Transcription
I want to tell you the fascinating story of when the Trinity verse was added to the Bible. And this is a very well-documented historical fact, and for my guide, I want to quote from "Whose Words?: The Story Behind Who Changed the New Testament and Why" by Professor Bart Ehrman, who is an expert in textual criticism on biblical manuscripts, and he tells us this story, which I would like to share with you. Now we need to go back in time to the 16th century, and we need to look at a man named 'Erasmus.' Erasmus was an enterprising scholar from Holland, a Dutch scholar who produced the first printed edition of the Greek New Testament. Now, the New Testament itself was written in Greek. In the centuries that followed, it was translated into Latin, and the church attempted to use the Latin translation. So, Erasmus produced a text in the original Greek, which he hoped would be a critical scholarly addition. And this is called the first published edition. Now, for the most part, Bart Ehrman says, he relied on a number of late medieval manuscripts. In fact, on only one twelfth-century manuscript of the Gospels, and another also from the 12th century for the book of Acts and the letters. And as we will see, he says it is this edition that he produced of the Greek New Testament that was used by later translators of the King James Bible a century later, and almost all translations until the end of the 19th century. And he tells a very interesting story about this Trinity verse, and he says, actually, as it turns out, these manuscripts that Erasmus used were not of the best quality. They were produced a total of eleven hundred years after the originals. For example, the main manuscript that Erasmus used for the Gospels contained both the story of the woman taken in adultery in the Gospel of John and the last verses in the Gospel of Mark that tell the story of the resurrection in the earliest Gospel. Fragments that were not originally part of the Gospels, as we learned in the preceding chapter. And he rightly points out that the earliest manuscripts, Codex Sinaiticus, for example, do not contain any resurrection appearance in the earliest Gospel in the New Testament (the Gospel of Mark). There was a key fragment of scripture that the source manuscripts Erasmus did not contain, however, this is the story of 1 John 5 verses 7 and 8. And this is the first letter of John in the New Testament chapter 5 verses 7 through 8, which scholars have called the Johannine comma, the Johannine comma. Johanna means John, and comma is just these sentences. Now, they are found in the Latin Vulgate manuscripts. So, these are later translations made into Latin, as I said earlier. But not in the overwhelming majority of Greek manuscripts. A fragment that has long been favored among Christian theologians, of course, as it is the only passage in the entire Bible that clearly defines the doctrine of the Trinity. And that there are three persons in the Godhead, but that these three constitute only one God. So, in the Vulgate, found in our King James version. I just want to read the passage. So, this is the King James version, the Holy Bible. It says: "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, the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one." So, this is from the King James version. And Bart Ehrman says: "This is a mysterious passage, but undoubtedly in its support for the traditional teachings of the church on the triune God, which is one. Without this verse, the doctrine of the Trinity must be inferred from a series of fragments combined together to show that Christ is God, just as the Spirit and the Father are, and that there is, however, only one God. This passage, in contrast, expresses the doctrine directly and concisely. But Erasmus did not find it in his Greek manuscripts." Now, this is the issue: He used the best manuscripts he had around in his city, which were actually not very good manuscripts by our standards today. The Greek manuscripts he read simply said: "There are three that bear witness: the Spirit, the water, and the blood: and these three are one." So, where did the Father, the Word, and the Spirit go? They were not in Erasmus's main manuscripts or in any of the others he consulted, and so naturally, he left them out of his first edition of the Greek text, as a good scholar would, because there is no evidence that this verse is in the Greek manuscripts. More than anything else, it is this omission of this verse that angered the Christian theologians of his time, who accused Erasmus of manipulating the text in an attempt to eliminate the doctrine of the Trinity and to devalue its conclusion, the doctrine of the full divinity of Christ. As the story goes, Erasmus, perhaps at an unguarded moment, agreed that he would include the verse in a future edition of his Greek New Testament, with one condition: that his opponents produce a Greek manuscript in which the verse could be found. Finding it in Latin manuscripts was not enough; there were late medieval manuscripts that had it. And so, a Greek manuscript was produced. In fact, it was produced for the occasion, it seems someone copied the Greek text of the letters. And when he came to the passage in question, he translated the Latin text into Greek, giving the Johannine comma in its known, theologically useful form. The manuscript offered to Erasmus, in other words, was a 16th-century custom-made production. So, Erasmus asked: "I want to see this in a Greek manuscript." And his opponents said: "Okay." And they went away, and they made one, word for word, composed in the 16th century, on Erasmus's day, wrote it, included the verse (the Johannine comma for the Trinity), and embedded it, and gave it to him. So, there you have it, there is your Greek manuscript, go ahead and produce your good scholarly text. Despite his doubts, Erasmus was true to his word and included the Johannine comma (this is the Trinity verse) in his next edition and in all his subsequent editions. These editions, as I have already noted, became the basis for the editions of the Greek New Testament that were later reproduced from time to time by translators over the centuries. These editions provided the form of the text that the translators of the King James Bible eventually used. And passages so familiar to English Bible readers from King James in 1611 onwards, up to modern editions in the 20th century, include: the woman taken in adultery, the last 12 verses of Mark which mentioned the resurrection, and the Johannine comma, even though none of these fragments can be found in the older and higher Greek New Testament manuscripts. They entered the English stream of consciousness simply by a chance of history, based on manuscripts that Erasmus just happened to have, and the one that was produced for his benefit. The various Greek editions of the 16th and 17th centuries were so similar that printers could eventually claim to be the text that was universally accepted by all scholars and readers of the Greek New Testament, as they were indeed, since there were no competitors. The most cited claim is found produced in 1633 by Abraham and Bonaventura Elzevir (who were uncle and nephew). In which they told their readers in words that have become famous since among scholars: "Now you have the text which is accepted by all, in which we have given nothing altered or corrupted." The expression of this line, especially the words "text accepted by all," gives us the common phrase *Textus Receptus*, or abbreviated as TR. This is what is known today as the *Textus Receptus*: a term used by textual critics to refer to that form of the Greek text that is not based on the oldest or best manuscripts, but on the form of the text published by Erasmus and handed down to printers for more than 300 years, until textual scholars (recently) began to insist that the Greek New Testament should be based on scientific principles, based on our oldest and best manuscripts, not simply reissued again and again according to custom. It was the inferior textual form of the *Textus Receptus* that stood at the basis of the earliest English translations, including the King James Bible and other editions until the end of the 19th century. So, there we have the story of the *Textus Receptus*, which is still honored by fundamentalist Christians, especially in the United States of America. The King James Version-only movement says this is the pure, unadulterated word of God, but of course, it is based on late medieval manuscripts. We now have manuscripts that go back even to the fourth century AD, the famous Codex Sinaiticus, which, of course, does not have the Johannine comma, does not have the story of women caught in adultery, does not have the resurrection appearances in the earliest Gospel, and has a whole host of other things, which I will also not discuss. So, this is the story of how the famous Trinity verse, which clearly states that God is three persons in one, is actually a verse, a false verse added later by scribes, was perhaps a marginal note on a note at the end, and it got included in the text, which is a theory, anyway. But it is not part of the original Greek manuscript, and this is very difficult for Christians to accept, because it means that their strongest evidence for the Trinity has been taken away, and they have to build the doctrine from a complicated Christmas tree, put together to try and create this doctrine from different texts in different places, and this is very convincing for most people, certainly for me, anyway. But even though most modern translations now do not contain the text, what Johanna and the comma, I mean, for example, in my preferred version, the New Revised Standard Version, does not have the Trinity verse because this is a good critical edition. The New King James Version, this is here. So, they know the facts, but they still have the verse in it. I have highlighted it in yellow: "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one." Even though we know it is not in any of the early Greek manuscripts and was not there in the original Bible, they still insist on keeping it in the Bible. Some people might say that this is a deception and lacks integrity, that they are still trying to pass this off as the word of God when they know well that it is not. So, I realized it was a very interesting story. I hope you also found it interesting. Until next time.