Thank you for the notice of Sarah Ruden's "Gospel" translation, which I just downloaded.

In a footnote, I see, she does try to deal with the problem of a Jewish woman marrying five times, which is really just impossible, so Ruden suggests the husband was just a "man"—but then puzzlingly she slides over the problem of the sixth man who isn't "lawfully" a husband.

But I'm afraid there's problems here. To live with a man is not 'unlawful' in Jewish law, and a husband doesn't belong to a wife—she belongs to him. Then the woman calls Jesus a "prophet"—and this is the key problem: the rest of their conversation is about theological subjects—like what temple to worship in!

Brant Pitre's "Jesus the Bridegroom" is really so eye-opening about this scene, and the footnotes supply many references.