| History of 1 John 5:7 For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. (NKJV) And it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is the truth. (NAS) The only verse in the whole Bible that explicitly ties God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit in one "Triune" being is the verse of 1 John 5:7 "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one." This verse is now universally recognized as being a later "insertion" of the Church and all recent versions of the Bible, such as the Revised Standard Version the New Revised Standard Version, the New American Standard Bible, the New English Bible, the Phillips Modern English Bible, etc. have all unceremoniously expunged this verse from their pages. Why is this? The scripture translator Benjamin Wilson gives the following explanation for this action in his "Emphatic Diaglott." Mr. Wilson says: "This text concerning the heavenly witness is not contained in any Greek manuscript which was written earlier than the fifteenth century. It is not cited by any of the ecclesiastical writers; not by any of early Latin fathers even when the subjects upon which they treated would naturally have lead them to appeal to it's authority. It is therefore evidently spurious." British scholar Richard Porson published that the verse of 1 John 5:7 was only first inserted by the Church into the Bible in the year 400C.E.(Secrets of Mount Sinai, James Bentley, pp. 30-33). Peake's Commentary on the Bible says, "The famous interpolation after 'three witnesses' is not printed even in RSVn, and rightly. It cites the heavenly testimony of the Father, the logos, and the Holy Spirit, but is never used in the early Trinitarian controversies. No respectable Greek MS contains it. Appearing first in a late 4th-cent. Latin text, it entered the Vulgate and finally the NT of Erasmus." Such comparatively unimportant matters as the description of Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem are spoken about in great detail since they fulfill prophesy (Mk 11:2-10, Lk 19:30-38). On the other hand, the Bible is completely free of any description of the "Trinity" which is supposedly a description of the very nature of the one who rode this donkey, who is claimed to be the only son of God, and who allegedly died for the sins of all of mankind. If every aspect of Christian faith is described in such detail such that even the description of this donkey is so vividly depicted for us, then why is the same not true for the description of the "Trinity"? [email protected] A centuries-long debate, about whether I John 5:7 (and some of verse 8) was a genuine part of I John began in the 16th century. Only 4, all very late, of nearly 500 manuscripts of I John have the disputed words in the text, none of them agreeing exactly with the printed form found in the so-called 'received text'. Four more manuscripts have the disputed words in the margin, in some cases having been copied there from printed editions. The words are absent from all the ancient versions of the NT except the Latin versions (and even there it is absent from the original form of the Vulgate) and with considerable variations among the manuscripts which do have it--the few Armenian and Slavonic manuscripts that contain the passage are apparently back-translations from printed Greek texts, and of no independent value as witnesses. The disputed passage is found in Wycliffe's English version, all the pre-Luther printed German Bibles, and a German manuscript perhaps of Waldensian origin, but all of these were based on the Latin Vulgate version as it existed in the late Middle ages. They do nothing more than testify that the passage is found in the Medieval Vulgate, something not in dispute. No Greek-speaking church father, even during the great Trinitarian controversies of the 2nd-4th centuries shows any knowledge of the existence in Greek of the disputed words, which is inexplicable if they are genuine, seeing how the Greek fathers ransacked the Bible from Genesis to Revelation for every possible proof text--real or imagined--for the doctrine of the Trinity. Trinitarian writers who likewise deemed the evidence against the genuineness of the passage as overwhelming: Burgon, F.H.A. Scrivener, Martin Luther, Tregelles, Tyndale, Horne, Scofield. For an honest and concise presentation of the evidence regarding the passage, I suggest the reader consult the passage in the commentaries of Adam Clark, Henry Alford, and B. F. Westcott, or Bruce Metzger's A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. ---Doug Kutilek <[email protected]> God and Saviour The Greek text of Titus 2:13 (there is no variation in the various printed Greek texts here) clearly and unambiguously teaches that the two terms "great God" and "savior" apply to one and only one person in this verse, namely, "Jesus Christ." This is one of the strongest "proof-texts" of the Deity of Christ in the entire Greek NT. The KJV's rendering "the great God, and our Savior Jesus Christ" is at best ambiguous (it always puzzled me), and at worst separates the terms and applies them to two persons, namely God the Father, and Jesus Christ. Because the KJV fails to unambiguously and clearly teach in this verse that Jesus Christ is both "our great God" and "savior," it is an erroneous and deficient translation (see similarly 2 Peter 1:1). ---Doug Kutilek <[email protected]>God and Saviour |
| WHO IS GOD? |
| man trying to make God into 3 people... |
| There is only one God. The entire world was created by this one perfect, all-powerful deity. (Isaiah 46:9, James 2:19, Genesis 1:1) God is a spirit. He is an invisible, supernatural being that fills the universe. (John 4:24) Jesus is the image of the invisible God. God, a spirit, wrapped himself in the body of Jesus to 1) die for our sins and 2) be a human example of how we should live (Col. 1:15). The fact that God conceived this fleshly body for himself gives him the title, father. He "fathered" the body that he then lived in as Jesus. Jesus said the father dwells in me (John 14:10). Beware of the traditions of men, in Jesus dwells all the fullness of the Godhead (Col 2:8-9). Jesus is the name of God. The invisible God revealed himself to man in many ways (ex: voice, fire, rock). His main manifestations are as father, as son, and as holy ghost. These are titles, just like father, son, and husband can all refer to the same person. Each role is very important but is not a name in itself. When God became a man and suffered and died for the sins of everyone in the world, then his name as our savior was revealed. 'Jesus' means 'God our salvation'! Knowing God's name is important because there is no other name to be saved by (Acts 4:12). Jesus also said that if you gather in his name, his spirit will be there with you (Matt 18:20). |