Part V, Variants: 1 Jn 5:7-8 and Matt 21:29-31: Is 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 an interpolation?

One encounters an axiom among the textual critics in the halls of academe regarding what are referred to as spurious passages: the more variants found among the manuscript witnesses to a particular passage, the more likely it is to be an interpolation. This notion has some basis in truth. Take, for instance, the so-called Johannine Comma, also known as the Testimony of the Heavenly Witnesses:

7 For there are three that bear witneƒs in Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghoƒt: and theƒe three are one: 8 And there are three that bear witneƒs in Earth, the Spirit, the Water, and the Bloud: and theƒe three agree in one.   --Symon Patrick, 1675 (italics his)

7 For there are three that bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit: and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, the water, and the blood: and these three agree as one.   --NKJV (as footnoted)

ότι τρεις εισίν οι μαρτυρούντες εν τω ουρανώ ο πατήρ ο λόγος και το αγίων πνεύμα και ούτοι οι τρεις εν εισί.  8 και τρεις εισίν οι μαρτυρούντες εν τη γη το πνεύμα και το ύδωρ και το αίμα και οι τρεις εις το εν εισίν  --Scrivener's TR (italics his)

The italics mark an interpolation, brought into the Greek text in an attempt (actually many attempts, as we shall see) to conform it to what was already in the Latin, when it was noticed that no Greek manuscript contained it [but see UPDATE]. I will attempt to demonstrate below that it was also interpolated into the Latin manuscripts from which it came, as there is no evidence that it ever existed in Greek until it was specifically translated for the purpose from manuscripts of the Latin Scriptures.

Now, Greek and Latin differ in an important way: Greek depends upon definite articles to carry meaning; Latin, on the other hand, doesn't even have definite articles. Therefore anyone attempting to translate from Greek to Latin is forced to drop the articles, but anyone translating from Latin to Greek must supply them. This is precisely what we see when we look at the several manuscripts which contain a Greek translation of the Latin interpolation. There are five with the Comma added to the margins much later than the copying of the manuscript itself, and six manuscripts written with the Comma included in the text. I should add here that four of the latter are but hand-made copies of three different printed editions of the Textus Receptus (and one of these, a combination of two of them). The other two are described below.

There are three primary sources for the Greek version of the Comma. I provide below transcriptions and literal translations of each, along with such idiosyncrasies as I can transmit from facsimiles of the books themselves.The comma is marked off by [].

1. Codex Ottobonianus gr. 298 (Minuscule 629, aka Codex 162), a 14th century Latin/Greek diglot of the Acts and Epistles with the Latin Vulgate in the first column and an adapted Greek text in the second, with Greek corrections in the intervening margin. It is the oldest extant copy of the Comma in the Greek Scriptures; which comma had, a century or so earlier, been included in the Greek translation of the Acts of the Lateran Council (see below). Thus this textual family of the Comma can most likely be traced back to that very document. Observe that no text of the Comma in a Greek copy of First John matches this one, and even here, the Greek Comma doesn't match the Latin one across the page (substantial differences in bold).

Latin:
7 Quia tres sunt qui testimonium dant [in celo, pat., verbum, & spiritus sanctus, et hy tres unum sunt. 8 Et tres sunt qui testimonium dant in ter], spiritus, aqua et sanguis. (omits et hi tres unum sunt)  

For three are that testimony give [in heaven: Father, Word, and Spirit Holy; and these three one are. And three are that testimony give in earth]: spirit, water, and blood. (omits the end of v. 8--or rather, inserts it into the comma--the reason for which we shall see anon)

Greek:  
7 ότι τρεις εισίν οι μαρτυρούντες [ἀπὸ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, πατὴρ, λόγος, καὶ πνεῦμα ἅγιον. καὶ οἱ τρεῖς εἰς τὸ ἕν εἰσι. 8 καὶ τρεῖς εἰσὶν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς] το πνεύμα, το ύδωρ, και το αίμα (omits, or rather transposes by substitution, καὶ οἱ τρεῖς εἰς τὸ ἕν εἰσι)

For three are the witness-bearing [from the heaven: father, word, and spirit holy, and the three into the one are. And three are the witness-bearing upon the earth] the spirit, the water, and the blood (same story on the end of v. 8)

And I now have the text of  the only surviving manuscript of The Acts of the Lateran Council:

Latin: Quemadmodum in Canonica Joannis epistola legitur, Quia tres sunt qui testimonium dant in cælo,  Pater, (et*) Verbum, et Spiritus Sanctus: et hi tres unum sunt. Statimque subjungitur: Et tres sunt qui testimonium dant in terra, Spiritus aqua et sanguis, et tres unum sunt: sicut in codicibus quibusdam invenitur.

*the text is uncertain; one source has et, but it is given to interpolation. The same source, moreover, lacks Sanctus.

Greek: ον τρόπον εν τη κανονική τη ιωαννο επιστολή αναγρωσκίται  ότι τρεις εισίν οι μαρτυρούντες [εν τω ουρανώ ο πατήρ λόγος και πνεύμα αγίου].  και τουτοι οι τρεις εν εισίν. ευθυσ τε προστιθησι καθως εν τισι κωδηξιν ευρίσκεται.


Translation of Latin: Moreover in the canonical epistle of John we read, For three are that testimony give in Heaven: Father, (and) Word, and Spirit Holy; and these three one are. After which immediately follows, And three are that testimony give in earth, spirit, water, and blood: and three one are: as is found in some copies.

Translation of Greek: Moreover in the canonical epistle of John is read, For three are the witness-bearing [in the heaven: the Father, Word, and Spirit Holy]; and these three one are. (still working on an exact translation of the closing comment; it appears to be the same as the Latin).


2. The Complutensian Polyglot (so-called), with the Latin Vulgate in one column and an adapted Greek text in the other--making it actually a Diglot in the New Testament volume. The first printing of the Comma in Greek, this was the version included in its manuscript copy, Codex Ravianus, and is close to that in the margin of Minuscule 88.

Latin:
7 Quonium tres sunt oooo ooo qui testimonium dant [in celo: pater: verbum: et spiritus sanctus: & hi ooo oo tres unum sunt. 8 Et tres sunt qui oooo testimoniuʒ dant in terra:] Spiritus agua & sanguis.

For three are that testimony give [in heaven: father, word, and spirit holy, and these three one are. And three are that testimony give in earth] spirit, water, and blood. (same story on the end of v. 8)

Greek:
7 ότι τρεις εισίν οι μαρτυρούντες [ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, ὁ πατὴρ καὶ ὁ λόγος καὶ τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα, καὶ οἱ τρεῖς εἰς τὸ ἕν εἰσι. 8 καὶ τρεῖς εἰσιν οι μαρτυρούντες ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς] το πνεύμα και το ύδωρ και το αίμα ('omits' καὶ οἱ τρεῖς εἰς τὸ ἕν εἰσι)

For three are the witness-bearing [in the heaven: the father and the word and the holy spirit, and the three agree as one [lit, into the one are]. And three are the witness-bearing on the earth] the spirit and the water and the blood (same story on the end of v. 8)


3. Codex Montfortianus (Minuscule 61), a NT manuscript specially adapted to the Vulgate. Not completed until after the printing of the Textus Receptus, it was the first appearance of the Comma in a solely Greek manuscript. Its Comma, but one of many singular readings, was incorporated into the 1522 edition of the Textus Receptus (and none other). Minuscule 429 has this particular version of the Comma in its margin.

7 ότι τρεις εισίν οι μαρτυρούντες [ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, πατὴρ, λόγος, καὶ πνεῦμα ἅγιον, καὶ οὗτοι οἱ τρεῖς ἕν εἰσιν. 8 καὶ τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυρούντες ἐν τῇ γῇ,] πνεύμα, ύδωρ, και αίμα, (omits καὶ οἱ τρεῖς εἰς τό ἕν εἰσι)

For three are the witness-bearing [in the heaven: father, word, and spirit holy, and these the three one are. And three are the witness-bearing in the earth] spirit, water, and blood (without the usual wording from the end of v. 8)

Observe, then, the state of the Johannine Comma in 1522, at the time it first entered the Protestant canon via the Third Edition of Erasmus. It entirely lacked the last clause--or, to put it more precisely, consisted of two separate interpolations bracketing a corrupted transposition. When one looks on the one hand at the first two editions of the Textus Receptus that don't contain the Comma, and on the other hand at the two manuscripts and two editions that do contain the Comma,  there is a total disconnect. Only in later editions was the Comma edited in such a way that it could be inserted into the text as a seamless interpolation. And when I say "later editions," I mean that it took over half a dozen unique editions of the Textus Receptus before 1 John 5:7-8 reached its present form! It was a process that itself took nearly a dozen steps both forward and backward, as shown below (I used electronic photofacsimilies of Erasmus 1,2,3,4, Stephanus 3, Beza 3,4, Elzevir1, Hutter, and Scrivener 1,2 to compile this data)--

1. Erasmus 1516, 1519, 1521: 1 John 5, without the Comma, has articles in front of each of the three witnesses.
- Aldus 1518 made no changes to these verses.
- Gerbelius 1521 does not have the comma.
2. The Complutensian Diglot, printed in 1514 and published in 1522: 1 John 5 has articles preceding all three Heavenly Witnesses, but none of the Earthly ones. Moved the ν from the final εισίν in v. 8 to the final one in v. 7, as part of its transposition of the end of v. 8 into the Comma.
3. Erasmus 1522: Under the influence of Codex Montfortianus, printed vv. 7-8 with no articles preceding any of the Witnesses, but restored the 'omission' of the end of v. 8. Kept the ν in the final εισίν of v. 8. In his Latin column, he changed 'verbum' to 'sermo' (Word), a brand new reading of the Latin Comma. This was the only change from the Vulgate text as he printed it.
- Cephalius 1524 and 1526 made no changes to these verses.
- Colinaeus 1534 made no changes to these verses.
4. Erasmus 1527, 1535: restored the deleted articles to v. 7. Reprinted his unique Latin translation in the 2nd column.
- Stephanus 1546, 1549 made no changes to Erasmus, as far as I can determine.
5. Stephanus 1550: Switched around 'spirit' and 'holy' under the influence of the Complutensian Diglot, conflating the two versions of the Comma then in print. Restored the deleted articles to v. 8. Identified the beginning of the Comma with a textual note in the margin showing that none of his manuscripts had the passage, but failed to identify in the earth as part of the Comma--a lapse also in the English Coverdale version. Neither εισί had a final ν.
6. Stephanus 1551:  Restored the ν to the final εισίν of v. 8 (this is the only reported textual change in this entire edition). Put the verse division, printed here for the first time, within the Comma.
- Elzevir 1624 and 1633 (which have hundreds of differences between them) made no changes. The second edition was reprinted five times, the last one in 1678--forming a basis for late 18th-century American editions.
- Beza 1565, 1582, 1588, 1598 reprinted Stephaus, with the Comma marked and noted in the margin.  Featured yet another new reading in the Latin column, with 'testify' in both verses instead of 'bear witness,' and 'these three agree as one' ending v. 8.
7. Elias Hutter's 1599 6-column polyglot prints the Comma in 12 languages, supplying a translation in parentheses in all languages but Latin and Greek. The Latin text follows the Vulgate, and the Greek text that of Stephanus--but with the addition of  and in front of the word. His English text follows the 1583 revision of the Geneva Bible, which uniquely has "in the earth." Neither of these additions were retained in any later editions of the Comma.
8. Scrivener 1887, 1894: Eliminated all the ligatures previously used. Comma marked in italics.
9. The Greek Orthodox Church Patriarchal text of 1904: goes back to the Stephanus 1551 version of the Comma.
10. TBS 20th century: Standardised the spelling of εισίν in both verses for the first time.

The standardization of the printed text came way too late to ensure that the Commas inserted into the margins of older manuscripts would be identical. The most eccentric of these is Minuscule 177, a manuscript of the NT minus the gospels, into the top margin of which the Comma was added in the 17th or 18th century. It is labeled "v.7," but has no article in front of 'heaven', nor does it have the "in earth" portion of the comma, which has been assigned to v. 8. The first word, οτι, was added one line above as a further correction. And all of the words are fully spelled out with no nomina sacra, as in Erasmus' 3rd edition. Other than that(!), it reads the same as the comma in the margin of Minuscule 636.

ότι τρεις εισιν οἱ μαρτυρουντες εν ουρανω: πατηρ, λογος, και πνευμα αγιον, και οἱ τρεις εις τό εν εισιν
for three are the witness-bearing in heaven: father, word, and spirit holy, and the three agree as one (literally, the three in the one are).

One manuscript copy matches Erasmus 1527 exactly in the comma, but--naturally--not in the rest of v. 8. Another two manuscript copies were made of Stephanus 1550, along with the marginal reading of Minuscule 221. This version reads:

7 οτι τρεις εισιν οι μαρτυρουντες [εν τῷ ουρανω: ὁ πατὴρ, ὁ λογος, και τὁ αγιον πνευμα, καὶ οὗτοι οι τρεις εν εισι. 8 και τρεις εισιν οι μαρτυρουντες ἐν τῇ γῇ]το πνεύμα και το ύδωρ και το αίμα και οι τρεις εις το εν εισί
for three are the witness-bearing [in the heaven: the father, the word, and the holy spirit, and these the three one are. 8 and three are the witness-bearing in the earth] the spirit and the water and the blood, and the three agree as one (literally, the three in the one are)

It appears that no two of the extant manuscripts or early editions have the same text of 1 John 5:7-8--not even in translation to English. Disregarding the Greek spelling--which was not standardised until this past century--the present text of v. 7-8 with the interpolation is one that, as far as we can tell, never existed on papyrus, parchment, or paper before the latter part of the sixteenth century, in at least the fourteenth edition of the Textus Receptus. In all these cases, the primary differences are the presence or absence of articles and conjunctions, and the choice of prepositions--primarily the very differences that would emerge in translating from Latin to Greek. But there are also changes in word order, the absence of a word due to parablepsis, duplication of a phrase, and even variously spelled words; in this one verse fragment we have examples of almost every scribal error.

But what is the significance of this? Is there a direct correlation between a passage being interpolated and it being full of scribal errors? It may depend. What factors large in this example is the fact that there were numerous variants in the Latin text of the Comma before it was ever brought over into the Greek text. I give an approximation of the evidence from the Old Latin mss as listed in the UBS4 apparatus (bear in mind that these are dated up to several centuries later than the oldest Vulgate manuscript):

it^q
[in terra], spiritus (et) aqua et sanguis. 8 [et tres sunt, qui testimonium dicunt in caelo, pater, verbum et spiritus]

it^cit^demit^div
[in terra], spiritus (et) aqua et sanguis, et hi tres unum sunt. 8 [et tres sunt qui testimonium dicunt in caelo, pater, verbum et spiritus.]

it^r
[in terra], spiritus et aqua et sanguis, et hi tres unum sunt. 8 [et tres sunt qui testimonium dicunt in caelo, pater, verbum, et spiritus, et hi tres unum sunt in Christo Iesu.]

it^m it^p
[in terra], spiritus (et) aqua et sanguis, et hi tres unum sunt [in Christo Iesu. 8 et tres sunt qui testimonium dicunt in caelo, pater, verbum, et spiritus.]

it^l
[in terra], spiritus et aqua et sanguis, et hi tres unum sunt [in Christo Iesu. 8 et tres sunt qui testimonium dicunt in caelo, pater, filius, et spiritus], et hi tres unum sunt [in Christo Iesu].

The Comma is  not found in the text of any extant Vulgate manuscripts prior to the ninth century, nor in the majority of those extant from before the 12th century. Cassiodorus, a textual critic of the sixth century, published the New Testament with the Old Latin and the Vulgate in parallel columns. To this is credited the ensuing commingling of the two textual traditions. Vulgate manuscripts show various signs of thus having received the interpolation from the Old Latin, all extant manuscripts of which contain it.  Some, for example, follow it^l--as well as Cyprian and Tertullian in their quotations of the canonical portion of v. 8--reading filius (son) instead of verbum, and this version found its way into at least one medieval translation of the Vulgate, used by the Waldensians.  The Second Edition of the Wycliffe Bible also translates filius, but as a gloss, not a literal translation--as can be seen from some manuscripts of the First Edition, where it is introduced as a gloss alongside the literal translation of verbum.

But the Vulgate manuscripts are even more divergent than this. One reads:

Tres sunt qui testimonium dant [in terra], spiritus aqua et sanguis. 8 [et tres sunt, qui testimonium dant in cælo pater verbum et spiritus] et tres unum sunt.  
Three there are that give testimony [in earth]: the spirit, the water, and the blood. 8 [And three there are that give testimony in heaven: Father, Word, and Spirit]; and three one are (many, if not most, Vulgate manuscripts omit this last clause from v. 8, but here it is missing from the interpolation in v. 7).

Note that although it is unique in what it includes, the Latin reading in this manuscript follows all the Old Latins in where it's included, being a transposition of what ended up making its way from late texts of the Vulgate into the Greek manuscripts. It's a dislocated text!

The evidence available to us may be sufficient to show how the early version of this interpolation arose--the only mystery yet to be solved is how it got transposed in its final edition--a mystery I here assist to the reader to solve. We begin with the first interpolated phrase, in terra (in earth), seen in a quotation by the sixth-century Bishop Facundus, who wrote:

De Patre et Filio et Spiritu Sancto sic dicit: Tres sunt qui testimonium dant [in terra], spiritus aqua et sanguis, et tres unum sunt.   (Of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, it says: Three there are that testimony give [in earth]: spirit, water, and blood, and three one are). Ironically, he interpreted these as Spirit=The Father, Water=The Holy Spirit, and Blood=The Son. At any rate, we now had 6 witnesses instead of 3, and it was short step to add 'in heaven' to balance the two groups out. Although the Vulgate continued to be copied without the Comma for centuries, more and more scribes were putting it in. Some added the extra witnesses following the three that were already there, some preceding; eventually the latter prevailed. The different Greek versions could in part be due to their being independently translated from varying Latin witnesses.

In early sixth-century Bishop Fulgentius' quotation of John the evangelist, we have the insertion of in coeolo to Facundas' three interpretations. This reads the same as the Declaration of the Council of Carthage in 484:

tres sunt qui testimonium perhibent [in coelo, Pater, Verbum, et Spiritus,] et tres unum sunt.

Codex Ottobonianus, cited above, doesn't appear to have followed the usual Latin order--and the bulk of the subsequent Vulgate texts have done the same. The influence of Thomas Aquinas can also be seen behind dropping et tres unum sunt from most subsequently copied manuscripts of the Comma.

Significantly, no Latin text gives any basis for the presence of the word eis in either triad. But eis is inserted into the Comma on the Greek side to match the eis already in the canonical triad--an dittography carried over into the Complutensian text that changes the meaning from 'the three are one' to 'the three agree as one'. This interpolation-within-an-interpolation was never present in any Latin text until it began to be translated from the Greek of the Textus Receptus into the modern languages of Europe. In the 1550's, Protestants in Geneva were very active in Bible Translation. Among these was Theodore Beza, who provided a Latin translation of the New Testament that was consulted in translating the Geneva Bible. He later translated it into French. All three Bibles reflected the difference between the two triads resulting from the introduction of eis into the text (Beza's French translation in italics):

Nam tres sunt qui testificantur [in coelo, Pater, Sermo, & Spiritus sanctus: & hi tres unum sunt. 8 Et tres sunt qui testificantur in terra], spiritus & aqua & sanguis: & hi tres in unum consentiunt ('& ces trois-la se rapportent en un').

The King James version went on to exaggerate that difference by translating μαρτυροῦντες differently for each triad.

Going back about as far as we can to find the Comma in extant manuscripts, one from the late 5th century attributed to Vigilius of Thapsus reads,

in terra, aqua sanguis et caro, et tres in nobis sunt.
in earth: water, blood, and flesh; and three in us are.

Going back just as far, to the very oldest copy of the Vulgate (Codex Fuldensis), there is no Comma:
Quia tres sunt qui testimonium dant, spiritus et aqua et sanguis. Et tres unum sunt.
--even though it contains a prologue to the Catholic Epistles which reads as follows:
. . . illo praecipue loco ubi de unitate trinitatis in prima iohannis epistula, positum legimus in qua est ab infidelibus translatoribus multum erratum esse fidei ueritate, conperimus trium tantummodo uocabula hoc est aquae sanguinis et spiritus in ipsa sua editione potentes et patri uerbique ac spiritus testimonium omittentes, in quo maxime et fides catholica roboratur et patris et fili et spiritus sancti una diuinitatis substantia conprobatur.
. . . "especially in that text where we read the unity of the trinity placed in the first letter of John, where much error has occurred at the hands of unfaithful translators contrary to the truth of faith, who have kept just the three words water, blood and spirit in this edition omitting mention of Father, Word and Spirit in which especially the catholic faith is strengthened and the unity of substance of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is attested."

Note that although in this prologue the three extra witnesses are in the early location following the canonical three, these themselves are not in the order as found in any text of First John! There simply isn't any history of transmission from a specific Latin phrase going forward to a specific Greek phrase, much less one that goes back to a specific Greek original.

Scientist and Biblical Scholar Issac Newton investigated this interpolation in his book Two Notable Corruptions. He wrote,

Lastly it is to be observed that the reading of this text in ancient MSS is very various and uncertain. For this is a most infallible signe that the text has been tampered with & that those who first inserted this testimony knew of no certain authentick reading which they were to follow, but noted it in the margins of their books in such various forms of words as they thought conformable either to Jerome's correction of the text or to his Preface or to such marginal notes as they had seen in other books, & that sometimes without designing to make it part of the text; then the transcribers by these marginal notes corrected the text--some one way, some another--according to the best of their judgments. For as this testimony in some old MSS which want it in the text is found noted in the margin in another hand, so in others the various readings in the text are such as ought to result by transcribing it out of the margins.

Perhaps we could restate the opening axiom of this post as follows:

An interpolation which is brought into the text by a multiplicity of transmission streams will exhibit a wide variety of readings in the manuscripts at the end of those streams.

It does not logically follow, however, that an interpolation brought into the text by a single scribe will necessarily contain any variants whatsoever, as we saw in the case of 2 Kings 9:4.  All the variants of that verse stem solely from translators trying to make sense of it. It was Newton's observation that the path of interpolation was typically, if not invariably, via a marginal note. It is interesting in this regard to observe that most of the cases in which the Comma is found in a Greek manuscript, it is found in the margin. Newton found this to be the same case even in many of the Latin manuscripts.

So, does this mean that every time we come to a multiplicity of variants, we can assume an underlying translated interpolation? Certainly not. There could be other reasons for a multiplicity of readings, or for the lack of a majority reading. For example, the split between ἔχωμεν and ἔχομεν in Romans 5:1 is pretty  much right down the middle of the manuscript corpus, whether uncial or minuscule, original hand or corrector--due to the fact that W and O sounded the same in Greek by the time the book of Romans was being copied into the manuscripts we now have. It does not mean that the word in either form is an interpolation, although it's apparent that many scribes couldn't resist the urge to correct what 'didn't look right' in the text before them.

There's another passage with a number of variants, even exhibiting a transposition similar to that in the Comma. In fact, it has way more variants than is typical of passages of that length, 1 Cor 14:34-35 included. It's Matthew 21:29-31:

29 He answered and said, 'I will not': but afterward he repented, and went. 30 And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, 'I go, sir': and went not. 31 Whether of them twain did the will of his father?" They say unto him, "The first".

Thus the common reading. But some manuscripts (and all Bibles that still follow the WH text) read this way:

29 He answered and said, 'I (/go), sir,' but did not go. 30 And he came to the second (or other) and said likewise. And he answered and said, 'I will not': but afterward he repented, and went. 31 Which of them twain did the will of his father?" They say, "The last".

A couple of manuscripts even read this way:

29 He answered and said, 'I will not': but afterward he repented, and went. 30 And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, 'I, sir: and went not. 31 Whether of them twain did the will of his father?" They say, "The last".

or this way:

He answered and said, 'I go, sir,' but did not go. 30 And he came to the second and said likewise. And he answered and said, 'I will not': but afterward he repented, and went. 31 Which of them twain did the will of his father?" They say, "The first".

And even this is an extreme oversimplification of the evidence. The manuscripts are simply riddled with variants at this section. Even the Vulgate manuscripts are split between the first three versions of the story. Both Origen and Jerome commented on the multiplicity of manuscripts with variant readings here. But no one today proposes that any of the information in these verses was interpolated; they simply disagree on the order. And they disagree on their theories as to why the last two versions don't make sense. Really, the second one doesn't make much sense either--why would the father send his second son if the first one had already gone? I'm quite happy myself with the edition found in most manuscripts.

An early textual critic, Lachmann, did feel that there must be an interpolation here somewhere--but few have agreed on just what it was. It does seem to be clear that editorial tampering with what was already in the text is behind all the variants--not an interpolation.

I don't think much of the axiom that a multiplicity of readings indicates an interpolation--that's simply getting the cart before the horse. The best indication of an interpolation is the discovery of the same block of text at various places in the immediate context of its location in the majority of manuscripts. This is a clear sign that something once written in the margin had been moved into the adjoining text.

Now we're getting to the place where we can pull together all this information and apply it to 1 Corinthians 14:34-45--which, as it happens, has both an alleged multiplicity of readings and a dislocated text.

UPDATE June 2013:
While we now know that the Comma Johanneum did not exist in a Greek-only manuscript prior to finding its way into print, a close perusal of the literature of the centuries in which this question first came up shows that this fact was by no means assumed nor accepted by defenders of the Comma, who expected at any time for a Greek manuscript of earlier centuries to show up containing it. This erroneous thinking was perpetuated due to a misunderstanding of the textual notes in Stephanus--for example, by Calvin, who wrote, "As I see that it is found in the best and most approved copies, I am inclined to receive it as the true reading."

UPDATE August 2016:
I can now refer the reader to an exhaustive treatment of the history of the Johannine Comma as set forth by Grantley Robert McDonald in his second doctoral thesis (2011), in which he presents a historical case for the comma springing from centuries of allegorically interpreting the Three Witnesses as representing the three persons of the Trinity, it being only a matter of time before the passage itself was altered (in numerous ways, as we have shown) to make this more explicit.
An endless loop may be followed by clicking on this link.

UPDATE June 2018:
In the interests of accuracy, I provide here a link to Dallas Theological Seminary's library, which claims that the Colineus edition of 1534 did in fact not have the comma. I can't remember now, a decade later, what my source was that it did, so I'll let DTS have the final word on the matter. At any rate, Colineus provided an early but not lasting break from the standardisation of the Textus Receptus, so it is likely that he did omit the comma on the grounds of it not being in any of the manuscripts he consulted.

Priscillian and Leo on the Johannine Comma

I have written earlier on the Johannine Comma, without mentioning Priscillian, who is thought by many to have been its author around 380. Leaving aside such speculation, I bring in Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome in the mid-fifth century. A great foe of Priscillianism, he quoted directly from 1 John 5:6-8 in his tenth epistle, and headed up the Council of Chalcedon which released a quotation of it in both Greek and Latin. It would be instructive to see how these read.

Priscillian (or a protégé of his in Liber Apologeticus):
 Sicut Johannes ait: Tria sunt quae testimonium dicunt in terra: aqua caro et sanguis; et haec tria in unum sunt. Et tria sunt quae testimonium dicunt in coelo: pater, verbum et spiritus; et haec tria unum sunt in Christo Jesu.

Pope Leo the Great:
 Et spiritus est qui testificatur quoniam Spiritus est veritas. Quia tres sunt qui testimonium dant spiritus et aqua et sanguis et hi tres unum sunt.

Council of Chalcedon:
 Et spiritus est qui testificator quoniam Christus est veritas. Quia tres sunt qui testimonium dant spiritus aqua et sanguis et hi tres unum sunt.

Chalcedon Greek version:
. . .τρεις γαρ εισίν οι μαρτυρούντες, το πνεύμα και το ύδωρ και το αίμα, και οι τρεις εις το εν εισί.

The Greek version is significant, and differs from the publication of the Council, in retaining the reading in v. 6 as "the spirit is truth" rather than the Latin version, which typically reads "Christ is Truth." Thus it can be seen that both of these official reports followed the version current in their respective languages. The text, without the Comma, is exactly as it is in the majority of Greek copies--and the minority of Latin copes, respectively--that are extant today. The Comma appears to have either been unknown to Leo, or, at best, known but rejected as an intrusion of Priscillianism.

Furthermore, the Comma in Liber Apologeticus is significantly different than the version that eventually ended up in most Vulgate manuscripts--assuming that there even is a majority reading of the Comma. Note the variant caro (flesh) instead of spirit: this reading is also found in the earliest known copy of the Vulgate to contain the Heavenly Witnesses before the Earthly ones, the 11th century Paris Bibl. Maz. Lat. 7:
Quoniam tres sunt qui testimonium dant in coelo, pater verbum, et spiritus. Et tres sunt qui testimonium dant in terra, caro, sanguis et aqua; et hic tres in nobis unum sunt.

 I have not written about the Johannine Comma for some time, but new information has come available, especially regarding the Latin transmission thereof. Here are some preliminary results of my latest research.  

Different ways the Latin textual tradition renders “(they) bear record” in 1 John 5:7, followed by their distribution in the Stuttgart Vulgate

• testes (“are witnesses,“ 14x, none in Johannine literature)

• testificantur (“they testify,” 1x, none in Johannine literature)

• testimonium perhibent (“they provide testimony,” 3 of 4 are in Johannine literature )

• testimonium praebent (“they provide testimony,” none )

• Testimonium dicunt (“they speak testimony,” none)

• Testimonium dant (“they give testimony,” 1x, only in the Vulgate comma)

In his writings, John uses a form of the verb μαρτυρέω (testify) 44 times—a majority of all such uses in the entire NT. It is one of the major themes in Johannine literature. Now, when we look at the Vulgate text, we see that the majority of times the phrase “testimonium perhibent” (“they provide testimony”) is used in the NT are in the writings of John. And this remains the case regardless of what form of the expression is used. And this is, in fact, the common rendering in the Old Latin of μαρτυρέω in 1 John 5, including the several uses in the immediate context of verse 7. I have not yet determined how common it is in translating either half of the Comma, though. Nor where the first usage of testimonium dant is found.

The Berean Believers: Men, Women, or Jews?

Inasmuch as this blog's posts on the TNIV continue to be of interest to Zondervan and even the CBT itself, I feel compelled to complete as many posts on it as I can in time for consideration before the Newer and Improveder NIV comes out in 2011.

I've been reading the NIV again after having set it aside for a couple of decades, and of course one thing that frequently comes to mind as I go through it is, "I wonder how the TNIV changes this?" Such was the case this morning while reading Acts 17. And what do you know--when I went online to check the TNIV, I found a change from the NIV that actually appears to be for the better. Don't get too excited about it, though, until you've heard me out.

Acts 17:10-12 NIV
As soon as it was night, the brothers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. Many of the Jews believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.

Now, the common English text just had "these" as the subject of 'were' in v. 11, but in replacing it with a proper noun for the NIV, the CBT looked all the way to the sentence before the previous one to find an antecedent for the Greek pronoun outoi. But in looking the passage over again to update the gender reference, it appears that someone on the CBT noticed that the actual referent was probably the Jews who met at the synagogue; it's actually the noun just previous to the pronoun in the Greek text. Thus the following change in the TNIV, which, I will agree, corrects the overgeneralisation of the NIV:

Acts 17:10-12 TNIV
As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. Many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.

Okay, so of course 'brothers' had to become 'believers', a change from the specific to the general, consisting at least implicitly of an elevation of women to an influential position of leadership in the Thessalonian church which is in no wise implied in the Greek text itself. "The Berean Jews" as a change from the general to the specific is warranted, however, but only because the previous change from the specific to the general wasn't. I will grant, though, that the TNIV makes the identity of those noble Bereans more explicit than did the KJV and most of its revisions.

It was no innovation, however, for Zondervan had pinned the same label on the noble Bereans in its Amplified New Testament back before it had even taken over sponsorship of the NIV. In other words, the NIV was a step backward in translation excellence, and all the TNIV did was bring it forward to a previous standard of several decades earlier--a time span during which the English language had supposedly changed so much that a new rendition was warranted.

Looking further in the NIV, we find the missing 'Jews' in v. 12, where they are in contrast to the Greeks who believed along with them. The TNIV was able to dispense with the label here, having put it back where it belonged--although even there it is only implicit, not explicit, in the Greek text. But that's fine, as it fits the CBT translation philosophy.

What isn't fine, though, is that the decades-old gender-insensitive reading at the end of v. 12 was left uncorrected. Of course the CBT in the TNIV never tampered with explicit references to women, only with masculine references that they felt should explicitly include women. So "a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men" was just fine as-is. Or was it?

What the Greek literally reads is:

many therefore of them believed and of the hellenic women the honorable ones and of the men not a few

If I had no knowledge of Greek beyond what a lexicon would supply, I would probably assume that there were three classes of new believers mentioned here:

1. Many of the Berean Jews who had searched the Scriptures
2. The honorable ones among the Berean Greek women
3. Not a few Berean men

But really, I doubt this is how any translator actually understood it. The genitive phrases link three groups to the verb 'believed': 'them', 'the Greek women', and 'the men'. Thus the verse should be punctuated to read:

Many therefore of them believed, also of the Hellenic women (the honorable ones), as well as of the men--not a few.

This is the most likely reading of the KJV rendition:
Therefore many of them believed; also of honorable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few.

But translators have generally understood this to refer to the following three classes of new believers:

1. Many of the Berean Jews who had searched the Scriptures (implicitly just the men)
2. Many of the prominent Berean Greek women (mentioned in a place of emphasis)
3. Many of the prominent Berean Greek men

You can read a lot into this understanding of the passage; for instance, among the nobility the women were the first to respond to the gospel, and then went on to lead their husbands to Christ. But this isn't how the CBT saw the situation. Despite the above three classes being explicit in the Amplified Bible, Zondervan went on to sponsor a rendition which has yet to be revised, and yields the following classes of new believers:

1. Many Berean Jews (gender left unspecified as per TNIV philosophy)
2. A number of prominent Greek women
3. Many Greek men (these last two classes, by implication at least, also being Bereans)

The problem again is one of referent. The Greek plural adjectives (which in the genitive case are gender-neutral) ellhnidwn (Greek) and euschmonwn (honorable) are only found once in the passage, but the TNIV does not apply both of them to men and women equally. This, even though they take just two mentions of 'numerous' and apply them to all three classes.

In other words, the CBT translations--like a straightforward reading of the KJV, implicitly depriving the Berean men of their prominence--nonetheless grant them an explicit Greek identity. This they do differently than the KJV, which allows the possibility of the Berean men being honorable, but not being Greeks. While I wouldn't want to encourage one approach or the other, either is allowed in the complex world of Greek-to-English translation, and most revisions of the KJV up to the present decade have retained its ambiguity. One of the most recent of these, however, the NRSV, while attempting to make more explicit the honor due the men, practically went the other way with the women. In trying not to mention the women in their usual grammatical place (after the men), the NRSV comes to within a single comma of implying to the English reader that they weren't prominent, even though that is explicit in the Greek:

Many of them therefore believed, including not a few Greek women and men of high standing.

This revision also perpetuates the NIV's overgeneralisation of including Greeks in the class of Scripture-searching Bereans--even though it calls them 'Jews' in the previous verse!

If I might add one more dig here, consider the refusal of the CBT to include a woman named Damaris in a class called 'men' in light of The Message's take on this passage, which, like the NRSV, includes Greeks in a class called 'Jews' (something not entirely impossible in biblical English, but certainly not understandable as such to Today's Young Person):

The Jews received Paul's message . . . . A lot of them became believers, including many Greeks who were prominent in the community, women and men of influence.

In Acts 6, Eugene Peterson referred to the two classes of Jewish believers as "Greek-speaking believers--'Hellenists'" and "Hebrew-speaking believers." I don't believe he actually intended to equate the two here; had he consulted the NIV instead of the RSV in preparing this paraphrase, he probably would have caught the inconsistency.

Now in conclusion, I have to say that the CBT may very well have made a conscious decision not to include 'men' in the class of honorable Bereans--at least not in verse 12, that is. And it's certainly not out of the realm of possibility to translate the text thus--the NLT did it as well, though not as explicitly. But there are actually two levels of inconsistency here, at least one of which is inexcusable.

First of all, the TNIV identifies the men as Greek, but not as honorable--although their honorable status is fully as implicit in the text as their Greek identity. This perpetuates a grammatical inconsistency in the RSV, which was apparently a favorite version of quite a few of the original members of the CBT. But at least the RSV, unlike the revision that replaced it, was able to keep the Jews straight from the Greeks.

Secondly, the TNIV, again like the now-defunct RSV, restricts the application of the adjective 'honorable' to just the Greek women of Berea. While this may be an acceptable translation, it shows a glaring inconsistency in the CBT's translation philosophy as it comes through in the TNIV. In the TNIV, the CBT has bent over backward to include the women in every possible explicit reference to men, but has made no such effort not to overlook the men whenever women are explicitly mentioned.

In the process of fixing a grammatical inconsistency of racial identification in the supposedly gender-insensitive NIV, the CBT has perpetuated the very philosophical inconsistency that made it insensitive to gender identification--but couldn't seem to see it through their pink-colored glasses. Is this not always what happens when, in an attempt to forcibly eliminate entrenched discrimination, those who tamper with societal norms must needs send the one class down in order to bring the other up?