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But it is likely this verse is not genuine. It is wanting in every MS. of this epistle written
before the invention of printing, one excepted, the Codex Montfortii, in Trinity College,
Dublin: the others which omit this verse amount to one hundred and twelve.

It is wanting in both the Syriac, all the Arabic, Ethiopic, the Coptic, Sahidic, Armenian,
Slavonian, etc., in a word, in all the ancient versions but the Vulgate; and even of this ver-
sion many of the most ancient and correct MSS. have it not. It is wanting also in all the an-
cient Greek fathers; and in most even of the Latin.

The words, as they exist in all the Greek MSS. with the exception of the Codex Montfortii,
are the following:-
"6. This is he that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not by water alone, but by water
and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. 7. For there
are three that bear witness, the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree in
one. 9. If we receive the witness of man, the witness of God is greater, &c."

The words that are omitted by all the MSS., the above excepted, and all the versions, the
Vulgate excepted, are these:-
[In heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one and there are
three which bear witness in earth.]

However, we will allow the book Forgery in Christianity, by Joseph Wheless, to explain
why this was not deleted by some of the later Bible versions --

Erasmus first detected the fraud and omitted the forged verse in his edition of the Greek
Testament in 1516. (New Comm. Pt. III, p. 718-19.) This verse 7, bluntly speaking, is a
forgery: "It had been willfully and wickedly interpolated, to sustain the Trinitarian doc-
trine; it has been entirely omitted by the Revisers of the New Testament." (Roberts, Com-
panion to the Revised Version, p. 72) "This memorable text," says Gibbon, "is condemned
by the silence of the Fathers, ancient versions, and authentic manuscripts, of all the manu-
scripts now extant, above four score in number, some of which are more than 1200 years
old." (Ch. xxvii, p. 598.) Speaking of this and another, Reinach says: "One of these forger-
ies (I John v, 7) was subjected to interpolation of a later date...If these two verses were
authentic, they would be an affirmation of the doctrine of the Trinity, at a time when the
gospels, and Acts and St. Paul ignore it. It was first pointed out in 1516 that these verses
were an interpolation, for they do not appear in the best manuscripts down to the fifteenth
century. The Roman Church refused to bow to the evidence...The Congregation of the In-
dex, on January 13, 1897, with the approbation of Leo XIII, forbade any question of the
authenticity of the text relating to the "Three Heavenly Witnesses." It showed in this in-
stance a willful ignorance to which St. Gregory's rebuke is specially applicable: 'God does
not need our lies.'" (Orpheus, p. 239.) But His Church does; for without them it would not
be; and with out the forged "Three Heavenly Witnesses," there would be not a word in the
entire New Testament hinting the existence of the Three-in-One God of Christianity. The
Holy Trinity is an unholy Forgery!

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