With respect to the pericope adulteræ, on the other hand, we may be quite certain that it did not originally stand in the position it now occupies (vii. 53-viii. 11), nor indeed in John’s Gospel at all, although the decision of the Holy Office of the 13th February 1897, which was confirmed by the Pope two days later, obliges Catholic exegetes to hold it as genuine. It is omitted in a great many manuscripts and versions—_e.g._ in א B L T. A and C are defective here, but the amount of space shows that they could not have contained it. It is omitted in the Syriac and Egyptian versions, in the Armenian and the Gothic, in some Old Latin codices, and in the earliest of the Greek and Latin Fathers. On the other hand it is found in all the manuscripts of Jerome and in Codex D, which is the only one of the earlier Greek manuscripts to contain it. In some minuscules and later Armenian manuscripts it stands at the end of the fourth Gospel, where now Westcott and Hort put it. In minuscule 225, written in the year 1192, it follows vii. 36; in the Georgian version it comes after vii. 44; while in the Ferrar Group—_i.e._ in minuscules 13, 69, 124, 346, 556—it is inserted after Luke xxi. 38. Its insertion after vii. 36 is probably the result of an accidental error. In the Greek Lectionaries the liturgy for Whitsunday begins at verse 37 and extends to verse 52, followed by viii. 12, so that the pericope was, by mistake, inserted before instead of after this lection. Its position in the Georgian version is the more remarkable, seeing that in the Old Latin Codex b, which contained the pericope by the first hand, the entire passage from vii. 44-viii. 12 has been _erased_. As a probable explanation of its position in the Ferrar Group after Luke xxi. 38, it has been suggested that the scribe inserted it there owing to the resemblance between Luke xxi. 37 and John viii. 1, and also between Luke xxi. 38 (ὤρθριζε) and John viii. 2 (ὄρθρου). Harris thinks that its proper place is in John between chapters v. and vi., because reference is made in v. 45, 46 to the Mosaic Law, which is also mentioned in viii. 5.