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1 John 5:7

Author	Comment
Micah	1 John 5:7	Lead	[-]
Posts: 312 (08/15/06 12:13:26) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Tags : None I've read Tim's articles on Bible translation and manuscript, and I'm reading his debate with James Snapp. Good points, Tim! I have a question, though. Should we accept 1 John 5:7 as part of inspired Scripture? If so, why? I'm curious because this is probably THE most hotly debated text in textual debates. - Keith
Tim	Re: 1 John 5:7	#1	[-]
Posts: 1579 (08/15/06 13:42:36) Guest Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Keith, That is probably the most difficult question of all, IMO. Honestly, I am not sure. There is hardly any support for the reading in the Greek manuscripts. But, there is some very early support among the ECFs. Yet, prior to the Council of Nicea, the evidence is exclusively from Latin Fathers. It seems to me that one of two things happened. Whichever is the case, it occurred very early in the transmission of the text (perhaps just a few years after John wrote, when there were only a very small number of copies). Either 1 Jn. 5:7 was part of what John wrote, was faithfully included in some very early Latin translations made from a copy very close to the original, yet the passage in question was left out of subsequent Greek copies. (This could explain why it seems to have been known by the early Latin Fathers but not mentioned by the Greek). Or, it was an interpolation that somehow made it into some early Latin copies, and the reading was subsequently added to the few Greek MSS that contain it from influence of the Latin. If I were translating Scripture, I would not remove it due to the uncertainty, and the warnings in Scripture about removing God's words. I would translate it but include a footnote. For a ballanced view, I suggest that you read both sides of the debate. I have found that the anti-Johannine comma side tends to include information that favors their conclusion and leave out a great deal that does not (hardly what I would call ballanced). Against: www.bible-researcher.com/comma.html For: www.studytoanswer.net/bib...hn5n7.html Tim
Voxverax	Re: 1 John 5:7	#2	[-]
Posts: 35 (08/23/06 18:53:11) Guest Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Greetings Keith, I have not personally made an exhaustive investigation into the question, but my impression is that we should definitely accept First John 5:7 -- OTI TREIS EISIN OI MARTUROUNTES -- as part of inspired Scripture, but not the gloss known as the "Johannine Comma." Maynard's essay defending the "Comma" is online, and is a great place to start looking into the data. But look at the data closely, being careful not to make the early patristic statements into something that they're not. When a commentator expounds on a text, it's illogical to treat the statements which he calls his own as if they are part of the text he is commenting upon, but it looks like that is what some Comma-defenders have desperately done, even to the point that where one patristic writer explicitly cites the text without the Comma, his comments are interpreted as if they refer to the Comma! The patristic evidence, and the Latin evidence, and the Greek evidence, taken together, strongly indicate that the Comma originated as an interpretive gloss which was intended to convey that the Spirit, the water, and the blood (mentioned in 5:8) each testify, in some figurative way, to what is testified to by the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. Other glosses have intruded into the text of First John to a lesser extent that the Comma: "just as God abides forever" in 2:17, and "And it is the Spirit that bears witness that Christ is the truth" in 5:6, and "and was clothed with flesh for our sake, and suffered, and arose from the dead; He adopted us" in 5:20. Lovely and truthful statements, all, but a logical approach to the available evidence demonstrates that they were not originally part of the text of First John. And I am confident that the same can be said about the Johannine Comma. Yours in Christ, James Snapp, Jr.
Tim	Re: 1 John 5:7	#3	[-]
Posts: 1579 (08/24/06 20:49:01) Guest Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Included in one's examination of this question should be the grammatical evidence. There is a rather improbable grammatical structure as the statement stands without the Johannine comma. Generally, the gender of a participle should agree with the nouns in the clause. For example, in verse 6, John writes, "This is He who came by water and blood Jesus Christ; not only by water, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit which bears witness, because the Spirit is truth." The words "which bears witness" are translated from a Greek present participle in the neuter gender (marturoun). The neuter gender agrees with the gender of the noun "Spirit" which is also neuter. As the text stands in the Greek copies without the Johannine comma, the next statement says this: "For there are three who bear witness: the Spirit, the water and the blood." Here, the words translated "who bear witness" come from the same as above except in v. 7 it is in the masculine gender (marturounteV). Literally, "there are three whom are witnessing." But all three nouns listed, "Spirit, water, and blood" are neuter nouns. This is at best a very awkward and improbable rendering of the Greek grammar. It would be equivalent in English to answering the question, "Who are the three witnesses?" by saying, "rock, paper, scissors." That answer would fit better with "WHAT are the three witnesses," rather than, "WHO are the three witnesses." But, if the Johannine comma is included, the problem disappears, because the clause, "there are three who are bearing witness" (masculine) is followed by two masculine nouns, "The Father" and "the Word (Son)." This evidence seems to suggest that the Johannine comma was ommitted in most mss rather than added in others. Tim
Holy Bible	Re: 1 John 5:7	#4	[-]
Posts: 21 (03/01/07 16:45:52) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	I John 5:7 is scripture. There are scads of verses in the modern Bible works that have way less back up for Manuscript evidence than the Comma. And the grammar fits best and makes sense with it in. ******* Holy Bible There is only one.
The Messiahist		#5	[-]
Posts: 1 (10/24/08 00:01:12) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Bart D. Ehrman chairs the Department of Religious Studies at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is an authority on the history of the New Testament, the early church, and the life of Jesus. And I will be quoting from his book 'Misquoting Jesus' concerning 1^st John 5:7, pages 80-83: There was one key passage of scripture that Erasmus's source manuscripts did not contain, however. This is the account of 1 John 5:7-8, which scholars have called the Johannine Comma, found in the manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate but not in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts, a passage that had long been a favorite among Christian theologians, since it is the only passage in the entire Bible that explicitly delineates the doctrine of the Trinity, that there are three persons in the godhead, but that the three all constitute just one God. In the Vulgate, the passage reads: There are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one; and there are three that bear witness on earth, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three are one. It is a mysterious passage, but unequivocal in its support of the traditional teachings of the church on the "triune God who is one." Without this verse, the doctrine of the Trinity must be inferred from a range of passages combined to show that Christ is God, as is the Spirit and the Father, and that there is, nonetheless, only one God. This passage, in contrast, states the doctrine directly and succinctly. But Erasmus did not find it in his Greek manuscripts, which instead simply read: "There are three that bear witness: the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three are one." Where did the "Father, the Word, and the Spirit" go? They were not in Erasmus's primary manuscript, or in any of the others that he consulted, and so, naturally, he left them out of his first edition of the Greek text. More than anything else, it was this that outraged the theologians of his day, who accused Erasmus of tampering with the text in an attempt to eliminate the doctrine of the Trinity and to devalue its corollary, the doctrine of the full divinity of Christ. In particular, Stunica, one of the chief editors of the Complutensian Polyglot, went public with his defamation of Erasmus and insisted that in the future editions he return the verse to its rightful place. As the story goes, Erasmus-possibly in an unguarded moment-agreed that he would insert the verse in a future edition of his Greek New Testament on one condition: that his opponents produce a Greek manuscript in which the verse could be found (finding it in Latin manuscripts was not enough). And so a Greek manuscript was produced. In fact, it was produced for the occasion. It appears that someone copied out the Greek text of the Epistles, and when he came to the passage in question, he translated the Latin text into the Greek, giving the Johannine Comma in its familiar, theologically useful form. The manuscript provided to Erasmus, in other words, was a sixteenth-century production, made to order. Despite his misgivings, Erasmus was true to his word and included the Johannine Comma in his next edition, and in all his subsequent editions. These editions, as I have already noted, became the basis for the editions of the Greek New Testament that were reproduced time and again by the likes of Stephanus, Beza, and the Elzevirs. These editions provided the form of the text that the translators of the King James Bible eventually used. And so familiar the passages to readers of the English Bible-from the King James in 1611 onward, up until modern editions of the twentieth century-include the woman taken in adultery, the last twelve verse of Mark, and the Johannine Comma, even through none of these passages can be found in the oldest and superior manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. They entered into the English stream of consciousness merely by a chance of history, based on manuscripts that Erasmus just happened to have handy to him, and one that was manufactured for his benefit. The various Greek editions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were so much alike that eventually printers could claim that they were the text that was universally accepted by all scholars and readers of the Greek New Testament-as indeed they were, since there were no competitors! The most-quoted claim is found in an edition produced in 1633 by Abraham and Bonaventure Elzevir (who were uncle and nephew), in which they told their readers, in words since become famous among scholars, that "You now have the text that is received by all, in which we have given nothing changed or corrupted." The phrasing of this line, especially the words "text that is received by all," provides us with the common phrase Textus Receptus (abbreviated T.R.), a term used by textual critics to refer to that form of the Greek text that is based, not on the oldest and best manuscripts, but on the form of text originally published by Erasmus and handed down to printers for more than three hundred years, until textual scholars began insisting that the Greek New Testament should be established on scientific principles based on our oldest and best manuscripts, not simply reprinted according to custom. It was the inferior textual form of the Textus Receptus that stood at the base of the earliest English translations, including the King James Bible, and other editions until the near end of the nineteenth century. EL ELYON, Only The Heavenly Father, Is Beyond Human Emotions, Thoughts, And Ways. The Messiahist, Y.A.N., Son of EL ELYON. The Way of God
Tim		#6	[-]
Posts: 1558 (10/24/08 06:31:17) Guest Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	One of the reasons for the differences between the TR and other texts is that the TR is based on MORE than just the Greek evidence. If you want a Bible that only takes into account the Greek manuscript majority tradition, then the English Majority Text Version (EMTV) is for you. If you want one based almost entirely on the Alexandrain Mss, and ignores the bulk of the evidence (both Greek and Latin), the NASB / NIV/ NRSV is for you. But, the KJV translators believed, and I think rightly so, that ALL of the ancient evidence ought to be weighed. That included Latin, Syriac, and other versions, as well as the early patristic quotations. And so they weighed this evidence as well. Erasmus' text was only ONE of several sources the KJV translators used. The text used by the KJV translators is not best represented by Erasmus, but by Scrivener's edition which agrees with the KJV in every detail. The Johannine Comma is VERY ancient. It is found in patrisic quotes and early Latin copies that are OLDER than the oldest Greek Mss that omit it. It therefore has as much right to be considered "original" (if age is a key factor) as Aleph or B which omit it. That it was included in the 4th century Vulgate also shows that this reading is as old as the Alexandrian Mss that omit it. This verse is at least as old as Cyprian, who quoted it as Scripture, and probably Tertullian, who referenced it, at least 100 years before Aleph and B were produced. The Erasmus story, IMO, is a modern "hit job" intended to discredit it without due consideration to all of the ancient evidence in favor of its being genuine, not the least of which is the grammatical and syntactical problem that arises when it is omitted. Tim Last Edited By: Tim 10/24/08 06:46:15. Edited 3 times.
PeaTearGriffin		#7	[-]
Posts: 72 (02/05/09 13:36:48) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Included in one's examination of this question should be the grammatical evidence. There is a rather improbable grammatical structure as the statement stands without the Johannine comma. I read this interesting link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:7Jim7 which talks about the grammatical argument behind the inclusion of the Johannine Comma ... The Johannine Comma (The Grammatical Argument) The bold parenthetical portion of the text below, which is included in the Textus Receptus Greek Text but not in the Majority Text Greek Text, is called the Johannine Comma. Its proponents say that it was deleted from the manuscripts which do not have it (most manuscripts), whereas its opponents say that it was added to the manuscripts which have it (a small minority of manuscripts). (The Majority Text) 1 John 5:6 This One is the One having come through water and Blood, Jesus Christ, not in the water only but in the water and the Blood. 7 And the Spirit is the thing bearing witness, because the Spirit is the truth. 8 Because three are the ones bearing witness, ... (in the heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit-and these Ones, the three Ones, one thing they are-and three are the ones bearing witness on the earth, [The Textus Receptus]) ... the Spirit and the water and the Blood, and the three ones for the one thing they are. 9 If the witness of the men we accept, the witness of the God greater it is, because this is the witness of the God which He has born witness regarding the Son of Him. Among the Comma's proponents, Frederick Nolan (1784-1864) and Robert Dabney (1820-1898) are the earliest known proponents of a grammatical argument favoring the Comma's inclusion in the text, in which it is asserted that the grammar of the Greek text requires the Comma's inclusion. This argument has been subsequently perpetuated by people such as Edward Hills and Thomas Holland and Gail Riplinger and Peter Ruckman and Thomas Strouse. Nolan discusses this in chapters 4 and 6 in his book titled "An Inquiry Into the Integrity Of the Greek Vulgate, Or Received Text Of the New Testament," and Dabney discusses this in a section titled "The Doctrinal Various Reading of the New Testament Greek" on pages 350-390 in the first volume of his four-volume collection titled "Discussions by Robert L. Dabney." According to this grammatical argument, the gender of the substantival (functioning as a noun) participle "the ones bearing witness" in verse 5:8 (all verse references in this article refer to the verses identified in the Majority Text presented above) should be neuter in agreement with the neuter grammatical gender of the nouns "Spirit" and "water" and "Blood" in the same verse, and the fact that this substantival participle is masculine instead of neuter indicates that something has been deleted from most manuscripts, namely, the Comma. Both Nolan and Dabney assert that the indirect source of the masculine gender of the substantival participle "the ones bearing witness" in verse 5:8 is the masculine grammatical gender of the nouns "Father" and "Word" in the Comma, but they differ from one another in their explanations of how this occurs. Nolan asserts that the gender of the substantival participle "the ones bearing witness" in the Comma is masculine in agreement with the masculine grammatical gender of the nouns "Father" and "Word" in the Comma, and that the gender of the substantival participle "the ones bearing witness" in verse 5:8 is masculine as a result of being "attracted" to the masculine substantival participle "the ones bearing witness" in the Comma. ... three masculine adjectives, "treiV oi marturounteV," are forced into union with three neuter substantives, "to pneuma kai to udwr kai to aima," a grosser solecism than can be ascribed to any writer ... the manifest rent in the Corrected Text, which appears from the solecism in the language, is filled up in the Received Text, and, "o pathr o logoV" being inserted, the masculine adjectives, "treiV oi marturounteV," are ascribed suitable substantives; and by the figure attraction, which is so prevalent in Greek, every objection is removed to the structure of the context. ... (chapter 4). ... furnishing the first adjectives, "treiV oi marturounteV," with substantives, which is effectually done by the insertion of "o pathr o logoV" in the disputed passage. The subsequent "treiV oi marturounteV" are thence attracted to the foregoing adjectives instead of being governed by the subsequent "to pneuma kai to udwr" ... (chapter 6) (Nolan) In contrast, Dabney asserts that the gender of the grammatically neuter noun "Spirit" in the Comma becomes masculine as a result of being "attracted" to the masculine grammatical gender of the nouns "Father" and "Word" in the Comma, and that the grammatically neuter nouns "water" and "Blood" in verse 5:8 become masculine as a result of being "attracted" to the now-masculine gender of the noun "Spirit" in the same verse, and that the gender of the substantival participle "the ones bearing witness" in this verse is masculine in agreement with the now-masculine gender of the nouns "Spirit" and "water" and "Blood" in this verse. ... the masculine article, numeral, and particle ... are made to agree directly with three neuters, an insuperable and very bald grammatical difficulty. But if the disputed words are allowed to stand, they agree directly with two masculines and one neuter noun ... where, according to a well known rule of syntax, the masculines among the group control the gender over a neuter connected with them. ... Then the occurrence of the masculines ... in verse 8 agreeing with the neuters ... may be accounted for by the power of attraction ... the pneuma, the leading noun of this second group, and next to the adjectives, has just had a species of masculiness superinduced upon it by its previous position in the masculine group ... (Dabney) Thus, whereas both Nolan and Dabney assert that the gender of the substantival participle "the ones bearing witness" in verse 5:8 should be neuter in agreement with the neuter grammatical gender of the nouns "Spirit" and "water" and "Blood" in the same verse, and whereas both of them assert that the indirect source of the masculine gender of the substantival participle "the ones bearing witness" in verse 5:8 is the masculine grammatical gender of the nouns "Father" and "Word" in the Comma, Nolan explains this as being the result of gender "attraction" between substantival participles, whereas Dabney explains it as being the result of gender "attraction" between nouns. The problem with this grammatical argument favoring the inclusion of the Comma is that none of its assertions is true. The truth of the matter is that there is no such thing as grammatical gender agreement with multiple nouns. It never happens anywhere in the Greek text of the New Testament. Neither is there any such thing as gender attraction between participles. It never happens anywhere in the Greek text of the New Testament. Neither is there any such thing as gender attraction between nouns. It never happens anywhere in the Greek text of the New Testament. The truth of the matter is that these assertions by Nolan and Dabney bear no resemblance to what is consistently observed to actually occur in the Greek language throughout the New Testament. Thus, the grammatical argument favoring the Comma is an exercise in circular reasoning. Nolan and Dabney started with the assumption that the Comma belonged in the text, and then they invented grammatical rationales to prove it, and then the presented their invented grammatical rationales as if they were factual when in reality their grammatical rationales bore no resemblance to what actually occurs in the Greek language throughout the New Testament. The only instance of attraction which is observed to actually occur in the Greek language throughout the New Testament is when the grammatical case of a relative pronoun conforms to the grammatical case of its antecedent noun (the preceding noun in the text to which the relative pronoun refers) instead of conforming to the grammatical case which is dictated by its (the relative pronoun's) own function in its own clause. There are only eight instances in the New Testament (the Majority Text) in which the referent (the idea to which a word refers) of a pronoun or a substantival (functioning as a noun) participle is represented in the text by multiple nouns (Matthew 15:19-20 and 23:23, John 6:9, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Galatians 5:19-21 and 5:22-23 and Colossians 3:5-7 and 3:12-14), and grammatical gender agreement does not occur in any of them, even when all of the referent nouns have the same grammatical gender (1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and Galatians 5:22-23), the reason being that grammatical gender agreement can occur only with a single referent noun. 1 Corinthians 13:13 is not included in this list because it is not a pronoun or substantival participle but a substantival adjective whose referent is represented in the text by multiple nouns in this verse. Likewise, 1 John 5:8 is not included in this list because, as discussed below, the referent of the substantival participle in this verse is not represented in the text by the three nouns in this verse. If the referent of the pronoun or substantival participle is represented in the text by a single noun, grammatical gender agreement is not a requirement, but merely a frequently used option. Otherwise, whether the author simply chooses not to use grammatical gender agreement with a single referent noun, or whether the referent of the pronoun or substantival participle is represented in the text either by no noun or by multiple nouns, the gender of the pronoun or substantival participle is always determined by the natural gender (the nature) of the referent (the idea to which the pronoun or substantival participle refers), either neuter for a thing or things or masculine for a person or persons or feminine for a female person or persons. Thus, there would be no expectation of grammatical gender agreement between the masculine substantival participle "the ones bearing witness" in verse 5:8 and the three grammatically neuter nouns "Spirit" and "water" and "Blood" in the same verse if the referent of this substantival participle were represented in the text by these three nouns, which it isn't. In Deuteronomy 17:6 and 19:15, Moses prescribed two or three witnesses (men) to establish the truth of a matter. This Mosaic tradition is cited in Matthew 18:16 and John 8:17-18 and 2 Corinthians 13:1 and 1 Timothy 5:19 and Hebrews 10:28-29 and 1 John 5:8-9 (MT). In 2 Corinthians 13:1 and Hebrews 10:28-29 and 1 John 5:8-9 (MT), the two or three things that bear witness to the truth of a matter are comparatively (this is like that) equated to the two or three witnesses (men) of the Mosaic tradition for establishing the truth of a matter. Just as in 2 Corinthians 13:1 Paul comparatively (this is like that) equates three things (his three visits to Corinth) to the two or three witnesses (men) prescribed by Moses to establish the truth of a matter in Deuteronomy 17:6 and 19:15, and just as in Hebrews 10:28-29 the author of Hebrew comparatively (this is like that) equates three things (trampling the Son of God and considering His Blood to be ordinary blood and insulting the Spirit) to the two or three witnesses (men) prescribed by Moses to establish the truth of a matter, likewise in 1 John 5:8-9 (MT) John comparatively (this is like that) equates three things (the Spirit and the water and the Blood) to the two or three witnesses (men) prescribed by Moses to establish the truth of a matter, hence the masculine gender of "the ones bearing witness" and "the three ones" in verse 5:8 (MT) in reference to the "men" in the phrase "the witness of the men" in verse 5:9. This is what John says in 1 John 5:6-9 (Majority Text): 5:6 This One is the One having come through water and Blood, Jesus Christ, not in the water only but in the water and the Blood. 7 And the Spirit is the thing bearing witness, because the Spirit is the truth. 8 Because three are the ones bearing witness, THE SPIRIT AND THE WATER AND THE BLOOD, and the three ones for THE ONE THING they are. 9 If the witness of the men we accept, THE WITNESS OF THE GOD greater it is, because this is THE WITNESS OF THE GOD WHICH HE HAS BORN WITNESS REGARDING THE SON OF HIM. John comparatively (this is like that) equates "the Spirit and the water and the Blood" in verse 5:8, which comprise "the witness of the God / the witness of the God which He has born witness regarding the Son of Him" in verse 5:9, to "the ones bearing witness / the three ones" in verse 5:8, who comprise the "men" in the phrase "the witness of the men" in verse 5:9, hence the masculine gender in verse 5:8. The gender of "the thing bearing witness" in verse 5:7 (MT) is neuter either (1) because it refers to a thing (the Spirit), or (2) because of grammatical gender agreement with the single referent noun "Spirit" in the same verse, or (3) both. The gender of "the ones bearing witness" in verse 5:8 (MT) is masculine either (1) because it refers to persons (men), or (2) because of grammatical gender agreement with the single referent noun "men" in the phrase "the witness of the men" in verse 5:9, or (3) both. Thus, everything is written as it should be written without the Comma. Notice also that throughout Deuteronomy 17:6 and 19:15 and Matthew 18:16 and John 8:17-18 and 2 Corinthians 13:1 and 1 Timothy 5:19 and Hebrews 10:28-29 and 1 John 5:8-9 (MT), the number of witnesses is always two or three, never more. In contrast, the number of witnesses is five (the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit ... and the water and the Blood) when the Comma is added to the text in contradiction to the two or three witness (men) Mosaic tradition to which John is comparatively equating the witness of God regarding His Son. The number of witnesses is incorrect when the Comma is added to the text. So there is no grammatical requirement for the Johannine Comma. Everything is written as it should be written without the Comma. Also, the number of witnesses presented in conformity to the two-or-three-witness Mosaic tradition indicates that John did not write the Comma.

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