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a reply to: Seede

THE BATTLE RENEWED

Had the final word been said on the “comma Johanneum”? Perhaps it seemed that way as the seventeenth century progressed, dominated by the Authorized Version. But the murmurings never ceased and the search for the mysterious Codex Britannicus continued, for it disappeared after Erasmus was told about it. Toward the end of the century, no less a personage than Sir Isaac Newton turned the attention of his scientifically trained mind to this text. In 1690 he sent John Locke the treatise “An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture.” The tract set out clearly the reasons for rejecting the text as spurious and several copies circulated among friends of Newton, but it was never published until nearly seventy years later and then only imperfectly.

Meanwhile the growth of textual criticism took on new impetus. The text was attacked by Richard Simon, and Dr. John Mill gathered the evidence against the passage, though he remained its defender. But Thomas Emlyn took up Mill’s evidence and urged both houses of Convocation assembled in 1717 to cut the words right out, for he said, “ ’tis never given up fairly, till it be left out of our printed copies.”5 In short order Emlyn was attacked by Mr. Martin, pastor of the French Church at Utrecht, whose voluminous and subtle answer seemed to clear the field. Emlyn’s reply caused Martin to launch a second tirade against him. But Emlyn won many supporters, though the devious windings of the controversy often made it extremely difficult to find out what it was really all about.

In 1729 there appeared here in England a diglot version of the Christian Greek Scriptures by Daniel Mace. In a fourteen-page note he listed the Greek and Latin manuscripts, ancient versions, early Greek and Latin writers that omitted the text and threw it out with this conclusion, “In a word, if this evidence is not sufficient to prove, that the controverted text in St. John is spurious; by what evidence can it be prov’d, that any text in St. John is genuine?”6 Thereafter, other English translations began to omit the verse, such as the one by William Whiston (1745), well known for his translation of Josephus, and that by John Worsley in 1770.

If Edward Gibbon thought the wheel had turned full circle when he published The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1781 he was mistaken. With his usual sarcasm he denounced the passage as a “pious fraud.”7 Up rose another champion, George Travis, an archdeacon, who rushed into action to defend the text. His extreme statements elicited crushing replies from Professor Richard Porson (running to over 400 pages) and Herbert Marsh, a bishop. At last the interpolation was exposed in a minute and most exact manner.

THE LAST STRONGHOLD GIVES WAY

After Porson and Marsh there was little to add. Most scholars of the nineteenth century considered the matter settled, but one stronghold remained, the Roman Catholic Church.

As late as 1897 a papal decree was issued forbidding the faithful to doubt the “comma Johanneum.” In part it said:

“Secretariat of the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Concerning the authenticity of the text of 1 John V. 7. (Wednesday, Jan. 12, 1897).

“In a General Congregation of the Holy Roman Inquisition . . . the following doubtful question was presented:

“‘Whether we may safely deny, or even treat as a matter of doubt, the authenticity of that text (1 John V. 7). . . ’

“All things having been most diligently examined and weighed, and the opinion of the Lords Consultors having been taken, the aforesaid Most Eminent Cardinals gave out ‘the answer is in the negative.’ On Friday the 15th of the aforesaid month and year, in the usual audience granted to reverend father the lord Assessor of the Holy Office, after that he had made an exact report of the aforesaid proceedings to our Most Holy Lord Pope Leo XIII, His Holiness approved and confirmed the resolution of these Most Eminent Fathers . . . ”—Acta Sanctae Sedis, vol. 29. 1896-7. p. 637.

But Pope Leo soon realized that he had been imposed upon, and in 1902 he established a commission to study Scripture more closely, directing it to begin with 1 John 5:7, 8. Because the report was unfavorable to the earlier decree it had to be put aside, but the pope continued to be worried by the situation right up to his death. Some Roman Catholic scholars began to ignore the decree. Dr. Vogels omitted the text from his Greek Testament published in 1920. Others were at first more cautious.

In the Roman Catholic Westminster Version of the New Testament published in 1931 the footnote to 1 John 5:7, 8 after calling attention to its omission in the original text continues, “Until further action be taken by the Holy See it is not open to Catholic editors to eliminate the words from a version made for the use of the faithful.”8 But in the same version republished as one volume in 1947 the interpolation is omitted, editor Cuthbert Lattey citing the Greek text published by Jesuit scholar A. Merk, which also omits it.

So the prospect envisaged by Professor J. Scott Porter in 1848 has come true. “It is to be hoped,” he wrote, after summing up the evidence on 1 John 5:7, 8, “the time will soon come when those who have the charge of preparing editions of the Bible for general circulation, will be ashamed of sending forth a known interpolation as a portion of the sacred text.”9 In recent times the discovery of such Bible manuscripts as the Codex Sinaiticus has confirmed that this particular verse was no part of God’s inspired Word.

In brief summary the words of that well-known textual critic F. H. A. Scrivener can be quoted: “We need not hesitate to declare our conviction that the disputed words were not written by St. John: that they were originally brought into Latin copies in Africa from the margin, where they had been placed as a pious and orthodox gloss on ver. 8: that from the Latin they crept into two or three late Greek codices, and thence into the printed Greek text, a place to which they had no rightful claim.”10

Our faith in God’s Word is greatly strengthened when we review the story of this text and reflect on the abundance of evidence from all sources that testifies to the accuracy of the Bible we hold in our hand.

REFERENCES

1 The Epistles of John by B. F. Westcott, 4th edition, 1902, page 202.

2 The Works of N. Lardner, volume 3, page 68.

3 Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, volume 18, 1889, by G. Schepss, page 6.

4 The Codex Montfortianus, A Collation, by O. T. Dobbin, 1854, page 9.

5 A Full Inquiry into the Original Authority of the Text, 1 John 5:7 . . . (second edition) by T. Emlyn, 1717, page 72.

6 The New Testament in Greek and English, 1729, volume 2, page 934.

7 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by E. Gibbon, chapter 37, Chandos edition, volume 2, page 526.

8 The Westminster Version of the Sacred Scriptures, volume 4, page 146.

9 Principles of Textual Criticism by J. Scott Porter, 1848, page 510.

10 A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament by F. H. A. Scrivener, 4th edition, 1894, volume 2, page 407.

a reply to: Seede

Any Proof of the Trinity in 1 John 5:7, 8? (article from 1975)

LONG have Bible scholars questioned the authenticity of certain words found at 1 John 5:7, 8. But since these words do appear in the Textus Receptus (“Received Text”), they are found in the King James, the Douay and other versions. As increasing evidence proved the words spurious, however, those believing in the Trinity seem to have taken a delaying action against expunging them from Bible translations.

For example, the noted English Roman Catholic Bible scholar Monsignor Knox has a footnote in his translation (1944) saying: “This verse does not occur in any good Greek manuscript. But the Latin versions may have preserved the true text.” And in its main text the Catholic Confraternity translation (1941) reads: “For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness on earth: the Spirit, and the water, and the blood; and these three are one.” In a footnote, this translation states: “According to the evidence of many manuscripts, and the majority of commentators, these verses should read: ‘And there are three who give testimony, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood; and these three are one.’” Nevertheless, the footnote adds: “The Holy See reserves to itself the right to pass finally on the origin of the present reading.”

A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture (1953) presumes to explain how the Father, the Word (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit all give testimony to Christ’s divinity. Then, in explanation of the words “and these three are one,” this work states that they “have one identical nature.” However, it then refers to another page (which most readers probably would not consult). There one finds an admission that this passage now is generally held to be a gloss that crept into the Old Latin, Vulgate and Greek manuscripts. Since that is true, why attempt to explain it?

In contrast is the footnote appearing in The Jerusalem Bible (1966), which does not have the added words in the main text. It states: “Vulg[ate] vv. 1 Jo 5:7-8 read as follows ‘There are three witnesses in heaven: the Father the Word and the Spirit, and these three are one; there are three witnesses on earth: the Spirit the water and the blood’. The words in italics (not in any of the early Greek MSS, or any of the early translations, or in the best MSS of the Vulg. itself) are probably a gloss that has crept into the text.”

Significantly, the spurious words in question are not found in the latest Roman Catholic translation in English, The New American Bible. But, how did they creep into Bible manuscripts? Likely, an over-zealous copyist deliberately inserted this statement so as to support the Trinity teaching. Yet, there is no proof of that false doctrine here or elsewhere in the Holy Scriptures.

So how does 1 John 5:5-8 read in an honest accurate modern English translation?

NW (Study Edition): 5 Who can conquer the world? Is it not the one who has faith that Jesus is the Son of God? 6 This is the one who came by means of water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. And the spirit is bearing witness, because the spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three witness bearers: 8 the spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.

5:5-8​—How did water, blood, and spirit bear witness to the fact that “Jesus is the Son of God”? Water was a witness bearer because when Jesus was baptized in water, Jehovah himself expressed His approval of him as His Son. (Matt. 3:17) Jesus’ blood, or life, given as “a corresponding ransom for all,” also showed that Jesus is God’s Son. (1 Tim. 2:5, 6) And the holy spirit testified that Jesus is the Son of God when it descended upon him at his baptism, enabling him to go “through the land doing good and healing all those oppressed by the Devil.”​—John 1:29-34; Acts 10:38.

Therefore, these “three are [indeed] in agreement.” As John says. Nothing to do with any sort of Trinity (three-in-one, a tri-unity, a trinity).

Source: Highlights From the Letters of John and of Jude