The Comma Johanneum: Five Essays

The Comma Johanneum: Five Essays by James Snapp Jr. and Barry Hofstetter initially published at The Text of the Gospels in 2016, 2017, and 2018 1. Cyprian and the Comma Johanneum         Few textual variants in the New Testament have received more attention than First John 5:7-8, where the  Textus Receptus – the printed base-text of the New Testament in the King James Version – reads, οτι τρεις εισιν οι μαρτυρουντες εν τω ουρανω ο πατηρ ο λογος και το αγιον πνευμα και ουτοι οι τρεις εν εισιν και τρεις εισιν οι μαρτυρουντες εν τη γη το πνευμα και το υδωρ και το αιμα και οι τρεις εις το εν εισιν, which is represented in English as, “There are three witnesses in heaven:  the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one.  And there are three witnesses in the earth:  the spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree in one.”  The base-text of most modern translations is significantly shorter and different:  οτι τρεις εισιν οι μαρτυρουντες το πνευμα και το υδωρ και το αιμα και οι τρεις εις το εν εισιν, that is, in English, “There are three witnesses:  the spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree in one.”           The longer reading – technically known as the Comma Johanneum – is well-known from the KJV.  It is also in the text of the NKJV and Modern English Version (with a footnote).  The English Standard Version, on the other hand, does not contain the Comma Johanneum and the ESV has no footnote in First John 5:7-8.  The NIV2011 and the Holman Christian Standard Bible do not have the Comma Johanneum in the text, but each contains a footnote acknowledging its existence in manuscripts of the Vulgate and in a few late manuscripts.            I am not going to review all the evidence about the Comma Johanneum here, but a few points should be covered to set the stage for what I am going to say about the testimony from the third-century writer Cyprian.  ● The support for the Comma Johanneum in Greek manuscripts is staggeringly poor.  Out of about 500 extant Greek copies of First John, four of them have the Comma Johanneum in the text:  629 (a manuscript in which the Greek and Latin texts appear side-by-side), 61 (Codex Montfortianus, which was brought to the attention of Erasmus when this passage was discussed in the early 1500s after Erasmus had not included the passage in his first edition of the Greek New Testament), and 2473 and 2318 (both of which are extremely late – later than 1611).  Six other manuscripts have the Comma Johanneum (“CJ” from here on) written in the margin, but these margin-notes appear to have been added much later than the production-date of the manuscript itself.  (In the case of minuscule 177, made in the 1000s, the CJ was added in the margin after 1550; the margin-note mentions the verse-number.) ● The Latin support for the inclusion of the Comma Johanneum is plentiful, and its earliest components are only slightly later than the earliest manuscript-evidence for non-inclusion.  The author of a composition called Liber Apologeticus (either Priscillian, or one of his associates) used the CJ in the 380’s, in Spain:  “Tria sunt quae testimonium dicunt in terra:  aqua caro et sanguis et haec tria in unum sunt.  Et tria sunt quae testimonium dicent in caelo:  Pater Verbum et Spiritus et haec tria unum sunt in Christo Iesu.”  It should be noticed, however, that this varies considerably from the contents of First John 5:7-8 as known from the TR and KJV.  Priscillian lists the earthly witnesses before the heavenly witnesses.  Priscillian’s list of earthly witnesses is different:  instead of referring to “the spirit, the water, and the blood,” Priscillian refers to “water, flesh, and blood.”  He also adds the phrase, “in Christ Jesus” at the end. ● A Latin writer in North Africa named Victor Vitensis attended the Council of Carthage in 484, after the Arian Vandal king Huneric had instructed the Trinitarian bishops of North Africa to meet there with Arian bishops to discuss the subject of the Trinity.  The Trinitarian African bishops, who numbered over 100, were led by Eugene of Carthage.   The Council of Carthage itself was unproductive and brief.  Eugene of Carthage, the leader of the Trinitarian bishops, had intended to present a statement of faith at the council, and this manifesto was incorporated into Victor Vitensis’ account.  It includes the following statement:  “Et ut luce clarius unius divinitatis esse cum Patre et Filio Spiritum Sanctum doceamus, Joannis Evangelistae testimonio comprobatur.  Ait namque:  Tres sunt qui testimonium perhibent in coelo:  Pater, Verbum et Spiritus Sanctus et hi tres unum sunt.” – which means, in English, “And as a shining light teaching the unity of the divinity of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, the testimony of John the Evangelist demonstratively testifies:  ‘There are three who bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one.’”  This indicates that the CJ was so well-circulated in Latin in North Africa in the late 400s that a prominent bishop was willing to utilize it at a theological conference. ● A composition called Contra Varimadum Arianum (conceivably written by Idacius Clarus in Spain in the late 300s, but perhaps more probably by Vigilius Tapsensis in North Africa in  the late 400s) includes the following statement:  “John the Evangelist, in his Epistle to the Parthians (i.e. his 1st Epistle), says there are three who afford testimony on earth:  the water, the blood, and the flesh, and these three are in us; and there are three who afford testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one. ● Eucherius of Lyons, c. 440, in his composition Formulas of Spiritual Knowledge (Formulae Spiritualis Intelligentiae), in chapter 10 (On Numbers), stated that the number three represents the Trinity, “in the epistle of John: three are those who bear witness: water, blood, and spirit.”  ● Cassiodorus, in the 500s, utilized the CJ in his composition Complexiones in Epistolis Apostolorum, as follows:  “Cui rei testificantur in terra tria mysteria:  aqua sanguis et spiritus, quae in passione Domini leguntur impleta:  in coelo autem Pater, et Filius, et Spiritus sanctus, et hi tres unus est Deus.”  In English this yields:  “And the three mysteries testify – on earth:  water, blood and spirit.  The fulfillment of which we read about in the passion of the Lord.  And in heaven:  Father and Son and Holy Spirit.  And these three are one God.”     ● In Codex Fuldensis, which was produced in 546, the CJ is mentioned in the Preface to the Canonical Epistles (by “Canonical Epistles” the General Epistles are meant).  The author of this preface specifically mentioned the CJ, and stated that “much error has occurred at the hands of unfaithful translators contrary to the truth of faith, who have kept just the three words ‘water, blood and spirit’ in this edition, omitting mention of Father, Word and Spirit.”  The text of First John in Codex Fuldensis does not contain the CJ; similarly, the order of the three witnesses in the text is different than the order cited in the Preface to the Canonical Epistles – in the text of First John, Codex Fuldensis refers to “spirit and water and blood” as the three who testify.           With all this in the background, we now come to today’s main subject:  the testimony of Cyprian of Carthage.  In his Treatise on the Unity of the Universal Church (1:6), Cyprian says: “Dicit Dominus, ‘Ego et Pater unum sumus,’ et iterum de Patre et Filio et Spiritu sancto scriptum est:  ‘Et tres unum sunt.’”  In English:  “The Lord says, ‘I and the Father are one,” and again, it is written of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, ‘And these three are one.’”           The issue here is (as Dan Wallace has pointed out) whether Cyprian quoted (or slightly misquoted) the CJ when he refers to the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, or whether he merely quoted the words, “And these three are one.”             The idea that Cyprian possessed a copy of First John that contained the CJ is not as unlikely as some commentators have made it seem.  Against the point that none of the early Greek manuscripts of First John contain the CJ, the counterpoint may be submitted that Hort, in 1881, argued for six readings in the General Epistles which are likewise supported by no ancient Greek manuscripts – and in 2013, the Nestle-Aland compilers adopted a reading into the text of Second Peter 3:10 that is found in no Greek manuscripts.  Clearly, at least among some highly influential textual critics, the lack of early Greek manuscript support does not rule out the plausibility of a textual variant.            In addition, it is possible to explain the early loss of the CJ as a consequence of two simple scribal errors.  If a copyist were to copy the longer reading in a narrow column, and transpose the words “εν τη γη” (“on the earth”) so as to appear before the word “τρεις” (three) in verse 8, the text would look like this:         οτι τρεις εισιν      οι μαρτυρουντες      εν τω ουρανω      ο πατηρ ο λογος και      το αγιον πνευμα      και ουτοι οι τρεις      εν εισιν και εν      τη γη τρεις εισιν      οι μαρτυρουντες      το πνευμα και το      υδωρ και το αιμα      και οι τρεις εις το      εν εισιν·            And if a subsequent copyist were to lose his line of sight and jump from the words οι μαρτυρουντες at the end of the second line to the identical words at the end of the ninth line, accidentally skipping the intervening words (in bold print), the resultant text would be:      οτι τρεις εισιν      οι μαρτυρουντες      το πνευμα και το      υδωρ και το αιμα      και οι τρεις εις το      εν εισιν·           which is the text found in almost all Greek manuscripts of First John.            So those who defend the CJ may have an answer to Dan Wallace s charge that they are denying history.  They are proposing that early scribal errors resulted in the corruption of all of the early Greek manuscripts, just as advocates of the Nestle-Aland compilation implicitly propose that early scribal errors have repeatedly resulted in the corruption of all the early Greek manuscripts except three, or two, or one, or (at Acts 16:12 and Second Peter 3:10) all of them.             But let’s not get distracted from that comment by Cyprian.  When one considers the theory that Cyprian was merely applying the final phrase of First John 5:8 to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a question presents itself:  what sort of interpretive alchemy starts with “the spirit and the water and the blood,” and manages to conjure from that a representation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?               Enter Scotti Anonymi – an anonymous Irishman who wrote a commentary on the General Epistles in the late 600s.  He does not comment on the CJ.  He does, however, put a distinctly Trinitarian spin on the three witnesses – which he lists, not as “the spirit and the water and the blood,” but as “water, blood, and spirit.”  This is a conformation to the order in which the water, blood, and spirit appear in First John 5:6.  A change in the order of the witnesses in First John 5:8 was an easy change for an early copyist to make.  And when we look at the early citations of First John, it becomes clear that early Latin copyists did indeed make this alteration in the text of First John.             That is why, in the commentary of Scotti Anonymi, the text of First John 5:8 elicited thoughts about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  As researcher Shane Angland has observed, Scotti Anonymi used Jeremiah 2:13 – where God describes Himself as “the fountain of living waters” – as the basis on which to interpret “the water” as a proxy for the Father.  Blood represents Christ.  And of course the reference to the spirit was interpreted to represent the Holy Spirit.  Even a fan of allegorical, or symbolic, interpretation, might not naturally or readily see a reference to the Trinity in the words, “the spirit and the water and the blood,” but when these nouns are rearranged as “the water and the blood and the spirit,” a symbolic interpretation becomes much more natural.           I propose that the arrangement of the witnesses in First John 5:8 was adjusted – not with any intent to model the Trinity, but simply to conform to the order in which the water, blood, and spirit are introduced in 5:6 – very early in an Old Latin transmission-stream.  Let’s look again for indications of this in the patristic evidence: ● This was the text used by the author of the Preface to the Canonical Epistles in Codex Fuldensis;  he mentioned “the three words ‘water, blood and spirit.’” ● This was the text used by Eucherius:  “water, blood, and spirit.”  ● This was the text used by Cassiodorus:  “water, blood, and spirit.”  ● Two-thirds of this reading is supported by Etherius of Osma in the 700s in Adversus Elipandum (“the water and the blood and the flesh”), and by the author of Contra Varimadum (“the water, the blood, and the flesh”). ● Priscillian similarly put water first in the list of earthly witnesses (“water, flesh, and blood”).           From this evidence it may be deduced that in the North African Latin text of First John (or at least in one form of it), by the time Cyprian ever read the text, the order of the earthly witnesses in 5:6 had been transposed to “water, blood, and spirit.”  Due to this transposition, Cyprian interpreted the passage as a reference to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  With the transposition in the equation, Cyprian’s interpretation of First John 5:8 as a model of the Trinity is not puzzling.  There is thus no reason to assume that he was referring to the CJ in his Treatise on the Unity of the Universal Church. 2. The Comma Johanneum         In First John 5:7-8, there is a textual issue.  The King James Version reads, “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.  And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood; and these three agree in one.”    The New American Standard Bible, however, has a shorter text:  “For there are three that testify:  the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.”  The material that is in this passage in the KJV and its Greek base-text, but not in the NASB and its Greek base-text, is called the Comma Johanneum, which may be roughly translated as “John’s phrase” or “That phrase in John’s writings.”      The form of First John 5:7-8 in the KJV is based on a few late Greek manuscripts, plus hundreds (perhaps thousands) of copies of the Latin Vulgate, and some Latin patristic quotations.             The form of First John 5:7-8 in the NASB is based on almost all Greek manuscripts of First John, including the early ones, plus hundreds of versional copies of First John in various languages, and many patristic quotations.                This difference in translations echoes a difference in the Greek base-texts used by the translators.  The King James Version is based on the Textus Receptus, or “Received Text,” a Greek compilation made in the 1500s, beginning with Erasmus’ 1516 edition but continuing on throughout the 1500s in various editions by Erasmus, Stephanus, and Beza, and issued with some adjustments in 1633.  The first edition of the Textus Receptus did not contain the Comma Johanneum, and Erasmus was criticized because of this.  In the course of his response to the accusation that he had acted irresponsibly by failing to include the Comma Johanneum (henceforth abbreviated as CJ), Erasmus wrote that he did not include the phrase because it was not in any of the Greek manuscripts that had been available to him when he had prepared his Greek compilation, and that if a single manuscript had contained the phrase, he would have included it.             Erasmus did not make a promise to include the CJ in the event that a manuscript was found that contained it.  The fictitious story that Erasmus made such a promise has been circulated far and wide; Bruce Metzger gave it wide popularity by presenting it in his handbook The Text of the New Testament as if it were true.  Even after Metzger retracted his claim – barely and timidly, in a footnote in the appendix! – it has proven to be a cockroach of a story, in the sense that it is hard to eradicate, even though Henk J. de Jonge efficiently refuted it in 1990.             [The Legend of the Rash Promise is not the only fiction that commentators have spread about the CJ.  It is often claimed that the CJ was never cited at any church councils – which, though true as far as councils of Greek-speaking clerics are concerned, ignores the brief Council of Carthage (where Latin was prevalent) that took place in 484 (not to be confused with other councils that occurred there).  At this council, according to Victor Vitensis, Eugene of Carthage led a large delegation of African bishops and was prepared to confront the Vandal (and Arian) ruler Huneric with a citation of the CJ as “a shining light teaching the unity of the divinity of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit.”]              But there is something to the vague idea that Erasmus said something that induced him to include the CJ even on scant evidence.   After issuing the first two editions of his Greek compilation, Erasmus wanted to refine his work again.  Having stated previously that he would have included the CJ if he had found it in a single manuscript, he found himself in a predicament when someone brought to his attention the existence of a Greek manuscript from Britain in which First John 5:7-8 included the CJ.              Erasmus was capable of anticipating what his opponents would say if he continued to refrain from putting the CJ into the Greek text of his compilation (something like, “You claimed that you would have included it if it was in just one Greek manuscript, but now, after being shown one Greek manuscript that has the phrase, you still did not include it!  How inconsistent!”) and so, in 1522, Erasmus included the CJ in the third edition of his Greek compilation, and there it remained in the Textus Receptus throughout the 1500s, and there it was in 1604 when the translation-work on the KJV began.             Entire books have written about the subsequent history of the debate that has orbited the CJ in the 1600s and onward; the names Isaac Newton, Richard Porson, Edward Gibbon, and Charles Forster should not escape the notice of anyone who wants to be thoroughly informed about all that.  My focus today is elsewhere:  I wish to share some reasons for maintaining that the CJ began as an allegorical comment about verse 8 in a branch of the Old Latin version, and that this can be demonstrated fairly concisely.              The earliest patristic evidence that is sometimes interpreted as evidence in favor of the CJ is a comment from Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, in the mid-200s.  In his composition Treatise on the Unity of the Universal Church (1:6), Cyprian says: “Dicit Dominus, ‘Ego et Pater unum sumus,’ et iterum de Patre et Filio et Spiritu sancto scriptum est:  ‘Et tres unum sunt,’” that is, in English, “The Lord says, ‘I and the Father are one,” and again, it is written of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, ‘And these three are one.’”  That final phrase, “And these three are one” is taken by defenders of the CJ as a reference to the end of First John 5:7.  However, depending on the arbitrary preferences of Latin translators, both verse 7 and verse 8 could end with the words Et hi tres unum sunt, or Et tres unum sunt (in the Vulgate, for example, as edited by Eberhard Nestle in 1906, both verses end the same way, Et hi tres unum sunt).  This reference does not rule out the idea that Cyprian was quoting verse 8, and interpreting it as a symbolic reference to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.             But this naturally raises a question:  if Cyprian’s quotation is from 5:8 rather than 5:7, why did Cyprian say that it was something about the Father and Son and Holy Spirit?  If Cyprian’s text of First John did not have the CJ, how ever did he manage to read a text that meant, “For there are three that testify:  the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement” and perceive therein a reference to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?              I contend that the Latin text of First John 5:8 used by Cyprian (and by several other Latin writers) contained a transposition.  Rather than refer to the spirit (or Spirit), and the water, and the blood, a form of First John 5:8 in a branch of the Old Latin text referred to the water, the blood, and the spirit, and it was only after this change to the word-order that the text of verse 8 elicited an allegorical interpretation, which a Latin writer expressed in a note that eventually was inserted into the text as the CJ.  The Old Latin text also shows that some Latin copyists altered the three witnesses in verse 8, so as to refer to the flesh (“caro”) as one of them.  But the transposition is the thing to see.  Consider these Latin utilizations of the passage:             ● Liber Apologeticus (380s, probably written by Priscillian or one of his associates):  Tria sunt quae testimonium dicunt in terra:  aqua caro et sanguis et haec tria in unum sunt.  Et tria sunt quae testimonium dicent in caelo:  Pater Verbum et Spiritus et haec tria unum sunt in Christo Iesu.” That is:  “There are three that bear witness in earth:  water, flesh, and blood, and these three agree in one.  And there are three that bear witness in heaven:  Father, Word, and Spirit.  And these three are one in Christ Jesus.”             The order is different from what is seen in the Textus Receptus (in which the heavenly witnesses are mentioned before the earthly witnesses).  And the earthly witnesses themselves, and the order in which they are mentioned, are different in Priscillian’s quotation; instead of Spirit and water and blood, Priscillian mentions the water, flesh, and blood.  Priscillian also adds an extra phrase at the end, “in Christ Jesus.”             ● Contra Varimadum Arianum (either from the late 300s and written by Idacius Clarus, or from the late 400s and written by Vigilius Thapsensis) cites First John 5:7-8 with the CJ and with the transposition in verse 8:  “John the Evangelist . . . says there are three who afford testimony on earth:  the water, the blood, and the flesh, and these three are in us; and there are three who afford testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one.”  Notice that once again, the earthly witnesses are listed before the heavenly ones, and “flesh” is one of the earthly witnesses, and that the order of earthly witnesses in this Latin text is different (water, blood, flesh) – varying from the order used by Priscillian, but agreeing partly; water is listed first.             ● Formulae Spiritualis Intelligentiae (from c. 440, by Eucherius of Lyons), chapter 10, states that the number three represents the Trinity; the author cites First John 5:8 as if it is a clear example:  “In the epistle of John, three are those who bear witness:  water, blood, and spirit.”  The CJ itself is not cited; rather, verse 8 is regarded allegorically as a reference to the Trinity – with the order of the witnesses rearranged so that water is listed first.             ● Complexiones in Epostolis Apostolorum (from the 500s, by Cassiodorus), utilizes the CJ as part of the text of First John:  “Cui rei testificantur in terra tria mysteria:  aqua sanguis et spiritus, quae in passione Domini leguntur impleta:  in coelo autem Pater, et Filius, et Spiritus sanctus, et hi tres unus est Deus.”  In English:  “And the three mysteries testify on earth:  water, blood and spirit.  The fulfillment of which we read about in the passion of the Lord.  And in heaven:  Father and Son and Holy Spirit.  And these three are one God.”  Notice again the word-order in the Latin text:  water is first; blood is second; spirit is third.  (Also notice that the variation in the wording of the CJ:  “Son” appears rather than “Word.”)              ● The Preface to the Canonical Epistles (found in the Latin Codex Fuldensis, which was produced in 546) was, for a long time, thought have been written by Jerome, and this of course gave its contents added weight in the 1500s, and perhaps to the translators of the KJV as well.  Here is what the author says about the CJ:  “Much error has occurred at the hands of unfaithful translators contrary to the truth of faith, who have kept just the three words ‘water, blood and spirit’ in this edition, omitting mention of Father, Word and Spirit.”             Notice that as far as the author is concerned, the CJ belongs in the text, and its absence is the effect of unfaithful translators.  Notice, too, the word-order in his citation of First John 5:8:  once again, water is listed first.               ● Adversus Elipandum (by Etherius of Osma in the 700s), despite being written long after the Vulgate began to replace the Old Latin text, features a utilization of First John 7:8 with an Old Latin reading:  “the water and the blood and the flesh.”  Again, notice the word-order.             The thing to see is that where the transposition goes, the CJ follows.              In the commentary of Scotti Anonymi – this moniker will have to do for the unknown author (possibly Augustinus Hibernicus) of a Latin commentary preserved in a single manuscript (Codex Aug. 233, kept at the Badische Landesbibliothek (Baden State Library) in Karlsruhe, Germany).  The manuscript itself was produced in the 800s; the commentary was probably composed in the late 600s.  In the relevant portion of Scotti Anonymi’s commentary, the CJ is not cited, but First John 5:8 is nevertheless interpreted by the commentator as if the three witnesses symbolize the three Persons of the Trinity, and the order of the witnesses in the citation is water, blood, and spirit.              Angland Shane has offered a summary of the gist of the part of the commentary that pertains to First John 5:8:  “The moral interpretation interpreted the three witnesses as baptism (water) martyrdom (blood) and the Spirit filled life (Spirit). Christ’s incarnation is presented as the prime example for this moral interpretation. The anagogical interpretation is Trinitarian. Water is said to speak of the Father (ingeniously Jeremiah 2:13 is cited as support). Blood speaks of Christ, especially His passion on the cross, and the Spirit is the Holy Spirit.”             If the same sort of symbolic filter upon the text was applied to an Old Latin text of First John 5:8 in which the witnesses’ order was water-blood-spirit, it would explain a progression of events:             (1)  An interpreter of the Old Latin text, upon reading the reference to water, blood, and spirit, is reminded of the Father, Son, and Spirit.  Recalling the testimony of the Father, Son, and Spirit in the Gospels, he composes a note mentioning this.              (2)  This note becomes the CJ, first in the margin of Old Latin manuscripts, and then in the Old Latin text itself in the 300s – sometimes before verse 8 and sometimes after verse 8.  For a little while, it was exclusive to copies in which the order of the three witnesses in verse 8 was transposed.               (3)  By the 500s, its doctrinal usefulness results in its adoption in Latin texts in which the witnesses in verse 8 were not transposed.             Meanwhile in the Greek manuscripts, there is no external evidence of the existence of the CJ for over a thousand years, because in the entire Greek transmission-stream, the transposition of the witnesses in verse 8 never occurred.  In the late medieval era, some manuscripts were made in which each page contains two columns of text; the Greek text occupies one column, and the Latin text occupies the other one.  Sometimes the Greek text was altered so as to agree with the Latin text, and for this reason, the CJ appears in the text of First John 5:7 in a few late medieval Greek manuscripts (the earliest of which is (probably) minuscule 629, which is assigned to the 1300s, though Daniel Wallace seems to think it is much younger).  But, unless one were to add to the equation Greek manuscripts that were copied with printed Greek copies of the Textus Receptus as their exemplars, the CJ seldom appears in exactly the same form twice in Greek.              For example, in Codex Montfortianus – the manuscript which was brought to Erasmus’ attention in the 1520s as containing the CJ – it seems evident that the source of the CJ is Latin, not Greek.  The text of the CJ in minuscule 61 (as was noted by Orlando T. Dobbin in 1854) runs as follows [the sacred-name contractions that are underlined here are overlined in the manuscript]:              ὁτϊ τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτϋροῦντ·¨ ἐν τῶ ουνω,             πηρ, λογος, καί πνα αγῖον, καί οὗτοι οἱ τρεῖς εν εισϊ.              καί τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτϋροῦντ·¨ ἐν τῃ γῃ, πνα, ὑδωρ, καί αιμα. But this is different from the text found in the Greek column of minuscule 629, which says that the witnesses are απο του (“from the”) heaven rather than εν τω (“en the”) heaven. And although Erasmus’ third edition (1522) includes First John 5:7 in the same form found in minuscule 61, by 1556 the text was different:              ὁτϊ τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτϋροῦντες ἐν τῶ ουρανω,             ὁ πατὴρ, ὁ λογος, καί τὸ πνεῦμα ἅγῖον, καί οὗτοι οἱ τρεῖς εν εισϊ.              καί τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτϋροῦντες ἐν τῃ γῃ,             πνεῦμα καί ὑδωρ καί αιμα, καί οἱ τρεῖς ἐισ τὸ εν εἰσιν.   It looks as if Erasmus, at some point, added two articles (ὁ, the), one conjunction (καί, and), and the final phrase.  In minuscule 629, the articles and the conjunction are absent, as in minuscule 61.  Thus, it seems difficult to maintain that the Greek base-text of First John 5:7 that is found in the KJV is extant in the text of any Greek manuscript not copied from a printed edition of theTextus Receptus. The takeaway from all this is that the Comma Johanneum was not part of the original text of First John; it began as a Latin interpretative note on verse 8, after the word-order in verse 8 had been altered.  Furthermore, hardly any Greek manuscripts of First John contain the CJ, and the ones that have it in their text have variations indicating that the few late Greek manuscripts that support the CJ do so because of contamination from Latin copies, not because they echo earlier Greek copies.  The CJ does not belong in the New Testament.   _______________ Scripture attributed to the New American Standard Bible® is Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.  Used by permission. 3. The Comma Johanneum and Greek Grammar Today we welcome a special guest, Dr. Barry Hofstetter, to share a post that pertains to an aspect of the textual question about First John 5:7. ●●●●●●● My name is Barry Hofstetter.  I currently teach Latin at the Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy in Bryn Mawr, PA. I have a B.A. in ancient studies, Greek and Latin emphasis from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (1981); an M.A. in Classics from the Ohio State University (1986); a M.Div. from Westminster Theological Seminary, 1989, and the Th.M. in New Testament from Westminster, 1991. I did further graduate work at Westminster Theological Seminary, and have taught the languages (Greek and Latin) at various institutions since 1989. Recently I took another look at First John 5:7-8 to consider the grammatical issues regarding that text, and particularly whether or not the text could stand as it does in the critical text, without the Johannine Comma. I have concluded that it certainly can, beyond a shadow of a doubt, and with more than one grammatical explanation. First, let’s consider the claim of Eugenius Bulgaris regarding the agreement of nouns, adjectives and participles:            “It is very well known, since all have experience with it, and it is clearly a peculiar genius of our language, that masculine and feminine nouns may be construed with nouns, adjectives and pronouns in the neuter, with regard to the actual sense (τὰ πράγματα, ta pragmata). On the other hand no one has ever claimed that neuter noun substantives are indicated by masculine or feminine adjectives or pronouns.” This claim is so extraordinary that I once again checked the Latin to ensure that I had read it right. I’m particularly focusing on the second sentence, and there is no easy way to say it – it’s just simply wrong. In fact it’s a regular feature of the language that “neuter noun substantives” may be modified by adjectives or participles reflecting the “natural” gender of the word (i.e., the actual gender of the referent, that to which the noun actually refers). I will also note here that Eugenius does not specifically mention participles, but appears to group them under “adjectives,” since he is specifically in context talking about a participial construction. Here is Smyth: 1013. Construction according to the Sense (926 a). — The real, not the grammatical, gender often determines the agreement: ὦ φίλτατ᾽, ὦ περισσὰ τιμηθεὶς τέκνον O dearest, O greatly honoured child E. Tro. 735 (this use of the attributive adjective is poetical), ““τὰ μειράκια πρὸς ἀλλήλουςδιαλεγόμενοι” the youths conversing with one another” P. Lach. 180e, ““ταῦτ᾽ ἔλεγεν ἡ ἀναιδὴς αὕτη κεφαλή, ἐξεληλυθώς” this shameless fellow spoke thus when he came out” D. 21.117. (A Greek Grammar for Colleges, 1920). Smyth is a standard reference, and I cite him in particular in order to show that masculine modifiers with neuter substantives are a regular feature of the language. The first example that Smyth gives shows a neuter noun, τέκνον, teknon, modified by a masculine participle, τιμηθεὶς, timetheis. The second example has a neuter plural substantive, μειράκια, meirakia, modified by a masculine plural participle, διαλεγόμενοι, dialegomenoi, and further referred to by a masculine plural pronoun, ἀλλήλους, allelous. The third example has a feminine noun, κεφαλή, kephale, modified by the masculine participle ἐξεληλυθώς, exeleluthos. This is widespread enough that it is mentioned in the grammar with no need to list more examples, and notice Smyth’s use of the word “often.”” So the next question is whether or not there are any New Testament examples, and actually, they are fairly numerous.  ● Matthew 25:32 (all texts are taken from the TR, all translations from the KJV):  και συναχθησεται εμπροσθεν αυτου παντα τα εθνη και αφοριει αυτους απ αλληλων… –  “And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another.”             Here, ἔθνη (ethne, nations) is neuter plural, but the pronoun referring to them, αύτούς (autous, them) is masculine. The neuter substantive is referred to by a masculine pronoun. ● Luke 19:37 …ηρξαντο απαν το πληθος των μαθητων χαιροντες αινειν τον θεον φωνη μεγαλη περι πασων ων ειδον δυναμεων… – “the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen…”             Here πλῆθος (plethos) is neuter singular and is referred to by χαίροντες (chairontes, rejoicing) a masculine plural participle, so once again a neuter substantive is referenced by a masculine (plural) participle.  (This is one example which helpfully illustrates the point – one among many that could be given.  I didn't mention τῶν μαθητῶν (of the disciples) for the same reason that I didn’t mention τὸν θεόν (God):  it doesn't affect the grammatical point.) “Of the disciples” is in the genitive case dependent on “the crowd.” It functions essentially as an adjective here, determining the consistency of the crowd, i.e., that it consists of disciples. For the word to modify disciples, it also would have to be in the genitive case, χαιρόντων. Now, Luke could have so had the participle modify the word disciples, and no one would have batted an eye. It would have been good Greek, and the sense would have been the same. But Luke, writing good idiomatic Greek, instead writes the word in the nominative case, and so shows that he is thinking of the word πλῆθος, crowd. He puts it in the masculine plural because the crowd does indeed consist of disciples, grammatically masculine, and it's also good Greek to indicate mixed groups in the masculine. That’s where the ad sensum comes in. He could just as easily have omitted the genitive, written his nominative masculine plural participle, and it would have been just as good, idiomatic Greek. Of course there are plenty of examples where just such a thing occurs. Here's another example also using the word “crowd” and a qualifying genitive:             Acts 5:16 συνηρχετο δε και το πληθος των περιξ πολεων εις ιερουσαλημ φεροντες ασθενεις... – “There came also a multitude out of the cities round about unto Jerusalem, bringing sick folks.”             Here crowd is modified by the masculine plural participle φέροντες, bringing. The qualifying genitive phrase “out of the cities round about Jerusalem,” is actually feminine, since “cities,” πόλεων, is a grammatically feminine word. Here’s a slightly different type of example to show that it’s not peculiar to having a crowd and a genitive plural:             Rom 2:14 οταν γαρ εθνη τα μη νομον εχοντα φυσει τα του νομου ποιη ουτοι νομον μη εχοντες εαυτοις εισιν νομος – “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves.”             In this case “Gentiles” is neuter plural, and the pronoun referring back to them, “these” is masculine plural. There is no qualifying genitive to offer any confusion. Now let’s consider what Eugenius said:  “On the other hand no one has ever claimed that neuter noun substantives are indicated by masculine or feminine adjectives or pronouns.” His claim does not appear to be borne out by the facts of the language. More examples may be culled from the New Testament text, but these will suffice. So now that we have determined that neuter substantives may be modified by masculine modifiers as the sense indicates to the author of the text, we have removed one of the major objections to the text of First John 5:7-8 as it stands in the critical text. If, as many have argued, the writer of First John was thinking of the witnesses as personified, it would be perfectly acceptable for him to use a masculine modifier to refer to the three witnesses, even though technically grammatically neuter.             Eugenius is apparently the source of much of the grammatical speculation [spread by writers such as Robert Dabney and Thomas Holland – JSJ] about First John 5:7-8 that has circulated.  In what follows, I shall suggest that there is a fairly simple alternative. As before, Greek quotations from New Testament texts are taken from the Textus Receptus to forestall the objection that there is some sort of text-critical difficulty that, in the mind of the King-James-Onlyist, will invalidate the argument; likewise English quotations from the New Testament will be taken from the KJV.  After that, I will present a more detailed response to Eugenius’ argument.             Have a look at First John 5:8: και τρεις εισιν οι μαρτυρουντες εν τη γη το πνευμα και το υδωρ και το αιμα και οι τρεις εις το εν εισιν. – “And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.” Now, a bit of a grammar lesson, to help folks better understand the argument. “That bear witness” in English is actually a relative clause, but in Greek it’s a participle. A part of what? A participle. Participle comes from the Latin “to have a share in”and what participles do is share in the qualities of both an adjective and a verb – they are verbal adjectives. Another thing that adjectives get to do from time to time is to pretend to be nouns. We do this with proverbial statements in English, “The good die young” or “The poor shall always be with you.” The latter example shows that Greek does it too, since it’s a quotation from the New Testament. In Greek (and Latin) it’s done much more frequently, and not just with proverbial statements.  Greek does this most often by planting a definite article in front of the adjective or participle. That’s the syntax of “there are three that bear witness.” It is a substantive participle, standing in where one might expect a noun instead. Had the author written οἱ μαρτύρες, “witnesses,” it would mean essentially the same thing, the difference being that the participle describes the referent in terms of the action inherent in the verb. Greek does this all the time, such as at John 3:16, “everyone who believes” is actually a substantive phrase parallel to “three who bear witness.” Now, why is this important? It means that the substantive functions more like a noun than like an adjective. That means it does not modify another noun (or nouns) in the sentence, but gets its number and gender from its understood antecedent, and its case from how it is used in the sentence. There is therefore no need for it to agree with anything in the sentence. Here, the author is clearly thinking of “witnesses, those who give witness.”  Notice also that “the spirit, and the water, and the blood” all have the definite article. This not only suggests that they are discrete elements, but that they are to be associated with the subject and with each other without being the same as each other. They are three different types of witnesses. Instead of the participle modifying them, they stand in apposition with the substantive participle. They are the particular examples of the witnesses. Since the substantive is acting as a noun, there is no need for “grammatical concord” between the substantive participle and the nouns which stand in apposition to it. It does not matter that “those who give witness” is masculine and that the three nouns are neuter. Are there other examples of this? Actually there are many throughout Greek literature, but two stand out in the New Testament: ● Matthew 23:23:  τα βαρυτερα του νομου την κρισιν και τον ελεον και την πιστιν – “the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.”…             Here, we have an adjectival substantive which is in Greek neuter plural, “the weightier matters,” which is then particularized by three nouns in apposition, law, which is masculine, mercy, which is feminine, and faith, also feminine.  ● First John 2:16:  οτι παν το εν τω κοσμω η επιθυμια της σαρκος και η επιθυμια των οφθαλμων και η αλαζονεια του βιου – “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” “All that is in the world” is a neuter substantive phrase that is then particularized by three nouns in the feminine, lust (twice) and pride.             Why didn’t Eugenius, whose Greek was supposed to be so good, come up with this? I believe that he was so strongly theologically motivated to keep the “received text” here that he either did not see any other grammatical options, or that he deliberately ignored them. This then set the tone for the 19th-century apologists who similarly desired to protect the text.                          In conclusion:  the fact ought to be accepted that masculine adjectives/pronouns/participles can and do modify neuter substantives, in plain contradiction to Eugenius' claim. ●●●●●●● Postscript             I have demonstrated that neuter substantives can indeed by modified by masculine modifiers, contrary to Eugenius’ claim. I have also suggested that “the three bearing witness” is treated as a substantive, and thus there is no need for it to modify the three neuter nouns, since they stand in apposition. Here I hope to show that Eugenius’ argument is really the claim that the three neuter nouns are personalized through their association with the Trinity, and thus the masculine participle is repeated. This is really the argument that many modern commentators use – the difference being that they see no need for added text. For Eugenius, the added text is what forces the spirit, the water and the blood to be taken as earthly representatives of the heavenly witnesses.              From my translation of the Latin excerpt from Eugenius:            What reason can therefore be given for this failure to comply with the rule? It can only be the expression of the preceding 7th verse, which through the immediately following 8th verse is set forth symbolically and obviously restated, an allusion made to that which precedes. Therefore the three who give witness in heaven are first placed in the 7th verse, τρεις εισιν οι μαρτυρουντες εν τω ουρανω ο πατηρ ο λογος και το αγιον πνευμα και ουτοι οι τρεις εν εισιν. Then immediately the very same three witnesses are brought in, to confirm on earth the same witness, through these three symbols, in vs. 8: και τρεις εισιν οι μαρτυρουντες εν τη γη το πνευμα και το υδωρ και το αιμα και οι τρεις εις το εν εισιν. And so our Evangelist might say “They are the same as those giving witness in heaven.” This is sufficiently indicated through the particle καί, the force of which here is not simply connective but plainly identifying. [At this point, Eugenius shifts to Greek] Concerning what was said in the text [perhaps = manuscript] above, clearly the Father, the Word and the Spirit. These are the ones giving witness also on the earth, and they are made manifest to us through symbols. These symbols are the spirit, through which the Father is revealed, the blood, through which the Son is revealed, and the water, through which the Holy Spirit is revealed. But these three, who above by way of revelation through the divine names themselves are presented as giving witness in heaven, are the same on earth through remembrance in the divine plan presented repeatedly by way of symbols. Eugenius refers to the three earthly witnesses as “symbols,” a word which develops quite a technical sense in the centuries following the writing of the NT as “that which represents divine truth in another format” (so the word is used of creeds and confessions). Here, however, Eugenius seems to use it not in that technical sense but much the way we use the word in English, as that which represents something else. Tantalizingly, he does not tell us what he thinks these symbols actually are, although his Greek Orthodox provenance might indicate a Eucharistic interpretation.  The important point here, however, is that Eugenius sees these earthly witnesses as essentially the same as the heavenly witnesses. The question here is whether the heavenly witnesses need to be there in the text. I would suggest not. John simply needs to be thinking of the witnesses as those who actively give witness, οἱ μαρτύρες, “the witnesses.” Did John in fact intend a Trinitarian allusion? Given the way he expresses himself both in this epistle and in his gospel concerning the Father, Son and Holy Spirit I personally think it’s quite likely, although impossible to prove definitively. Eugenius in principle then simply uses a variety of the personification argument, that the assumed natural gender of “witnesses” would be masculine. Note, however, that the argument is one which is heavily theological, and not really grammatical. Now, several 19th-century apologists for the added text have taken Eugenius’ argument to be primarily grammatical, and seen it under the category of grammatical attraction, that the second expression is overwhelmed, as it were, by the previous and so naturally becomes masculine rather than the expected neuter. Although there is grammatical attraction in Greek, it usually works with pronouns, and especially in relative clauses. It would be highly unusual to see such an attraction between two parallel clauses. In this analysis of attraction in grammatical concords, there is nothing at all related to any kind of grammatical attraction between parallel clauses, and rightly so, since there are no such examples in the language.  The argument that this is a special, one of kind case is simply special pleading. Languages just don’t work that way.             In addition, consider the following comment from Meyer: τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες] The masculine is used because the three that are mentioned are regarded as concrete witnesses (Lücke, etc.), but not because they are “types of men representing these three” (Bengel),[313] or symbols of the Trinity (as they are interpreted in the Scholion of Matthaei, p. 138, mentioned in the critical notes). It is uncertain whether John brings out this triplicity of witnesses with reference to the well-known legal rule, Deuteronomy 17:6; Deuteronomy 19:15, Matthew 18:16, etc., as several commentators suppose. It is not to be deduced from the present that ὕδωρ and αἷμα are things still at present existing, and hence the sacraments, for by means of the witness of the Spirit the whole redemptive life of Christ is permanently present, so that the baptism and death of Jesus – although belonging to the past – prove Him constantly to be the Messiah who makes atonement for the world (so also Braune). The participle οἱ μαρτυροῦντες, instead of the substantive οἱ μάρτυρες, emphasizes more strongly the activity of the witnessing. 4. The Comma Johanneum and Christian Doctrine         It is practically a matter of routine among Christian apologists – defenders of Christianity against objections – to insist that no textual variants have a decisive impact on any of the core beliefs of Christianity.  I consider that claim to be an oversimplification.  The doctrine of inerrancy, though not part of the major creeds of Christendom, is an important Christian belief.  Some evangelical seminaries even refer to the doctrine of inerrancy as an essential, without specifying what it is essential for.  Several textual variants which have considerable manuscript-support, if adopted, would draw the doctrine of inerrancy into question.  I am thinking specifically of textual variants in Matthew 13:35, Matthew 27:49, Mark 6:22, and a few other passages.           Textual variants also have a potential impact on doctrines involving the role of women in the church, fasting, divorce, granting forgiveness to those who have not expressed repentance, Mary’s perpetual virginity, the physicality of Christ’s body after His resurrection, the specificity of confessions, Christ’s involvement in human history before the Incarnation, and some other issues.  These are not trivial matters.  Today, though, I want to address just one question:  Was the Christian concept of the Trinity developed as a result of the presence of the Comma Johanneum in the text?           The answer is, “No.”  In the course of the previous two posts, we reviewed some evidence which very strongly supports the position that the Comma Johanneum is not part of the original text of First John.  It appears to have originated as an explanatory note in the Latin text, subsequent to the creation of another variant, namely the transposition of the words “the spirit, the water, and the blood,” so that the three witnesses became “the water, the blood, and the spirit.”  The Greek manuscript-support for the Comma Johanneum is extremely weak.  Although it was apparently a widely circulated reading in the Latin text that was in use in North Africa in the late 400s, at the church-councils that sorted out Christological controversies (such as the Council of Nicea and the Council of Chalcedon), the Comma Johanneum was not invoked for any purpose.              In the late 1700s, a public exchange of letters between Edward Gibbon and George Travis drew public attention to the controversy about the Comma Johanneum; Gibbon was sure that it was a “pious fraud,” while Travis argued vigorously in favor of its genuineness.  This was followed in 1790 by a book by Richard Porson, a Cambridge professor, in which Porson made a detailed and hard-hitting critique of Travis’ research, his arguments, and his motives.  Travis, of course, wrote a response, which Porson considered so weakly argued as to be self-refuting.             Adamant refusal to acknowledge that the Comma Johanneum was not part of the original text was, to an extent, caused by something other than the manuscript-evidence and the patristic evidence.  In England, the people writing and arguing the loudest and longest against the genuineness of the Comma Johanneum tended to be Unitarian, and those who agreed openly and enthusiastically on this point ran the risk – no matter how orthodox their views were on other subjects – of becoming the lightning-rods of heresy-hunters and alarmists, just as Erasmus had been accused of planting the seeds of Arianism by excluding the passage from his first and second editions of the Greek New Testament.             Yet when we visit the patristic writings of those who established and disseminated the worship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the 300s and 400s, the use of this passage is, as we have seen, extremely sparse.  In 258 (over a century before Priscillian), the unknown author of De Rebaptismate cited First John 5:6-8 without the Comma Johanneum:  For John says of our Lord in his epistle, teaching us: “This is He who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood:  and it is the Spirit that bears witness, because the Spirit is truth.  For three bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three are one.”            And later, at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Leo the Great likewise quoted from First John 5, referring to the testimony of the blessed apostle John:  “‘Who is he that overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?  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 bears witness, because the Spirit is truth.  For there are three that bear witness, the spirit, the water, and the blood, and the three are one.’  That is, the Spirit of sanctification, and the blood of redemption, and the water of baptism . . . .” The earliest Greek form of the Comma Johanneum in the text of a manuscript of First John: GA 629, fol. 105v (Ottobianus 298 at the Vatican Library)           For at least the first 500 years of the existence of the Christian church, the only Christians who used the Comma Johanneum were those who used the Old Latin text that circulated in North Africa and Spain.  The creedal formulations of Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon were all achieved without the use of the Comma Johanneum.   It would be wrong, then, to think that it is necessary to retain this passage in order to maintain now what was maintained then regarding the deity of Christ.  Yet, when the Comma Johanneum is rejected, it is not because we can afford to reject it, but because the evidence compels its rejection.  No Greek manuscript before the time of Erasmus exactly corresponds to the Comma Johanneum as printed in the Textus Receptus(and nor does minuscule 61).  The true words of Scripture do not need assistance from an interpolation, even one that summarizes explicitly what is expressed elsewhere in Scripture implicitly.  5. Hand-to-Hand Combat: Alexandrinus vs. Montfortianus         Today’s hand-to-hand combat is a contest between the famous and the infamous.  In one corner is Codex Alexandrinus (A, 02), a very important uncial manuscript of the Bible produced in the 400s.  Codex Alexandrinus’ Gospels-text (which begins in Matthew 25:6; the pages are not extant up to that point) is essentially Byzantine and thus Codex A constitutes the earliest manuscript-support for many Byzantine readings.  In Acts and the General Epistles, Codex A’s text tends to be Alexandrian.  And for Revelation, Codex A is regarded by many researchers as the best manuscript we have (though it is not perfect).            Codex A came to the attention of European scholars in 1627, when it was presented to Charles I of England as a gift from Cyril Lucar, patriarch of Constantinople.  (Ambassador-explorer Thomas Roe was instrumental in the delivery of the manuscript, which Lucar had intended to give to James I, who died before the manuscript arrived in England.)  Although at some previous time the codex was, according to a note in the manuscript, kept at Alexandria, this does not require that it was produced in Alexandria.  (One may wonder, had the codex arrived 20 years earlier, what its influence on the King James Version might have been.)           In the other corner is Codex Montfortianus (61), a manuscript which was probably made around 1520.  It is presently housed at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.  Minuscule 61 is thus a few years younger than the earliest printed compilations of the Greek New Testament!  Such a late manuscript would normally be little-known, but Codex Montfortianus played an interesting role in a controversy about the Comma Johanneum that occurred following the publication of Erasmus’ first edition of the printed Greek New Testament.             Erasmus’ first (1516) and second (1519) editions of the Greek New Testament did not include the Comma Johanneum in the text of First John.  The Comma Johanneum, which refers to the Father, Word, and Holy Spirit as three heavenly witnesses, had become very popular in Europe due to its inclusion in medieval editions of the Vulgate.  Some scholars (especially Edward Lee and Jacobus Stunica) protested against Erasmus’ non-inclusion of the Comma Johanneum.  The late Bruce Metzger wrote that in response, “In an unguarded moment Erasmus promised that he would insert the Comma Johanneum, as it is called, in future editions if a single Greek manuscript could be found that contained the passage.”  James White has similarly stated that “Erasmus had promised, in his response to Lee, to include the passage should a Greek manuscript be found that contained it.”            That story has been circulated by many commentators.  (Even Samuel Tregelles spread this story, back in the 1800s.)  However, researcher Henk de Jonge, via a detailed direct study of the relevant compositions, has shown that Erasmus never made the promise described by Metzger, White, and many others.  Instead, Erasmus, in a letter written in May of 1520, in the course of explaining why he had not included the Comma Johanneum, stated, “If a single manuscript had come into my hands which attested to what we read [in the Vulgate], then I would certainly have used it to fill in what was missing in the other manuscripts I had.”                         Erasmus also stated that Edward Lee did not have a valid reason to accuse Erasmus of negligence in this regard; de Jonge provides Erasmus’ retort:  “What sort of indolence is that, if I did not consult the manuscripts which I could not manage to have?  At least, I collected as many as I could.  Let Lee produce a Greek manuscript in which are written the words lacking in my edition, and let him prove that I had access to this manuscript, and then let him accuse me of indolence.”           Shortly after this exchange between Edward Lee and Desiderius Erasmus, the existence of Codex Montfortianus, and the inclusion of the Comma Johanneum in its text of First John, were pointed out to Erasmus.  Erasmus never made a promise to include the Comma Johanneum in a future edition of the Greek New Testament if a Greek manuscript containing it could be found; he merely insisted that he could not validly be accused of omitting it in his first two editions due to negligence, because he had not found it in the manuscripts accessible to him.  However, it is also clear that because of Erasmus’ statement that he would have included the Comma Johanneum if he had found it in a single manuscript, Erasmus could easily anticipate in 1522 that if he were to omit the Comma Johanneum in his third edition, after being informed of the existence of a Greek manuscript that contained the passage, he would certainly be accused of inconsistency, having already stated that if he had possessed a single Greek manuscript with the passage, he would have included it. Erasmus consequently included the Comma Johanneum in subsequent editions (with some adjustments to its text).  It was also included in the editions of Stephanus and Beza later in the 1500s – and thus it was in the base-text used by the translators of the Geneva Bible and the King James Version.  So although minuscule 61 is relatively unimportant as far as most other passages of the New Testament are concerned, in First John 5:7-8 its impact has been enormous.           J. Rendel Harris, in 1887, proposed that Codex Montfortianus was produced – with the Comma Johanneum – by a Franciscan monk named William Roy (sometimes called Froy, because, in theory, an abbreviation for “Fratris” (“brother”) was misinterpreted as part of his name), who was working at the time under the auspices of Henry Standish, a British bishop who opposed both Erasmus’ Greek New Testament and the Protestant Reformation in general.  (Froy went on to leave the Franciscan order in the early 1520’s; he became an assistant of William Tyndale for a while, and was eventually martyred, in Portugal, in 1531.)  Roy was in the right place, at the right time, and possessed the necessary training and resources to produce the manuscript (in which the text of Revelation appears to have been copied from minuscule 69).            Richard Brynckley (or Brinkley) is another suspect.  This erudite scholar was Provincial Minister from 1518 to 1526, and he had taught at Cambridge from 1492 to 1518, when minuscule 69 was kept there.  (Brynckley was at Cambridge when Erasmus lived there in 1511-1513, and Erasmus later sent greetings to Brinkley in a letter to Henry Bullock.)  Grantley McDonald, in a recent book, has recently questioned the possibility that Brinkley made MS 61, on the grounds that the script that Brinkley used to write his name and title in another manuscript does not match the script in MS 61.  However, Brinkley may have been, like many people, capable of using one kind of script when writing his signature, and another handwriting-style for other purposes.         Yet another suspect is Francis Frowyk.  Grantley McDonald proposes that Harris’ identification of “Froy” as Fratris Roy does not fit the evidence as well as the identification of Froy with Francis Frowyk, a Franciscan colleague of both Erasmus and John Clement (one of the owners of MS 69).  Frowyk, according to McDonald, visited Erasmus in August of 1517.  Frowyk had the requisite skill in Greek, and access to minuscule 69, and interest in Erasmus’ work.  It may be that Codex Monfortianus was produced not by an enemy intent on embarrassing Erasmus, but by a friend who discerned that an opportunity existed to quietly provide a resource which would give Erasmus the means to deflect some accusations of heresy which several critics were making against him.                In any event, without Codex Montfortianus, the Reformation might have been significantly different.  With all this in the background, we approach the battleground for today's contest:  First John 3:1-14 – not far from the passage for which Codex Montfortianus has become infamous.  We shall use, as the basis of comparison, the text of the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland compilation.  Words in brackets will be treated as part of the text.  Transpositions will be mentioned but not included in the final corruption-count.  Abbreviations of sacred names, and other abbreviations, will not be treated as variants.  In addition, στ (sigmaand tau) and ϛ (stau) will be treated as identical, that is, the use of stau in 61 to represent what is expressed as στ in Codex A will not be considered a variant. Here are the differences between Codex A and the text of NA27 in First John 3:1-14. 1 – A has εδωκεν instead of δεδωκεν.  (-1) 2 – no differences. 3 – no differences. 4 – no differences. 5 – no differences. 6 – no differences. 7 – A has Παιδια instead of Τεκνια (+4, -4) 7 – A has μη τις instead of μηδεις (+1, -2) 8 – A has δε after ο at the beginning of the verse (+2) 9 – no differences 10 – A has την after ποιων (+3) 11 – A has αγγελεια instead of αγγελια (+1) 12 – no differences 13 – A does not have Και at the beginning of the verse (-3) Codex A thus has 11 non-original letters, and is missing 10 original letters, for a total of 21 letters’ worth of corruption.  Here are the differences between the text of 61 and the text of NA27 in First John 3:1-14.  (Agreements with the RP2005 Byzantine Text are marked with a triangle.) 1 – 61 has ιδε instead of ιδετε (-2) 1 – 61 transposes, yielding ο πατηρ ημιν 1 – 61 does not have και εσμεν (-8)  ▲ 2 – 61 has ουκ instead of ουπω (+1, -2) 2 – 61 has δε after οιδαμεν (+2)  ▲ 2 – 61 has εστι instead of εστιν (-1) 3 – 61 has αυτος instead of εκεινος (+3, -5) 3 – 61 has εστι instead of εστιν (-1) 4 – 61 does not have ποιει (-5) 4 – no differences 5 – 61 has ημων after αμαρτιας (+4)  ▲ 5 – 61 has εστι instead of εστιν (-1) 6 – no differences 7 – 61 has εστι instead of εστιν (-1) 8 – 61 has εφανευρωθη instead of εφανερωθη (+1)  [This might be an accent but I was not sure.] 9 – 61 has το before σπερμα (+2) 10 – 61 has εστι instead of εστιν (-1) 10 – 61 has εργα before the first τεκνα (+4)   11 – no differences 12 – 61 has εσφαξε instead of εσφαξεν (-1) 13 – 61 does not have Και at the beginning of the verse (-3)  ▲ 13 – 61 has μου after αδελφοι (+3)  ▲ 14 – 61 has τον αδελφον after αγαπων (+10)  ▲ Minuscule 61 thus contains, in First John 3:1-14, 30 non-original letters, and is missing 31 original letters, for a total of 61 letters’ worth of corruption.  (If movable-nu variants are removed from consideration, then 61 has 30 non-original letters, and is missing 25 original letters, for a total of 55 letters’ worth of corruption.)  RESULTS:            Compared to NA27, Codex A has only 21 letters’ worth of corruption in First John 3:1-14 – most of which consists of the reading Παιδια (instead of Τεκνια) in verse 7, την after ποιων in verse 10, and the inclusion of Και at the beginning of verse 13.             Compared to NA27, 61 has 61 letters’ worth of corruption in First John 3:1-14 – the biggest differences being the absence of  και εσμεν in verse 1, αυτος instead of εκεινος in verse 3, the absence of ποιει in verse 4, the presence of ημων in verse 5, and the inclusion of τον αδελφον in verse 14.             This was an easy victory for Codex Alexandrinus – and the quality of Codex A’s text increases when NA28 is the standard of comparison:  in NA28, Παιδια was adopted at the beginning of verse 7.  Codex A thus has only 13 letters’ worth of corruption in First John 3:1-14.  (Side-note:  I cannot tell why the compilers of NA-28 kept Και at the beginning of verse 13.  If Και is rejected – as it seems to be in the text of practically all modern English versions – then Codex A’s corruption-level in these 14 verses decreases to just 10 letters’ worth of corruption.) [Readers are invited to check the data and math in this post.  Using the embedded link to Codex A, First John 3 begins on fol. 82r.  Using the embedded link to MS 61, First John 3 is on fol. 436r.] ●●●●●●● - 22 -