1 John 5:9

According to the Jewish law threefold testimony was valid (Deuteronomy 19:15; cf. Matthew 18:16; John 8:17-18). Read (as in 1 John 3:20) ὅ, τι μεμαρτύηκεν, “what He hath testified concerning His Son,” i.e. the testimony of His miracles and especially His Resurrection (Romans 1:4). The variant ἥν is a marginal gloss indicating the relative (ὄ, τι), not the conjunction (ὄτι). The latter is incapable of satisfactory explanation. The alternatives are: (1) “Because the testimony of God is this the fact that He hath testified,” which is meaningless and involves an abrupt variation in the use of ὄτι. (2) “Because this is the testimony of God, because, I say, He hath testified,” which is intolerable. The Apostle appeals here to his readers to be as reasonable with God as with their fellow men. Cf. Pascal: “Would the heir to an estate on finding the title-deeds say, ‘Perhaps they are false'? and would he neglect to examine them?”