1 John 5:7 is probably the most controversial inclusion in the King James translation of the Bible. Often referred to as the Johannine Comma (Latin: Comma Johanneum), entire books have been written about this one verse, either for or against its place in the Biblical text. It is arguably the most concise Trinitarian declaration in the New Testament:

For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

I believe this verse is inspired, preserved Scripture, but this article is not meant to convince those who hold an opposing view. Instead, I simply want to address the following question: Is the Johannine Comma in the Waldensian Bible? The answer is definitely yes.

In a previous article, I presented a brief history of the Waldensian Bible, but for the sake of this article, allow me to elaborate a little more on it.

According to Gilly (1848), the famed Peter Waldo and at least two other men translated various Latin texts into the vernacular of southern France, which historically went by many names (Provençal, Romaunt, etc.) but is now called Old Occitan. This was in the 12th century, nearly 350 years before the Protestant Reformation. Jones (1819) recognizes this translation as the oldest European translation of the Bible in a modern tongue outside of Latin.

Due to heavy suppression of the Waldensians, especially in the 16th–17th centuries, few copies of this Bible survived. There are six known codices of this translation, commonly referenced by their canonical locations: two in Paris, then one each in Lyons, Dublin, Grenoble, and Zurich. Thankfully, the Dublin manuscript is digitally accessible thanks to the work of the Library of Trinity College Dublin, and can be accessed here.

The Dublin manuscript, like all Bibles produced in the early 16th century, has no verse numbers, though there is some separation based on traditional concepts of thought and paragraph. The typography is blackletter, which is found in nearly all medieval manuscripts before the invention of the printing press. The blackletter typography (with its archaic contractions and abbreviations) made the transcription challenging, though certainly entertaining and educational.

My transcription of 1 John 5:7 in Old Occitan reads:

Car trei son liqual doman testimoni al cel lo Paire e lo Filh¹ e lo Sanct Esperit e aquesti trei son un.

With punctuation added, this translates to English literally as:

For three are who bear witness in the heaven: the father and the son and the holy spirit, and these three are one.

Those opposing this verse’s inclusion in the scriptural tradition would argue that this is a reading from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, which is also where Erasmus sourced the verse in the third edition of his Novum Instrumentum omne, precursor to the Textus Receptus. Yet Gilly (1848), who wrote extensively on the origins of the Waldensian Bible in The Romaunt Version of the Gospel According to St. John, states:

Now the Romaunt Version, among other marks of great care and erudition, and of faithful adherence to the best Latin copies of the New Testament, did not adhere to it servilely, but consulted the remains of the old ‘Versio Itala,’ and adapted the readings of that version, whenever they saw reason to prefer them to those of Jerome.

Further:

These are indications, not to be lightly esteemed, of anxious discrimination on the part of the translators of the Romaunt Versions, who, like the translators of our own Authorized Version, omitted no opportunity of comparing their own work with the various texts, and interpretations of the original, within their reach.

In summary, the Waldensian Bible is not a single-source translation; the translators used various texts, most notably Old Latin manuscripts. Because of this textual tradition, gleaning from both ancient Latin texts and Jerome, the Bible used by Waldensians in Piedmont and Southern France includes the Johannine Comma and its definitive statement on the Trinity.

Thus, despite the existence of older manuscripts (both Greek and Latin) that did not include 1 John 5:7, churches separate from the medieval Roman Church held to a tradition of including it in the biblical text. Amid the backdrop of persecution, the Waldensians affirmed their theological stance on the Trinity through the Bible they read, studied, and quoted.

References

Gilly, W. S. (1848). The Romaunt Version of the Gospel According to St John. United Kingdom: John Murray.

Jones, W. (1832). The History of the Christian Church from the Birth of Christ to the XVIII Century. United States: R.W. Pomeroy.

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