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Answer: It depends on which translation of the New Testament
you are using. Many modern translations do not include
this supposed proof of a trinitarian godhead.
As rendered in the King James Version of the Bible,
it reads: "For there are three that bear record in heaven,
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these
three are one. And there are three that bear witness
in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood:
and these three agree in one." However, these verses
do not occur in any reliable Greek manuscript.
There is an interesting footnote to the above to be
found in the Catholic Jerusalem Bible (1966), which
does not have the added words in the main text. It states:
Vulg[ate] vv.7-8 read as followers "There
are three witnesses in heaven: the Father the Word
and the Spirit, and these three are one; there are three
witnesses on earth: the Spirit the water and the
blood." The words in italics (not in any of the early
Greek MSS, or any of the early translations, or in the
best MSS of the Vulg. itself) are probably a gloss that
has crept into the text.
These spurious words may have been the work of an
overzealous copyist, who inserted this statement so
as to lend credence to the doctrine of the Trinity.
Whatever its source, the crucial passage is of much
later origin than the original authorship of 1 John.
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