Oldest is not always better
 

Another charge often levied against this passage of scripture is that the manuscripts which do contain it are old, late, not early. That the earliest manuscripts do not, and therefore the passage should be jettisoned.

This of course presupposes that an early manuscript is superior to a later manuscript, by reason of the date. Is this argument meritorious?

Consider the following facts:

Whereas all but about 20 of the available Greek manuscripts contain the Comma (which in itself would destroy any 'only a few have them' arguments anyway), and the vast majority of these manuscripts are considered 'late' (post 9th century AD), the vast majority of the 20 odd manuscripts which omit the Comma are also late (post 9th century, some 95 percent of them, in fact). And this is according to the 'standard' set by the UBS themselves! (The UBS is the promoter of the Critical Text underlying the newer versions.)

The oldest Greek manuscript which contains the Comma (Dubbed Wizanburgensis) is older than all but 5 of the manuscripts which omit the Comma, and is contemporary with a 6th.

The bulk of the manuscripts for both sides of the issue are 'late', and both sides have 'early' manuscripts which attest to their respective readings.

But is older always better in regard to Biblical manuscripts? Not necessarily.

The Critical text relies primarily on two old texts (not necessarily manuscripts, by the way), the Vaticanus, and the Sinaiticus. These texts however routinely contradict each other in thousands of places, and the NIV or NASB or other critical text-based versions do not always make the decision of which reading to go with based upon age alone. I wonder why? In any event, these texts date from around the 4th century.

The problem is however that prior to that period, the New Testament text would have been extremely difficult to alter (such as by inserting the Johannine Comma). Many scholars are convinced that all variant readings were established by around the year 200 (Scrivener, Colwell, for example).

Consider the case of Origen for example. Origen in his day was one of the most influential teachers in Christendom. Yet his 'critical examinations' of Matthew 19:19 found their way into only one obscure manuscript of a local church. Why? Because by his time, the New Testament text had been dispersed too far and too widely to allow for such fiddling with the Scripture to be accepted very widely without leaving a clear witness to objections to the changes.

Furthermore, the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus texts (usually referred to in the margins of newer Bible versions as 'the oldest and best manuscripts') are vellum texts. Vellum was used by Christians (especially catholics) as 'official copies' of the Scripture for liturgical usage. Unfortunately, vellum is not very durable, and wears out quickly from use.

Quick question then: If Vaticanus and Sinaiticus were designed for common liturgical use, then why do they still exist?

Obviously, the reason we even have them in existence is precisely because they were not used. I wonder why they weren't used?

It could be that, since they differ so much from the majority of the texts and manuscripts, and from each other as well (just as much, in fact), therefore nobody used them because they were obviously corrupt versions of the known text of Scripture.

Papyrus (the other primary material upon which the Scriptures were recorded) is even less durable than vellum. Usage means wear and tear, and thus replacement. Therefore, ancient manuscripts or texts on vellum or papyrus, which are in good condition after 1500 or so years, are themselves the vest evidence they were not used... and why were they not used? Because they were obviously flawed, and known to be flawed.

When you have readings that come from a MAJORITY of extant manuscripts, and those manuscripts are 'late', that in itself is proof of their usage and copying. (The originals wear out and are replaced due to use.) And when you have the opposite conditions (very old manuscripts with minority readings) you may draw the opposite conclusion - they were NOT used and copied.

Which basically implies that either the oldest pristine manuscripts and texts giving strange and minority readings are the Word of God, hidden from everyone until say the late 19th century, or else they are simply corrupted versions of the New Testament text which were not used and copied precisely because they were known to be full of errors.

Furthermore, Dean Burgon's study of the patristic writers' quotations of the New Testament showed that the patristic writers quoted the Majority (often called the 'Byzantine') family of texts and manuscripts compared to the aberrant or 'Alexandrian' (ie similar to the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus texts) by a ratio of 3 to 2. That is, they largely preferred to quote the 'later' majority manuscripts (even though these writers lived from the 2nd to the 9th centiuries!) rather than any manuscript or text reflecting the 'Alexandrian' or Vaticanus/Sinaiticus type of manuscript or text.

Zuntz (a textual critic and scholar) in his The Text of the Epistles (p 55) identified the fact that many manuscripts which are classed as 'Alexandrian' contain 'Byzantine' (majority) readings, and concludes that the Byzantine readings are ancient ( a similar situation prevails in Homeric textual criticism, by the way...)

In any event, simply pointing to a manuscript or textual reading as superior 'because it is older' is without merit. While age certianly are to be taken into account, age is by no means the sole, or even the most important, consideration in textual criticism.

The early witnesses
 

One thing that is strange, is that if the Johannine Comma was simply invented in the 'late period' of manuscript development (as the NIV footnote tries to argue), then why was it routinely quoted for centuries before that?

Tertullian in his famous Against Praxeas alludes to the Johannine Comma, and Cyprian explicitly quotes it in his 'Of the Ecclesiastical Unity' chapter 6. Both of these men lived in the 3rd century, prior to the time of the 'heretic' Priscillian who is often accused of being the inventor of the Comma. Likewise Athanasius quoted the Comma (again prior to Priscillian).

There are other witnesses to the antiquity of the Comma, besides mere quotations from patristic writers.

There is the Old Latin manuscript tradition. Dating from about the middle 2nd century, the Old Latin manuscripts contained the Comma. These Old Latin manuscripts were translated from the Greek, thus giving clear evidence that the Greek manuscripts at that time did in fact have the Comma.

Later, Jerome (when commissioned to develop the Latin Vulgate) complained that there were attempts being made in his day to alter and change the Greek Bibles, and even mentioned the Johannine Comma as being one of the corrupters targets. Like I said, by the 3rd century, attempts to alter the text of Scripture were noticed and challenged. (Some silly people try to argue that the Comma was unknown to Jerome, and not included in the Vulgate. However, the Council of Carthage, relying upon Jerome's Vulgate, explicitly cites the Johannine Comma in one of its canons.)

In fact, the Waldensian Bibles used by the Waldensians, who were completely outside of the Catholic Vulgate text tradition (they having been enemies of the Roman Catholic church since 'time immemorial' according to both themselves and the Inquisitors who persecuted them) had the Comma in their Bibles, being as they were translated from the Old Latin manuscripts and texts.

The Comma was known in the Syriac manuscript tradition as well, having been referred to by Jason of Edessa sometime around 700 AD. Thus, the Comma was present in yet another text or manuscript tradition.

The point being, there is a plethora of evidence that the Johannine Comma was known and in existence from the earliest times, which exposes the claims of its detractors as either uninformed or disengenuous.

The Erasmus myth
 

Once upon a time, Erasmus was compiling the manuscripts of the New Testament into a text. He left out the Johannine Comma because no Greek text or manuscript could be found with it. He was challenged on this, and said, 'Show me just one Greek manuscript with it, and I will include it.' And so, made to order, a Greek manuscript was 'discovered' which conveniently contained the passage in question, and so he included in his revised text. And the rest is history.

Or is it?

First of all, there is no evidence of any such 'promise' on Erasmus' part. The top Erastian scholar, H. J. de Jonge, Dean of Theology at Leiden university, has pointed out that there is simply no evidence whatsoever of any such 'promise'.

In fact, one of the guys who popularised the 'Erastian Promise', Brian Metzger (one of the more famous proponents of the Critical Text) actually issued a retraction of his previous use of the Erastian Promise myth! (see his The Text of the New Testament p 291)

And so much for Erasmus.

The internal evidence
 

And now we come to the Johannine Comma itself.

If the critics are right, and we remove the Comma, the resulting revised Greek text becomes a garbled bit of Greek non-grammar!

To put it simply, if we remove the offending parts, we have 'spirit, water, and blood' in verse 8. These are in Greek neuter nouns. They are followed by a Greek participle hoi marturountes, which is masculine. This is extremely bad grammar. It is in fact a Greek grammatical impossibility, to have three masculine witnesses agreeing as one neuter witness.

Replace the Johannine Comma where it ought to be, and the grammatical difficulty is completely resolved.

If removing a passage of Scripture renders the resulting text a garbled mass of grammatical confusion, it shoudl be obvious a mistake has been made, and the words should be put back in.

Also, it is contended that the verse was created by trinitarians to support their doctrine. Yet it does not in fact do so.

The eastern Orthodox churches routinely FAILED to use this passage, possibly even expunging it from many of the manuscripts they had, precisely because they feared it lent credence to the hated doctrine of Sabellius.

The trinitarian formula is 'Father, Son, and Holy Spirit' not 'Father, WORD, and Holy Spirit'.

Although some trinitarians did attempt to use it (as Tertullian for example) they had to cautiously explicate it in a trinitarian fashion specifically to avoid charges of Sabellianism!

The supposed creation of this text to buttress a trinitarian doctrine falls apart when considered against whom it would be used. Sabellians? Monarchians? Oneness people?

What about the Arians? Interestingly, the Arian controversy was strongest in the East, and there the Trinitarians did not really use this verse to argue against the Arians.

Conclusion
 

So then, we see the following:

1. The contested verse has plenty of ancient witness to its authenticity and antiquity.

2. The arguments put forward against it are fraught with inconsistencies and downright falsehoods.

3. The grammar falls apart without it and makes no sense.

4. The reason for its alleged interpolation does not match the historical facts.

5. Nobody has actually proven who dunnit, where, or when, or even why.

In short, there is really no reason whatsoever to accept the accusation that the contested words are not God's words, except a bigoted prejudice against what some perceive as a 'trinitarian proof text' (although they perceive falsely) and a bigoted and uninformed prejudice against any text or manuscript which does not conform to the 'critical text' (as corrupted and inconsistent as it is).

In point of fact, I would submit that all other things being equal, if the verse was NOT in the KING JAMES BIBLE, but was in the NIV, NASB, and all the others, the people arguing against it would be SILENT and committed to its veracity and authenticity.

I believe that people oppose this verse because they are opposed to the King James Bible itself. There is something about that Bible they do not like. Perhaps they themselves do not even know what it is.

Do not accuse me of being a 'King James Only' type. I am not. But there is something about the King James Bible that modernists, liberals, humanists, and other assorted spiritually troubled persons simply cannot stand.

There is a power in God's Word. It draws the ire of all modern society's self appointed 'experts'.

And so I conclude with why I believe the Johannine Comma is inspired, and not to be removed from the Bible.

'There are three that bear record in heaven - the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost... and these three are ONE.'

This is just an assertion. It remains to be seen whether or not those arguments are insufficient. Your statement here assumes a priori, that the verse IS in fact God's word to be altered. And in fact if it IS an interpolation then the word of God is already altered and it needs to be removed! In fact, if this argument was sufficient in and of itself we SHOULD return to the Roman Catholic version of the bible with it's apocryphal books.

This is such an ironic statement, since this is a Oneness board but it's Trinitarian scholarship that tells us it's an interpolation. In fact MANY OPs AND Trinitarians both point to this verse as evidence of their respective doctrines. I don't know of ANYONE that decided to "remove" this verse out of an emotive reasoning that "well it does not fit my doctrine so I will just magically cut it out"...if that was the case why not remove John 17:5 too? Isn't this sort of a strawman argument on your part? Come on, time is short and people don't have the time or desire to read through verbosity. Get to the facts brother lol

This is just more non-argumental polemiics. This is the kind of stuff that makes topics come crashing to a halt. Let's get to the facts and cut out the preachy emotive based rhetoric! :slaphappy

Oh well, based on such strong emotional reasoning....sorry that does not mean squat to me. I don't base what I believe is the truth on how it sounds to someone else. Using this sort of reasoning I might as well hand my brain over to Crakjac and believe in Universalism or for that matter I might go back to the catholic version and confess the protestants never should have removed God's word. Or maybe I should read the word in greek only? Come on brother. My eyes are glazing over here. Do you really expect us to read through ALL this verbosity to gleen what chunks of facts there might be here to show this verse is NOT an interpolation?

Brother are you quoting someone else? This is a forum. If I am forced to spend all my time reading one persons long long long series of posts where in half or most of the content doesn't even do what it was claimed to be doing, Im just might not bother with the rest of the post. There are other topics and posters here. Cut up the dross brother and get to the point! lol

Praxeas, you were simply responding to my introduction, in which I stated reasons for being very careful about trying to eviscerate the Bible.

Believing as I do in that regard, I find the arguments put forth by the opposition in regard to the verse in question to be faulty and unconvincing.

The argument is NOT that only a few have it. It's that only a few have it AND that many of them only include it as a margin note AND that the other MSS that DO have it are very late, like 15th 16th century.

A.T.Robertson says
At this point the Latin Vulgate gives the words in the Textus Receptus, found in no Greek MS. save two late cursives (162 in the Vatican Library of the fifteenth century, 34 of the sixteenth century in Trinity College, Dublin). Jerome did not have it. Cyprian applies the language of the Trinity and Priscillian has it. Erasmus did not have it in his first edition, but rashly offered to insert it if a single Greek MS. had it and 34 was produced with the insertion, as if made to order.

I hope of all you posted that it's not simply why you believe the opposition argument is flawed. You were gonna post stuff for why the verse in question is genuine too?

BTW this, if true, does not show that the comma is NOT an interpolation...in fact you could be arguing that the other verses are themselves spurious or interpolations