Since it does not appear in the earliest manuscripts, that makes it unreliable. Whether it is doctrinally correct is irrelevant.

Consider sources such as this:

http://www.the-highway.com/inerrancyTOC_Gerstner.html

This: http://www.reformed.org/documents/in...ents/icbi.html

And this: http://mb-soft.com/believe/text/inerranc.htm

Thankyou Chan. I'm way behind on my reading.

The earliest manuscripts are also devoid of many other things in the NT. The oldest MSS are not necessarily the best, bro.

Bro., We do not have any MSS that date that far back, anyway. We just have copies.

These words appear in no earlier version of the Greek NT, nor even in Latin versions prior to the 5th century. They first appear in the writings of a Spaiard named Priscillian who was executed for heresy in A.D. 385.

bump 4 blume

We have to take the overall and entire picture in mind. When we start messing with what is genuine and what is not in the New Testament, and get the slant on things that so-called "higher critics" have, we will begin to question everything in the bible. And soon, we will wonder what else is genuine and what else is not. In time, we will say, like the author of the book mentioned at the start, the New Testametn is simply unreliable, and lose our entire faith.

In short, if part of it is wrong, then it is all wrong. There is so much discrepancy involved in what is actually manuscript evidence and what is not, just as history is often in the eye of the beholder, along with the fact that what we may have seen in only one MS may actually be in many not recovered, that we have to make a general decision. I believe it was God's will for the Johanine Comma to be in the bible. I believe, by a logic of faith, that God did this, and that it may not have been in many MSS, but it must have been in the originals.

Just my opinion.