Explainer / Messiah
1 John 5:7–8
And it is the Spirit that bears witness, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three who bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and the three agree in one.
We kept the ASV's wording, in modern English. Like the ASV, this version does not print the words known as the Comma Johanneum.
Why
The words in question
The KJV reads in 5:7–8: "For there are three that bear record **in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
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And there are three that bear witness in earth**, the spirit, and the water, and the blood." The words in bold are the Comma.
The manuscripts
The words are not in any Greek manuscript before the 14th century.
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They appear first in Latin writings around the 4th–5th centuries, entered the Latin Vulgate tradition, and reached a handful of very late Greek manuscripts, some written after the printed Greek New Testament had begun to circulate. No early church father cites them.
The printed editions
Erasmus omitted the words from his first two printed Greek New Testaments (1516, 1519) and added them in 1522.
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The Textus Receptus and the KJV follow that later edition. The ASV and every modern critical edition leave them out, and this version follows them.
Verse numbers
Because the ASV leaves out the Comma, its verse division here differs from the KJV's.
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ASV 5:7 is "And it is the Spirit that bears witness…," and 5:8 is "For there are three who bear witness: the Spirit, and the water, and the blood." This version keeps the ASV's numbering.