Loading...I’ve mentioned several problems with the King James Version in previous posts. Arguably the most significant set of problems has to do with the text that the translators were translating. The brief reality is that in the early 17th century, Greek editions of the New Testament were based on very few and highly inferior manuscripts. Only after the King James was translated did scholars begin to become aware of the existence of older, and far better, manuscripts.
The manuscripts of the New Testament (and of all books from antiquity) were copied — prior to the invention of printing — almost always by scribes who did their best to make faithful reproductions of the copies they were copying, and many of them did a remarkably good job. Others did a not-so-good job. Since mistakes can get replicated over time, and introduced over time, in general it is a good idea to consult the *earliest* manuscripts for determining what an author of a book wrote. The later manuscripts tend to be worse (that’s not an *absolute* rule, but a relatively good one).
As we saw in the previous post, the first edition of the Greek NT to be published after the invention of printing was by the Rotterdam humanist Erasmus, whose 1516 edition went through several revisions over the years. Other publishers based their own editions on Erasmus, rather than doing a careful study of the surviving manuscripts themselves. Eventually it became such a standard text that it came to be known as the Textus Receptus (the “received text” – that is, the text everyone used). Erasmus’s edition was based just on the few Greek manuscripts at his disposal, which were late medieval and that had the typical kinds of mistakes that one can find in late medieval manuscripts.
As a result, translations into English of the Greek New Testament, based on Erasmus’s editions and those that replicated, more or less, his text, include translations of passages that were almost certainly not originally in the New Testament, but that had come to be added later by scribes. The most famous of all is
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In the Latin Vulgate – the Bible of Western Christendom for centuries – 1 John 5:7-8 states that “there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. And these three are one.” This then is the doctrine of the trinity: there are three divine beings in heaven and even though there are three of them, they are actually only one. One God, in three persons – the doctrine of the trinity. Nowhere else in the NT is the doctrine explicitly stated (although Father, Son, and Spirit are mentioned in the same breath elsewhere. But not the doctrine itself, which includes the idea that: “these three are one.”)
When Erasmus produced his first edition of the Greek NT, he left that verse out, since it was not in the Greek manuscript he was using. What happened next is a matter of debate. Some scholars have argued that the account of events widely known in the scholarly literature is apocryphal. But the way the story normally is told is as follows: Church theologians were incensed that Erasmus had left the Trinity out of the Bible and attacked him for it. He explained that he could not find the verse in any of the Greek manuscripts he had consulted, and what he was producing was, after all, a Greek New Testament. He did agree, though, that if someone could show him a Greek manuscript that had the verse, he would include it in his next edition. And so, someone (literally) produced a manuscript – adding the verse by translating it in its proper place from the Latin.
And so Erasmus was true to his word, and included it in his next edition. It was this subsequent edition that was used by other publishers of other editions of the Greek NT, and these were the editions used by the translators of the King James. And so you will find the verse in the King James.
As more and more manuscripts were discovered, it became clear that in fact the verse was not part of the original text of 1 John, and so modern translations do not include it. When these translations started to appear at the end of the 19th century and into the 20th, there was considerable uproar when it was recognized that they did not include the leading proof text for the Trinity, and translators were roundly accused of being anti-Christian, liberal, untrustworthy, and even demonic tools of the Devil. But they were in fact simply translating the text as it had been handed down in the textual tradition. Sometimes readers don’t want the Bible as it was originally written, but only the Bible as they are familiar with it.
That is why those who insist on following the King James version insist that the story of Jesus and the Woman taken in Adultery (John 7:53-8:11) and the final twelve verses of Mark’s Gospel (Mark 16:9-21) were originally in the NT. They weren’t. They are *terrific* stories, but, well, they were added by later scribes.
The KJV has lots of other problems like this. Like the later additions to the text, it too is powerful and moving. But that doesn’t mean it is accurate, if what you want is to know what the authors themselves actually wrote.
Hey Professor Ehrman!
When I was an Evangelical, 1 John 5:7-8 was a verse that gave me a tremendous amount of grief. Based on what I considered (from my reasonably intelligent, but non-scholarly view) to be a ‘straightforward’ reading of the New Testament, the doctrine of the trinity seemed dubious, and I had a major crisis of faith over that. (If only your blog had been around back then!)
At some point, I read the NT in a NKJV translation instead of the NIV, and I definitely recall feeling confused about why my NIV and other translations did not agree with the very specific and very theologically necessary wording of my NKJV Bible. This led to even more grief, because then I was ACTIVELY choosing to read the NKJV for that one verse specifically and that didn’t track for me either.
I look back on that as one of the earliest times when I realized the Bible, while perhaps inspired, could not possibly be inerrant in the sense that I had been taught. Much like yourself, this realization is not what caused me to leave the faith. Your books, lectures, and blog posts really echo my own journey in this regard.
~Jake
I’m sure you know that to skeptics, and maybe even liberal Christians, these battles over the “correct” text are almost like two Trekkies at a convention debating whether Spock could exist since humans and Vulcans are clearly two different species. I almost wonder if people who want to argue for one correct, inspired version of the text are using it as a distraction from what the text actually says. I mean, there’s a lot of problematic ideas in both testaments. Is the fundamentalists’ fear that any human effect on the Bible makes it all suspect and potentially invalid, therefore the text must be perfect? Seems like a very tenuous faith to me, built on a potential house of cards. Liberal Christians seem to have a more robust faith than that!
Yes they do indeed. But of course any interpreter of texts (Homer, Cicero, Shakespeare) wants to know what the author actually said….
“In the Latin Vulgate – the Bible of Western Christendom for centuries – 1 John 5:7-8 states that “there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. And these three are one.”
You may have the wrong Vulgate, Bart.
I read verses 7-8:
“quia tres sunt qui testimonuum dant
Spiritus et aqua et sanguis
et tres unum sunt”
The words you give are not found in any of the nine cited Vulgate witnesses for 1 John.
This illustrates an important point though; 16th century textual scholars were not seeking to establish a text from the ‘best and oldest manuscripts’, but from the ‘best and oldest versions’; their study of manuscript sources had the objective of detemining the better *version* for each text. Protestants maintained that the Byzantine Greek consistently witnessed the original text better; Catholics that the Vulgate Latin did. Arguably, if the Catholics had trusted the oldest Vulgate wintesses; they had the better case.
As it happened, seeking for the best and oldest Greek manuscripts has turned out to be the better approach. But that is dependant on the fortuitous survival of some very old and complete Greek witnesses.
The Johannine Comma started appearing in Vulgate manuscripts in the early 9th century, and the text was widely known and used. That’s why Stunica and other Catholic theologians were so scandalized by Erasmus having left it out (do you think there was some other reason?). Modern editions of the Vulgate do as well, and that’s probably what you’re looking at. It is found, though, in the highly influential Editio Clementina (Biblia Sacra Vulgatae Editionis Sixi Quinti iussu rcognita….) from teh 1590s. In 1897 Pope Leo XIII confirmed that it was not safe to conclude that the verse was missing from the original text of 1 John 5, but the decree was not binding and subsequent scholarship tended to confirm that it was a later addition to the text.
Grantley McDonald proposes the primary reason for Stunica’s attack being to undermine Erasmus’s scholarly reputation; and boost that of the Complutensian Polyglot.
“the delayed publication of the Complutensian Polyglot had the unexpected benefit of allowing corrections to be made to respond to some of the more controversial aspects of Erasmus’ text. In this way some of the reputational value of the Complutensian bible could be recovered. Stunica’s published attacks on Erasmus’ text thus had the function not merely of defending the true text of the New Testament, but also of undermining the reputational value of Erasmus’ edition by casting his orthodoxy and scholarly integrity into doubt.”
Hence the cancellation of the Polyglot’s original sheets for this passage, their replacements now having a note implying that Erasmus’s reading was motivated by heresy.
Erasmus was not averse to including the comma – he printed it in his ‘trade’ book; ‘ The Paraphrases’. He was always a Catholic and a Trinitarian believer. When he had made his translation, he had no way of knowing that the comma was nowhere in the Greek manuscript tradition. Hence his joy when one ‘appeared’, albeit one that he recognised as ‘recent’.
Do we have any indication from him or anyone else that he was happy to see the ms?
From McDonald.
Stunica published his attack on Erasmus in June 1521, and letters went back and forth thirteen times. All academic Europe was watching the heavyweight contest of the year.
Erasmus published the exchange in October 1521. He noted that, although Stunica had originally claimed that the ‘comma’ text in the Polyglot was from a ‘Rhodian codex’; he had subsequently gone quiet on this. Erasmus concluded he was bullshitting, and taunted him mercilessly:
“Though my dear Stunica so often boasts of his Rhodian codex, to which he attributes such authority, he has strangely not adduced it as an oracle here, especially since it almost agrees with our [Latin] codices so well that it might seem to be a ‘Lesbian straight-edge’ [i.e. evidence made to fit the occasion].”
Then he put the boot in:
“However—lest I should keep anything hidden—there has been found in England a single Greek manuscript in which occurs what is lacking in the commonly-accepted texts… I therefore restored from this British codex what was said to be lacking in our editions, lest anyone should have any cause to blame me unjustly. However, I suspect that this codex was adapted to agree with the manuscripts of the Latins”
Right. I don’t se this as an expression of joy but reluctance.
This was a knock-out victory for Erasmus, and his version of the Greek New Testament as against that in the Complutensian Polyglot. Erasmus was cock-a-hoop; and repeated his devastating conclusions verbatim in the 1522 edition of his ‘Annotations’. Not only had he been able to demonstrate conclusively his own version’s Catholic orthodoxy against the baseless accusations of Stunica; he had also established throughout the Latin academic world, that his Greek reading of the text of the ‘comma’ had bona-fide manuscript authority; which the very different Greek text in the Complutensian Polyglot had not.
George Williams has shown, even in Spain, ‘Catholic Evangelism’ was to be firmly ‘Erasmian’ in character from 1522 onwards, largely arising from Erasmus’s academic triumph in this exchange; as a form of ‘biblical humanism’ that was clearly differentiated from emerging Lutheranism.
Nevertheless Erasmus, in the ‘Annotations’, continued to maintain the ‘comma’ as absent, not only from (almost) all Greek authorities, but also from the best Latin authorities – Augustine and Bede – and from early surviving Vulgate Latin manuscripts. Against these stood Jerome’s Vulgate ‘prologue’ to the Catholic Epistles, which asserted the ‘comma’. Erasmus was unaware this prologue was a fraud.
Each to his own Bart (and Erasmus’s heavy sarcasm can make his meanings tricky to evaluate) but I read no reluctance at all, just glee at having bested Stunica. What Erasmus does say is that he has now included the comma to protect his reputation from slanderous misrepresentations.
What Erasmus does not imply is that the British codex has forced his hand. He had included the comma in his Latin New Testament of June 1521, so he was already committed to the change, albeit with continued reservations that the ‘British codex’ appeared to be adapted from the Vulgate. But it gave him a Greek exemplar text, which was was more than the Polyglot could claim.
The proposal that the British codex had been produced ‘to order’ seems impossible on time grounds. John Clement, who owned it, was around Erasmus in Leuven from April 1520; just about the time that Erasmus published his response to Edward Lee – on which the myth of ‘Erasmus’s promise’ depends. The codex must have been completed some time after 1516 (as its marginal notes cite Erasmus first edition), but before Clement left England with it.
Ah, joy at besting Stunica. OK, I thought you meant he was rejoicing that the Trinity really was in there. Or maybe you do mean that?
Not joy; though, speculatively an element of relief. Erasmus maintained the pose that, in his Greek editions, he was simply reporting the best evidenced readings from manuscripts of the Greek version. But this was not exactly the case; for instance the account of Paul on the Damascus Road at Acts 9:5-6, where Erasmus readings from his first edition corresponded to the Vulgate in adding text not present in any Greek witnesses – Erasmus’s Greek text being harmonised from the counterpart Damascus road narratives in Chapters 22 and 26.
Erasmus settled here on including the Vulgate-consistent Greek phraseology in his New Testament edition, while in the accompanying volume of his Annotations, explaining that no Greek witnesses supported this text at that point. From his third edition in 1522, he was able to treat the ‘comma’ consistently.
Erasmus’s reservations about the comma were less a matter of its prescence or absence in particular Greek (and Latin) witnesses; than its absence throughout the ancient Greek and Latin patristic presentation of the doctrine of the Trinity. Which convinced him that it must have been absent from their bibles. Arguments better presented in his Annotations than his text.
Recently I was sitting on a park bench in the shade on a hot day when a frail old lady sat beside me and began to talk, at first recounting (with slurred speech) the names of her children or grandchildren but soon warming to the topic of the King James Bible and the Book of Revelation, both of which she held in extremely high esteem. If I said anything she told me she didn’t have her hearing aids in and couldn’t understand a word, so it was a very one-sided conversation.
The fact that “Uniting Church” (the denomination that emerged from the 1977 union of Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregationalist churches in Australia) has exactly 13 letters in it held some profound numerological significance for her, though I did not understand why. I wanted to ask how many letters it would have in Greek.
When I looked up some translations on 1 John 5:7-8, quite a number has it as “spirit, water and blood”. Just wondering how that came about since the Vulgate has it as “the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit”
You’re almost certainly looking at translations that are based on the Greek, no?
If the comma johannine is an explicit statement of *the* trinity, isnt “there are three that bear witness the spirit the water and the blood and these three in one are” an explicit statement of *a* trinity?
A trinity of spirit water and blood? Yes, that would be three things that are one. But it would not be a godhead made up of three persons who are one.
But it means 1st John talks about a trinity of testifiers who are 3 in 1, and one of those testifiers is the spirit.
The only question then is who are the other two testifiers, the water and the blood, that make up the rest of this 3 in one.
For the author of 1 John, The water, blood, and spirit all are in agreement that Christ is the Son of God. Water and Blood are not members of the godhead. There are debates about what they do stand for: Jesus’ baptism (water), death (blood), and divine testimony Spirit?)
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The “spirit the water and the blood” is supposed to be eternal life. “He is the true God and eternal life.”
1 John 5:9 “If we receive human testimony, the testimony of God is *greater*, for this is the testimony of God that he has testified to his Son.”
this is a reference to John 5 and John 8:17
“Not that I accept such human testimony … but I have a testimony *greater* than John’s.”
“In your law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true.”
So the point is that with human testimony 2 or 3 testifiers are enough to establish truth. Here we have 2 or 3 *divine* testimonies, which are greater than human testimony, so certainly establish truth.
John 3:11 “we testify about what we have seen” (He’s talking about the three testifiers)
John 3::12 “I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?”
So the Johannine comma is just making explicit what is implicit in the original text.
When gJohn and 1st John are read together its clear they are talking about three divine testifiers who are 3 in 1!
So considering that the Complutensian Polyglot was printed already in 1514, ie. before Erasmus had published his first edition and way before this custom-made Greek manuscript was available, I was wondering if and how the Johannine Comma was included in the Polyglot.
Yes, the Polyglot does have the passage, but it’s not clear it the editors got it from a Greek manuscript or assumed it should belong in the text based on the Latin tradition, and so translated it into Greek. Scholars debate the issue.
Excuse me for being dense, but where is the comma in question located in the text?
Ah, the Johannine “comma” is a technical term, not referring to a punctuation mark (,) but to a portion of a sentence that is an understandable unit. We use commas to separate off those kinds of units in English; but here it is referring to the unit itself (the one that says there are three, the Father the Word and the Spirit, and that these three are one)
Hi Bart, Do you know if the New King James Version merely updates the English while using the same problematic Greek New Testament manuscripts that were used for the KJV? I ask because I know some people who think the NKJV resolves most of the problems of the KJV.
I believe the NKJV translated the “textus receptus” for the NT, so, the same form of the text behind the KJV.