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We continue from the first article in this series.
In the earlier article in this series we maintained that unlike what most Christians believe the truth of the matter is that our Christian Scriptures have been severely altered in "key" theological places. We shared with the reader that the historical evidence shows conclusively that our Christian Bible no longer represents the original form of the text. Make no mistake about this; such alterations have affected "religious dogmas" as they have come down the corridors of history to you and me. The bottom line as I have found it in my exhaustive studies is that we no longer have "the Faith of Jesus"; rather we have bought into a "Faith in Jesus" and God's true salvation message to mankind and the very identity of "the Christ" has been altered beyond recognition in the process. Let us examine what other "authorities" have to say about this in our "information age".
One of the most common biblical manuscripts used to make our modern English translations is known today as the Nestle Text. Yet it was Prof. Eberhard Nestle himself who warned us in his Einfhrung in die Textkritik des griechischen Testaments: "Learned men, so called Correctores were, following the church meeting at Nicea 325 AD, selected by the church authorities to scrutinize the sacred texts and rewrite them in order to correct their meaning in accordance with the views which the church had just sanctioned." This is bombshell that should rock the whole of the Christian world. Evidence today proves that the Church of Constantine endeavored to make the teachings of the New Covenant align harmoniously with fourth century Roman Pagan religious thought and culture. To ignore these facts with respect to the manner in which the corrupters of the Word recreated the message of the New Testament Scriptures in order to make it compatible to Roman Church Orthodox dogmas and doctrines, is to make oneself disingenuous to God and His "Christ" whom we proclaim to be faithful to.
The truth and the facts to the matter is very clearly expressed in the words of Prof. Bart D. Ehrman in his book, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, where he warns us that: "...theological disputes, specifically disputes over Christology (theology concerning the identity of 'the Christ'), prompted Christian scribes to alter the words of Scripture in order to make them more serviceable for the polemical task. Scribes modified their manuscripts to make them more patently ‘orthodox’ and less susceptible to ‘abuse’ by the opponents of orthodoxy". Let me remind you that antisemitic Roman Orthodoxy was bringing the text of the Bible into conformity with the doctrines and tenets of the Church of the Roman Emperor Constantine. To close our hearts and minds to the facts, and ignore the truth, is from a New Covenant perspective synonymous with relinquishing any claim whatsoever with respect to being a follower of Jesus.
With regard to the condition of the Bible we presently use Dr. Vincent Taylor, in his The Text Of The New Testament states: "The surviving Greek texts of the book of Acts are so radically different from each other, that it has been suggested that perhaps there were multiple versions written". He goes on to say: "The manuscripts of the New Testament preserve traces of two kinds of dogmatic alterations: those which involve the elimination or alteration of what was regarded as doctrinally unacceptable or inconvenient, and those which introduce into the Scriptures proof for a favorite theological tenet or practice".
Let us try to summarize Dr. Taylor's words above. What Dr. Taylor is stating is that, whatever religious teaching, message or doctrine that was taught through Judaism by the Jewish Christ which the Church of the Roman Empire did not agree with, there exists overwhelming evidence that the church forgers and corrupters removed what was objectionable from their Gentile antisemitic perspective. In like manner, whatever doctrines the Church regarded as being true, or what they wanted to do irrespective and or regardless of whether that belief or action was supported in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Roman Church inserted this belief into the Biblical manuscripts and writings in order to make it appear as it was the authentic teachings of the earliest disciples and Apostles of messianic Judaism and followers of the "Jewish Christ". That means we cannot without serious study of Judaism know for certain if what is taught in the New Testament is sanctioned and taught by the "mind of Christ". This is the reason why the Roman Church has been nicknamed "the Forgery Mill" down through history. What Dr. Taylor is warning us as well as the whole of Christendom is that there is good reason to conclude that our Sacred Scriptures and the ancient Spiritual Wisdom in them have been rewritten and altered doctrinally by the antisemitic Church of Constantine. I became aware of this problem regarding the corruption of our Christian Bible while doing outside reading while I was in Seminary and this is the reason why I spent the first 5 years of my Pastorate seriously studying Judaism in order to acquire "the mind of Christ" as expressed through "JUDEO-Christianity" and not "Roman Christianity" which I had seen was "theologically" rotten to the core. I came to see beyond any doubt that Rome has "radically reinterpreted" almost all of the ancient Spiritual Wisdom and its Spiritual Science including the "identity" of "the Christ" and God's message to the Souls of mankind. Now the question that is being posed here is whether you will once seeing this type of evidence continue to believe the theological tenets of Rome, or turn your gaze toward Jerusalem and the Jewish Faith and recover "the Faith once given the Saints" of which we read in our New Testament. Simply said, "the Faith of Jesus" is not the same as "Faith in Jesus" with its "easy believeism". We will look at the two opposing "Gospel Messages" in a soon coming article where we contrast the "Gospel of Jesus" expressed in "the Faith of Jesus" against the "Gospel of the Romanized Paul" with its "Faith in Jesus" theology.
We need to focus for a second on John Mill, a name uncommon to most. John Mill, in 1676, became chaplain to the bishop of Oxford, and in 1681 he obtained the rectory of Bletchington, Oxfordshire, and was made chaplain to Charles II. From 1685 till his death he was principal of St Edmund Hall, Oxford; and in 1704 he was nominated by Queen Anne to a prebendal stall in Canterbury. He died a fortnight after the publication of his Greek New Testament. Mill's Greek New Testament edition is a major landmark in the history of textual criticism; in its margin he amassed a collection of more than 30,000 various readings, gathered from every source available to him over a period of thirty years. But in doing this in 1707 he shattered all faith in the infallibility of the Bible by demonstrating 30,000 various readings which were produced from 80 manuscripts. Mill noted over 30,000 various "major" to mostly "slight errors" between some 100 extant New Testament manuscripts. The findings of, first Mill, and then Wetstein (1751), proved once and for all that the variations in the biblical texts, many of which were quite serious, had existed from the earliest of times.
In the Preface to the Revised Standard Version of the bible this notable statement is made regarding the need for a revision of the English translation: "Yet the King James Version has grave defects... was based upon a Greek text that was marred by mistakes, containing the accumulated errors of fourteen centuries of manuscript copying. It was essentially the Greek text of the New Testament as edited by Beza, 1589, who closely followed that published by Erasmus, 1516-1535, which was based upon a few medieval manuscripts. The earliest and best of the eight manuscripts which Erasmus consulted was from the tenth century, and he made the least use of it because it differed most from the commonly received text; Beza had access to two manuscripts of great value dating from the fifth and sixth centuries, but he made very little use of them because they differed from the text published by Erasmus".
I hoped you noticed that the King James Version of our New Testament chose not to follow "the oldest" and "the best manuscripts" existing earlier from the 5th and 6th centuries because they differed "theologically" from the older texts from the 10th century; later manuscripts that reflect the progressive "Christology" and "theologies" as developed from further church councils down through history.
One of the oldest copies of the Bible which dates back to the fifth century which just happened to be mentioned above is the Codex Bezae, of which the Britannica writes: "Codex Bezae…has a text that is very different from other witnesses. Codex Bezae has many distinctive longer and shorter readings and seems almost to be a separate edition. Its 'Acts, for example, is one-tenth longer than usual’".
Answer for yourself: How is it that we can we have a Bible that is said to be "almost… a separate edition"? If this is true, it is important for us to know which edition is the correct one? And in answering this question, we must also must ask what criteria should we use in our effort to choose which of these separate editions we should use in our Bible translations?
The answer may shock you. The traditional answer to this question is very simple: "We choose the Biblical texts that support our current 'religious beliefs' and 'religious doctrines' of our current beliefs, and reject the texts that do not support them".
Answer for yourself: But how can we be sure that this is the means by which we are able to be certain that we have chosen the correct edition let alone "the Truth". Should we not look to the "oldest" and "more trustworthy" texts which most likely have had the least amount of "alteration", "tampering" and "correction? Should we not look to the origins of such "religious dogmas" in these texts and see how they were understood, believed, and interpreted by those who first gave them to the world in the first place and then and only then compare them line upon line, and precept upon precept, with what we have been taught to believe concerning them in our later texts? If seeing that our later Scriptures and texts present opposite or conflicting "beliefs" concerning these same ancient Spiritual Dogmas should we not ask ourselves "who" changed them, "when" then were changed, and "why" they were changed?
Regarding this serious problem presented by Codex Bezae, Dr. Vincent Taylor writes that: "It is characterized by a series of remarkable omissions in Luke, especially in chapters XXII and XXIV, and by many striking additions and variations in the Acts" (Dr. Vincent Taylor, The Text of the New Testament). Rightly interpreted his statement means that our later Gospel of Luke, as it reads in our Bibles today, has had "theology" added in places not found in the original Codex Bezae and that much of the Book of Acts, as it originally was written, has been removed from our current Book of Acts.
Answer for yourself: How would these "remarkable omissions" and "striking additions and variations" effect our current and traditional Christian doctrines of belief; especially in light of the fact that the book of Acts chronicles the emergence of the Gentile Church? Could it be that the Jewishness of the early Gentile Church have been removed from the Book of Acts in keeping with Rome's antisemitism?
We really cannot say for sure, because we only translate what supports church doctrine and agrees with what we want to believe. From a biblical perspective, this is not only Spiritually dishonest, but could well be detrimental to our Spiritual well-being! History records for us that the non-Jewish "believers" in Christ kept the Biblical Festivals up until the 5th century but our experience as Christians today is almost totally devoid of such an experience let alone the instruction that lays behind each one of these Biblical Festivals as it relates to the Spiritual evolution of man's Soul. Christians who desire truth over error will want to know when the problem of Scriptural alteration began. Let us not forget that we are warned by Paul that after his death such deceptions will begin and that was around 60 A.D. So we see the corruption of the oral traditions and the 7 authentic Pauline Epistles begins early and today we have Paul as the supposed writer of 2/3 of the whole of the New Testament. This has been called today "Monk work"!
Something which no sincere believer today should take lightly is the charge against Christians by Celsus, the second century Epicurean philosopher. Celsus was a Greek philosopher and opponent of Christianity. In his writings Celsus alleged that: "Certain Christians, like men who are overcome by the fumes of wine and care not in the least what they say, alter the original text of the Gospels so that they admit of various and almost indefinite readings. And this, I suppose, they have done out of worldly policy, so that when we press an argument home, they might have the more scope for their pitiful evasions". To which allegation the third century Church Father Origen replied: "Besides, it is not at all fair to bring this charge against the Christian religion as a crime unworthy of its pretended purity; only those persons who were concerned in the fraud should, in equity, be held answerable for it" (Origen, Contra Celsus). Here we have the testimony of not only an opponent of Christianity but another great early Church Father to the "fraud" of the New Testament!
What we see is that the words of Origen, which were composed in the third century when he was commissioned by the church to answer the allegations of Celsus that were written in the second century, is an acknowledgment that there: "are some who corrupt the Gospel histories, and who introduce heresies opposed to the meaning of the doctrine of Jesus". This clearly states that "the mind of Christ" is being changed by various opposing antisemitic theologies created by the early Gentile Roman Church. No wonder we find Constantine changing the Sabbath to Sunday and doing away with the Biblical Festivals for the Christian Church. No wonder we find in the Book of Acts the Greek word for "Passover" being changed to "Easter" when the same word is translated correctly as "Passover" all the way through the New Testament in other places. God forbid that the Gentiles come to know that in ancient Egyptians who were Gentiles were keeping the Passover thousands of years before Moses. Evidently there is a Spiritual message in the Passover that eclipses what we thought only involved the Exodus thousands of years later with Moses. God forbid that the ancient Spiritual Wisdom and God's message to mankind and his Soul be taught to the Gentiles through Biblical Judaism instead of Rome. In this statement we can thus readily see that Origen not only admits to the alteration of the New Testament Scriptures, but alerts us to the fact the antisemitic alterations were made to the earliest New Testament texts purely for doctrinal reasons. This is a fact, and that many of these heresies that have been introduced into the New Testament texts of our Bibles are intended to oppose the genuine "doctrine of Jesus"; a doctrine I must remind the reader that was taught through the Jewish culture and religion and expressed through the "Jewish Mind of the Christ". Further, Origen’s reply also verifies that this wholesale corruption of the Scriptures took place as early as the second century when Celsus originally made this allegation against the Church.
Answer for yourself: And what was it that Celsus alleged? That the Christian Scriptures "admit of various and almost indefinite readings" because "the original text of the Gospels" has been altered to coincide and substantiate the doctrines of the Gentile converts in an attempt to prove their tenets of belief and limit salvation of man's Soul solely through the doors of the Roman Church.
Let us regress for just a second and be read for a real "shocker". Among the Spiritual Mysteries that was concealed from the masses who were too carnal to receive the deeper truths of Christianity, was the doctrine of the pre-existence of the Soul. Again, in his writing known as The True Word, Celsus accused Christianity of teaching the masses the spurious doctrine of heaven and hell in an after death state, while teaching the elect the doctrine of reincarnation. Though this may astonish the modern believer, Origen does not refute Celsus, but rather explains that: “But on these subjects much and that of a mystical kind, might be said; in keeping with which is the following: It is good to keep close the secret of a king, (Tobit xii, 7), in order that the doctrine of the entrance of souls into bodies, not, however, that of the transmigration from one body into another, may not be thrown before the common understanding, nor what is holy given to the dogs, nor pearls be cast before swine. For such a procedure would be impious, being equivalent to a betrayal of the mysterious declaration of God's Wisdom”. Notice please that Origen says: “It is good to keep secret the entrance of souls into bodies”, Origen writes, but “not… the transmigration from one body into another”. In other words, Origen openly acknowledges that the pre-existence of the Soul, as well as the doctrine of reincarnation are openly revealed to Christians who have been purified and matured sufficiently to comprehend the mysteries of God, while the knowledge of why the Soul even came into this world is kept secret, and is not openly revealed to carnal minds. In explanation, Origen quotes Scripture and writes that “It is good to keep close the secret of a king”, and affirms that certain mysteries only belong to the spiritually mature in the word that one should not permit “what is holy given to the dogs, nor pearls be cast before swine”. Origen, an early Church Father, is speaking of reincarnation. This only should make you wonder what other wonderful mysteries of the Spirit and God have been kept from you that was taught in the ancient Spiritual Mysteries that once abounded in Christianity before the rise of Rome.
Now let us consider Tyrannius Rufinus or Rufinus of Aquileia (between 340 and 345–410) who was a monk, historian, and theologian. He is most known as a translator of Greek Patristic material into Latin; especially the work of Origen. Quoting from The Apology Of Rufinus, we find: "Origen pointed out by certain marks of his own, namely, the signs of asterisks and obeli, which words had been, so to speak, killed by other translators, and those which had been superfluously introduced. But he put in no single word of his own, nor did he make it appear that the certainty of our copies was in any point shaken; but those things which, as the actual words run, seemed wanting in plainness and clearness, he showed to be full of the mysteries of a Spiritual meaning. What comfort then can the conduct of Origen give you in this matter, when your work is shown to be quite unlike his, and when all your labor is spent upon making one letter kill the next, whereas his endeavor, on the contrary, is to vindicate the Spirit which giveth life?" Rufinus tells it like it is and my studies have confirmed exactly what he says in the late 4th century. It appears that these alterations, additions, and deletions of words and religious dogmas from our New Testaments have contributed to the stripping of the Metaphysical and Spiritual from our New Testaments and in its place the "literal" and "historical" have been sadly introduced in place of them. This "substitution" of perspectives and "radical reinterpretation" of the ancient Spiritual Wisdom by Rome's forgers as they altered the Sacred Texts finds its genesis in Rome's desire to "literalize" and "limit" God's Christ to but one person whose only access and salvation of mankind could be found through the doors of Rome and the Vatican. Here, at the very core of Rome's "Christology" we find the need of Rome to alter the ancient Spiritual Wisdom of the ancients in such a way that the "Spiritual" and "Metaphysical" was reshapended into a supposed "literal" and "historical" understanding and interpretation of "the Christ". Forgery of the ancient Spiritual Wisdom was not an option is such a dastardly destruction of ancient Spiritual Truth was to ever succeed. The only thing that Rome needed next was to do three things:
Our focus again returns to the texts and we pick up with Jerome's Latin translation of the Bible called the Vulgate. Speaking of the altered text in Jerome's Vulgate, Rufinus then writes: "Last of all I have shown that be has altered the sacred books which the Apostles had committed to the churches as the trustworthy deposit of the Holy Spirit, and that he who calls out about the audacity shewn in translating mere human works himself commits the greater crime of subverting the divine oracles." And Rufinus then adds: "The causes of these discrepancies I have more fully set forth in the Apology which Pamphilus expressly wrote for the works of Origen, to which I added a very short paper in which I shewed by proofs which appear to me quite clear, that his books have been in very many places tampered with by heretics and ill disposed men..." Ironically these "heretics" so referred to are the Orthodox Christians themselves!
Answer for yourself: How can we claim today that our Bibles accurately portray what the Lord spoke, when in the second century and beyond it was continually alleged that our Scriptures "admit of various and almost indefinite readings"? Thus we must ask ourselves: On what basis do we choose which reading we will put in our Bibles, and which we will ignore?
Again, the answer is simple: We choose the readings that say what we want to hear. The problem is that there is strong evidence to support the position that many of the most important original passages of Scripture have been so cleansed from all the surviving Greek Manuscripts, that they no longer exist in the texts we use to make our modern-day translations.
The fact that the very people who copied the Scriptures often altered the original words and meaning in accordance with their own current beliefs is confirmed by St. Jerome when he wrote: "They write down not what they find but what they think is the meaning; and while they attempt to rectify the errors of others, they merely expose their own" (Jerome, Epist. lxxi.5). Thus, each copy was edited to clarify the beliefs of the copyist. Each scribe who copied the manuscripts and found something he did not agree with, viewed the offending verse of Scripture as an error of the previous copyist.
Under the title Versions of the Scriptures, The New Unger's Bible Dictionary states that: "Jerome had not been long in Rome (A.D. 383) when Damasus asked him to make a revision of the current Latin version of the New Testament with the help of the Greek original. 'There were,' he says, 'almost as many forms of text as copies.' The gospels had naturally suffered most. Jerome therefore applied himself to these first. But his aim was to revise the Old Latin and not to make a new version. Yet, although he had this limited objective, the various forms of corruption that had been introduced were, as he describes them, so numerous that the difference of the old and revised (Hieronymian) text is clear and striking throughout. Some of the changes Jerome introduced were made purely on linguistic grounds, but it is impossible to ascertain on what principle he proceeded in this respect. Others involved questions of interpretation. But the greater number consisted in the removal of the interpolations by which especially the synoptic gospels were disfigured".
It is true that many interpolations were inserted into the Scriptures by men who attempted to prove the validity of their beliefs. The problem was that many genuine passages of text were removed because they did not conform to the beliefs of the Roman Church and what was considered an interpolation, were in many instances the most important passages of the original Scriptures from the position of a Spiritual Church vs an Institutionalized one.
What we fail to realize today is that during this period, every single document was edited and revised to confirm the doctrine of the Roman Church. The noted Church Historian Eusebius quotes the Church Father Dionysius (Hist. Eccl., Bk. 4. 23), who reports that his own epistles had been tampered with: "When my fellow Christians invited me to write letters to them I did so. These the devil's apostles have filled with tares, taking away some things and adding others. For them the woe is reserved. Small wonder then if some have dared to tamper even with the word of the Lord Himself, when they have conspired to mutilate my own humble efforts".
Eusebius writes of a number of sects of Christians of his day: "Therefore they have laid their hands boldly upon the Divine Scriptures, alleging that they have corrected them. That I am not speaking falsely of them in this matter, whoever wishes may learn. For if any one will collect their respective copies, and compare them one with another, he will find that they differ greatly. Those of Asclepiades, for example, do not agree with those of Theodotus. And many of these can be obtained, because their disciples have assiduously written the corrections, as they call them, that is the corruptions, of each of them. Again, those of Hermophilus do not agree with these, and those of Apollonides are not consistent with themselves. For you can compare those prepared by them at an earlier date with those which they corrupted later, and you will find them widely different. But how daring this offense is, it is not likely that they themselves are ignorant. For either they do not believe that the Divine Scriptures were spoken by the Holy Spirit, and thus are unbelievers, or else they think themselves wiser than the Holy Spirit, and in that case what else are they than demoniacs? For they cannot deny the commission of the crime, since the copies have been written by their own hands. For they did not receive such Scriptures from their instructors, nor can they produce any copies from which they were transcribed". Here before us we see clearly that "theological agenda" are at play in copying and production of the New Testament. But here is hope.
"For you can compare those prepared by them at an earlier date with those which they corrupted later, and you will find them widely different".
Any serious Christian can today go to the earliest historical sources for these Scriptures and examine them in their "pre-forged" states. We can examine these earlier "pre-forged" Spiritual dogmas and doctrines of the ancients which were held sacred by the ancient Spiritual Masters for thousands and thousands of years. We can trace them being passed down through the corridors of time basically unchanged from nation to nation. We can follow a chain of integrity of transmission from nation to nation as the Metaphysical ideas and dogmas of Spirit are handed down from generation to generation, from religion to religion, until we find their ultimate desecration and "reinterpretation" by the hands of Rome during the 2nd through the 5th centuries. It is here with Rome that we find these ancient Spiritual teachings regarding God and His "Krst/Christ" so terribly mutated and sadly reproduced altered, adulterated, misinterpreted, and mischaracterized in our Christian Bibles today by Rome's "demoniacs" (quoting Eusebius).
Writing about the text of the Bible in his day, St. Augustine wrote: "For those who are anxious to know the Scriptures ought in the first place to use their skill in the correction of the texts, so that the uncorrected ones should give way to the corrected" (De Doctrina Christ., II. 14). With regard to the sect of the Manicheans who refused to accept the doctrine of original sin, Augustine wrote: "Which argument must be regarded as against the Manicheans, who do not receive the holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, in which original sin is narrated; and whatever thence is read in the apostolic epistles, they contend was introduced with a detestable impudence by the corrupters of the Scriptures". This truly is a strange statement given the fact that Judaism, who was given and entrusted with the Old Testament, never taught the doctrine of "original sin" nor her Rabbis ever found one in the Hebrew Scriptures when they properly interpreted. Thus, every group and every sect accused the others of corrupting the Scriptures with interpolations to prove their own particular brand and flavor of beliefs.
Irenaeus said of those he called heretics that they "certainly recognize the Scriptures; but they pervert the interpretations" (Adv. Haer. III.12). These perversions often rested on a corrupt biblical text. Tertullian attributes the intentional contaminations of the text to the heretics when he wrote "Now, inasmuch as all interpolation must believed to be a later process… One man perverts the Scriptures with his hand, another their meaning by his exposition…(De Praescript. 38).
Fraudulent Scriptures and epistles were so rampant in the early church, that no two copies were the same. This fact is especially seen in the Introduction to Ignatius in the Anti-Nicean Library where it reads: "There are, in all, fifteen Epistles which bear the name of Ignatius. These are the following: One to the Virgin Mary, two to the Apostle John, one to Mary of Cassobelae, one to the Tarsians, one to the Antiochians, one to Hero, a deacon of Antioch, one to the Philippians; one to the Ephesians, one to the Magnesians, one to the Trallians, one to the Romans, one to the Philadelphians, one to the Smyrnaeans, and one to Polycarp. The first three exist only in Latin: all the rest are extant also in Greek. It is now the universal opinion of critics, that the first eight of these professedly Ignatian letters are spurious. They bear in themselves indubitable proofs of being the production of a later age than that in which Ignatius lived. Neither Eusebius nor Jerome makes the least reference to them; and they are now by common consent set aside as forgeries, which were at various dates, and to serve special purposes, put forth under the name of the celebrated Bishop of Antioch".
With regard to those epistles which are acknowledged as the genuine writings of Ignatius, even among this group there are numerous intentional additions and interpolations that were introduced into the text to make them support the doctrine of the later Church of the Roman Empire. With regard to the variations in the readings, the Introduction to Ignatius in the Anti-Nicean Library states: "But after the question has been thus simplified, it still remains sufficiently complex. Of the seven Epistles which are acknowledge by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., iii. 36), we possess two Greek recensions, a shorter and a longer. It is plain that one or other of these exhibits a corrupt text, and scholars have for the most part agreed to accept the shorter form as representing the genuine letters of Ignatius. This was the opinion generally acquiesced in, from the time when critical editions of these Epistles began to be issued, down to our own day. Criticism, indeed, fluctuated a good deal as to which Epistles should be accepted and which rejected. Archp. Usher (1644), Isaac Vossius (1646), J. B. Cotelerius (1672), Dr. T. Smith (1709), and others, edited the writings ascribed to Ignatius in forms differing very considerably as to the order in which they were arranged, and the degree of authority assigned them, until at length, from about the beginning of the eighteenth century, the seven Greek Epistles, of which a translation is here given, came to be generally accepted in their shorter form as the genuine writings of Ignatius".
Under the heading of Apostolic Fathers - Ignatius, the 1968 edition of the Britannica states: "In the 4th century (or perhaps later) his letters suffered interpolation, and six more were added by someone who found Ignatian theology hard to reconcile with the conclusions of the council of Nicaea (or of Chalcedon)".
The Council of Nicaea was convened by the Emperor Constantine, and was called for the express purpose of requiring all Christians throughout the empire to adhere to the doctrine of the Trinity -- which doctrine was founded upon the writings of Plato and is the doctrine later expressed that equates Jesus, the Father and Holy Spirit as all one and the same being. We know today that interpolations were added to most of the early Christian writings to find support for this doctrine that had always been part of the Pagan world.
As just one example of an interpolation to support the doctrine of the Trinity, Ignatius writes in the shorter version: "For if I be truly found [a Christian], I may also be called one, and be then deemed faithful, when I shall no longer appear to the world. Nothing visible is eternal. 'For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal’". To this text which is taken from the shorter version, the longer version of Ignatius adds: "For our God, Jesus Christ, now that He is with the Father, is all the more revealed [in His glory]". The Church of the Roman Empire then used these interpolations in an attempt to bring their favorite doctrines which were of a Pagan origin into the new synthesized religion inaugurated by the Emperor Constantine.
Answer for yourself: It is one thing to forge Scripture, but why were later these epistles from Church Fathers corrupted? Ignatius was a first century Christian. If the Roman Church could demonstrate that Ignatius believed that Jesus was "literally" and "historically" God incarnated in the flesh, then the majority of Gnostic Christians at that time who held opposite and dissenting opinions and beliefs about "the Christ" could more readily be silenced.
In the endeavor to recreate New Covenant teachings as a secular institution -- an anti-Gnostic redemptive religion with its focus on the control of the masses -- many essential elements of the spiritual essence of the scriptures had to be modified and changed. There is nothing in the original Gospels that would affirm the opinion that Jesus had any great respect for secular authorities. Jesus viewed the governments of this world as being empowered by Satan. Therefore, in order to make Christianity compatible with the secular environment of Rome, certain additions to the scriptures were intended to bring the more radical anti-secular elements of the religion under control by the use of biblical edicts to obey the government. These numerous interpolations are found throughout the epistles, and can often be easily detected, as is the case in 1 Peter 2: 19-20:
(19) For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. (20) For what glory is it if, when ye are buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? But if, when ye do well and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God"
Verses 13-14 and 17-18, which instruct the reader to submit themselves to the ordinances of man and honor the kings and governors was put there to exert political and social control over the people by the secular authorities of the Roman Empire. This type of interpolation is easily seen in the Epistles of Ignatius.
In addition to the concept of submission to the king, emperor, or more appropriately, any government official, we also see the addition of the doctrine of hell connected to failure to obey the Bishop in Ignatius' Epistle to the Philadelphians, ch. 4: "In Hades there is no one who can confess his sins". This doctrine was of the utmost importance to the Roman Institutionalized Church because the doctrine of hell was a necessary foundational concept which was then used to control the masses and bringing them into subjection to the secular authorities.
Moving on to other early church writers, under the heading of Apostolic Fathers let us look at Polycarp. When looking up Polycarp in the Encyclopedia Britannica we find: "These apparent contradictions have led many scholars to suppose that they are two letters rather than one. It is also possible, though uncertain, that like Ignatius' letters, that of Polycarp has undergone later revision. The Monophysites, who were quite careful in citing authorities, provided quotations from Polycarp that do not exactly correspond with the existing text (much of which is available in a late Latin translation)". Quoting from the Introduction to Polycarp in the Anti-Nicean Library: "That this Epistle has been interpolated can hardly be doubted, when we compare it with the unvarnished specimen, in Eusebius... A great part of it has been engrossed by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History (iv. 15); and it is instructive to observe, that some of the most startling miraculous phenomena recorded in the text as it now stands, have no place in the narrative as given by that early historian of the Church".
Under Clementine Literature, the Britannica states that "It became the starting point of the most momentous and gigantic of medieval forgeries, the Isidorian Decretals', where it stands at the head of the pontifical letters, extended to more than twice its original length. This extension perhaps occurred during the 5th century".
In his book, Introduction to the New Testament, B.W. Bacon wrote: "The Christian can only mitigate the disrespect he feels for plagiarists and impostors by the reflection that the conscience of the second century had practically no recognition for those literary crimes, rampant as they then were in the Church" (p. 168). Yet it is the product of these "literary crimes" that believers put their faith in when they read their Bibles today!
In his Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, by Dr. F. H. Scrivener, he writes that: "In the second century we have seen too many instances of attempts to tamper with the text of Scripture, some merely injudicious, others positively dishonest". Scrivener states that "it is no less true to fact than paradoxical in sound, that the worst corruptions to which the New Testament has ever been subjected, originated within 100 years after it was composed: and that Irenaeus and the African Fathers, and the whole Western, with a portion of the Syrian Church" used inferior manuscripts.
Regarding the Codex Vaticanus (4th Century) he writes: "One marked feature is the great number of omissions which induced Dr. Dobbin to speak of it as an abbreviated text of the New Testament. He calculates that whole words or clauses are left out no less than 2556 times" (Scrivener, Page 120, Volume I).
In his book The Revision Revised, Dean Burgon asks "Ought it not sensibly to detract from our opinion of the value of their evidence, (Codex B and Codex Aleph) to discover that it is easier to find two consecutive verses in which the two manuscripts differ, the one from the other, than two consecutive verses in which they entirely agree? …On every such occasion only one of them can possibly be speaking the truth. Shall I be thought unreasonable if I confess that these perpetual inconsistencies, between Codd B and Aleph -- grave inconsistencies and occasionally even gross ones -- altogether destroy my confidence in either?"
With regard to the textual problems of the King James Version, Dr. Tischendorf writes: "…this text (the Received Text) differs in many places from the oldest authorities of the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries, and, therefore, must be replaced by a text which is really drawn from the oldest sources discoverable. The difficulty of finding such a text lies in this that there is a great diversity among these texts" (Dr. C. Tischendorf, Codex Sinaiticus; p. 85).
Dean John W. Burgon is cited by Dr. David O. Fuller in his book Which Bible?, when he wrote in reference to Codexes B, Aleph, D, and L: "I insist and am prepared to prove that the text of these two Codexes (B and Aleph) is very nearly the foulest in existence" (Pp. 126-127); and "That they exhibit fabricated texts is demonstratable… B and Aleph are covered all over with blots -- Aleph even more than B.... We suspect that these two manuscripts are indebted for their preservation, solely to their ascertained evil character" (Pg. 93, 128). Burgon then goes on further and states: "No amount of honest copying -- persevered in for any number of centuries -- could possibility have resulted in two such documents" (Pg. 93).
Answer for yourself: How can a copy of the Scriptures be said to be preserved "solely to their ascertained evil character"? What could have possibly been in them to elicit such a response? If biblical scholars Wescott and Hort are correct in their conclusion that the "original texts are forever lost" -- and all the remaining texts have been preserved solely because of their evil character, while the texts that more faithfully preserved the purity of the Gospel have all been destroyed because they did not agree with the later evolving theological doctrines of the Roman Church, then what was so objectionable in them to warrant such comments? What could these earlier copies of the New Testament contain that Rome so hated that they had to be destroyed and effaced let alone so ridiculed! Could these be parts of the Gnostic First New Testament so hated by Rome because they taught other than a "literal" and "historical" interpretation of "the Christ"? How much more important in the light of these quotes are the archeological finds of the Nag Hammadi Library in recovering the truth about the religious climate and religious beliefs concerning "the Christ" as they existed in first century Israel and Mystical Judaism? Could such remarks stem from what they taught about a Gnostic Christ and not about a "literal" and "historical Christ"?
Answer for yourself: In light of what we have seen regarding the continual corruption of the New Testament over the centuries, then how much more important are these Gnostic Library finds that laid buried under sand and away from the corrupting hands of mankind for 2,000 years which were only found 60 years ago? How important are these finds to us today in revealing to us how the earliest centuries both viewed and believed concerning "the Christ" when compared to the later "literal" and "historical" accounts of "the Christ" which we have received in our evidently forged anti-Gnostic and anti-Semitic Bibles given us by Rome?
Answer for yourself: Moreover, what is in the text that would cause a biblical scholar to call the copy "depraved"? Are they depraved, or is it possible that are these passages are just contrary to later accepted Roman Church doctrine? These are important questions that faithful believers should be asking. Do these Caudexes really contain "fabricated texts", or are they said to be fabricated and depraved simply because they fail to support modern Christian beliefs and dogma?
In the Hibbert Journal (1902), Conybeare writes: "These facts speak for themselves. Our Greek texts, not only of the Gospels, but of the Epistles as well, have been revised and interpolated by orthodox copyists. We can trace their perversions of the text in a few cases, with the aid of Patristic citations and ancient versions. But there must remain many passages which have been so corrected, but where we cannot today expose the fraud". With regard to the assertion of those many scholars who claim that the New Testament has not been interpolated to support what is known as orthodox doctrines, Conybeare goes on to write: "This is just the opposite of the truth, and such distinguished scholars as Alfred Loisy, K. Wellhausen, Eberhard Nestle, Adolf Harnack, to mention only four names, do not scruple to recognize the fact". The fact that Conybeare speaks of is that the text of the New Testament has been severely altered and revised by the so-called orthodox church of the past.
In the publication, The Fraternal Visitor, this assessment was made concerning the falsification of the Scriptures: "Codex B (Vaticanus) would be the best of all existing MSS, …if it were completely preserved, less damaged, (less) corrected, more easily legible, and not altered by a later hand in more than two thousand places. Eusebius, therefore, is not without grounds for accusing the adherents of Athanasius and the newly-risen doctrine of the trinity of falsifying the Bible even more than once" (Fraternal Visitor 1924, p. 148; translated from Christadelphian Monatshefte).
Under the title of Bible in the Church, the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics writes: "In the first two centuries nearly all the various readings of the New Testament came into existence, the majority of them by deliberate alteration of the text, many for the sake of style, and several in the interests of dogma… Often readings were rejected as falsifications of heretics, but often the heretics were right in their counter-complaint… Every province, every order, every monastery, has a tradition of its own…"
In closing it needs be said that every Christian today who desires to know the Mysteries of God should be alarmed by the fact that his New Testament has been altered for theological purposes hundreds if not thousands of times. From a doctrinal standpoint with regard to the manner we must live in order to approach the alter of the Lord, one's adherence to much of what is written in our New Testament is an obstruction that inhibits the modern church from embracing the Spiritual essence of what the Jewish Christ actually taught let alone his true Identity. Nowhere in the New Testament does the text even hint that Jesus is to be worshiped in any other manner than as a pattern for each of us to imitate. Let me say as my last word in this series of articles that you will be shocked at what you find when you begin to look at what the "Christ" has taught since the beginning of time about God and what we have been told by Roman Catholicism which was presented as "the truth" down through history. It will take courage to do such study but let me close in saying that God never gave us a lie and any recovery of truth brings us that much closer to God; the God of truth. Shalom.
