There came a rise of much controversy regarding the doctrine of the trinity, yet, though these words would have been most pertinent, early church writers never once used them.
Verses six to eight of First John chapter five are quoted by Hesychius, Leo called the Great, and Ambrose among the Latins; and Cyril of Alexandria, Oecumenius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus and Nicetus among the Greeks, to name just a few, but the words in question never appear in the quotations. As an example, the anonymous work entitled “Of Rebaptising,” written about A.D. 256, states, “For John teaching us says in his epistle (
1 John 5:6, 7, 8) ‘This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ: not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood; and these three agree in one.’”2 Even Jerome did not have it in his Bible. A prologue attributed to him that defended the text has been proved to be a false one.
The “comma Johanneum,” as this spurious addition is usually called, first appears in the works of Priscillian, leader of a sect in Spain near the end of the fourth century A.D.3 During the fifth century it was included in a confession of faith presented to Hunneric, king of the Vandals, and it is quoted in the Latin works of Vigilius of Thapsus, in varying forms. It is found in the work entitled “Contra Varimadum” composed between 445 and 450 (A.D.), and Fulgentius, an African bishop, used it a little later.
Until then the “comma” had appeared as an interpretation of the genuine words recorded in the eighth verse, but once it had become established in this way, it next began to be written in as a gloss in the margin of Latin Bible manuscripts. But a marginal gloss can easily be construed as an omission from the genuine text, and so in later manuscripts it is interlined, then finally it became an integral part of the Latin text, though its position in consequence varies, and it is sometimes before the eighth verse and sometimes after it. (Compare John Wesley’s New Testament where the seventh verse follows the eighth.)