Nathaniel Ellsworth Cornwall explains the Middleton argument
Cornwall has a superb section on the argument which is on p. 627 here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=rkQUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA627
(In another spot we have James Snapp complementing his scholarship, which he used as Waterrock on BVDB.)
But those who propose to expunge I. John, v. 7, must also meet fairly, and set aside, or ingeniously evade, the weighty conclusion of the candid Bishop Middleton, who, having admitted, in one of his essays on the Greek Article, that "this passage is generally abandoned as spurious," yet finds in the eighth verse, as it would stand without the seventh, a grave objection to that view, and says: "I am not ignorant that in the rejection of this controverted passage, learned and good men are now for the most part agreed, and I contemplate with admiration and delight the gigantic exertions of intellect which have established this acquiescence; the objection, however, which has given rise to this discussion, I could not consistently with my plan suppress. On the whole, I am led to suspect that though so much labor and critical acuteness have been bestowed upon these celebrated verses, more is yet to be done before the mysteries in which they are involved can be fully developed" (p. 453).
And when all is done which Bishop Middleton thus suggests, there will remain to be disposed of, as points distinct from the one made by him, the internal evidence of the genuineness of the passage, from its grammatical structure and the ungrammatical aspect of the eighth verse without the seventh, and the logical insufficiency of the sixth and eighth verses for a basis of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh, concerning "the witness of God," "which He hath testified of His Son."
The first thing that strikes an accurate scholar in
I. John, v. 8, without the seventh verse preceding, is the very hard grammar of the masculine article and participle οἱ μαρτυροῦντες, and the masculine article and numeral οἱ τρεῖς, with the three neuter nouns, πνεῦμα, ὕδωρ, and αίμα. That
palpably ungrammatical construction may have caused the suggestion, by
an old annotator on the passage in Jerome's version, that without the seventh verse the connection is altogether maimed and defective. But as no grammatical difficulty appears in the Latin version, that remark probably had reference to the logical connection, which, without the seventh verse, is also defective. Neither the grammatical nor the logical defect, however, is remedied by the attempts of those who, though not expressly recognizing the great difficulty of this point of grammar, have yet betrayed a dread of it and a desire to evade it, and have left it with slight, inadequate treatment. Assuming that the passage originally contained only those neuter nouns,
some attempt to make the masculine form of the article and numeral denote the persons of the Trinity. And for that purpose they further assume a
far-fetched allegorical interpretation, which finds the Trinity in the eighth verse. But such attempts to evade the difficulty of that very hard grammar, are thwarted by
the correct use of the neuter participle, μαρτυροῦν, in the sixth verse, with one of those three nouns, πνεῦμα, where it denotes one of the persons of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God. And that construction, which is perfect Greek, could not be legitimately changed without the intervention of a masculine or a feminine noun, to overrule the neuter forms.
But suppose the persons of the Trinity to be denoted by those three neuter nouns in verse eighth. Yet why were the article and participle masculine, and not neuter or feminine, when
the only Greek nouns which signify person, in the theological sense, are προςωπον (neuter), (SA
erson) and
ὑποστασις (feminine)? (SA:hypostasis) There is a rule of Greek grammar, that
"when persons and things are spoken of, the article or adjective may be in the masculine." But on the present supposition, there are
no things nor any persons in that sense of the word, and that rule has no reference to persons, in the theological sense. This,
Gregory Nazianzen, of the fourth century, shows; often denoting the persons of the Trinity by the neuter numeral, τρια, without any noun, but not by the masculine, τρεῖς. And other writers of that age, and in the third century, often use the phrase, τρια προσωπα, and sometimes the feminine noun, ὑποστασις. If. therefore,
the feminine ai (Grk) had appeared instead of the masculine
οἱ, with the numeral, τρεῖς, those who would cut out the seventh verse might have had some ground for their attempts to patch up the grammar of the passage after such mutilation. But as the Greek words now stand, in the eighth verse in all manuscripts and readings, the article
oi cannot have place there legitimately, without one of the masculine nouns, πατηρ and λογος, which are found only in the seventh verse.
The comment in Lange on the use of οἱ μαρτυροῦντες, with the three neuter nouns, also betrays a dread of the ungrammatical aspect of the eighth verse, when the seventh is cut out. But the evasion of the difficulty in Lange is such as none but Germans could invent. It is attempted in this way. "The historical facts previously specified are now introduced in the masculine gender, to designate them as concrete witnesses, like persons"-why not say like men, at once, and avoid confusion of terms?" but so that they are subordinate to the Spirit, who is the principal and only absolute witness, employing and making use of the facts in the life of Jesus." But the Spirit, that "principal witness," is always denoted in Greek by the neuter noun, πνεῦμα, which, unaccompanied by an overruling noun, masculine or feminine, always requires the article or adjective to take the neuter form, and here in the sixth verse, has a neuter participle: whatever might be said of the possible exception of a participle in the masculine form, used as a verb, but not as a noun. And the use of the neuter noun, προσωπον, in the New Testament, and in other Greek, ecclesiastical and classical, to designate individuals " as concrete witnesses" (see II. Cor. i. 11, et al.), and thus "persons," in the common signification of the word, makes that last invention to evade the grammatical difficulty of expunging I. John, v. 7, utterly puerile and futile. That very German comment, then, which no sophistry can ever make germane, shows what must be expected in a revision of the English Bible, under the prevalence or popularity of such treatment of Greek grammar.
