Oh, I see; although I think a literalist approach leads to a non-literal one. I don't think women were ever supposed to be stoned and that this was part of the point in the laws, that the value of the person was to be upheld. I also don't think the Pharisees at the time of Jesus would have literally gone through with a stoning. They were probably going to have some kind of ceremonial stoning without any stones thrown, more like a ruinously embarrassing social event for the girl or worse a shunning.It doesn't happen...anymore, in Jesus' time it did and was part of Jewish law., according to the gospels' narrative Jesus saved an adulterous woman from being stoned to death. That's why I wrote about the "fundamentalist/literalist" approach
By writing in the dust, Jesus seems to me to allude to the law of marital jealousy. Its the only place in the Torah where someone writes in the dust and also happens to be about cases of adultery, so probably Jesus writes a curse in the dust. The gospel narrative says that one by one the Pharisees then leave until only Jesus and the girl remain. This could not have happened had Jesus made anything except a Torah compliant argument. He convinced them to let her go through what he wrote. By virtue of providing a way, however frail, for them not to stone her, they were compelled not to. Why then is this in the gospels? Its probably an object lesson for Christians and intended to be given along with an explanation of the Torah, but the object lesson and explanation seem to have been lost in time. I am only guessing at what they were.