The Very Earliest Witness for 1 John 5:7
...We have seen that there is a list of early writers who all attest, directly or indirectly, to the genuineness of the verse 1 John 5:7. The list begins with Theophilus of Antioch who wrote in the latter half of the 2nd century, and goes all the way up to the Council of Arles and beyond which sat at the beginning of the 4th century (see n. 12 below). But impressive though it is, there is one thing that is patently wrong with this list. The men in it are all Christian authors, and the suspicion comes naturally to mind that ‘well, they would say that, wouldn’t they’. They each had a deep theological interest in the subject of the Trinity and the vindication of the New Testament, and therefore it is only to be expected that they would say nothing to controvert the verse in question and everything they could to corroborate it. In other words, in the eyes of many skeptics, their words are shot through with bias and self interest. How can we possibly trust them?
Well, we can trust them on one point at least, namely that if the verse hadn’t existed in their time, then they each would have had to invent it, though for no obvious purpose. Another point on which we may trust them is this. In their day 1 John 5:7 was not in dispute. There was therefore no anti-Arian axe to grind and therefore no need to mention it, yet they mention or quote from the verse anyway if only in passing. Such incidental treatment of the verse speaks powerfully for the genuineness of their statements and for the inclusion of 1 John 5:7 in the very earliest manuscripts of the New Testament, manuscripts which were still extant and with which they were all familiar. But even this observation will not do. It is nowhere near radical enough. What is needed to settle the matter is an independent witness to the early presence of 1 John 5:7; one who was patently not a Christian; preferably someone who was an actively anti-Christian pagan writer (making him a hostile witness); someone who pre-dates even the earliest of the Christian apologists (namely Theophilus of Antioch in this case); and whose writing directly refers to or even quotes from 1 John 5:7 - and, moreover, just to make things really difficult, one whose hostile testimony was produced within just fifty years of the close of the Eyewitness Period during which John wrote his first epistle. Produce such a witness as that – one who fulfils every one of these thoroughly unreasonable criteria – and we will surely and truly believe that 1 John 5:7 was no late interpolation, but an integral component of the first epistle of John from the very beginning. Do that and the argument will surely be settled. Now, that is what we may call a tall order, a very tall order indeed - and a most unreasonable one at that. Where can we possibly hope to find such a writer - one who is pagan and a hostile witness to Christianity, who wrote demonstrably within just fifty years of John, and who quotes from or directly alludes to 1 John 5:7? It is a tall order indeed, and seems impossible to meet.
Providentially, however, it is one that is met on every point by the anti-Christian satirist Lucian of Samosata, whose too-little-publicised satire, Philopatros, has survived to the present day. It is a most intriguing document. Firstly, there is its date. Mainly for the fact that it mentions a punitive expedition into Persia by the Romans, there are two emperors under which the Philopatros could have been written. The first is Trajan who was emperor from AD 98-117; and the second is Marcus Antoninus, who reigned from 161-180.
Expeditions into Persia took place under both emperors, so which one was it?
Critics generally plump for the latter of the two simply because this removes the witness further from the scene. But interestingly, the dialogue of the Philopatros undoes the notion by mentioning the taking by the Romans of the Persian city of Susa – the Shushan of the Book of Esther – which occurred under Trajan in the year 116. Marcus Antoninus’ incursion into Persia was to descend into farce before it had even begun, with nothing taken by Rome at all apart from a very bloody nose. Thus it is the taking of Susa under Trajan which dates the Philopatros, giving it an earliest possible year of writing of AD 116, within just 46 years of the close of the Eyewitness Period during which John wrote his first epistle.19
And then there is its intriguing title, Philopatros. It is Greek for ‘love of the Father,’ and is powerfully reminiscent of John’s repeated allusions to the love of the Father which appear in his first epistle (throughout but particularly in 1John 2:15; & 3:1). Clearly, and on this ground alone, we may conclude that Lucian of Samosata was familiar with the first epistle of John, very familiar indeed. But there’s more – much more.
Remarkably, and out of all the verses of the New Testament that he could have parodied, Lucian satirises for us our disputed verse, 1 John 5:7. He puts his own satirical slant on it, to be sure, but he has clearly taken 1 John 5:7 and made it the focus of his parody. Even after he has done his work, the close resemblance between the contents of what Lucian has written and 1 John 5:7 is truly remarkable, and leaves no room whatever for any notion of coincidence or happenstance. One wonders why the critics never mention it.20 But let’s see how Lucian deals with the verse.
1 John 5:7 has: “For there are Three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these Three are One.” (King James Version)
Satirising the verse, Lucian has: “The mighty god that rules on high, Immortal dwelling in the sky, the son of the father, spirit proceeding from the father, three in one and one in three. Think him your Zeus, consider him your god.”21
Interesting, isn’t it? Lucian’s satire (by which he meant to mock the Word of God) contains not just Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but he even tells us that these Three are One, exactly as John does in the 7th verse of his first epistle’s 5th chapter, though in parody, thus unwittingly – I should say Providentially - vindicating the Word of God in one of its most controverted statements. Why, he even uses the neuter gender for ‘three’, as does John, a usage which Porson and so many of his ilk have needlessly and foolishly choked upon. Lucian could not have copied his material from any early 1 John 5:7 apologist, for the earliest of those (Theophilus of Antioch) did not appear on the scene for another fifty years, and the verse was not to be publicly challenged by the Arian heresy for a further 300 years; which leaves only one possible source for his satire, namely John’s first epistle.
How else could he have made use not only its content and unique turns of phrase, but also its grammar? Could a better witness than this be had from anywhere in the ancient world? Dating as it does from within just fifty years of the Eyewitness Period – long before our earliest Christian apologist for this verse - and coming as it does from the hand of a decidedly hostile witness, is it possible to ask for more? We may not think so.
This is a truly excellent testimony to the authenticity, and indeed the antiquity of 1 John 5:7 – a source of evidence which our critics strangely forget to tell us about. Curious, isn’t it? Philopatros has been available to them since 1506, yet they would rather have us believe that 1 John 5:7 is a spurious interpolation and no true part of the New Testament, not having appeared for several centuries after the New Testament period. Yet this astounding and unsuspected source of evidence meets all of the unreasonable evidential demands that are made upon it and is, in every sense, as plain as day. I shall leave the reader to guess why it has gone unmentioned all these years.22
Extract from Authenticity of the New Testament (Part 2) Bill Cooper
Notes from the Postscript on this chapter...
19. Forster, A New Plea..., p. 34. AD 116 would admittedly be a little early, as Lucian was but a child in that year. However, the Greek of Philopatros is clumsy and unpolished (Macleod, p. 414), and no doubt reflects the fact that Philopatros was one of his first attempts at writing parody. Either way, it still dates to long before Theophilus of Antioch, the earliest 1 John 5:7 apologist from whom Lucian might have copied his information.
20. I know of no modern critic who treats of the Philopatros and its vindication of the verse 1 John 5:7. Porson, however, does refer to it – with revulsion, to be sure - but he does mention it. He writes it off with no evidence whatever as an early 4th-century forgery, but even so it clearly unnerves him, for even the 4th century is way too early for the appearance of 1 John 5:7 in any pagan writer. According to the critics’ model the verse hadn’t even been written by then. Porson writes: “I know not whether I ought to mention the ‘Philopatros’, a dialogue written early in the fourth century, and falsely ascribed to Lucian, where the Christian Trinity is thus ridiculed.” (cit. Forster, A New Plea..., p. 30). He knew that mentioning it at all undid his case, whilst not mentioning it would have opened him to a charge of dishonesty - most discomfiting. So discomfiting, in fact, that an attempt has been made in more recent times on no good grounds to date Philopatros to the 10th century simply because that is the date of its earliest surviving mss (MacLeod, p. 414). For the problems this raises, see Postscript above.
21. MacLeod, Lucian Volume VIII. 1967. Loeb Classical Library. p. 437. In its original Greek, the passage reads: “...υιον πατρος πνευμα εκ πατρος εκπορευομενον ενα εκ τριων και εξ ενος τρια.” My thanks to Dr James J Scofield Johnson, Chief Academic Officer of ICR’s School of Biblical Apologetics, for supplying me with a literal translation and a thorough grammatical analysis of the passage, enabling me to check MacLeod’s accuracy in translating such an important piece.
22. Critics who lazily lean on Porson for their wit and knowledge, would have learned of Philopatros from Porson’s own mention of it (see n. 20). But since Porson’s day, something strange has happened to the title of Philopatros. Lucian’s works were first translated into Latin by Erasmus in 1506, then in co-authorship with Thomas More in 1521, and were afterwards translated afresh in 1634; 1637; 1638; 1663 and 1684. Various Greek-Latin extracts of Lucian were published in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, but somewhere along the line the title of Philopatros (love of the Father) was changed to Philopatris (love of country). See for example Jacobitz, Luciani Samosatensis Opera. 1904. Leipzig. Vol 3. pp. 411-425. Patriotism is not the focus of this parody. The love of the Father is, which makes one wonder if the alteration was made some time after 1790 - when Porson uses its correct title - to disguise Philopatros’ contents and their significance for 1 John 5:7. It underwent this change during the height of the rationalist ‘Age of Enlightenment’ after all. If it was deliberate, then it was very effective, for few in the modern age have even heard of Lucian’s Philopatros, let alone know what it contains. After all, an old Greek satire on patriotism isn’t likely to stimulate curiosity in anyone, especially when they find that it’s not even about patriotism. Thus, this simple change in title guaranteed that Philopatros – the greatest witness we have for the authenticity and antiquity of 1 John 5:7 - would thereafter languish in obscurity... till now, at any rate. (The Philopatros should not be confused with Lucian’s Patridos, which certainly is about patriotism; see Fowler, The Works of Lucian of Samosata. 1905. Oxford. Vol 4. pp. 23-26).
