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

Word, and the Holy Ghost'), but this text is clearly an interpolation since no
genuine Greek manuscript contains it." 4
Each of these statements, naturally, find much use among Muslim apologists and
other anti-trinitarians who would probably have little use for anything else contained
within these works.
Even conservative Evangelical commentators have jumped onto the anti-Comma
bandwagon, parroting the same general claims concerning the paucity of Greek
manuscript evidence for the trinitarian rendering of these verses. In his commentary on I
John, Hiebert refers to the "famous interpolated passage for which there is no valid
textual evidence,”
"The external evidence is overwhelmingly against the authenticity of these words,
commonly known today as "the Johannine Comma." They are found in no Greek
uncial manuscripts; no Greek cursive manuscript before the fifteenth century
contains them. Only two known Greek cursives (cursive 629 of the fourteenth
century and 61 of the sixteenth century) have the addition in their text; cursive
635 of the eleventh century has it in the margin in a seventeenth century hand, and
88 of the twelfth century has it in the margin by a modern hand. In these cursives
the words are a manifest translation from a late recension of the Latin Vulgate. No
ancient version of the first four centuries gives them; nor is it found in the oldest
Vulgate manuscripts. None of the Greek Church Fathers quoted the words
contained in this interpolation. As Feuillet points out, their failure to cite it is 'an
inexplicable omission if they knew it: in fact, how could they not have used it in
the Trinitarian controversies?'" 5
Hiebert then continues on into a discussion of the much-heralded (and muchmisrepresented)
inclusion of the Comma by Erasmus into the third edition of his Greek
text. A similar charge is leveled in many of the more popular Evangelical study Bibles.
For example, Ryrie states,
"Verse 7 should end with the word record. The rest of verse 7 and all of verse 8
are not in any ancient Greek mss." 6
Unfortunately for the critics, these claims are either outright falsehoods, or else
rest upon incomplete information. Worse, they continue to be propagated uncritically by
naturalistic textual scholars like Bruce Metzger and Kurt and Barbara Aland, whose
written works routinely perpetuate false information based upon a partial coverage of the
evidence available. It is somewhat understandable that those who rely upon information
given to them by others (Hiebert, Ryrie, etc.) would repeat the assertions made by textual
4 The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, Ed. A.C. Myers, p. 1020
5 D.E. Hiebert, The Epistles of John: An Expositional Commentary, p. 27
6 C.C. Ryrie, The Ryrie Study Bible: King James Version, Expanded Edition (1994), note on I John 5:7-8.
We should note that Ryrie is in fact in error on this point, as "the spirit, the water, and the blood, and these
three agree in one" appear in all manuscripts containing this passage.
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