Missing: 1 John 5:7 - KJV (Major)
King James added a verse in 1 John 5:7 that does not contain the other translations and not in original manuscripts:
Last updated
King James added a verse in 1 John 5:7 that does not contain the other translations and not in original manuscripts:
Last updated
The Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7-8): This passage concerns the doctrine of the Trinity and is found in the King James Version and other later translations. However, it is not present in any Greek manuscript before the 14th century and is believed to have been a later addition.
All other translations state:
Misquoting Jesus p. 81
Indeed, as it turns out, these manuscripts were not of the best quality: they were, after all, produced some eleven hundred years after the originals ! For example, the main manuscript that Erasmus used for the Gospels contained both the story of the woman taken in adultery in John and the last twelve verses of Mark, passages that did not originally form part of the Gospels, as we learned in the preceding chapter.
There was one key passage of scripture that Erasmus's source manuscripts did not contain, however. This is the account of i John 5:7-8, which scholars have called the Johannine Comma, found in the manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate but not in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts, a passage that had long been a favorite among Christian theologians, since it is the only passage in the entire Bible that explicitly delineates the doctrine of the Trinity, that there are three persons in the godhead, but that the three all constitute just one God. In the Vulgate, the passage reads:
There are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one; and there are three that bear witness on earth, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three are one.
It is a mysterious passage, but unequivocal in its support of the traditional teachings of the church on the "triune God who is one." Without this verse, the doctrine of the Trinity must be inferred from a range of passages combined to show that Christ is God, as is the Spirit and the Father, and that there is, nonetheless, only one God. This passage, in contrast, states the doctrine directly and succinctly.
But Erasmus did not find it in his Greek manuscripts, which instead simply read: "There are three that bear witness : the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three are one." Where did the "Father, the Word, and the Spirit" go? They were not in Erasmus's primary manuscript, or in any of the others that he consulted, and so, naturally, he left them out of his first edition of the Greek text.
