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The reliability of the text of the New Testament is a necessary prerequisite for accepting the historicity of the New Testament. Never has there ever been a more true statement made to mankind in the history of our existence. Of course, we all are taught to approach our Bibles assuming that the Biblical history in them is correct. We are all led to grow up assuming that our very texts of the Bible teach a "historical understanding" of events recorded by the Holy Spirit in both the Old and New Testaments. Hardly ever do we entertain thoughts that our passages in our Bibles might not be correct "historically" and meant to be interpreted always "literally" until one begins to get acquainted personally with both the findings of modern scholarship, archeology, and Comparative Religions where one finds that much of what we find taught in the mouth of the New Testament Jesus has been repeated previously not only in earlier Judaism but in the ancient Spiritual Wisdom of the ancient Mystery Religions going back as far as recorded records can take us today. Only when one begins to compare these "Sayings of the Lord", the sayings of Jesus previously known as "the Logia", with the Sacred Scriptures of texts of ancient Religions does he find that these sayings and teachings existed before they were later incorporated into what we know as our Bibles today. Seeing this evidence alerts us that many of the assumptions that we make about our Bibles are untrustworthy at best. This brings me to the point of this article. This should make you wonder just how reliable is this "literal" and "historical" understanding we are taught to bring to our Bibles. These many assumptions we have as we approach our Bibles are based upon a silent premise; that being that the texts in our Bibles as we have received them today are correct when compared to the ones from which the English and Greek texts have been translated. At the core of this is a huge question: How can the historicity of the Bible be correct unless the text is correct?
Most Christians when they buy a Bible assume that the English translation is simply a faithful rendition of what the author had to say but in a different language. This is the assumption that the typical Christian makes concerning the Bible. This is a terrible wrong assumption as any serious investigation in the reliability of the Scriptures as we have received them in our Christian Bibles will show.
When it comes to the New Testament in our Bibles we find that it has the same problems as found in the Old Testaments of our Christian Bibles. The reasons for this are many. To begin with, it was a long time after Jesus died before any part of the New Testament was written and a much longer time before the Gospels were written; Paul's 7 authentic Epistles being the first writings that were to be included in later "New Testaments". We find first the 7 authentic Epistles of the Gnostic Paul which were written earliest around 56-64 A.D. Only later do we find Paul's Epistles enlarged with Rome's Second New Testament; a theological work carefully created to counter the Gnostics and Docetists which were the earliest expression of Christianity. Since the New Testament was written centuries before the invention of the printing press it had to be hand copied. The nature of hand copying inherently introduces opportunities for scribal errors; both accidental and purposeful as we have seen and will yet continue to see. In the early years copyists tended to be amateurs. What we as typical Christians fail to realize is the important fact that for large periods of time the gospels were carried by word of mouth. Only later were they hand copied.
The first complete New Testament that the world has, the codex Sinaiticus, was written in the second half of the 4th century. We have 5400 copies of the New Testament which are in Greek and are in manuscript form. None of the copies we have are originals. None of the manuscripts we have are copies of copies of the original. Not even copies of copies of copies of the originals. None of the copies that we do have, except for the earliest fragments, is identical to any of the others. Here is the alarming fact: There are more differences among these copies than there are words in the New Testament.
The reasons for the disparities are largely due to the method of reproduction. These documents had to be hand copied century after century because the printing press had not yet been invented. The most common errors were misspelled words. Sometimes lines and paragraphs were double copied or omitted. These were the innocent kinds of errors one would expect in a copying process. But sometimes phrases or paragraphs were altered, added or omitted for "theological agendas" which can be traced to the successive Roman Christian Church Councils where "theology" was often determined successively down through Church history by a "vote of hands".
Answer for yourself: Are the records and historicity found in the New Testament known to be 100% completely and fully authentic such that no intentional nor unintentional changes have ever been made by the church to the text of the New Testament? Honest Christians down through history have told the truth of the matter:
"It is well known that the primitive Christian Gospel was initially transmitted by word of mouth and that this oral tradition resulted in variant reporting of word and deed. It is equally true that when the Christian record was committed to writing it continued to be the subject of verbal variation. Involuntary and intentional, at the hands of scribes and editors" (Peake's Commentary on the Bible, p. 633).
"Yet, as a matter of fact, every book of the New Testament with the exception of the four great Epistles of St. Paul is at present more or less the subject of controversy, and interpolations are asserted even in these." (Encyclopedia Brittanica, 12th Ed. Vol. 3, p. 643).
Dr. Lobegott Friedrich Konstantin Von Tischendorf, one of the most adamant conservative Christian defenders of the Trinity and one of the Church's foremost scholars of the Bible was himself driven to admit that: "[the New Testament had] in many passages undergone such serious modification of meaning as to leave us in painful uncertainty as to what the Apostles had actually written"(Secrets of Mount Sinai, James Bentley, p. 117).
"Besides the larger discrepancies, such as these, there is scarcely a verse in which there is not some variation of phrase in some copies [of the ancient manuscripts from which the Bible has been collected]. No one can say that these additions or omissions or alterations are matters of mere indifference" (Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, Dr. Frederic Kenyon, Eyre and Spottiswoode, p. 3).
The Biblical world has in its possession a large collection of ancient manuscripts of the Bible. These ancient copies of the Bible were written in different locations around the world and in different ages. We are told that in our current age there are up to 24,000 such ancient copies of the Bible. These are the manuscripts that the scholars go to in order to produce our modern Bibles (such as the KJV, the RSV, the NIV, etc.). In most cases the most ancient copies of the Bible are the ones held in the highest regard and considered to be the most accurate. This, however, is not a hard and fast rule.
All biblical versions of the Bible prior to the revised version of 1881 were dependent upon the "Ancient copies" (those dated at about five to six hundred years after Jesus). The revisers of the Revised Standard Version (RSV) 1952 were the first biblical scholars to have access to the "Most ancient copies" which date roughly four hundred years after Christ. It is only logical for us to concur that the closer a document is to the source the more authentic it is. Upon discovering these "most" ancient copies of the Bible, what did the scholars of the Bible learn about their "King James Version" (KJV) of the Bible? In the preface of the RSV 1971 we find the following:
"...Yet the King James Version has GRAVE DEFECTS.."
They go on to caution us that: "...That these defects are SO MANY AND SO SERIOUS as to call for revision"
The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible by Oxford Press has the following to say in its preface:
"Yet the King James Version has serious defects. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the development of biblical studies and the discovery of many biblical manuscripts more ancient than those on which the King James Version was based made it apparent that these defects were so many as to call for revision."
Answer for yourself: Who says so? Who are these people who claim that the Bible in the hands of the majority of today's Christians contains "many grave defects" which are so "serious" as to require a complete overhaul of the text? Well, we can find the answer in the very same RSV Bible. In it, the publishers themselves (Collins) mention on page 10 of their notes:
This Bible (RSV) is the product of thirty two scholars assisted by an advisory committee representing fifty cooperating denominations"
Let us see what is the opinion of Christendom with regard to these scholars and their work in the revision of the Bible (revised by them in 1952 and then again in 1971):
Answer for yourself: So is the revised Standard Version of the Bible the only one that makes these changes? Is it just a matter of the KJV vs. the RSV? Far from it. These very same changes have become so widely acknowledged by the scholars of Christianity that we find the very same changes made to most other modern versions of the Bible, such as the New International Version (NIV), the New American Standard Version (NASV), etc.
No one can absolutely guarantee that what has come down to us from antiquity is either what the original author wrote or what was originally adopted as Canon. The Canon was only a list of books to be included in the Bible; it did not prescribe content. Scholars must use their best educated guess when producing an edition of the Bible because of the incredibly large number of variants in the manuscripts that have survived the ravages of time. They must take into consideration, the best attested, the earliest and best manuscripts, and quotes of the early church fathers about specific verses.
Today we are blessed by having the abilities to study the Bible through Textual Criticism. Now before you think I am trying to "criticize" the Bible understand that in this capacity the word "criticism" does not mean anything "bad"; instead it is "good". Normally we all think that the "the act of criticizing or being negative" when we hear the word "criticism". This is the typical definition that first comes to mind because of its widespread use. However, in relation to the Bible "criticism" means "the scientific investigation of literary documents in regards to such matters as origin, text, composition, character, or history." The two key words are "scientific investigation." They do not mean negative criticism. Further, this specialist in New Testament textual criticism says:
"Textual critics . . . sort through these [New Testament] manuscripts and the variant readings therein in an effort to reconstruct the original wording of the Greek New Testament. (Philip W. Comfort, Encountering the Manuscripts: An Introduction to New Testament Paleography and Textual Criticism, Broadman and Holman, 2005, p. 289).
The Oxford Classical Dictionary has something interesting to say about this "Bible Criticism". It says that "textual criticism sets out to establish what a text originally said or meant to say."
Also of note is Harold J. Greenlee, who, in his Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism states that "Textual criticism is the study of copies of any written work of which the autograph (the original) is unknown, with the purpose of ascertaining the original text" (J. Harold Greenlee, Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism, Rev. ed. Hendrickson, 1995, p. 1).
Paul Wegner, in his A Student's Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible: Its History, Methods, and Results makes the comment: "Briefly stated, textual criticism is the science and art that seeks to determine the most reliable wording of a text". He goes on to say: "Biblical criticism is a science because specific rules govern the evaluation of various types of copyist errors and readings, but it is also an art because these rules cannot be rigorously applied in every situation" (Paul D. Wegner, A Student's Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible: Its History, Methods, and Results, InterVarsity, p. 24, 2006).
What should hold our focus is not the minor and insignificant changes but the major "theological changes" made to these New Testament texts over the earliest centuries, primarily beginning in the 2nd century, in which the ancient Spiritual Wisdom was so corrupted to almost be beyond recognition today as it is contained in the New Testament. The allegorical and Spiritual-Mystical understanding of these texts was lost when these same Sacred Texts were selectively altered to appear as if "literal" and "historical" accounts of events then before their alteration they had been understood Mystically and Metaphysically only. Those who have seen these corruptions of these Sacred Texts have termed this alteration of Sacred Scriptures in our Christian Bibles the "The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture".
A book entitled The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament was published in 1993 by Bart D. Ehrmann. This is my opinion is a "must read" for every "thinking" Christian who wants to know for how "the Christ" of the New Testament has been altered by these earliest Scribes. In his book Ehrmann makes the case how proto-orthodox scribes of the second and third centuries modified their texts of Scripture to make them conform more closely with their own developing Christological beliefs, effecting thereby the "orthodox corruption of Scripture."
A corruption represents a change from the wording of the original author of a text. The corruptions tended to be in the direction of making the text less compatible with the theology of heretics. The term proto-orthodox is a backward projection. The church in Rome became the dominant or "orthodox" church. The individuals in ancient times recognized by the Orthodox Roman Church as having carried forward the true faith down through the centuries are referred to by them as "pro-orthodox" and later even as "heretics".
Scholars, like Ehrmann, are finding evidences that there was an incredible amount of diversity in the early Christianities. We as Christians are very familiar with the inherited traditions of Christianity which came from the ancient partisan writings by the Roman Church Fathers. In these writings and in many, but not all of the Scriptures in the New Testament, it is generally suggested there was only one true faith, the faith that we identify with Roman Christianity, from which history records that many dissented. However, the discovery of ancient documents like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Libraries some 60 years ago in the deserts of Qumran and Egypt have challenged this view given us by Rome of a monolithic faith and these two major discoveries of Qumran's Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library have absolutely broken the back of these Roman deceptions inherent in these inherited Christian traditions. We have really known all along from Scripture that Paul was constantly battling views that dissented from his own. The winner of such feuds is the one who gets to write the history. Nevertheless, the world views that differed from these inherited traditions of Roman Orthodox Church are called "heresies". What I uncovered in my twenty years of study is the ironic face that what is termed "heresy" by the Roman Church was in reality the "Orthodox Faith" of the ancient Spiritual Masters since the beginning of humanity and the "heretics" were the emerging "literal" and "historical" Roman Church.
The victors not only write the history, they also reproduce the texts. But more than that they "alter" and "re-write" them.
"It is highly probable that not one of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) was in existence in the form which we have it, prior to the death of Paul. And were the documents to be taken in strict order of chronology, the Pauline Epistles would come before the synoptic Gospels" (Rev. Charles Anderson Scott, History of Christianity in the Light of Modern Knowledge, p. 338).
This statement is further confirmed by Prof. Brandon: "The earliest Christian writings that have been preserved for us are the letters of the apostle Paul" (S.G.F. Brandon, Religions in Ancient History, p. 228).
Please note what is said by Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, in the latter part of the second century: "As the brethren desired me to write epistles (letters), I did so, and these the apostles of the devil have filled with tares (changes), exchanging some things and adding others, for whom there is a woe reserved. It is not therefore, a matter of wonder if some have also attempted to adulterate the sacred writings of the Lord, since they have attempted the same in other works that are not to be compared with these."
Victor Tununensis, a sixth century African Bishop related in his Chronicle (566 AD) that when Messala was consul at Costantinople (506 AD), he "censored and corrected" the Gentile Gospels written by persons considered illiterate by the Emperor Anastasius. The implication was that they (the Gospels) were altered to conform to sixth century Christianity which differed from the Christianity of previous centuries (M.A. Yusseff, The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gospel of Barnabas, and the New Testament, p. 81).
These "corrections" were by no means confined to the first centuries after Christ. Sir Higgins says:
"It is impossible to deny that the Bendictine Monks of St. Maur, as far as Latin and Greek language went, were very learned and talented, as well as numerous body of men. In Cleland's 'Life of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury', is the following passage: 'Lanfranc, a Benedictine Monk, Archbishop of Canterbury, having found the Scriptures much corrupted by copyists, applied himself to correct them, as also the writings of the fathers, agreeably to the orthodox faith, secundum fidem orthodoxam." (Higgins, History of Christianity in the light of Modern knowledge, p. 318).
In other words, the Christian scriptures were re-written in order to conform to the doctrines of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and even the writings of the early church fathers were "corrected" so that the changes would not be discovered. Sir Higgins goes on to say: "The same Protestant divine has this remarkable passage: 'Impartiality exacts from me the confession, that the orthodox have in some places altered the Gospels'." The author then goes on to demonstrate how a massive effort was undertaken in Costantinople, Rome, Canterbury, and the Christian world in general in order to "correct" the Gospels and destroy all manuscripts before this period.
Theodore Zahan, illustrated the bitter conflicts within the established churches in Articles of the Apostolic Creed. He points out that the Roman Catholics accuse the Greek Orthodox Church of remodeling the text of the holy scriptures by additions and omissions with both good as well as evil intentions. The Greek Orthodox, on the other hand, accuse the Roman Catholics of straying in many places very far away from the original text. In spite of their differences, they both join forces to condemn the non-conformist Christians of deviating from "the true way" and condemn them as heretics. The "heretics" in turn condemn the Catholics for having "recoined the truth like forgers." The author concludes "Do not facts support these accusations?" Let us not loose sight of the fact that it was these supposed "heretics" that had the earlier oral traditions and Sacred Scriptures that later fell under the power of Rome and forgery for centuries at their hands. It should make you wonder just what these "heretics" believed that was later changed by Rome! It does me! Though years of intensive study I found out and have made this information available on my websites.
Now please say attention to this. St. Augustine himself, a man acknowledged and looked up to by both Protestants and Catholics alike, professed that there were secret doctrines in the Christian religion and that "there were many things true in the Christian religion which it was not convenient for the vulgar to know, and that some things were false, but convenient for the vulgar to believe in them." Here St. Augustine admits to Christianity telling and teaching "lies" to the majority of the Christian world because is was "convenient" that the Roman Church do so. Sir Higgins admits: "It is not unfair to suppose that in these withheld truths we have part of the modern Christian mysteries, and I think it will hardly be denied that the church, whose highest authorities held such doctrines, would not scruple to retouch the sacred writings" (M. A. Yusseff, The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gospel of Barnabas, and the New Testament, p.83). Even many of the epistles attributed to Paul were not written by him. Scholars tell us today that the true "historical" Paul was a Gnostic and opposed the "literalization" of the ancient Spiritual Wisdom and the corruption of the ancient dogmas concerning "the Christ". After years of research, Catholics and Protestants alike agree that of the thirteen epistles attributed to Paul only seven are genuinely his. They are: Romans, 1, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Philemon, and 1 Thessalonians; the rest are Roman forgeries and "theological inventions" intended to divert the "simple believer" away from the ancient Spiritual Mysteries and into the doors of the "literal" and "historical" Roman Church with their Roman Road to Salvation which is based upon "lies" as we see Augustine confess.
Today, Christian sects are not agreed on the definition of what exactly is an "inspired" book of God. The Protestants are taught that there are 66 truly "inspired" books in the Bible, while the Catholics have been taught that there are 73 truly "inspired" books, not to mention the many other sects and their "newer" books, such as the Mormons, etc. As we shall see shortly, the very first Christians, the Gnostic Chrestians, for many generations, did not follow either the 66 books of the Protestants, nor the 73 books of the Catholics. Quite the opposite, that generation believed in books that were, many generations later, "recognized" to be supposed fabrications and apocrypha by a more enlightened age than that of the first century of the common era and which have since been completely destroyed by the Roman Church. In the providence of God these "destroyed Gospels" of the "true Christ" were dug up just a little over 60 years ago and are challenging our accepted Christian traditions about our Bibles and the Church's traditional interpretation of "Jesus Christ".
The Christian world today is claimed to possess anywhere up to 24,000 "ancient manuscripts" of the Bible with a very few of them dating all the way back to the fourth century after Christ (but not back to Christ or the apostles themselves). In other words, they have with them gospels and epistles which date back to the century when the Trinitarians took over the Christian Church. All manuscripts from before this period have strangely perished. All Bibles in existence today are compiled from these "ancient manuscripts." However, any reputable scholar of the Bible will tell us that no two ancient manuscripts are exactly identical.
Bart Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, on page 27 and beyond states: "In any event, none of [the original manuscripts of the books of the Bible] now survive. What do survive are copies made over the course of centuries, or more accurately, copies of the copies of the copies, some 5,366 of them in the Greek language alone, that date from the second century down to the sixteenth. Strikingly, with the exception of the smallest fragments, no two of these copies are exactly alike in their particulars. No one knows how many differences, or variant readings, occur among the surviving witnesses, but they must number in the hundreds of thousands."
People today generally believe that there is only ONE Bible, and ONE version of any given verse of the Bible. As we have begun to see, this is far from true. All Bibles in our possession today (Such as the KJV, the NRSV, the NASV, NIV,...etc.) are the result of extensive cutting and pasting from these various manuscripts with no single one being the definitive reference. There are countless cases where a paragraph shows up in one "ancient manuscript" but is totally missing from many others. For instance, Mark 16:8-20 (twelve whole verses) is completely missing from the most ancient manuscripts available today but show up in more recent "ancient manuscripts."
There are countless examples in the Bible where verses of a questionable nature are included in the text without any disclaimer telling the reader that many scholars and translators have serious reservations as to their authenticity. The King James Version of the Bible (Also known as the "Authorized Version"), the one in the hands of the majority of Christendom today, is one of the most notorious in this regard. It gives the reader absolutely no clue as to the questionable nature of such verses. However, more recent translations of the Bible are now beginning to be a little more honest and forthcoming in this regard. For example, the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, by Oxford Press, has adopted an extremely subtle system of bracketing the most glaring examples of such questionable verses with double square brackets ([[ ]]). It is highly unlikely that the casual reader will realize the true function these brackets serve. They are there to tell the informed reader that the enclosed verses are of a highly questionable nature. Examples of this are the story of the "woman taken in adultery" in John 7:53-8:11, as well as Mark 16:9-20 (Jesus' resurrection and return), and Luke 23:34 (which, interestingly enough, is there to confirm the prophesy of Isaiah 53:12).....and so forth.
However, in spite of all we have said up to now, we find that many ancient manuscripts of the Bible do not only differ with the text of our modern Bibles in many hundreds and thousands of words, phrases and even whole paragraphs, rather they even contain in them whole Gospels which were in the first four centuries considered authentic and "inspired" such as the "Letter of Barnabas" and the "Shepherd of Hermas" which are both found in the Codex Sinaiticus but not in our modern Bibles today. This should make you ask yourself "Why not?" When our modern editors set about their task of harmonizing the text of our modern Bibles with the continually expanding list of more and more ancient manuscripts of the Bible, they do so with the fundamental goal of doing whatever it takes to stay as close to the text of our modern Bibles as humanly possible so as not to fall pray to the ill will of the orthodox who have grown accustomed to the modern "orthodox" reading which it has taken them centuries to achieve. This means that these editors will even go so far as to include in the text of our modern Bibles verses which can not be found in the most ancient manuscripts simply by obtaining the missing text from the most ancient manuscript which does contain it. This is called an "ecletic texts"; I call it "salad bar" theology. The other "extra" Gospels are also conveniently discarded since they are obviously "not canonical" and not accepted by the orthodox Church in modern times nor their recent predecessors. No telling what types of Divine Truth we have lost let alone possibly another whole perspective as to how to interpret these Sacred Texts in our Bibles other than the usual "literal" and "historical" approach.
Answer for yourself: What has been the official Church position regarding these "discrepancies"? How did the Church decide to handle this situation? Did they call upon all of the foremost scholars of Christian literature to come together in a mass conference in order to jointly study the most ancient Christian manuscripts available to the Church and come to a common agreement as to what was the true original word of God? No! Well then, did they immediately expend every effort to make mass copies of the original manuscripts and send them out to the Christian world so that they could make their own decisions as to what truly was the original unchanged word of God? Once again, No!
Answer for yourself: So what did they Roman Church do? Let us ask Rev. Dr. George L. Robertson. In his book Where did we get our Bible? he writes: "Of the Manuscripts of Holy Scripture in Greek still existing there are said to be several thousand of varying worth ... Three or four in particular of these old, faded out, and unattractive documents constitute the most ancient and the most precious treasures of the Christian Church, and are therefore of special interest."
First in Rev. Richardson's list is the "Codex Vaticanus" of which he says:
"This is probably the most ancient of all Greek Manuscripts now known to exist. It is designated as Codex 'B.' In 1448, Pope Nicholas V brought it to Rome where it has lain practically ever since, being guarded assiduously by papal officials in the Vatican Library. its history is brief: Erasmus in 1533 knew of its existence, but neither he nor any of his successors were permitted to study it... becoming quite inaccessible to scholars, till Tischendorf in 1843, after months of delay, was finally allowed to see it for six hours. Another specialist, named de Muralt in 1844 was likewise given an aggravating glimpse of it for nine hours. The story of how Dr. Tregelles in 1845 was allowed by the authorities (all unconscious to themselves) to secure it page by page through memorizing the text, is a fascinating one. Dr. Tregelles did it. He was permitted to study the MS. continuously for a long time, but not to touch it or to take notes. Indeed, every day as he entered the room where the precious document was guarded, his pockets were searched and pen, paper and ink were taken from him, if he carried such accessories with him. The permission to enter, however, was repeated, until he finally had carried away with him and annotated in his room most of the principle variant readings of this most ancient text. Often, however, in the process, if the papal authorities observed he was becoming too much absorbed in any one section, they would snatch the MS. away from him and direct his attention to another leaf. Eventually they discovered that Tregelles had practically stolen the text, and that the Biblical world knew the secrets of their historic MS. Accordingly, Pope Pius IX ordered that it should be photographed and published; and it was, in five volumes which appeared in 1857. But the work was very unsatisfactorily done. About that time Tischendorf made a third attempt to gain access to and examine it. He succeeded, and later issued the text of the first twenty pages. Finally in 1889-90, with papal permission, the entire text was photographed and issued in facsimile, and published so that a copy of the expensive quartos was obtainable by, and is now in the possession of all the principle libraries in the biblical world" (Rev. Dr. George L. Robertson, Where did we get our Bible?, Harper and Brothers Publishers, pp.110-112).
Answer for yourself: What were all of the Popes afraid of? What was the Vatican as a whole afraid of? Why was the concept of releasing the text of their most ancient copy of the Bible to the general public so terrifying to them? Why did they feel it necessary to bury the most ancient copies of the inspired word of God in a dark corner of the Vatican never to be seen by outside eyes? Why? What about all of the thousands upon thousands of other manuscripts which to this day remain buried in the darkest depths of the Vatican vaults never to be seen or studied by the general masses of Christendom? What is being kept back from us?
Well Rome can control the ancient manuscripts, they can even forge them, add to them, delete from them but they have no control over the providence of God in allowing the discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic Nag Hammadi Library which reveal to us the most ancient Spiritual Texts of the earliest Chrestian/Christian centuries before the rise of Rome. The discovery of these more ancient Sacred Texts of these earliest "Chrestians/Christians", when compared with the later texts of Rome, show us without a doubt Rome's "radical reinterpretation" of the ancient Spiritual Wisdom and their forgery of these previously existing Sacred Texts. Seeing this information and textual "theological" manipulation and forgery by Rome gives us a clear picture as to how the ancients understood "the Christ" in comparison as to how we have been taught about "the Christ" today from the altered texts we have received. Let me tell you now; God's Christ was never understood to be "literal" or "historical" being and "limited" to but one person. The Christ is incarnated, personalized and "literalized" in you when you awaken to the Presence of the Christ Mind dwelling within you for it is you in which "the Christ" has come and incarnated; not in but one person but in the whole of humanity. This is Rome's "secret" kept from the world because along with it comes freedom from fear and the manipulation of mankind through such religious fear so keenly used by Rome during the Middle Ages.
In a study that explores the close relationship between the social history of early Christianity and the textual tradition of the emerging New Testament, Ehrman, in The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, examines how early struggles between Christian "heresy" and "orthodoxy" affected the transmission of the documents over which, in part, the debates were waged. His thesis proves beyond any doubt in this book by multiple examples that proto-orthodox Christian scribes of the second and third centuries occasionally altered their Sacred Texts for polemical and theological reasons; altering the Mystical and Metaphysical understanding of God's Christ resident in every child of God into a corrupt concept that later "literalized" and "historicized" and "limited" "the Christ" to but one person. The Christ had to be "literalized" and "limited" by Rome if they were to tell the world that access for mankind's Salivation was tied to their new interpretation of "the Christ" whose only access was through the doors of the Roman Church. For example, existing Sacred Texts were later altered by Rome to oppose the adoptionists like the Ebionites, who having only the oral traditions at that time, claimed that Jesus must have been only a man but certainly not "literally" God. A variant of this idea is found in the Docetists like Marcion and the Ptolemaeans, who claimed that "the Christ" was never limited to but one person, rather "the Christ" was tabernacling within each child of God and was within mankind as a "slumbering Divinity" in need of awakening. Ehrman's thorough and incisive analysis makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the social and intellectual history of early Christianity and raises intriguing questions about the relationship of readers to their texts, especially in an age when scribes could transform the documents they reproduced to make them say what they were already thought to mean, effecting thereby the orthodox corruption of Scripture.
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture unfolds the argument boldly emblazened on its cover, namely, that the ancient scribes who transmitted the New Testament texts to later generations occasionally altered those texts "theologically" in order to make them conform to theological positions deemed "doctrinally correct" at the time. Both Ehrman's title and its implicit thesis contain an edge of irony, an irony that will be familiar to readers of Walter Bauer's classic Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. Just as Bauer claimed to demonstrate that those Christians conventionally labelled orthodox represented neither the original nor the majority theological position in the pre-Constantinian church, so Ehrman undertakes an analogous unmasking of the "proto-orthodox," who prove on his analysis to have been not faithful guardians of the purity of the ancient Sacred Tradition and the ancient Spiritual Wisdom of mankind but, rather, corruptors of the ancient Sacred Scripture and Wisdom itself. Roman Christian Orthodoxy's monolithic insistence that there is but a single, simple truth, basically their interpretation of these Sacred Texts and their alterations as their hands, necessitated at the same time Rome's denial of both the diversity and the ambiguity of competing theological positions. Ehrman emphasized this point in his book and this diversity of theological positions in the first century of the common era is easily verified by reading the attacks by Rome upon these earliest positions and interpretations of "the Christ". Such a denial by Rome of the earlier understanding of the nations regarding "the Christ" will cause them as well to create a completely new hermeneutic and interpretation of these same ancient Sacred Texts that challenged not only these earlier ancient interpretations but even the very words of the most ancient Sacred Scriptures themselves. This was only exaggerated by Rome's later forgery and corruption of the earlier Scared Texts since the "New Testament manuscripts were not produced impersonally by machines capable of flawless reproduction" but "were copied by hand, by living, breathing human beings who were deeply rooted in the conditions and controversies of their day;" so rooted that intentional forgery and deception in their copying and reproduction was no problem for Rome who was bent upon positioning itself as the only route for the salvation of mankind.
Ehrman makes it plain to the reader that the "Scribes altered their sacred texts to make them "say" what they were already known to "mean,". Of course he means they altered the texts to agree with Rome's evolving creation of theology and Christology regarding "the Christ" which changed with each successive Church Council. Yet, the fact remains and we must not miss it; our New Testament texts were altered. Ehrman goes on to say:"The truth of the matter is that we may never recognize the full extent of the orthodox corruption of Scripture".
The quest for a pure, or at least a purer, biblical text is by no means abandoned and indeed continues to define the goal of even such an unconventional textual criticism as Ehrman's. The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture should be of interest to every Christian who desires to have the "Truth" regarding the New Testament and their "Jesus Story". Ehrman makes a critical point in his book. He shows the reader that the process of textual corruption is closely correlated with the history of doctrine in the pre-Nicene period and particularly with the development of Roman Christological thought. For the readers not familiar with the word "Christology" let us define it now: Christology is a field of study within Christian theology which is concerned with the nature of Jesus as "the Christ". In particular, it is concerned how the divine and human are related in his person; either:
Christology is generally less concerned with the details of Jesus' life and message than it is with how the human and divine co-exist in one person. This can be said that Christology is more concerned about "Faith in Jesus" rather than "the Faith of Jesus". Throughout the history of Christianity, Christological questions have been very important in the life of the church. Christology was a fundamental concern from the Council of Nicaea (325 C.E.) until the Third Council of Constantinople (680 C.E.). Here we see that for over 300 years the idea of the relationship of the Divine with "humanity" was the central concern for the evolving Roman Catholic Church. This is the basic reason for the alteration of the ancient Spiritual Texts; Rome was creating a "theology" around Jesus as "the Christ" based upon what they wanted it to be. In this time period, the Christological views of various groups within the broader Christian community led to Rome accusing them of being "heretics", and, infrequently, subsequent religious persecution and death was their plight. In some cases, a sect's unique Christology is its chief distinctive feature; in these cases it is common for the sect to be known by the name given to its Christology.
Of course it goes without saying that all Roman Christian Christology is based upon a "literal" and "historical" interpretation of "the Christ". It is when we begin to look into Docetism and Gnosticism that we are recovering the earliest pre-Roman ideas of "the Christ" as well as "the faith" once given the Saints. This is the "theology" of the most ancient Sacred Texts which sadly fall prey to later Roman forgery and adulteration. It is in them we find the earliest expression of the "Logia of the Lord" which can be paralleled with the most ancient Spiritual Wisdom in the world which we also find in the mouth of the New Testament Christ; thus liking the two! The bottom line in all of this is that many of the most familiar passages of the New Testament may not be "original" at all and corruptions of earlier ancient Spiritual Dogmas of the Metaphysical "Christ". With that goes the need for a honest reevaluation as to how we are to interpret our Bibles as it appears the more we study that the "literal" and "historical" interpretation of "the Christ" and the Scriptures in our New Testament might be better served if approached and interpreted in other ways than "literally" and "historically".
