The Story of an Interpolation—1 John 5:7, 8 Part 2
THE BATTLE RENEWED
Had the final word been said on the “comma Johanneum”? Perhaps it seemed that way as the seventeenth century progressed, dominated by the Authorized Version. But the murmurings never ceased and the search for the mysterious Codex Britannicus continued, for it disappeared after Erasmus was told about it. Toward the end of the century, no less a personage than Sir Isaac Newton turned the attention of his scientifically trained mind to this text. In 1690 he sent John Locke the treatise “An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture.” The tract set out clearly the reasons for rejecting the text as spurious and several copies circulated among friends of Newton, but it was never published until nearly seventy years later and then only imperfectly.
Meanwhile the growth of textual criticism took on new impetus. The text was attacked by Richard Simon, and Dr. John Mill gathered the evidence against the passage, though he remained its defender. But Thomas Emlyn took up Mill’s evidence and urged both houses of Convocation assembled in 1717 to cut the words right out, for he said, “ ’tis never given up fairly, till it be left out of our printed copies.”5 In short order Emlyn was attacked by Mr. Martin, pastor of the French Church at Utrecht, whose voluminous and subtle answer seemed to clear the field. Emlyn’s reply caused Martin to launch a second tirade against him. But Emlyn won many supporters, though the devious windings of the controversy often made it extremely difficult to find out what it was really all about.
In 1729 there appeared here in England a diglot version of the Christian Greek Scriptures by Daniel Mace. In a fourteen-page note he listed the Greek and Latin manuscripts, ancient versions, early Greek and Latin writers that omitted the text and threw it out with this conclusion, “In a word, if this evidence is not sufficient to prove, that the controverted text in St. John is spurious; by what evidence can it be prov’d, that any text in St. John is genuine?”6 Thereafter, other English translations began to omit the verse, such as the one by William Whiston (1745), well known for his translation of Josephus, and that by John Worsley in 1770.
If Edward Gibbon thought the wheel had turned full circle when he published The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1781 he was mistaken. With his usual sarcasm he denounced the passage as a “pious fraud.”7 Up rose another champion, George Travis, an archdeacon, who rushed into action to defend the text. His extreme statements elicited crushing replies from Professor Richard Porson (running to over 400 pages) and Herbert Marsh, a bishop. At last the interpolation was exposed in a minute and most exact manner.
THE LAST STRONGHOLD GIVES WAY
After Porson and Marsh there was little to add. Most scholars of the nineteenth century considered the matter settled, but one stronghold remained, the Roman Catholic Church.
As late as 1897 a papal decree was issued forbidding the faithful to doubt the “comma Johanneum.” In part it said:
“Secretariat of the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Concerning the authenticity of the text of 1 John V. 7. (Wednesday, Jan. 12, 1897).
“In a General Congregation of the Holy Roman Inquisition . . . the following doubtful question was presented:
“‘Whether we may safely deny, or even treat as a matter of doubt, the authenticity of that text (1 John V. 7). . . ’
“All things having been most diligently examined and weighed, and the opinion of the Lords Consultors having been taken, the aforesaid Most Eminent Cardinals gave out ‘the answer is in the negative.’ On Friday the 15th of the aforesaid month and year, in the usual audience granted to reverend father the lord Assessor of the Holy Office, after that he had made an exact report of the aforesaid proceedings to our Most Holy Lord Pope Leo XIII, His Holiness approved and confirmed the resolution of these Most Eminent Fathers . . . ”—Acta Sanctae Sedis, vol. 29. 1896-7. p. 637.
But Pope Leo soon realized that he had been imposed upon, and in 1902 he established a commission to study Scripture more closely, directing it to begin with 1 John 5:7, 8. Because the report was unfavorable to the earlier decree it had to be put aside, but the pope continued to be worried by the situation right up to his death. Some Roman Catholic scholars began to ignore the decree. Dr. Vogels omitted the text from his Greek Testament published in 1920. Others were at first more cautious.
In the Roman Catholic Westminster Version of the New Testament published in 1931 the footnote to 1 John 5:7, 8 after calling attention to its omission in the original text continues, “Until further action be taken by the Holy See it is not open to Catholic editors to eliminate the words from a version made for the use of the faithful.”8 But in the same version republished as one volume in 1947 the interpolation is omitted, editor Cuthbert Lattey citing the Greek text published by Jesuit scholar A. Merk, which also omits it.
So the prospect envisaged by Professor J. Scott Porter in 1848 has come true. “It is to be hoped,” he wrote, after summing up the evidence on 1 John 5:7, 8, “the time will soon come when those who have the charge of preparing editions of the Bible for general circulation, will be ashamed of sending forth a known interpolation as a portion of the sacred text.”9 In recent times the discovery of such Bible manuscripts as the Codex Sinaiticus has confirmed that this particular verse was no part of God’s inspired Word.
In brief summary the words of that well-known textual critic F. H. A. Scrivener can be quoted: “We need not hesitate to declare our conviction that the disputed words were not written by St. John: that they were originally brought into Latin copies in Africa from the margin, where they had been placed as a pious and orthodox gloss on ver. 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.”10
Our faith in God’s Word is greatly strengthened when we review the story of this text and reflect on the abundance of evidence from all sources that testifies to the accuracy of the Bible we hold in our hand.
THE BATTLE RENEWED
Had the final word been said on the “comma Johanneum”? Perhaps it seemed that way as the seventeenth century progressed, dominated by the Authorized Version. But the murmurings never ceased and the search for the mysterious Codex Britannicus continued, for it disappeared after Erasmus was told about it. Toward the end of the century, no less a personage than Sir Isaac Newton turned the attention of his scientifically trained mind to this text. In 1690 he sent John Locke the treatise “An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture.” The tract set out clearly the reasons for rejecting the text as spurious and several copies circulated among friends of Newton, but it was never published until nearly seventy years later and then only imperfectly.
Meanwhile the growth of textual criticism took on new impetus. The text was attacked by Richard Simon, and Dr. John Mill gathered the evidence against the passage, though he remained its defender. But Thomas Emlyn took up Mill’s evidence and urged both houses of Convocation assembled in 1717 to cut the words right out, for he said, “ ’tis never given up fairly, till it be left out of our printed copies.”5 In short order Emlyn was attacked by Mr. Martin, pastor of the French Church at Utrecht, whose voluminous and subtle answer seemed to clear the field. Emlyn’s reply caused Martin to launch a second tirade against him. But Emlyn won many supporters, though the devious windings of the controversy often made it extremely difficult to find out what it was really all about.
In 1729 there appeared here in England a diglot version of the Christian Greek Scriptures by Daniel Mace. In a fourteen-page note he listed the Greek and Latin manuscripts, ancient versions, early Greek and Latin writers that omitted the text and threw it out with this conclusion, “In a word, if this evidence is not sufficient to prove, that the controverted text in St. John is spurious; by what evidence can it be prov’d, that any text in St. John is genuine?”6 Thereafter, other English translations began to omit the verse, such as the one by William Whiston (1745), well known for his translation of Josephus, and that by John Worsley in 1770.
If Edward Gibbon thought the wheel had turned full circle when he published The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1781 he was mistaken. With his usual sarcasm he denounced the passage as a “pious fraud.”7 Up rose another champion, George Travis, an archdeacon, who rushed into action to defend the text. His extreme statements elicited crushing replies from Professor Richard Porson (running to over 400 pages) and Herbert Marsh, a bishop. At last the interpolation was exposed in a minute and most exact manner.
THE LAST STRONGHOLD GIVES WAY
After Porson and Marsh there was little to add. Most scholars of the nineteenth century considered the matter settled, but one stronghold remained, the Roman Catholic Church.
As late as 1897 a papal decree was issued forbidding the faithful to doubt the “comma Johanneum.” In part it said:
“Secretariat of the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Concerning the authenticity of the text of 1 John V. 7. (Wednesday, Jan. 12, 1897).
“In a General Congregation of the Holy Roman Inquisition . . . the following doubtful question was presented:
“‘Whether we may safely deny, or even treat as a matter of doubt, the authenticity of that text (1 John V. 7). . . ’
“All things having been most diligently examined and weighed, and the opinion of the Lords Consultors having been taken, the aforesaid Most Eminent Cardinals gave out ‘the answer is in the negative.’ On Friday the 15th of the aforesaid month and year, in the usual audience granted to reverend father the lord Assessor of the Holy Office, after that he had made an exact report of the aforesaid proceedings to our Most Holy Lord Pope Leo XIII, His Holiness approved and confirmed the resolution of these Most Eminent Fathers . . . ”—Acta Sanctae Sedis, vol. 29. 1896-7. p. 637.
But Pope Leo soon realized that he had been imposed upon, and in 1902 he established a commission to study Scripture more closely, directing it to begin with 1 John 5:7, 8. Because the report was unfavorable to the earlier decree it had to be put aside, but the pope continued to be worried by the situation right up to his death. Some Roman Catholic scholars began to ignore the decree. Dr. Vogels omitted the text from his Greek Testament published in 1920. Others were at first more cautious.
In the Roman Catholic Westminster Version of the New Testament published in 1931 the footnote to 1 John 5:7, 8 after calling attention to its omission in the original text continues, “Until further action be taken by the Holy See it is not open to Catholic editors to eliminate the words from a version made for the use of the faithful.”8 But in the same version republished as one volume in 1947 the interpolation is omitted, editor Cuthbert Lattey citing the Greek text published by Jesuit scholar A. Merk, which also omits it.
So the prospect envisaged by Professor J. Scott Porter in 1848 has come true. “It is to be hoped,” he wrote, after summing up the evidence on 1 John 5:7, 8, “the time will soon come when those who have the charge of preparing editions of the Bible for general circulation, will be ashamed of sending forth a known interpolation as a portion of the sacred text.”9 In recent times the discovery of such Bible manuscripts as the Codex Sinaiticus has confirmed that this particular verse was no part of God’s inspired Word.
In brief summary the words of that well-known textual critic F. H. A. Scrivener can be quoted: “We need not hesitate to declare our conviction that the disputed words were not written by St. John: that they were originally brought into Latin copies in Africa from the margin, where they had been placed as a pious and orthodox gloss on ver. 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.”10
Our faith in God’s Word is greatly strengthened when we review the story of this text and reflect on the abundance of evidence from all sources that testifies to the accuracy of the Bible we hold in our hand.
