Religious Text Lab

Compare sacred texts across traditions

Word-level drift, translation pressure, manuscript history and doctrinal impact — for the Bible, Qur'an, Tanakh, Gita, Tao Te Ching, Dhammapada and your own corpora.

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Bibleuncertainty: highVerse insertion (heavenly-witnesses clause)

1 John 5:7–8 — The Comma Johanneum

The 'heavenly witnesses' clause is absent from the earliest Greek manuscripts and appears in the later Latin tradition. Its presence makes the verse an explicit Trinitarian proof-text; its absence does not. A textbook case of a doctrinally weighty addition.

Base text

Comparison text

Latin Vulgate (Clementine)public-domain

Latin · c. 405 / 1592

Quoniam tres sunt qui testimonium dant in cælo: Pater, Verbum, et Spiritus Sanctus: et hi tres unum sunt. Et tres sunt qui testimonium dant in terra: spiritus, et aqua, et sanguis; et hi tres unum sunt.

American Standard Versionpublic-domain

English (critical Greek) · 1901

And it is the Spirit that beareth 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.

Word-level differences

99% drift

Quoniam tres sunt qui testimonium dant in cælo: Pater, Verbum, et Spiritus Sanctus: et hi tres unum sunt. Et tres sunt qui testimonium dant And it is the Spirit that beareth 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 terra: spiritus, et aqua, et sanguis; et hi tres unum sunt. one.

Doctrinally loaded shifts

  • Divine terminology: “spirit” appears in the comparison only.

Source timeline / witnesses

c. 405 / 1592Latin Vulgate (Clementine)Latin
1395WycliffeEnglish (from Vulgate)
1534TyndaleEnglish (from Greek)
1599Geneva BibleEnglish (Textus Receptus)
1769King James VersionEnglish (Textus Receptus)
1901American Standard VersionEnglish (critical Greek)

Manuscript / transmission notes

  • ▸Absent from all Greek mss before the 14th c.; first firmly attested in Latin.
  • ▸Entered the printed Greek text via Erasmus' later editions under external pressure.
  • ▸Tyndale printed it but flagged doubt in his notes; modern critical texts omit or bracket it.

Doctrinal impact notes

  • ▸Used historically as a one-verse proof of the Trinity.
  • ▸Most modern scholars across denominations treat it as a gloss — which does not by itself settle the doctrine, only this verse's testimony to it.