Everything about An Historical Account Of Two Notable Corruptions Of Scripture totally explained
An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture is a dissertation by the English mathematician and scholar
Isaac Newton. First published in
1754, twenty-seven years after Newton's death, it reviewed all the textual evidence available from ancient sources on two disputed Bible passages, at and .
1 John 5:7
King James Version Bible,
1 John 5:7 reads:
» For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
Using the writings of the early
Church Fathers, the
Greek and
Latin manuscripts and the testimony of the first versions of the Bible, Newton attempted to demonstrate that the words "in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one," in support of the Trinity doctrine, didn't appear in the original inspired Greek Scriptures. He then traced the way in which the spurious reading crept into the Latin versions, first as a marginal note, and later into the text itself. He argued that it was first taken into a Greek text in
1515 by
Cardinal Ximenes on the strength of a late Greek manuscript corrected from the Latin. Finally, Newton considered the sense and context of the verse, concluding, "Thus is the sense plain and natural, and the argument full and strong; but if you insert the testimony of 'the Three in Heaven' you interrupt and spoil it."
1 Timothy 3:16
The shorter portion of Newton's dissertation was concerned with
1 Timothy 3:16, which reads (in the
King James Version):
» And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.
Newton argued that, by a small alteration in the Greek text, the word "God" was substituted to make the phrase read "God was manifest in the flesh." instead of "He was manifest in the flesh." He demonstrated that early Church writers in referring to the verse knew nothing of such an alteration.
Summary of both passages
Historical background
Newton didn't publish these findings during his lifetime, likely due to the political climate. Those who wrote against the doctrine of the
Trinity were subject to persecution in England. As late as
1698 the
Act for the Suppression of Blasphemy and Profaneness made it an offense to deny one of the persons of the Trinity to be God, punishable with loss of office, employment and profit on the first occasion, and imprisonment for a repetition. Newton's friend
William Whiston (translator of the works of
Josephus) lost his professorship at
Cambridge for this reason in
1711. In
1693 a pamphlet attacking the Trinity was burned by order of the
House of Lords, and the next year its printer and author were prosecuted. In
1697 Thomas Aikenhead, an eighteen-year-old student charged with denying the Trinity, was hanged at
Edinburgh,
Scotland.
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