Biblical Criticism in Early Modern Europe: Erasmus, the Johannine Comma and Trinitarian Debate. By Grantley McDonald
It is not many textual variants that deserve to have their reception history told across the span of centuries. But, then, it is also not many variants that have been written about by the likes of Calvin and Hobbes, Milton and Mill, and Whiston and Wesley—all for different reasons and with differing conclusions. Nor have most textual variants made their way into British law or received the immediate attention and comment of the Pope. In the case of the Johannine Comma (1 John 5:7–8), however, the story deserves to be told well. Here, in elegant and lively prose, that fascinating story gets the treatment it deserves from Grantley McDonald in a revised version of his 2011 Leiden University doctoral thesis completed under Henk Jan de Jonge. Those familiar with de Jonge’s work on the Comma will know that he has written an important article exposing as a myth the popular claim that Erasmus added this text only after he dared someone to find it in a Greek manuscript and, sure enough, one was made to order. Why this myth persists even today in our finest textual critics is a question worth reflection. McDonald does touch on it as he unravels the myth’s origin and development. That, along with so much else, is recounted in superb detail. For McDonald, the many ways that Erasmus’s work was used (and misused) becomes the prism by which he expands from a mere recounting of commentary on the Comma to a ‘social history’ that provides insight into how Western Christians have responded to the rise of biblical criticism.
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