/lit/ - Literature

>>20907364
>The Comma probably originated as a piece of allegorical exegesis of the three witnesses and may have been written as a marginal gloss in a Latin manuscript of 1 John, whence it was taken into the text of the Old Latin Bible
That seems to be based on an unjustified and overly complicated assumption. What happened here is simply that the verse comes from the Greek autographs, and, for whatever reason, while some defaced copies of the Greek were circulating, not all of them were defaced. That's a much more straightforward explanation that takes into account the evidence, as the text is cited twice word for word by Cyprian, once by Origen and once by Tertullian, all in the 3rd century AD and independently of each other. The reason why it wasn't cited even more is because the Sabellians, who were the heretics that Tertullian was arguing with, were already taking John 10:30 out of context and misinterpreting it, and John 10:30 says essentially the same thing, "I and my Father are one." The verse of John 10:30 is very similar to 1 John 5:7 already, so there's no point in bringing it into that debate. And multiple sources say that the Arians were responsible for spreading copies with this verse removed, which would help explain why it wasn't used as much as it might have later on, and again because John 10:30 existed.