Johannine Comma and Eberhard Nestle

From Textus Receptus

In the 1904 edition of the Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the Greek New Testament by Eberhard Nestle he meantions several issues about the Johanneum Comma.

In his third edition, Erasmus for the first time incorporated the well-known “comma Johanneum,” the passage about the Three Witnesses (1 John 5:7). He did so on the evidence of a manuscript now in Dublin (Montfortianus, 61), in which the passage had probably been inserted from the Vulgate by the English Franciscan monk Roy. From the Vulgate it had already been received, in a slightly different form, into the Complutensian Polyglot. Luther himself purposely omitted it from his version. The first edition of his translation to contain it was that printed at Frankfurt by Feyerabend in 1576. It was not inserted in the Wittenberg editions till 1596. After 1534 no Greek edition appeared without it for the space of 200 years.

There has also appeared recently at Innsbruck a Greek-Latin edition in two volumes by Michael HETZENAUER, a Capuchin. The first volume contains the Evangelium and the second the Apostolicum. But as the strict Catholic is bound by the decision of the Holy Office, Hetzenauer’s edition hardly falls to be considered here. A resolution of the Holy Office of 13th January 1897 pronounced even the Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7) to be an integral part of the New Testament. This was confirmed by the Pope on the 15th January, and published in the Monitore Ecclesiastico of the 28th February of the same year. An edition in Greek and Latin was issued by BRANDSCHEID at Freiburg in 1893.

It is impossible to enumerate here editions of separate books of the New Testament. Many of these are in the form of Commentaries. In addition to the works of Blass, to which reference will be made later, mention may be made here of a recent and most thorough piece of work  viz., The Gospel according to St. Mark: The Greek Text, with Introduction and Notes, by Henry Barclay SWETE, D.D., pp. ex. 412 (London, Macmillan, 1898); also of The Gospel according to St. Luke after the Westcott-Hort text, edited with parallels, illustrations, various readings, and notes, by the Rev. Arthur Wright: London, Macmillan, 1900; and of Hilgenfeld’s edition of the Acts in Greek and Latin. Berlin, 1899.

61. Of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. This is the notorious Codex Montfortianus, now in Dublin, which derives its name from one of its later possessors. It was this manuscript, “codex apud Anglos repertus,” that decided Erasmus to insert in his third edition of 1522 the passage of the Three Heavenly Witnesses, 1 John 5:7, 8. It was probably written by a Franciscan monk of the name of Froy or Roy. Its twin brother, the parchment codex Ravianus (Rau), formerly numbered 110, and now in Berlin, which also contains the passage, proves to be nothing more than a transcript of the text of the Complutensian. Manuscripts, it may be observed, continued to be prepared long after the invention of printing. Melanchthon, e.g., wrote out the Epistle to the Romans three times in Greek ; and the manuscript in the Zurich Library hitherto cited as 56 Paul is nothing else than a copy of Erasmus’s printed edition of 1516 made by Zwingli in the following year.

162. Of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, now in Rome : a bilingual in Latin and Greek : contains the passage 1 John 5:7.

5:7. The “comma Johanneum” needs no further discussion in an Introduction to the Greek Testament, but its history on Latin soil is all the more interesting. The fact that it is still defended even from the Protestant side is interesting only from a pathological point of view. On the decision of the Holy Office, confirmed by the Pope on the 15th January 1897, see Hetzenauer’s edition of the New Testament, and the notice of it by Dobschütz in the ThLz., 1899, No. 10. On the literature, compare also Kölling (Breslau, 1893) ; W. Orme’s Memoir of the Controversy respecting the Three Heavenly Witnesses, 1 John v. 7 (London, 1830), New Edition, with Notes and Appendix by Ezra Abbot (New York, 1866); C. Forster, A New Plea for the Authenticity of the Text of the Three Heavenly Witnesses (Cambridge, 1867); H. T. Armfield, The Three Witnesses: The disputed Text in St. John (London, 1893).

PLATE VII.

“CHARLEMAGNE’S BIBLE,” or BIBLE OF GRANDVAL, of the ninth century, in the British Museum (reduced).

1 John 4:16-5:10, showing the omission of the “comma Johanneum,” 5:7.

In an earlier day, Eberhard Nestle wrote that "The fact that it is still defended even from the Protestant side is interesting only from a pathological point of view." Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the Greek New Testament, 1901, p. 327, translation by William Edie 1899 German of the German pathologisches.