pericope

A pericope is a short, self-contained passage taken from a larger text. The term comes from the Greek perikopē, meaning a cut-around or section, and it is used in literary and scholarly contexts to designate a distinct unit of text that can stand alone for study, reading, or analysis.

In biblical studies, a pericope refers to a discrete passage of Scripture that conveys a complete unit of meaning, often arranged for liturgical or interpretive purposes. Pericopes are the units into which Scripture is divided for public reading in many churches, and they are frequently used in lectionaries. The division into pericopes does not always coincide with chapter or verse boundaries, and editors may group material to reflect narratives, discourses, or themes.

In textual criticism, pericope denotes a passage treated as an indivisible unit for manuscript comparison and study of a text’s transmission. Some pericopes are the subject of scholarly debate about authenticity or originality, based on how reliably they appear in early witnesses. A well-known example is the Pericope Adulterae (the story of the woman taken in adultery, John 7:53–8:11), whose presence is questioned in early manuscripts but remains part of many later textual traditions and liturgical readings.

Beyond the biblical realm, the term pericope is used to describe any short, self-contained passage in ancient literature that is read or analyzed as a unit, illustrating the broader concept of textual segmentation in classical and early Christian texts.