3727 - Is It Spurious? by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 16, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 16.

3727 — Is It Spurious?

By Editor

My attention has been called to a note regarding 1 John 5:7, 8. The Danish copy of the Scriptures omits from the word "record," verse 7, to the word "earth," verse 8; so it would read: "For there are three that bear record, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one." This was used as an argument against the personality of the Holy Spirit. Can you give me any light on the question? H.

We believe that all scholars agree that these words are an interpolation. They are in none of the early Greek copies of the Scriptures, and some writers tell us that they did not appear until after the Arian controversy. Then they were inserted, perhaps, in the margin by some strong Trinitarian, and afterward by mistake copied into the text. The fact that that text is spurious would not necessarily bear against the personality of the Spirit, as the Bible reveals it, because it does not reveal the personality of the Spirit in the way that it does the personality of our Lord.