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.

Every so often in history, it seems everything happened at once. A recent example future historians may evaluate is the rapid downfall of colonial empires from the end of World War II until the 1960’s. Further back was the period of national revolutions beginning with the American Revolutionary War and ending with the Napoleonic Wars.

Build Up

The most interesting to me, however, is the “explosion” of Bibles in the early modern period. Before the sixteenth century, the Bible—both Old and New Testaments—were inaccessible to most people. The Latin Vulgate was the most extant version, but few except for the Roman Catholic clergy could read it. Translations existed in English, French, German, etc., but they were not published or distributed to commoners, and thus are mostly lost to history. Everything changed, though, with a series of events starting in 1452.