Johannine Comma and Peter Ruckman

From Textus Receptus

The article Does 1 John 5:7 belong in the Bible? by Peter Ruckman, says:

It is a standard cliche (taught by Metzger, Hort, Bob Jones III, Custer, Zane Hodges, Curtis Hutson, and all apostate Fundamentalists such as Waite, Hudson, Combs, Dell, Walker, Sherman, et al), that 1 John 5:7 has no business being in the Bible because Erasmus only added it after finding a sixteenth century Greek manuscript (61) probably "written in Oxford in 1520 by a Franciscan friar." On the basis of this "historical" fairy tale the NIV omits the "Johannine Comma," and so does the ASV and NASV along with the RSV and NRSV and similar Roman Catholic Alexandrian productions.

How well do I remember my dear professor at Bob Jones, back in 1951, telling me that there was NO Greek manuscript evidence for the reading. When I called 61 to his attention he said, "Well, only one." He lied. Professor Armin Panning (New Testament Textual Criticism) lists an eleventh century manuscript. I was then told, "Well, that is all." It wasn't all. There was a ninth century manuscript that the Vulgate used to put the verse into its text with. That all? Well, not by a long shot. It shows up in the Old Latin of the fifth century. Knowing this, supercilious little pipsqueaks like Doug Kutilek respond with "Well, if you are going to correct the Greek with the Old Latin why don't you use the Old Latin every time to correct the Greek?" Because we are "eclectic," just like anyone else. The AV translators didn't choose either every time, so why should we?

Here is a twelfth century manuscript (min. 88) with the words found in the margin, but it is cited as scripture in a fourth century Latin treatise by Priscillian. Get rid of Priscillian. They do; all of the critics of the Johannine Comma call him a "heretic." That is what the Roman Catholic Church called him.

The plot thickens. When Cardinal Ximenes planned to print his Polyglot in 1502 he planned to include 1 John 5:7-8 and did. He stated that he had taken care to secure a number of Greek manuscripts; he described some of these as very "ancient codices" sent to Spain from Rome. Why haven't the manuscript detectives given us a complete list of these "ancient codices"? They must have contained 1 John 5:7. Ximenes printed the verse.

Shall we do some homework? I mean, why stop with the insipid, shallow, traditional cliches of the faculty and staff of Louisville, Denver, Chicago, New Orleans, Dallas, BJU, BBC, and the University of Chicago?

John Gill (appealed to by Doug Kutilek as a CORRECTOR of the AV) says that Fullgentius cites the passage at the beginning of the sixth century (where did he get it? From a friar at Oxford in 1520?), and Jerome cites it in his epistle to Eustochium and wants to know why it was excluded (450 A.D.). But Gill says further that Athanasius cites it in 350 A.D. WHERE FROM? Jerome's Latin Vulgate? Jerome hadn't been born yet.

But why stop here? Gill says that CYPRIAN quotes it in 250 A.D. nearly one hundred years before Sinaiticus or Vaticanus were written. (Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament (3 vols.), Vol. 2, pp.907-8), and Tertullian beats him by fifty years. Tertullian evidently had Erasmus's manuscript 61 in 200 A.D., more than one hundred years before Vaticanus and Sinaiticus removed the verses from the text.

Why was I not given this material at BJU? How is it that the faculty and staff at Tennessee Temple and Liberty University never picked up the information? How does one explain this cocky, blatant, dogmatic correction of the Holy Bible going on year after year by lazy children who have not done their homework? These are the people that think YOU are a fanatic for believing the Book. These are amateurs like Kutilek and Hudson whose lives are taken up with simply reproducing CLICHES that are passed on from one legendary campfire to another as Alexandrian myths move from generation to generation.

When the AV committee sat down they didn't have just Erasmus and his "61." They had Diodab in Italian, Luther in German, Olivetan in French, and Geneva in English, plus six Waldensian Bibles whose sources come from the fourth and fifth centuries. Suppose you couldn't find a Greek manuscript reading for 1 John 5:7 but saw it show up in 200 A.D., again in 250 A.D., again in 325 A.D., again in 350 A.D., and then found it in four anti-Catholic texts which were based on Old Latin that often disagreed with the Vulgate?

Don't get much for your tuition these days, do ya?

Manuscript 61: Professor Michaelis says that this manuscript in four chapters in Mark possess three coincidences with the OLD SYRIAC, two of which agree with the Old Itala, while they differ from every Greek manuscript extant. Do you mind if I remind you of something very basic? The AV of the English Reformation and Luther's Heilige Schrift of the German Reformation BOTH contain the Johannine Comma. "By their fruits ye shall know them." (I just thought I would throw that in there "extra, free of charge," since by now any scholar reading this has already become completely unglued and has forgotten the basics.)

Manuscript 61 was supposed to have been written between 1519 and 1522; the question comes up "from WHAT?" Not from Ximenes; his wasn't out yet. Not from Erasmus for it doesn't match his "Greek" in places. The literal affinities in 61 are with the SYRIAC (see Acts 11:26), and that version was not known in Europe until 1552 (Moses Mardin). The Old Latin and Old Syriac (despite Custer of BJU espousing the liberal theories of the unsaved scholar Burkitt) date from 130 and 150 A.D. The Diatesseron of Tatian (Syriac) which has the King James readings in Luke 2:33 and Matthew 1:25 and Matthew 6:13, contrary to Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, was written no later than 180 A.D., and probably earlier.

The contested verse (1 John 5:7) is quoted at the Council of Carthage (415 A. D.) by Eugenius, who drew up the confession of faith for the "orthodox." It reads with the King James. How did 350 prelates in 415 A.D. take a verse to be orthodox that wasn't in the Bible? It had to exist there from the beginning. It came out. "Pater, VERBUM, et Spiritus Sanctus" (1 John 5:7).

So the old dead heads at BJU lied to me, like they are lying right now to a couple of hundred "ministerial students." They have plenty of company. The faculty at Dallas, Denver, and Pacific Coast are doing the same thing. Ditto Lynchburg, Arlington, and Springfield. The CULT IS THE CULT.

There is no cure for apostasy.

Keep 1 John 5:7, and if "the Greek" doesn't have it, you know what to do. CORRECT "THE GREEK"!

Amen and Amen