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I found another verse that uses a capital W for "the Word" and it appears to refer to a person in the King James and New King James Versions of the Bible. "For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one." I John 5:7 NKJV. It would make sense that "the Word" in this verse is a person. And, this is the only verse in the entire King James Version of the Bible that clearly says three are one. Many people look to this verse to find justification for believing in the doctrine of the Trinity.
But, there is controversy surrounding 1 John 5:7 in the KJV and the NKJV. Even Wayne Grudem on page 273 of "Systematic Theology" warns against this: "However, the KJV translation of 1 John 5:7 should not be used in this connection. It reads, "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one." The problem with this translation is that it is based on a very small number of unreliable Greek manuscripts, the earliest of which comes from the fourteenth century AD. No modern translation (except the NKJV) includes this KJV reading, but all omit it, as do the vast majority of Greek manuscripts from all major text traditions, including several very reliable manuscripts from the fourth and fifth century AD, and also including quotations by church fathers such as Irenaeus (d. ca. AD 202), Clement of Alexandria (d. ca. AD 212), Tertullian (d. after AD 220), and the great defender of the Trinity, Athanasius (d. AD 373)."
You can actually see when it was inserted into the Bible. The words “the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit: and these three are one” are absent from the earliest Greek manuscripts of 1 John and from nearly all Greek manuscripts for many centuries. Most modern textual critics conclude that this wording was not part of the original text of 1 John but was a later addition. As a result, virtually all modern Bible translations either omit it from the main text or place it in a footnote.
Historical evidence indicates the phrase entered the KJV through the following chain of events:
It started as a Latin marginal note: Around the 4th or 5th century, Latin-speaking Christians in North Africa or Spain began writing a theological note in the margins of 1 John 5. They felt the “Spirit, water, and blood” symbolised the Trinity and wrote that down to explain the text.
It slipped into the Latin text: Over centuries of hand-copying, later scribes mistook this marginal note for a part of the actual scripture that a previous scribe had accidentally left out. By the Middle Ages, it was firmly embedded in the Latin Vulgate.
It was forced into the Greek text: When Erasmus published the first printed Greek New Testament in 1516, he left the phrase out because he couldn’t find it in any ancient Greek manuscripts. Under immense church pressure, he promised to include it if anyone could find even one Greek manuscript that had it. A manuscript was hastily created in 1520 containing a Greek translation of the Latin phrase, and Erasmus kept his promise by adding it to his third edition (1522).
The KJV translated what was given: The KJV translators used Erasmus’s updated Greek text (via a tradition known as the Textus Receptus). They did not invent or insert the phrase themselves; they simply translated the Greek text that had inherited this Latin addition.
Modern translations (like the NIV, ESV, NASB, CSB, NET, NRSV, etc) handle this variant in one of two ways. They either drop the added clause entirely from the main text or relegate it to a footnote, shifting the verse numbering so that verses 7 and 8 are combined into a single sentence.
It is an interesting fact that the clearest Trinitarian proof text in the King James Version of the Bible, and the only passage that explicitly says the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit are one, is absent from the earliest Greek manuscripts and is widely recognized as a later addition to the text.
Mark Rohde can be reached at marklrohde@icloud.com.