1 John 5:7 — The Comma Johanneum

The WTBTS is quick to point out that there is a textual variant that exists in the KJV (and other translations that are based on the Textus Receptus (Latin for "Received Text") which is not found in older Greek manuscripts. They note, correctly, that translators should translate only what the oldest and best manuscripts contain and not what is found only in later manuscripts. This textual variant supports the doctrine of the Trinity in 1 John 5:7 reads as: “in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one”? This is known as the Comma Johanneum.

Below is a chronological chart of major Bible translations and editions that contain the Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7–8) in their main text. The exact wording varies somewhat, especially in the Latin tradition.

Date Translation / Edition Language Contains Comma Johanneum? Notes
c. 405 Latin Vulgate Latin Not in Jerome's original form, but present in many later Vulgate manuscripts The Comma entered the Vulgate tradition during the early Middle Ages.
1280–1450 Medieval Vulgate manuscripts Latin Yes (many manuscripts) Became standard in much of the Western Church.
1455 Gutenberg Bible Latin Yes Printed from the medieval Vulgate tradition.
1462 Mentelin Bible German Yes Derived from the Vulgate.
1471 Bible Historiale French Yes Based on the Vulgate.
1522 Erasmus Greek New Testament Third Edition Greek Yes First printed Greek NT to include the Comma.
1526 Tyndale New Testament English Yes
(later editions)		 Early editions vary; later revisions reflect Erasmus' third edition.
1535 Coverdale Bible English Yes Based partly on Latin and German sources.
1537 Matthew Bible English Yes Inherited from Tyndale/Coverdale tradition.
1539 Great Bible English Yes Official English Bible under Henry VIII.
1560 Geneva Bible English Yes Very influential among English Protestants.
1568 Bishops' Bible English Yes Predecessor to the KJV.
1582 Douay-Rheims New Testament English Yes Based on the Vulgate.
1592 Clementine Vulgate Latin Yes Official Roman Catholic edition for centuries.
1611 King James Version English Yes Most famous English Bible containing the Comma.
1633 Textus Receptus Greek Yes Standard Protestant Greek text.
1750 Challoner Revision of the Douay-Rheims English Yes Widely used Catholic English Bible.
1833 Webster's Bible English Yes Revision of the KJV.
1894 Young's Literal Translation English Yes Retains the Comma.
1982 New King James Version English Yes Retains the Comma in the text with textual notes.
1998 Third Millennium Bible English Yes Modernized KJV tradition.
2014 Modern English Version English Yes Based on the Textus Receptus.

Translations That Do Not Contain It

Beginning in the nineteenth century, most translations based on critical Greek texts omit the Comma from the main text:

Date Translation
1881 Revised Version
1901 American Standard Version
1946/1952 Revised Standard Version
1971 New American Standard Bible
1978 New International Version
1989 New Revised Standard Version
2001 English Standard Version
2017 Christian Standard Bible

Historical Observation

The dividing line is essentially 1522. Once Desiderius Erasmus included the Comma in his third Greek New Testament edition, it flowed into the Textus Receptus, and from there into most Protestant Bibles for roughly 350 years. After the rise of modern textual criticism in the nineteenth century, nearly all new translations removed it from the main text because it is absent from the earliest Greek manuscript evidence.

What follows provides the reasons why all modern translations and the NWT do NOT include the later addition to the verses in 1 John 5:7-8.

Question: When did the earliest manuscript include the phrase in 1 John 5:7 “in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one”? This is known as the Comma Johanneum.

🕮 Earliest Manuscripts with the Comma Johanneum

The earliest Greek manuscripts of 1 John do not contain these words. They appear only in much later manuscripts, and even then, only in a few.

Source / Type Date Language Notes
Codex Montfortianus (Minuscule 61) Early 1500s CE Greek The earliest known Greek manuscript that contains the Comma. Likely translated from the Latin Vulgate.
Latin Vulgate manuscripts 8th–9th century CE (some marginal earlier glosses possibly 4th–5th century) Latin The passage appeared gradually in the Latin textual tradition, starting as a marginal note that later entered the text.
Old Latin versions Possibly 4th–5th century CE (in some marginal notes) Latin A few Old Latin copies contain a form of the Comma, but none of the earliest or most reliable ones.
Earliest Greek manuscripts (e.g., Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus) 4th–5th century CE Greek Do not contain the Comma Johanneum.

📜 Summary of the Evidence

🧩 Conclusion

The earliest manuscript containing those words in Greek is Codex Montfortianus (c. 1520 CE) — more than 1400 years after the original writing of 1 John.
All earlier Greek manuscripts and early Church quotations of 1 John 5:7–8 omit that phrase entirely.

Which Latin manuscripts contained the Comma?

The Latin textual tradition is where the Comma Johanneum (“in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one”) first appeared and spread.

🕮 1 John 5:7 – Latin Manuscripts Containing the Comma Johanneum

🔹 Earliest Stage: Marginal or Gloss Form (4th–6th centuries CE)

The Comma seems to have originated in Latin marginal notes, probably as a theological gloss explaining the unity of the Father, Word, and Spirit.
Some early traces:

Manuscript Century Details
Liber Apologeticus (by Priscillian or Instantius, Spain) c. 380 CE Earliest known quotation of the Comma, showing it already existed in some Old Latin circles in Spain.
Codex Speculum (m) 5th century Contains the Comma (Old Latin text). A key witness—it’s one of the earliest to include the phrase.
Codex Freisingensis (r) 6th century Old Latin; contains the Comma.
Codex Legionensis (l) 7th century Old Latin; contains the Comma.

So: the Comma appears sporadically in Old Latin manuscripts from the 5th century onward, especially in Spain and North Africa.

🔹 Jerome's Vulgate and manuscripts based on his work

Item Date Contains Comma? Notes
Jerome’s Original Vulgate 382–405 CE ❌ No Based on Greek sources that did not have the Comma.
Codex Fuldensis 546 CE ❌ No Early copy of Jerome’s text.
Codex Amiatinus 700 CE ❌ No Oldest complete Vulgate; no Comma.
Codex Cavensis, Toletanus 9th–10th cent. ✅ Yes Spanish Vulgate manuscripts that added the Comma.
Clementine Vulgate (official) 1592 CE ✅ Yes Standardized the Comma in the Latin Bible after the Council of Trent.

🔹 Middle Period: Incorporated into Vulgate Copies (8th–9th centuries CE)

When Jerome’s Vulgate became the standard Latin Bible, some later copies began to include the Comma in the text itself (not just in the margin). Key examples:

Manuscript Century Details
Codex Cavensis (Cavensis I) 9th century One of the earliest Vulgate manuscripts with the Comma integrated in the text.
Codex Toletanus (Tol) 10th century Contains the Comma. Important witness from Spain.
Codex Complutensis (Complutensian Polyglot) Printed 1514 CE Contains the Comma in the Latin column (but not in the Greek).

By this stage, the Spanish and later the Irish/English Vulgate traditions widely included the Comma.

🔹 Later Medieval Copies

By the 12th–15th centuries, the Comma had become common in the Latin Vulgate tradition, especially in Western Europe, though it was still absent from early and authoritative Vulgate texts.

Examples:

Summary of Latin manuscripts

🧩 Summary Table

Period Latin Tradition Examples with the Comma Notes
4th century Old Latin (Spanish) Liber Apologeticus of Priscillian Earliest citation
5th century Old Latin Codex Speculum (m) Old Latin text; includes Comma
6th–7th century Old Latin Codex Freisingensis (r), Codex Legionensis (l) Present in some, absent in others
8th century Vulgate (Jerome’s) Codex Amiatinus – No Absent in oldest Vulgate
9th–10th century Vulgate (Spanish) Codex Cavensis, Codex Toletanus Comma now in text
15th–16th century Late Vulgate & printed editions Complutensian Polyglot (1514), Clementine Vulgate (1592) Comma standardized

✅ Summary Conclusion

The Comma Johanneum first appeared in Latin manuscripts, likely in Spain around the late 4th century (first quoted by Priscillian).
It entered a few Old Latin manuscripts by the 5th century, became common in Spanish Vulgate copies by the 9th century, and eventually standardized in printed Latin Bibles by the 16th century.

Which Greek manuscripts contained the Comma Johanneum?

This is the reason why scholars consider the Comma Johanneum a late addition rather than part of the original Greek New Testament.

🕮 Greek Manuscripts That Contain the Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7)

The phrase

“in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one”

appears in very few Greek manuscripts, and all of them are very late — long after the Latin tradition had already introduced it.

🔹 Greek Manuscripts and the Comma Johanneum

Manuscript Date Greek Text Type Form Present
Codex Sinaiticus (ℵ) 4th c. Alexandrian ❌ Short (no Comma)
Codex Vaticanus (B) 4th c. Alexandrian ❌ Short
Codex Alexandrinus (A) 5th c. Byzantine/Alexandrian ❌ Short
Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C) 5th c. Alexandrian ❌ Short
Minuscule 635 (margin) 11th c. (note added later) Greek minuscule ✅ The Comma was added in a later hand.
Minuscule 88 (margin) 12th c. (note added 16th c.) Greek minuscule ✅ The Comma appears only in a later marginal note, not the original text.
Minuscule 629 (Codex Ottobonianus) 14th c. Greek minuscule ✅ Contains the Comma in the text, clearly dependent on the Latin Vulgate.
Minuscule 61 (Codex Montfortianus) early 16th (~1520 CE) Greek minuscule ✅ Long (with Comma) Earliest Greek manuscript known to include the Comma; likely translated from the Latin Vulgate. Origin: England. Used by Erasmus for his 3rd edition (1522).
Minuscule 918 16th c. Greek minuscule ✅ Contains the Comma; text shows Latin influence.
Lectionary 60 16th c. Greek lectionary Includes the Comma in a reading for the feast of the Trinity.
Others (marginal notes) 15th–17th centuries Greek minuscule A few other very late copies have the Comma in the margin, often clearly copied from the Latin or from printed editions.

🔸 Manuscripts That Do Not Contain It

All the early and authoritative Greek manuscripts — including:

→ None of these contain the Comma Johanneum.

Even in later Byzantine copies (9th–14th centuries), it is missing from almost all manuscripts.

📜 How It Entered the Greek Text

That edition then became the basis for the Textus Receptus, and later the King James Version inherited it from there.

Summary of Greek manuscripts

✅ Summary Table

Category Count Time Period Authenticity
Early Greek MSS (2nd–8th centuries) 0 2nd–8th centuries None contain the Comma
Byzantine MSS (9th–14th centuries) ~1 (marginal) 9th–14th centuries Added in margin later
Late Greek MSS (15th–16th centuries) ~5–6 15th–16th centuries Added under Latin influence
Printed editions (Erasmus 1522 → KJV 1611) yes 16th century onward Based on Codex Montfortianus

🧩 Conclusion

The Comma Johanneum appears in only about 8 very late Greek manuscripts, all dating from the 14th to 16th centuries, and often only in the margin.
Every piece of evidence points to its origin in the Latin tradition, not in the original Greek text.

An appropriate quote at this point would be from Zion’s Watch Tower Aug 1, 1896, by Charles Russell:

“But the originals are what we desire, or translations as near to them and their purity as we can obtain.”

— Charles Russell, Zion’s Watch Tower Aug 1, 1896

What is interesting is that the very principle that is cited today by the WTBTS for excluding the Comma Johanneum was ignored by the translators of the NWT when it came to inserting the name “Jehovah” 237 times into the NT. No Greek NT manuscript has ever been found that contains the Hebrew Tetragrammaton. The WTBTS admits that the word “Jehovah” was coined by a Catholic monk, Raymundus Martini ca. 1270. Yet when it comes to providing support for their preferred doctrine they conveniently forget the most important of all principles when translating the Bible: allowing their own convictions to influence what they translate. They do exactly what they criticise the Catholic Church of doing when they added the Comma Johanneum into their Bible translations.