Johannine Comma and Elijah Hixson

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On Jan 7, 2020, Elijah Hixson wrote an article on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog called The Greek Manuscripts of the Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7–8)]

The article was discussed at length on 'Timothy Berg's Facebook thread'. Jeff Riddle also did a response to it.

ms. 635

Elijah Hixson ETC Article ms. 635. He stated "...I can’t make out all the words, but I’m seeing το πν(ευμ)α το αγιο(ν) και ο π(ατ)ηρ (και)...the rest is more difficult. αιματος?..."

Elijah says of ms 635:

Before I get there, I want to mention that sometimes an eleventh Greek manuscript is cited. GA 635 is sometimes cited as having the CJ in the margin, but it does not.

I can’t make out all the words, but I’m seeing το πν(ευμ)α το αγιο(ν) και ο π(ατ)ηρ (και)...the rest is more difficult. αιματος? It’s probably an obvious solution, and I’m happy to update the post if someone has a better image or can make more sense of it. There are a number of notes like this in the margins of 635, and there isn’t room for the whole CJ here anyway, so I didn’t want to spend too much time on it.

I discuss below the 10 manuscripts with the CJ, with the first eight in approximate chronological order of the inclusion of the CJ. I want to mention from the start that I have drawn attention to the Roman Catholic provenance of a few of these. I’ll explain more at the end why I do so, but the short version is that some of the most vehement defenders of the CJ are Protestant textus receptus advocates who subscribe to the Westminster or London Baptist confessions and claim doctrinal purity via affirmation of these confessions, yet in order to defend the CJ by appealing to the Greek manuscripts, they have to appeal to manuscripts from the tradition from which their own tradition broke away, and in some cases, manuscripts that were made (or marginal notes that were added) after that break.

1. GA 629 (1362–1363)

GA 629, f. 105v, images at https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Ott.gr.298

Elijah says of ms 635:

629 is dated 1362–1363 and is the earliest known Greek manuscript of the CJ. There are earlier manuscripts, than 629 but in those, the CJ is still later, so, say in the year 1400, those manuscripts themselves existed but they did not have the CJ yet, where as in the year 1400, 629 did.

While I haven’t yet figured out where 629 came from, there is a note on f. 2 that identifies it as being the property of “Joannis Angeli Ducis ab Altaemps”. This would be Giovanni Angelo D’Altemps, who, if that Italian Wikipedia article is correct, seems to have inherited at least part of his library from his grandfather, Cardinal Mark Sittich von Hohenems Altemps, who himself was the nephew of Pope Pius IV. Today, 629 is in the Vatican Library as Ottob. gr. 298. That is all to say that as much as I can tell about the original provenance of this manuscript (and the manuscript does pre-date its known owner by more than 200 years), by the time of later editions of the TR, it can be tied to a Roman Catholic family.

GA 639. f. 105v.

629 is a Latin-Greek diglot, which should raise suspicions about its witness to the CJ. After all, the contention is that the CJ was translated into Greek from Latin and that’s how it ended up in a few Greek manuscripts, and that looks exactly like what happened here. Notice above that there are no definite articles in the three heavenly witnesses, but Latin does not have definite articles like Greek, so the lack of articles here in Greek suggests that it is a translation from Latin. Also note that this manuscript is not a witness to the form of the CJ as it appears in the TR. In fact, in these 23–25 words, I count 8 differences between the CJ here and the CJ as it appears in the Trinitarian Bible Society’s textus receptus (at least according to the TBT TR on Bibleworks). They are απο του ουρανου, απο της γης, the article(3x), the order of Πνεῦμα Ἅγιον, οὗτοι in the TBT and εἰς τὸ in 629:

TBT:

ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ ὁ πατήρ ὁ λόγος καὶ τὸ Ἅγιον Πνεῦμα καὶ οὗτοι οἱ τρεῖς ἕν εἰσι καὶ τρεῖς εἰσὶν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες ἐν τῇ γῇ

629: απο του ουρανου πατήρ λόγος καὶ Πνεῦμα Ἅγιον καὶ οἱ τρεῖς εἰς τὸ ἕν εἰσιν καὶ τρεῖς εἰσὶν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες απο της γης

In short, 629 appears to be a thoroughly Roman Catholic manuscript that has an unusual form of the CJ as a translation from Latin into Greek, probably (and this is purely my guess at this point) to harmonise the differences between the Latin and Greek columns. An interesting study would be for someone to compare these two columns in more detail to see if they appear to be harmonised.

2. Codex Montfortianus (GA 61)

3. 429marg (date: after 1522)

4. 918 (date: probably 1573–1578)

5. 2473 (1634)

6. 2318 (1700s)

7. 177marg (c. 1785)

8. 221marg (after c. 1850?)

9. 88marg

Conclusions

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