He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone (John 8:7)
Tradition dictates that a moral lesson be drawn. We are all identified as sinners before God: judgement ought thereby be suspended lest its exercise leads to hypocrisy.
But hypocrisy is not sufficient sanction against judgement: practical reason runs subservient to the thinking of thought. What was simply participation in civic ritual is countered by an imploring call to re-affirm our sinfulness ( – its judgement). We are no longer members of a “this-worldly” group of stone-throwers but become an abstract, “other-worldly” community of sinners.
