Comma Johanneum/Changing of the Bible.

[Sinthesis]

Next we must understand that often King David would write Psalms in the 3rd person as they were to be sung by the Levites. The Psalm begins in the Hebrew “L’David Mizmor†which means “A psalm of David.†L'David means "to David"/concerning him. So you can see why it says, "The LORD said to my lord." As it was what the Levites would sing.

The absurdity of this argument is apparent if you simply extend the idea throughout the rest of the 110th Psalm. Not to mention the rest of the Psalms.

 

[Steven Avery]

Hi Folks,

Apparently this section of the New Testament In 1 John.... I just wanted to open a discussion on it and hear your thoughts.

While it is fine to question many creedal "Trinitarian" formulations, this verse:

1 John 5:7
For there are three that bear record in heaven,
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost:
and these three are one.

Is 100% scripture, with evidences going back way before the earliest manuscripts. And many infallible evidentiary proofs . So let your doctrinal questioning include this scripture verse.

As for Psalm 110, and the Hebraics, I would agree with Sforno's understanding .. Messiah.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven Avery
Bayside, NY

 

[John 8:32]

Hi Folks,

While it is fine to question many "Trinitarian" formulations, this verse:

1 John 5:7
For there are three that bear record in heaven,
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost:
and these three are one.

Is 100% scripture, with evidences going back way before the earliest manuscripts. And many infallible evidentiary proofs . So let your doctrinal questioning include this scripture verse.

As for Psalm 110, and the Hebraics, I would agree with Sforno's understanding .. Messiah.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven Avery
Bayside, NY

Albert Barnes disagrees with you...

I. It is missing in all the earlier Greek manuscripts, for it is found in no Greek manuscript written before the 16th century. Indeed, it is found in only two Greek manuscripts of any age - one the Codex Montfortianus, or Britannicus, written in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and the other the Codex Ravianus, which is a mere transcript of the text, taken partly from the third edition of Stephen’s New Testament, and partly from the Complutensian Polyglott. But it is incredible that a genuine passage of the New Testament should be missing in all the early Greek manuscripts.
II. It is missing in the earliest versions, and, indeed, in a large part of the versions of the New Testament which have been made in all former times. It is wanting in both the Syriac versions - one of which was made probably in the first century; in the Coptic, Armenian, Slavonic, Ethiopic, and Arabic.
III. It is never quoted by the Greek fathers in their controversies on the doctrine of the Trinity - a passage which would be so much in point, and which could not have failed to be quoted if it were genuine; and it is not referred to by the Latin fathers until the time of Vigilius, at the end of the 5th century. If the passage were believed to be genuine - nay, if it were known at all to be in existence, and to have any probability in its favor - it is incredible that in all the controversies which occurred in regard to the divine nature, and in all the efforts to define the doctrine of the Trinity, this passage should never have been referred to. But it never was; for it must be plain to anyone who examines the subject with an unbiassed mind, that the passages which are relied on to prove that it was quoted by Athanasius, Cyprian, Augustin, etc., (Wetstein, II., p. 725) are not taken from this place, and are not such as they would have made if they had been acquainted with this passage, and had designed to quote it. IV. The argument against the passage from the external proof is confirmed by internal evidence, which makes it morally certain that it cannot be genuine.

Adam Clarke disagrees with you...

But it is likely this verse is not genuine. It is wanting in every MS. of this epistle written before the invention of printing, one excepted, the Codex Montfortii, in Trinity College, Dublin: the others which omit this verse amount to one hundred and twelve.
It is wanting in both the Syriac, all the Arabic, Ethiopic, the Coptic, Sahidic, Armenian, Slavonian, etc., in a word, in all the ancient versions but the Vulgate; and even of this version many of the most ancient and correct MSS. have it not. It is wanting also in all the ancient Greek fathers; and in most even of the Latin.

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown disagrees with you...

three — Two or three witnesses were required by law to constitute adequate testimony. The only Greek manuscripts in any form which support the words, “in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one; and there are three that bear witness in earth,†are the Montfortianus of Dublin, copied evidently from the modern Latin Vulgate; the Ravianus, copied from the Complutensian Polyglot; a manuscript at Naples, with the words added in the Margin by a recent hand; Ottobonianus, 298, of the fifteenth century, the Greek of which is a mere translation of the accompanying Latin. All the old versions omit the words. The oldest manuscripts of the Vulgate omit them: the earliest Vulgate manuscript which has them being Wizanburgensis, 99, of the eighth century.


Dr. Bullinger disagrees with you...

bear record = bear witness, as in 1Jn_5:6.

in heaven, &c. The texts read, "the Spirit, and the water", &c, omitting all the words from "in heaven" to "in earth" (1Jn_5:8) inclusive. The words are not found in any Greek. MS. before the sixteenth century. They were first seen in the margin of some Latin copies. Thence they have crept into the text.

The Diaglott disagrees with you...

1 John 5:6 This is the one having come by means of water and blood, Jesus the Anointed; not by
the water only, but by the water and the blood; and the spirit is the one testifying, because the spirit
is the truth.
1 John 5:7 Because three are those testifying;
1 John 5:8 the spirit, and the water, and the blood; and the three for the one are.

 

[Steven Avery]

Comma Johanneum - clearing out the fog

Hi,

1 John 5:7
For there are three that bear record in heaven,
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost:
and these three are one.

Albert Barnes disagrees with you... Adam Clarke disagrees with you... Jamieson, Fausset and Brown disagrees with you... Dr. Bullinger disagrees .. the Diaglott disagrees

Since these gentlemen are silent or mistaken about all the incredibly strong evidences for the verse, why would anyone take their position over Eugenius Bulgaris, Frederick Nolan, Thomas Burgess, Arthur-Marie Le Hir, Charles Forster, Nathaniel Ellsworth Cornwall, Charles Vincent Dolman, Henry Thomas Armfield, and many others who wrote in far greater depth, and with far more insight, about the heavenly witnesses and the evidences ? Unless the anyone never really studied and understood the evidences themselves.

To give one simple example, what did you learn about the Council of Carthage of 484 AD in the limited, deficient quotes you gave ? Any attempted exposition on the heavenly witnesses that does not discuss hundreds of bishops in the Arian controversies contra Hunneric and the Vandals in the fifth century, with the bishops affirming the verse directly in a statement of their faith as luce claris, clearer than the light (even under the threat of persecution, making scripture quoting accuracy that much more imperative) is clearly being used as worthless agitprop. Even if written by commentators who are generally at a better level, like Albert Barnes and JFB.

==============

FACTUAL ERRORS AND FABRICATIONS

Note: Adam Clarke writes deceptively "It is wanting in every MS. of this epistle written before the invention of printing" when Clarke knows the verse is in the great mass of Latin manuscripts, by far the largest textline read by the Christian church "before the invention of printing". Thus, you could write, "the majority of MS of this epistle written before the invention of printing include the heavenly witnesses" with greater accuracy than what was written by Clarke.

And Ethelbert William Bullinger is on the same level with a section you highlighted "They were first seen in the margin of some Latin copies." Where can these "first seen" Latin copies be seen ? Who wrote about them ? Or are you simply highlighting a conjectural fabrication of Bullinger.

One error you highlighted is perhaps partly excusable when written, although today it is simply a falsehood. JFB: "All the old versions omit the words". By far, the single most significant old version is the Old Latin, or the Vetus Latina. The Old Latin evidences are wide and deep, many of them were noted in the 1800s. While JFB should have known about the discoveries of Nicholas Wiseman, including the Speculum with the verse, he might not have known about some of the manuscripts. And he may somehow not seen Cyprian and Fulgentius (mulitiple references) and Vigilius Tapsensis (Books on the Trinity, multiple references) and others as using the Old Latin, since they are technically ECW and not "old versions". (At least not in a hyper-technical sense. Church writers, however, must use actual Bibles). And Priscillian was not yet discovered. Today, the statement is simply nonsense.

The statement by Barnes "never quoted by the Greek fathers in their controversies on the doctrine of the Trinity" involves some word parsing. The Disputation of Athanasius with Arius from the Council of Nicea is an important evidence, but the careful wording could bypass the Disputation. Plus numerous other allusion evidences can be bypassed as not being direct quotes.

==============

RETURNING TO EVIDENCES UNMENTIONED OR HANDWAVED

Another simple example is Cyprian, mentioned only en passant by Barnes, unmentioned by the others. A far more sensible view of Cyprian's main reference to the verse, written around 250 AD in Unity of the Church, is offered by Luther scholar Franz August Otto Pieper (1852-1931). Pieper looked at the reference very closely and essentially saw it as probative to heavenly witnesses authenticity.

You should try, if you are going to write on the topic, not to highlight dated misinformation (some of which is covered above). We have Latin manuscripts supporting the verse from the 6th or 7th century (before Wizanburgensis) and about 95% of the Latin manuscripts have the verse, which is thousands of manuscripts. And literally dozens of commentators wrote about the verse before the Reformation era, in a continual stream of apologetics and commentary. And the Vulgate Prologue is extant from the 6th century, with strong evidence of being the writing of Jerome.

This Prologue specifically discusses how the verse was sometimes removed by unfaithful translators. The 6th century extant (c. 545 AD) aspect was discovered after your three main quotes, in Codex Fuldensis, in a copy written under the auspices of Victor of Capua, a learned scholar of the day. (Ironically, the Codex in 1 John itself lacks the verse, standing as a testament to the accuracy of the concern expressed in the Prologue.) This early extantness came to light in the later 1800s, and essentially worked to disprove the theory that the Prologue was some type of late forgery. The late dating was critical to the idea that had been floated that the first person writing of Jerome was actually written by some sort of clever forger (the motive sometimes given that the conjectured unknown forger was trying to push the verse by fabricating a Jeromian Prologue !) Interestingly, the controversy about the Prologue authorship arose only after the heavenly witnesses verse controversies were in process. The Prologue as a writing of Jerome was never doubted before that time (e.g. even in the discussions of Erasmus with Stunica). The weak and essentially now-refuted forgery accusation is an example of the circular "scholarship" that has been brought to bear in an effort to try to justify the removal of the pure scripture.

There is much more that could be said, to help understand the evidences for the heavenly witnesses external and internal. I hope this small discussion above can be of some assistance.

Psalm 119:140
Thy word is very pure:
therefore thy servant loveth it.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven Avery
Bayside, NY

 

[John 8:32]

There is the "insertion theory"...

Those who believe the Johannine Comma is inauthentic view the text as either an accidental intrusion, which could be a margin commentary note that a later scribe mistakenly considered to be the original text. [n 5] Or as a deliberate insertion or forgery. The deliberate theory usually considers the motives to be doctrinal, to support Trinitarian doctrines.

Erasmus, looking at the Vulgate Prologue, which evidence had been emphasized by Stunica, implied that Jerome had been the source of the verse about which the Prologue speaks: "For who would have called him a forger and a falsifier, unless he changed the common reading of the place?"[10] Erasmus "spoke of Jerome's violence, unscrupulousness, and frequent inconsistency, as the probable origin of this supposed interpolation in the Sacred text."[11] Drummond quoted Erasmus more moderately than Armfield.[n 6]

Hugo Grotius contended that the verse had been added in to the Johannine text by the Arians[n 7] About the Grotius view, Richard Simon wrote "... all this is only founded on conjectures: and seeing every one does reason according to his prejudices, some will have the Arians to be the authors of that addition, and others do attribute the same to the Catholicks."[12] Luther's pastor, John Bugenhagen, like Grotius, wrote of a conjectured Arian origin .

Isaac Newton took a similar approach as Erasmus, looking to Jerome as the principle figure in placing the Comma in the Bible. [n 8] Newton also thought that the Athanasius Disputation with Arius (Ps-Athanasius) "had been deeply influential on the subsequent attitude to the authenticity of the passage."[13] Newton's comment that from Matthew 28:19 "they tried at first to derive the Trinity" implies that for the conjectured interpolation, "the Trinity" was the motive.

Richard Simon believed the verse began in a Greek scholium, while Herbert Marsh posited the origin as a Latin scholium.[14] Simon conjectured that the Athanasius exposition at Nicea was the catalyst for the Greek scholium which brought forth the text.[n 9]

Richard Porson was a major figure in the opposition to the authenticity of the verse. His theory of spurious origin involved Tertullian and Cyprian, and also the interpretation by Augustine which led to a marginal note. And, in the Porson theory, that marginal note was in the Bible text used by the author of the Confession of Faith at the Council of Carthage of 484 AD.[n 10] Porson also considered the Vulgate Prologue as spurious, a forgery not written by Jerome, and this Prologue was responsible for the entrance into the Vulgate. "..Latin copies had this verse in the eighth century. It is then that we suppose it to have crawled into notice on the strength of Pseudo-Jerome's recommendation."[15]

Johann Jakob Griesbach wrote his Diatribe in Locum 1 Joann V. 7, 8 in 1806, as an Appendix to his Critical Edition of the New Testament. In the Diatribe, Griesbach "expresses his conviction that the seventh verse rests upon the authority of Vigilius Tapsensis."[16]

The 1808 Improved Version, with Thomas Belsham contributing, followed Griesbach on the idea of Tapsensis authority, combined with enhancing the forgery intimations of Gibbon. Thus came the theory that the verse was a forgery by Virgilius Tapsensis. This emphasis on Tapsensis (Thapsus) was echoed by Unitarians of the 1800s, including Theophilus Lindsey, Abner Kneeland, and John Wilson.

John Oxlee, in his journal debate with Frederick Nolan, accused the African Prelates Vigilius Tapensis and Fulgentius Ruspensis of thrusting the verse into the Latin manuscripts.[17]

William Orme, in the Monthly Review, 1825, conjectured Augustine as the source. "it is probable that the verse originated in the interpretation of St. Augustine. It seems to have existed for some time on the margins of the Latin copies, in a kind of intermediate state, as something better than a mere dictum of Augustine, and yet not absolutely Scripture itself. By degrees it was received into the text, where it appears in by far the greater number of Latin manuscripts now in our hands."[18][n 11]

Scrivener allowed for the authenticity of the Cyprian citation as a reference to the verse being in Cyprian's Bible. [n 12] To allow for this, Scrivener's theory of the source and timing of an interpolation can not be late, and his scenario did not give estimated dates or any names responsible. "the disputed words...were originally brought into Latin copies in Africa from the margin, where they had been placed as a pious and orthodox gloss on v. 8: that from the Latin they crept into two or three late Greek codices, and thence into the printed Greek text, a place to which they had no rightful claim."[19]

Joseph Barbour Lightfoot, who similarly worked on the Revision, included Origen as part of the origin. "not in the first instance a deliberate forgery, but a comparatively innocent gloss .... the spirit and the water and the blood—a gloss which is given substantially by S. Augustine and was indicated before by Origen and Cyprian, and which first thrust itself into the text in some Latin MSS .."[20]

Brooke Foss Westcott had a theory of verse origin and development which said of the Augustine reference in the City of God - "Augustine supplies the word 'Verbum' which is required to 'complete the gloss'". Even in 1892, in the third edition of The epistles of St John: the Greek text, with notes and essays, when Westcott acknowledged the newly discovered Liber Apologeticus Priscillian reference with verbum, the Augustine Verbum/gloss assertion remained in his book. And the assertion "there is no evidence that it was found in the text of St John before the latter part of the 5th century" also remained, alongside "The gloss which had thus become an established interpretation of St John's words is first quoted as part of the Epistle in a tract of Priscillian (c 385)".

Joseph Pohle, after asking "how did the text of the three heavenly Witnesses find its way into the Vulgate? All explanations that have been advanced so far are pure guesswork." concludes "the Comma Ioanneum was perhaps found in copies of the Latin Bible current in Africa as early as the third century", and then considered Cassiodorus as responsible for inserting the verse into the Vulgate.[n 13] Pohle, like Scrivener, allows that the Cyprian citation may well indicate that the verse was in his Bible. [n 14]

In the early 20th century Karl Künstle helped to popularize a theory that Priscillian of Ãvila (ca. 350-385) was the author of the Comma.[n 15] The theory held that "Priscillian interpolated ... in the first epistle of John so as to justify in this way his unitarian theories. The text was then retouched in order to appear orthodox, and in this shape found its way into several Spanish documents."[21] This idea of a Priscillian origin for the Comma had a brief scholarship flourish and then quickly lost support in textual circles. The Priscillian citation had been recently published in 1889 by Georg Schepps. [n 16]

Alan England Brooke, while theorizing that "the growth of that gloss can be traced back at least as early as Cyprian"[22] also placed the Theodulfian recension of the Vulgate, after 800 AD, as a prime point whereby the verse first gained traction into the Latin text-lines. "It is through the Theodulfian Recension of the Vulgate that the gloss first gained anything like wide acceptance".[23]

Adolf Harnack in Zur Textkritik und Christologie der Schriften des Johannes "argues that the comma johanneum is the post-augustinian revision of an old addition to the text".[24]

Raymond Brown expresses a theory of verse development in which the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian (the sections that proponents consider Comma allusions) represented the "thought process" involved, that gave rise to the Comma. The words of the Comma "appear among Latin writers in North Africa and Spain in the third century as a dogmatic reflection on and expansion of the 'three that testify': 'the Spirit' is the Father [Jn 4:24]; 'the blood' is the Son; 'the water' is the Spirit (Jn 7:38-39)."[25]

Walter Thiele allows for a Greek origin of the Comma, before Cyprian. Raymond Brown summarizes: "Thiele, Beobachtungen 64-68, argues that the I John additions may have a Greek basis, for sometimes a plausible early chain can be constructed thus: Cyprian, Pseudo-Cyprian, Augustine, Pseudo-Augustine, Spanish Vulgate (especially Isidore of Seville and Theodolfus)." [26]

Church historian Jaroslav Pelikan expresses the common scholarly view that the words (apparently) crept into the Latin text of the New Testament during the Early Middle Ages, "[possibly] as one of those medieval glosses but were then written into the text itself by a careless copyist. Erasmus omitted them from his first edition; but when a storm of protest arose because the omission seemed to threaten the doctrine of the Trinity, he put them back in the third and later editions, whence they also came into the Textus Receptus, 'the received text'."[27][n 17]

Most New Testament scholars today believe that the Comma was inserted into the Old Latin text based on a gloss to that text, with the original gloss dating to the 3rd or 4th century, as expressed with some qualifications by Bruce Metzger.[28] The summary of Daniel Wallace is short, beginning in the 300s AD with an unspecified homily: "The reading seems to have arisen in a fourth century Latin homily in which the text was allegorized to refer to members of the Trinity. From there, it made its way into copies of the Latin Vulgate, the text used by the Roman Catholic Church."[29][n 18]

These theories generally consider the verse as not in the Bible of Cyprian. The acceptance of the possibility of Cyprian reading the verse in his Bible impels a more difficult conjecture of very early interpolation. Essentially before the Arian and Sabellian doctrinal battles. Yet it is those doctrinal battles which are generally given as supplying the motive for the proposed interpolation.

And the deliberate "forgery theory"...

Most opponents of the Comma as inauthentic view the verse as having arisen by a sequence of events involving scribal difficulties and error. Often this is a staged understanding, beginning with an interpretation placed as a margin commentary. The margin note is later erroneously brought into the text by a scribe who mistakenly thought the margin note indicated a superior alternate reading or correction. Those types of proposed scenarios are based on the limitations inherent in laborious hand-copying and do not have to impugn motives.

By contrast, the accusations of deliberate textual tampering and forgery for doctrinal purposes are based on scribes making deliberate changes away from the original text. A number of writers have theories of direct forgery as the motive for the insertion of the Comma into the text. Some of these theories were developed after the 1883 Priscillian discovery [n 16] and fingered Priscillian as the culprit.

Voltaire wrote that the verse was inserted at the time of Constantine. "Lactantius...It was about this time that, among the very violent disputes on the Trinity, this famous verse was inserted in the First Epistle of St. John: “There are three that bear witness in earth—the word or spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three are one.”.[n 19]

The accusation against the verse by Edward Gibbon in 1781, while stating "the Scriptures themselves were profaned by their rash and sacrilegious hands" stops short of a direct accusation of forgery by also discussing marginal notes and allegorical interpretation. In response to Gibbon, George Travis noted the lack of forgery accusations before the Reformation-era debate. [n 20]

In 1813, Unitarian Thomas Belsham accused the verse of being an "impious forgery...spurious and fictitious".[n 21] In Calm Inquiry in 1817, Belsham had the verse as a "palpable forgery"[30] and his student, Unitarian minister Israel Worsley, for more emphasis wrote of "a gross and a palpable forgery".[31][n 22]

For the next decades, the forgery accusation was generally made outside the context of textual analysis, usually by Unitarians and freethinkers, such as Robert Taylor.[32] author of the Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society. Everard Bierer took this approach "This bold interpolation shows conclusively what Trinitarian fanaticism in the Dark Ages would do, and leaves us to imagine what renderings it probably gave to many other texts, and especially somewhat obscure ones on the same subject."[33]

In 1888, Philip Schaff, church historian who worked on the American committee of the Revision, brought the accusation to the mainstream, "Erasmus .. omitted in his Greek Testament the forgery of the three witnesses".[34]

Charles Taze Russell in 1899 made his accusation specific and the forgery late: "the spurious words were no doubt interpolated by some over-zealous monk, who felt sure of the (Trinity) doctrine himself, and thought that the holy spirit had blundered in not stating the matter in the Scriptures: his intention, no doubt, was to help God and the truth out of a difficulty by perpetrating a fraud."[35]

Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare was a textual scholar who wrote in 1910 a section specifically about "famous orthodox corruptions", including "The text of the three witnesses a doctrinal forgery".[36]

Preserved Smith in 1920 called the verse "a Latin forgery of the fourth century, possibly due to Priscillian"[37]

Gordon Campbell, author of Bible: The Story of the King James Version 1611-2011 asserts that the Comma is "a medieval forgery inserted into Bibles to support a trinitarian doctrine that had been erected on a disconcertingly thin biblical base.".[38]

The popularity of the modern "orthodox corruption" view of Bart Ehrman has increased the forgery claims, especially on the Internet. Ehrman calls the Comma "the most obvious instance of a theologically motivated corruption in the entire manuscript tradition of the New Testament. Nonetheless, in my judgment, the comma's appearance in the tradition can scarcely be dated prior to the trinitarian controversies that arose after the period under examination."[39] Ehrman posits his other corruptions as around the 2nd century, so Ehrman is considering the Comma as exceptional and placing the "appearance" of the Comma in the 300s or 400s, close to Priscillian's verse usage and citation as from John.


At any rate, I do not accept the authority of the chruch at Rome and a council that occurred in 397 AD to determine which scriptures John canonized on Patmos.

 

[Steven Avery]

Hi,

So which of the many theories do you think is right ?
So many to choose from.

Wait, here is another.

At any rate, I do not accept the authority of the chruch at Rome and a council that occurred in 397 AD to determine which scriptures John canonized on Patmos.

I'm not quite following you here. Are you saying that you do not agree with the Johannine epistles as canonical scripture, in general ?

Definitely, if you do not see 1 John as scripture, then you would not accept 1 John 5:7.

btw, you should make sure to mention when you cut-and-paste from Wikipedia. Whether the information is strong or weak, it is important for people to know the source.

Shalom,
Steven

 

[farouk]

Stephen:

I think rather than plumping for some theory or other, it's good to acknowledge that in any case the truth of God in Three Persons is well attested by Scripture.

Especially in John's Gospel, chapters 13 - 17, John's First Epistle, the end of Matthew 28, etc.

 

[Steven Avery]

Hi Folks,

Stephen: I think rather than plumping for some theory or other...

Defending the Bible I read and embrace as the pure and perfect word of God is simply a reasonable service. And a Christian perspective. Without the pure word of God, there really is no doctrine of any type, since the plumbline is the scriptures.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven

 

[farouk]

Hi Folks,

Defending the Bible I read and embrace as the pure and perfect word of God is simply a reasonable service. And a Christian perspective. Without the pure word of God, there really is no doctrine of any type, since the plumbline is the scriptures.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven

Stephen: Yes, I see what you mean and I would agree. (I thought you were talking specifically about the complexities of 1 John 5.7's manuscript history, though, which is what I meant with theories about interpreting them.)

Blessings.

 

[Steven Avery]

Hi,

Stephen: Yes, I see what you mean and I would agree. (I thought you were talking specifically about the complexities of 1 John 5.7's manuscript history, though, which is what I meant with theories about interpreting them.)

Right. I was being ironic. We had a list of about 20 or 30 differing and conflicting theories of forgery and interpolation, which is what you run into historically from the opposition to the verse. I forgot that irony meters have to be fine-tuned in this type of communication .

Yours in Jesus,
Steven

 

[farouk]

Hi,

Right. I was being ironic. We had a list of about 20 or 30 differing and conflicting theories of forgery and interpolation, which is what you run into historically from the opposition to the verse. I forgot that irony meters have to be fine-tuned in this type of communication .

Yours in Jesus,
Steven

Like when ironing my shirts, for example ...

 

[Free]

I doubt the authenticity of 1 John 5:7 but it makes no difference in what Scripture says overall.

 

[Free]

Charles Taze Russell in 1899 made his accusation specific and the forgery late: "the spurious words were no doubt interpolated by some over-zealous monk, who felt sure of the (Trinity) doctrine himself, and thought that the holy spirit had blundered in not stating the matter in the Scriptures: his intention, no doubt, was to help God and the truth out of a difficulty by perpetrating a fraud."[35]

I'm not sure what you're getting at overall, but quoting Charles Russell is not the way to go about proving anything. He was not in any way whatsoever a Greek scholar, nor a good theologian, nor a Christian.

 

[Steven Avery]

Hi,

I doubt the authenticity of 1 John 5:7 but it makes no difference in what Scripture says overall.

Just to understand. Can you give some examples of some verses in the Bible that do make a difference in what Scripture says overall ?

Thanks.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven

 

[Free]

Hi,

Just to understand. Can you give some examples of some verses in the Bible that do make a difference in what Scripture says overall ?

Thanks.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven

Just so we're clear my point is that if the Johannine Comma is false, it makes no difference to the truth of the Trinity.

 

[Steven Avery]

Hi,

I just found it rather puzzling that you could talk about a scripture that "makes no difference".

2 Timothy 3:16
All scripture is given by inspiration of God,
and is profitable for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction,
for instruction in righteousness:

I simply don't see anything there about scriptures that make no difference.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven

 

[Free]

Hi,

I just found it rather puzzling that you could talk about a scripture that "makes no difference".

2 Timothy 3:16
All scripture is given by inspiration of God,
and is profitable for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction,
for instruction in righteousness:

I simply don't see anything there about scriptures that make no difference.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven

You are begging the question. My point is clear and I stand by it.

 

[Steven Avery]

Hi,

You are begging the question. My point is clear and I stand by it.

No, I'm not begging any question, I am pointing out the more fundamental question.

The point is simple. Scripture comes first, doctrine is developed from scripture. If you do not know what the scripture actually says at 1 John 5:7, John 1:18, 1 Timothy 3:16, Acts 20:28, the resurrection appearances of Jesus in Mark's Gospel and 100 or 1000 other places, it is impossible to have a definite, sound, pure doctrine. And those who disagree with you in those 1000 places can easily cry "corruption" and "redaction" and "interpolation" ... and you will never have the definite, pure scripture in your hand.

Psalm 119:140
Thy word is very pure:
therefore thy servant loveth it.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven Avery

 

[farouk]

Hi,

I just found it rather puzzling that you could talk about a scripture that "makes no difference".

2 Timothy 3:16
All scripture is given by inspiration of God,
and is profitable for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction,
for instruction in righteousness:

I simply don't see anything there about scriptures that make no difference.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven

Stephen:

In terms of the doctrinal content of 1 John 5.7, what it says is essentially supported by many other verses.

So it's not wise to allow any interpretation of discussion to be extrapolated to the effect that the whole doctrine of the Trinity somehow depends on the manuscript evidence for 1 John 5.7 being found to be weighty, when one may actually find that it is based on less weighty manuscript evidence than one might have first thought.

Many books and articles have been written on this, but their effect has often not been clarity about the Scriptural doctrine of the Trinity, but rather hyperbole and obscurity.

 

[Steven Avery]

Thy word is very pure: therefore thy servant loveth it

Hi,

So it's not wise to allow any interpretation of discussion to be extrapolated to the effect that the whole doctrine of the Trinity somehow depends on the manuscript evidence for 1 John 5.7 being found to be weighty, when one may actually find that it is based on less weighty manuscript evidence than one might have first thought.

My point was not to argue for or against the "whole doctrine of the Trinity" (of which there are many) but to show that the word of God is pure and perfect, including, and especially, the heavenly witnesses.

Going back to our poster who has left the building, he obliquely touched on this point, when discussing the idea that the historic, pure New Testament text is corrupted.

But then wouldn't that then falsify the rest of the New Testament teachings and bring the entire work into question

Once you surrender the purity of God's word to modernism and Hortianism, there is not any tangible, readable, pure inspired and preserved word of God. (That is why, in the modern theories, inerrancy and infallibility are only in ethereal and unknown original autographs, not in the Bible in our hand.) Each translator and textual critic remakes the Bible in their own eyes. This occurred in the earlier centuries with Marcion, and it happens today with the mistaken and errant textual philosophies taught in many seminaries.

And I find that a good segment of the Christian populace today have been cornfused and hornswaggled by the modern textual theorists, the version publishing industrial complex, the version of the month club, and simply do not know what is the pure word of God.

Scripture first, doctrine and interpretation flows from scripture.

The issues go far beyond 1 John 5:7, although the heavenly witnesses is the fulcrum verse in the battle. Here is an example.

1 Timothy 3:16 (AV)
And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness:
God was manifest in the flesh,
justified in the Spirit,
seen of angels,
preached unto the Gentiles,
believed on in the world,
received up into glory.

Along with the proper pure Bible text of Isaiah 9:6, and augmented by Colossians 2:9 and 2 Corinthians 5:19, this is the key verse for declaring "God was manifest in the flesh" in Jesus Christ. However, not in the modern Hortian corruption texts. In fact, many seminarian teachers will first tell you that the whole book to Timothy was a forgery, by somebody pretending to be Paul, and then they will tell you that the forged (they may not use the word forgery, but that is the theory) text is actually the corrupt "who/which" instead of "God". And you simply will not know the pure word of God.

A more excellent way.

Psalm 119:140
Thy word is very pure:
therefore thy servant loveth it.

Shalom,
Steven