1 Jn 5:7 continued
"The Revised Version omits this verse, and does not even mention it in the margin, and none of the newer translations includes it.
It is quite certain that it does not belong to the original text.
"The facts are as follows. First, it does not occur in any Greek manuscript earlier than the 14th century. The great manuscripts belong to the 3rd and 4th centuries [most scholars date them to the 4th and 5th centuries], and it occurs in none of them. None of the great early fathers of the Church knew it. Jerome's original version of the [Latin]Vulgate does not include it. The first person to quote it is a Spanish heretic called Priscillian who died in A. D. 385. Thereafter it crept gradually into the Latin texts of the New Testament although, as we have seen, it did not gain an entry to the Greek manuscripts.
"How then did it get into the text? Originally it must have been a scribal gloss or comment in the margin.
Since it seemed to offer good scriptural evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity [and since there was no good scriptural evidence for this new doctrine introduced by the Roman church in 325 A. D.], through time it came to be accepted by theologians as part of the text, especially in those early days of scholarship before the great manuscripts were discovered.
[More likely it was written in the margin of an existing manuscript with the
intention that future trinitarian copyists actually add it to all new copies. - RDB.
]
"But how did it last, and how did it come to be in the Authorized [King James] Version? The first Greek testament to be published was that of Erasmus in 1516. Erasmus was a great scholar and, knowing that this verse
was not in the original text, he did not include it in his first edition. By this time, however, theologians [trinitarians, of course] were using the verse. It had, for instance, been printed in the Latin Vulgate of 1514. Erasmus was therefore criticized for omitting it. His answer was that if anyone could show him a Greek manuscript which had the words in it, he would print them in his next edition. Someone did produce a very late and very bad text in which the verse did occur in Greek; and Erasmus, true to his word but very much against his judgment and his will, printed the verse in his 1522 edition.
"The next step was that in 1550 Stephanus printed his great edition of the Greek New Testament. This 1550 edition of Stephanus was called - he gave it that name himself -
The Received Text, and it was the basis of the Authorized Version [
KJV] and of the Greek text for centuries to come. That is how this verse got into the Authorized Version. There is, of course, nothing wrong with it [
if the trinity were really true as trinitarians like Barclay himself want!]; but modern scholarship has made it quite certain that John did not write it and that it is a much later commentary on, and addition to, his words; and that is why all modern translations omit it." - pp. 110-111,
The Letters of John and Jude, The Daily Study Bible Series, Revised Edition, The Westminster Press, 1976. [Material in brackets and emphasis added by me.]
Trinitarian NT Greek scholar Daniel B. Wallace agrees.
https://bible.org/article/textual-problem-1-john-57-8#_ftnref3
Highly respected (and highly
trinitarian) New Testament Bible scholar Dr. A. T. Robertson writes:
"For there are three who bear witness (hoti treis eisin hoi marturountes). At this point the Latin Vulgate gives the words in the Textus Receptus [Received Text], found in no Greek MS. [Manuscript] save two late cursives (162 in the Vatican Library of the fifteenth century, 34 of the
sixteenth century [1520 A.D.] in Trinity College, Dublin). Jerome [famed trinitarian, 342-420 A. D.] did not have it.
Cyprian applies the language of the Trinity [ ? - - see UBS Commentary below] and
Priscillian [excommunicated 380 A. D., executed 385 A. D.] has it. Erasmus did not have it in his first edition, but rashly offered to insert it [in his next edition of
1522] if a single Greek MS. had it and [ms.] 34 [
1520 A.D.] was produced with the insertion,
as if made to order. The spurious addition is:
en toi ouranoi ho pater, ho logos kai to hagion pneuma kai houtoi hoi treis hen eisin kai treis eisin hoi marturountes en tei gei (in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and the three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth). The last clause belongs to verse 8. The fact and the doctrine of the Trinity do not depend on this
spurious addition." - p. 240, Vol. VI,
Word Pictures in the New Testament, Broadman Press, 1960.
The highly respected (and
trinitarian) United Bible Societies has published a commentary on the New Testament text. It discusses 1 John 5:5-7 as follows]:
"After
marturountes "bearing witness"] the Textus Receptus [Received Text] adds the following:
en to ourano, o Pater, o Logos, kai to Agion Pneuma kai outoi oi treis en eisi. (8) kai treis eisin oi marturountes en te ge. That these words are
spurious and have no right to stand in the New Testament is
certain in the light of the following considerations.
"(A) EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. (1) The passage is absent from every known Greek manuscript except four, and these contain the passage in what appears to be a translation from a late recension of the Latin Vulgate. These four manuscripts are ms. 61 [this is ms. 34 in the earlier numbering system used by Robertson above], a sixteenth century manuscript formerly at Oxford, now at Dublin; ms. 88, a twelfth century manuscript at Naples, which has the passage written
in the margin by a modern hand; ms. 629 [ms. 162, Robertson], a fourteenth or fifteenth century manuscript in the Vatican; and ms. 635, an eleventh century manuscript which has the passage
written in the margin by a seventeenth century hand.
"(2) The passage is quoted by none of the Greek Fathers, who, had they known it, would most certainly have employed it in the Trinitarian controversies (Sabellian and Arian [certainly at the Nicene Council of 325]). Its first appearance in Greek is in a Greek version of the (Latin) Acts of the Lateran Council in 1215.
"(3) The passage is absent from the manuscripts of
all ancient versions (Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Arabic, Slavonic), except the Latin; and it is not found (
a) in the Old Latin in its early form (Tertullian
Cyprian Augustine), or in the Vulgate (
b) as issued by Jerome (codex Fuldensis [copied A. D. 541-46] and codex Amiatinus [copied before A. D. 716]) or (
c) as revised by Alcuin (first hand of codex Vercellensis [ninth century]).
"The earliest instance of the passage is in a fourth century
Latin treatise entitled
Liber Apologeticus (chap. 4), attributed either to the Spanish heretic
Priscillian (died about 385) or to his follower Bishop Instantius. ....
"(B) INTERNAL PROBABILITIES. (1) As regards transcriptional probability, if the passage were original, no good reason can be found to account for its omission, either accidentally or intentionally, by copyists of hundreds of Greek manuscripts, and by translators of ancient versions.
"(2) As regards intrinsic probability, the passage makes an awkward break in the sense." - pp. 716-718,
A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, United Bible Societies, 1971.
