Jesus and Women

The law they cite requires both parties, and they brought one. What the accusers were actually doing, and why the manuscript question does not settle it.

He calls her people dogs, and softening it does not help. Bailey reads the exchange as an exam given to a woman he expected to pass, with an audience in mind.

He sits on the wellhead with no means of drawing water and opens by asking her for help. The longest conversation in the Gospels starts from a position of need.

Ruth, Esther, Deborah and Judith were heroines in the older literature. By the first century the position had moved, and the movement is well documented.