Johannine Comma
The Johannine Comma is a phrase in verses of the First Epistle of John, which is seen as an interpolation in the Epistle of John according to modern textual criticism.
The text in the King James Version of the Bible reads:
In the Greek Textus Receptus, the verse reads thus:
ὅτι τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες εν τῷ οὐρανῷ, ὁ πατήρ, ὁ λόγος, καὶ τὸ Ἅγιον Πνεῦμα· καὶ οὗτοι οἱ τρεῖς ἕν εἰσι.It became a touchpoint for the Christian theological debate over the doctrine of the Trinity from the early church councils to the Catholic and Protestant disputes in the early modern period.
It may first be noted that the words "in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one" found in older translations at 1 John 5:7 are thought by some to be spurious additions to the original text. A footnote in the Jerusalem Bible, a Modern Catholic translation, says that these words are "not in any of the early Greek MSS , or any of the early translations, or in the best MSS of the Vulgate|Vulg itself." In A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Bruce Metzger traces in detail the history of the passage, asserting its first mention in the 4th-century treatise Liber Apologeticus, and that it appears in Vetus Latina and Vulgate manuscripts beginning in the 6th century. Modern translations as a whole do not include them in the main body of the text due to their ostensibly spurious nature.
The comma is mainly only attested in the Latin manuscripts of the New Testament, being absent from the vast majority of Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, the earliest Greek manuscript being 14th century. It is also totally absent in the Geʽez, Coptic, Syriac, Georgian, Arabic and from the early pre-12th century Armenian witnesses to the New Testament. Despite its absence from these manuscripts, it was contained in many printed editions of the New Testament in the past, including the Complutensian Polyglot, the different editions of the Textus Receptus, the London Polyglot and the Patriarchal text. And it is contained in many Reformation-era vernacular translations of the Bible due to the inclusion of the verse within the Textus Receptus and the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate. In spite of its late date, members of the King James Only movement and those who advocate for the superiority for the Textus Receptus and of the Vulgate have argued for its authenticity.
The Comma Johanneum is among the most noteworthy variants found within the Textus Receptus in addition to the confession of the Ethiopian eunuch, the long ending of Mark, the Pericope Adulterae, the reading "God" in 1 Timothy 3:16 and the "Book of Life" in Book of Revelation 22:19.
Text
The "Johannine Comma" is a short clause found in 1 John 5:7–8.Erasmus omitted the text of the Johannine Comma from his first and second editions of the Greek-Latin New Testament because it was not in his Greek manuscripts. He added the text to his Novum Testamentum omne in 1522 after being accused of reviving Arianism and after he was informed of a Greek manuscript that contained the verse, although he expressed doubt as to its authenticity in his Annotations.
Many subsequent early printed editions of the Bible include it, such as the Coverdale Bible, the Geneva Bible, the Douay-Rheims Bible, and the King James Bible. Later editions based on the Textus Receptus, such as Robert Young's Literal Translation and the New King James Version, include the verse. In the 1500s it was not always included in Latin New Testament editions, though it was in the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate. However, Martin Luther did not include it in his Luther Bible.
The text in the King James Bible reads:
The text in the Latin of the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate reads:
The text in the Greek of the Novum Testamentum omne reads:
There are several variant versions of the Latin and Greek texts.
English translations based on a modern critical text have omitted the comma from the main text since the English Revised Version, including the New American Standard Bible, English Standard Version, and New Revised Standard Version.
Origin
Several early sources that might be expected to include the Comma Johanneum in fact omit it. For example, Clement of Alexandria's quotation of 1 John 5:8 does not include the Comma.Among the earliest possible references to the Comma appears by the 3rd-century Church Father Cyprian, who in Unity of the Church 1.6 quoted John 10:30: "Again it is written of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, 'And these three are one. However, some believe that he was giving an interpretation of the three elements mentioned in the uncontested part of the verse.
The first undisputed work to quote the Comma Johanneum as an actual part of the Epistle's text appears to be the 4th-century Latin homily Liber Apologeticus, probably written by Priscillian of Ávila, or his close follower Bishop Instantius.
Manuscripts
Doubtful proposed manuscript attestation
The Codex Vaticanus in some places contains umlauts to indicate knowledge of variants. Although there has been some debate on the age of these umlauts and if they were added at a later date, according to a paper made by Philip B. Payne, the ink seems to match that of the original scribe. The Codex Vaticanus contains these dots around 1 John 5:7, which is why some have assumed it to be a reference to the Johannine Comma. However, according to McDonald, G. R, it is far more likely that the scribe had encountered other variants in the verse than the Johannine comma, which is not attested in any Greek manuscript until the 14th century.No extant Syriac manuscripts contain the Johannine Comma, nevertheless some past advocates of the inclusion of the Johannine comma such as Thomas Burgess have proposed that the inclusion of the conjuctive participle "and" within the text of 1 John 5:7 in some Syriac manuscripts is an indication of its past inclusion within the Syriac textual tradition.
It is known that Erasmus was aware of a codex from Antwerp which was presented to him at the Franciscan monastery. This manuscript was likely lost during the times of Napoleon, however it was said to have contained the Johannine Comma in the margin, as Erasmus mentions it in his Annotations. Nevertheless, Erasmus doubted the originality of that marginal note within the manuscript and believed that it was a recent addition within it. The exact nature of this manuscript from Antwerp is unknown, scholars such as Mills, Küster and Allen have argued that it was a Greek New Testament manuscript. However, others such as Wettstein have proposed that this was instead a manuscript of the commentary of Bede.
Patristic writers
Clement of Alexandria
The comma is absent from an extant fragment of Clement of Alexandria, through Cassiodorus, with homily style verse references from 1 John, including verse 1 John 5:6 and 1 John 5:8 without verse 7, the heavenly witnesses.Another reference that is studied is from Clement's Prophetic Extracts:
This is seen by some as allusion evidence that Clement was familiar with the verse.
Tertullian
Tertullian, in Against Praxeas, supports a Trinitarian view by quoting John 10:30:While many other commentators have argued against any Comma evidence here, most emphatically John Kaye's, "far from containing an allusion to 1 Jo. v. 7, it furnishes most decisive proof that he knew nothing of the verse". Georg Strecker comments cautiously "An initial echo of the Comma Johanneum occurs as early as Tertullian Adv. Pax. 25.1. In his commentary on John 16:14 he writes that the Father, Son, and Paraclete are one, but not one person. However, this passage cannot be regarded as a certain attestation of the Comma Johanneum."
References from Tertullian in De Pudicitia 21:16 :
and De Baptismo:
have also been presented as verse allusions.
Treatise on Rebaptism
The Treatise on Rebaptism, placed as a 3rd-century writing and transmitted with Cyprian's works, has two sections that directly refer to the earthly witnesses, and thus has been used against authenticity by Nathaniel Lardner, Alfred Plummer and others. However, because of the context being water baptism and the precise wording being "et isti tres unum sunt", the Matthew Henry Commentary uses this as evidence for Cyprian speaking of the heavenly witnesses in Unity of the Church. Arthur Cleveland Coxe and Nathaniel Cornwall also consider the evidence as suggestively positive, as do Westcott and Hort. After approaching the Tertullian and Cyprian references negatively, "morally certain that they would have quoted these words had they known them" Westcott writes about the Rebaptism Treatise:Jerome
The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910 asserts that Jerome "does not seem to know the text", but Charles Forster suggests that the "silent publication of in the Vulgate ... gives the clearest proof that down to his time the genuineness of this text had never been disputed or questioned."Many Vulgate manuscripts, including the Codex Fuldensis, the earliest extant Vulgate manuscript, include a Prologue to the Canonical Epistles referring to the Comma:
The Prologue presents itself as a letter of Jerome to Eustochium, to whom Jerome dedicated his commentary on the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel. Despite the first-person salutation, some claim it is the work of an unknown imitator from the late 5th century. Its inauthenticity is arguably stressed by the omission of the passage from the manuscript's own text of 1 John; however, this can also be seen as confirming the claim in the Prologue that scribes tended to drop the text.