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This paper discusses three Hebrew gratulatory poems from the corpus of so-called carmina gratulatoria hebraica composed by 17th century Hungarian peregrines in Franeker (Holland). It introduces the genre and context of this type of poems. As carmina gratulatoria represent a community oriented genre, they offer a wealth of information about their sociocultural setting, in our case the relations of the writer and his addressees, his education in and knowledge of Hebrew in Hungary and in the Netherlands, the writer’s skills of Hebrew and writing poetry. This is the first study of these Hebrew poems from the 17th century.

Jesus refers to the Law when the Scribes and Pharisees accuse a woman of adultery: “the hands of the witnesses shall be the first raised against the person to execute the death penalty” (Deut 17,7). According to Károly Balázs, the word avnama,rthtoj ‘without sin’ used in the Gospel is etymologically related to ma,rturoj ‘witness’. If he is right, this might shed a new light on our interpretation of this pericope, as well as our view of sin in general. On the other hand, if there is no such relationship, the reference to the law raises the possibility of false witnessing. None of the accusers dared to raise his hand against the accused woman.