TRINITY IN THE BIBLE

TRINITY IN THE BIBLE

There is a quick and easy way to explain the concept of Trinity in the Bible…It’s not in
there. Well, actually, it depends on which Bible you read. If you read the old King James
Version, you will of course read I John 5:7 where it says, “ For there are three that bear record in
heaven, the Father, the Word, and The Holy Ghost: And these three are one.” I would like to point out
that virtually all Biblical scholars and historians have unanimously concluded that this verse
is an insertion! If you think that this statement that I have just put forth is biased then I
suggest you pick up any recent publication of the Bible such as the Revised Standard
Version, New Revised Standard Version, The New International Version, the New
American Standard Bible, The New English Bible, etc, etc. All of these versions have
completely excluded the verse. Benjamin Wilson says in his Emphatic Diaglott,
“his text concerning the heavenly witness is not contained in any Greek manuscript which was
written earlier than the fifteenth century. It is not cited by any of the ecclesiastical writers…”
Peake’s Commentary on the Bible notes;
“The Famous interpolation after ‘three witnesses’ is not printed even in RSV, and rightly. It cites the
heavenly testimony of the Father, the Logos, and the Holy Spirit, but is never used in the early Trinitarian
controversies. No respectable Greek MS contains it. Appearing first in a late 4th –cent. Latin text, it entered
the Vulgate and finally the NT of Erasmus.”
The same verse quoted above from the original KJV of the Bible, reads this way in the
NRSV.
“There are three that testify:”(I John 5:7)
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That’s it! That’s all there is in I John chapter 5 verse 7 from the New Revised Standard
Version. It goes on in verse 8 to say, “…the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three
agree.”
There is nothing about Father and Son. Even if some scholar were to interpret the spirit,
water, blood as analogous to the ‘Holy Trinity’, the difference between one text saying
“…and these three are one” and “…and these three agree” is too blatant a contradiction to ignore.
There is a difference between being in agreement and being ‘one’, unless the word ‘one’ is
being used figuratively to mean in agreement. If the message of Jesus is in alignment with
what God has ordered, then, in an allegorical sense, he is ‘one’ with God. So which Bible are
Christians meant to follow? Is one a ‘Holy Bible’ and the other a ‘Holier Bible’? If these texts
can be deleted and interpolated by men, how can this book be considered the “word of
God”? Are Christian Bible readers supposed to read their Bibles faithfully until another
revised addition is published then cast the old one aside like an out-dated software program?
What about the faithful who still have old KJV bibles who haven’t been notified that their
text has been upgraded and some verses have been left out because it has been determined
that the verses were in fact interpolations? What about the preachers who still teach from
Bibles that are out-dated and contain verses that have been identified as false according to
most Bible scholars?
The fact remains it is difficult to discuss the concept of Trinity and its Biblical
references because there aren’t any. The concept of Trinity was developed over the span of
three and a half centuries after the time of Jesus. In the New Catholic Encyclopedia, it says,
“…when one does speak of an unqualified Trinitarianism, one has moved from the period of Christian
origins to say, the last quadrant of the 4th century. It was only then that what might be called the definitive
Trinitarian dogma ‘One God in three persons’ became thoroughly assimilated into Christian life and
thought…it was a product of 3 centuries of doctrinal development”
Trinities were worshipped in several places during the time of Jesus as well as in
antiquity. The Egyptians worshipped trinities. So did the Babylonians and Zoroastrians.
Hindu worship revolves around a trinity. Many societies based their worship around the
concept of trinities. Once the ‘One God’ of Jesus was introduced to the pagan Romans and
others in the area in the form of a ‘trinity’ through Christianity, it became easy for the
heathen worshippers to move laterally to a form of worship that had the same elements but
with different names. This is the environment that Paul was immersed in. Paul was in fact
heavily influenced by Greco-Roman ideologies and philosophies of God incarnate in man,
religious blood sacrifice and resurrection and triune Platonic theories of the ‘first cause’, the
‘reason’ or ‘logos’, and the ‘spirit’ of the universe. Many of the man-deities were the rulers of
Greece, Rome, Egypt, etc. It is well known that the Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs were
worshipped as gods and in some of the ancient myths, the ‘man-god’ Pharaoh had to be
sacrificed for the greater good of the society. History records that Julius Caesar was deified
by the Romans and the Greeks with the approval of the senate and this was commemorated
with a temple and statue dedicated to his worship. Constantine was considered the human
manifestation of the Roman sun-god, Sol-invictus. Many compromises were made early on
in the church to accommodate these pagan beliefs. The Sabbath (in Arabic, sab’ah – seven)
was changed from the seventh day to Sun-day, the holy day for the Roman sun god and
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Christmas was set to be celebrated on December 25th, which happened to be not only the
birthday of the Roman sun-god Sol-Invictus but also the very popular Persian Sun-god
Mithra. According to A.D. Ajijola in his book, The Hijacking of Christianity, the Persian
sun-deity Mithra was worshiped almost 600 yeas before it was introduced to Rome. Mithra
was supposedly born of a virgin on December 25th and died in service to humanity. He was
buried and he rose from the tomb to be heralded as a ‘savior’ for all humanity. He is
depicted in ancient drawings as a ‘lamb’. The concept of a ‘resurrected’ deity was also well
ingrained in the beliefs of the people of the Mediterranean Region. In his monumental work,
The Golden Bough, James George Frazer writes,
“ Under the names of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis, the peoples of Egypt and Western Asia
represented the yearly decay and revival of life, especially of vegetable life, which they personified as a god who
annually died and rose again from the dead.”