FEW
TEXTS OF SCRIPTURE HAVE SPURRED AS much controversy as has 1 John 5:7–8. A portion
of these verses has been dubbed the “Johannine Comma”
(Latin comma Johanneum, “the
phrase of John”). Here is how the verses read in the
King James Version, with the underlined words indicating
the Comma:
7 For there are three
that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and
the Holy Ghost: and these three are
one.
8 And
there are three that bear witness in
earth, the Spirit, and the
water, and the blood: and these three agree in
one.
The issue, as many Christians are aware,
is whether those words actually belong to the sacred
text or should rather be rejected due to the lack of
evidence of genuineness.
I want to
approach this subject, however, from a little different
direction than it is usually broached. To do so, I would
first like to quote the following from a distinguished
law professor at Rutgers University who explains “the
prosecutor’s burden of proving guilt beyond a
reasonable doubt”:
The defendant never has the burden of
proving his innocence. The burden is entirely on the
prosecutor, and if the prosecutor fails to carry that
burden, an acquittal is required. The defense attorney
may choose as a matter of trial strategy to convince the
jury that the defendant is innocent, but it is equally
appropriate simply to cast doubt on the prosecutor’s
story so that the burden is not met.
Reasonable doubt is a much higher
standard than the burden of proof elsewhere in the law.
. . . Reasonable doubt is a doubt about guilt that
remains after the jury has weighed all of the evidence
and seriously considered the matter.[i]
In other
words, the standard of proof does not require that the
prosecutor establish absolute certainty by eliminating
all doubt, but it does require that the evidence
be so conclusive that all reasonable doubts are removed from the mind of the ordinary
person.
So what’s
the point? Simply this: I want to approach this issue
from the perspective of beyond a reasonable
doubt. The “prosecutor” (modern
textual critic) insists that the “defendant” (our text)
is “guilty,” if you will, of being false and not
belonging here. One argument, in fact, is that there was
deliberate tampering by zealous copyists who forged
manuscript evidence.
My purpose,
therefore, is not to prove that the Johannine Comma is
authentic (or that the accused copyists were innocent),
because as the “defense attorney” I don’t have to do
that. Rather, my purpose is to allow the critics to
present their evidence and just see if they meet their
burden of proof. Let us see whether they do indeed prove
their case beyond a reasonable doubt or if it is
at least
possible that the
Comma is genuine. As the great theologian Robert L.
Dabney put it in 1891: “All the critics vote against it.
But let us see whether the case is as clear as they
would have it.”[ii]
Before continuing, I want to interject
that my purpose is not to turn this into a polemic for
“King James Onlyism,” for that is not my position on
the textual issue.[iii] While I do
defend the historic (and what I believe is the
providentially preserved) text of the New Testament
(i.e., Traditional or Ecclesiastical Text) instead of
the modern Critical Text, that is not my purpose here.
Nor is my purpose to attack said critics, for that is
neither constructive nor Christian. I know that some
TOTT readers embrace the Critical Text and the modern
translations based on it, so I do not wish to offend or
inflame. My only purpose is to examine this issue from
what I hope is a fresh perspective.
If I may also interject, while some in
the “Kings James Only” camp stoop to unfortunate name
calling, some critics react by lumping everyone who
defends the Comma into that camp. But there have been
several very solid and brilliant men through the ages
that have defended the Comma, such as: John Calvin,
Francis Turretin, Matthew Henry, John Gill, Robert L.
Dabney, Edward F. Hills, and others. To shrug off men
such as those as being unscholarly, or even fanatical
simpletons, is not wise.
Let us now allow the prosecution to
charge the defendant and present its
evidence.
Charge #1:
Lack of Greek Manuscript Evidence
By far, this is the most relied upon
proof that the Comma does not belong here. One modern
critic (I withhold his name for unity’s sake) blunders
by writing that the Comma “disappear[s] from the Greek
manuscript tradition without leaving a single trace,”
but that is simply not so. Most critics agree that out
of all the Greek manuscripts that contain 1 John, one
(but only one) does contain the Comma: Miniscule 61, a
15th or 16th-century Italian copy
named Codex Montfortii (Britannicus by Erasmus), which
now resides at Trinity College,
Dublin.
We submit, however, that there is a problem of
consistency in that argument, which plants at least the
seed of reasonable doubt. While in this instance the
critics insist that only one manuscript supports this
reading, they accept other readings based on minority
evidence. For example, in 1 John 1:7, the Traditional
Text reading Iesou
Christou
(“Jesus Christ”) appears in 477 manuscripts, but the
critics prefer the Critical Text reading Iesou
(“Jesus”)
even though it appears in only 27 manuscripts. Also,
while 491 manuscripts support panta (“all things”) in 1 John
2:20, the critics prefer pantes (“all”) even though its
support is only 12 manuscripts. Again, much ado is made
about nothing when it comes to the words “in Ephesus”
(Eph 1:1). While the critics cast doubt that these words
are genuine, relying on only six manuscripts, thousands
of others support this reading. And these are only three
of hundreds of illustrations. It seems the prosecutor
wants to have the best of both
worlds.
We should
also point out here the reason for this obvious
partiality toward the minority. It is usually due to the
critic’s number one criteria for a “correct reading,”
namely, that it is supported by the so-called “older
manuscripts.” It is consistently assumed (repeat
assumed) that the older are
closer to the original. But does that hold up in court?
Is a jury actually going to believe the testimony of
only a few over the testimony of a
thousand?
The prosecution goes one step further by
even challenging Miniscule 61. This brings us to
Erasmus. The Comma did not, in fact, appear in the first
two editions of his Greek text (1516 and 1519) because
he could not find a Greek manuscript that contained it
(only Latin),[iv] but did appear in
his third edition (1522). Now, it is here that the
following story has been popularized. We cite Bruce
Metzger’s own rendition of this story (written in 1968)
because of his prominence in modern textual
criticism:
In an unguarded moment Erasmus promised
that he would insert the Comma Johanneum, as it is
called, in future editions if a single Greek manuscript
could be found that contained the passage. At length
such a copy was found—or was made to order. As it now
appears, the Greek manuscript had probably been written
in Oxford about 1520 by a Franciscan friar named Froy
(or Roy), who took the disputed words from the Latin
Vulgate. Erasmus stood by his promise and inserted the
passage in his third edition (1522), but he indicates in
a lengthy footnote his suspicions that the manuscript
had been prepared expressly in order to confute
him.[v]
Based much
on Metzger’s scholarship, this story has been retold
countless times for decades, so we now call to the stand
a rebuttal witness: Henk J. de Jonge of Leiden
University. In 1980 he published his paper Erasmus
and the Comma Johanneum. As an
expert on Erasmus, de Jonge went through every word
Erasmus wrote and found not a trace of this story. There
is, in fact, not a shred of proof that it ever happened.
In my own research, I have found not a single person who
retells this story who then cites a source. While
apologist James White does cite Professor Erika Rummel
as a source, all she does is cite de Jonge and then
still inexplicably maintain that Erasmus did issue the
challenge.[vi] Most
significantly, however, in light of de Jonge’s work,
Metzger himself finally admitted in the 3rd
Edition of his classic, The Text of the New
Testament, that this story
“needs to be corrected.”[vii] I ask the jury,
does not all this cast some reasonable doubt?
Further, if we may add, as for the theory
that Miniscule 61 was a deliberate forgery to deceive
Erasmus, any defense attorney worth his salt would rise
and say, “Objection, Your Honor! Speculative.” By law,
the Judge would have to respond, “Objection sustained.”
He might even add, “The jury will disregard the
prosecutor’s remarks because there is no proof of his
allegation.” As Dabney submits, “The recent [1891]
critics are not so infallible as they pretend to
be,”[viii] and we would
submit that neither are the ones of
today.
While
Minuscule 61 is regarded as the only possibly credible
Greek manuscript that contains the Comma, the fact is
that there are a few others: Minuscules 110 (Codex
Ravianus), 629 (Codex Ottobonianus,
14–15th-centuries), 918
(16th-century), and 2318
(18th-century). The prosecutor shrugs off all
these by saying that none are dated before the
14th-century, but this once again flows from
the presupposition and assumption
that older is always better and younger is irrelevant.
We also note that the Comma is found in the margins of
Minuscules 88 (Codex Regis, 11th-century with
margins added in the 16th), 221
(10th-century with margins added in the
15–16th), 429 (14th-century with
margins added in the 16th), and 636
(16th). There are also
some variant readings in lectionaries (ancient church
service books). All this evidence, however, is also
discounted with improvable (and objectionable)
allegations such as tampering and
forgery.
While the Greek evidence is admittedly
weak, giving the prosecution some weight, the Latin
evidence makes up for that. As John Gill wrote in the
18th-century, “it is certain [that the Comma]
is to be seen in many Latin manuscripts of an early
date, and stands in the Vulgate Latin edition of the
London Polyglot Bible.”[ix] We’ll continue
our look at the Latin evidence in Charge
#2.
We again ask, has the prosecution proven
it’s case beyond a reasonable doubt?
Charge #2: Not Found in
Greek Writers or Ancient
Versions
Similar to Charge #1, this one points out
the fact that the Comma is not quoted by a single Greek
writer, who would surely have done so in the face of the
Arianism of the day. Arius, a 4th-century
parish priest in Alexandria, taught that Jesus was not
coequal with God and was, in fact, a created being. If
genuine, it is argued, the Comma would have been the
perfect weapon against Arius.
There is again, however, room for
reasonable doubt because it most certainly is cited by
Latin writers. As John Gill documents, it is “cited by
many of them” such as “Fulgentius [of Ruspe, North
Africa] in the beginning of the sixth century, against
the Arians, without any scruple or hesitation.” Edward
Freer Hills (1912-81), who not only graduated from Yale
and Westminster Seminary but also earned a PhD in
textual criticism from Harvard Divinity School, well
sums up the data for us:
Evidence for the early existence of the
Johannine comma is found in the Latin versions and in
the writings of the Latin Church Fathers. For example,
it seems to have been quoted at Carthage by Cyprian (c.
250) . . .
The first
undisputed citations . . . occur in the writing of two
4th-century Spanish bishops, Priscillian, who in 385 was
beheaded by the Emperor Maximus on the charge of sorcery
and heresy, and Idacius Clarus, Priscillian’s principal
adversary and accuser. In the 5th century the
Johannine comma
was quoted by several orthodox African writers to
defend the doctrine of the Trinity against the
gainsaying of the Vandals, who ruled North Africa from
489 to 534 and were fanatically attached to the Arian
heresy. And about the same time it was
cited by Cassiodorus (480-570), in Italy. The comma is also
found in r, an Old Latin
manuscript of the 5th or 6th
century, and in the Speculum,
a treatise which contains an Old
Latin text. It was not included in Jerome’s original
edition of the Latin Vulgate, but around the year 800 it
was taken into the text of the Vulgate from the Old
Latin manuscripts. It was found in the great mass of the
later Vulgate manuscripts and in the Clementine edition
of the Vulgate.[x]
Charge #3:
Probably an Interpolation
Here is a particularly serious charge. It
is alleged that the only reason that the Comma appears
is that a scribe deliberately inserted it to strengthen
the teaching of the Trinity. A less accusatory
contention is that one scribe made a comment in the
margin and then a later scribe assumed it belonged in
the text. All such accounts have one thing in common,
however, namely, words such as “must have occurred” or
“probably happened.” The defense once again is justified
in his objection on the grounds of
speculation.
Is there not, in fact, something amiss
when one resorts to such tactics as accusing pious
scribes of emendation, questioning their very integrity,
and in effect calling them liars, or at the very least
accusing them of incompetence? We call Matthew Henry to
the stand:
It was far more easy for a transcriber,
by turning away his eye, or by the obscurity of the
copy, it being obliterated or defaced on the top or
bottom of a page, or worn away in such materials as the
ancients had to write upon, to lose and omit the
passage, than for an interpolator to devise and insert
it. He must be very bold and impudent who could hope to
escape detection and shame; and profane too, who durst
venture to make an addition to a supposed sacred
book.[xi]
Charge #4:
Destroys the Passage’s Continuity
The final charge, that the inclusion of
the Comma destroys the continuity of John’s thought, is
particularly odd. It is insisted that he “is speaking of
certain things which bear ‘witness’ to the fact that
Jesus is the Messiah, certain things which were well
known to those to whom he was writing [Spirit, water,
and blood],” so “how does it . . . strengthen the force
of this to say that in heaven there are ‘three that bear
witness’—three not before referred to, and having no
connection with the matter?”[xii] This is odd
thinking because it calls into question the possible
thinking process of an inspired
author.
The same commentator further insists that
the “language is not such as John would use,” adding
that John does use “the term ‘Logos,’ or ‘Word’ (Jn.
1:1, [etc.], but it is never in this form, ‘The Father,
and the Word.’” That, of course, as the jury immediately
discerns, proves nothing. Just because John doesn’t use
this term anywhere else as he does here does not negate
this usage. Interestingly, while this commentator was
certainly not a liberal, the same kind of argumentation
is, in fact, used by liberal scholarship to “prove” that
Paul did not pen Ephesians. One such argument insists
that Paul was not the author since almost 100 words and
phrases appear in Ephesians that are not found in any
other of his letters.[xiii] We submit,
then, that ignoring the obvious significance of John’s
characteristic use of “Word” (Logos) is self-defeating.
The defense must now caution the jury
before continuing. We must present some technical
evidence for a moment to demonstrate further reasonable
doubt. Critics consistently gloss over a grammatical
fact concerning this text and dismiss it as irrelevant,
despite several noted scholars who point it out
it.[xiv]
To put it simply, words in Greek have gender. For
example, “man” is the masculine anthropos, so if we wanted to
modify it with “good,” the modifier must also be
masculine, agathos. Likewise, to modify the
feminine form gene
would require the feminine
agathe. In verse 6, then,
“water” (hudor), “blood”
(haima), and “spirit”
(pneuma) are all neuter in
gender. Likewise the participle “beareth witness” is
neuter (oi
marturoun), as it should be. If we immediately jump to
verse 8, however, the same three words are treated as if
they were masculine because the same basic participle,
“that bear witness,” is now in the masculine
(oi
marturountes). That is poor
grammar. Something seems to be missing. The problem is
easily solved when we include verse 7, where we find two
masculine nouns, Father
(pater) and
Word
(logos), and one neuter, Holy
Ghost
(pneuma). Because of the
influence of these masculine nouns in verse 7, it is
quite proper to treat the usually neuter nouns in verse
8 as masculine using the masculine participle
(oi
marturountes). If we may submit, there is no adequate
rebuttal that the prosecution can bring here, and we are
once again left with reasonable
doubt.
The
Defense’s Closing Argument
Ladies and
gentlemen of the jury, this controversy really boils
down to one question: Why is
there a controversy? This is the clearest statement of
the trinity in Scripture, so why challenge it in the
first place? While the defenders of the Comma are the
ones often accused of making this a “big deal,” it is on
the contrary the critic who has made it such and for no
good reason. Incalculable time has been wasted on this
question when there is absolutely no constructive reason
to do so. If we may presume upon Shakespeare a moment,
“The [critic] doth protest too much,
methinks.”[xv] Is there some
deeper reason for such loathing of these words? Is there
an agenda?
“Why would
God allow this text to be lost to antiquity?” the
persecutor insists. “If He has supposedly providentially
preserved the biblical text, why would He permit these
words to be so ambiguous in the textual record?” If I
may be so simple-minded and naïve for a moment, could it
just possibly be to see if we
will truly trust His providence—as puzzling as that
might appear to our human thinking—instead of resorting
to rationalism and sewing the seed of doubt in the
sacred text to no good end?
No, we cannot prove beyond doubt that the
Comma is genuine, but as noted at the beginning of this
trial, we don’t have to do that. It is the prosecutor,
the textual critic, who has made this allegation, and
the burden of proof has been upon him. We submit,
therefore, that he has not met that burden and has,
indeed, left a reasonable doubt.
The defense rests.
Dr. J. D.
Watson
Pastor-Teacher
Grace Bible Church
NOTES
[i]
Jay M. Feinman, Law 101: Everything You Need to Know
About the American Legal System (Oxford University
Press, 2000), pp. 325–6.
[ii] Robert L. Dabney, “The
Doctrinal Various Readings of the New Testament Greek”
in Discussions: Evangelical and Theological, Vol.
1 (Banner of Truth, 1891, reprint 1982), p.
377.
[iii] See TOTT #13 & 14,
What’s Really at Stake in the Textual
Issue?
[iv] An oddity here is that
while Erasmus refused to include the Comma based solely
on Latin authority, he did that very thing with the
disputed words of Acts 9:5 (“it is hard for thee to kick
against the pricks”) and 6 (“And he trembling and
astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And
the Lord said unto him”).
[v] The Text of the New
Testament (Oxford, 1968), p
101.
[vi] Henk J. de Jonge,
Erasmus and the Comma Johanneum (an extract from
Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, 1980, t. 56,
fasc. 4, pp. 381-389). This extract is posted on our
website: read this
article. James White, The
King James Only Controversy (Bethany House, 1995),
pp. pp. 61, 85(n29). Erika Rummel, Erasmus’
Annotations on the New Testament (University of
Toronto, 1986), p. 133.
[vii] The Text of the New
Testament, 3rd Edition (Oxford, 1992), p.
291.
[ix] John Gill’s
Exposition of the Entire Bible, electronic edition,
1 Jn.5:7.
[x] The King James
Version Defended (Christian Research Press, 1956,
1984), p. 210. (Hills copiously documents these
statements, but for space sake we have not included his
notes.)
[xi] This is actually John
Reynolds, one of those who finished Henry’s commentary
(completed through Acts) upon his death in 1714.
[xii] Albert Barnes’ Notes
on the Bible, electronic edition, 1
Jn.5:7.
[xiii]
Andrew Lincoln, Word Biblical Commentary:
Ephesians (Word Publishing,
1990).
[xiv] E.g., Dabney (p. 378),
Hills (p. 211–212), Henry,
etc.
[xv] Hamlet (New
Folger Library, 1992), Act 3, scene 2, line
254.
