J. Doyle
Dealer - Purveyor
To be fair, most translations (newer anyhow) do include a footnote that that verse is not found in the oldest manuscripts, but MAY have been added later.
HOWEVER (and this is a big HOWEVER), that verse is only one of countless examples that infer a holy trinity. Psalm 2, for example seems to be a conversation between Father, Son and Spirit. Heck, even in the beginning of Genesis: Let us make man in OUR image.
To give perhaps a more Jewish centered anecdote, let's go back to the very first Jew and his wife: Abram and Sarai, whose names were subsequently changed to AbrAHam and SarAH. God changed their names when he entered into covenant with them, but notice how they were both changed, adding what would be in the hebrew language similar to our letter "H", but more specifically meant as "breath" or even "Spirit". One might derive from this that God's Holy Spirit entered Abraham and Sarah at this time. Pretty cool huh?
Now this isn't particularly as black and white as the verse that may or may not have originally been, but it does lend itself heavily to the concept, or at least is not contradictory.
Then there are Jesus' own words, "Before Abraham was, I AM", or "I and my Father are ONE", "if you've seen me you've seen the Father", so on and so forth.
Anybody who doubts that Jesus may have actually said and believed these things need only look to the fact that he was crucified BECAUSE he said and believed these things.
Long story short, it really doesn't matter if that verse was originally in the text, or even inspired by God, as dozens of other verses tie into the same idea.
After all, how would Christ's crucifixion mean much of anything, if he wasn't 100% Almighty God, as well as man?
Correct. My Bible contains the footnote about verse 8 too. Regardless...even if verse 8 was not original, verse 7 seems to have been and it makes the case just fine on it's own....as well as the rest of your post.