Interestingly, the Anchor Bible Dictionary cites de Jonge but repeats the Erasmus story anyway! Quote: |
In view of the paucity of external evidence and the transcriptional probability that the Comma arose due to theological reasons, this reading would have been relegated to a historical footnote had it not been for certain events in the 16th century. Observing that the Comma occurred only in the Lat version and not in any Gk manuscript known to him, Erasmus omitted it from his editions of the Gk testament in 1516 and 1519. Stunica, editor of the Complutensian Polyglott (printed 1514; published 1522), assailed Erasmus for omitting the Comma and included it in his own text, translated from the Lat. In response to a wider outcry, Erasmus maintained that he had searched many Gk manuscripts, failing to find even one which contained the Comma. Ms. 61, containing the Comma and apparently produced at the time for that very purpose, was brought to Erasmus’ attention and, fearing a negative response to his edition, he included the Comma in his 3d edition of 1522, but not without suspicion that 61 had been revised according to the Lat. The reading was accepted into Stephanus’ 3d edition of 1550 and the Elzevir text of 1633, later known as the Textus Receptus. It then achieved wider currency in the Clementine Vg in 1592, which became the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church, and in the Rheims edition. Not originally in Luther’s Bible, later editors added it to his text beginning in 1582. Although earlier bracketed by Tyndale as questionable, the reading was adopted in the KJV. Thus the Comma gained widespread acceptance in the 16th and 17th centuries.
| Freedman, D. N. (1996, c1992). The Anchor Bible Dictionary (3:883). New York: Doubleday.
"For a full account of the so-called “Comma Johanneum” (the “Johannine Comma”; κόμμα means “section,” or “clause”) see Westcott, 202–209; Metzger, Textual Commentary, 715–17; Marshall, 236 n. 19; Schnackenburg, 44–46, and the literature there cited."
Smalley, S. S. (2002). Vol. 51: Word Biblical Commentary : 1,2,3 John. Word Biblical Commentary (273). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.
Metzger's comments from his latest Textual Commentary are as follows: Quote:
5.7–8 μαρτυροῦντες, 8 τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ καὶ τὸ αἷμα {A}
After μαρτυροῦντες the Textus Receptus adds the following: ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, ὁ Πατήρ, ὁ Λόγος, καὶ τὸ Ἅγιον Πνεῦμα· καὶ οὗτοι οἱ τρεῖς ἔν εἰσι. (8) καὶ τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες ἐν τῇ γῇ. That these words are spurious and have no right to stand in the New Testament is certain in the light of the following considerations.
(A) External Evidence.
(1) The passage is absent from every known Greek manuscript except eight, and these contain the passage in what appears to be a translation from a late recension of the Latin Vulgate. Four of the eight manuscripts contain the passage as a variant reading written in the margin as a later addition to the manuscript. The eight manuscripts are as follows:
61:
codex Montfortianus, dating from the early sixteenth century.
88v.r.:
a variant reading in a sixteenth century hand, added to the fourteenth-century codex Regius of Naples.
221v.r.:
a variant reading added to a tenth-century manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
429v.r.:
a variant reading added to a sixteenth-century manuscript at Wolfenbüttel.
636v.r.:
a variant reading added to a sixteenth-century manuscript at Naples.
918:
a sixteenth-century manuscript at the Escorial, Spain.
2318:
an eighteenth-century manuscript, influenced by the Clementine Vulgate, at Bucharest, Rumania.
(2) The passage is quoted by none of the Greek Fathers, who, had they known it, would most certainly have employed it in the Trinitarian controversies (Sabellian and Arian). Its first appearance in Greek is in a Greek version of the (Latin) Acts of the Lateran Council in 1215.
(3) The passage is absent from the manuscripts of all ancient versions (Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Arabic, Slavonic), except the Latin; and it is not found (a) in the Old Latin in its early form (Tertullian Cyprian Augustine), or in the Vulgate (b) as issued by Jerome (codex Fuldensis [copied a.d. 541–46] and codex Amiatinus [copied before a.d. 716]) or (c) as revised by Alcuin (first hand of codex Vallicellianus [ninth century]).
The earliest instance of the passage being quoted as a part of the actual text of the Epistle is in a fourth century Latin treatise entitled Liber Apologeticus (chap. 4), attributed either to the Spanish heretic Priscillian (died about 385) or to his follower Bishop Instantius. Apparently the gloss arose when the original passage was understood to symbolize the Trinity (through the mention of three witnesses: the Spirit, the water, and the blood), an interpretation that may have been written first as a marginal note that afterwards found its way into the text. In the fifth century the gloss was quoted by Latin Fathers in North Africa and Italy as part of the text of the Epistle, and from the sixth century onwards it is found more and more frequently in manuscripts of the Old Latin and of the Vulgate. In these various witnesses the wording of the passage differs in several particulars. (For examples of other intrusions into the Latin text of 1 John, see 2.17; 4.3; 5.6, and 20.)
(B) Internal Probabilities.
(1) As regards transcriptional probability, if the passage were original, no good reason can be found to account for its omission, either accidentally or intentionally, by copyists of hundreds of Greek manuscripts, and by translators of ancient versions.
(2) As regards intrinsic probability, the passage makes an awkward break in the sense.
For the story of how the spurious words came to be included in the Textus Receptus, see any critical commentary on 1 John, or Metzger, The Text of the New Testament, pp. 101 f.; cf. also Ezra Abbot, “I. John v. 7 and Luther’s German Bible,” in The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel and Other Critical Essays (Boston, 1888), pp. 458–463.
| Metzger, B. M., & United Bible Societies. (1994). A textual commentary on the Greek New Testament, second edition a companion volume to the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament (4th rev. ed.) (647). London; New York: United Bible Societies.
BTW, Ken, I think that the problem has less to do with elitism than with socialization. Most of us seminary grads, whether in liberal mainline schools or places as conservative as Master's or Dallas, were taught that there is NO significant opposition to the CT. I only discovered Maurice Robinson in recent years, being familiar with Pickering on the TR side and Carson's answer to him.
Pardon some of us for parroting what we learned in school. As a teacher, you know how influential you guys are in the lives of impressionable young folks. 
I struggle with the issue today as one of a small handful of things I have been reconsidering. At this point, however, my mind still sides with the majority on the CT side despite my emotional hope that the TR people might be right.
__________________
Dennis E. McFadden, Ex Mainline Baptist (in Remission)
Atherton Baptist Homes, CEO
First Baptist Church of Alhambra, Member, Transformation Ministries (CA)
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