As New English Bible points out, some ancient manuscripts add “convicted by their conscience” after they all left. However, this phrase also is recognized as an ancient scribe’s addition to the text, and should not be included. These are only two of the many textual variations in this passage.

The older ones first is literally “beginning from the older ones.” The Greek expression “beginning from” may simply mean “including,” but apparently all translations follow the same meaning suggested by Good News Translation. In some languages it may be necessary to say “The older men left first and then the younger men” or “The older men were the first ones to leave, and then the younger men followed them.”

In Greek this verse is one sentence. Good News Translation makes it two sentences and at the beginning of the second changes the Greek pronoun “he” to Jesus.

There is literally “in the midst,” the same expression used in verse 3. New English Bible, Jerusalem Bible and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch also translate this expression there, while Revised Standard Version, Moffatt, and New American Bible “before him.”

It is not possible in some languages to translate “Jesus was left alone.” Obviously the woman was still standing there, and there may have been a crowd of onlookers, for the scribes and Pharisees had intruded upon Jesus as he was teaching the people. An equivalent expression in some languages is “they left Jesus there with the woman still standing where she had been.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of John. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1980. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .