ADDITIONS_TO_THE_NEW_TESTAMENT_
For Christians, God is the author of the Bible though man is its author too. One is as responsible for the Bible as the other. Ultimately, because God makes man and his powers, God is the real author. Catholics read from the Bible at Mass and the reader declares at the end of the reading, This is the Word of the Lord. The response is Thanks be to God. If the Bible is not the word of God then it follows that Christianity is just a man-made faith. There is nothing binding about what man says. Why should we listen to what other people think instead of thinking for ourselves? We would be demeaning ourselves to think that we should let others think for us. It would follow that if the Bible is not the word of God that Christianity is oppressing people though they might not know it.
Roman Catholics have their interpretation of the Bible. Protestants have theirs which differs dramatically from the Catholic Churchs. Eastern Orthodox and Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and Christadelphians are further proof that nobody agrees on how to interpret the Bible. Christians love to take texts out of context to manipulate people.
Christians manipulating people to accept their interpretation is very common. Interpretations are just somebody's opinion. Some Christians realised that this was a problem. To make their case more convincing, they simply changed the Bible text to back up their beliefs.
Inaccuracy is the rule for Bible translators these days.
There are a lot of scholars and theologians who change the Bible if they don’t like it.
The Jerusalem Bible has several places translated in accordance with readings and insertions that have little right to be considered to have been in the original (page 17, The Church of Rome and the Word of God). For example, it omits “few are required, one only one is needed” from Luke 10:41. It all boils down to what ancient codex they prefer to follow.
In Remarks on the New King James Version and Revised Authorised Version page 12 shows how these two Bibles have mistranslations in them. It demonstrates that the translators wanting rid of the Protestant doctrine that you are saved now and destined for heaven if you have received Christ change “you are saved” in the Bible to “you are being saved”. Another tendency among translators is to reduce the references that seem to say Jesus is God.
The New International Version booklet demonstrates how the popular translation of the Bible, the New International Version, is notorious for having altered doctrine (page 5). This Bible has mistranslations in it. For example, it translates garden as olive grove! (page 8)
Let’s Weigh the Evidence gives many examples of how modern Bibles try to undermine the divinity of Jesus Christ and the virgin birth and other doctrines. Zebedee’s wife and her children worshipping Jesus was changed to bowing down before Jesus in Matthew 20:20 in the New American Standard Bible. Also it changes Jesus promise that whoever eats his bread will never hunger to not hunger. Its rendition of John 6:47 has Jesus promising eternal life to those who believe and leaves out the important words “on me” (page 32). The Revised Standard Version changed Micah 5:2 to make it say that the Messiah would have an origin from ancient days not from everlasting (page 27). The Revised Standard denied the doctrine of salvation by faith only by making 1 Peter 2:2 ask the Church to grow up to salvation (page 29) whereas the original just says grow. The Good News Bible changed Isaiah 7:14 to remove any reference to a virgin birth (page 38). The Living Bible removed the accusation of the Jews against Jesus that he was totally born in sin in John 9:34 (page 42). Incredibly, 2 Kings 21:6 says that it was God’s opinion that Manasseh was a sinner (page 44) as if God has opinions when he knows all things! Opinions are weak beliefs that only beings that don’t know all things have. The fifth chapter details whole chunks and paragraphs omitted in the New American Standard Bible. All of Mark 16:9-20 was eliminated.
The New World Translation created by Jehovah’s Witnesses is undoubtedly the most unreliable Bible in existence. Excuse after excuse was used to excuse the perversions of the meaning in the Greek manuscripts in it. This Bible is exposed in books like Jehovah of the Watch-tower. Christianity prides itself on listening to God and not men but we see that rarely happens. Even the Bible it has cannot be trusted and you need to be lucky to find out what the text really means.
Christians like to brag about how the Dead Sea Scrolls supported the purity and the authenticity of the texts of the Old Testament as we now have it.
When pressed they will admit that there are differences but then they quickly follow that with the statement that none of these differences affect any doctrine.
The Unauthorized Version (page 196) tells us that the Books of Samuel in Hebrew differ from our Samuel books. We know this from the way the author of the books of the Chronicles went about his business and from the Dead Sea Scrolls.
When mistakes have happened how can they be so confident that no doctrine has been affected? It only takes one word to be left out or inserted for an alteration of doctrine to happen.
ADDITIONS TO THE NEW TESTAMENT
The Christians admit that the Gospel of Peter was popular among the believers of the early Church (page 64, Conspiracies and the Cross). They say that there are more fragments of this Gospel than the Gospel of Mark which was put into the New Testament (page 64, Conspiracies and the Cross). In 199 AD, Serapion the bishop of Antioch went to Rhossus to refute the Gospel of Peter to the Church there which had taken it seriously. He wrote a letter to the Church in Rhossus. The Church there was reading the Gospel at its Church services. Serapion declared in his letter that he took it for granted they were believing correct doctrine and when he heard about their devotion to the Gospel of Peter he decided without reading the gospel that they may use it. Later he said he discovered that the gospel was heretical and contained some additions to the teaching of Christ. He then warned them to have nothing to do with it.
Clearly, Serapion was open to the idea that previously unknown writings by the apostles might turn up. If he had been closed to the idea, he would have declared right away that the Gospel of Peter should be discarded. (Incidentally, if there had really been a papacy in those days, he could have checked it out by writing to the pope - the supposed successor of Peter - but he didn't.) The only reason Serapion rejected the gospel of Peter was because he thought it added to and altered the message of the four gospels he had. He rejected it simply because it didn't match the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John too well. He did not care where the gospel came from or if it had eyewitness support.
Why should we think that the negative opinion of one man, Serapion, towards the gospel of Peter should be taken as important? Perhaps the Church at Rhossus was right to think the gospel was Peter's! Plus Peter had been at Antioch which was near Rhossus. Maybe he wrote the gospel during this sojourn.
The Christians claim that there is no evidence that the Gospel of Peter was treated as canonical anywhere other than at the Church at Rhossus. But then there is the problem of the fragments. It was usually the Churches that kept books and scrolls of scriptures. They had them so that they could be used for worship and that literate people could come in and read them. Books and scrolls were difficult and expensive to produce. It could not have been any other way. The fragments show that the Gospel of Peter was widely considered to be canonical.
Christians boast today that what we have left of the Gospel of Peter does not contradict the gospels we have. They say that the account of the resurrection of Jesus in the gospel has different details from the accounts in the four gospels but nothing actually contradicts them (page 65, Conspiracies and the Cross). But Peter says there really were soldiers sleeping at the tomb of Jesus though some were awake. Matthew says the soldiers claimed that Jesus had been stolen when they were asleep. It never says the soldiers really were asleep. If they were, the tomb could have been robbed and the body stolen. It looks bad for Christians if the guardians of the tomb were so careless. They want to believe that the body of Jesus was in the tomb and vanished because it rose from the dead and not because it was stolen.
Peter has the soldiers actually seeing the resurrection. For the New Testament, nobody saw the resurrection happen. They only saw Jesus after he was resurrected. The gospel is inferring the soldiers were reliable witnesses which contradicts the gospel of Matthew which says they were bribe takers and liars. The gospel is also inferring that the accounts in the four gospels which state that though Jesus was seen after his death nobody had seen him rise from the dead are defective.
Peter says the stone at the tomb of Jesus rolled away by itself. But the New Testament says that an angel came down and moved it.
The treatment of the Gospel of Peter shows that the early Church was not as careful as modern Christians would have you believe. It even cast aside gospels that it didn't like just because it didn't like them.
Christians admit that there are textual variants between ancient manuscripts of the New Testament but they say they don't matter. They say that they don't affect any doctrine. But even if that is true (its not!) that is not the point. It means we don't know which version of the text is the correct one. We don't know which version is the word of God. If that can happen, then clearly we cannot know if any of the variants are the word of God. God failing to keep the wording of his Bible perfectly would be a sign that maybe we are wrong to think it is his word! If variants happen then how do we know that there are no variants in the New Testament that we don't know about? What about variants that could have become part of the accepted standard text?
The variants do affect doctrine.
Some manuscripts say that Jesus became angry when he was healing a skin disease and others say he was compassionate (page 75, Conspiracies and the Cross). They say the variant does not affect any doctrine about Jesus. I would disagree. If Jesus became angry when healing it would be a sign that he was mad and sinful for unnecessary anger is a sin.
The Gospel of John does not actually say Jesus was God though many Christians imagine that it does. Yet variants of John 3:16 which in referring to Jesus have "only begotten son", "one and only Son" and "one and only God" (page 76, Conspiracies and the Cross) do affect doctrine. Begotten is taken to imply the Trinitarian idea that God projects the Son who is himself. One and only son implies the idea that Jesus was the only son of God in some way - perhaps a different way. One and only God would be the only time Jesus is called God. When a Bible can't call Jesus God except in a dodgy verse then there is something seriously wrong.
We have a story in John 8 that was added to the gospels. It presents Jesus as saving an adulterous woman from a lynch mob that wanted to put her to death by stoning her. The story affects doctrine for it has Jesus doing strange things like writing on the ground. His saying to the mob that they could throw a stone if they were without sin is fine. But the report that they all went away one by one reaches far beyond credibility. It adds to the difficulty in believing the gospels. The story affects doctrine then in the sense that when it cannot be reasonably shown to be apostolic in origin it opens the door to adding new stories to the gospels. It contradicts the promise of Christ that the word of God would be preserved reliably and intact.
Mark 16 has a whole chunk added in. Christians say the chunk creates no problems for it says Jesus appeared and told the apostles to preach the gospel and that its promises to the believers about lifting snakes and drinking poison without harm are spoken of in the Old Testament anyway. So they say that whether the addition is God's word or not doesn't affect anything Christians believe about Jesus. They say that it does not add to the faith. It does. The Old Testament never said that the Christian believers would have such powers. Mark 16 says that these powers were given then whereas the Old Testament is not specific on when exactly. The time is a new doctrine. And there is no evidence that the power to lift snakes and drink poison without harm ever worked!
The Catholic Church added in a chunk into John 1 to make it say that there were three persons in one God. The Church at the time had trouble from Christians who didn't believe this doctrine for they didn't find it in the Bible and some of these believers used a different list of Bible books from the Church. The Cathars used the New Testament but gave special status to the gospel of John as if it were the only really reliable New Testament book.
The variants show that the Church was changing the New Testament to make it fit its ideas and even to support them.
Top theologian Origen wrote in the third century that "The differences between the manuscripts have become great either through the negligence of some copyists or through the perverse audacity of others; they either neglect to check over what they have transcribed, or in the process of checking they make additions or deletions as they please."
The Christians rationalise this by saying that the text of the New Testament was so important to Origen that to him even two or three alterations were great and an unmitigated disaster! The Church was editing the New Testament to make it suit itself. And the Christians cannot give a quote from Origen to support their interpretation of him. "Making additions or deletions as they please", does not sound like Origen was thinking of copyists who were making one or two changes.
Books and chunks were left out of the Bible. Alterations and chunks were entered in at the hands of religious frauds. To believe that the Bible is the word of God is really just to believe in the word of unreliable man.
Hebrews 10:5,6. This quotes Psalm 40:6. In the original Hebrew the Psalm says that God has opened my ears. In the Septuagint, which is quoted in Hebrews, it says that God has got a body ready for me.
Haley suggests that it may have been an error in the Septuagint or the translators thought that the change would make the verse make sense to people who could not understand Hebrew so it was not roguish (152). This is absurd as saying that a translator should change cat in a book to dog for people who don’t know what cats are.
Haley then says that the Hebrew version means that, “You God have made me obedient through listening to you with my physical ears”, and that the Septuagint version means, “You have given me a body to obey you and hear you.” This is a transparent attempt to make it seem that though the words are different the meaning is the same and that the meaning is that a body was given to hear and obey.
If you have an all-powerful God he might give a spirit invisible ears only and no other material component.
Also the opening ears in the Hebrew is just a metaphor for listen and such usage is universal over the globe. A spirit can listen without physical ears.
Matthew 27:9, 10. A quotation of prophecy from Zechariah was wrongly attributed to Jeremiah by the gospeller.
Haley says that the prophecy belonged to the section of the Prophets which started off with the book of Jeremiah. Since Jeremiah was first, Matthew calls the whole collection Jeremiah. (153). This is unlikely for Matthew would have wanted you to look up the prophecy when he said it came from Jeremiah. Otherwise, he would have been more specific. What is the point of giving a reference if you can’t say exactly what book it came from? Nobody would do that. You don’t say a quotation from Exodus is to be found in Genesis just because Genesis is the first book in the section of the Bible where Exodus is, the Torah. Plus the arrangement Haley has in mind wasn’t standard and may not have existed.
Others say that the prophecy was made by Jeremiah and quoted by Zechariah. There is no evidence for this and it presupposes that Matthew miraculously knew who made the prophecy. This would be a silly miracle. God would not show him that when all he needed to do was quote Zechariah and say so and the theory is just a conjecture. Besides, what evidence is there that Matthew had supernatural clairvoyant powers? If they are right then Occam’s Razor is wrong.
Haley says that the names might have been abridged. Jeremiah would be Iriou and Zriou. Then he says that this could have led to a mistake in one letter. So, a mistranslation for which is there is no evidence is given as a last resort. Yet Haley says that steps were taken to ensure that the true text would not be lost. He said that the best manuscripts would soon have prevented any corrupting. So, if he is right, a mistake that made its way into most Bibles would be unlikely. Even if other mistakes crept in elsewhere, it is still more likely that this is not a mistake.
Matthew 2:23. Matthew
says that Jesus lived in
It is thought that Nazarene means branch so Matthew’s quotation
would have to be from Isaiah 11:1 which says that a branch will come out of the
roots of Jesse and grow and be fruitful.
But Jesus is the branch in the sense that he grows new people for God
like leaves so the verse has nothing to do with
Matthew invented the prophecy. He had no right quoting it when it was not in any book that people could look up.
In Archer’s Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties,
Archer gives a totally unconvincing explanation for why the New Testament
writers preferred to use the inaccurate Septuagint, or Greek Old
Testament. He says that since the Jews
of the Diaspora brought this version into every part of the
Archer would be the last to admit it, but what he is really doing is accusing the New Testament writers of conscious attempted fraud. The Gentiles should have been told that the Septuagint was not always accurate. They probably mostly knew this anyway because the book was only a translation. Finding quotations in the gospels from a Bible that differed from the original would have upset them and put them off the Gospels. The real reason the Septuagint was used was because it fitted Christian understandings of the Old Testament better than the real Old Testament. It provided them with some fake proof texts. That was extremely fraudulent. They could have translated the Hebrew text themselves with the help of experts instead of using a corrupted version. If the authors could find no experts then it is plain that they were only ordinary men and not the leaders and theologians of the Church that tradition says they were.
The use of the Septuagint proves that the New Testament is not inspired by God or the work of honest people. Men who really care about God and what God has said would use the Hebrew Bible and translate that and get their dogma from it.
The Christians abused the Old Testament. “When Christians quoted those old prophecies, they used Greek translations which were untrue to the Hebrew originals: they ran separate bits of a text into one, they twisted the sense and reference of the nouns (Paul at Galatians 3:8, is a spectacular example); they mistook the speaks and the uses of personal pronouns (John 19:37 or Matthew 27:9), they thought that David or Isaiah had written what they never wrote (Acts 2 or Acts 8:26); they muddled Jeremiah with Zechariah (Matthew 27:9); they reread the literal sense and found a non-existent allegory (Paul, to the Galatians at 4:21-3). There are errors in the famous speech which the Acts author gives to Peter at Pentecost: Peter tortures bits of Psalms 16 and 132, mistakes their meaning and context, and quotes them in poor Greek translation, though Greek was not the historical Peter’s mother tongue and most of his supposed audience would not have understood a word of it” (page 339-340, The Unauthorized Version). Even worse, Psalm 16 which Peter used to prove that Jesus rose from the dead doesn’t mention a resurrection but only a recovery from illness!
Conclusion
The founders and heads of modern Christianity are prone to dishonesty. They don’t treat their own Bible as the word of God. They were and are no better than Mormon leaders who change and lie about their scriptures the Book of Mormon.
FURTHER
A Summary of Christian Doctrine, Louis Berkhof, The Banner of Truth
Trust,
A Test of Time, David Rohl,
Century,
Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, John W Haley,
An Act of God, Graham Philips, Sidgwick
and
Answers to Tough Questions, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Scripture Press Bucks, 1988
Attack on the Bible, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord,
Belief and Make-Believe, GA
Wells,
Biblical Exegesis and Church Doctrine, Raymond E Brown, Paulist Press,
But the Bible Does Not Say So, Rev Roberto Nisbet, Church Book Room Press,
Catholicism and Christianity, Cecil John Cadoux, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1928
Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Karl Keating, Ignatius
Press,
Conspiracies and the Cross, Timothy Paul Jones, FrontLine, Florida, 2008
Creation and Evolution, Dr Alan Hayward, Triangle,
Does the Bible Contradict Itself? Radio Bible Class,
Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties, Gleason W Archer, Zondervan,
Essentials, David L Edwards and John Stott, Hodder & Stoughton,
Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995
Free Inquiry, Fall 1998, Vol 18, No 4, Council for Secular Humanism,
God and the Human Condition, F J Sheed,
Sheed & Ward,
God Cannot Lie, David Alsobrook,
God, Science and Evolution, Prof E H Andrews, Evangelical Press, Herts, 1985
God’s Word, Final Infallible and Forever, Floyd C McElveen, Gospel Truth Ministries, Grand Rapids, 1985
Hard Sayings, Derek Kidner, InterVarsity Press,
How and Why Catholic and Protestant Bibles Differ, Carolyn Osiek, RSCJ and Donald Senior, CP, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1983
How to Interpret the Bible, Fergus Cleary SJ, Ligouri Publications,
In Defence of the Faith, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene Oregon, 1996
Inspiration in the Bible, Fr Karl Rahner,
Herder and Herder,
Jehovah of the Watch-tower, Walter Martin and Norman Klann, Bethany House Publishers,
Jesus and Early Christianity in the Gospels, Daniel J Grolin, George Ronald, Oxford, 2002
Let’s Weigh the Evidence, Which
Bible is the Real Word of God? Barry Burton, Chick Publications,
Know What You Believe, Paul E Little, Scripture Union,
Know Why You Believe, Paul E Little, Scripture Union,
New Age Bible Versions, GA Riplinger, Bible & Literature Foundation,
New Evangelicalism An Enemy of
Fundamentalism, Curtis Hutson, Sword of the Lord,
None of These Diseases, SI McMillen MD,
Our Perfect Book the Bible, John R Rice, Sword of the
Lord,
Proof the Bible is True, Rev JMA
Willans BD, Dip.Theol.
Radio Replies Vol 3, Radio
Replies Press,
Reason and Belief, Bland Blanschard,
Remarks on the New King James Version and Revised Authorised Version, DK Madden, 35 Regent Street, Sandy Bay, Tasmania, 7005, 1991
Return to
The Bible, The Biography, Karen Armstrong, Atlantic Books, London, 2007
Science and the Bible, Henry Morris, Moody Press, Bucks, 1988
Science Held Hostage What’s Wrong With Creation Science and Evolutionism, Howard J Van Till/Davis A.Young/Clarence Menninga, IVP, Downer’s Grove, Illinois, 1988
Science Speaks, Peter W Stoner and Robert C Newman, Moody Press, Chicago, 1976
Set My Exiles Free, John Power, Logos Books, MH Gill & Son Ltd,
Testament, The Bible and
History, John Romer, Henry Holt and Company,
The Authority of the Bible, Ambassador College,
The Bible Fact or Fantasy, John Drane,
Lion,
The Bible is the Word of God, Jimmy Thomas, Guardian of
Truth,
The Bible or Evolution? William
The Bible, Questions People Ask, A Redemptorist
Pastoral Publication, Liguori Publications,
The Bible Unearthed,
The Canon of Scripture, FF Bruce, Chapter House,
The Church of Rome and the Word of God, Rev Eric C Last,
Protestant Truth Society,
The Early Church, Henry Chadwick, Pelican, Middlesex, 1987
The Enigma of Evil, John Wenham, Eagle,
The History of Christianity, Lion, Herts, 1982
The King James Version Defended, Edward F Hills, The Christian Research Press,
The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Edited by Raymond E Brown, Joseph A Fitzmyer, Roland E Murphy, Geoffrey Chapman, New York 1990
The Theology of Inspiration, John Scullion SJ, Mercier,
The Unauthorised Version, Robin Lane Fox, Penguin, Middlesex, 1992
Verbal Inspiration of the Bible, John R Rice Sword of the
Lord,
What is the Bible?
Henri Daniel-Rops, Angelus Books, Guild Press,
Which Version Now?
Bob Sheehan, Carey Publications, 5 Fairford
Close,
Who is a Fundamentalist?
Dr Curtis Hutson, Sword of the Lord,
Why Does God..? Domenico Grasso SJ, St Pauls , Bucks, 1970
Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer,
BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:
The Amplified Bible
WEB
Final Response by Steven Carr to Dr Wilkinson
www.bowness.demon.co.uk/wilkin6.htm
Why the Roman Catholic Arguments for the Canon are Spurious?
www.christiantruth.com/canon.html
In Response to William Webster’s: The Canon, Why the Roman Catholic Arguments for the Canon are Spurious
www.geocities.com/Athens/3517/Webster.html
Science in the Bible? Dr M Magee
www.askwhy.co.uk/truth/440BibleScience.html
Why It’s a Load of Old Cobblers, Adrian Barnett
www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/noahs_ark.html
Exposes the utter absurdity of the Noah’s
Steven Carr, Critique of Josh McDowells Non_Messianic Prophecies This Site cannot be overly recommended. It is superb.
www.infidels.org/library/modern/steven_carr/non-messianic.html
New Testament Contradictions, Paul Carlson
www.infidels.org/library/modern/paul_carlson/nt_contradictions.html
Rabbits do not chew their cud, Alleged Bible Contradictions
http://unhindered.com/apolo/contradictions/index.html
The Bible as History Flunks New Archaeological Tests
www.10.nytimes.com/library/arts/072900david-bible.html