Franz Anton Knittel (1721-1792), German Protestant theologian and paleographer[1] in his 263-page volume entitled, New Criticisms on the Celebrated Text, 1 John 5:7 begins his discussion aware of impending attacks upon his research. He begins with “a remark of great importance” and proceeds to make a distinction between Historical Critical difficulties and Historical Critical objections. Knittel writes,

It may readily be supposed, that scarcely any one of these Propositions has been unassailed. I shall therefore now adduce what has been urged against most of them in its fullest force; and, where illusions have been generated, endeavor to radiate upon them the pure light of Truth.

But I have one remark to make—a remark of great importance; which neither we, nor our antagonists, nor he that listens to us, can dispense with ; unless we all wish to mistake what is the truth. My remark is this : —

In Historical Criticism, we must never confound difficulties with objections: for they differ much, both in nature and in power. The former are concerned with relative, the latter with absolute, incomprehensibility: or, more plainly—He that raises an historical objection, alleges a fact which directly contravenes what we assert, or renders our assertion absolutely impossible. For example: Whoever impugns the proposition, “Moses wrote everything which is found in his Five Books,” by asserting, “No one can write after he is dead; therefore Moses never wrote what is found in Deut. xxxiv. 5, 6, 7: therefore the fact asserted, viz. that everything which we read in the books of Moses was written by his own hand, is impossible;”—whoever, I say, impugns the fore going proposition in this manner, raises an objection.

Objections, therefore, are what the calculators of probabilities call Argumenta necessario indicantia:[2] consequently, there are two kinds of objections. The first, when the existence of the fact on which the contradiction rests is indubitable, and absolutely certain. The example just alleged belongs to objections of this first kind. These therefore are incontrovertible; and completely demolish the positions against which they are levelled. The second sort of objections is, when the existence of the fact on which the contradiction rests, is not absolutely certain, but presumptive. For instance: If this proposition, “In the 2d century after the birth of Christ, the autographs of the Apostolic writings were no longer ex tant,” be impugned thus ; viz. “If some Christians in the time of Ignatius appealed to the Apostolic Originals, these originals must still have been extant in the 2d century;”— whoever, I say, impugns the proposition thus, raises an objection of the second class; for the testimony of Ignatius[3] to the existence of the fact on which the contradiction rests, (I mean, that “Christians appealed to the Apostolic Originals of the Apostles,”) is not absolutely certain, but only presumptive. Therefore, objections of the second class may be refuted; and we may maintain our assertion against them.

We now come to Difficulties.—He that creates difficulties, draws such inferences from a fact as tend not to make what we assert impossible, but its contrary, to a certain extent, more possible, that is, more presumptive.

[The following paragraph speaks to the unquantifiability of the transmission process being quantified by “any ancient Greek Manuscript” for two reasons: 1. MSS not yet discovered; and 2. The ancient MSS that have perished.[4] Knittel is arguing that the possibility of his conclusions makes the case against a reading presumptive. Knittel also seems to intimate that in 1785 some considered that all the extant MSS had been discovered, a lesson for the 2022 critic to consider.]

“For example: Supposing the testimony of the Ancient Fathers, that the clause 1 John V. 7. was formerly extant in the New Testament, be thus impeached: No such clause has hitherto been found in any ancient Greek Manuscript;—such an impeachment is no objection, but a mere difficulty. For, as it is possible that all the Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament have not yet been discovered; as it is possible that the Manuscripts in which the Fathers read it have perished; so the observation just made does not render what the Fathers say impossible: though the contrary proposition, viz. “that hitherto the clause has not been found in any ancient Manuscript,” gains presumptively, to a certain extent; that is, in case our assertion, “that the Fathers actually found the clause in their New Testament,” cannot be perfectly ascertained.

Difficulties, therefore, are what the Ars Conjectandi (or Doctrine of Probabilities) designates Argumenta contingenter indicantia.[5] Consequently there are two kinds of difficulties. First, When the existence of the fact which elicits the difficulty is absolutely certain.[6] The example given, is of this kind.

The second kind of difficulties is, When the existence of the fact which elicits the difficulty is not absolutely certain, but merely presumptive. For instance: If the position, “Matthew wrote his Gospel in Greek,” be controverted thus: Eusebius writes, “It is reported that Pantaenus left the Gospel of St. Matthew, in the Hebrew language, with the Indians: “thence it is evident this Gospel was written by Matthew, not in Greek, but in Hebrew.” Now, this argument consists of a difficulty, and that of the second kind: for, in the first place, the very quality of the fact here laid as its basis is doubtful: consequently, the presumptiveness or calculative value of the analogical inference (the contingenter indicans) = 1/2: for the Gospel left by Pantaenus may have been that written by Matthew; but it may also have been a Translation, made from the Greek Gospel of this Apostle, by another hand. Secondly, Eusebius also does not state the existence of this fact as certain. His words are, “It is reported.”

Consequently, in difficulties of the second class, two calculations (viz. one which bears the analogical inference; another, on which the existence of the fact is based) must be multiplied into each other, if we would determine the total probability of the surmise to be engendered thereby.

And now a few remarks—which I feel to be important—on Historical and Critical Difficulties: I say, on Historical and Critical Difficulties, on which many a fashionable Critic of our day builds his entire triumph, when he impugns ancient truths which he dislikes, and tries to say something new, in order to be stared at ; — on Historical and Critical Difficulties, by which our lovers of innovation are so rapidly seduced from the straight path of Truth, into the romantic by-ways of Imagination.

[Knittel remarks that the critic “impugns ancient truths which he dislikes, and tries to say something new, in order to be stared at,” indicative of the lengths a man’s pride, superbia, will take him. Written in 1785, 100 years before Westcott and Hort’s 1881 New Testament, Knittel knew that the Received Text and specifically 1 John 5:7 was being attacked in earnest by critics and responded accordingly. Scripture is the self-authenticating, self-attesting and self-interpreting word of God. Knittel’s appeal to “the straight path of Truth” confirms the principium (John 1:1).]

Francis Antony Knittel, New Criticisms on the Celebrated Text, 1 John 5:7, translated by William Alleyn Evanson (London: C. and J. Rivington, St. Paul’s Church-yard, J Hatchard and Son, Piccadilly, 1829, 1785), 10-14.

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            [1] Paleography: The study and scholarly interpretation of earlier, especially ancient, writing and forms of writing.

            [2] Jacobi Bernoulli, Artis Conjectandi, Pars IV. cap.III. Argumenta necessario indicantia – necessary proofs.

            [3] Michaelis’s Introduction to the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, Vol. I. § 37. pp. 243, ‘244.

            [4] For the absence of early witnesses see the Translators Preface, xxvii, “being either destroyed in the great conflagration of the Escurial 1671, or disposed of by some ignorant or dishonest Librarian, or concealed in the Library at Alcala, or possibly in the Vatican at Rome, under the apprehension of their proving unfavorable to the authority of the Vulgate.”

            [5] Bernoulli in loc. cit. Argumenta contingenter indicantia – contingent proofs.

            [6] The fact in the present case is this: “No very ancient Greek Manuscript, which we have yet discovered, reads John V. 7.” This fact is certain.

On 1 John 5:7 Francis Turretin in the Institutes Q. XI, Sec. X writes,

“all the Greek copies have it [habent tamen omnia Exemplaria Graeca], as Sixtus Senensis[1] acknowledges: “they have been the words of never-doubted truth, and contained in all the Greek copies from the very times of the apostles” [et in omnibus Graecis exemplaribus ab ipsis Apostolorum temporibus lecta] (Bibliotheca sancta [1575], 2:298).

Also, earlier in his 1566 edition of the Bibliotheca Sancta, Sixtus writes the following regarding 1 John 5:7, “there has always been the undoubted truth in all Greek copies from the very times of the apostles” [indubitatæ semper veritatis suisse , & in omnibus græcis exemplaribus ab ipsis apostolorum]. Sisto (da Siena), Biblotheca Santa (Bavarian State Library: Franciscius, 1566, digitized Nov. 30, 2011), 972. 1,069 pages

Contrary to the critical orthodoxy of a single manuscript, Codex Montfortianus, (of which there are interesting questions about whether Erasmus actually referred to the manuscript at all) as grounds for the inclusion of 1 John 5:7, there is much yet to be learned for the passage’s inclusion which confirms the accuracy of Sixtus’ assessment of the passage and the reason why Turretin referenced his work. After hearing one side of a story for so long one might forget that there is always another side. What follows are two excerpts from the translator’s preface written in 1829 by William Evanson introducing the 1785 work of Francis Knittel (1721-1792) entitled, New Criticisms on the Celebrated Text, 1 John 5:7. In his preface, Evanson sets the stage for 251-page defense of 1 John 5:7’s inclusion in the New Testament. Knittel’s work is wonderful to read for the scope and quality of his scholarship.

The following material is a thimble full of Evanson’s preface, introducing the trajectory of Knittel’s writing. Research such as this is not a replacement for Scripture as autopistos, but, it is satisfying and confirming. Through the experience of learning, such research creates a fulfilling environment for the future exploration of information not yet discovered.

We pick up Evanson’s Translator’s Preface on page ix:

The entire evidence against the authenticity of 1 John V. 7. is resolvable into its absence from the majority of Greek Manuscripts, hitherto discovered and collated, which contain the First Epistle of St. John. The number of such may be, at the utmost, 150. Of these, there are only Two of very high antiquity; namely, the Codex Alexandrinus,[2] in the British Museum; and the Codex Vaticanus, in the Vatican Library at Rome. These are supposed, by some, to have been of the 4th century. All other Greek Manuscripts, as yet discovered, are later than the 9th century. Those two omit the disputed clause. But that omission is only a negative testimony, at the best; and it is suspicious testimony, as being contemporary with the prevalence of the Arian Heresy, which unquestionably originated in the meaning severally attached to that verse by Alexander and by Arius, in the 4th century. And, moreover, it is counterbalanced, or neutralized, by antecedent and contemporary positive, i.e., affirmative testimony; because Tertullian in the 2d, and Cyprian in the 3d centuries, (who both understood the Greek Language well, and manifestly consulted the Original Text of the New Testament;) Origen, a Greek Father in the 3d century; the second Symbolum Antiochenum (published at the Council of Antioch, a.d. 341); Gregory of Nazianzen, a Greek Father; Phoebadius and Ausonius, Latins of the 4th century ; and Jerome, in his Latin Version, castigated, as he expressly says, ‘ad Gracam veritatem,’ in the same century[3]; all either directly quote, or make such allusions to that verse, as necessarily infer its existence in the Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament then extant. Therefore, the testimony respecting 1 John V. 7. may be summed up thus :—Eight unsuspicious, positive, against Two extremely suspicious, negative witnesses. And the verdict, I feel confident, should be recorded as follows: “The verse, 1 John V. 7, being tried upon the sole testimony of Greek Manuscripts of the first four centuries—which, if it please some, we will call primary testimony,—we find, after due inquiry, that it did exist, as an integral part of the Greek New Testament, at, and antecedent to, the 4th century;” or, to use the words of Bishop Barlow, (no mean authority,) “We make no doubt it was originally there de facto;[4] and, de jure,[5] should be so still….”[6]

Moving down further in the Preface, we pick up Evanson again on page xxv:

Thus then stands the External Evidence, as regards the disputed verse, under the several heads, 1st, Greek-Manuscript authorities of the first four centuries ; 2dly, Greek-Manuscript authorities from the 4th to the 16th century; 3dly, Printed Editions.

Under the first, we have the positive, or affirmative unsuspicious testimonies of Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen, the Second Symbolum Antiochenum, Gregory Nazianzen, Phoebadius, Ausonius, and the Latin Vulgate of Jerome, either directly quoting or undeniably alluding to the clause: and against them we have only the negative and suspicious testimony of two Greek Manuscripts [Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus] of the New Testament; both confessedly Latinized, and (allowing them to have been written in the 4th century) the productions of an age in which Arianism had tainted the whole body of the Christian Church, for forty years.

Under the second, we have the affirmative unsuspicious evidence of at least two existing Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament; of all the most ancient and best Manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate (there being not one in fifty which omits the verse) ; and a large number of quotations or direct allusions to it, in the Works of Greek and Latin Fathers, from the 4th to the 16th century[7]; —against the negative evidence of about 140 Greek Manuscripts, few more ancient than the 14th century; and the great majority belonging to the same suspicious stock, the Eastern Church. And, as it is admitted, that there are probably many thousand Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament in existence, which have never been collated or examined; as the Manuscripts employed by the Complutensian Editors have not yet been discovered, being either destroyed in the great conflagration of the Escurial 1671,[8] or disposed of by some ignorant or dishonest Librarian, or concealed in the Library at Alcala, or possibly in the Vatican at Rome, under the apprehension of their proving unfavorable to the authority of the Vulgate; therefore, until the materials, on which a negative testimony can be admitted, be very considerably augmented in number and authenticity, the affirmative, i.e., in favor of the disputed clause, must be allowed to preponderate under this head also.[9]

Thirdly, As to Printed Editions, the verse is contained in the Princeps Edition, by which Erasmus improved, and Stephens wholly formed, their several Editions of the New Testament; and in the genuine versions of Jerome, edited by Martianay and Vallarsius; names fully equivalent to those of the Deistical Wetstein and the Utilitarian Semler, or any of their servile imitators.

I have confined my remarks solely to the external evidence for and against this verse, and rest in the assured conviction that the former is decidedly preponderant. The Internal Evidence has been so ably and argumentatively discussed by the learned Bishop Burgess, and established on such an immoveable basis, entirely and unanswerably in favor of the verse, that the opponents of that verse have no other resource, than to thrust that species of evidence out of court altogether, and take refuge in a very convenient postulate, which has everything to recommend it —except truth. They tell us, that “no Internal Evidence can prove a clause to be genuine, where External Evidence is decidedly against it.” The falsity of this aphorism is palpable, from the whole history of Various Readings. How is any particular reading to be determined, when there are conflicting testimonies ? By the context ; —by the general scope of the author;—in short, by Internal Evidence alone. But the aphorism is not only untrue, but inapplicable in the case in question ; viz. 1 John V. 7. External Evidence is not decidedly against it: Internal Evidence is wholly in its favor: therefore it is a genuine Text of Holy Writ. One thing has deeply impressed me, in this inquiry. No satisfactory answer has ever been given to the question which naturally occurs, “How did that verse first gain admission and currency, as a text, of Scripture, if it were not so ab initio?”[10]

Francis Antony Knittel,, New Criticisms on the Celebrated Text, 1 John 5:7, translated by William Alleyn Evanson (London: C. and J. Rivington, St. Paul’s Church-yard, J Hatchard and Son, Piccadilly, 1829, 1785), Translators Preface, ix-xi, xxv-xxviii.

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                [1] Italian convert to Christianity and anti-Talmudic agitator; born at Sienna (whence his name) in 1520; died in 1569. Besides homilies and mathematical writings, Sixtus was the author of the “Bibliotheca Sancta”(Venice, 1566), a Latin work in eight books, treating of the divisions and authority of the Bible; it contains an alphabetical index and an alphabetical list of rabbinical interpreters of the Bible. https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com › articles › 13792-sixtus-senensis

                [2] “The Codex Alexandrinus is, notoriously, a Latinized Version. Wetstein was prohibited, by the Authorities at Amsterdam, from printing his Greek Testament from that Codex, because it conformed to the Papal Vulgate in many important passages.” (See Goezen’s Vertheidigung der Complutensischen Bibel &c. &c. Preface, p. xiii.) The Theological World is greatly indebted to the learned and laborious Rev. H. H. Baber, Librarian to the British Museum, for an exact facsimile of the Vetus Testamentum Gracum in this interesting Codex ; one of the most splendid additions to our stock of Biblical Literature, and an incomparable specimen of typographic skill.

            [3] All the most ancient and best Manuscripts of Jerome’s Latin Vulgate contain 1 John V. 7. Not one Manuscript in fifty omits it. The majority of those in which it is omitted, contain the words “in terra” in the 8th verse. This is presumptive evidence of the existence of the 7th verse in the Originals from which they were transcribed.

            [4] de facto – existing in actuality

            [5] De jure – by right, legitimately

            [6] See Bishop Burgess’s Letter to Archdeacon Beynon, p. 22.

            [7] The verse, 1 John V. 7, was alleged against the Arians at the Council of Carthage, in the 5th century ; and its authenticity was not disputed by the Arian Bishops then present; nor questioned by any Arian, or other Heretic, from the 5th to the 16th century.

            [8] In 1671, a part of King Philip II of Spain’s intellectual treasure stored in the Escorial library  was destroyed by fire.

            [9] At the same time, I must assert, that no amount of negative testimony can overthrow the positive evidence of those unimpeachable witnesses already adduced, as vouchers for the authenticity of 1 John V.7.

                [10] ab initio: Latin, From the beginning; from the first act; from the inception.

Thomas Jackson, (1579-1640) Bachelor of Divinity, and Fellow of Corpus Christi College in Oxford deals in this excerpt with the authority of Scripture in relation to our teachers. As you read, please note that a foundation to accept or reject the teaching is known bv the believing student through the God’s word “immediately in it self and for it self.” If the self-authenticating Word does not ground the student in the Christian Faith, the expositor alone knowing God’s word will become “a God to all other men.” Written in 1613, Jackson could not have grasped the prophetic significance of his observations for the contemporary Church and Academy. He writes,

“Our younger students are bound to yield their absolute assent unto Aristotle’s authority in matters of logic: but not unto any interpreter that shall pretend it save only when he shall make evident unto them that was Aristotle’s meaning. And while they so only, and no otherwise yield their assent, they yield it wholly and immediately unto Aristotle and not to the interpreter, although by his means they came to know Aristotle’s meaning, which once known, without any further confirmation of other testimony or authority, commands their obedience and assent. But ere they can fully assent unto this great Master, or thoroughly perceive his meaning, they must continually assent unto their private tutors, or other expositors, and take his sense and meaning upon their trust and credit. In like manner (say we) in all matters, doctrines, or controversies of faith and Christian obedience, we are bound to yield our assent, directly, absolutely, and finally unto the authority of Scripture’s only, not unto any Doctor, Expositors, or other whosoever he be, that shall pretend authority out of Scripture over our faith, save only when he shall make it clear, and evident unto us, that his opinion is the true meaning of the Scripture. And thus, yielding our absolute assent unto the truth explained by him, we yield it not to him, but unto the Author of truth, whose words we hold to be infallible in whose mouths soever. And once known to be his words, they need not be the testimony or authority of him, that did bring us to the true knowledge of them. And before we be brought to see their truth with our own eyes, and feel it by our own sense, (by the effects or experiments of it upon our own souls) we are to limit our assent and obedience (as it is set down before) according to the probabilities, or impartial inducements, which we have of the Expositor’s skill and sincerity, must be framed according to the rules and precepts of Scripture, not according to our affections or humors. We may not think of him most to be believed, that is in the highest place, or hath he the greatest stroke in other affairs. For as the faith of Christ, so must our persuasion of the faithful dispensers, or skillful seeds-men of faith, be had without respect of persons.

If we yield assent or obedience unto any Expositor, or any other, otherwise than upon these conditions and limitations, then we as said before, whilst we yield absolute obedience unto his doctrine that persuaded us to true belief, because we perceive that which he spake to be the word of God, we did not yield it unto him, but unto God’s word, delivered and made known unto us by him. So here again by the same reason (only inverted) it will evidently follow that if we believe any man’s doctrines or decisions to be the word of God, because he speaks it, or because we hold his words to be infallible, we do not truly and properly believe the word of God, (suppose his doctrine were the word of God), but his words and infallibility only. Hence again it follows, that if we yield the same absolute and undoubted assent unto his authority, which we would do unto God’s word immediately known it it self, and for it self, or rely upon his infallibility in expounding God’s word, as fully as he doth upon the word, (which it is supposed he knows immediately in it self), and unto man which is only due unto him. For the infallibility of this teacher hath the same proportion to all that thus absolutely believe him, as the infallibility of the Godhead hath unto him; his words the same proportion to all other men’s faith that God’s word hath unto his. God’s word is the rule of his, and his words must be the rule of other men’s faith. Or, to speak more properly, God must be God only to him, and he a God to all other men.”

When you hear your professor’s lectures, do you look beyond the professor to the Author of Scripture, and hear in the lecture the viva Vox Dei, the living voice of God, or is he your final authority?

Thomas Jackson, The Eternal Truths of Scriptures, and Christian Belief Thereon Wholly Depending, Manifested by its Own Light. Delivered in Two Books of Commentary upon the Apostles Creed: The Former, Containing the positive grounds of Christian Religion in general, cleared from all exceptions of Atheists or Infidels. The later, Manifesting the Grounds of Reformed Religion to be so firm and sure, that the Romanist cannot oppugn them, but with the utter overthrow of the Romanish Church, Religion, and Faith.  (London: Printed by William Stansby by Elizabeth Crosley, 1613), 305-307. 479 pages.

For those unfamiliar with the Textual Apparatus of the United Bible Societies (UBS) Greek text, the preferred student’s text of choice in America’s seminaries, a brief introduction to notation of the reading selected for the text is presented. This material, personally, was enlightening considering the boldness of the editors, Metzger, Martini, Wikgren, Black and Aland to describe the relativity of any chosen reading. Intuitively, the believer knows, that this process cannot be the process through which God’s written word comes to the Church.

On pages x and xi of the Introduction, under heading 1. The Evaluation of Evidence for the Text, we read the following:

“By means of the letters A, B, C, D, enclosed within “braces {  } at the beginning of each set of textual variants, the Committee has sought to indicate the relative degree of certainty, arrived at on the basis of the internal considerations as well as of external evidence, for the reading adopted as the text. The letter A signifies that the text is virtually certain, while B indicates that there is some degree of doubt. The letter C means that there is considerable degree of doubt whether the text or the apparatus contains the superior reading, while D shows that there is a very high degree of doubt concerning the reading selected for the text.”

My Greek language professor said you determine the D reading by “a flip of a coin.” This is fun stuff in an academic environment where the Greek text is not considered Scripture but just another learning tool to translate. While publishers make the case for a novel vernacular alternative to the King James Bible, Academia makes jokes about the Greek text the same way one would about any common textbook.

Underlying the relative versions adopted by Multiple Version Onlyism is a relative Greek text, including the D reading where there is a “very high degree of doubt concerning the reading selected for the text in the text,” determined, so to speak, “by the flip of a coin.”

One of the promises of Isaiah 59:21 is that the word will be the mouth of the covenant keeper. The four-fold reference to the words, in thy mouth, speaks of perpetual accessibility for edification, evangelism, meditation and conversation. But what about the illiterate adult or the young child who cannot read. Of what value is the Scripture to them?

Turretin points out that the universality of this promise to every individual believer or church at every point throughout history is not the emphasis. Dealing with individuals who cannot read, such as young children, and thus could not have the word in their own mouths of their own accord, Turretin writes, “Although the Scriptures formally [the writing] are of no personal use to those who cannot read (analphabetous), yet materially [the doctrine] they serve for their instruction and edification much as the doctrines preached in the church are drawn from this source.” Turretin, Institutes, 59.

This succinct statement demonstrates the effectiveness of the doctrinae substantia through verbal communication. That as the voice of a man or woman communicates the word of God, in the spoken word of God the hearer hears the viva Vox Dei, the living voice of God. At the entry for viva vox and viva Vox Dei Richard Muller writes,

“This term was applied to the Word of God spoken directly to Israel before the Mosaic inscription of the law to the Word of God spoken directly to the prophets. In addition, because of the Reformers’ emphasis upon the power and efficacy of Scripture, the term was used by the Reformers and the Protestant orthodox to indicate the reading aloud of vernacular Scriptures during worship. Reformation and post-Reformation interpretation of Scripture, for all its emphasis upon a strict grammatical reading of the text, holds in common with the earlier exegesis a sense of the direct address of the text to the present-day church. The preacher is not one who applies an old word to new situations, but rather he is a servant and an instrument of the living Word, the viva Vox Dei, for its effective operation in the world.” Muller, Dictionary, 328

The speaker of the written Scripture, according to Muller’s research, “is a servant and an instrument of the living Word, the viva Vox Dei, for its effective operation in the world.” A dependent audience for this effective operation is those who cannot read. Considering that in cities like Baltimore, MD, 77% of high school graduates read on an elementary level or not at all, the importance of the spoken Word is heightened. The Bible Version debate is essentially less relevant to the child and the illiterate, their soul’s future depending on the clear articulation of the viva Vox Dei to them by parents and servants of the Lord.

Are there any critical text proponents that argue that their preferred novel version is the viva Vox Dei? If it is not the living word of God they are sharing, what hope do they give to those who cannot read?