Textual problems concerning the longer version of 5:7. The Textus Receptus (Received Text) of 1 John 5:7-8 contains additional words
which are absent from the earliest and best Greek manuscripts.manuscript and contextual evidence is decidedly against their authenticity.588 The longer reading is found only in eight late mss, four of which have the words in a marginal note. Most of these mss (2318, 221, and [with minor variations] 61, 88, 429, 629, 636, and 918) originate from the 16th century; the earliest ms, codex 221 (10th century) includes the reading in a marginal note, added sometime after the original composition. Thus, there is no sure evidence of this reading in any Greek ms until the 1500’s These words, known as the Comma Johanneum (Latin for “Johannine sentence”
are inserted between vv. 7-8 and read as follows: ejn tw'/ oujranw'/, oJ pathvr, oJ lovgo", kaiV toV a{gion pneu'ma, kaiV ou|toi oiJ trei'" e{n eijsi. 5:8 kaiV trei'" eijsin oiJ marturou'nte" ejn th'/ gh'/ (“…in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. 5:8 And there are three that testify on earth…”
. Although the words are fairly well known in the English-speaking world (primarily through their inclusion in the King James Version), ; each such reading was apparently composed after Erasmus’ Greek NT was published in 1516. The story of how the longer reading was omitted from the first two editions of Erasmus’ text (1516, 1519) but came to be included in his later editions is well known. One of Erasmus’ most vocal critics was Stunica, one of the editors of the Complutensian Polyglot, who charged that Erasmus’ text lacked the trinitarian affirmation of 1 John 5:7-8 (the passage currently under discussion). Erasmus responded that he had not found any Greek manuscript containing these words, but—unwisely as it turned out—promised that if he were shown one Greek manuscript containing the words, he would insert them. A manuscript containing the “missing” words was produced, probably written to order around 1520 by a Franciscan friar who took the words from the Latin Vulgate and translated them back into Greek.589 Erasmus became aware of this manuscript between May 1520 and September 1521. He kept his promise and inserted the words of the Comma into his third edition (1522), but indicated in a lengthy footnote his suspicions that the Greek manuscript containing the disputed words had been written to order.590 The influential German translation of Luther was based on Erasmus’ second edition (1519) and so did not contain the Comma. But the translators of the King James Version, who worked mainly from Theodore Beza’s tenth edition (1598), which was based on the third and later editions of Erasmus (as well as those of Stephanus), included the Comma because they found it in these editions of the Greek text.
The force of the o{ti (Joti, “for”
at the beginning of 5:7. A second causal Joti-clause (after the one at the end of the preceding verse) is somewhat awkward, especially since the reasons offered in each are somewhat different. The content of the second Joti-clause (the one in question here) goes somewhat beyond the content of the first. The first Joti-clause, the one at the end of 1 John 5:6, stated the reason why the Spirit is the one who testifies: because the Spirit is the truth. The second Joti-clause, here, states that there are three witnesses, of which the Spirit is one. It is probably best, therefore, to understand this second o{ti (Joti) as indicating a somewhat looser connection than the first, not strictly causal but more inferential in sense (the English translation “for” captures this inferential sense).591
