Inclusion-Exclusion | BibleSanity.org

About...

The Gospel

Biblical Inerrancy

Natural Interpretation

You are Here: BibleSanity.org >> Bible Versions >> Passage Inclusion vs Exclusion

Passage Inclusion vs Exclusion

Plenary Inspiration and the Majority Text

Plenary Inspiration

A common core tennat of conservative Christianity is acknowledging the Holy Bible as the Word of God. Consider the example below from a typical Statement of Faith:

"We believe in the verbal and plenary inspiration, inerrancy, and divine authority of the Holy Bible. It is the completed special revelation of God to man and is comprised of the 66 books recognized as the Protestant Canon."

The term 'Plenary' means that our faith of Scripture as the Word of God includes ALL the Scriptures, not just some of them. This prohibits readers from evaluating some passages as out of date, and denies that historic or scientific information is outside of the scope of inerrancy.

Canon - This plenary inclusion of all of Scripture must also be related to a Canon of Scripture, but this will be the same for all Protestant Canon Bibles. Canon will only vary for denominationally-specific Bibles (Intro to Apocrypha).

Inclusion / Exclusion

The Three: The importance of plenary inspiration must also relate to manuscript differnences which vary by inclusion or exclusion of some New Testament passages, which Majority Text manuscripts include, but some Critical Text (CT) Bibles exclude or mark as questionable. There are three such passages:

The last several verses of the Book of Mark (Mark 16:9-20)
The explanation portion of the account of the healing at the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:3-4)
The account of the woman caught in adultry (John 7:53-8:11).

Without arguing the merits of textual criticism and all the work tracing variant readings, the fact is that we have very few good manuscripts from before the fifth century and the vast majority of manuscripts include these three passages. I understand that there are reasonable arguments for each of these three being additions rather than original Scripture, but the truth is that we really don't know. A separate consideration is that they have been included for over 400 years, so they should not silently disappear without notice.

These three passages above should be included in the main text (not in a footnote), but may be presented in Italics or encapsulated by brackets. If they are marked as doubtful, then they should be footnoted.

The 77 - There are also many (77) places where just a few words or phrases are in question and are omitted or marked as doubtful by most CT Bibles. The majority of these words or phrases are duplicates from parallel or earlier verses and are without good manuscript support, and are also of little or no impact to the meaning of the given passage. These are far less significant than the first 3 verses discussed and do not necessarily need to be footnoted when following the Critical Text.

The One Lastly, there is 1 John 5:7-8 (the Johannine Comma), which I will discuss next. This verse needs to be in TR-based Bibles, because it is in the TR, but it does not need to be included in CT Bibles as it has strongly established evidence as being an addition rather than original Scripture.

The 3, and the 77, and the 1 comprise my 81 comparison passages which I examine in my Bible version reviews. I have provided a wide-screen PDF table showing these comparisons:

Manuscript Comparisons TR-MT-CT

The Johannine Comma

While the extended text of I John 5:7-8 is required for TR Bibles, I do NOT require inclusion of the extended version of this passage in CT Bibles, and here's why.

The extended text is from some Old Latin and Latin Vulgate mss. The Comma Johanneum (the long version of 1 John 5:7-8) first appears in a 4th C Latin homily, "Liber Apologeticus" written around AD 380 by either Bishop Priscillian of Avila or his follower Bishop Instantius. Note that this is not Latin translation of Scripture, but a sermon. As far back as we have evidences, the Comma Johanneum has been present is some Old Latin and Latin Vulgate mss (in text or marginalized), and absent in others of equal antiquity.

It is not found in any Greek manuscripts (at all) until the time of Erasmus and GA#61 in 1520.

The third edition (1522) of Erasmus' Novum Instrumentum Omne (Textus Receptus) was supplemented by a contemporary (1520) manuscript, Codex Montfortianus (GA #61), specifically for the extended text of 1 John 5:7-8, which was not in any of his existing manuscripts, and which Erasmus himself rejected as non-authentic in his "Annotationes."

Furthermore, Bruce Metzger, in his "A Textual Commentary of the Greek New Testament" says, "That these words are spurious and have no right to stand in the New Testament is certain..." and goes on to detail a very solid case for the opinion. Even my old KJV Scofield Study Bible (Scofield notes 1909, 1917) gives the following note on the passage, "It is generally agreed that v. 7 has no real authority, and has been inserted."

Therefore, when reviewing Bibles, my standards for this particular passage are thus:

Any KJV-friendly (TR-based) Bible must include the extended text of 1 John 5:7-8, as it is in the TR text, but may (and really should) note its doubtful origin.
Any CT Bible should use the shorter text, and hopefully will include an appropriate footnote.