Editing Johannine Comma (section)

==Origins==
''See Also [[Trinity of the Church Fathers]]''
[[image:CODEX SINAITICUS 1 John 5 7 8 Comma Johanneum.JPG|thumb|250px|left|Excerpt from [[Codex Sinaiticus]] including [[1 John 5:7]]–[[1 John 5:9|9]]. It lacks the Comma Johanneum. The purple-coloured text says: "There are three witness bearers, the Spirit and the water and the blood".]]

===Omission Theories (verse authentic)===
Those who believe the Johannine Comma is authentic attribute authorship to the apostle John.  They have diverse theories as to why the Comma dropped out of the Greek manuscript line and why most of the evidence is in Latin manuscripts and church writings. Often these proposed textual histories include [[Homeoteleuton#Scribal error|homeoteleuton]] as the initial cause of the early variant.  In 1699 [[Louis Ellies Dupin]] discussed the possibility:
:"...that those two verses beginning with the same words, it was easy for the copiers to omit one by negligence, nothing being more usual than when the same word is in two periods that follow one another, for the copier to pass from the word of the first period to that which follows in the second."

The commentary of Puritan scholar [[Matthew Henry]] added the difficulty and unlikelihood that a deliberate addition could be inserted into the text-line:
:"It was far more easy for a transcriber, by turning away his eye, or by the obscurity of the copy, it being obliterated or defaced on the top or bottom of a page, or worn away in such materials as the ancients had to write upon, to lose and omit the passage, than for an interpolator to devise and insert it; he must be very bold and impudent, that could hope to escape detection and shame, and profane too, that durst venture to make an addition to a supposed sacred book."
:
[[Anthony Kohlmann]] asked and answered the question, "what reason can you assign for so notable an omission in some old manuscripts?" Kohlmann pointed to homoeoteleuton and doctrinal motivations and included an analogy to another verse which some attempted to excise.

An article on the KJV_Today website looks at the Johannine first epistle text and asserts out that corruption in 1 John occurs in a number of doctrinally charged Christological verses, including full phrases. "1 John has its fair share of early textual corruptions to demonstrate that passages were indeed altered for reasons of carelessness or infidelity ... One thing is certain: the text of 1 John underwent corruption long before the alleged 'fabrication' of the Comma.  With there being these other demonstrable examples of early textual corruptions, it is reasonable to suppose that the omission of the Comma was also an early textual corruption."

Also those asserting authenticity of the Comma, followed by omission, often assert that the early church writers and internal evidences are undervalued by today's textual theories. Franz Pieper is an example from 20th-century scholarship. For Pieper the Cyprian citation is a key element leading to his acceptance of authenticity. Pieper disagrees with the Karl Ströbel claim,<sup>[]</sup> that the old codices must be the judge in textual criticism (given in Ströbel's review of the Sander book). Pieper says "a quotation from the Fathers is often of decisive importance".

Another point raised in favor of authenticity is the difficulty of additions changing the Bible text-line, since additions are usually a conscious change or tampering, "First, to omit implies only excusable oversight, while to insert implies designed deceit and direct invention of a human statement as God's word." and likely to be noted, caught and corrected, sounding foreign and unusual to the reader. While text dropped, by fatigue or homoeoteleuton, is a process that is common. And such changes require no conscious attempt at textual tampering, they are often accidental.  Whether accidental or deliberate tampering, such an omission is less visible than an addition.  The text is no longer there to jar the mind of the proof-reader, the scriptorium or the church in the next town. And thus the new variant can escape early detection and correction and be accepted into a stream of manuscripts.

Another issue raised is the difficulty of positing a multi-stage (scribal commentary -> ms margin -> ms text) textual entrance, without any direct evidential support. This scenario is seen as having Ockham-style difficulties, being the more complex alternative. And proponents of authenticity see these difficulties as compounded by a combination of additional factors.  The sanctity of the scripture text meant that the scriptoriums and churches watched carefully for scribal additions.  Also the proposed late textual entry (as theorized by Ehrman and others) and the widespread early use of the Comma throughout the Latin church even in the 400s mitigate against the multi-stage theory.  The 400s is when we have the Council of Carthage and the Twelve Books on the Trinity and additional references.

In addition, some Comma defenders offer a fideistic apologetic, that the preservation of the word of God mandates that there would not be any significant Bible addition, textual charlatanism, that would be transmitted to the large body of the church for 1000 years and more.

===Addition Theories (verse spurious)===

Those who believe the Johannine Comma is inauthentic view the text as either an accidental intrusion, which could be a margin commentary note that a later scribe mistakenly considered to be the original text. Or as a deliberate insertion or forgery.  The deliberate theory usually considers the motives to be doctrinal, to support Trinitarian doctrines.

====[[Desiderius Erasmus|Erasmus]]====
[[Desiderius Erasmus|Erasmus]], looking at the Vulgate Prologue, which evidence had been emphasized by [[Stunica]], implied that Jerome had been the source of the verse about which the Prologue speaks: "For who would have called him a forger and a falsifier, unless he changed the common reading of the place?" Erasmus "spoke of Jerome's violence, unscrupulousness, and frequent inconsistency, as the probable origin of this supposed interpolation in the Sacred text." Drummond quoted Erasmus more moderately than Armfield.

====Pierre Olivetan====
Olivetan was the first translator of the French reformed Bible. He kept the Comma: 
*Car il en y a troys qui donnent tesmoingnage au ciel: le pere, la parolle, et
le sainct esperit, et ces troys sont ung. Aussi en y a trois … 

In the margin he wrote:
*Ceste sentence commenceant à Car, jusque à Aussi, ne se trouve point
en plusieurs exemplaires anciens, tant Grecz que Latins.

====[[Hugo Grotius]]====
[[Hugo Grotius]] contended that the verse had been added in to the Johannine text by the Arians About the Grotius view, Richard Simon wrote "... all this is only founded on conjectures: and seeing every one does reason according to his prejudices, some will have the Arians to be the authors of that addition, and others do attribute the same to the Catholicks." Luther's pastor, John Bugenhagen, like Grotius, wrote of a conjectured Arian origin .

====Elzevir====
[[Image:1_John_5_7-8_Elzevir_1633.JPG|300px|thumb|right|[[1 John 5:7]]-[[1 John 5:8|8]] in the [[1633 AD|1633]] Greek New Testament of the Elzevir family]]

====Johann Albrecht Bengel====
1 John 5:7. ὅτι τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες, because there are three bearing witness) The participle, bearing witness, used instead of the noun, witnesses, implies that the act of bearing witness, and the effect of the testimony, are always present. Before also he had spoken of the spirit, in the neuter gender, τὸ πνεῦμά ἐστι το ΄αρτυρουν: now he speaks in the masculine gender, there are three who bear witness, of the spirit also; at the same saying, that the water and the blood bear witness, also in the masculine gender. Those feminines, faith, hope, charity, are said to be three (tria), in the neuter gender, 1 Corinthians 13:13; but here πνεῦμα, ὕδωρ, αἷμα, all of the neuter gender in Greek, that is, the spirit, the water, and the blood, are τρεῖς μαρτυροῦντες, in the masculine gender. To be bearing witness is properly applied to persons only: and the fact that three are described, by personification, as bearing witness on earth, just as though they were persons, is admirably adapted (subservient) to the personality of the three who bear witness in heaven; but yet neither the spirit (that is the truth of the Gospel), nor the water, nor the blood, are persons. Therefore the apostle, advancing from the preceding verse to the one now present, employs a trope, adapted to the brevity of the discourse, so as to say this: There are three classes of men (1 John 5:9, compared with John 5:34), who discharge the office of bearing witness on earth; (1st) that class of witnesses in general which is employed in preaching the Gospel; and, in particular, (2d) that class of witnesses, which administers baptism, as John the Baptist and the others; and also (3d) that class of witnesses, which beheld and puts on record the passion and death of the Lord. There is therefore a METALEPSIS,(20) and that of a most weighty kind: viz. one wherein (a) by a Synecdoche of number, instead of the whole class of witnesses, there is put one who witnesses; as though it were said, a prophet, baptist, apostle: for although these three functions might often meet in one man, yet of themselves they were divided: comp. Ephesians 4:11 : and on that account the Metonymy is the more suitable, on which presently. The degrees of these three functions are found, Matthew 11:9; Matthew 11:11, where however the word prophet is used in a more restricted sense. (b) By Metonymy of the abstract term, instead of those who bear witness, as αὐτόπται καὶ ὑπηρέται (eye-witnesses and ministers), the spirit itself, the water, and the blood, are mentioned.— ἐν τῇ γῇ, on earth) See below.— τὸ πνεῦμα, καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ, καὶ τὸ αἷμα, the spirit, and the water, and the blood) The apostle changes the order: for whereas before he had put the spirit in the third place, he now puts it in the first place, according to the natural order. The spirit, as was before said, bore witness before the water and the blood; and the spirit bears witness even without the testimony of the water and the blood, but the water and the blood never bear witness without the spirit.— καὶ οἱ τρεῖς εἰς τὸ ἓν εἰσιν, and these three agree in one [concur towards one end]) The Prophet, the Baptist, and the Apostle are equally of the same earthly nature of themselves (comp. are one, 1 Corinthians 3:8), and are ordained altogether to one end, to testify of Jesus Christ, as of Him who is come into the world. Comp. εἶναι εἰς τὶ, Luke 5:17. τὸ ἓν, with the article, denotes not so much one, as the same thing.

Does this interpretation of the 7th verse seem somewhat weak? This complaint will presently be of service to our argument.

====[[Isaac Newton]]====
[[Isaac Newton]] took a similar approach as Erasmus, looking to Jerome as the principle figure in placing the Comma in the Bible. Newton also thought that the Athanasius Disputation with Arius (Ps-Athanasius) "had been deeply influential on the subsequent attitude to the authenticity of the passage." Newton's comment that from Matthew 28:19 "they tried at first to derive the Trinity" implies that for the conjectured interpolation, "the Trinity" was the motive.

====[[Richard Simon]]====
[[Richard Simon]] believed the verse began in a Greek scholium, while [[Herbert Marsh]] posited the origin as a Latin scholium. Simon conjectured that the [[Athanasius of Alexandria|Athanasius]] exposition at Nicea was the catalyst for the Greek scholium which brought forth the text.

====[[Richard Porson]]====
[[Richard Porson]] was a major figure in the opposition to the authenticity of the verse. His theory of spurious origin involved Tertullian and Cyprian, and also the interpretation by Augustine which led to a marginal note.  And, in the Porson theory, that marginal note was in the Bible text used by the author of the Confession of Faith at the Council of Carthage of 484 AD. Porson also considered the Vulgate Prologue as spurious, a forgery not written by Jerome, and this Prologue was responsible for the entrance into the Vulgate. "..Latin copies had this verse in the eighth century. It is then that we suppose it to have crawled into notice on the strength of Pseudo-Jerome's recommendation."

====[[Johann Jakob Griesbach]]====
[[Johann Jakob Griesbach]] wrote his [http://archive.org/details/DiatribeInLocumIIoann.5.7.8 ''Diatribe in Locum 1 Joann V. 7, 8''] in 1806, as an Appendix to his Critical Edition of the New Testament. In the Diatribe, Griesbach "expresses his conviction that the seventh verse rests upon the authority of Vigilius Tapsensis."

The 1808 ''Improved Version'', with [[Thomas Belsham]] contributing, followed Griesbach on the idea of Tapsensis authority, combined with enhancing the forgery intimations of Gibbon. Thus came the theory that the verse was a forgery by Virgilius Tapsensis. This emphasis on Tapsensis (Thapsus) was echoed by Unitarians of the 1800s, including [[Theophilus Lindsey]], [[Abner Kneeland]], and John Wilson.

====[[John Oxlee]]====
[[John Oxlee]], in his journal debate with Frederick Nolan, accused the African Prelates Vigilius Tapensis and Fulgentius Ruspensis of thrusting the verse into the Latin manuscripts.

====[[William Orme (minister)|William Orme]]====
[[William Orme (minister)|William Orme]], in the Monthly Review, 1825, conjectured Augustine as the source. "it is probable that the verse originated in the interpretation of St. Augustine. It seems to have existed for some time on the margins of the Latin copies, in a kind of intermediate state, as something better than a mere dictum of Augustine, and yet not absolutely Scripture itself. By degrees it was received into the text, where it appears in by far the greater number of Latin manuscripts now in our hands."

====[[Benjamin Wilson]]====
[[Benjamin Wilson]] gives the following explanation for this action in his "Emphatic Diaglott":
:"This text concerning the heavenly witness is not contained in any Greek manuscript which was written earlier than the fifteenth century. It is not cited by any of the ecclesiastical writers; not by any of early Latin fathers even when the subjects upon which they treated would naturally have lead them to appeal to it's authority. It is therefore evidently spurious."

====[[Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener|Scrivener]]====
[[Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener|Scrivener]] allowed for the authenticity of the Cyprian citation as a reference to the verse being in Cyprian's Bible. <sup>[]</sup> To allow for this, Scrivener's theory of the source and timing of an interpolation can not be late, and his scenario did not give estimated dates or any names responsible. "the disputed words...were originally brought into Latin copies in Africa from the margin, where they had been placed as a pious and orthodox gloss on v. 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."

====[[Joseph Lightfoot|Joseph Barbour Lightfoot]]====
[[Joseph Lightfoot|Joseph Barbour Lightfoot]], who similarly worked on the Revision, included Origen as part of the origin. "not in the first instance a deliberate forgery, but a comparatively innocent gloss .... the spirit and the water and the blood—a gloss which is given substantially by S. Augustine and was indicated before by Origen and Cyprian, and which first thrust itself into the text in some Latin MSS .."

[[Brooke Westcott|Brooke Foss Westcott]] had a theory of verse origin and development which said of the Augustine reference in the City of God - "Augustine supplies the word 'Verbum' which is required to 'complete the gloss'". Even in 1892, in the third edition of [http://books.google.com/books?id=1hRWAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA203 ''The epistles of St John: the Greek text, with notes and essays''], when Westcott acknowledged the newly discovered ''Liber Apologeticus'' Priscillian reference with ''verbum'', the Augustine ''Verbum/gloss'' assertion remained in his book. And the assertion "there is no evidence that it was found in the text of St John before the latter part of the 5th century" also remained, alongside "The gloss which had thus become an established interpretation of St John's words is first quoted as part of the Epistle in a tract of Priscillian (c 385)".

====[[Joseph Pohle]]====
[[Joseph Pohle]], after asking "how did the text of the three heavenly Witnesses find its way into the Vulgate? All explanations that have been advanced so far are pure guesswork."  concludes "the ''Comma Ioanneum'' was perhaps found in copies of the Latin Bible current in Africa as early as the third century", and then considered Cassiodorus as responsible for inserting the verse into the Vulgate. Pohle, like Scrivener, allows that the Cyprian citation may well indicate that the verse was in his Bible.

====Karl Künstle====
In the early 20th century Karl Künstle helped to popularize a theory that [[Priscillian|Priscillian of Ávila]] (ca. 350-385) was the author of the Comma. The theory held that "Priscillian interpolated ... in the first epistle of John so as to justify in this way his unitarian theories. The text was then retouched in order to appear orthodox, and in this shape found its way into several Spanish documents." This idea of a Priscillian origin for the Comma had a brief scholarship flourish and then quickly lost support in textual circles. The Priscillian citation had been recently published in 1889 by Georg Schepps.

====Alan England Brooke====
Alan England Brooke, while theorizing that "the growth of that gloss can be traced back at least as early as Cyprian" also placed the Theodulfian recension of the Vulgate, after 800 AD, as a prime point whereby the verse first gained traction into the Latin text-lines. "It is through the Theodulfian Recension of the Vulgate that the gloss first gained anything like wide acceptance".

====[[Adolf von Harnack|Adolf Harnack]]====
[[Adolf von Harnack|Adolf Harnack]] in ''Zur Textkritik und Christologie der Schriften des Johannes'' "argues that the comma johanneum is the post-augustinian revision of an old addition to the text".

====[[Raymond E. Brown|Raymond Brown]]====
[[Raymond E. Brown|Raymond Brown]] expresses a theory of verse development in which the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian (the sections that proponents consider Comma allusions) represented the "thought process" involved, that gave rise to the Comma. The words of the Comma "appear among Latin writers in North Africa and Spain in the third century as a dogmatic reflection on and expansion of the 'three that testify': 'the Spirit' is the Father [Jn 4:24]; 'the blood' is the Son; 'the water' is the Spirit (Jn 7:38-39)."

====[[Walter Thiele]]====
[[Walter Thiele]] allows for a Greek origin of the Comma, before Cyprian. Raymond Brown summarizes: "Thiele, [http://www.degruyter.com/dg/viewarticle/j$002fzntw.1959.50.issue-1$002fzntw.1959.50.1.61$002fzntw.1959.50.1.61.xml;jsessionid=EA678D327173A4B4C3CB3E48371ADBF6 ''Beobachtungen''] 64-68, argues that the I John additions may have a Greek basis, for sometimes a plausible early chain can be constructed thus: Cyprian, Pseudo-Cyprian, Augustine, Pseudo-Augustine, Spanish Vulgate (especially Isidore of Seville and Theodolfus)."

[[Michael Maynard]] said of Walter Thiele:

:“Walter Thiele was my professor at Tubingen. He works at the Vetus Latina Institute in Beuron, Germany. I was delighted to discover his article in 1959 where he argued against the common view of Tischendorf and Griesbach who said that Cyprian, one of the oldest Church Father, quoted it—What did Griesbach and Tischendorf say? They said that Cyprian was just looking at the eighth verse and he just allegorized those witnesses as heavenly ones. But Thiele in 1959 argued, “No, Cyprian did not merely allude to verse 8, he actually had a Latin manuscript in his hand which had 1 John 5:7.” So Thiele is going against the crowd. Yet Thiele is a Hort-Westcott advocate! Further, Thiele is regarded as the foremost scholar of Latin Biblical manuscripts. Yet he is in favour of the [PAGE 37] view that Cyprian actually had 1 John 5:7 in that Latin manuscript he held in his hands, although Thiele still regards the verse as an interpolation. Now I asked Dr Thiele “That was your view 30 years ago. Do you still believe this today?” He replied “Ja, aber ich bin allein” which means “Yes, I am alone.” (with respect to the view that Cyprian quoted verse 7, instead of alluding to verse 8.) Thus, when it comes to issues on Latin manuscripts, all the professors in Germany consult Thiele, but when it comes to his view on the Johannine Comma, they do not want to listen to him! But that is about all the time I have now.”
~ Michael Maynard, "In Defence of the Johannine Comma", in The Burning Bush, Far Easter Bible College vol 3, no. 1, January 1997, p. 36-37

====[[Jaroslav Pelikan]]====
Church historian [[Jaroslav Pelikan]] expresses the common scholarly view that the words (apparently) crept into the Latin text of the New Testament during the Early Middle Ages, "[possibly] as one of those medieval glosses but were then written into the text itself by a careless copyist. [[Erasmus]] omitted them from his first edition; but when a storm of protest arose because the omission seemed to threaten the doctrine of the Trinity, he put them back in the third and later editions, whence they also came into the [[Textus Receptus]], 'the received text'."

Most New Testament scholars today believe that the Comma was [[Interpolation (manuscripts)|inserted]] into the Old Latin text based on a [[gloss]] to that text, with the original gloss dating to the 3rd or 4th century, as expressed with some qualifications by [[Bruce M. Metzger|Bruce Metzger]].

These theories generally consider the verse as not in the Bible of Cyprian. The acceptance of the possibility of Cyprian reading the verse in his Bible impels a more difficult conjecture of very early interpolation, essentially before the Arian and Sabellian doctrinal battles.  Yet it is those doctrinal battles which are generally given as supplying the motive for the proposed interpolation.

====Forgery====
Most opponents of the Comma as inauthentic view the verse as having arisen by a sequence of events involving scribal difficulties and error. Often this is a staged understanding, beginning with an interpretation placed as a margin commentary.  The margin note is later erroneously brought into the text by a scribe who mistakenly thought the margin note indicated a superior alternate reading or correction. Those types of proposed scenarios are based on the limitations inherent in laborious hand-copying and do not have to impugn motives.

By contrast, the accusations of deliberate textual tampering and forgery for doctrinal purposes are based on scribes making deliberate changes away from the original text. A number of writers have theories of direct forgery as the motive for the insertion of the Comma into the text.  Some of these theories were developed after the 1883 Priscillian discovery and fingered Priscillian as the culprit.

[[Voltaire]] wrote that the verse was inserted at the time of Constantine. "Lactantius...It was about this time that, among the very violent disputes on the Trinity, this famous verse was inserted in the First Epistle of St. John: “There are three that bear witness in earth—the word or spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three are one.”.

The accusation against the verse by [[Edward Gibbon]] in 1781, while stating "the Scriptures themselves were profaned by their rash and sacrilegious hands" stops short of a direct accusation of forgery by also discussing marginal notes and allegorical interpretation. In response to Gibbon, George Travis noted the lack of forgery accusations before the Reformation-era debate.

In 1813, Unitarian [[Thomas Belsham]] accused the verse of being an "impious forgery...spurious and fictitious". In ''Calm Inquiry'' in 1817, Belsham had the verse as a "palpable forgery" and his student, Unitarian minister Israel Worsley, for more emphasis wrote of "a gross and a palpable forgery".

For the next decades, the forgery accusation was generally made outside the context of textual analysis, usually by Unitarians and freethinkers, such as Robert Taylor. author of the Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society. [http://deila.dickinson.edu/theirownwords/author/BiererE.htm Everard Bierer] took this approach "This bold interpolation shows conclusively what Trinitarian fanaticism in the Dark Ages would do, and leaves us to imagine what renderings it probably gave to many other texts, and especially somewhat obscure ones on the same subject."

In 1888, [[Philip Schaff]], church historian who worked on the American committee of the Revision, brought the accusation to the mainstream, "Erasmus .. omitted in his Greek Testament the forgery of the three witnesses".

[[Charles Taze Russell]] in 1899 made his accusation specific and the forgery late: "the spurious words were no doubt interpolated by some over-zealous monk, who felt sure of the (Trinity) doctrine himself, and thought that the holy spirit had blundered in not stating the matter in the Scriptures: his intention, no doubt, was to help God and the truth out of a difficulty by perpetrating a fraud."

[[Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare]] was a textual scholar who wrote in 1910 a section specifically about "famous orthodox corruptions", including  "The text of the ''three witnesses'' a doctrinal forgery".

[[Preserved Smith]] in 1920 called the verse "a Latin forgery of the fourth century, possibly due to Priscillian"

Gordon Campbell, author of ''Bible: The Story of the King James Version 1611-2011'' asserts that the Comma is "a medieval forgery inserted into Bibles to support a trinitarian doctrine that had been erected on a disconcertingly thin biblical base.".

The popularity of the modern "orthodox corruption" view of Bart Ehrman has increased the forgery claims, especially on the Internet.  Ehrman calls the Comma "the most obvious instance of a theologically motivated corruption in the entire manuscript tradition of the New Testament. Nonetheless, in my judgment, the comma's appearance in the tradition can scarcely be dated prior to the trinitarian controversies that arose after the period under examination." Ehrman posits his other ''corruptions'' as around the 2nd century, so Ehrman is considering the Comma as exceptional and placing the "appearance" of the Comma in the 300s or 400s, close to Priscillian's verse usage and citation as from John.