Saturday, December 24, 2022

Norman L. Geisler and Ron Rhodes on 1 John 5:7

  

It is true that this verse has virtually no support among the early Greek manuscripts, though it is found in Latin manuscripts. Its appearance in late Greek manuscripts is based on the fact that Erasmus was placed under ecclesiastical pressure to include it in his Greek New Testament of 1522, having omitted it in his two earlier editions of 1516 and 1519 because he could not find any Greek manuscripts which contained it.

 

Its inclusion in the Latin Bible probably results from a scribe incorporating a marginal comment (gloss) into the text as he copied the manuscript of 1 John. But including it in the text violates almost every rule of textual criticism. Even the New King James Version, which generally retains the longer readings and disputed passages (see Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11), comments in the margin that this is “a passage found in only four or five very late Greek mss.” (Norman L. Geiser and Ron Rhodes, When Cultists Ask: A Popular Handbook on Cultic Misinterpretations [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1997], 299)