A Defense of the Johannine Comma - Study to Answer.Net

Though it is often touted that the Comma “does not appear in the Syriac,” the
Syriac evidence is as yet inconclusive as far as the manuscripts are concerned. It is very
misleading to claim that the witness from this version knows nothing of the Comma. The
Syriac manuscripts which have been studied and collated, and upon which this claim is
ultimately based, constitute a very small total of the witness available to this version. The
claim rests on a total of five collations, 52 each utilizing only a handful of manuscripts,
with the number used across all these standing at around a dozen manuscripts at most.
This is certainly not a very exhaustive sampling of the hundreds of available Syriac
manuscripts, most of which have not been examined in any detail nor any results from
examination being published. Thus, the evidence from the Syriac version of the Bible
must be considered inconclusive until the fuller body of evidence is examined.
Even given what has been looked at from the Syriac texts so far, we can see that
the claim that the Comma "does not appear in the Syriac" is in the very least rendered
questionable on the basis of the existing manuscripts. There is evidence that the verse
appeared in Syriac readings, and Jacob of Edessa, a Syriac Father, makes a reference to
the verse around 700 AD. 53 The Syriac edition of Giles Gutbier from Hamburg 1664,
produced from the collation of two Syriac manuscripts, contains the verse.
Further, there is evidence from the Armenian version that this verse may have
either been found in the Syriac used to translate it in the early 5th century by Sahak
Partev, the Catholicos of Armenia, or in the Greek which was used to revise and confirm
the Armenian translation by the council of Ephesus in 431. The Comma was quoted in a
synod of Sis, held in Armenia in 1307, which seems to be a positive indication of that
verse's existence in the Armenian version at that date.
Some assert that the Armenian version was revised by the Armenian king Haitho
II (1224-1270) according to the Vulgate, but this claim primarily rests upon the fact of
the Synod of Sis' quotation, and thus is a claim based upon circular reasoning and is
therefore to be dismissed. While there was interaction between the Crusaders and the
Armenians in Cilician Armenia, there is no actual evidence that the Armenian version
was revised to conform to the Latin Vulgate. Indeed, if any revision of the Armenian text
took place during this period, it was by one Nerses of Lambron, who is believed by some
to have revised the Armenian New Testament according to the Greek (not the Latin
Vulgate) used by the Eastern Orthodox during the 12 th century. However, it is not at all
certain that Nerses actually carried out any such revision. Even if he did, and this
revision resulted in the inclusion of the Comma at that time (again, another hypothetical
52 Maynard, A History of the Debate Over I John 5:7-8, pp. 15-6
53 Anton Baumstark, a prominent scholar in the studies of Syriac and Eastern Christianity, observed this
citation in his Ein Syrisches Citat des Comma Johanneum, appearing in the German journal Oriens
Christianus: Hefte für die Kunde des Christlichen Oriens, Part 2 (1902), pp. 440-1, noting its appearance in
Jacob's On the Holy Mysteries. Brown mentions this citation in his discussion of the evidences for and
against the Comma, attempting in a rather unconvincing manner to downplay its evidentiary value, see The
Anchor Bible: Epistles of John, Ed. R.E. Brown, p. 778
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