Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

JoeW showed the forum he has the capability to cut-and-paste from Metzger, congrats. I'll forego a massive return cut-and-paste.

Anybody who really wants to study the issues around the Johannine Comma (and learn about the language-parsing, and many omissions and errors and such from Metzger) could start with a site that has literature in depth from all sides, although more for the pro-side.

http://www.1john57.com/jcindex.htm
The Johannum Comma Archives.

And for earnest dialog on some of the questions and history and research, I will try to be very available, on any one of a few forums (including this one). There are some issues that I find difficult to research past a certain point (the Vulgate intro to the canonical epistles issues, as an example). There are others that are really pretty straight-forward when you simply read the material, such as the Cyprian reference (see articles on the web by Daniel Wallace and Martin Shue).

And of course there are many issues that are conceptual. I have a special interest in this one since I myself was so convinced the Johannine Comma was not scripture... until I studied the evidences, carefully and in depth.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

Oh, first lets point out that there is nothing in any of this about forgery, simply a textual analysis full of glaring omissions and various errors, combined with an especially tricky parsing of words and a faulty methodology.

Nonetheless, let's take the closest to an integrity accusation.

If you want to read Joe's hoped-for version of this, be sure you only get the the first or second edition of the Metzger book. His claim was debunked by the Dutch scholar Henk J. DeJonge, and the 3rd edition of Metzger's book has the correction. ... oops.

Shalom,
Steven

RUmike

Praxeus, I am very interested in your last comment about Metzger's 3rd edition. But since I don't have access to that edition (or any of them), do you think you could sum up what the correction is exactly? i.e. how did Metzger's opinions/conclusion on the JC change in the 3rd edition. Thanks in advance.

Steven Avery

Hi RUmike. Overall, his opinions and conclusions didn't change. The particular accusation against Erasmus, meant to taint the Textus Receptus and Erasmus and the Johannine Comma, that Joe referenced (and that is quoted all over the web) was corrected. If you want more details on that I can find it, probably reasonably quickly. Metzger made the correction in another spot in the book, to make it not so obvious. Par for the course.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Toto

The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration is searchable on Amazon.

mdarus

Forgive me if I ignore the rabbit trails...
The Trinity is a doctrine very dear to Christians. Nevertheless, I like to think of it as a hypothesis for summarizing the biblical data. It should be a hypothesis because it seeks to answer questions that are not specifically answered in the Bible. Theology most often gets contentious when it attempt to answer questions that are not directly answered in the Bible. It is a good hypothesis in that it is consistent with the unity of God while seeking to explain how the Son and the Holy Spirit fit into this. However, it is difficult to treat it as a hypothesis because it has long been used as a litmus test for orthodoxy.

RUmike

Thanks Prax. I guess I misunderstood and got the impression that you meant that Metzger's case against the JC was lessened or shown wrong in later editions. To me, the passage from Metzger above seems convincing that the Johannine Comma is not original. Is there evidence that he omits or misrepresents? That is, what are some of your reasons for believing it to be original to the text despite the points that Metzger addresses?

Amaleq13

Here is what Metzger says in the 3rd edition on page 101:
“In an unguarded moment Erasmus promised that he would insert the Comma Johanneum, as it is called, in future editions if a single Greek manuscript could be found that contained the passage.�


From http://www.biblestudymanuals.net/Textus_Receptus.htm, here is what DeJonge found:
I do not see how this "correction" has any relevance to the conclusion that the passage is spurious. It seems more of a scholarly nitpick than a substantive criticism. Both Metzger's paraphrase and the direct quote indicate that a single manuscript would have been sufficient for Erasmus to change his translation.

The article continues:

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

Amaleq, the Combs article is generally a mediocre source for information on Erasmus.

First, Metzger himself calls it a correction, although he puts it on a footnote in a whole nother section, thus allowing folks like JoeW and James White to continue to try to hornswaggle with disinformation ! (tis hard to imagine that Joe didn't know about this when he tried to refer you to p.101 of TNT)

The Text of the New Testament - pg 291 3rd edition
What is said on p. 101 above about Erasmus' promise to include the Comma Johanneum if one Greek manuscript were found that contained it, and his subsequent suspicion that MS. 61 was written expressly to force him to do so, needs to be corrected in the light of the research of H.J. de Jonge, a specialist in Erasmian studies who finds no explict evidence that supports this frequently made assertion; see his "Erasmus and the _Comma Johanneum_", _Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, lvi (1980), pp 381-9.

Jeffrey Khoo discusses the full contretemps.
http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/neofun...-onebible.html
"Metzger’s myth that Erasmus promised to include 1 John 5:7 if a Greek manuscript could be presented to him that contained the text. H J De Jonge of the faculty of theology, Leiden University, an authority on Erasmus, has convincingly argued, giving evidence that Metzger’s view on Erasmus’s promise “has no foundation in Erasmus’s work. Consequently it is highly improbable that he included the difficult passage because he considered himself bound by any such promise� (cited in Michael Maynard, A History of the Debate Over 1 John 5:7-8, 265; full bibliography of primary source: Henk J De Jonge. “Erasmus and the Comma Johanneum.� Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 56 [1980]: 381–89). Metzger eventually admitted his error in the 3rd edition of his book—The Text of the New Testament—but hid it under a footnote on a distant page (how convenient!).

Tell that to the dozens of sources that use this as a primary source to taint Erasmus, the Textus Receptus and the Johannine Comma.

The adversaries of the Johannine Comma as scripture are well aware of the value of such a false story in impugning integrity and poisoning the well. Their motive is transparent.

That is why, as de Jonge states,
"there is one episode in this history which is surprisingly well known among both theologians and non-theologians" and that Metzger's "version of events has been handed down and dissemmated for more than a Century and a half by the most eminent cntics and students of the text of the New Testament, for examplc S P Tregelles (1854) F J A Hort (188l), F H A Scrivener (1883), B F Westcott (1892), A Bludau (1903) "

In the TR, there are three verses that are included with minimal Greek manuscript support, due to the other supports, including ...
1) Latin manuscripts - Old Latin and Vulgate
2) early church writer usage
3) internal considerations

Of course the TR textcrit paradigms are also very different than the modern paradigms that misuse their theories of frequent addition to the text and the harder reading in order to create an inconsistent and errant text. Even in this very verse the Greek grammar is awkward and questionable without the Comma, and that would be used as an argument FOR the modern omission, by the strange theories of modern textcrit.

In fact, in the Comma the internal considerations appear to be referenced by Gregory of Nazianzus as early as late fourth century (with some analogy to the reference about the Periocope Adultera by Augustine).

Most theories trying to disclaim the verse do a lot of hand-waving about the early references in particular (Cyprian, Priscillian, Council of Carthage, Intro to the Vulgate, Gregory and others), since they are trying to pretend that this is a very late interpolation. People read the misinformation from Metzger and Ehrman which is designed to deceive, to give the impression the verse was a middle ages pop-up. (We discussed this on forum once earlier, in the context of the Ehrman misinformation, which appeared to be even worse). These folks especially do a lot of parsing with the adjective "Greek" so they can simply pretend the Latin evidence is not there, or inconsequent, both in early church writers and in manuscripts. This is a very tricky and deceptive type of writing.

As to the other manifold and multifold errors and omissions, in the Metzger attack on the verse, that I will try to post on separately with a good resource or two. It was a WIP but the net-dogs nipped the homework last night.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Welcome. Metzger has a ton of other omissions and parsing he could have corrected. If you study the above link you would have discovered many of them.

The following article focuses on Metzgerian error on the Johannine Comma. http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Bible...7-exegesis.htm
"And These Three Are One" - A Case For the Authenticity of 1 John 5:7-8 Rooted in Biblical Exegesis by Jesse M. Boyd

In olden days, I used my concerns about the Comma as a cornerstone of my personal rejection of the TR and KJB as scripture. That is why I studied it out in a far more indepth fashion. In doing so, my views changed 100%.

Yes, much of it can be seen above.

This is also a welcome topic of discussion on the excellent whichversion forum on yahoogroups (one of the moderators, Martin Shue, wrote the answer to the Daniel Wallace article on Cyprian, Wallace's article was a disingenuous piece of textual scholarship, trying to obscure the rather obvious). However, that is not a forum for agnostics, atheists and skeptics, since they are discussing from a base of accepting the NT as scripture. Any one with that viewpoint is welcome, while others sincerely trying to get scholarly and research backdrop on textual issues (rather than just arguing against the text) would probably be welcome simply by stating their purpose in an introductory post.

Shalom,
Steven Avery