The Story of an Interpolation—1 John 5:7, 8 Part 1
MODERN scholars do not hesitate to omit from their Bible translations the spurious passage found at
First John 5:7, 8. After the words “For there are three witness bearers” this added passage reads, “in heaven, the Father, the Word and the holy spirit; and these three are one. [Verse 8] And there are three witness bearers on earth.” (Omitted by the American Standard Version, An American Translation, English Revised Version, Moffatt, New English Bible, Phillips, Rotherham, Revised Standard Version, Schonfield, Wade, Wand, Weymouth, etc.) Commenting on these words, the famous scholar and prelate B. F. Westcott said, “The words which are interpolated in the common Greek text in this passage offer an instructive illustration of the formation and introduction of a gloss into the apostolic text.”1 So what is the story behind this passage, and how did the science of textual criticism finally show it to be no part of God’s inspired Word, the Holy Bible?
WHEN THE PASSAGE FIRST APPEARS
With the falling away from true Christianity came the 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.) An interesting survey made some years ago of 258 Latin Bible manuscripts in the National Library of Paris showed the progressive absorption of this interpolation through the centuries.
The text was further promoted at a council held in 1215 by Pope Innocent III when a work of the Abbot Joachim on the trinity was condemned. The entire passage with the interpolation was quoted from the Latin
Vulgate in the acts of the council, which were translated from Latin into Greek. From here some Greek writers took up the text, notably Calecas in the fourteenth century and Bryennius in the fifteenth.
ERASMUS AND STEPHENS
The invention of printing gave rise to much increased production of the original Bible text. The interpolation at
1 John 5:7, 8 was omitted in the Greek texts of Erasmus (1516 and 1519), Aldus Manutius (1518) and Gerbelius (1521). Desiderius Erasmus was violently attacked for not including the text, both by Edward Lee, later Archbishop of York, and J. L. Stunica, one of the editors of the Complutensian Polyglott, which had been printed in 1514 but still remained locked in the warehouse awaiting the pope’s approval. The opposition to Erasmus was based upon the view, expressed in a letter to him by Martin Dorp, that the Latin
Vulgate was the official Bible and could not be in error.
Confident that no Greek manuscript contained the “comma Johanneum,” Erasmus in reply rashly stated that if so much as one Greek manuscript could be found to contain the words he would insert them in his next edition. He was told of the early sixteenth century Codex Britannicus, better known as Codex Montfortianus (No. 61). Keeping his promise, Erasmus inserted the words in his third edition of 1522, though he appended a long note reasoning against the addition.
A closer examination of the Codex Montfortianus reveals some interesting facts. Its collator, O. T. Dobbin, wrote that the interpolation at
1 John 5:7, 8 “not only differs from the usual text, but is written in such Greek as manifestly betrays a translation from the Latin.”4 For instance, because the Latin does not have the article “the” before each of the expressions “Father,” “Son” and “holy spirit” it did not occur to the translator that the Greek would require them. So of how much worth was this codex as a
Greek manuscript? The same fault is found in the other authority sometimes referred to, the Codex Ottobonianus 298 (No. 629) in Latin and Greek. In his fourth edition, of 1527, Erasmus inserted the definite articles to make the Greek text more accurate grammatically.
From now on the interpolation appeared in other Greek texts whose authors followed the editions of Erasmus. Then in 1550 further confusion occurred through the edition of Robert Stephens published that year. It contained a critical apparatus giving various readings from fifteen manuscripts and at
1 John 5:7 a semicircle points the reader to the margin, where seven manuscripts are cited as authority for the omission of three words only. Critics have demonstrated that this semicircle was misplaced, as were many other signs throughout this edition, and that it should have included for omission the entire “comma Johanneum.” But worse still, because only seven manuscripts were cited, it was assumed by many ignorant people that all the rest of Stephens’ manuscripts did include the interpolation, for they did not realize that the remaining manuscripts did not contain the epistles of John anyway. So out of a possible 100 percent (seven manuscripts) not one included the disputed words.
It was now only a short step to introduce the text into other language translations. It had already appeared in the version of Wycliffe (1380), for he translated from the Latin, having no knowledge of Greek. But now it appeared in translations made from the Greek, such as those of Tyndale and Cranmer, though it was printed in italics and set in brackets. But by the time of the Geneva version of 1557 even this distinction disappeared and the passage is set in ordinary type without brackets. So the interpolation slipped unobtrusively into the 1611 authorized
King James Version.
