@ 4:00 It is in the vast majority of the Old Latin (Itala) manuscripts (circa 150 AD) , which outnumber the Greek manuscripts. Although some doubt if 1 John 5:7 was a part of Jerome's original Vulgate, the evidence suggests that it was. Jerome states: "In that place particularly where we read about the unity of the Trinity which is placed in the First Epistle of John, in which also the names of three, i.e. of water, of blood, and of spirit, do they place in their edition and omitting the testimony of the Father; and the Word, and the Spirit in which the catholic faith is especially confirmed and the single substance of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is confirmed." Other church fathers are also known to have quoted the Comma: • Clement 200 AD alludes to the Comma • Tertullian 155-245 AD alludes to the Comma • Cyprian (258 AD) writes: "The Lord says, 'I and the Father are one' and likewise it is written of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 'And these three are one'." • Athanasius 296-373 makes strong reference to the Comma • Priscillian (385 AD) cites the Comma: As John says, "and there are three which give testimony on earth, the water, the flesh, the blood, and these three are in one, and there are three which give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one in Christ Jesus." • Likewise, the Varimadum (380 AD) states: "And John the Evangelist says, . . . 'And there are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one'." • Additionally, Cassian (435 AD), Cassiodorus (580 AD), and a host of other African and Western bishops in subsequent centuries have cited the 1 John 5:7. Not only so Recall that the council of Carthage (484 BC) was a debate between the followers of the Arian heresy who denied the Trinity and the orthodox Christians who affirmed it. If 1 John 5:7 was not present, the Arians could have used its absence from the text to bolster their position. But they never once questioned the authenticity of the verse. Therefore, we see that the reading has massive and ancient textual support.
I'm really enjoying these videos. These videos have been the ones I have learned the most from of what you've made. I've been generally familiar with the rest of the content, but I have only looked at the distigmae in a cursory manner. So far, I don't think it's evidence for it. We still aren't sure enough about when they come in, there's alternative explanations even if they're old (unless all three dots are old, in which case it would be strong evidence), and the external evidence is so weak such that it'd feel like too much of a stretch to use it for that, and I say that as someone who accepts the Comma as Scripture, am convinced it's not original, but would very much rather have evidence it is. OTOH, I know so little about distigmae in B, I hold all my opinions rather lightly. This is well outside what I've studied. As an aside, Benjamin Kantor has published a two volume NT that replicates B. It typesets it with a font that replicates the handwriting, but it is typeset and not scans. It also has one column instead of three.
I think we do need to wait for Rabin and Gordon in order to be really clear as to what they did and did not do. As previously mentioned P. Payne is pushing back already. I would guess the x-ray spectroscopy is a bit more definitive than the photographs when it comes to ink matching. It is unclear whether this page was one of the pages that they analysed - hopefully another detail that will get cleared up with full publication. Some other random minor notes: (i) It's interesting just how faded the re-inking is on the open double spread that contain 1 John 4-5. Just visually flicking a page or two either side shows how beat-up these pages are in comparison with others nearby. Vaticanus was maybe left open at this spread for quite a while at some point (?). It's comparable to how beat up Codex Montfortianus is at the same place in 1 John. Signs of scholars coming and checking repeatedly...? (ii) I think you need to look at a bunch more distigmai on that page and nearby pages to come to more secure conclusions about the size, shape, colour of them. There are others where the variations in the two dots are not terribly dissimilar to the kinds of variations you're seeing with the left-most and centre dots of the "tristigma" ;-) at 1 Jn 5.7-8 (iii) The funny markings in the same column as 1 Jn 5.7 are the older chapter system AND the "modern" chapter system division at 5:1. The somewhat odd symbol between the two dots that looks a bit like a G is in-fact Arabic 5. For comparison see the chapter division at 1 Peter 5:1. Now according to Gordon (or maybe Rabin ... this is why we need their papers) they specifically went out of their way to compare the inks at those chapter divisions and the distigmai, and they claim that the ink is the same. I.e. the distigmai must post-date the modern chapter system and the common introduction of Arabic numerals in the West. (iv) Teenie-Tiny correction: It was P. Bombasius who checked Vaticanus for Erasmus on 1 John 5:7. That happened somewhere approximately around 1520. Sepulveda did his work on Vaticanus a decade later around 1530, creating his list of 365 "Vulgate-Friendly" readings that he sent to Erasmus. Of course 1 John 5:7b-8a is a "Vulgate-Unfriendly" reading. The mismatch between the 800+ distigmai and the 365 readings presented to Erasmus might be because Sepulveda was cherry-picking variations to make his case. The Vatican are involved in wider MSI and palimsests projects. I would hope Rabin and Gordon are only the foretaste of wider up-to-date digital editing, multi-spectral analysis, x-ray spectroscopy etc. I tofally get the rejection of C14 dating using current methods: in fact Rabin in the paper you shared with me explains why its problematic in terms of conservation and also not at all definitive in terms of inks.
You're right, I could have checked a number of other distigmai. I did take a look at a number of them specifically looking at the space between the distigmai and the text. Payne wrote how 1 John 5:7's distigmai leaves a lot less space between the dots and the letters within the 1st book of John, but if you review the distigmai, like pg 1437 for example, you can see examples where they have as little, or even less space. There are a number of other pages as well were you can see this. To me, 1 John being such a short book, is not a big enough sample size to distinguish the spacing like that. I did end up leaving that stuff out of this video, mostly because I didn't see it as anything that would say much and the video was already getting long.
Hefin “ … 1 John 5:7b-8a is a "Vulgate-Unfriendly" reading.” Overall, it is Vulgate-friendly. There is a myth that it was not in the c. AD 400 Vulgate, refuted by the Prologue, and overall it is in 95% of the Latin mss.
@@purebible1311 Ha! What I meant was that the reading of Vaticanus at 1 John 5:7b-8a is "Vulgate-unfriendly". Vulgates of the 16th century consistently included the comma.
I am still very new to textual criticism; so please for give my ignorance. If I had to make a hypothesis on the smudges by 1 John 5:7 I would reckon that the text itself was there, but smudged by a damp/sweaty hand. The text was done being written or re-inked and the scribe laid his hand on the vellum to add the distigmi. But I could be very wrong, I am by no means a textual scholar.
The difference in colour of the ink does give me the impression that there may have been three different people involved here, but I'm also seeing a difference in the colour of the page itself which might account for that. I wonder if the three dots indicate that there are three known variants rather than just two.
it did cross my mind, that two dots would represent 2 readings one in the text, and the other in another mss. So at 1 John 5:7 the math checks out that each dot could represent a variant on that line.
Ok Cool, have you heard of the Eastern Orthodox view of the Trinity I Believe it's called Monarchy of the Father? Bue Branson defend this articulation of the Trinity and was wondering sense you defend the Byzantine Manuscript as The Authority would you agree with the same articulation of the Trinity that Byzantine Eastern Orthodox believers do?
@@hudsontd7778 I wouldn't know TBH, I'm not up on all the nuances of the trinitarian belief. I've accepted the 1 being 3 person model, knowing that God is too complex for a finite mind like mind to really grasp.
That's fair, I guess my point would be that you would say that the Latin Manuscripts are Unrealible because of the Roman Catholic Church Right? I am personally not sure how you could not say the same thing about the Byzantine Manuscript Eastern Orthodox Church? I am sure you would agree that the EO have some strange teaching? Bart Erhman has shown hard data in his book the Orthodox Corruption of Scripture to fit Creedle Presupposition. Please do research on the Monarchy of the Father Trinity View that EO teach and see if 1JOHN 5:7 fits there Trinity articulation or if it needed to be taken out?
If the two dots are the question mark : which was first used in Latin in the late 700s then this started to be used in the modern middle ages Greek which started to be found in the late 700s
The original scribe or later scribes could have been specifically instructed to not include the text, but granted enough leeway to add the dots. I think the recent dating of 400 A.D. of the Latin Speculum by Hugh Houghton dispels the myth the verse was not known at the time. Sense the speculum is a series of extracts taken from practical sources means the scribe would've had to taking it from earlier sources places it solidly in the same time as the Vaticanus. The early date Speculum also supports Cyprian citation of the verse which is earlier than the Vaticanus and well as bolstering the Jerome Prologue.
I find the distigmi at 1 Cor. 14:34-35 to be highly interesting as well. It does make the question of the authenticity of those verses a bit more complicated than most Complimentarians want to admit. It's not JUST that D moves them to the end of the chapter, but Vaticanus seems to also be aware of a variant there. However I still can't bring myself to say that they got inserted into EVERY extent manuscript we have today but yet aren't Scripture. Even if, for the sake of argument, they weren't penned by Paul, they've still been received and read by the Church immediately and persistently. I think the better question is what exact context the "silence" refers to, because it's very clear to me that it does not mean absolute silence, and it's not even talking about leadership roles in the context.
Very interesting questions to research. Thank you, Pastor Dwayne.
@ 4:00 It is in the vast majority of the Old Latin (Itala) manuscripts (circa 150 AD) , which outnumber the Greek manuscripts.
Although some doubt if 1 John 5:7 was a part of Jerome's original Vulgate, the evidence suggests that it was. Jerome states: "In that place particularly where we read about the unity of the Trinity which is placed in the First Epistle of John, in which also the names of three, i.e. of water, of blood, and of spirit, do they place in their edition and omitting the testimony of the Father; and the Word, and the Spirit in which the catholic faith is especially confirmed and the single substance of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is confirmed."
Other church fathers are also known to have quoted the Comma:
• Clement 200 AD alludes to the Comma
• Tertullian 155-245 AD alludes to the Comma
• Cyprian (258 AD) writes: "The Lord says, 'I and the Father are one' and likewise it is written of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 'And these three are one'."
• Athanasius 296-373 makes strong reference to the Comma
• Priscillian (385 AD) cites the Comma: As John says, "and there are three which give testimony on earth, the water, the flesh, the blood, and these three are in one, and there are three which give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one in Christ Jesus."
• Likewise, the Varimadum (380 AD) states: "And John the Evangelist says, . . . 'And there are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one'."
• Additionally, Cassian (435 AD), Cassiodorus (580 AD), and a host of other African and Western bishops in subsequent centuries have cited the 1 John 5:7.
Not only so Recall that the council of Carthage (484 BC) was a debate between the followers of the Arian heresy who denied the Trinity and the orthodox Christians who affirmed it. If 1 John 5:7 was not present, the Arians could have used its absence from the text to bolster their position. But they never once questioned the authenticity of the verse.
Therefore, we see that the reading has massive and ancient textual support.
Thank you, Brother Dwayne 🌹⭐🌹
I'm really enjoying these videos. These videos have been the ones I have learned the most from of what you've made. I've been generally familiar with the rest of the content, but I have only looked at the distigmae in a cursory manner.
So far, I don't think it's evidence for it. We still aren't sure enough about when they come in, there's alternative explanations even if they're old (unless all three dots are old, in which case it would be strong evidence), and the external evidence is so weak such that it'd feel like too much of a stretch to use it for that, and I say that as someone who accepts the Comma as Scripture, am convinced it's not original, but would very much rather have evidence it is. OTOH, I know so little about distigmae in B, I hold all my opinions rather lightly. This is well outside what I've studied.
As an aside, Benjamin Kantor has published a two volume NT that replicates B. It typesets it with a font that replicates the handwriting, but it is typeset and not scans. It also has one column instead of three.
I think we do need to wait for Rabin and Gordon in order to be really clear as to what they did and did not do. As previously mentioned P. Payne is pushing back already. I would guess the x-ray spectroscopy is a bit more definitive than the photographs when it comes to ink matching. It is unclear whether this page was one of the pages that they analysed - hopefully another detail that will get cleared up with full publication.
Some other random minor notes:
(i) It's interesting just how faded the re-inking is on the open double spread that contain 1 John 4-5. Just visually flicking a page or two either side shows how beat-up these pages are in comparison with others nearby. Vaticanus was maybe left open at this spread for quite a while at some point (?). It's comparable to how beat up Codex Montfortianus is at the same place in 1 John. Signs of scholars coming and checking repeatedly...?
(ii) I think you need to look at a bunch more distigmai on that page and nearby pages to come to more secure conclusions about the size, shape, colour of them. There are others where the variations in the two dots are not terribly dissimilar to the kinds of variations you're seeing with the left-most and centre dots of the "tristigma" ;-) at 1 Jn 5.7-8
(iii) The funny markings in the same column as 1 Jn 5.7 are the older chapter system AND the "modern" chapter system division at 5:1. The somewhat odd symbol between the two dots that looks a bit like a G is in-fact Arabic 5. For comparison see the chapter division at 1 Peter 5:1. Now according to Gordon (or maybe Rabin ... this is why we need their papers) they specifically went out of their way to compare the inks at those chapter divisions and the distigmai, and they claim that the ink is the same. I.e. the distigmai must post-date the modern chapter system and the common introduction of Arabic numerals in the West.
(iv) Teenie-Tiny correction: It was P. Bombasius who checked Vaticanus for Erasmus on 1 John 5:7. That happened somewhere approximately around 1520. Sepulveda did his work on Vaticanus a decade later around 1530, creating his list of 365 "Vulgate-Friendly" readings that he sent to Erasmus. Of course 1 John 5:7b-8a is a "Vulgate-Unfriendly" reading. The mismatch between the 800+ distigmai and the 365 readings presented to Erasmus might be because Sepulveda was cherry-picking variations to make his case.
The Vatican are involved in wider MSI and palimsests projects. I would hope Rabin and Gordon are only the foretaste of wider up-to-date digital editing, multi-spectral analysis, x-ray spectroscopy etc. I tofally get the rejection of C14 dating using current methods: in fact Rabin in the paper you shared with me explains why its problematic in terms of conservation and also not at all definitive in terms of inks.
You're right, I could have checked a number of other distigmai. I did take a look at a number of them specifically looking at the space between the distigmai and the text. Payne wrote how 1 John 5:7's distigmai leaves a lot less space between the dots and the letters within the 1st book of John, but if you review the distigmai, like pg 1437 for example, you can see examples where they have as little, or even less space. There are a number of other pages as well were you can see this. To me, 1 John being such a short book, is not a big enough sample size to distinguish the spacing like that. I did end up leaving that stuff out of this video, mostly because I didn't see it as anything that would say much and the video was already getting long.
Hefin
“ … 1 John 5:7b-8a is a "Vulgate-Unfriendly" reading.”
Overall, it is Vulgate-friendly. There is a myth that it was not in the c. AD 400 Vulgate, refuted by the Prologue, and overall it is in 95% of the Latin mss.
@@purebible1311 Ha! What I meant was that the reading of Vaticanus at 1 John 5:7b-8a is "Vulgate-unfriendly". Vulgates of the 16th century consistently included the comma.
Bro I would love to have you on our show to discuss this!
Have you done a video on Acts 23:9?….”fight against God” omission in the CT
no, but I'll take this down, it's a neat little variant :)
I am still very new to textual criticism; so please for give my ignorance. If I had to make a hypothesis on the smudges by 1 John 5:7 I would reckon that the text itself was there, but smudged by a damp/sweaty hand. The text was done being written or re-inked and the scribe laid his hand on the vellum to add the distigmi. But I could be very wrong, I am by no means a textual scholar.
that would be my guess!
The difference in colour of the ink does give me the impression that there may have been three different people involved here, but I'm also seeing a difference in the colour of the page itself which might account for that. I wonder if the three dots indicate that there are three known variants rather than just two.
it did cross my mind, that two dots would represent 2 readings one in the text, and the other in another mss. So at 1 John 5:7 the math checks out that each dot could represent a variant on that line.
Interesting video, are you a Trinitarian Dwayne?
yes, sir!
Ok Cool, have you heard of the Eastern Orthodox view of the Trinity I Believe it's called Monarchy of the Father?
Bue Branson defend this articulation of the Trinity and was wondering sense you defend the Byzantine Manuscript as The Authority would you agree with the same articulation of the Trinity that Byzantine Eastern Orthodox believers do?
@@hudsontd7778 I wouldn't know TBH, I'm not up on all the nuances of the trinitarian belief. I've accepted the 1 being 3 person model, knowing that God is too complex for a finite mind like mind to really grasp.
That's fair, I guess my point would be that you would say that the Latin Manuscripts are Unrealible because of the Roman Catholic Church Right?
I am personally not sure how you could not say the same thing about the Byzantine Manuscript Eastern Orthodox Church?
I am sure you would agree that the EO have some strange teaching? Bart Erhman has shown hard data in his book the Orthodox Corruption of Scripture to fit Creedle Presupposition.
Please do research on the Monarchy of the Father Trinity View that EO teach and see if 1JOHN 5:7 fits there Trinity articulation or if it needed to be taken out?
If the two dots are the question mark : which was first used in Latin in the late 700s then this started to be used in the modern middle ages Greek which started to be found in the late 700s
but when you give them a horizontal orientation and then put them in the margin, does it mean the same thing?
The original scribe or later scribes could have been specifically instructed to not include the text, but granted enough leeway to add the dots. I think the recent dating of 400 A.D. of the Latin Speculum by Hugh Houghton dispels the myth the verse was not known at the time. Sense the speculum is a series of extracts taken from practical sources means the scribe would've had to taking it from earlier sources places it solidly in the same time as the Vaticanus. The early date Speculum also supports Cyprian citation of the verse which is earlier than the Vaticanus and well as bolstering the Jerome Prologue.
a random scribe puts 3 dots and here we are fighting over it.
I find the distigmi at 1 Cor. 14:34-35 to be highly interesting as well. It does make the question of the authenticity of those verses a bit more complicated than most Complimentarians want to admit. It's not JUST that D moves them to the end of the chapter, but Vaticanus seems to also be aware of a variant there.
However I still can't bring myself to say that they got inserted into EVERY extent manuscript we have today but yet aren't Scripture. Even if, for the sake of argument, they weren't penned by Paul, they've still been received and read by the Church immediately and persistently. I think the better question is what exact context the "silence" refers to, because it's very clear to me that it does not mean absolute silence, and it's not even talking about leadership roles in the context.
Someone spilled his coffee???
Ha! A possibility if I were a scribe!
@@Dwayne_Green😂
Candle wax for the many times over the centuries it was consulted:)
And this is one of the “most reliable” manuscripts, for which we discard the text that was providentially passed down to us?? Scary