Talk:Comma Johanneum

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CRITICAL VIEW: EVIDENCE FOR THE TEXTUS RECEPTUS VERSION OF 1 JOHN 5:7 IN GREEK MANUSCRIPTS PRIOR TO THE 16TH CENTURY

Contrary to popular belief there is more than the one Greek manuscript (Manuscript 61 at Dublin) that has the Textus Receptus' rendering of 1 John 5:7. There are in fact two more (Mss. 88 and 629), although only one of these has the verse in its text (Codex Wianburgensis of the eighth century); the other has the verse in a margin.

HISTORICAL REFERENCES TO THE TEXTUS RECEPTUS VERSION OF 1 JOHN 5:7 PRIOR TO THE 16TH CENTURY

There are several references to the same rendering of 1 John 5:7 as the Textus Receptus' that predate the 1500's and cast serious doubt on the scholarship of the editors of the modern bible versions:

1. Tatian’s Diatessaron (180 A.D.) quotes the Textus Receptus version, predating both the popular Vaticanus and Sinaiticus manuscripts

2. Tertullian quotes it around 200 A.D. (Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament, Vol. 2, pp. 907-8)

3. The Council of Carthage (415 A.D.) cited the verse as a basic text proving it as a fundamental doctrine that an orthodox Christian was to believe: the Latin text reads: “Pater, Verbum, et Spiritus Sanctus” (Father, Word, and Holy Spirit.)

4. Jerome cited the verse in his epistle to Eustachian (450 A.D.)

Source: "Why we Retain 1 John 5:7 in the Authorized Version" by Dr. Peter S. Ruckman, Bible Baptist Bookstore, Pensacola, FL

For some reason probably having to do with where I grew up, that source just don't inspire me with confidence. Anville 07:23, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Please note: re-inserting the same text, particularly with the last paragraph deleted, does not count as "verification". According to the Verifiability policy, "The burden of evidence lies with the editors who have made an edit or wish an edit to remain" (emphasis mine). Also, "For academic subjects, the sources should preferably be peer-reviewed. Sources should also be appropriate to the claims made: outlandish claims beg strong sources." Finally, "Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published, and then claim to be an expert in a certain field." I'm not trying to be a killjoy, just exercising a standard level of scholarly caution. Anville 17:17, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Further remarks: researching the matter in more depth, one finds that the claims enumerated above are spurious. For example, Tertullian cites John 10:30, not the Epistle (which would have been a better citation for his case, had it existed). I also note, merely as a personal opinion, that posting the same material to An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture, again with the actual source (Ruckman's book) not specified, carries a hint of intellectual dishonesty. I do not wish to place an uncivil interpretation upon any user's actions, but still—when one has not read Tertullian, should one cite Tertullian? At the very least, let's be open about our secondary sources. Anville 21:19, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

RESPONSE FROM JCWALDENSIAN Anville: I've read your response from you concerning point 2) about Tertullian, and evidence will be forthcoming and I will, for the moment, remove it from the page. However I need a specific accounting from you regarding the three Greek Manuscripts mentioned, which are primary sources, and I also need a specific accounting from you regarding the other historical references before you remove them. I need to know exactly which references you're objecting to.
These references are already well known, announced in widely published works by men with Doctorates in this field of study such as Dr. Sam Gipp and Dr. Peter S. Ruckman. Since you did not object to these other manuscripts and references in your reply, they will be re-posted to the 1 John 5:7 page. If you continue to protest this posting, then we will go directly to the original manuscripts themselves in order to settle this matter. Once again, you need to list the exact manuscripts and/or references to which you're objecting.

Thank you. I do not have time to work on this more today; more detailed comments will follow tomorrow or the day after. Anville 17:32, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 My more detailed comments 1.1 Specific passages 1.2 On certain Points of Greek grammar 1.3 On the question of Doctorates 1.4 Concluding remarks 2 Another Metzger reference 3 Comparison 4 Promoted to GA 5 Cyprian's gloss

[edit] My more detailed comments

[edit] Specific passages

Tatian's Diatessaron. Written around the year 175, give or take, Tatian's Diatessaron is a "harmony" of the four Gospels; that is, Tatian took the Gospels and edited their four stories into one continuous narrative, leaving out the stuff he found to be inconsistent. The most significant omissions are the Pericope Adulteræ ("Let he who is without sin cast the first stone", etc.) and the genealogies of Jesus, which do not agree between Matthew and Luke, partly because Matthew skips generations. According to Biblical scholar L. McFall, the resulting compilation is about 72% the length of the four Gospels combined. The translations I have read of the Diatessaron do not include any phrasing which resembles the Comma Johanneum; to double-check, I have searched through an English translation made via the Arabic, but without luck. It does contain plenty of passages which might support a Trinitarian reading, e.g.,

And in that hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, I acknowledge thee, my Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto children: yea, my Father; so was thy will. And he turned to his disciples, and said unto them, Everything hath been delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth who the Son is, save the Father; and who the Father is, save the Son, and to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him. (XV, 37)

Tatian's own views on the Trinity are complicated and do not seem thoroughly orthodox. He calls the Logos, the Word, "a Spirit born from the Father", and he says "the spirit which pervades matter [is] inferior to the more Divine Spirit". These views sound like a Homoiousion or an Arian speaking, one who believes in "different substance" rather than "same substance". Using Tatian to support orthodox Trinitarianism is more than a little disingenuous, particularly since after his death, his works were called heretical. Theodoret says the Syriac churches which used the Diatessaron "did not perceive the mischief of the composition, but used the book in all simplicity on account of its brevity. And I myself found more than 200 such copies held in respect in the churches in our parts. All these I collected and put away, and I replaced them by the Gospels of the four Evangelists." Irenaeus says that Tatian was "elated, puffed up as if superior to other teachers, and forming his own type of doctrine." [1]

While the Diatessaron circulated in Syriac and pre-Vulgate "Old Latin" versions, but as the Vulgate came to be widely adopted, the Diatessaron was "corrected" to conform to Vulgate readings. Later manuscripts written in Latin are therefore very poor sources of independent information.

All in all, I'm surprised anyone would even look in the Diatessaron for the Johannine Comma, since the Diatessaron is a compilation of the Gospels. It includes the Gospel of John, not the First Epistle of John. Granted, out of all the Johannine books, these two are most likely to have the same author—but still! And if you do believe that Tatian is somehow a guide to what texts are "inspired", then your Gospels will have to omit the story of the woman caught in adultery, as well as the Davidic descent of Jesus.

The phrase "damned if you do, damned if you don't" springs to mind.

Tertullian. As I indicated earlier, Tertullian quoted John 10:30, not 1 John 5:7–8, even though the Johannine Comma had it existed in his Scriptures would have provided a stronger buttress for his argument. (It is interesting that, as Edward Gibbon reports in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Tertullian was the one who had to defend Christianity against the charge that Christians ate pagan babies. No joke. This is what the Romans say behind your back when you go around talking about "eating the flesh of the Son of Man".)

Council of Carthage. This is very interesting, and I thank you for pointing it out to me. The chronology is confusing: St. Eugenius of Carthage lived well after the Fourth Council of that city (he was appointed bishop in 480). He appears to have made a Comma-esque statement around the year 485. I have been unable to find an original source for this, and I cannot for certain tell whether Eugenius was using the Johannine Comma as a part of 1 John or if he was merely glossing another verse (like Cyprian). People have also claimed that the Fourth Council of Carthage, which met in the 410s, approved the Johannine Comma, but this is even harder to document. Unless the fellow were extremely long-lived for those times, it would have to be a different Eugenius who read the Comma to the assembled churchmen and got their approval. (And why wouldn't they approve? They were gathered for the express purpose of upholding the Trinity against the Arian heresy. A statement of straight-up Trinitarian belief like the Comma would surely be met with widespread acclaim.) Or perhaps the people writing about the Council made a mistake. Mistakes do happen. Until somebody straightens out the confusion over Eugeniuses, I don't know what to make of this.

It is also worth noting that the most famous Carthaginian of them all, St. Augustine, wrote a book called On the Trinity right within this time interval, around the year 425. On the Trinity doesn't mention the Comma. You'd think that if it mattered so much....

One thing is clear: whether or not a guy named Eugenius or somebody else said "pater et verbum et spiritus sanctus" (or whatever declension of those nouns you prefer), it still happened at least thirty years after Priscillian put the verse into his version of 1 John. So, what good is it? Maybe the only copy of 1 John laying around was Priscillian's—books took a long time to make in those days—or maybe, being hot-blooded Trinitarians, the bishops meeting in Carthage that day just thought Priscillian's version was the best.

Jerome's Epistle to Eustachian. I believe this is a misprint for "Jerome's Epistle to Eustochium." The date 450 is also implausible, as sources agree that Jerome was born around 347 and died in the year 420. As one archivist says, the Epistle to Eustochium is

Perhaps the most famous of all the letters. In it Jerome lays down at great length the motives which ought to actuate those who devote themselves to a life of virginity, and the rules by which they ought to regulate their daily conduct. The letter contains a vivid picture of Roman society as it then was—the luxury, profligacy, and hypocrisy prevalent among both men and women, besides some graphic autobiographical details (? 7, 30), and concludes with a full account of the three kinds of monasticism then practised in Egypt (34–36). Thirty years later Jerome wrote a similar letter to Demetrias (CXXX.), with which this ought to be compared. Written at Rome 384 A.D. [2]

Again, this Epistle does not include the Johannine Comma. The article already addresses the Codex whose copy of Jerome's Prologue to the Canonical Epistles mentions the Comma; since that Codex's copy of 1 John itself doesn't include the Comma, well, the less said the better.

[edit] On certain Points of Greek grammar

I'm surprised that no one has yet raised the claims about 1 John 5's Greek grammar, specifically the notion that removing the Johannine Comma makes the passage grammatically incorrect. (I've also heard it said that, like the passage in Josephus which mentions Christ, the Comma interrupts the logical flow of the text around it, but let's leave that aside for now.) Perhaps this is because people find Greek grammar just too dull even for debates over Biblical canon. Unfortunately, the best source online for this issue is in French. Called "Le comma johannique, les « textes grecs » et les Pères de l'Eglise" ("The Johannian Comma, the "Greek Texts" and the Church Fathers") it cites many sources in English, but not belonging to a country where the KJV is standard, it throws less of a hissy fit than most references I've read.

One might like to reason that omitting the Comma Johanneum makes the passage grammatically incorrect, but—

Un tel raisonnement est trompeur, car il n'est pas rare, dans le " Nouveau Testament ", de rencontrer des passages où les règles d'accord ne sont pas suivies, en ce qui concerne le genre, le cas, ou le nombre. Citons quelques exemples pour illustrer cela.

In English:

Such reasoning is mistaken, since it is not rare, in the New Testament, to find passages where the rules of agreement are not followed, in that which concerns the gender, case or number. Let's cite some examples to illustrate this.

Such examples include Matthew 23:23, in which "justice" [krisin, feminine], "mercy" [eleon, masculine] et "fidelity" [pistin, feminine] are the antecedents to the neuter demontsrative pronoun tauta ("these things"). Other examples of the same kind—to say nothing of other grammar glitches—include 1 Corinthians 13:13 and Galatians 1:22–3.

...And so forth, and so on, from alpha to omega, unto the end of days. So, rather than saying that the argument is too dull and dusty (I happen to like grammar, anyway), we might as well just say that it's wrong.

[edit] On the question of Doctorates

Peter Ruckman is, indeed, a large and famous figure in the King-James-Only Movement. "Famous" is perhaps not so good a word as "infamous": though it is hard to take a census of these things, the majority of KJV-Only partisans often go to considerable lengths to avoid even being associated with him, and they do not consider him a good representative of their opinions. I find this attitude understandable: if you claim, as Ruckman has, that the KJV supercedes even the Testaments in their original languages, then all the arguments about different sources and versions go out the window. In 1983, Ruckman claimed that the KJV is not a copyrighted work. This is factually wrong. He has claimed that there was no Greek translation of the Old Testament before Origen, also factually wrong. D. W. Cloud, himself a KJV-only advocate, wrote to Ruckman in 1985, telling him that his extremism was doing more harm to the Textus Receptus and the Authorized Version than even the TR's most vocal opponents. Almost twenty years later, Cloud wrote, "I know these words make even some of my friends cringe, but I still believe this. Why? Because his strange ideas, his multiple divorces, his angry spirit, his arrogance, his Alexandrian cult mentality, his extremism regarding the KJV being advanced revelation, and his bizarre private doctrines tends to cause men to reject the entire issue." [3]

Many "degree mills" have advertised themselves by making their own articles on the Wikipedia. If I had any inclination, I could look one of them up, write a check or money order and in six weeks become Dr. Anville, Certified Professional Theologian. This would give me the "right" to append those letters to my name, but would it add the slightest jot or tittle of credibility to anything I say? In order to judge the worth of Dr. Ruckman's doctorate, I would have to go to Bob Jones University (a place he has denounced, anyway), interrogate his old professors, examine his doctoral thesis, evaluate the extent of the school library, et cetera. I have neither the time nor the will nor the need to do this—and even if I did, the No Original Research policy makes such arguments inadmissable in the Wikipedia.

The people whose work I cited in building this article have degrees too: the bibliography points us to Drs. Metzger, Mann, Williams and others. The editors of the Schaff-Herzog and Catholic Encyclopedias also have extensive academic qualifications (otherwise they wouldn't have gotten those jobs). I did not make a grand point about listing everyone's full set of letters, because I am used to writing in subjects where that is not necessary. In the vast, vast majority of scientific journal articles, for example, one does not see the authors identifying themselves with "Dr." or "Ph.D." At most, one sees "Professor of X at Y University", or usually just "Y University". The tradition in academic discourse is to judge the content, not the speaker.

Yes, I am aware of the ad hominem argument and how it is a logical fallacy. I do not wish to dispel Ruckman with such an argument. Instead I ask, in the interest of civil and civilized discourse, that we use our sources in the proper fashion. Again I ask, if one has not read Tertullian, should one cite Tertullian—only by "Tertullian" I wish to indicate as shorthand all the ancient writers, Cyprian, Jerome or whosoever. When drafting material for this article, I made every effort to specify the secondary sources which quoted and translated the relevant ancient writers, and to give Web-accessible sources when possible, so that people who do not have the time, money and linguistic skills to read hundreds or thousands of manuscripts can verify the story, as much as they humanly can. This way, one can read what a professor says that Jerome said, or better yet a translation of what Jerome himself said. Reading what Ruckman said that Gill said that Tertullian wrote about (all "in the house that Jack built", as it were) is just too much. I repeat my point that claiming we got a particular datum out of Gill, when in fact we got it out of Ruckman who read Gill, is poor practice. Even if Ruckman had never been accused of distorting others' words—and he has been, even by KJV admirers—it would not be the proper thing to do.

One should focus, I believe, upon the actual arguments presented. As I have outlined above, those arguments are not very good, never mind their source, though I'm sure errors could have been introduced in the copying from one book to another and eventually to the Internet. Even in this electronic age, we are scarcely less error-prone than the copyists of Priscillian's day.

So yes, I suppose I am disparaging the "Doctorate". I am criticizing the reliance upon letters prefixed or suffixed to a name. The Bard of Avon himself said that even a name is not "hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man." If a name is so little, what's in a title? To prefer a title over a human being is, ultimately, to prefer the Pharisees over Christ. If it came to a theological debate between a Bob Jones University graduate and a carpenter's son from the back-hills country, to which would you listen?

[edit] Concluding remarks

I paraphrase some remarks of A. Barnes, in his Notes on the New Testament. As Barnes says, the Johannine Comma does not contribute to the logical progression of the Apostle's discourse, and in fact it completely interrupts his thread of discussion. In 1 John 5, the author is speaking of things which witness to the fact that Jesus is the Messiah. Three things were very well known to the people to whom John was writing, namely the Spirit, the blood and the water (the Crucifixion story of the spear, in other words). How does saying that in the heavens there are three things which render witness (three things which have no relation with the subject in question) reinforce the main point? Without the Comma, the discussion has a very clear and appropriate sense. There are three things, says John, which witness that Jesus is the Messiah. He mentions them in 1 John 5:6, and in immediate consequence, he affirms (1 John 5:8) that their witness really does bear upon the point and is totally harmonious. To say that there are other witnesses besides, and to say that these are somehow "one", contributes nothing toillustrating the nature of the witnessing of these three, the blood, the water and the Spirit. The "internal sense" of the passage furnishes no better proof of the Johannine Comma's authenticity than does the "external proof".

It reminds me, in a funny way, of the seventh chapter of Isaiah. Y'all remember the story, now, right? The nation of Judah was in dire straits (wasn't it always?) with the threatening kingdoms of the hour gathering their might. The prophet Isaiah went to King Ahaz and told him what he, the King, had to do. Isaiah even offered a divine sign as proof that, as a prophet, he knew what he was talking about. "A young woman shall conceive," he told the King, "and bear a son, and call his name Immanuel." And before Immanuel was old enough to tell good from evil, the threat would collapse.

As it so happens, Isaiah never said that an "Immanuel" was born. A little later in the book, however, he has a vision in which God directs him to name his own son Maher-shalal-hash-baz. (Think of the ribbing the poor child would receive come kindergarten, unless all the other children were similarly cursed with prophetically-commanded names!) When one translates the names "Immanuel" and "Maher-shalal-etc.", one finds that the meanings are equivalent. One promises good will for Judah, and the other promises a speedy end to the threatening kingdoms to the north, but the symbolism is the same. It is eminently reasonable to conclude that Isaiah's own wife is the "young woman" he mentioned to Ahaz, and that the predicted Immanuel is none other than his own son.

How could it be otherwise? Could Isaiah offer as a sign, "Seven hundred years from now, a child will be born and called Immanuel—"

At which point, Ahaz would interrupt, "Seven hundred years? Judah is in deadly peril now! Get this windbag 'prophet' out of my sight."

Despite this, countless people have read (or been told to read) Isaiah 7:14 as a prophecy of Christ. I will never understand the emotional or intellectual appeal of this. Does no one read on to Isaiah 8? Presumably, the rise of a divine Being on Earth is important enough on its own account that it does not need to be "justified" by stretching Old Testament verses beyond all measure. (Could one even imagine a time when Jesus did not know the difference between good and evil?) Remember, Matthew is the fellow whose genealogy of Jesus doesn't even match the list of Judean kings given in the Old Testament's historical books, so if he erroneously cited a verse in Isaiah, we could cut him a little slack. It's even possible that the Greek translations of Isaiah he had to work with really did say "virgin" instead of "young woman" in verse 7:14, so that he made his mistake honestly. Why would they say this? Well, Greek mythology is replete with virgin births, divine beings springing from the blood of other divine beings, and all sorts of stuff like that. Roman legends have it that Romulus and Remus were born of a Vestal Virgin impregnated by Mars. If it was good enough for the two heathens who founded Rome, why wasn't it good enough for the Messiah?

I suppose one could go back to the seventh chapter of Isaiah and say, "It had a literal meaning at the time, but it was really a prophecy". OK, symbolism and extra layers of meaning, that's cool—but then we've really taken ourselves right out of the Fundamentalist view, haven't we? If one says that a book like Isaiah had a literal meaning for the audiences of its day and a prophetic or symbolic one hundreds of years later, then it's equally valid to say that Genesis had literal meaning during the Babylonian Exile but is really, in symbolic terms, a prophecy of the Big Bang.

Like I said a while ago, damned if you do, damned if you don't. Pick one!

Finally, I am exasperated by the people who constantly ask "WWKJVD?" as if it were a great and momentous question. To quote the translators of that very Authorized Version,

we do not deny, nay we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession, (for we have seen none of theirs of the whole Bible as yet) containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God. As the King's speech, which he uttereth in Parliament, being translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and Latin, is still the King's speech, though it be not interpreted by every Translator with the like grace, nor peradventure so fitly for phrase, nor so expressly for sense, everywhere. [...] No cause therefore why the word translated should be denied to be the word, or forbidden to be current, notwithstanding that some imperfections and blemishes may be noted in the setting forth of it. For whatever was perfect under the Sun, where Apostles or Apostolic men, that is, men endued with an extraordinary measure of God's spirit, and privileged with the privilege of infallibility, had not their hand? [4]

A little later, they say that the Bible has many words which only appear once, and that the Scriptures name many rare "birds, beasts and precious stones" upon which not even the Hebrews themselves could agree on the definition. Being good people, the translators admitted that in such cases, they might have screwed up. What's more,

it hath pleased God in his divine providence, here and there to scatter words and sentences of that difficulty and doubtfulness, not in doctrinal points that concern salvation, (for in such it hath been vouched that the Scriptures are plain) but in matters of less moment, that fearfulness would better beseem us than confidence, and if we will resolve upon modesty with S. Augustine, (though not in this same case altogether, yet upon the same ground) Melius est debitare de occultis, quam litigare de incertis, [S. Aug li. S. de Genes. ad liter. cap. 5.] "it is better to make doubt of those things which are secret, than to strive about those things that are uncertain." [5]

Or, as the scandalous old proverb says, "There are other Kings than Scottish Jimmy."

I'm out of time and have to move on to other things. Without a better indication of the specific manuscripts and passages in question, I really can't say more than I already have.

Cordially,

Anville 11:11, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another Metzger reference

I checked Bruce Metzger's The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (Oxford, 3rd edition, 1992 ISBN 0195072979). This text is in concord with the article. --Blainster 23:55, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comparison

Is it OK to quote a modern version of the text without the comma for comparison? Borisblue 02:37, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Promoted to GA

Fun to read, and well-written. I would like to see the red links to become blue and maybe, the reason for the addition of the comma if possible. Lincher 01:32, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cyprian's gloss

"Et iterum de Patre et Filio et Spiritu Sancto scriptum est—Et hi tres unum sunt" (De Unitate Ecclesiæ, "On the Unity of the Church", vi).[3] Translated, Cyprian's remark reads, "And again it is written of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit—and these three are one." If Cyprian had been aware of the Comma, he would likely have quoted it directly, rather than glossing a verse in a different Johannine book with a sentence which resembles the Comma. (From the article)

Cyprian is obviously quoting something he regards as scripture other than the passage at hand. The final clause, Et hi tres unum sunt, are plainly intended as a direct quote; the Et (rather than, say, quod, if that was used as early as Cyprian) otherwise breaks the construction of the sentence. Either he was aware of the Comma, and was partly paraphrasing and partly quoting it, or he was aware of some other passage of the New Testament as he knew it, not known to us in any extant versions.

If the argument put forward here goes against the Comma, it goes equally against any other such text, and we have Cyprian saying, "It is written," while we claim that he didn't mean it was written in any actual passage. It's not an argument against a reference to the Comma, it's an argument against Cyprian having even written the sentence. This is not in question, is it?

Cyprian introduces the quote by saying it is written concerning the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, paraphrasing the first part of the Comma with the familiar nomenclature of the three Persons rather than using the less usual wording of the Comma itself, on which he might otherwise have felt the need to comment further.

Either it is a quote of the Comma Johanneum, or it's a quote of some other (lost) comma in some other NT text. Do we need to postulate this?

Great article, for all that. Copey 2 01:33, 16 November 2006 (UTC)