Johannine comma tertullian biography

Interpolated phrase in verses 5:7–8 of 1 John

The Johannine Comma (Latin: Comma Johanneum) is an interpolated phrase (comma) in verses 5:7–8 of the First Epistle of John.^[1] The text (with the comma in italics and enclosed by brackets) in the King James Version of the Bible reads:

⁷For there are three that beare record [in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.] ⁸[And there are three that beare witnesse in earth], the Spirit, and the Water, and the Blood, and these three agree in one.

— King James Version (1611)

In the Greek Textus Receptus (TR), the verse reads thus:^[2]

ὅτι τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες εν τῷ οὐρανῷ, ὁ πατήρ, ὁ λόγος, καὶ τὸ Ἅγιον Πνεῦμα· καὶ οὗτοι οἱ τρεῖς ἕν εἰσι.

It became a touchpoint for the Christian theological debate over the doctrine of the Trinity from the early church councils to the Catholic and Protestant disputes in the early modern period.^&#