Thursday December 13, 2007

Jocelyn Schmidt
Journal for 12/13/07
New Testament


Shalom! Today was the day before our archaeology final, so most people spent the day studying in the center. The test will include questions from only the last half of the semester, plus information from the supplemental readings so it will probably be considerably harder than the first final. A few people attempted to get onto the temple mount this morning, but I don’t think any of them were successful. My favorite New Testament story is when Christ forgives the adulterous woman. I love that in every situation and interaction, Christ always has the most perfect responses to the Pharisees. When they bring the adulterous woman who has blatantly been set up before Christ and ask him whether or not she deserves to be stoned, he answers simply, “He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.” Since every person on this earth has sinned, Christ in this statement was probably referring to a certain sin. We talked about in our New Testament class and in our Archaeology class how this accusation can be taken in two different ways. Either he was referring to the sins of all those who played a role in this wicked scheme to trap Christ, or he was referring to everyone in the crowd who had themselves committed sins of adultery. We were also told that in the Roman era it was the witness who was always the first to throw the first stone at the condemned, so Christ was reminding these wicked men of this detail knowing that they their guilty consciences would condemn them of their own guilt. This story demonstrates Christ’s commandment to “judge not, lest ye be judged.” Not even Christ who was perfect, condemned this woman. This shows to me how much more, we who have sinned should not judge others.