Johannine comma alone should be the end of story for the kjv only crowd but they turn a blind eye to the truth. ...
The Historical evidence:
Jeffrey Khoo observes further: “Yale professor Roland Bainton, another Erasmian expert, agrees with de Jonge, furnishing proof from Erasmus’ own writing that Erasmus’ inclusion of 1 John 5:7f was not due to a so-called ‘promise’ but the fact that he believed ‘the verse was in the Vulgate and must therefore have been in the Greek text used by Jerome’” (Jeffrey Khoo,
Kept Pure in All Ages, 2001, p. 88).
Edward F. Hills, who had a doctorate in textual criticism from Harvard, testifies: “...it was not trickery that was responsible for the inclusion of the
Johannine Comma in the Textus Receptus, but the usage of the Latin speaking Church” (Hills,
The King James Version Defended).
In the 3rd edition of
The Text of the New Testament Bruce Metzger corrected his false assertion about Erasmus as follows: “What is said on p. 101 above about Erasmus’ promise to include the
Comma Johanneum if one Greek manuscript were found that contained it, and his subsequent suspicion that MS 61 was written expressly to force him to do so, needs to be corrected in the light of the research of H. J. DeJonge, a specialist in Erasmian studies who finds no explicit evidence that supports this frequently made assertion” (Metzger,
The Text of The New Testament, 3rd edition, p. 291, footnote 2). The problem is that this myth continues to be paraded as truth by modern version defenders.
WHY DID THIS TRINITARIAN TESTIMONY DROP OUT OF MOST EXTANT GREEK MANUSCRIPTS? The omission in the Greek manuscripts was probably brought about by the heresy of Sabellianism or Arianism.
Dr. Hills argued that the omission arose during the Sabellian controversy. “In the second place, it must be remembered that during the 2nd and 3rd centuries (between 220 and 270, according to Harnack), the heresy which orthodox Christians were called upon to combat was not Arianism (since this error had not yet arisen) but Sabellianism (so named after Sabellius, one of its principal promoters), according to which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were one in the sense that they were identical. Those that advocated this heretical view were called Patripassians (Father-sufferers), because they believed that God the Father, being identical with Christ, suffered and died upon the cross, and Monarchians, because they claimed to uphold the Monarchy (sole-government) of God. It is possible, therefore, that the Sabellian heresy brought the
Johannine comma into disfavor with orthodox Christians. The statement, these three are one, no doubt seemed to them to teach the Sabellian view that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were identical. And if during the course of the controversy manuscripts were discovered which had lost this reading in the accidental manner described above, it is easy to see how the orthodox party would consider these mutilated manuscripts to represent the true text and regard the
Johannine comma as a heretical addition. In the Greek-speaking East especially the
comma would be unanimously rejected, for here the struggle against Sabellianism was particularly severe. Thus it was not impossible that during the 3rd century amid the stress and strain of the Sabellian controversy, the
Johannine comma lost its place in the Greek text but was preserved in the Latin texts of Africa and Spain, where the influence of Sabellianism was probably not so great” (Edward Hills,
The King James Version Defended, pp. 212, 213).
It is also possible that the Arians corrupted this passage of Scripture. “It is well known, that the Arians are expressly accused by many of the Latin fathers, of having corrupted the Scriptures, of expunging passages, and of strangely mutilating them, during the time that they were in power. [This was particularly objected to them by Hilary of Poitiers, Hilary the deacon, Ambrose, and Salvianus.] Socrates, Greek ecclesiastical historian who flourished in the fifth century, directly accuses them, of having garbled this very Epistle; for the purpose of separating, between the Divinity and humanity of Christ. ... When we consider further, that Arianism became for a season the reigning religion, especially in the East, where it obtained much more than in the West, may we not in this way be able to account, in some measure, for the silence of the Greek fathers with respect to this verse? The Western Church never became so generally Arian, as the Eastern; of course it might be expected, that the verse was more likely to be found in the writings of Latin, than of Greek fathers; and accordingly we perceive that this is the case” (Robert Jack,
Remarks on the Authenticity of 1 John v. 7).
CONCLUDING POINT:
THERE IS A STRANGE HYPOCRISY TO THE CLAIM BY TEXTUAL CRITICS THAT 1 JOHN 5:7 HAS SLIGHT TEXTUAL AUTHORITY. Whereas the Received Text does contain a few readings that have small support in the Greek manuscripts (but are represented broadly in the Latin), the Critical Greek Text contains HUNDREDS of readings that have small support in both the Greek and the Latin manuscripts! One of the principles of Westcott and Hort was this: “A few documents are not, by reason of their paucity, appreciably less likely to be right than a multitude opposed to them” (Introduction to the Westcott-Hort Greek New Testament, 1881, p. 45).
The United Bible Societies Greek New Testament, the latest edition of the Westcott-Hort text, repeatedly questions and omits verses with far less textual authority than the Trinitarian statement of
1 John 5:7. Most of the significant omissions are made on the authority of Aleph and B (sometimes both together; sometimes one standing alone), and a bare handful of similar manuscripts and versions.
For example, the word “fasting” is removed from
Mark 9:29 in the Westcott-Hort text, the Nestles’ text, the UBS text, and all of the modern versions on the “authority” of its omission in Aleph, B, two minuscules (0274, 2427), one Old Latin, and the Georgian version.
The entire last 12 verses of the Gospel of Mark are omitted are seriously questioned on the “authority” of only three Greek manuscripts, Aleph, B, and the minuscule 304 (plus some slight witness by versions that were influenced by the Alexandrian Text).
The UBS text puts
Matthew 21:44 in brackets on the “authority” of only one uncial (the terribly unreliable D), one minuscule, plus 7 Old Latin and one Syriac manuscripts. This is flimsy textual authority, to say the least.
Sometimes, in fact, the modern textual critics don’t have even this much “authority” for their changes. 104 times in the book of Matthew, the 3rd edition of the UBS Greek N.T. prints a reading that either is “found in no manuscript (34 times) or is found in only one Greek manuscript of the more than 5,300 existing” (Wilbur Pickering,
Some Relevant Considerations for New Testament Textual Criticism).
I, for one, believe the apostle John wrote the Tri[o] statement in
1 John 5:7 under divine inspiration.
A recommended resource for further study is Michael Maynard,
A History of the Debate over 1 John 5:7-8: a
tracing of the longevity of the Comma Johanneum, with evaluations of arguments against its authenticity (Tempe, AZ: Comma Publications, 1995).
______
The above is excerpted from the book
THE BIBLE VERSION QUESTION-ANSWER DATABASE. ISBN 1-58318-088-5. This book provides diligently-researched, in-depth answers to more than 80 of important questions on this topic. A vast number of myths are exposed, such as the myth that Erasmus promised to add
1 John 5:7 to his Greek New Testament if even one manuscript could be produced, the myth that the differences between the Greek texts and versions are slight and insignificant, the myth that there are no doctrines affected by the changes in the modern versions, and the myth that the King James translators said that all versions are equally the Word of God. It also includes reviews of several of the popular modern versions, including the Living Bible, New Living Bible, Today’s English Version, New International Version, New American Standard Version, The Message, and the Holman Christian Standard Bible. 423 pages. ..."