# On the "Johannine Comma" (1 John 5.7)



## bookslover (Mar 28, 2016)

For those interested, the top post at my blog (for today, 3/28/16) (see below my signature) has a quotation from Gary Derickson's new commentary about this. Nothing new, I suppose, but nice to have the info stated afresh.


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## MW (Mar 28, 2016)

bookslover said:


> For those interested, the top post at my blog (for today, 3/28/16) (see below my signature) has a quotation from Gary Derickson's new commentary about this. Nothing new, I suppose, but nice to have the info stated afresh.



Even wikipedia is more informative.


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## Justified (Mar 28, 2016)




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## JOwen (Mar 29, 2016)

Here is a book that everyone should read on the subject.It substantiates what Rev.Winzer is arguing for in another thread. Read especially 423 ff. 

Warmly,


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## Logan (Mar 29, 2016)

Respectfully, it's hard to see how that type of reasoning, evidence, or argumentation found in those sermons could be convincing to someone not already convinced.

He spends dozens of pages first laying out an emotional case for keeping the text. "It's been in our English Bibles for a while...this would be a great verse against the Arians, etc." And "many of these guys who didn't find evidence for it weren't really pious guys anyway. I mean, Socinus questioned it an you don't want to agree with Socinus do you?" And thus, only good guys are on his side and only bad guys on the other.

Only after this extensive setup does he grant that this text was not used by the Greek writers against the Arians, nor does it appear in Iraneus, Clement, Denis of Alexandria, Athanasius, the Council of Sardica, Epiphanius, Basil, Alexander of Alexandria, Nyssene, Nazianzene, Didymus, Ciril of Alexandria, the works of Justin Martyr, Caesarius, Proclus, and the Nicene Fathers. That it was not found in any Greek father for more than 500 years after Christ, nor in the Latin fathers. Yet from this he will only grant that they didn't make use of it, or maybe it wasn't in their copies, but it still could have been part of the Autograph.

He grants it is missing in "some" of the ancient manuscripts, and "several" of the valuable ones (or maybe that was "all"?). He grants that it isn't in ancient translations, such as the Syriac and the Arabic, Coptic, Ethiopic, Latin. But then again, there are some other verses that aren't there either so what does that prove? 

These are some pretty big concessions. Yet, despite all this, he insists that it still might be original because _maybe_ there were many copies that had it that were lost. That _maybe_ Greek fathers did write about it but their writings were lost to us.

He cites someone who says they saw the text in some "ancient" Latin copies (how ancient is not exactly specified). As to the Greek, his evidence is that some people in comparing copies didn't comment on it, and Stephanus said he found 7 out of 16 of his copies had it. Again, age isn't specified, or even why Stephanus put that note (perhaps because it was strongly contested even then). And from Beza, that he received some of Stephanus' manuscripts and he found it it "some" of them. And that Father Simon claims that "nigh all the manuscripts not above 600 years old, agree in this, that they have the verse in dispute". Tertullian made a similar statement but unless almost all of those manuscripts were destroyed (another assumption), then it appears to have been hyperbole or a mistaken claim. It certainly isn't backed up by anything other than the bald statement of one or two men. "But see? Despite many saying they don't find it in the vast majority of copies, I found one guy who said he did."

And other than obscure references in the fathers that might, possibly, _maybe,_ have referred to this verse, that is about the sum of his "evidence", though much more drawn out and laboured. The reasoning from what "might have been" to "what might have happened" to "what we have now" is the same sort of reasoning Darwin used in Origin of the Species. There may be better arguments for it, but I'm hard pressed to see why this one should be convincing.

And despite Burgon's popularity among its defenders, I find no evidence that he was convinced by these arguments either, and I know certainly Scrivener was not.


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## NaphtaliPress (Mar 29, 2016)

N.B. I take it this is Calamy the son, not the Westminster Divine judging by the date (same name and both DDs).


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## JOwen (Mar 29, 2016)

Correct Chris.


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## MW (Mar 29, 2016)

The discussion has progressed somewhat since Calamy's days, but works like this have an important historical value for showing (1) that the text was regarded as having a fundamental place in the doctrine of the Trinity. We find this not only in Calamy but in numerous Trinitarian authors in the Protestant tradition. They appealed to it as not only illustrative but determinative. (2) It also demonstrates that the text mostly came under scrutiny as a result of anti-trinitarian polemic. Moreover this polemic played an historical role in the rise of text-critical discussions and methodology. This bears on the pre-history of textual criticism as a science and helps to explain some of the motives behind its empirical assumptions.


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