Jonannine Comma and Bruce Metzger

From Textus Receptus

Bruce Metzger in his zeal to discredit Erasmus and the Comma made up the Erasmian promise and claimed:

"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. At length such a copy was found—or made to order." (Bruce Metzger)

In the 3rd edition of his book. Bruce Metzger retracted his false accusations against Erasmus. He had claimed that Erasmus said he would only include the verse if he found a Greek manuscript that contained it. Then almost made one to order.

"What is said on p. 101 above about Erasmus' promise to include the Comma Johanneum if one Greek manuscript were found that contained it, and his subsequent suspicion that MS 61 was written expressly to force him to do so, needs to be corrected in the light of the research of H. J. DeJonge, a specialist in Erasmian studies who finds no explicit evidence that supports this frequently made assertion." ^{Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of The New Testament, 3rd Edition, p 291 fn 2.}

The concept of minuscule 635 containing the Comma is a Metzger error and should be removed from manuscript lists.

A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament

Bruce Metzger - A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed.

Below are the comments of Dr. Bruce M. Metzger on 1 John 5:7-8, from his book, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 1993):

After μαρτυροῦντες the Textus Receptus adds the following: ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, ὁ Πατήρ, ὁ Λόγος, καὶ τὸ Ἅγιον Πνεῦμα· καὶ οὗτοι οἱ τρεῖς ἔν εἰσι. 8 καὶ τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες ἐν τῇ γῇ. That these words are spurious and have no right to stand in the New Testament is certain in the light of the following considerations.

(A) External Evidence.

(1) The passage is absent from every known Greek manuscript except eight, and these contain the passage in what appears to be a translation from a late recension of the Latin Vulgate. Four of the eight manuscripts contain the passage as a variant reading written in the margin as a later addition to the manuscript. The eight manuscripts are as follows:

61: codex Montfortianus, dating from the early sixteenth century.

88: a variant reading in a sixteenth century hand, added to the fourteenth-century codex Regius of Naples.

221: a variant reading added to a tenth-century manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

429: a variant reading added to a sixteenth-century manuscript at Wolfenbüttel.

629: a fourteenth or fifteenth century manuscript in the Vatican.

636: a variant reading added to a sixteenth-century manuscript at Naples.

918: a sixteenth-century manuscript at the Escorial, Spain.

2318: an eighteenth-century manuscript, influenced by the Clementine Vulgate, at Bucharest, Rumania.

(2) The passage is quoted by none of the Greek Fathers, who, had they known it, would most certainly have employed it in the Trinitarian controversies (Sabellian and Arian). Its first appearance in Greek is in a Greek version of the (Latin) Acts of the Lateran Council in 1215.

(3) The passage is absent from the manuscripts of all ancient versions (Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Arabic, Slavonic), except the Latin; and it is not found (a) in the Old Latin in its early form (Tertullian Cyprian Augustine), or in the Vulgate (b) as issued by Jerome (codex Fuldensis [copied a.d. 541-46] and codex Amiatinus [copied before a.d. 716]) or (c) as revised by Alcuin (first hand of codex Vallicellianus [ninth century]).

The earliest instance of the passage being quoted as a part of the actual text of the Epistle is in a fourth century Latin treatise entitled Liber Apologeticus (chap. 4), attributed either to the Spanish heretic Priscillian (died about 385) or to his follower Bishop Instantius. Apparently the gloss arose when the original passage was understood to symbolize the Trinity (through the mention of three witnesses: the Spirit, the water, and the blood), an interpretation that may have been written first as a marginal note that afterwards found its way into the text. In the fifth century the gloss was quoted by Latin Fathers in North Africa and Italy as part of the text of the Epistle, and from the sixth century onwards it is found more and more frequently in manuscripts of the Old Latin and of the Vulgate. In these various witnesses the wording of the passage differs in several particulars. (For examples of other intrusions into the Latin text of 1 John, see 2.17; 4.3; 5.6, and 20.)

(B) Internal Probabilities.

(1) As regards transcriptional probability, if the passage were original, no good reason can be found to account for its omission, either accidentally or intentionally, by copyists of hundreds of Greek manuscripts, and by translators of ancient versions.

(2) As regards intrinsic probability, the passage makes an awkward break in the sense.

For the story of how the spurious words came to be included in the Textus Receptus, see any critical commentary on 1 John, or Metzger, The Text of the New Testament, pp. 101 f.; cf. also Ezra Abbot, "I. John v. 7 and Luther's German Bible," in The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel and Other Critical Essays (Boston, 1888), pp. 458-463.

Johannine Comma

1 John 5:7

1 John 5:8

Pure Bible Forum

KJV Today

1 John 5:7 and Modern Criticism by Taylor Desoto

Codex Montfortianus, Erasmus, and 1 John 5:7

Erasmian Myths: The Comma Wager

Erasmian Myths: Codex Vaticanus

1 Jn.5:7,8 Establishing the Authenticity

Defense D. A. Waite

And These Three Are One

Manuscript Differences

“And These Three Are One” Part 1

Riddle Review of McDonald book

Hixson, the CJ, and Roman Catholic Provenance

Riddle on Hixson Part 1

Riddle on Hixson Part 2

Riddle on Hixson Part 3

Riddle - Internal Argument

Riddle - Papyrus

KJV Asia Scams

KJV Asia

KJV Asia Manuscripts

Setting the Record Straight

Dedending 1 John 5:7 by David Cloud

KJV "Errors"

(1 John 5:7-8) Is It Inspired Scripture?

First John 5:6-8 by Floyd Jones

Scion of Zion Article

Trinitarian Bible Society on Johannine Comma

1 John 5:7-8 by Jeffrey Khoo

1 John 5:7 by Thomas Golda

David Cloud Articles

Email Debate Gregory S. Neal and Thomas Holland

“And These Three Are One” Part 2

Internal Articles

Ignatius of Antioch

Origen‎‎

Augustine of Hippo

Clement of Alexandria

Codex Ottobonianus mss 629

Joseph Bryennios

Complutensian Polyglot

Erasmus

Eugenios Voulgaris

Christian Frederick Matthaei

Franz Anton Knittel

Frederick Nolan

Ezra Abbott

Walton's Polyglot

Links to Books

Frederick Nolan - An Inquiry

SS(ancti) apostolorum septem epistolae catholicae 1782 [1]

Joseph Bryennios Comma Quotation

New criticisms Knittle

13 Sermons - Doctrine of the Trinity Edmund Calamy

Raising the Ghost of Arius by Grantley McDonald

Letters To Edward Gibbon George Travis 1785

A Vindication...of Porson Thomas Turton 1827

Memoir of the Controversy. William Orme

A Vindication of 1st John v. 7 Thomas Burgess Web

Ben David

William Craig Brownlee 1825 Part 1

William Craig Brownlee 1825 Part 2

Theopneustia - François Samuel R. Louis Gaussen, 1841

New plea for the authenticity - Charles Forster 1867 [2][3]

Deux dissertations (French) English Martin

The doctrine of the Greek article - Thomas Middleton

Richard Porson I John v 7, 1790

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