Conservative Friends Bible Study of 1 John #12 Chapter 5 Verses 1 - 12

Ohio Yearly Meeting's Podcast

The notes from this podcast provide an abbreviated (verse by verse) summation of selected, important Greek words:

Henry begins the session by quickly reviewing and commenting on a phrase from 1 John 5:1:

Verse 5:1

When, in this First Epistle of John, the author uses the phrase, “born of God”, the Greek means a spiritual birth from God. The word, “of God” in the Greek, means “out of God”.

Verses 5:6-12

The phrase in verse 6, “. . . water and blood” has various interpretations. Some see it as the water and blood that poured out of Jesus’ side at His crucifixion; others look to the baptism of Jesus in water when He was immersed in the Spirit. The word, “blood” in Hebrew often refers to the life in something. Today, the English words, “life blood”, would have a similar meaning. As the discussion continues, Henry seems to land on the best interpretation being the human birth experience including both the breaking of the water in the mother immediately before birth begins, and the blood that accompanies a person’s birth.

Verses 5:7-8

The group discusses at length the King James’ Version (KJV) of verses 7 and 8:

7 For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. [Italics added for clarity] 8 And there are three that bear witness on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree as one.

Henry indicates that the Textus Receptus Latin manuscript (from which the KJV was mostly translated), includes the above italicized words that comprise verse 7 in the KJV. But the words of verse seven appear in only eight manuscripts, most of which are far later than the hundreds and hundreds of the earliest known and most reliable manuscripts. The words of verse 7 are not found any of these earliest manuscripts: Syrian, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Arabic, Slavonic, Old Latin in its early form (as used by Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine), nor in the Vulgate (as used by Jerome).

Thus, it seems the words of verse seven (italicized above) may have originated from a marginal note added by a copyist to a manuscript at a later time. Then, later copyists mistakenly considered those words to be part of the original manuscript, and began to include them as though they had been in the original manuscript.

Verse 5:9

“Marturian” (the Greek word translated “witness” in the KJV), became our English word for “martyr”, since many Christians who were witnesses for Christ, ended up as martyrs as a because of their faith.

The advice in our introduction is from page 30 of the Ohio Yearly Meeting's Book of Discipline.

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