Joseph Smith not only made
unnecessary changes in the Bible, but he also failed to see the places where
the text of the Bible really needed correction. There is one statement in the
King James Version, 1 John 5:7-8, which scholars are certain is an interpolation.
In modern versions of the Bible this statement has been removed to conform with
the ancient Greek manuscripts. Below is a comparison of the text in the King
James Version and that found in the Revised Standard Version:
KING JAMES VERSION—1 John
5:7-8: . . . there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the
Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that
bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these
three agree in one. (The New Testament in Four Versions, p. 766)
REVISED STANDARD VERSION—1
John 5:8: There are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and
these three agree. (The New Testament in Four Versions, p. 766)
In Our Bible and the
Ancient Manuscripts we find this information:
The text is found in no Greek
MSS, except a few of very late date in which it has been inserted from the
Latin. It is a purely Latin interpolation of African origin, which, beginning
as a gloss, first found its way into the text of Spain, where it appears in the
Freising Fragments, and later in the Vulgate codices Cavensis and Toletanus.
Thence it spread over Europe
as an unequivocal Scripture “proof” of the doctrine of the Trinity. (Our
Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, p. 258)
Bruce M. Metzger gives this
information:
Among the criticisms levelled
at Erasmus one of the most serious appeared to be the charge of Stunica, one of
the editors of Ximenes’ Complutensian Polyglot, that his text lacked
part of the final chapter of 1 John, namely the Trinitarian statement
concerning “the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
And there are three that bear witness in earth” (1 John v. 7-8, King James version).
Erasmus replied that he had not found any Greek manuscript containing these
words, though he had in the meanwhile examined several others besides those on
which he relied when first preparing his text. In an unguarded moment 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 was made to order! As it now appears,
the Greek manuscript had probably been written in Oxford about 1520 by a
Franciscan friar named Froy (or Roy), who took the disputed words from the
Latin Vulgate. Erasmus stood by his promise and inserted the passage in his
third edition (1522), but he indicates in a lengthy footnote his suspicions
that the manuscript had been prepared expressly in order to confute him.
Among the thousands of Greek
manuscripts of the New Testament examined since the time of Erasmus, only three
others are known to contain this spurious passage. They are Greg. 88, a
twelfthcentury manuscript which has the Comma written in the margin in a seventeenthcentury
hand; Tisch. w 110, which is a sixteenth-century manuscript copy of the
Complutensian Polyglot Greek text; and Greg. 629, dating from the fifteenth or,
as Riggenbach has argued, from the latter half of the sixteenth century. The
oldest known citation of the Comma is in a fourth-century Latin treatise
entitled Liber apologeticus (ch. 4), attributed either to Priscillian or
to his follower, Bishop Instantius of Spain. The Comma probably originated as a
piece of allegorical exegesis of the three witnesses and may have been written as
a marginal gloss in a Latin manuscript of 1 John, whence it was taken into the
text of the Old Latin Bible during the fifth century. The passage does not
appear in manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate before about A.D. 800. (The Text
of the New Testament, pp. 101-102)
Even in Joseph Smith’s time
this portion of 1 John was rejected by many scholars. Adam Clarke stated:
Though a conscientious
advocate for the sacred doctrine contained in the disputed text, and which I
think expressly enough revealed in several other parts of the sacred writings,
I must own the passage in question stands on a most dubious foundation. (Clarke’s
Commentary, vol. 6, 1824, p. 929)
An examination of the writings
of Mormon scholars reveals that they also question the authenticity of this
verse. Arch S. Reynolds stated:
The extraneous matter added in
the Authorized Version is clearly an interpolation, since the above is wanting
in every manuscript except one before the fourteenth century, and in all early
versions. (“A Study of Joseph Smith’s Bible Revision,” p. 169)
Richard L. Anderson, of the
Brigham Young University, stated: One of the few major additions that
seem apparent is 1 John 5:7.
The observation is made that
in addition to three earthly witnesses, the spirit, water, and blood, there are
three heavenly witnesses, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, which are one. The
text of the fifth century did not speak of the heavenly Trinity, and the
fact that very few Greek manuscripts add the heavenly Trinity makes it probable
that this comment was not an original part of John’s letter. (Fourteenth
Annual Symposium on the Archaeology of the Scriptures, BYU, 1963, p. 53)
Now, if Joseph Smith was
inspired at all in his work on the Scriptures we would expect to find this
interpolation removed in his “Inspired Revision.” Instead, however, we find
that it appears exactly as written in the King James Version:
For there are three that bear
record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are
one.
And there are three that bear
witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood; and these three
agree in one. (Inspired Version, by Joseph Smith, 1 John 5:7-8) (Jerald
Tanner and Sandra Tanner, Mormonism: Shadow or Reality? [5th ed.; Salt
Lake City: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1987, 2008], 389-90, emphasis in original)
