i want to tell you the fascinating story about when the trinity verse was added to the bible .
and this is a very well documented historical fact and for our guide i want to quote from " Whose Word
Is It ? : The Story Behind Who Changed The New Testament and Why " by professor Bart Ehrman
who is an expert on textual criticism on biblical manuscripts and he tells us this
story which i would want to share with you . now we need to go back in time to the 16th century
and we need to look at a guy called ' Erasmus ' Erasmus was an enterprising scholar from
Holland , a Dutch scholar who produced the very first printed edition of the Greek
New Testament . now the new testament itself was written in Greek . in the Centuries afterwards it
got translated into Latin and the church tends 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 handful of late medieval manuscripts . in fact on just one twelfth century manuscript of the gospels
and another also from the 12th century for the book of acts and the epistles . and as we
shall see he says it's this edition that he produced of the Greek new testament
that was used by the later translators of the King James Bible a Century later and virtually all
translations until the end of the 19th century . and he tells a very interesting story then about
this trinity verse and he says : indeed as it turns out these manuscripts that Erasmus used were not
of the best quality , they were after all produced some 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 John's gospel and the last verses in Mark's gospel which tell the story
the resurrection in the earliest gospel . passages that did not originally form part of the gospels
as we learned in the preceding chapter . and he rightly shows that the earliest manuscripts the
codex sinaiticus for example does not contain any resurrection appearances in the earliest gospel
in the new testament (the gospel of mark) . there was one key passage of scripture that Erasmus
sources manuscripts did not contain however this is the account of 1 John 5 verse 7 and 8. and this
is the first letter of John in the new testament chapter 5 verses 7 to 8 which scholars have called
the johannine comma , the johannine comma . johanna means John and the comma is just these sentences .
now they are found in the manuscripts of the Latin vulgate . so these are the later
translations made into latin as i said before . but not in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts .
a passage that has long been a favorite among christian theologians of course since
it's the only passage in the entire bible that explicitly delineates the doctrine of the trinity .
and that there are three persons in the godhead but that these three all constitute just one
god . so in the vulgate which is 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 witness in heaven the father , the word and the holy spirit and these three
are one . and these are three that bear witness on earth the spirit , the water and the blood
and these three agree as one . so this is from the king James version .
and Bart Ehrman says : this is a mysterious passage but unequivocal in its support of the traditional
teachings of the church on the triune god who is one . without this verse , the doctrine of the trinity
must be inferred from a range of passages combined together to show that christ is god
as is the spirit and the father and that there is nonetheless only one god . this passage in contrast
states the doctrine directly and succinctly but Erasmus did not find it in his greek manuscripts .
now this is the point : he used the best manuscripts that he had around
in his city which were actually not very good manuscripts by our standards today .
the greek manuscripts that 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 primary manuscript or in any of the others that he consulted and so
naturally he left them out of his first edition of the greek text as a good scholar would do
because there's no evidence that this verse is in the greek manuscripts . more than anything else
it is this leaving out of this verse that outraged christian theologians of his day
who accused Erasmus of tampering with the text in an attempt to eliminate the doctrine
of the trinity and to devalue its corollary the doctrine of the full divinity of christ .
as the story goes , Erasmus possibly in an unguarded moment agreed that he would
insert the verse in a future edition of his greek new testament on 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 appears that someone copied
out the greek text of the epistles . and when he came to the passage in question , he translated
the latin text into greek giving the johannine comma in its familiar theologically
useful form . the manuscript provided to Erasmus in other words was a 16th century production made
to order . so Erasmus demanded : i want to see this in a greek manuscript . and his opponents say : okay . and they
went away and they made one , literally made one up in the 16th century , in Erasmus day , wrote it out ,
included the verse (the johannine comma about the trinity) stuck it in and gave it to him . so there
you are , there's your greek manuscript go ahead and produce your good critical scholarly text .
despite his misgivings , 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've
already noted became the basis for the editions of the greek new testament that were later reproduced
time and time again by translators over the centuries . these editions provided the form of
the text that the translators of the king James Bible eventually used . and so familiar passages
to readers of the english bible from the king James in 16 11 onward . 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 passages can be found
in the oldest and superior greek new testament manuscripts . they entered into the english stream
of consciousness merely by a chance of history based on manuscripts that Erasmus
just happened to have handy to him and one that was manufactured for his benefit .
the various greek editions of the 16th and 17th century were so much alike that
eventually printers could claim that they were the text that was universally accepted by all
scholars and readers of the greek new testament as indeed they were since there were no competitors .
the most quoted claim is found in addition produced in 16 33 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 that : you now have the text that is received by all . in which we have given nothing
changed or corrupted . the phrasing of this line especially the words " text that is received by all "
provides us with the common phrase textus receptors or abbreviated as TR . this is what
it's known as today the textures receptors : a term used by textual critics to refer to that form of
the greek text that is based not on the oldest or the 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 insisting that the greek new testament should be based on scientific principles .
based on our oldest and best manuscripts not simply reprinted again and again according to
custom . it was the inferior textual form of the textus receptus that stood at the base 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 venerated by
fundamentalist christians especially in the united states of America . the king James version only movement say
this is the pure unadulterated word of god but of course it's based on late medieval manuscripts .
we have manuscripts now that go back even to the fourth century A.D the codex santiaticus famously
which of course does not have the johannine comma , it doesn't have the story that women
caught in adultery , it doesn't have the resurrection appearances in the earliest
gospel and there's a whole bunch of other things which i won't go into as well . so this is the
story of how the famous trinity verse which openly explicitly states that god is three persons in one
is in fact a verse , a fake verse added in later by scribes it was probably a marginal note on
annotation at the bottom and it got incorporated into the text that's one theory anyway . but it's
not part of the original greek manuscript and this is very difficult for christians to accept
because it means their most solid witness for the trinity has been taken away and they have to now
construct the doctrine out of a complicated like a christmas tree all mangled up together
to try and create this doctrine out of different texts in different places
and that is very unpersuasive to most people certainly to me anyway . but even though
most modern translations now do not contain the text the what the johanna and 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 it here .
so they know the facts but they still have the verse in it , it's still in i've highlighted it
in yellow : for these are three that bear witness in heaven , the father , the word and the holy spirit
and these three are one . even though we know that it's not in any of the early greek manuscripts
and it wasn't there in the original bible they still insist on keeping it in the bible .
some people may say that this is a fraud and it lacks integrity that
they're still trying to pass this off as god's word when they know for well it's not .
so i found that a very interesting story i hope you found it interesting too . until next time