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<conspiracyFile>48 page printout, pages 148 to 195 of 322
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CHAPTER V
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THE "GOSPEL" FORGERIES
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"Whether a Church which stands convicted of having forged its
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Creed, would have any scruple of forging its Gospels, is a problem
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that the reader will solve according to the influence of prejudice
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or probability on his mind." Taylor, Diegesis, p. 10.
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LET us now take up the holy Evangels and Epistles of Christ-
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propaganda. After even our cursory examination of the welter of
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Gospels, Acts, Epistles and other pious frauds of Christian
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missionary-work, all admittedly forged by holy hands in the early
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Christian "age of apocryphal literature" in the names of Jesus
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Christ himself, of the Twelve pseudo-apostles and other Worthies,
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including Mother Eve, even the most credulous and uncritical
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Believer must feel the intrusion of some question: How came the
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four "Gospels according to" Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, to be
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sometime accepted as genuine and inspired? and, Why are there only
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Four out of so much greater a number, as we have seen in
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circulation and acceptance? The questions are pertinent, and shall
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be given fair answer.
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This entire aggregation of forged religious writings, under
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the guise of genuine Gospels, Acts, Epistles, Apocalypses, falsely
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attributed to apostolic writers, is know together as "Old Christian
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Literature," whether now called "canonical" or apocryphal. Of it
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EB. says that this present distinction "does not, in point of fact,
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rest upon any real difference in the character or origin of the
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writings concerned, but only upon the assumption of their differing
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values as sacred or non-sacred books." (EB. iii, 3481.)
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Furthermore, the common characteristic and motive of them all is
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thus described, or explained: "To compose 'letters' under another
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name, especially under the name of persons whose living
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presentment, or real or supposed spiritual equipment, it, was
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proposed to set before the reader, was then just us usual as was
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the other practice of introducing the same persons into narratives
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and reporting their 'words' in the manner of which we have
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examples, in the case of Jesus, in the Gospels, and, in the case of
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Peter, Paul, and other apostles, in the Acts." (EB. iii, 3481.)
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"The Gospel has come down to us," says Bishop Irenaeus (about
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185 A.D.), which the apostles did at one time proclaim in public,
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and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in
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the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith. ... For,
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after our Lord rose from the dead [the apostles] departed to the
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ends of the earth, preaching the glad tidings of the good things
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sent from God to us, who indeed do equally and individually possess
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the Gospel of God." (Iren., Adv. Haer, Bk. III, ch. i; ANF. i,
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414.) Bishop Irenaeus and Bishop Papias have both averred that the
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Christ lived to old age (even as late as 98-117 A.D.), flatly
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denying thus as "heresy" the Gospel stories as to his crucifixion
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at about thirty years of age. In any event, the Apostles, according
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to the record, scattered "to the ends of the earth, preaching,"
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orally, before they wrote anything at all.
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But, says CE., although "the New Testament was not written all
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at once, the books that compose it appeared one after another in
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the space of fifty years, i.e., in the second half of the first
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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148
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FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
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century." (CE. xiv, 530.) That this last clause is untrue will be
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fully and readily demonstrated. This statement, too, contradicts
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Bishops Papias and Irenaeus, who are, positively, the only two of
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the second century Fathers who up to their times at all mention
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written Gospels or their supposed authors, as we have seen and
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shall more particularly notice.
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And CE. says, as is true, of the earliest existing manuscripts
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of any New Testament books: "We have New Testament MSS. written not
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much more than 300 years after the composition of the books"; and
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it admits (though with much diminution of truth, as we shall see):
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"And in them we find numerous differences, though but few of them
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are important." (CE. xiv, 526.) In this CE. at another place, and
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speaking much more nearly the truth, contradicts itself, saying:
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"The existence of numerous and, at times, considerable differences
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between the four canonical Gospels is a fact which has long been
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noticed and which all scholars readily admit. ... Those evangelical
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records (SS. Matthew, Mark, Luke) whose mutual resemblances are
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obvious and striking, and ... the narrative (that of St. John)
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whose relation with the other three is that of dissimilarity rather
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than that of likeness." (CE. vi, 658.)
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But the so-called "canonical" books of the New Testament, as
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of the Old, are a mess of contradictions and confusions of text, to
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the present estimate of 150000 and more "variant readings," as is
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well known and admitted. Thus CE.: "It is easy to understand how
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numerous would be the readings of a text transcribed as often as
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the Bible, and, as only one reading can represent the original, it
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follows that all the others are necessarily faulty. Mill estimated
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the variants of the New Testament at 30000 and since the
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discovery of so many MSS. unknown to Mill, this number has greatly
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increased." (CE. iv, 498.) Who, then, is "inspired" to distinguish
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true from false readings, and thus to know what Jesus Christ and
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his entourage really said and did, or what some copyist's error or
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priest's forgery make them say or do, falsely? Of the chaos and
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juggling of sacred texts in the Great Dioceses of Africa, CE. says:
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"There never existed in early Christian Africa an official Latin
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text known to all the Churches, or used by the faithful to the
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exclusion of all others. The African bishops willingly allowed
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corrections to be made in a copy of the Sacred Scriptures, or even
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a reference, when necessary, to the Greek text. With some
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exceptions, it was the Septuagint text that prevailed, for the
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O.T., until the fourth century. In the case of the New, the MSS.
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were of the Western type. On this basis there arose a variety of
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translations and interpretations. ... Apart from the discrepancies
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to be found in two quotations from the same text in the works of
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two different authors, and sometimes of the same author, we now
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know that of several books of Scripture there were versions wholly
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independent of each other." (CE. i, 193.)
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Bishop Victor of Tunnunum, who died about 569 A.D. and whose
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work, says CE., "is of great historical value," says that in the
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fifth century, "In the consulship of Messala, at the command of the
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Emperor Anastasius, the Holy Gospels, as written Idiotis
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Evangelists, are corrected and amended." (Victor of T., Chronica,
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p. 89-90; cited by Dr. Mills, Prolegom. to R.V., p. 98.) This would
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indicate some very substantial tinkering with Holy Writ; which
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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149
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FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
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process was a continuing one, for, says CE., "Under Sixtus V (1585-
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90) and Clement VIII (1592-1605) the Latin Vulgate after years of
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revision attained its present shape." (CE., xii, 769.) And the
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Vulgate, which was fiercely denounced as fearfully corrupt, was
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only given sanction of divinity by the Council of Trent in 1546,
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under the Curse of God against any who questioned it. Though this
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amendatory tinkering of their two Holinesses was after the Council
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of Trent had put the final Seal of the Holy Ghost on the Vulgate in
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1546!
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STILL TINKERING AT IT!
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The ancient clerical trick of tempering with the "Word of God"
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and amending its plenary Divine Inspiration and Inerrancy, goes on
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apace today, even to the extent of putting a veneer of civilization
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on the barbarian Hebrew God, and warping his own barbarian words so
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as to make a semblance of a "God of Mercy" out of the self-styled
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"Jealous God" of Holy Writ.
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In 1902, after the sacred Council of Trent, in 1546, had put
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the Curse of God on any further tinkering with the Inerrant Bible,
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His Holiness Leo XIII appointed a Commission of Cardinals, known as
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the Pontifical Biblical Commission, to further amend Divine
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Inspiration; in 1907, "the Commission, with the approval of the
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sovereign pontiff, invited the Benedictine Order to undertake a
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collection of the variant readings of the Latin Vulgate as a remote
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preparation for a thoroughly amended edition." (CE. ii, 557.) This
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august body has recently laid before His Holiness, after all these
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years of labor, the revised text of the revelations of Moses in the
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Book of Genesis; and is now worrying with Exodus and the "Ten
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Commandments" in chapter XX thereof.
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Associated Press dispatches published to the world today,
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relate that "the Vatican's International Commission on the revision
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of the Bible [is] taking steps to correct one of the most famous
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Biblical passages, Exodus xx, 5, now believed to have been
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mistranslated"! (N.Y. Times, May 18, 1930.) The actual text, and
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"what the Vatican Commission thinks it should read," are here
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quoted so that all may judge of the immense farce and fraud of this
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capital falsification; -- the material tampering being indicated by
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italics.
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Exodus xx, 5 -- as is.
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"For I the Lord thy God am a Jealous God, visiting the
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iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and
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fourth generation of then that hate me"; ...
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Ditto -- as falsified.
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"For I, the Lord thy God, am a God of loving-kindness and
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mercy, considering the errors of the fathers as mitigating
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circumstances in judging the children unto the third and
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fourth generation"!
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Even a fool knows that no set of words, humanly or divinely
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devisable, could bear such enormity of contrary translation; this
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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150
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FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
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is self-evident. The simple Hebrew words of verse 5 do not admit of
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a word of tampering in translation. Even the present translations
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into modern languages make apparent the correctness of the familiar
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rendering. The words of verse 5 -- "visiting the iniquities ... of
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them that hate me," close with a semicolon, followed immediately by
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their antithesis: -- "And showing mercy [Heb. chesed] unto
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thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments." (v. 6;
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Deut. v. 9, 10.) The "Jealous God" pursues the progeny of those
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"that hate" him, and "shows mercy ... to them that love" him. The
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inspired "correction" of the "mistranslation" leaves verse 6
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meaningless and redundant.
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But the two simple Hebrew words chiefly involved make this
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fraudulent "correction" ridiculous and impossible. In Hebrew,
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Yahweh says from Sinai: "Anoki yahweh elohe-ka EL QANNA -- I Yahweh
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thy God [am a] Jealous God." The only false translation in this
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verse is "Lord thy God" for the 6000-times falsified "Yahweh thy
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God," as elsewhere noted. Always "qanna" means "jealous' -- and is
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used of the "jealous god," husband, wife, etc. The "joker" in this
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false "correction" is apparent from the word "chesed -- mercy,"
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hundreds of times used in Holy Writ. There is no Hebrew word
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meaning "loving-kindness"; this is a fanciful rendering given by
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the pious translators to the same old word "chesed -- mercy." Even
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the Infallible One knows -- or can look in a Hebrew dictionary or
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concordance and see -- that "el qanna ... visiting iniquity" --
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cannot be twisted into "et chesed and chesed ... showing chesed --
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mercy" to only those that love him. And how many thousands of
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"corrections" of words "now believed mistranslated," would be
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necessary to whitewash the barbarian Yahweh of Holy Writ into a
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"whited sepulchre" of civilized deity!
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SOME TESTS FOR FORGERY
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We have seen the debauchery of forgery out of which the Four
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Gospels were born. This makes pertinent the critical statement of
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one of the latest authorities on the subject: "Few genuine texts
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have come down to us from beyond the Middle Ages -- most documents
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reaching us in the form of later copies made by scribes in
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monasteries"; and he adds: "The mere fact that documents have been
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accepted for centuries does not itself protect them from the tests
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of historical criticism." (Shotwell, See of Peter, Gen. Introd.
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xix, xxii.) It is pertinent to add here a paragraph from CE. which
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states with entire accuracy the elementary principles upon which
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literary criticism rests; due to the application of just these
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principles by honest and fearless critics, the Bible has been
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stripped of every clerical pretense of inspired inerrancy and of
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even common literary and historical honesty; so that even the
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inerrant Church has been driven to confess countless errors and
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forgeries; even, as we have seen, to the frank repudiation of the
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fables of Creation, the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and
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the divine revelation of the Hebrew religion, which is thus shown
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to be a very human evolution. These critical principles have
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destroyed the vast mass of Hebrew and Christian apocrypha; and may
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now be applied to the New Testament booklets which yet make false
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pretense to divine inspiration of truth. Says CE.:
|
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|
Bank of Wisdom
|
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
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151
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FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
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"Some broad principles [of literary criticism] are
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universally admitted by critical scholars. A fundamental one
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is that a literary work always betrays the imprint of the age
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and environment in which it was produced; another is that a
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plurality of authors is proved by well-marked differences of
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diction and style, at least when they coincide with
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distinctions of viewpoint or discrepancies in a double
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treatment of the same subject. A third received canon holds to
|
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a radical dissimilarity between ancient Semitic and modern
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Occidental, or Aryan, methods of composition." (CE. iv. 492.)
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The lines last above in italics point to the most fatal of all
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proofs -- that of "double treatment" or forged "interpolations,"
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than which nothing is clearer evidence of tampering and later
|
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fraudulent alterations of text. The most radical dissimilarity
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between the ancient Semitic methods of religious composition and
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our modern Occidental notions of literary honesty -- or even of
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intelligent forgery -- is, that the Hebrew and Greek religious
|
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forgers were so ignorant or careless of the principles of
|
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criticism, that they "interpolated" their fraudulent new matter
|
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into old manuscripts without taking care to erase or suppress the
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previous statements glaringly contradicted by the new
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interpolations. Though, as the great masses of the ignorant
|
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Faithful couldn't read, it may have suited the design of the
|
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priests to retain both contradictory matters, either of which might
|
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be used according to occasion to impose on their credulous Flocks.
|
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When, therefore, in the same document, two statements of
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alleged fact or doctrine are found, one of which is in glaring
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contradiction of the other, one or the other is inevitably false
|
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and to a moral certainty the work of a later and different hand.
|
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When, furthermore, one of the statements is consonant with the time
|
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and conditions under which it was supposedly written, or to which
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it refers, and the contradictory "betrays the imprint of the age
|
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|
and environment in which it was written," later and different from
|
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that of the original, and/or betrays "distinctions of viewpoint or
|
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|
discrepancies" from the earlier version, inevitably the latter
|
|||
|
convicts itself of being forged. With these established and
|
|||
|
admitted principles in mind, we may now look a bit closely at these
|
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questioned documents of the Four Gospels.
|
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|
THE GOSPEL TITLES
|
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|
These Four are themselves forgeries and apocryphal "in. the
|
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sinister sense of bearing names to which they have no right," as
|
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well as by their contents being false, with many forged
|
|||
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"interpolations" or spurious additions. Even if the Four Gospels
|
|||
|
were themselves genuine, as we shall see they are not, yet
|
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|
admittedly their present titles are not original and given to them
|
|||
|
by the writers. The present clerical position, seeking to save the
|
|||
|
works, is that, like the Acts of the Apostles, "the name was
|
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subsequently attached to the book, just as the headings of the
|
|||
|
several Gospels were affixed to them." (CE. i, 117.) More
|
|||
|
particularly speaking of the Gospel titles, the same authority
|
|||
|
says: "The first four historical books of the New Testament are
|
|||
|
supplied with titles (Gospel According to [Gr. kata] Matthew,
|
|||
|
According to Mark, etc.) which, however ancient, do not go back to
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
152
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|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
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the respective authors of those sacred writings. ... That, however,
|
|||
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they do not go back to the first century of the Christian era, or
|
|||
|
at least that they are not original, is a position generally held
|
|||
|
at the present day. ... It thus appears that the titles of the
|
|||
|
Gospels are not traceable to the Evangelists themselves." (CE. vi,
|
|||
|
655, 656.) The very fact that the late second century Gospel-titles
|
|||
|
are of Gospels "according to" this or that alleged apostle, rather
|
|||
|
than "The Gospel of Mark" etc., is itself confession and plenary
|
|||
|
proof that "Mark," et als., were not -- and were not intended to be
|
|||
|
represented as -- the real authors of those "according to" Gospels.
|
|||
|
The form of the titles to the Epistles -- also later tagged to
|
|||
|
them, -- as "The Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans," etc. makes
|
|||
|
this clear and convincing, that no Apostles wrote the "according
|
|||
|
to" Gospel-biographies of the Christ.
|
|||
|
It is obvious, too, from an attentive reading of the Four
|
|||
|
Gospels, that they are not arranged in our present collection in
|
|||
|
their order of composition; "Matthew" certainly is not first in
|
|||
|
order, and is only put first because it begins with the "Book of
|
|||
|
the Generation of Jesus Christ." The Gospel "according to Mark" is
|
|||
|
now well established as the earliest of the first three, the
|
|||
|
"Synoptics," and "John" is clearly the latest. There has been much
|
|||
|
dispute on this point: "The ancient lists, versions, and
|
|||
|
ecclesiastical writings are far from being at one with regard to
|
|||
|
the order of these (4) sacred records of Christ's words and deeds.
|
|||
|
In early Christian literature the canonical Gospels are given in no
|
|||
|
less than eight orders, besides the one (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John)
|
|||
|
with which we are familiar." (CE. vi, 657.)
|
|||
|
Let us pause a moment to catch the full force of these
|
|||
|
admissions by CE. and note their consequences fatal to the pretense
|
|||
|
of Apostolic authorship or origin of these Gospels. We shall
|
|||
|
shortly see amplest proofs that none of the Four existed until well
|
|||
|
into the last half of the second century after so-called Christ and
|
|||
|
Apostles; but here we have, by clearest inference, an admission
|
|||
|
that the Gospels were not written by Apostles or their
|
|||
|
contemporaries. These titles "do not go back to the respective
|
|||
|
authors of those sacred writings; ... do not go back to the first
|
|||
|
century; ... are not original; ... are not traceable to the
|
|||
|
Evangelists." What an anomaly, in all literature! most especially
|
|||
|
in apostolic "sacred records of Christ's words and deeds"!
|
|||
|
Here we have these wonderful and "only true" inspired writings
|
|||
|
of the companions of the Christ, eye-witnesses to his mighty
|
|||
|
career, written for the conversion and salvation of the world,
|
|||
|
floating around loose and anonymous for a century and a half,
|
|||
|
without the slightest indication of their divine source and
|
|||
|
sanction! All the flood of forged and spurious gospels, epistles,
|
|||
|
acts and revelations -- "the apocryphal and pseudo-Biblical
|
|||
|
writings with which the East especially had been flooded" (CE. iii,
|
|||
|
272), bore the names of the pretended writers, from the false Books
|
|||
|
of Adam and Enoch to the forged "Gospel of Jesus Christ" and the
|
|||
|
"Apocalypse of St. Peter." But the authentic and true Gospels of
|
|||
|
the genuine Apostles of Christ, are nameless and dateless scraps of
|
|||
|
papyrus! Imagine the great Fathers and Bishops of the Churches, the
|
|||
|
inspired and all-wise "Popes" of the Church at Rome, rising in
|
|||
|
their pulpits before the gaping Faithful; taking up an anonymous
|
|||
|
roll of manuscript, and announcing: "Our lesson today is from,
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
153
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
(ahem!) one of the wonderful Gospels of our Lord and Savior Jesus
|
|||
|
Christ; but, (ahem!) I don't really know which one. It is by either
|
|||
|
Matthew, or Mark, or Luke, or John, I'm sure; but the writer forgot
|
|||
|
to sign or insert his name. We will, however, worship God by
|
|||
|
reading it anonymously in faith. No, here is one with a name to it;
|
|||
|
we will now read from the inspired 'Gospel of Barnabas,' or the
|
|||
|
sacred 'Shepherd of Hermas.' Let us sing that grand and reassuring
|
|||
|
old Hymn, 'How firm a foundation, ye Saints of the Lord, Is laid
|
|||
|
for your faith in His wonderful Word!' Let us pray for more faith;
|
|||
|
and remember to believe what I have told you. Ite, missa est --
|
|||
|
It's all over, beat it!"
|
|||
|
Books, evidently, do not go the rounds of readers nor of
|
|||
|
inspired Churches for over a century without a title or name. The
|
|||
|
first mention of the names or titles, as of the "Gospels" to which
|
|||
|
they were "supplied" was, as we shall see, not until about 185
|
|||
|
A.D., when the "Gospels according to" the Four first appear in
|
|||
|
ecclesiastical literature, and thereupon began their career in the
|
|||
|
current use of the Churches, and therefore, evidently, then first
|
|||
|
came into existence. The Four Gospels thus, self-evidently, did not
|
|||
|
-- could not for more than a century exist anonymous, without the
|
|||
|
Apostolic titles certifying their origin and authenticity. To
|
|||
|
pretend otherwise is sheer deceit and false pretense.
|
|||
|
THE "CANONICITY" OF THE FOUR GOSPELS
|
|||
|
The only possible pretext whereby generations of men should be
|
|||
|
persuaded or cozened or compelled to accept and believe the Gospels
|
|||
|
(as well as the other N.T. books), even under the genial threat "he
|
|||
|
that believeth not shall be damned," is that these books were
|
|||
|
written by immediate companions and apostles of the Christ,
|
|||
|
faithful eye-witnesses to his work and word, commanded and inspired
|
|||
|
by Christ, God, or the Holy Ghost (which one is not explicit), to
|
|||
|
write and publish these wonderful biographies of the Christ. This
|
|||
|
is explicitly the teaching and dogma of the Church: no real
|
|||
|
Apostolic author, no true Gospel.
|
|||
|
Through pious Christian fraud and forgery, there were
|
|||
|
fraudulently in vogue some couple of hundred "books current under
|
|||
|
an Apostle's name in the Early Church, such as the Epistle of
|
|||
|
Barnabas and the Apocalypse of St. Peter," as CE. (iii, 274) admits
|
|||
|
of these fraudulent "sacred writings" -- with Apostolic titles. Our
|
|||
|
Ecclesiastical authority then states the "certain indubitable
|
|||
|
marks" whereby true Apostolic authenticity, essential to validity
|
|||
|
and credence, must be known: "For the primitive Church, evangelical
|
|||
|
character was the test of Scriptural sacredness. But to guarantee
|
|||
|
this character it was necessary that a book should be known as
|
|||
|
composed by the official witnesses and organs of the Evangel; hence
|
|||
|
to certify the Apostolic authorship, or at least sanction, of a
|
|||
|
work purporting to contain the Gospel of Christ." (CE. iii, 274.)
|
|||
|
All purported "Gospels" as to which Apostolic authorship or
|
|||
|
sanction could not be guaranteed and certified were, of course,
|
|||
|
spurious, as is natural and proper. Yet, for centuries, false and
|
|||
|
forged "Gospels," etc., as the two just named, bore the Apostolic
|
|||
|
certificates of authenticity -- now confessed to be false.
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
154
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
THE "MARK" FABLE BELIES "CANONICITY"
|
|||
|
The impossibility of the pretense that the precious Four
|
|||
|
Gospels circulated nondescript and anonymous in the Churches for a
|
|||
|
century and a half, is patently belied by the specific instance of
|
|||
|
the "Gospel according to Mark," of which Gospel we have the precise
|
|||
|
"history" recorded three centuries after the alleged notorious
|
|||
|
event. Bishop Eusebius is our witness, in his celebrated Church
|
|||
|
History. He relates that Peter preached orally in Rome, Mark being
|
|||
|
his "disciple" and companion. The people wanted a written record of
|
|||
|
Peter's preachments, and (probably because Peter couldn't write),
|
|||
|
they importuned Mark to write down "that history which is called
|
|||
|
the Gospel according to Mark." Mark having done so, "the Apostle
|
|||
|
(Peter) having ascertained what was done by revelation of the
|
|||
|
Spirit, was delighted ... and that history obtained his authority
|
|||
|
for the purpose of being read in the Churches." (HE. Bk. II, ch.
|
|||
|
15.) Thus Peter was dead at the time, but his ghost got the news
|
|||
|
and somehow communicated its delight and approval for the document
|
|||
|
to be a "Gospel" for the Churches. But in a later section the
|
|||
|
Bishop gives another version: the people who heard Peter "requested
|
|||
|
Mark, who remembered well what he [Peter] had said, to reduce these
|
|||
|
things to writing. ... Which, when Peter understood, he directly
|
|||
|
neither hindered nor encouraged it." (HE. Bk. VI, ch. 14.) Peter,
|
|||
|
thus, was alive, but wholly indifferent about his alleged Gospel.
|
|||
|
The impossibilities of these contradictory fables need not
|
|||
|
detain us now. But both join in declaring that the "Gospel
|
|||
|
according to Mark" was publicly given to the Churches, at Rome,
|
|||
|
just before or after the death of Peter, 64-67 A.D. The moment,
|
|||
|
then, that this famous manuscript fell from the inspired pen --
|
|||
|
(but it was not inspired: Mark only "remembered well"), -- the
|
|||
|
Great Seal of the Holy Ghost was upon it, and it bore before the
|
|||
|
world the notorious crown of Canonicity, -- And this fact was of
|
|||
|
course known to all the Roman Church. And so, of course, of the
|
|||
|
other three; every papyrus containing these precious productions of
|
|||
|
Divine Inspiration must ipso facto be "canonized" and notoriously
|
|||
|
sacred and of Divine sanction from the very day they were written.
|
|||
|
Every Church, Father, Bishop, and Pope must certainly have known
|
|||
|
the fact, and have glorified in their precious possession.
|
|||
|
But so it was -- not. Pope Peter evidently did not and could
|
|||
|
not know it; he was "martyred in Rome" 64-67, the Church tells us;
|
|||
|
and the earliest date clerically claimed for "Mark" is some years
|
|||
|
after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The great Pope Clement I
|
|||
|
(died 97 A.D.?), first-to-fourth "successor" to Pope Peter, knew
|
|||
|
nothing of his great Predecessor's "Gospel according to Mark"; for,
|
|||
|
admits the CE.: "The New Testament he never quotes verbally.
|
|||
|
Sayings of Christ are now and then given, but not in the words of
|
|||
|
the Gospels. It cannot be proved, therefore, that he used any one
|
|||
|
of the Synoptic Gospels." (CE. iv, 14.) Of course, he did not,
|
|||
|
could not; they were not then written. And no other Pope, Bishop or
|
|||
|
Father (except Papias and until Irenaeus), for nearly a century
|
|||
|
after "Pope Clement," ever mentions or quotes a Gospel, or names
|
|||
|
Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. So for a century and a half -- until
|
|||
|
the books bobbed up in the hands of Bishop St. Irenaeus and were
|
|||
|
tagged as "Gospels according to" this or that Apostle, there exists
|
|||
|
not a word of them in all the tiresome tomes of the Fathers. It is
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
155
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
humanly and divinely impossible that the "Apostolic authorship" and
|
|||
|
hence "canonicity" or divine inspiration of these Sacred Four
|
|||
|
should have remained, for a century and a half, unknown and
|
|||
|
unsuspected by every Church, Father, Pope and Bishop of Christendom
|
|||
|
-- if existent. Even had they been somewhat earlier in existence,
|
|||
|
never an inspired hint or human suspicion was there, that they were
|
|||
|
"Divine" or "Apostolic," or any different from the scores of
|
|||
|
"apocryphal or pseudo-Biblical writings with which the East
|
|||
|
especially had been flooded," -- that they were indeed "Holy
|
|||
|
Scripture." Hear this notable admission: "It was not until about
|
|||
|
the middle of the second century that under the rubric of Scripture
|
|||
|
the New Testament writings were assimilated to the Old"! (CE. iii,
|
|||
|
275), -- that is, became regarded as apostolic, sacred, inspired
|
|||
|
and canonical, -- or "Scriptures."
|
|||
|
To argue and prove that the Four were regarded as "Apostolic"
|
|||
|
and hence "canonical" after the middle of the second century,
|
|||
|
argues and proves that until that late date they were not so
|
|||
|
regarded, -- which we have seen is impossible if they had been
|
|||
|
written by Apostles a hundred years and more previously and
|
|||
|
authorized by them "for the purpose of being read in the Churches,"
|
|||
|
as the very ground and pillar of their foundation and faith.
|
|||
|
Follow the proofs and argument of the Church to its own
|
|||
|
undoing: "From the testimony of St. Irenaeus (A.D. 185) alone there
|
|||
|
can be no reasonable doubt that the Canon of the Gospel was
|
|||
|
inalterably fixed in the Catholic Church by the last quarter of the
|
|||
|
second century ... to the exclusion of any pretended Evangels.
|
|||
|
[Sundry writings mentioned] presuppose the authority enjoyed by the
|
|||
|
Fourfold Gospel towards the middle of the second century. ... Even
|
|||
|
Rationalistic scholars like Harnack admit the canonicity of the
|
|||
|
quadriform Gospel between the years 140-175." (CE. iii, 275.) Even
|
|||
|
CE. does not prove or claim that it was any earlier; so here the
|
|||
|
Church and the Rationalists are in accord on this fatal fact!
|
|||
|
Certainly Popes Peter and Clement I, not to review the silent
|
|||
|
others, would have "inalterably fixed" the Divine Canonicity of the
|
|||
|
Four a century before, if they had known about these precious
|
|||
|
productions of the Apostles; -- if, in fact, they had existed, the
|
|||
|
known works of Holy Apostles and apostolic men! But until "towards
|
|||
|
the middle of the second century" there was no "canon" or notion of
|
|||
|
divinely inspired Apostolic Gospels -- simply for the reason that
|
|||
|
until just about that period they were not in existence.
|
|||
|
The sudden appearance at a certain late date, of a previously
|
|||
|
unknown document, which is then attributed to an earlier age and
|
|||
|
long since dead writers, is one of the surest earmarks of forgery.
|
|||
|
Thus CE. speaking of another monumental Church forgery -- (the
|
|||
|
"False Decretals" of Isidore, hereafter noticed) -- urges this very
|
|||
|
fact as one of the most cogent grounds of the detection of that
|
|||
|
forgery: "These documents appeared suddenly in the ninth century
|
|||
|
and are nowhere mentioned before that time. ... Then again there
|
|||
|
are endless anachronisms," -- just as in the Gospels and Epistles.
|
|||
|
(CE. vi, 773.) More ample and compelling proofs of this destroying
|
|||
|
fact will soon be made.
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
156
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
THE GOSPELS "ACCORDING TO" GREEK PRIESTS
|
|||
|
According to the names "supplied" to the Four Gospels, as to
|
|||
|
the other New Testament books, the "Apostolic" authors were all of
|
|||
|
them Jews; the same is supposedly true of most of the now confessed
|
|||
|
apocrypha. All these were forgeries in the names of Jewish pseudo-
|
|||
|
apostles. But all of the Gospels, the other New Testament Books,
|
|||
|
and the forged apocrypha, were written in Greek. Self-evidently,
|
|||
|
these "ignorant and unlearned" peasant Apostles, speaking a vulgar
|
|||
|
Aramaic-Jewish dialect, could neither speak nor write Greek, -- if
|
|||
|
they could write at all. The Old Testament books were written
|
|||
|
mostly in Hebrew, which was a "dead language," which only the
|
|||
|
priests could read; thus in the synagogues of Palestine the rolls
|
|||
|
were read in Hebrew, and then "expounded" to the hearers in their
|
|||
|
Aramaic dialect. But these Hebrew "Scriptures" had been translated
|
|||
|
into Greek, in the famous Septuagint version which we have admired.
|
|||
|
Here is another significant admission by CE.: it speaks of "the
|
|||
|
supposed wholesale adoption and approval, by the Apostles, of the
|
|||
|
Greek, and therefore larger Old Testament," that is, the Greek
|
|||
|
version containing the Jewish apocrypha; and then admits the fact:
|
|||
|
"The New Testament undoubtedly shows a preference for the
|
|||
|
Septuagint; out of about 350 texts from the Old Testament [in the
|
|||
|
New], 300 favor the Greek version rather than the Hebrew." (CE.
|
|||
|
iii, 271.) It was also the Greek Septuagint and Greek forged
|
|||
|
Oracles, that were exclusively used by the Greek Fathers and
|
|||
|
priests in all the Gospel-propaganda work of the first three
|
|||
|
centuries. Obviously, the Gospels and other New Testament booklets,
|
|||
|
written in Greek and quoting 300 times the Greek Septuagint, and
|
|||
|
several Greek Pagan authors, as Aratus, and Cleanthes, were
|
|||
|
written, not by illiterate Jewish peasants, but by Greek-speaking
|
|||
|
ex-Pagan Fathers and priests far from the Holy Land of the Jews.
|
|||
|
There is another proof that the Gospels were not written by
|
|||
|
Jews. Traditionally, Jesus and all the "Apostles" were Jews; all
|
|||
|
their associates and the people of their country with whom they
|
|||
|
came into contact, were Jews. But throughout the Gospels, scores of
|
|||
|
times, "the Jews" are spoken of, always as a distinct and alien
|
|||
|
people from the writers, and mostly with a sense of racial hatred
|
|||
|
and contempt. A few instances only need be given; they all betray
|
|||
|
that the writers were not Jews speaking of their fellow Jews. The
|
|||
|
Greek writer of "Matthew" says: "this saying is commonly reported
|
|||
|
among the Jews until this day" (Mt. xxviii, 15), -- showing, too,
|
|||
|
that it was written long afterwards; a Jew must have said "among
|
|||
|
our people," or some such. It is recorded by "Mark": "For the
|
|||
|
Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands of it,
|
|||
|
eat not, holding to the tradition of the elders" (Mk. vii, 3); no
|
|||
|
Jew writing for his fellow-Jews would explain or need to explain
|
|||
|
this Jewish custom, known to and practiced by "all the Jews." Luke
|
|||
|
names a Jew and locates geographically his place of residence:
|
|||
|
"Joseph, of Arimathea, a city of the Jews"; an American writer,
|
|||
|
speaking of Hoboken, could not say "a city of the Americans" nor
|
|||
|
did Jews need to be told by a Jew that Arimathea was a "city of the
|
|||
|
Jews." The Greek priest who wrote "John" is the most prolific in
|
|||
|
telling his Pagan readers about Jewish customs and personalities;
|
|||
|
absurd in a Jew writing for Jews: "After the manner of the
|
|||
|
purifying of the Jews" (ii, 6); "And the Jews' passover was at
|
|||
|
hand" (ii, 13) "Then answered the Jews, and said unto Jesus" (iii,
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
157
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
1); "Then there arose a question between some of John's disciples
|
|||
|
-- [all Jews] -- and the Jews about purifying" (iii, 25); "And
|
|||
|
therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus" (v, 16); "Therefore the
|
|||
|
Jews sought the more to kill him" (v, 18). More: "And the passover,
|
|||
|
a feast of the Jews, was nigh" vi, 4); no American would say "the
|
|||
|
Fourth of July, a holiday of the Americans," though a French writer
|
|||
|
might properly so explain. "After these things Jesus would not walk
|
|||
|
in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him" (vii, 1); "for they
|
|||
|
feared the Jews: for the Jews had agreed already" (ix, 22); "His
|
|||
|
disciples said unto him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone
|
|||
|
thee with stones" (xi, 8); "As the manner of the Jews is to bury"
|
|||
|
(xix, 40), which need be explained to no Jew. These and many like
|
|||
|
passages prove that no Jews wrote the Gospels; that they were
|
|||
|
written by foreigners for foreigners; these foreigners were Greek-
|
|||
|
speaking aliens unfamiliar with Jewish customs; the writers were
|
|||
|
therefore ex-Pagan Greek priests who were zealously "selling" the
|
|||
|
"glad tidings of great joy" to the ignorant and superstitious Pagan
|
|||
|
populace.
|
|||
|
THE FOUR GOSPELS -- "CHOSEN"
|
|||
|
The Four Gospels are thus demonstrated as: not written by
|
|||
|
Jews; not written by any of the "Twelve Apostles"; not written nor
|
|||
|
in existence for over a century after the supposed Apostles. When
|
|||
|
finally the Gospel "according to" Luke came to be written, already,
|
|||
|
as "Luke" affirms, there were "many" other like pseudo-Apostolic
|
|||
|
Gospel-biographies of the Christ afloat (Luke, i, 1); he added just
|
|||
|
another. In his Commentary on Luke, Father Origen confirms this
|
|||
|
fact as well known: "And not four Gospels, but very many, out of
|
|||
|
which these we have chosen and delivered to the churches, we may
|
|||
|
perceive." (Origen, In Proem. Luc., Hom. 1, vol. 2, p. 210.) How,
|
|||
|
and why, out of half a hundred of other lying forgeries of Gospels,
|
|||
|
were these sacred Four finally "chosen" as truly "Apostolic,"
|
|||
|
inspired, and canonical? Nobody knows, as CE. confesses.
|
|||
|
It is a very strange and fatal confession, in view of the
|
|||
|
insistent false pretense of the Church for centuries of the patent
|
|||
|
Divinity of the Four Gospels, and of its own infallible inspiration
|
|||
|
and Divine guidance against all doubt and error; but it confesses:
|
|||
|
"It is indeed impossible, at the present day, to describe
|
|||
|
the precise manner in which out of the numerous works ascribed
|
|||
|
to some Apostle, or simply bearing the name of gospel, only
|
|||
|
four, two of which are not ascribed to Apostles, came to be
|
|||
|
considered as sacred and canonical. It remains true, however,
|
|||
|
that all the early testimony which has a distinct bearing on
|
|||
|
the number of the canonical Gospels recognizes four such
|
|||
|
Gospels and none besides. Thus, Eusebius (d. 340) ... Clement
|
|||
|
of Alexandria (d. about 220), ... and Tertullian (d. 220),
|
|||
|
were familiar with our four Gospels, frequently quoting and
|
|||
|
commenting on them." (CE. vi, 657.)
|
|||
|
The statement as to "all the early testimony" in favor of
|
|||
|
these Four only, is not only untrue, but it is contradicted by a
|
|||
|
true statement on the same page as the last above; it is, too, a
|
|||
|
further humiliating confession of blind and groping uncertainty
|
|||
|
with respect to the very foundation stones on which the Infallible
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
158
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
Church is built, and makes a bit less confident the forged
|
|||
|
assurance that the Gates of Hell -- to say nothing of human Reason
|
|||
|
-- shall not yet prevail against the ill-founded structure. Here is
|
|||
|
the destructive admission:
|
|||
|
"In the writings of the Apostolic Fathers one does not,
|
|||
|
indeed, meet with unquestionable evidence in favor of only
|
|||
|
four canonical gospels. ... The canonical Gospels were
|
|||
|
regarded as of Apostolic authority, two of them being ascribed
|
|||
|
to the Apostles St. Matthew and St. John, respectively, and
|
|||
|
two to St. Mark and St. Luke, the respective companions of St.
|
|||
|
Peter and St. Paul. Many other gospels indeed claimed
|
|||
|
Apostolic authority, but to none of them was this claim
|
|||
|
universally allowed in the early Church. The only apocryphal
|
|||
|
work which was at all generally received, and relied upon, in
|
|||
|
addition to our four canonical Gospels, is the 'Gospel
|
|||
|
according to the Hebrews.' It is a well-known fact that St.
|
|||
|
Jerome regards it as the Hebrew original of our Greek
|
|||
|
Canonical Gospel according to St. Matthew." (CE. vi, 657.)
|
|||
|
Thus, admittedly, "numerous works" of pretended and false
|
|||
|
"gospels," some fifty, were forged and falsely "ascribed to some
|
|||
|
apostle" by devout Christians; after a century and a half only four
|
|||
|
"came to be considered" and were finally "chosen" -- selected -- as
|
|||
|
of divine utterance and sanction. Why? one may well wonder.
|
|||
|
WHY FOUR GOSPELS?
|
|||
|
Why Four Gospels, then, -- when only one would have been
|
|||
|
aplenty and much safer, as fewer contradictions -- out of the fifty
|
|||
|
ascribed by pious forging hands to the Holy Twelve? The pious
|
|||
|
Fathers are ready here, as ever, with fantastic reasons to explain
|
|||
|
things whereof they are ignorant or are not willing to give honest
|
|||
|
reasons for. "The saintly Bishop of Lyons," says CE. with
|
|||
|
characteristic clerical solemnity when anyone else would laugh,
|
|||
|
"Irenaeus (died about 202), who had known Polycarp in Asia Minor,
|
|||
|
not only admits and quotes our four Gospels, [he is the very first
|
|||
|
to mention them!] -- but argues that there must be just four, no
|
|||
|
more and no less. He says: 'It is not possible that the Gospels be
|
|||
|
either more or fewer than they are. For since there are four zones
|
|||
|
of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the
|
|||
|
Church is scattered throughout the world. ... and the pillar and
|
|||
|
ground of the Church is the Gospel. ... it is fitting that we
|
|||
|
should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side
|
|||
|
and vivifying our flesh. ... The living creatures are quadriform,
|
|||
|
and the Gospel is quadriform, as is also the course followed by our
|
|||
|
Lord"! (CE. vi, 659.) Thus far CE. quoting the good Bishop; but we
|
|||
|
may follow the Bishop a few lines further in his very innocent
|
|||
|
ratiocinations from ancient Hebrew mythology, in proof of the
|
|||
|
divine Four:
|
|||
|
"For this reason were four principal covenants given to
|
|||
|
the human race: One prior to the deluge, under Adam; the
|
|||
|
second, that after the deluge, under Noah; the third, the
|
|||
|
giving of the law, under Moses; the fourth, that which
|
|||
|
renovates man, and sums up all things by means of the Gospel,
|
|||
|
raising and bearing men upon its wings into the heavenly
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
159
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
Kingdom. ... But that these Gospels alone are true and
|
|||
|
reliable, and admit neither an increase nor diminution of the
|
|||
|
aforesaid number, I have proved by so many and such arguments.
|
|||
|
For, since God made all things in due proportion and
|
|||
|
adaptation, it was fit also that the outward aspect of the
|
|||
|
Gospel should be well arranged and harmonized. The opinion of
|
|||
|
those men, therefore, who handed the Gospel down to us, having
|
|||
|
been investigated, from their very fountainheads, let us
|
|||
|
proceed also [to the remaining apostles), and inquire into
|
|||
|
their doctrine with regard to God." (Iren. Adv. Haer. III, xi,
|
|||
|
8, 9; ANF. i, 428-29.)
|
|||
|
The true reason, however, for four finally "chosen" and
|
|||
|
accepted Gospels, is that stated by Reinach, after quoting Irenaeus
|
|||
|
and other authorities: "The real reason was to satisfy each of the
|
|||
|
four principal Churches each of which possessed its Gospel: Matthew
|
|||
|
at Jerusalem, Mark at Rome, or Alexandria, Luke at Antioch, and
|
|||
|
John at Ephesus." (Reinach, Orpheus, p. 217.) This reason for the
|
|||
|
use of a different Gospel by each of the principal and independent
|
|||
|
Churches, -- for the special uses of each of which the respective
|
|||
|
Gospels were no doubt worked up by forging Fathers in each Fold, --
|
|||
|
is confirmed by Bishop Irenaeus himself in this same argument. Each
|
|||
|
of the four principal sects of heretics, he says, makes use in
|
|||
|
their Churches of one or the other of these Four for its own uses,
|
|||
|
for instance: Matthew by the Ebionites; Mark by "those who separate
|
|||
|
Jesus from Christ"; Luke by the Marcionites; and John by the
|
|||
|
Valentinians; and this heretical use of the Four, argues the
|
|||
|
Bishop, confirms their like acceptance and use by the True
|
|||
|
Churches: "So firm is the ground upon which these Gospels rest,
|
|||
|
that the very heretics bear witness to them, and starting from
|
|||
|
these documents, each of them endeavors to establish his own
|
|||
|
peculiar doctrine [citing the use by each sect of a different
|
|||
|
Gospel as above named]. Since, then, our opponents do bear
|
|||
|
testimony to us, and make use of these documents, our proof derived
|
|||
|
from them is firm and true." (Iren., op. cit. sec. 7.) The
|
|||
|
"canonical Four," verily, as CE. confesses, were manufactured
|
|||
|
precisely for the purpose of meeting and confuting the heretics, as
|
|||
|
were the gradually developed and defined sacred dogmas of the
|
|||
|
Orthodox Church, even that of the Trinity. The fabrication of the
|
|||
|
Four can be seen working out under our very eyes, in the light of
|
|||
|
the foregoing statement of Irenaeus, and of that of CE. to be
|
|||
|
quoted.
|
|||
|
In the next section we shall see proven, that no written,
|
|||
|
Gospels existed until shortly before 185 A.D., when Irenmus wrote;
|
|||
|
they are first mentioned in chapter xxii of his Book II; the above
|
|||
|
quotation is from Book III, when use of them became constant.
|
|||
|
Evident we see it to be, from what Irenaeus has just said, that the
|
|||
|
sects of heretics named were making use, each of them of one of the
|
|||
|
just-published Four as well as of other "spurious gospels"; the
|
|||
|
Orthodox claimed the Four as their own, and finally established the
|
|||
|
claim. The "gospel" up to about this time, a century and a half
|
|||
|
after Jesus Christ, was entirely oral and "traditional"; the
|
|||
|
Gnostics and other heretics evidently were first to reduce some
|
|||
|
"gospels" to writing; the Orthodox quickly followed suit, in order
|
|||
|
to combat the heretics by "apostolic" writings. This is clear from
|
|||
|
the following, that "the spurious gospels of the Gnostics prepared
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
160
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
the way for the canon of Scripture," -- meaning, for the now
|
|||
|
"canonical Scripture"; for, as the "canon" was not dogmatically
|
|||
|
established until 1546, the Four were not "canonized" when Irenaeus
|
|||
|
wrote in 185, -- when the "way was prepared" for them by the
|
|||
|
earlier heretical "spurious gospels." Thus CE. writes:
|
|||
|
"The endless controversies with heretics have been
|
|||
|
indirectly the cause of most important doctrinal developments
|
|||
|
and definitions formulated by councils to the edification of
|
|||
|
the body of Christ. Thus the spurious gospels of the Gnostics
|
|||
|
prepared the way for the canon of Scripture: the Patri-
|
|||
|
passian, Sabellian, Arian, and Macedonian heresies drew out a
|
|||
|
clearer concept of the Trinity; the Nestorian and Eutychian
|
|||
|
errors led to definite dogmas on the nature and Person of
|
|||
|
Christ. And so on down to Modernism, which has called forth a
|
|||
|
solemn assertion of the claims of the supernatural in
|
|||
|
history." (CE. vii, 261.)
|
|||
|
Heresy means "Choice"; heretics are those who choose what they
|
|||
|
will believe, or whether they will believe at all. It was to
|
|||
|
foreclose all choice on the part of believers, that the divinely-
|
|||
|
inspired, apostolic fictions of the Four Gospels were drawn up for
|
|||
|
the first time to combat the "spurious gospels" of the free
|
|||
|
choosers. Heresy could not exist in the time of Jesus Christ, for
|
|||
|
he laid down nothing for belief, except "He that believeth on me
|
|||
|
shall be saved" against his immediate "second coming" and end of
|
|||
|
the world. The gospels are thus anti-heretical documents of the
|
|||
|
second century, after Gnosticism first appeared.
|
|||
|
In this connection it may be mentioned, as complained by
|
|||
|
Augustine, that there were some 93 sects of heretics during the
|
|||
|
first three centuries of the Christian Faith; all these were
|
|||
|
Christian sects, believing in the tales of Jesus Christ and him
|
|||
|
crucified, but each of them as rivals struggling for the profits
|
|||
|
and power of religion and warring to suppress all others, and make
|
|||
|
itself master in pelf and power. Hence the Fathers thundered
|
|||
|
against the heretics. The inspired Four Gospels, contradictory at
|
|||
|
every point, were impossible to believe in all points; they left
|
|||
|
every one free to disbelieve all, or to believe such as he could.
|
|||
|
So incredible, even on their face, were one and all of these
|
|||
|
canonical Four Gospels, that the fanatic Father Tertullian thus
|
|||
|
stated the grounds of his holy faith in them: "Credo quia
|
|||
|
incredibilis est -- I believe because it is unbelievable"; and St.
|
|||
|
Augustine, greatest of the Fathers, declared himself in these
|
|||
|
terms: "Ego vero Evangelio non crederem, nisi me Catholicae
|
|||
|
Ecclesiae conmoveret Auctoritas. ... Ego me ad eos teneam, quibus
|
|||
|
praecipientibus Evangelio credidi -- I would not believe the Gospel
|
|||
|
true, unless the authority of the Catholic Church constrained me.
|
|||
|
... I hold myself bound to those, through whose teachings I have
|
|||
|
believed the Gospel." (Augustine, On the Foundation, sec. 5, Ed.
|
|||
|
Vives, vol. xxv, p. 435; Orpheus, p. 223.)
|
|||
|
In the work often cited, Bishop Irenaeus either falsely quotes
|
|||
|
the Gospel of Mark, or the sacred text has been seriously altered
|
|||
|
in our present copies; he says: "Mark commences with a reference to
|
|||
|
the prophetical spirit, saying, 'The beginning of the Gospel of
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
161
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
Jesus Christ, as it is written in Esaias the prophet"' (sec. 8, p.
|
|||
|
428), as if Isaiah testified to the Gospel. The Bishop also quotes
|
|||
|
two long passages, one a written letter of the Apostles "unto those
|
|||
|
brethren from among the Gentiles who are in Antioch, and Syria, and
|
|||
|
Silicia, greeting," -- which are not in the Acts of the Apostles or
|
|||
|
any other New Testament book as we now have them. (Iren., Adv.
|
|||
|
Maer. III, xi, 14; p. 436.) The good Bishop seems either to have
|
|||
|
fabricated this alleged Epistle and passage, or other pious hands
|
|||
|
falsified the sacred Scriptures by forging them out of its pages.
|
|||
|
So it is evident that these inspired booklets, as we now know them,
|
|||
|
at least differ in very many material respects from the
|
|||
|
"traditional Gospel" and from the form in which the Four Gospels
|
|||
|
were first reduced to writing. Many other instances exist, of which
|
|||
|
some of the most notorious will be shown in the course of the
|
|||
|
chapter.
|
|||
|
INSPIRATION AND PLAGIARISM
|
|||
|
In this connection a few words may be said as to the
|
|||
|
chronological order and manner of composition of the first three or
|
|||
|
Synoptic Gospels. "Historically Mark is the earliest, and its study
|
|||
|
the foundation of critical enquiry. But the ordinary Christian is
|
|||
|
not a historical critic." (New Commentary, Pt. III, p. 126; ef. pp.
|
|||
|
33, 45.) With the latter statement all will agree; with the first
|
|||
|
CE. is in agreement with the leading critics, though holding to the
|
|||
|
exploded "tradition" that one Mark wrote "Mark," or, in its words:
|
|||
|
"If, then, a consistent and widespread early tradition is to count
|
|||
|
for anything, St. Mark wrote a work based upon St. Peter's
|
|||
|
Preaching." (CE. ix, 676.) The later writers of "Matthew" and
|
|||
|
"Luke" copied bodily from "Mark," with the utmost literality in
|
|||
|
many places, but with the greatest freedom of changes, additions
|
|||
|
and suppressions at others, to suit their own purposes. But one
|
|||
|
comparison, that between "Mark" and "Matthew," can here be given;
|
|||
|
the method extends quite as notably to "Luke." Thus CE. discloses
|
|||
|
the process: "Mark is found complete in Matthew, with the exception
|
|||
|
of numerous slight omissions and the following periscopes. ... In
|
|||
|
all, 31 verses are omitted"; and so with respect to the "analogies"
|
|||
|
with the other two. "Parts peculiar to Matthew are numerous, as
|
|||
|
Matthew has 330 verses that are distinctly his own." (CE,. x, 60,
|
|||
|
61; cf. for thorough examination, New Comm. Pt. III, pp. 33, seq.)
|
|||
|
"These 'Matthean additions,' as they are called. ... seem to be
|
|||
|
authentic when they relate our Lord's words; but, when they relate
|
|||
|
incidents, they are extremely questionable." (New Comm. Pt. III, p.
|
|||
|
127-128.)
|
|||
|
We have just seen the same authority admit the want of
|
|||
|
authenticity of one set of words imputed by Matthew to his Lord;
|
|||
|
our next section will demonstrate another famous "Matthean
|
|||
|
addition" to be a gross and bungling forgery. This bodily copying
|
|||
|
from Mark, with so many "additions and suppressions," implies, as
|
|||
|
we have seen, "a very free treatment of the text of Mark in Matthew
|
|||
|
and Luke (a freedom which reaches a climax in the treatment of Mk.
|
|||
|
x, 17f. in Mt. xix, 16f.). ... Just as the latter (Matthew)
|
|||
|
tampered more with the Markan order than St. Luke did." (New Comm.
|
|||
|
Pt. III, 36, 40.) But this textual tampering is well explained, for
|
|||
|
clerical apologists: "Nor need such freedom surprise us. Mark, at
|
|||
|
the time when the others used it, had not attained anything like
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
162
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
the status of Scripture, and an evangelist using it would feel
|
|||
|
free, or might indeed feel bound, to bring its contents into line
|
|||
|
with the traditions of the particular Church in which he lived and
|
|||
|
worked"! (Ib. p. 36.)
|
|||
|
This perfectly confirms the position taken in the section "Why
|
|||
|
Four Gospels?" that these Gospels were framed up each in a
|
|||
|
different Church, to meet its own uses and special purposes, and in
|
|||
|
answer to the "gospels" of the Heretics. "Mark," being first in
|
|||
|
order, was probably in the hands of several Churches, some of whose
|
|||
|
"traditions" did not accord with the "gospel" narratives therein
|
|||
|
retailed; the local gospel-mongers, therefore, taking "Mark" as
|
|||
|
good "copy" for a start, took their blue-pencil styluses in hand
|
|||
|
and "edited" its text by profuse "tampering" until they produced,
|
|||
|
severally, the "gospels according to" Matthew and Luke, for use in
|
|||
|
more "orthodox" and approved form according to the local
|
|||
|
traditions. The "John" gospel-fabrication alone of the Four quite
|
|||
|
disregarded the "Mark" document, and is in the most complete
|
|||
|
contradiction with it, and with all the first three. The "Big Four"
|
|||
|
gradually won their way against and were "chosen" from all the
|
|||
|
other fifty or more in circulation, which then became "apocrypha,"
|
|||
|
or admitted forgeries.
|
|||
|
GOSPELS LATE FORGERIES
|
|||
|
We have seen the admissions of CE. that the earliest notice of the
|
|||
|
Four Gospel's now known to us was towards the close of the second
|
|||
|
century, quoting as the earliest witnesses the African Bishops,
|
|||
|
Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, both of whom died about 220
|
|||
|
A.D. It presents, however, one earlier witness to Gospels going in
|
|||
|
the name of the Four: "Irenrus, in his work Against Heresies (A.D.
|
|||
|
182-188), testified to the existence of a Tetramorph or Quadriform
|
|||
|
Gospel, given by the Word and unified by one Spirit," (CE. iii,
|
|||
|
275), -- of which we have just had occasion to admire his quaint
|
|||
|
and cogent proofs. This first mention, by Irenaeus, of Four
|
|||
|
Gospels, with the names of their supposed writers, we shall in a
|
|||
|
moment quote; first we will get the record in honest and correct
|
|||
|
form by citing an even earlier partial naming of something like
|
|||
|
Gospels, and their reputed writers.
|
|||
|
1. Bishop Papias, about 145 A.D., is the very first name of
|
|||
|
something like written "Gospels" and writers; and this is what he
|
|||
|
says, quoting his anonymous gossipy old friends, the presbyters:
|
|||
|
"And the presbyter said this. MARK having become the
|
|||
|
interpreter of PETER, wrote down accurately whatsoever he
|
|||
|
remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he
|
|||
|
related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard
|
|||
|
the Lord, nor accompanied him. ... For one thing he took
|
|||
|
especial care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to
|
|||
|
put anything fictitious into the statements. MATTHEW put the
|
|||
|
Oracles (of the Lord) in the Hebrew language, and each one
|
|||
|
interpreted them as best he could." (Papias, quoted by
|
|||
|
Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. iii, 39; ANF. i, 154-5.)
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
163
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
Here, then, over one hundred years after Christ, we have the
|
|||
|
first mention of written gospels and of Mark, and the recital, by
|
|||
|
hearsay on hearsay, that he wrote down "whatsoever he remembered"
|
|||
|
that Peter had said the Lord had said and done. This is rather a
|
|||
|
far cry from divine inspiration of inerrant truth in this first
|
|||
|
hearsay by memory recital of the supposed Gospel-writers. Thus
|
|||
|
"Mark" is admittedly not "inspired," but is hearsay, haphazard
|
|||
|
"traditions," pieced together a generation and more afterwards by
|
|||
|
some unknown priestly scribe. But note well, even if Mark may have
|
|||
|
written some things, alleged as retailed by Peter, yet this is not,
|
|||
|
and is not an intimation even remotely, that this by-memory record
|
|||
|
of Mark is the "Gospel according to Mark" which half a century
|
|||
|
after Papias came to be known. Indeed, such an idea is expressly
|
|||
|
excluded; Mark's notes were "not in exact order," but here and
|
|||
|
there, as remembered; while the "Gospel according to Mark" is, or
|
|||
|
purports to be, very orderly, proceeding from "The beginning of the
|
|||
|
gospel of Jesus Christ" orderly and consecutively through to his
|
|||
|
death, resurrection and ascension. It includes the scathing rebuke
|
|||
|
administered by the Christ to Peter: "Get thee behind me, Satan:
|
|||
|
for thou savourest not the things that be of God" (Mk. viii, 33) ;
|
|||
|
one may be sure that Peter never related these eminently deserved
|
|||
|
"sayings of Christ" to Mark or to anyone.
|
|||
|
Moreover, the present "Gospel according to Mark" relates the
|
|||
|
crucifixion of Jesus at about thirty years of age, after one year's
|
|||
|
ministry; which is wholly false, as Jesus died at home in bed of
|
|||
|
old age, in effect says Bishop Papias, on the "tradition" of these
|
|||
|
same presbyters. So, every other consideration here aside, Papias
|
|||
|
is not a witness to "The Gospel according to Mark." As for Matthew,
|
|||
|
Papias simply reports the elders as saying that Matthew wrote down
|
|||
|
the "ORACLES" or words of the Lord, and in Hebrew; the "Gospel
|
|||
|
according to Matthew" is much more than mere "words of the Lord";
|
|||
|
it is the longest and most palpably fictitious of the "Lives" of
|
|||
|
the Christ; it was written in Greek, and very obviously by a Greek
|
|||
|
priest or Father, many years after the reputed time of Jesus
|
|||
|
Christ. And Bishop Papias, more than a century after Christ, did
|
|||
|
not have in his important church, and had never seen, these alleged
|
|||
|
apostolic writings, and only knew of some such by the gossip of the
|
|||
|
elders at second or third hand. So we must count Papias out as a
|
|||
|
witness for these two of our written Gospels. None of the present
|
|||
|
Four Gospels was thus in existence in about A.D. 145. And it is
|
|||
|
obvious that, even by "tradition," the Gospels in the names of Luke
|
|||
|
and John did not exist in the time of Papias.
|
|||
|
2. Justin Martyr (145-149) quotes sundry "sayings" of Jesus
|
|||
|
which we find here and there in the present Four, -- just as like
|
|||
|
alleged "sayings" identically are to be found in almost any of the
|
|||
|
confessedly forged or apocryphal gospels; but he names no names nor
|
|||
|
Gospels, but only says "memoirs of the apostles," or simply "it is
|
|||
|
said." (See all instances cited, in EB. ii, 1819.) So Justin is no
|
|||
|
witness to our present Four Gospels, which evidently did not exist
|
|||
|
in his time about 150 years after Jesus Christ, -- though he
|
|||
|
assiduously quotes the Sibyl and the heathen gods as proofs of
|
|||
|
Jesus Christ, as we have seen.
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
164
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
3. Irenaeus (182-188) makes the very first mention of Four
|
|||
|
Gospels and names the reputed authors. These are textually the
|
|||
|
interesting, and as we shall see, at least in part, spurious words
|
|||
|
of Bishop Irenaeus:
|
|||
|
"Matthew also issued a Gospel -- [see it grow -- Papias
|
|||
|
said only "oracles of the Lord"] among the Hebrews in their
|
|||
|
own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and
|
|||
|
laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure,
|
|||
|
Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand
|
|||
|
down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke
|
|||
|
also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel
|
|||
|
preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord,
|
|||
|
who also had leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a
|
|||
|
Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia." (Iren. Adv.
|
|||
|
Haer. Bk. III, Ch. 1, i; ANF. i, 414.)
|
|||
|
Irenaeus, therefore, about the year 185 of our Lord, to use a
|
|||
|
medium date, or some one hundred and fifty years after his death,
|
|||
|
is the first of all the zealous Christ-bearers to record the fact
|
|||
|
that, at the time he wrote, there were in existence four wonderful
|
|||
|
biographies or histories of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, two
|
|||
|
under the names of holy Apostles, and, he "implies that the Gospels
|
|||
|
of Mark and Luke were, in effect, apostolic, as being written by
|
|||
|
companions of Peter and Paul." (EB. i, 1830.) If any such apostolic
|
|||
|
and authentic works had been in existence before the years, we will
|
|||
|
say, 150-180 A.D., it is beyond comprehension and possibility that
|
|||
|
the zealous Fathers, who so eagerly quoted, and misquoted, the Old
|
|||
|
Testament and its apocrypha, the forged New Testament apocrypha,
|
|||
|
and the heathen Oracles, in proof of their Christ, should have been
|
|||
|
silent as clams about the apostolic Jesus-histories "according to"
|
|||
|
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Even all the later Fathers, and
|
|||
|
ecclesiastical writers, and the CE., admittedly are unable to trace
|
|||
|
their genealogy further back into "the age of apocryphal
|
|||
|
literature" than about 150 A.D. or later. It is impossible,
|
|||
|
therefore, to believe or to pretend, that these Four Gospels were
|
|||
|
written by apostles and their personal disciples, some hundred
|
|||
|
years and more before they were ever heard of by the zealous and
|
|||
|
myth-mongering Fathers. A confused medley of alleged words and
|
|||
|
wonderful deeds of the Christ, handed down by ancient tradition or
|
|||
|
new-invented for any occasion, existed in oral "tradition," and
|
|||
|
were worn threadbare by rote repetition; but never a written word
|
|||
|
of the Four for a century and a half after the apostles had their
|
|||
|
say, and had handed down that wonderful and inexhaustible "Deposit
|
|||
|
of Faith," which, oral and unedited, is yet drawn upon until this
|
|||
|
day by the inspired Successors of Peter for their every new Dogma.
|
|||
|
One may turn the thousands of pages of the Ante-Niacin Fathers
|
|||
|
before Irenaeus in vain to find a direct word of quotation from
|
|||
|
written Gospels, nor (except as above, recorded) even bare mention
|
|||
|
of the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, as writers of Gospels.
|
|||
|
The above words of Irenaeus are registered in his Book III, chapter
|
|||
|
i; in the first two Books, while, like Justin, he quotes "sayings"
|
|||
|
which are to be found in our present texts, as in the apocryphas,
|
|||
|
he does not mention "Gospel" or any of the four reputed
|
|||
|
evangelists, until chapter xxii of Book II, where he mentions the
|
|||
|
word "Gospels" and those of John and Luke, and assails their record
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
165
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
of the early death of Jesus as "heresy." But beginning with chapter
|
|||
|
x of Book III, he bristles with the names of and direct quotations
|
|||
|
from all Four; and so with all the following Fathers. It seems,
|
|||
|
therefore, a fair inference that Irenaeus had just heard of these
|
|||
|
Four Gospels at the time the last chapters of the second of the two
|
|||
|
Books were composed; and that they came into existence, or to his
|
|||
|
knowledge, just before the time be began to compose Book III. And
|
|||
|
certainly these Four Gospels could not have been in existence and
|
|||
|
circulation very long before they would come to the eager hands of
|
|||
|
the active and prolific Bishop of Lyons, who had recently come from
|
|||
|
the tutelage of his friend Polycarp, -- "disciple of the Apostle
|
|||
|
John" -- venerable Bishop of Smyrna, who sent him to Lyons, and
|
|||
|
who, for his part, shows not a suspicion of knowledge of them. And
|
|||
|
these Gospels, just now come into existence, were immediately and
|
|||
|
fiercely attacked by Bishop Irenaeus as false and "heresy" in the
|
|||
|
vital points of the crucifixion and early death of Jesus, who, says
|
|||
|
the Bishop, lived to very old age, even maybe till the times of
|
|||
|
Trajan, 98-117, as vouched for by the Apostle John and other
|
|||
|
apostles and by the [oral] "Gospel." This, too, casts discredit on
|
|||
|
these Gospels as containing authentic record of the apostolic
|
|||
|
"traditions," condemned in this vital particular by the only two
|
|||
|
Bishops, Papias and Irenaeus, who -- for a century and a half --
|
|||
|
mention any Gospel-writings at all.
|
|||
|
"LURE" DISCREDITS APOSTOLICITY
|
|||
|
Moreover, at the time that the Gospel bearing the name of Luke
|
|||
|
was published, already many Gospels or purported histories and
|
|||
|
sayings of Jesus Christ were in active circulation: "Forasmuch as
|
|||
|
many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of
|
|||
|
those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they
|
|||
|
delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eye-witnesses
|
|||
|
and ministers of the word; it has seemed to me good also, having
|
|||
|
had a perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to
|
|||
|
write unto thee, in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou
|
|||
|
mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been
|
|||
|
instructed." (Luke, i, 1-4). Now, these "many" Gospels were clearly
|
|||
|
not by any of the apostles, else Luke would certainly have so
|
|||
|
stated; they were not "inspired" writings, but they were by sundry
|
|||
|
anonymous "eye-witnesses and ministers of the word"; they are
|
|||
|
either totally lost to posterity, or are among the fifty admittedly
|
|||
|
forged and apocryphal Gospels which we have previously noticed.
|
|||
|
Thus we see two of the "Four," i.e., "Mark," and "Luke" are, on
|
|||
|
their face, uninspired, hear-say, and long ex post facto.
|
|||
|
That neither apostle nor contemporary of Jesus wrote a line of
|
|||
|
"gospel" is thus perfectly evidenced by Luke: "According to the
|
|||
|
prologue of Luke, no eye-witness of the life of Jesus took pen in
|
|||
|
hand -- none at least appear to have produced any writings which
|
|||
|
Luke would have called a 'narrative.'" (EB. ii, 1892.) These
|
|||
|
conclusions are confirmed by the learned clerical translators and
|
|||
|
editors of the ANF, respectively, as follows:
|
|||
|
"Though a few of the Apocryphal Gospels are of
|
|||
|
comparatively early origin, there is no evidence that any
|
|||
|
Gospels purporting to be what our Four Gospels are, existed in
|
|||
|
the first century, or that any other than fragmentary
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
166
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
literature of this character existed even in the second
|
|||
|
century." (Ed. note to Apocrypha of the New Testament, ANF.
|
|||
|
viii, 349.) -- "There is abundant evidence of the existence of
|
|||
|
many of these traditions in the second century, though it
|
|||
|
cannot be made out that any of the books were then in
|
|||
|
existence in their present form." (Translator's Introductory
|
|||
|
Notice to Apocryphal Gospels. ANF. viii, 351.)
|
|||
|
Such apocryphal gospels would naturally contain -- as they do
|
|||
|
-- many of the same reputed words and deeds of the Christ as those
|
|||
|
now reported by Luke and the others; many are indeed in large
|
|||
|
sections in the very same words. Luke does not say or imply that
|
|||
|
these "many" were false, but, on the contrary, being by alleged
|
|||
|
"eye-witnesses" they were necessarily more or less the same things
|
|||
|
which Luke undertook, not to belie or correct, but simply to repeat
|
|||
|
in good order for the edification of his friend Theophilus. It is
|
|||
|
very significant, for the date of the authorship of "Luke," to note
|
|||
|
the fact that the only Theophilus known to early Church history is
|
|||
|
a certain ex-Pagan by that name, who, after becoming Christian, and
|
|||
|
very probably before being instructed in the certainty of the faith
|
|||
|
by "Luke," himself turned Christian instructor and Father, and
|
|||
|
wrote the Tract, in three Books, under the title Epistle to
|
|||
|
Antolychus, preserved in the Collection of Ante-Niacin Fathers,
|
|||
|
vol. ii, pp. 89-121. This Theophilus became Bishop of Antioch about
|
|||
|
169-177 A.D. (CE. xiv, 625); and thus illuminates the date of
|
|||
|
"Luke."
|
|||
|
That these Four Gospels, then, are forgeries, falsely ascribed
|
|||
|
to Apostles and their companions, a century and a half after Christ
|
|||
|
and the apostles, and were compounded of very conflicting
|
|||
|
"traditions" and out of the existing 50 or more forgeries
|
|||
|
circulating in apostolic names -- is proven as positively as
|
|||
|
negative proofs permit, and "beyond a reasonable doubt" -- which is
|
|||
|
proof ample for conviction of capital crime.
|
|||
|
Most people, says Bishop Papias, took pleasure in "voluminous
|
|||
|
falsehoods" in reporting or writing of Jesus Christ and his life
|
|||
|
and deeds, for which reason, says the Bishop, he was driven to "the
|
|||
|
living voice of tradition" for his own accounts, -- samples of
|
|||
|
which we have seen. These fanciful and distorted oral traditions,
|
|||
|
finally reduced into some fifty fantastic written records of
|
|||
|
"voluminous falsehoods," were later, about the time of Book III of
|
|||
|
Bishop Irenaeus, crystallized into four documents, one each of
|
|||
|
which was held by one of the principal churches as its
|
|||
|
authoritative biography of the Christ, or "gospel"; to which, the
|
|||
|
titles "According to" Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, were tacked for
|
|||
|
pretended apostolic sanction.
|
|||
|
The truth of the late second century origin of the Gospels and
|
|||
|
Epistles may be garnered from the guarded words of a standard
|
|||
|
theological textbook on Christian Evidences: "The Christian
|
|||
|
literature which has survived from the latter part of the first
|
|||
|
century and the beginning of the second is scanty and fragmentary
|
|||
|
-- [which could not be true if the Gospels and Epistles had then
|
|||
|
existed]. But when we come into the light of the last quarter of
|
|||
|
the second century, we find the Gospels of the canon in undisputed
|
|||
|
possession of the field.". (The Grounds of Theistic and Christian
|
|||
|
Belief, by George Parker Fisher, D.D., LL.D.; 1902.)
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
167
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
Summarizing the results of critical study of the four Gospels,
|
|||
|
upon all the evidences, internal and external, which are there
|
|||
|
fully reviewed, the conclusions of modern Biblical scholarship are
|
|||
|
thus recorded by the Encyclopedia Biblica:
|
|||
|
As to Matthew: "The employment of various sources, the
|
|||
|
characteristic difference of the quotations from the LXX
|
|||
|
(Septuagint) and the original (Hebrew), the indefiniteness of
|
|||
|
the determinations of time and place, the incredibleness of
|
|||
|
the contents, the introduction of later conditions, as also
|
|||
|
the artificial arrangement, and so forth, have long since led
|
|||
|
to the conclusion that for the authorship of the first Gospel
|
|||
|
the apostle Matthew must be given up." (EB. ii, 1891.)
|
|||
|
As to Mark: "According to Papias, the second gospel was
|
|||
|
written by Mark. ... In what Papias says the important point
|
|||
|
is not so much the statement that Mark wrote the gospel as the
|
|||
|
further statement that Peter supplied the contents orally. ...
|
|||
|
The supposition that the gospel is essentially a repetition of
|
|||
|
oral communications by Peter, will at once fall to the ground.
|
|||
|
... Should Mark have written in Aramaic then he cannot be held
|
|||
|
to have been the author of canonical Mark, which is certainly
|
|||
|
not a translation, nor yet, in view of the LXX quotations
|
|||
|
which have passed over into all three gospels, can he be held
|
|||
|
to have been the author of the original Mark." (EB. ii, 1891.)
|
|||
|
As to Luke: "This tradition [that Luke was the author of
|
|||
|
the third gospel and of Acts] cannot be traced farther back
|
|||
|
than towards the end of the second century (Irenaeus,
|
|||
|
Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and the Muratorian
|
|||
|
fragment). ... It has been shown that it is impossible to
|
|||
|
regard Luke with any certainty as the writer even of the 'we'
|
|||
|
sections of Acts, not to speak of the whole book of Acts, or
|
|||
|
of the Third Gospel. ... If Luke cannot have been the author
|
|||
|
of Acts, neither can he have been the author of the Third
|
|||
|
Gospel." (EB. ii, 1893, 2831.)
|
|||
|
As to John: "No mention of the Fourth Gospel which we can
|
|||
|
recognize as such carries us further than to 140 A.D. As late
|
|||
|
as 152, Justin, who nevertheless lays so great value upon the
|
|||
|
'Memorabilia of the Apostles, regards John -- if indeed he
|
|||
|
knows it at all -- with distrust, and appropriates from it a
|
|||
|
very few sayings. ... If on independent grounds some period
|
|||
|
shortly before 140 A.D. can be set down as the approximate
|
|||
|
date of the production of the gospel [a certain statement in
|
|||
|
it is explained]. ... The Apostolic authorship of the gospel
|
|||
|
remains impossible, and that not merely from the consideration
|
|||
|
that it cannot be the son of Zebedee who has introduced
|
|||
|
himself as writer in so remarkable a fashion, but also from
|
|||
|
the consideration that it cannot be an eye-witness of the
|
|||
|
facts of the life of Jesus who has presented, as against the
|
|||
|
synoptists, an account so much less credible, nor an original
|
|||
|
apostle who has shown himself so readily accessible to
|
|||
|
Alexandrian and Gnostic ideas, nor a contemporary of Jesus who
|
|||
|
survived so late into the second century and yet was capable
|
|||
|
of composing so profound a work." (EB. ii, 2550, 2553.)
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
168
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
None of these Four Gospels, then, being of apostolic
|
|||
|
authorship or even of the apostolic age, but anonymous productions
|
|||
|
of over a century after the apostles, all are exactly of like
|
|||
|
origin and composition as all the other fifty apocryphal Jesus-
|
|||
|
writings: the Four "do not, in point of fact, rest upon any real
|
|||
|
difference in the character or origin of the writings concerned,"
|
|||
|
from all the other fifty admittedly apocryphal and forged gospels
|
|||
|
dating about the middle of the second century, at the height of the
|
|||
|
Christian age of apocryphal literature. They are therefore late
|
|||
|
Christian forgeries of the Catholic Church.
|
|||
|
FORGERIES IN THE FORGED GOSPELS
|
|||
|
That the Four Gospels, as we have them, are very late
|
|||
|
productions, issued in the names of apostles a century and more
|
|||
|
dead, and are therefore forgeries, is now proven beyond
|
|||
|
peradventure. That they are not, even in the form that Bishop
|
|||
|
Irenaeus first knew them, each the work of one inspired mind and
|
|||
|
pen, is as readily and conclusively provable. They are, each and
|
|||
|
all Four, clumsy compilations framed by different persons and at
|
|||
|
very different times, as is patent on their face; they are thus
|
|||
|
concatenations of forgeries within forgeries. This we shall now
|
|||
|
demonstrate.
|
|||
|
The Church claims these Four Gospels to be apostolic and
|
|||
|
divine works, and together with all the other books of the Trentine
|
|||
|
Bible, to be throughout divinely inspired, having God himself for
|
|||
|
their Author. This 1546 Dogma of the Infallible Church has been
|
|||
|
thus reaffirmed by the Sacred Vatican Council (A.D. 1870):
|
|||
|
"These books are sacred and canonical because they
|
|||
|
contain revelation without error, and because, written by the
|
|||
|
inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their
|
|||
|
Author." (CE. fi, 543.)
|
|||
|
More recently, Pope Leo XIII, in his Encyclical Prov. Deus.
|
|||
|
(1893), thus reaffirms the plenary inspiration and inerrancy of
|
|||
|
Holy Writ:
|
|||
|
"It will never be lawful to restrict inspiration merely
|
|||
|
to certain portions of the Holy Scriptures, or to grant that
|
|||
|
the sacred writers could have made a mistake. ... They render
|
|||
|
in exact language, with infallible truth, all that God
|
|||
|
commanded, and nothing else"! (Ib.)
|
|||
|
For the Protestant sects the notion of divine inspiration and
|
|||
|
inerrant truth of Scripture -- excepting always the dozen and more
|
|||
|
of Old Testament "apocryphap' Books and parts, as Tobias and the
|
|||
|
history of the Assyrian great god Bel and the Dragon, -- a typical
|
|||
|
profession is that of the first Article of the Baptist Declaration
|
|||
|
of Faith: "The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired, and
|
|||
|
is a perfect treasure of heavenly instruction. ... It has God for
|
|||
|
its Author, and truth without any admixture of error for its
|
|||
|
matter."
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
169
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
All this priestly "confidence stuff" must remind one of what
|
|||
|
Cicero said of the Roman augurs. Even CE., valiant but often
|
|||
|
perplexed defender of the orthodox Faith, can not give full credit
|
|||
|
to that inspired canard, which even the infallible authors of it
|
|||
|
could not have themselves believed. Timorously "reasoning in
|
|||
|
chains" and minimizing the truth, the orthodox apologist, forced by
|
|||
|
scholarly criticism, confesses -- utterly belying Council and
|
|||
|
Holiness:
|
|||
|
"In all the Bible, where the same event is several times
|
|||
|
narrated by the same writer, or narrated by several writers,
|
|||
|
there is some slight [sic] divergency, as it is natural there
|
|||
|
should be with those who spoke or wrote from memory. Divine
|
|||
|
inspiration covers the substance of the narration." (CE. i,
|
|||
|
122.)
|
|||
|
Those sacred writers, putting on papyrus rolls from errant and
|
|||
|
therefore necessarily uninspired "memory," their intimate
|
|||
|
familiarities with the thoughts and desires, purposes and
|
|||
|
providence of God, make not "some slight divergences" from accurate
|
|||
|
recording of the promptings of the Spirit to them; they committed
|
|||
|
incessant contradictions of so gross a nature as to impeach and
|
|||
|
destroy the possibility of truth and credibility of Virtually every
|
|||
|
word they said or wrote "in all the Bible," Old and New Testaments
|
|||
|
alike. I have so fully exposed some thousands of these glaring and
|
|||
|
self-destroying contradictions in my previous work, that here I
|
|||
|
simply notice only those most vital ones which are pertinent and
|
|||
|
incidental to our present subject of apostolic forgeries.
|
|||
|
In a work accompanying the Revised Version of the Bible, in
|
|||
|
which the Revisers pointed out some 30000 (now over 150000)
|
|||
|
variant readings in the New Testament, the reverend author makes
|
|||
|
this naive explanation: "In regard to the New Testament, no miracle
|
|||
|
has been wrought to preserve the text as it came from the pens of
|
|||
|
the inspired writers. That would have been a thing altogether out
|
|||
|
of harmony with God's method of governing the world"! (Dr. Alex.
|
|||
|
Roberts, Companion to the Revised Version, p. 4.) One may wonder at
|
|||
|
the writer's intimacy with God's governmental methods, as well as
|
|||
|
at God's indifference to the preservation of his miraculously-
|
|||
|
revealed Holy Word, so awfully necessary to save us from eternal
|
|||
|
damnation; when, as we shall see, by special miraculous
|
|||
|
intervention and providence he has, the Church vouches, preserved
|
|||
|
wholly "incorrupt" through the Ages of Faith countless whole
|
|||
|
cadavers and ghastly scraps and miraculous relics galore of the
|
|||
|
unwashed Saints of Holy Church.
|
|||
|
CONTRADICTIONS AND TRUTH
|
|||
|
No more compelling proofs of forgery in a document can well be
|
|||
|
than the glaring contradictions between two parts of the text.
|
|||
|
Remember that in the "age of apocryphal literature" there were no
|
|||
|
printed books, thus fixing the text, and no "copyright" existed.
|
|||
|
All books, sacred and profane, were manuscripts, tediously written
|
|||
|
by hand on rolls of papyrus or sheets of parchment-skin; like the
|
|||
|
manuscripts of the Gospels, Epistles, etc., they were usually
|
|||
|
unsigned and undated, and frequently gave no clue to the anonymous
|
|||
|
writers. When one man came into possession of a manuscript which he
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
170
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
desired, he sat down and copied it by hand, or employed slaves or
|
|||
|
professional copyists to do the labor. There was absolutely no
|
|||
|
check against errors of copying, or intentional omissions,
|
|||
|
alterations or insertions into the text, to suit the taste or
|
|||
|
purpose of the copyist. Religious books were written, and copied,
|
|||
|
by priests, monks or Fathers; religious notions and doctrines were
|
|||
|
very diversely held, and developed or were modified incessantly.
|
|||
|
Traditions of what was said or done by Jesus Christ and the
|
|||
|
apostles were, as we have seen, very variant and conflicting. Very
|
|||
|
often, as we shall see, conflicting traditions or accounts are
|
|||
|
found in the same book. As no honest writer of intelligence and
|
|||
|
care would put into one short work which he is writing, two totally
|
|||
|
contradictory statements regarding the same fact, the only way in
|
|||
|
which such contradictions can occur in what purports to be an
|
|||
|
original or genuine manuscript, is by the intentional insertion by
|
|||
|
a later copyist of the new and contradictory material, euphoniously
|
|||
|
called "interpolations" (CE. iv, 498, post), -- without the
|
|||
|
critical sense to perceive the contradiction, and omit the original
|
|||
|
statement with which his addition conflicts.
|
|||
|
Father Tertullian, in his work Against Heresies, denying that
|
|||
|
'Christians do such things -- do not need to, he says, because the
|
|||
|
Scriptures are favorable to the Orthodox -- accuses the Heretics of
|
|||
|
such practices, and naively explains how such interpolations or
|
|||
|
forgeries of text are done, and why they needs must be:
|
|||
|
"All interpolation must be believed to be a later process. ...
|
|||
|
One man perverts the Scriptures with his hand, another their
|
|||
|
meaning by his exposition. ... Unquestionably, the Divine
|
|||
|
Scriptures are more fruitful in resources of all kinds for this
|
|||
|
sort of facility [of introducing interpolations]. Nor do I risk
|
|||
|
contradiction in saying that the very Scriptures were even arranged
|
|||
|
by the will of God in such a manner as to furnish materials for
|
|||
|
heretics, inasmuch as I read that 'there must be heresies' (I Cor.
|
|||
|
xi, 19), which there cannot be without Scriptures"! (Praes.
|
|||
|
xxxviii-xxxix; ANF. iii, 262.) Speaking of instances related to the
|
|||
|
birth of Jesus Christ, EB. makes a remark, which it extends to
|
|||
|
others, and is generally applicable to the conflicting Gospel
|
|||
|
narratives:
|
|||
|
"From the nature of the case both canonical narratives
|
|||
|
were accepted by faith and incorporated with each other. The
|
|||
|
gospels themselves supply ample justification of a criticism
|
|||
|
of the gospel narratives. In spite of all the revisions which
|
|||
|
the gospels received before they became canonically fixed,
|
|||
|
they still not infrequently preserve references to conditions
|
|||
|
which are irreconcilable with the later additions." (EB. iii,
|
|||
|
3343, 3344.)
|
|||
|
"For Christian orthodoxy," says the same authority,
|
|||
|
"reconcilability of the two canonical accounts was always a
|
|||
|
necessary dogma"; and on this point, the orthodox CE. makes a
|
|||
|
quaint but typically clerical argument, in effect that the
|
|||
|
confessed contradictions of Holy Writ make it all the more
|
|||
|
credible: "As can readily be seen, variations are naturally to be
|
|||
|
expected in four distinct, and in many ways independent, accounts
|
|||
|
of Christ's words and deeds, so that their presence, instead of
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
171
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
going against, rather makes for the substantial value of the
|
|||
|
evangelical narratives"! (CE. vi, 659.) Fanciful and disingenuous
|
|||
|
as this is, and derogatory of the Papal theory that it is not
|
|||
|
possible that "the sacred writers could have made a mistake," the
|
|||
|
argument loses even its rhetorical force when we find the most
|
|||
|
monumental contradictions in the inspired words of the same writer
|
|||
|
in the same inspired little book. We will notice some of the most
|
|||
|
obvious and fatal forgeries by "interpolations" into the Gospel
|
|||
|
Christ-tales.
|
|||
|
JESUS -- MAN OR GOD?
|
|||
|
The Jews, in their "canonical," more definitely in their
|
|||
|
apocryphal or admittedly forged Scriptures, expected a "Messiah,"
|
|||
|
or anointed King of the race and lineage of David, who should
|
|||
|
deliver them from the rule of their enemies, -- at the time of the
|
|||
|
Gospel tales, the Romans; previously, the Assyrians, Persians, and
|
|||
|
Greeks, successively. This King, says Isaiah, shall sit and reign
|
|||
|
"upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to establish it"
|
|||
|
(Isa. ix, 7); and that this prophecy was in order of fulfillment,
|
|||
|
Gabriel the Angel announced to Mary the Ever-Virgin Mother of eight
|
|||
|
sons and daughters: "Thou shalt bring forth a son, and shalt call
|
|||
|
his name Jesus; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of
|
|||
|
his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob
|
|||
|
forever." (Lk. i, 32, 33.) There is not a word of "prophecy"
|
|||
|
anywhere that this King should be divine, a Son of the God of
|
|||
|
Israel; he was to be a human king of the house of Jacob, of David.
|
|||
|
There were many false pretenders to the still vacant Messiahship,
|
|||
|
and even Jesus was not the last to proclaim himself the Messiah or
|
|||
|
Christ: "For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and
|
|||
|
shall deceive many." (Mt. xxiv, 4, 23, 24; Mk. xiii, 6, 21, 22.)
|
|||
|
That this Messiah Jesus who was come was mere man, but
|
|||
|
instinct with the spirit of God, is positively avowed by both Peter
|
|||
|
and Paul. Says Peter in his first sermon at Pentecost: "Ye men of
|
|||
|
Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God
|
|||
|
among you [etc.]. The patriarch David ... therefore being a
|
|||
|
prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that
|
|||
|
of the fruit of his loam according to the flesh, he would raise up
|
|||
|
Christ to sit upon his throne." (Acts, ii, 22, 29, 30.) And Paul:
|
|||
|
"There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man
|
|||
|
Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. ii, 5); and again: "Jesus Christ of the seed
|
|||
|
of David" (2 Tim. ii, 8); Therefore, in the times when the two
|
|||
|
cited sacred books were, by whomever, written, Jesus was at that
|
|||
|
time regarded simply as a man, a "son" or descendant of David. So,
|
|||
|
when, many years later, the Gospels "according to" Matthew and Luke
|
|||
|
came to be by whomever written, in their original form Jesus Christ
|
|||
|
was mere man.
|
|||
|
Matthew's first chapter begins very humanly and explicitly:
|
|||
|
"The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the
|
|||
|
son of Abraham"; and Matthew gives an unbroken line of human
|
|||
|
begettings, father of son, until "And Jacob begat Joseph the
|
|||
|
husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ"!
|
|||
|
(Matt. i, 1-16.) And Matthew names and catalogues twenty-eight
|
|||
|
generations between David and Jesus, to-wit: David, Solomon ...
|
|||
|
Jacob, Joseph, -- Jesus, -- a purely human ancestry. Also Luke
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
172
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
still reflected the belief, held at the time he wrote, that Jesus
|
|||
|
was of human ancestry; he gives his human genealogy all the way
|
|||
|
back to Adam, and through many mythical patriarchs who assuredly
|
|||
|
never existed. This human genealogy by Luke vastly differs,
|
|||
|
however, from that of Matthew; instead of twenty-eight generations
|
|||
|
from David, through Solomon ... Jacob and Joseph, our Luke
|
|||
|
genealogist makes out in detail forty-two generations, to wit:
|
|||
|
David, Nathan. ... Heli, Joseph, Jesus; and only three of the
|
|||
|
intermediate names are the same in the two lists. So one or the
|
|||
|
other of the two inspired genealogies is fictitious, false and
|
|||
|
forged, necessarily: both are, of course, if Jesus was not the son
|
|||
|
of David, but the immediate "Son of God." The truth is thus stated:
|
|||
|
"The genealogy could not have been drawn up after Joseph ceased to
|
|||
|
be regarded as the real father of Jesus." (EB. iii, 2960.)
|
|||
|
And CE. thus 'Scraps the inspired genealogy of Luke: "The
|
|||
|
artificial character of Luke's genealogy may be seen in the
|
|||
|
following table [copying Luke's list] ... The artificial character"
|
|||
|
is shown by details cited. (CE. vi, 411.) It also explodes the
|
|||
|
seventeenth century clerical pretense, -- heard often today -- in
|
|||
|
attempted explanation of these glaring contradictions, that one or
|
|||
|
the other of these sacred genealogies, preferably that of Luke, was
|
|||
|
the genealogy, not of Joseph, but of Mary: "It may be safely said
|
|||
|
that patristic tradition does not regard St. Luke's list as
|
|||
|
representing the genealogy of the Blessed Virgin." (CE. vi, 411.)
|
|||
|
And, as CE. itself points out, Mary is not mentioned as in the line
|
|||
|
of descent from David in either list. To bring her into the
|
|||
|
genealogy, in one list or the other, it must have been written:
|
|||
|
"And Jacob begat Mary the wife of Joseph," instead of "And, Jacob
|
|||
|
begat Joseph the husband of Mary": or "And Jesus ... being the son
|
|||
|
of Mary, which was the daughter of Heli," instead of the recorded
|
|||
|
"the son of Joseph (as was supposed), which was the son of Heli"
|
|||
|
(Luke iii, 22-31). Both the genealogies are false and forged lists
|
|||
|
of mostly fictitious names, in the original Gospel-forgeries,
|
|||
|
fabricated to prove Jesus a direct son or descendant of David, and
|
|||
|
thus to fulfill the terms of the pretended prophecies that the
|
|||
|
human Messiah should be of the race and lineage of David the king.
|
|||
|
Moreover, Joseph and Mary both knew nothing of the Holy-
|
|||
|
Ghostly paternity of their child Jesus. The celebrated Angelic
|
|||
|
"Annunciation" of this Fable to the "prolific yet ever-virgin
|
|||
|
Mother of God," recorded by Dr. Luke (i, 28), is itself a forgery,
|
|||
|
admits CE.: "The words: 'Blessed art thou among women' (v. 28) are
|
|||
|
spurious and taken from verse 42, the account of the Visitation ...
|
|||
|
[Adding] The opinion that Joseph at the time of the Annunciation
|
|||
|
was an aged widower and Mary 12 or 15 years of age, is founded only
|
|||
|
upon apocryphal documents" -- like all the rest of these Fables of
|
|||
|
Christ. (CE. i, 542.) Simon came into the temple when Joseph and
|
|||
|
Mary had brought the child there "to do for him after the custom of
|
|||
|
the law," and indulged in some ecstasies which would have been
|
|||
|
quite intelligible if Gabriel had made the revelations attributed
|
|||
|
to him; but, hearing them, "Joseph and his mother marvelled at
|
|||
|
those things which were spoken of him" (Lk. ii, 33). It is false,
|
|||
|
the original says: "His father and his mother marvelled." etc. Here
|
|||
|
is another holy forgery stuck into Luke ii, as is the later verse,
|
|||
|
"and Joseph and his mother knew not of it" (v. 43). The true
|
|||
|
original reads "and his parents knew not of it," -- just as in
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
173
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
verse 41; "Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the
|
|||
|
feast of the passover"; and as in verse 48, "thy father and I have
|
|||
|
sought thee sorrowing." In "John," Jesus is twice: expressly called
|
|||
|
the son of Joseph; Philip say's to Nathaniel, "We have found him of
|
|||
|
whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of
|
|||
|
Nazareth, the son of Joseph" (i, 45); and again: "Is not this
|
|||
|
Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know'?" (vi,
|
|||
|
42) all which "convincingly proves that in the mind of the narrator
|
|||
|
Joseph and Mary were and knew themselves to be, in the natural
|
|||
|
sense of the words, the parents of Jesus." (EB. iii, 3344.) The
|
|||
|
same authority thus sums up the whole of the New Testament evidence
|
|||
|
prior to the "interpolations" of miraculous birth: "The remark has
|
|||
|
long ago and often been made that, like Paul, even the Gospels
|
|||
|
themselves know nothing of the miraculous birth of our Savior. On
|
|||
|
the contrary, their knowledge of his natural filial relationship to
|
|||
|
Joseph the carpenter, and to Mary, his wife, is still explicit."
|
|||
|
(Ibid.) And if Jesus had been a God he could hardly have been
|
|||
|
crazy; yet his own family thought him so and sent to arrest him as
|
|||
|
a madman, as above noticed. It is therefore self-evident, that the
|
|||
|
original Jesus "tradition," down as late as Papias and Irenaeus,
|
|||
|
regarded Jesus simply as a man, and as a very old man when he died
|
|||
|
a peaceful and natural death. But the zeal to Combat and win the
|
|||
|
Pagans, when, after the failure with the Jews, the Gospel "turned
|
|||
|
to the Gentiles," and to exalt the man Jesus into a God, as was
|
|||
|
Perseus or Apollo, grew with the Fathers; by the same token Jesus
|
|||
|
was now made to be the son of the Hebrew God Yahveh: we have heard
|
|||
|
the Fathers so argue. So later pious tampering grafted the "Virgin-
|
|||
|
birth" and "son of God" Pagan myths onto the simple original
|
|||
|
"traditions" of merely human origin as the "son of David,"
|
|||
|
carelessly letting the primitively forged Davidic genealogies
|
|||
|
remain to contradict and refute them. These "interpolations" are
|
|||
|
self-apparent forgeries for Christ's sake, in two of the Gospels.
|
|||
|
But if Tertullian spoke truly (if the passage is genuine with
|
|||
|
him), the other Gospels have been yet further tampered with; for
|
|||
|
Tertullian explicitly says: "Of the apostles, John and Matthew, and
|
|||
|
apostolic men, Luke and Mark, these all start with the same
|
|||
|
principles of the faith ... how that He was born of the Virgin, and
|
|||
|
came to fulfill the law and the prophets." (Adv. Marcion, IV, ii;
|
|||
|
ANF. iii, 347.) As these Gospels now stand, Mark and John say not
|
|||
|
a word of the Virgin-birth, but throughout assume Jesus to have
|
|||
|
been of human birth, and only "son of God" in a popular religious
|
|||
|
sense; for "son of God" was in current usage to mean any person
|
|||
|
near and dear to God. Indeed, the Greek text of the Gospels makes
|
|||
|
this plain, that no supernatural progeneration and actual God-
|
|||
|
sonship was intended. In most instances the Greek texts read simply
|
|||
|
"son of God -- huios Theou," not "the Son -- o huious": the
|
|||
|
definite article is a clerical falsification.
|
|||
|
"UPON THIS ROCK I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH"
|
|||
|
Of transcendent importance as the sole basis of the Church's
|
|||
|
most presumptuous False Pretense -- its Divine founding by Jesus
|
|||
|
Christ -- this Peter-Rock imposture, the most notorious, and in its
|
|||
|
evil consequences the most far-reaching and fatal of them all, will
|
|||
|
now be exposed to its deserved infamy and destruction.
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
174
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
Upon a forged, and forced, Greek Pun put into the mouth of the
|
|||
|
Jewish Aramaic-speaking Jesus, speaking to Aramaic peasants, the
|
|||
|
Church of Christ is falsely founded. "The proof that Christ
|
|||
|
constituted St. Peter the head of His Church is found in the two
|
|||
|
famous Petrine texts, Matt. xvi, 17-19, and John xxi, 15-19." (CE.
|
|||
|
xii, 261.) The text in John is that about "Feed my Lambs"; but this
|
|||
|
forgery is not of present interest. The more notorious "proof" is
|
|||
|
Matthew's forged punning passage: "Thou art Peter, and upon this
|
|||
|
rock I will build my church," etc.
|
|||
|
It may first be noticed, that "Matthew" is the only one of the
|
|||
|
three "Synoptic" gospelers to record this "famous Petrine text."
|
|||
|
And he records this pun as made in Greek, by Jesus -- just before
|
|||
|
his crucifixion, under very exceptional circumstances, and upon the
|
|||
|
inspiration of a "special divine revelation" then and there first
|
|||
|
made by God to Peter, as below to be noted. But in this, "Matthew"
|
|||
|
is flatly contradicted by "John," who ascribes this as an Aramaic
|
|||
|
pun by Jesus in the very first remark that he made to Peter, upon
|
|||
|
his being introduced by his brother Andrew, on the self-same day of
|
|||
|
the baptism of Jesus; when "Andrew first findeth his brother Simon
|
|||
|
... and brought him to Jesus"; whereupon, "when Jesus beheld him,
|
|||
|
he said, Thou art Simon son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas,
|
|||
|
which is by interpretation, A stone." (John i, 42.) Thus was Simon
|
|||
|
Barjona nick-named "Cephas -- Rock" by Jesus on the very first day
|
|||
|
of the public appearance and mission both of Jesus and of Peter,
|
|||
|
and not a year or more later, towards the close of the career of
|
|||
|
Jesus! So the famous Petrine Pun, if ever made by Jesus -- as it
|
|||
|
was not -- was made in the Aramaic speech spoken by these Galilean
|
|||
|
peasants; the Greek Father who forged the "Gospel according to
|
|||
|
John" had to attach the translation into Greek of the Aramaic
|
|||
|
"Cephas," into "Petros, a stone," for the benefit of his Greek
|
|||
|
readers.
|
|||
|
After this first explosion of the famous Greek "Rock" pun on
|
|||
|
which the Church is founded, and as the matter is of highest
|
|||
|
consequence, let us expose the "Matthew" forgery of the whole
|
|||
|
"Petrine text" by arraying the three Synoptics in sequence in the
|
|||
|
order of their composition and evolution from simple to complex
|
|||
|
fabrication:
|
|||
|
Mark (viii, 27-38).
|
|||
|
"And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of
|
|||
|
Caesarea Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples,
|
|||
|
saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am?
|
|||
|
"And they answered, John the Baptist: but some say,
|
|||
|
Elias; and others, One of the prophets.
|
|||
|
"And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And
|
|||
|
Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ.
|
|||
|
"And he charged them that they should tell no man of him.
|
|||
|
"And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must
|
|||
|
suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the
|
|||
|
chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three
|
|||
|
days rise again.
|
|||
|
"And he spak that saying openly. And Peter took him, and
|
|||
|
began to rebuke him.
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
175
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
"But when he had turned about and looked on his
|
|||
|
disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me,
|
|||
|
Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but
|
|||
|
the things that be of men."
|
|||
|
Luke (ix, 18-22).
|
|||
|
"And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his
|
|||
|
disciples were with him; and he asked them, saying, Whom say
|
|||
|
the people that I am?
|
|||
|
"They answering said, John the Baptist; but some say,
|
|||
|
Elias; and others say, that one of the old prophets is risen
|
|||
|
again.
|
|||
|
"He said unto them, But whom say ye that I am? Peter
|
|||
|
answering said, The Christ of God.
|
|||
|
"And he straitly charged them, and commanded them to tell
|
|||
|
no man that thing.
|
|||
|
"Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be
|
|||
|
rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be
|
|||
|
slain, and be raised the third day."
|
|||
|
Matthew (xvi, 13-22).
|
|||
|
"When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he
|
|||
|
asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of
|
|||
|
man am?
|
|||
|
"And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist:
|
|||
|
some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.
|
|||
|
"He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon
|
|||
|
Peter answered and said, Thou are the Christ, the Son of the
|
|||
|
living God.
|
|||
|
"And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou,
|
|||
|
Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto
|
|||
|
thee, but my Father which is in heaven.
|
|||
|
"And I say unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this
|
|||
|
rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not
|
|||
|
prevail against it. [Here about the Keys, and "binding and
|
|||
|
loosing"].
|
|||
|
"Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no
|
|||
|
man that he was Jesus the Christ.
|
|||
|
"From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his
|
|||
|
disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many
|
|||
|
things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be
|
|||
|
killed, and be raised again the third day.
|
|||
|
"Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be
|
|||
|
it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.
|
|||
|
"But he turned and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me.
|
|||
|
Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the
|
|||
|
things that be of God, but those that be of men."
|
|||
|
Let it be noted, in passing, that all three of the Synoptists
|
|||
|
expressly aver in the above narration, as elsewhere in their texts,
|
|||
|
that Jesus positively declared and predicted, that he should be put
|
|||
|
to death, and after three days rise again: distinctly, his
|
|||
|
Resurrection from the dead. All three on this important point are
|
|||
|
liars, if John be believed; for after the crucifixion and burial of
|
|||
|
Jesus, and the discovery on the third day of his empty grave by the
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
176
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
Magdalene, which she immediately reported to Peter and John, they
|
|||
|
ran doubting to the grave, looked in, and "saw, and believed"; and
|
|||
|
John positively avers: "For as yet they knew not the scripture,
|
|||
|
that he must rise again from the dead." (John xx, 9.) But this
|
|||
|
inspired assertion contains a grave anachronism: for "as yet" there
|
|||
|
was, of course, no "scripture" about the death and resurrection at
|
|||
|
all, nor for well over a century afterwards, as in this chapter is
|
|||
|
proven.
|
|||
|
Let us examine for a moment into the context of this "famous
|
|||
|
Petrine text" and into its antecedents, in order to get the "stage
|
|||
|
setting of this dramatic climacteric Pun of such vast and serious
|
|||
|
consequences unto this day.
|
|||
|
The original simple narrative is told in the earlier writer,
|
|||
|
"Mark," and copied almost verbatim into "Luke." There Jesus is
|
|||
|
reported to have put a sort of conundrum to the Twelve, "saying
|
|||
|
unto them, Whom do men say that I am?" The answer showed a very
|
|||
|
superstitious belief in reincarnations or "second comings" of dead
|
|||
|
persons to earth; for "they answered, John the Baptist: but some
|
|||
|
say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets, or Jeremias," to fuse
|
|||
|
the somewhat disparate replies. Jesus himself shared this
|
|||
|
reincarnation superstition, for he had positively asserted that
|
|||
|
John the Baptist was Elijah redivivus: "This is Elias, which was
|
|||
|
for to come," (Matt. xi, 14; xvii, 11-13); though John, being
|
|||
|
questioned about it, "Art thou Elias?" contradicted the Christ,
|
|||
|
"and he saith, I am not." (John i, 20, 21.)
|
|||
|
After hearing the disciples report what others said about him,
|
|||
|
who he was, Jesus then "saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
|
|||
|
And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ. And he
|
|||
|
charged them that they should tell no man of him" (Mk. viii, 27-30;
|
|||
|
Lk. ix, 18-22). There was certainly nothing novel or unexpected in
|
|||
|
this alleged reply of Peter; it was exactly the proclaimed mission
|
|||
|
of Jesus as the "promised Messiah," as the precedent texts of
|
|||
|
"Mark" verify. On the day of his baptism by John, before all the
|
|||
|
people, "the heavens opened ... And there came a voice from heaven,
|
|||
|
saying, Thou art my beloved Son" (i, 2); what the devils cried out
|
|||
|
in the synagogue, "I know thee who thou art, the Holy one of God"
|
|||
|
(i, 24) just what all the devils unanimously proclaimed before the
|
|||
|
disciples and all hearers, "And unclean spirits, when they saw him.
|
|||
|
... cried, saying, Thou art the son of God" (iii, 2); just what the
|
|||
|
possessed man with the legion of devils cried out before all the
|
|||
|
disciples, "What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the
|
|||
|
most high God" (v, 7); -- all as recorded by "Mark" prior to the
|
|||
|
above reply by Peter. So, naturally, Peter's "confession" caused no
|
|||
|
surprise; it was the expected thing: so Jesus made no remark on
|
|||
|
hearing it, except the peculiar injunction that "they should tell
|
|||
|
no man" -- what all men and devils already knew by much-repeated
|
|||
|
hearsay. So Jesus at once proceeded to speak of his coming
|
|||
|
persecution, death, and resurrection; "And Peter took him, and
|
|||
|
began to rebuke him. But when he had turned about and looked on his
|
|||
|
disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for
|
|||
|
thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that
|
|||
|
be of men" (Mk. viii, 31-33). The identical story in its same
|
|||
|
simple form, minus the Satan colloquy, is told also in Luke (ix,
|
|||
|
18-22). This is the round, unvarnished tale of the first Greek
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
177
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
Father "gospel" writers, a century after the reputed conversation,
|
|||
|
and long before the "primacy of Peter" idea dawned as a "good
|
|||
|
thing" upon the Fathers of the Church. There is not a word about
|
|||
|
"church" in the passage, nor in the entire "gospel according to
|
|||
|
Mark," nor in Luke, nor in even the much later "John."
|
|||
|
The later Church Father who wrote up the original of the
|
|||
|
"gospel according to Matthew," copied Mark's story substantially
|
|||
|
verbatim, Mark's verses 27-33, being nearly word for word
|
|||
|
reproduced in Matthew's 13-16, 20-24 of chapter xvi; the only
|
|||
|
material verbal difference being in Peter's answer, in verse 16,
|
|||
|
where Peter's words are expanded: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of
|
|||
|
the Living God," -- obviously padded in by the "interpolator" of
|
|||
|
verses 17-19, which we now examine.
|
|||
|
As the years since "Mark" rolled by, the zeal of the Fathers
|
|||
|
to exalt Peter increased; we have seen many admitted forgeries of
|
|||
|
documents having that purpose in view. So it was, obviously, a new
|
|||
|
forging Father who took a manuscript of "Matthew," and turning to
|
|||
|
the above verses copied from "Mark," added in, or made a new
|
|||
|
manuscript copy containing, the notable forgery of verses 17-19.
|
|||
|
There, onto the commonplace and unnoticed reply of Peter, "Thou art
|
|||
|
the Christ," the pious interpolator tacked on:
|
|||
|
"the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said
|
|||
|
unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood
|
|||
|
hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in
|
|||
|
heaven. And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and
|
|||
|
upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell
|
|||
|
shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the
|
|||
|
keys of the Kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind
|
|||
|
on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatsoever thou shalt
|
|||
|
loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." (Matt. xvi,
|
|||
|
16b-19.)
|
|||
|
It is impossible that the original writer of "Matthew" should
|
|||
|
have written those remarkable and preposterous verses, in which
|
|||
|
Jesus is made to take Peter's commonplace announcement, "Thou art
|
|||
|
the Christ," as a "special revelation from heaven" to Peter and a
|
|||
|
great secret mystery here first "revealed"; -- this matter of
|
|||
|
common notoriety and even devil-gossip throughout Israel, as we
|
|||
|
have seen from "Mark's" numerous Christ-texts; the same is true in
|
|||
|
Luke. These avowals that Jesus was the Christ are even more
|
|||
|
numerous and explicit in "Matthew" up to the interpolation. That
|
|||
|
Jesus was "Christ" is the identical disclosure and announcement,
|
|||
|
which had been declared by Gabriel to Mary; by a dream to the
|
|||
|
suspicious Joseph; by wicked Herod, who "demanded of them where
|
|||
|
Christ should be born" (ii, 4); by the voice from heaven
|
|||
|
proclaiming to the world, "This is my beloved Son" (iii, 17); that
|
|||
|
was declared by the Devil in the wilderness, "If thou be the Son of
|
|||
|
God" (iv, 6); that the Legion of Devils cried aloud, "What have we
|
|||
|
to do with thee, Jesus, thou son of God" (viii, 29); that Jesus
|
|||
|
himself avowed of himself time and again, "All things are delivered
|
|||
|
unto me by my Father, Lord of heaven and earth" (xi, 25-27) that
|
|||
|
all the crew of Peter's fishing-boat acclaimed when they
|
|||
|
"worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God" (xiv,
|
|||
|
33). 'Just two chapters earlier in Matthew, is the fable of Jesus
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
178
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
and Peter "walking on the water," as "foretold" by the Sibyls; when
|
|||
|
Peter began to sink, he was rescued and dragged aboard the little
|
|||
|
fishing boat by Jesus; -- "and they that were in the ship came and
|
|||
|
worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the son of God." (Mt.
|
|||
|
xiv, 29-33.) So that Peter's wonderful information was no novelty
|
|||
|
and special divine revelation, to himself, but was the common
|
|||
|
credulity and gossip of the whole crew of fishermen, devils and
|
|||
|
Palestinian peasantry. And long before, on the very next day after
|
|||
|
his baptism by John, and before Peter was "called" or even found,
|
|||
|
and when his brother Andrew went and found him to bring him to
|
|||
|
Jesus, Andrew declared to Peter. "We have found the Messiah, which
|
|||
|
is, being interpreted, the Christ"! (John i, 41.) And, on the next
|
|||
|
day Nathaniel said to Jesus: "Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou
|
|||
|
art the King of Israel"! (John i, 49.) Peter's wonderful "special
|
|||
|
revelation" and confession thus lose an originality and are without
|
|||
|
merit of the great "reward" which CE. (xii, 261) says Jesus
|
|||
|
bestowed upon him for this pretended original and inspired
|
|||
|
discovery, as we shall in due order notice.
|
|||
|
That Jesus Christ never spoke the words of those forged
|
|||
|
verses, that they are a late Church forgery, is beyond any
|
|||
|
intelligent or honest denial. The first mention of them in
|
|||
|
"patristic literature," and that only a reference to the "keys," is
|
|||
|
this scant line of Father Tertullian, in a little tract called
|
|||
|
Scorpiace or "The Scorpion's Sting," written about 211 A.D., in
|
|||
|
which he says: "For, though you think heaven is still shut,
|
|||
|
remember that the Lord left to Peter and through him to the Church,
|
|||
|
the keys of it." (Scorpiace, x; ANF. iii, 643.) That Jesus did not
|
|||
|
use the words of those verses, interpolated into a paragraph of
|
|||
|
Matthew copied bodily and verbatim by the original "Matthew" writer
|
|||
|
from "Mark," and repeated in their original form by "Luke,"' is
|
|||
|
thus conclusive from "internal" evidences; the later and
|
|||
|
embroidered form is a visible interpolation and forgery. That this
|
|||
|
is true, is demonstrated, moreover, by the inherent impossibility
|
|||
|
of the thing itself.
|
|||
|
THE "CHURCH" FOUNDED ON THE "ROCK"
|
|||
|
First of all, in proof that Jesus Christ never made this Pun,
|
|||
|
did not establish any Christian Church -- nor even a Jewish
|
|||
|
reformed synagoguel, -- are his own alleged positive statements to
|
|||
|
be quoted in refutation of the other forged "missionary" passage in
|
|||
|
Matthew: "Go ye into all the world, and teach all nations." The
|
|||
|
avowed mission of Jesus, as we have seen from his reputed words,
|
|||
|
was exclusively to his fellow Jews: "I am not sent but to the lost
|
|||
|
sheep of the house of Israel"; and he expressly commanded his
|
|||
|
disciples not to preach to the Gentiles, nor even to the near-
|
|||
|
Jewish Samaritans. He proclaimed the immediate end of the world,
|
|||
|
and his quick second coming to establish the exclusively Jewish
|
|||
|
Kingdom of Heaven, even before all the Jews of little Palestine
|
|||
|
could be warned of the event -- that "the Kingdom of Heaven is at
|
|||
|
hand." It is impossible, therefore, that Jesus could have so
|
|||
|
flagrantly contradicted the basic principles of his exclusive
|
|||
|
mission as the Jewish promised Messiah, and could have commanded
|
|||
|
the institution of a permanent and perpetual religious organization
|
|||
|
an ecclesia" or "Church," to preach his exclusively Jewish
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
179
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
Messianic doctrines to all nations of the earth, which was to
|
|||
|
perish within that generation. This is a conclusive proof of the
|
|||
|
later "interpolation" or forgery of this punning passage.
|
|||
|
On this point says EB.:
|
|||
|
"It would be a great mistake to suppose that Jesus
|
|||
|
himself founded a new religious community" (c. 3103). -- "A
|
|||
|
further consideration which tells against the genuineness of
|
|||
|
Mt. xvi, 18b, is the occurrence in it of the word ecclesia. It
|
|||
|
has been seen to be impossible to maintain that Jesus founded
|
|||
|
any distinct religious community. ...
|
|||
|
"As for the word itself, it occurs elsewhere in the
|
|||
|
Gospels only in Mt. xviii, 17. There, however, it denotes
|
|||
|
simply the Jewish local community to which every one belongs;
|
|||
|
for what is said relates not to the future but to the present,
|
|||
|
in which a Christian ecclesia cannot, of course, be thought
|
|||
|
of." (c. 3105) ... "It is impossible to regard as historical
|
|||
|
the employment of the word ecclesia by Jesus as the
|
|||
|
designation of the Christian community." (EB. iii, 3103, 3105,
|
|||
|
3117.)
|
|||
|
Indeed, as said by a contemporary wit, the truth is that
|
|||
|
"Jesus Christ did not found the Church -- he is its Foundling. His
|
|||
|
parent, the Jewish church, abandoned the child; the Roman church
|
|||
|
took it in, adopted it, and gave his mother a certificate of good
|
|||
|
character." (The Truth Seeker, 10/23/26.)
|
|||
|
Jesus spoke Aramaic, a dialect of the ancient and "dead"
|
|||
|
Hebrew. The true name of the fisherman "Prince of the Apostles,"
|
|||
|
just repudiated by Jesus as "Satan," was Shimeon, or in its Greek
|
|||
|
form, Simon, who was later "surnamed Peter." He attained somehow
|
|||
|
the Aramaic nickname Kepha, or in its Greek form, Cephas, meaning
|
|||
|
a rock; this evidently furnished to the Greek punster the cue for
|
|||
|
his play on words: "Thou art Petro, [Greek, petros, a rock; cf.
|
|||
|
Eng. petrify, petroleum, etc.), and upon this petros [rock] I will
|
|||
|
build my ecclesia [church]." Jesus could not have made this Greek
|
|||
|
play on words; neither Peter nor any of the other "ignorant and
|
|||
|
unlearned" Jewish peasant disciples could have understood it. Much
|
|||
|
less could Jesus have said, or the apostles have understood, this
|
|||
|
other Greek word "ecclesia," even had it been possible for Jesus,
|
|||
|
facing the immediate end of the world -- proclaimed by himself --
|
|||
|
to have dreamed of founding any permanent religious sect. There was
|
|||
|
nothing like ecclesia known to the Jews; it was a technical Greek
|
|||
|
term designating the free political assemblies of the Greek
|
|||
|
republics. This is illustrated by one sentence from the Greek
|
|||
|
Father Origen, about 245 A.D., when the Church had taken over the
|
|||
|
Greek political term ecclesia to denote its own religious
|
|||
|
organization. Says Origen, using the word in both its old meaning
|
|||
|
and in its new Christian adaptation: "For the Church [ecclesia] of
|
|||
|
God, e.q., which is at Athens; ... Whereas the assembly [ecclesia]
|
|||
|
of the Athenians," etc. (Origen, Contra Celsum, iii, 20; ANF. iv,
|
|||
|
476.) The Greek Fathers who, a century later, founded the Church
|
|||
|
among the Pagan Greek-speaking Gentiles, adopted the Greek word
|
|||
|
ecclesia for their organizations because the word was familiar for
|
|||
|
popular assemblies, and because the translators of the Septuagint
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
180
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
had used ecclesia as the nearest Greek term for the translation of
|
|||
|
the two Hebrew words qahal and edah used in the Old Testament for
|
|||
|
the "congregation" or "assembly" of all Israel at the tent of
|
|||
|
meeting.
|
|||
|
These Hebrew words (qahal, edah) had also a more general use,
|
|||
|
as signifying any sort of gathering or crowd, religious or secular.
|
|||
|
Thus "sinners shall not stand in the congregation [Heb. edah] of
|
|||
|
the righteous" (Ps. i, 5); or of a mob of wicked ones: "I have
|
|||
|
hated the congregation [Heb. qahal] of evil doers" (Ps. xxvi, 5);
|
|||
|
and even of the great assemblage of the dead: "The man that --
|
|||
|
[etc.], shall remain in the congregation [Heb. qahal] of the dead"
|
|||
|
(Prov. xxi, 16); all these various senses being rendered "ecclesia"
|
|||
|
in the Greek Septuagint translation.
|
|||
|
Thus no established and permanent organization of disciples of
|
|||
|
the Christ is implied by the term ecclesia, even if Jesus could
|
|||
|
have used the Aramaic equivalent of that Greek term; at most it
|
|||
|
would have only meant the small group of Jews which might adopt the
|
|||
|
"Kingdom of Heaven" watchword and watchfully wait until the speedy
|
|||
|
end of the world and the expected quick consummation of the
|
|||
|
proclaimed Kingdom, -- not yet come to be, these 2000 years.
|
|||
|
This only possible meaning is made indisputable by the one
|
|||
|
other instance of the use of the Greek word ecclesia attributed to
|
|||
|
Jesus, -- and that also by the myth-mongering "Matthew." Here Jesus
|
|||
|
is made to lay down some rules for settling the incessant discords
|
|||
|
among his peasant believers in the Kingdom: "Moreover, if thy
|
|||
|
brother shall trespass against thee ... tell it to the church
|
|||
|
[ecclesia] but if he neglect to hear the ecclesial let him be unto
|
|||
|
thee as an heathen man and a publican" (Matt. xviii, 15-17); --
|
|||
|
that is, kick him like a dog out of your holy company and exclude
|
|||
|
him from share in the coming Kingdom. There was, of course, no
|
|||
|
organized Christian "Church" in the lifetime of Jesus; he could
|
|||
|
only have meant -- (if he said it), that disputes were to be
|
|||
|
referred to the others of the little band of Kingdom-watchers, who
|
|||
|
should drop the "trespasser" out of their holy group if he proved
|
|||
|
recalcitrant and insisted upon the right of his opinion or action.
|
|||
|
But Jesus never said even this; it is a forged later companion-
|
|||
|
piece to the "Rock and Keys" forgery, as is proven by the following
|
|||
|
verse 18 -- (a repetition of xvi, 19) -- regarding the "binding and
|
|||
|
loosing" powers given to itself by the later forging Church when it
|
|||
|
assumed this preposterous prerogative of domination.
|
|||
|
The "On this Rock" forgery of Matt. xvi, says Reinach, "is
|
|||
|
obviously an interpolation, made at a period when a church,
|
|||
|
separated from the synagogue, already existed. In the parallel
|
|||
|
passages in Mark (vii, 27, 32) and in Luke (ix, 18-22), there is
|
|||
|
not a word of the primacy of Peter, a detail which Mark, the
|
|||
|
disciple of Peter, could hardly have omitted if he had known of it.
|
|||
|
The interpolation is posterior to the compilation of Luke's
|
|||
|
gospel." (Orpheus, pp. 224-225.)
|
|||
|
As aptly said by Dr. McCabe; "It [the word ecclesia] had no
|
|||
|
meaning whatever as a religious institution until decades after the
|
|||
|
death of Jesus Christ. In the year 30 A.D. no one on earth would
|
|||
|
have known what Jesus meant if he had said that he was going to
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
181
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
'found' an ecclesia or church, and that the powers of darkness
|
|||
|
would not prevail against it, and so on. It would sound like the
|
|||
|
talk of the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland." (The Story of
|
|||
|
Religious Controversy, p. 294.) Indeed, it may be remarked, it is
|
|||
|
the "powers of darkness" of mind which have so far prevailed to
|
|||
|
perpetuate this fraud; the powers of the light of reason are
|
|||
|
hastening to its final overthrow.
|
|||
|
PETER-ROCK-CHURCH" DENIED AB SILIENCIO
|
|||
|
"Luke" was not present when this monumental pronouncement of
|
|||
|
the "Rock and Keys" was allegedly made; Peter may have forgotten to
|
|||
|
tell him of it, or "Luke" may have forgotten that Peter told him.
|
|||
|
And Peter may have forgotten to tell of it and of his peerless
|
|||
|
"primacy" to his own "companion" and "interpreter" Mark, or Mark
|
|||
|
may have forgotten that Peter told him, and thus have failed to
|
|||
|
record so momentous an event. But John, the "Beloved Disciple" was
|
|||
|
right there, with Matthew, himself, one of the speakers and hearers
|
|||
|
in the historic colloquy, -- and John totally ignores it. The
|
|||
|
silence of all three discredits and repudiates it. Moreover, and
|
|||
|
most significantly, Peter himself, in his two alleged Epistles, has
|
|||
|
not a word of his tremendous dignity and importance conferred on
|
|||
|
him by his Master; never once does he describe himself in the pride
|
|||
|
of priestly humility, "Peter, Servant of the servants of God," or
|
|||
|
"Prince of Apostles: or even "Bishop of the Church which sojourns
|
|||
|
at Rome," or any such to distinguish himself from the common herd
|
|||
|
of peasant apostles. Peter must have been very modest, even more so
|
|||
|
than his "Successors."
|
|||
|
Furthermore, the official "Acts of the Apostles" never once
|
|||
|
notes this divinely commissioned "primacy" of Peter; and every
|
|||
|
other book of the New Testament utterly ignores it. Paul is said to
|
|||
|
have written a sententious "Epistle to the Romans," and to have
|
|||
|
written two or three Epistles from Rome, where Peter is supposed to
|
|||
|
have been, enthroned as divine Vicar of God and Head of the Church
|
|||
|
Universal; and yet never a word of this tremendous fact; Paul did
|
|||
|
not know it, or ignores it. The "Epistles of Paul," fourteen of
|
|||
|
them, and the "Acts," are replete with defiances of Paul to Peter,
|
|||
|
-- "I withstood him to his face"; and in all the disputes between
|
|||
|
them, over matters of the faith and the fortunes of the new
|
|||
|
"Church," not a single one of the Apostles rises in his place and
|
|||
|
suggests that Peter is Prince and Primate, and that Peter's view of
|
|||
|
the matters was ex-cathedra the voice of God, and he, having
|
|||
|
spoken, the matter was settled. Paul, in all his Epistles, never
|
|||
|
gives a suspicion that he had ever heard, even from Peter, of the
|
|||
|
latter's superior authority.
|
|||
|
Thus the admitted principal, if not only "proof" which the
|
|||
|
Church urges for its Divine and "Petrine" foundation is found to be
|
|||
|
-- like every other Church muniment and credential, a clerical
|
|||
|
forgery, a priestly imposture. We shall glance at some other like
|
|||
|
examples of the Christian art of "Scripture" falsification.
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
182
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
"GO, TEACH ALL NATIONS" FORGERY
|
|||
|
Applying Tertullian's test of authenticity, that contradictory
|
|||
|
passages betray a later "interpolation," the closing verses, 16-20,
|
|||
|
of the last chapter of Matthew -- as of Mark 9-20, -- are
|
|||
|
themselves late interpolations or forged passages.
|
|||
|
Matthew previously quotes Jesus as declaring: "I am not sent
|
|||
|
but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (xv, 24; x, 6); and
|
|||
|
his command to the Twelve: "Go not into the way of the Gentiles.
|
|||
|
... but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (x, 5,
|
|||
|
6). Also Matthew (as Mark) has reiterated the assurance of the
|
|||
|
immediacy of the end of the world and the "second coming" in glory:
|
|||
|
"Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of
|
|||
|
Man be come." (Mt. x, 23; cf. x, 7; xxvi, 28, 34, passim.) So that
|
|||
|
neither in reason nor in truthful statement could it be possible
|
|||
|
for Jesus to have met the Eleven a few days after his resurrection,
|
|||
|
in Galilee, and commanded them in this wonderful language: "Go ye
|
|||
|
therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
|
|||
|
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: ... and, lo, I am
|
|||
|
with you always, even unto the end of the world" -- which he had
|
|||
|
just, and repeatedly, averred should happen in the life-time of his
|
|||
|
hearers and before they could preach even to the Jews of little
|
|||
|
Palestine. (Mt. xxviii, 18, 20; cf. Mk. xvi, 15-16.) This "command"
|
|||
|
could only have been "interpolated" into the forged ending of
|
|||
|
Matthew and Mark long after the original form of the tradition of
|
|||
|
Jesus had been first written, and when the "second coming" in the
|
|||
|
"Kingdom of God" and the immediate "end of the world" had become
|
|||
|
impossible of further credit by lapse of long years of time and
|
|||
|
disappointed expectation. It could also only have been written
|
|||
|
after the gospel of the "Kingdom" for the Jews had failed, and the
|
|||
|
apostles had "turned to the Gentiles," which was not, even on the
|
|||
|
face of Scripture, until after the so-called "Council of
|
|||
|
Jerusalem," when the Jewish apostles, after bitter quarrel with the
|
|||
|
interloper Paul, had recognized Paul's pretended "revelation" of
|
|||
|
mission to the Gentiles and had parcelled out the propaganda work,
|
|||
|
Paul to the uncircumcised Gentiles, all the others, Peter included,
|
|||
|
to "the circumcision" only; though the entire story of the Council
|
|||
|
is itself a contradictory fabrication, as demonstrated by EB. (i,
|
|||
|
916, et seq.)
|
|||
|
ACTS BELIES THE "GO, TEACH ALL NATIONS" FORGERY
|
|||
|
Culminating proof that Jesus Christ never uttered this
|
|||
|
command, to "Go, teach all nations," of Matthew and Mark, and that
|
|||
|
it is a forgery long after interpolated into the original forged
|
|||
|
texts, is found in the positive "history" of the inspiredly forged
|
|||
|
Acts of the Apostles, in Holy Writ itself. If Jesus Christ, just
|
|||
|
arisen from the dead, had given that ringing and positive command
|
|||
|
to Peter and the Eleven, utterly impossible would it have been for
|
|||
|
the remarkable "history" recorded in Acts to have occurred. Acts,
|
|||
|
too, disproves the assertion of Mark that, straightway, after the
|
|||
|
command was given to the Eleven, "they went forth, and preached
|
|||
|
everywhere" (Mk. xvi, 20), -- that is, to all nations thereabouts,
|
|||
|
the Pagan Gentiles. A further contradiction may he noted: Matthew
|
|||
|
says that the command was given to the Eleven in Galilee, on "a
|
|||
|
mountain where Jesus had appointed them" (Mt. xxviii, 16-19), --
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
183
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
and some days after the resurrection; whereas Mark records that the
|
|||
|
command was given to the Eleven "as they sat at meat," evidently in
|
|||
|
a house in Jerusalem, through the roof of which Jesus immediately
|
|||
|
afterwards ascended into heaven (Mk. xvi, 14-19); after which they
|
|||
|
immediately "went forth, and preached everywhere" (verse 20). But
|
|||
|
they did not, as the silence of the other two Gospels, and the
|
|||
|
positive evidence of Acts and several of the Epistles, proves;
|
|||
|
together with the promised disproof of the "Go, teach all nations"
|
|||
|
command, for preaching the Kingdom to the Gentile Pagans, now to be
|
|||
|
produced.
|
|||
|
Cornelius, the leader of the Italian Band at Coesarea, a Roman
|
|||
|
Gentile Pagan, had a "revelation" that he should go to Joppa to
|
|||
|
find Peter, evidently with a view to "conversion" and admission
|
|||
|
into the new all-Jewish sect. A companion vision in a trance was
|
|||
|
awarded to Peter, seemingly to prepare him for the novel notion of
|
|||
|
community with Gentiles; though "Peter doubted in himself what this
|
|||
|
vision which he had seen should mean"; but at this juncture the
|
|||
|
messengers came from Cornelius, and related to Peter the vision of
|
|||
|
Cornelius, and his request that Peter come to see him. Evidently,
|
|||
|
Peter had never heard of the Master's command alleged to have been
|
|||
|
given by Jesus to Peter himself, and the others: "Go, teach all
|
|||
|
nations" of the uncircumcised, for he said to the messengers: "Ye
|
|||
|
know how it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep
|
|||
|
company, or come unto one of another nation"; but recalling the
|
|||
|
vision from which he had just awaked, be added: "but God hath
|
|||
|
showed me" that it was permissible now to deal with "one of another
|
|||
|
nation." So, Peter went along to Cornelius, and he asked "For what
|
|||
|
intent ye have sent for me?" Cornelius repeated the vision, and
|
|||
|
said, "Now we are all here present before God, to hear all things
|
|||
|
that are commanded thee by God." At this, Peter was evidently
|
|||
|
greatly surprised, and "opened his mouth, and replied; Of a truth
|
|||
|
I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: But that in every
|
|||
|
nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted
|
|||
|
with him." Thus clearly Peter had never heard his Jesus command:
|
|||
|
"Go, teach all nations"; it required this new "revelation" -- some
|
|||
|
years later -- for him to tardily and finally "perceive" that God
|
|||
|
accepted even "one of another nation." Clearer yet is this, that up
|
|||
|
to this time salvation is of the Jews" only, by Peter's next words:
|
|||
|
"The word which God sent unto the children of Israel ... which was
|
|||
|
published throughout Judaea -- [not to "all nations"], and began in
|
|||
|
Galilee, after the baptism which John preached -- [not baptism "in
|
|||
|
the name" of the Trinity]. ... And be [Jesus] commanded us to
|
|||
|
preach unto all the people" -- of the children of Israel. And now
|
|||
|
for proof positive: Peter was now "showed" the new dispensation: a
|
|||
|
visitation of the Holy Ghost came upon the Pagans present, who
|
|||
|
thereupon all "spake with tongues," to the great amazement of Peter
|
|||
|
and his Jewish companions: "They of the circumcision which believed
|
|||
|
were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the
|
|||
|
Gentiles was also poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost," which had
|
|||
|
been promised only to all believing Jews. Ignorant thus of the
|
|||
|
Christ's preascension command to him and the Eleven, to teach all
|
|||
|
men, but now convinced that "one of another nation" was acceptable
|
|||
|
with God, and should be baptized, Peter yielded, and argued for his
|
|||
|
companions to consent: "Then answered Peter, Can any man forbid
|
|||
|
water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the
|
|||
|
Holy Ghost as well as we? And he commanded them to be baptized in
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
184
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
the name of the Lord" (Acts x), -- not in the name of the Trinity,
|
|||
|
as Matthew alleges that Jesus himself had commanded Peter himself
|
|||
|
to do. So this bit of Scripture "history" is positive refutation of
|
|||
|
the "Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
|
|||
|
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" forgery.
|
|||
|
And none of the others of the Twelve had ever heard the
|
|||
|
command. For immediately that they learned of this flagrant
|
|||
|
"heresy" of Peter, "that the Gentiles have also received the word
|
|||
|
of God," they were piously outraged and furious against Peter: "And
|
|||
|
when Peter had come up to Jerusalem, they that were of the
|
|||
|
circumcision contended with him, Saying, Thou wentest in to men
|
|||
|
uncircumcised, and didst eat with them." Peter put up a long
|
|||
|
argument in defense, urging the "revelation" to Cornelius and his
|
|||
|
own trance vision, quoted the gospels of Matthew and John -- (not
|
|||
|
yet in existence!), -- and wound up: "Forasmuch then as God gave
|
|||
|
them the like gift as he did unto us, ... what am I, that I could
|
|||
|
withstand God?" This line of argument pacified the other apostles;
|
|||
|
"When they heard these things, they held their peace, and glorified
|
|||
|
God, saying, Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance
|
|||
|
unto life." (Acts xi.) Perfect proof is this, that the alleged "Go,
|
|||
|
teach all nations" command of the Christ to Peter and the other
|
|||
|
apostles, is a falsification, a late forgery into Matthew and Mark:
|
|||
|
for if Jesus had so commanded these same apostles, the special
|
|||
|
revelations would not have been necessary; Peter's doubt and
|
|||
|
hesitation, and the row of the others with Peter for baptizing
|
|||
|
Cornelius and his Band could not have occurred, would have been
|
|||
|
impossible and absurd; as would have been the apostolic rows of the
|
|||
|
"Council of Jerusalem," recorded in Acts xv and belied by Paul in
|
|||
|
Galatians ii, as is made evident in EB. (i, 916.)
|
|||
|
This incontrovertible fact, that Jesus Christ never uttered
|
|||
|
that command, "Go, teach all nations," and that the texts so
|
|||
|
reciting are later forgeries to serve the Gentilic propaganda of
|
|||
|
the Faith after the Jews had rejected it, -- is confessed by CE. in
|
|||
|
these destructive words: "The Kingdom of God had special reference
|
|||
|
to Jewish beliefs. ... A still further expansion resulted from the
|
|||
|
revelation directing St. Peter to admit to baptism Cornelius, a
|
|||
|
devout Gentile." (CE. iii, 747.) If Jesus Christ, preaching the
|
|||
|
exclusive Jewish Kingdom, had revised and reversed his God-ordained
|
|||
|
program, and had commanded "Go, teach all nations, baptizing them,"
|
|||
|
the "expansion" would have resulted then and there from the command
|
|||
|
itself, -- not from the "revelation" and apostolic row some years
|
|||
|
later, which would have been unnecessary and supererogatory -- as
|
|||
|
it was unseemly. Thus another pious lie and forgery is exposed and
|
|||
|
confessed.
|
|||
|
Even more plain and comprehensive are the words of this same
|
|||
|
divine forged command of the Christ, as recorded by Mark: "Go ye
|
|||
|
into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. And he
|
|||
|
that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that
|
|||
|
believeth not shall be damned." (Mk. xvi, 15-16.) It should be a
|
|||
|
relief to many pious Hell-fearing Christians to know that their
|
|||
|
Christ did not utter these damning words, and that they may
|
|||
|
disbelieve with entire impunity; that they are priestly forgeries
|
|||
|
to frighten credulous persons into belief and submission to
|
|||
|
priestcraft. The proofs of this from the Bible itself we see
|
|||
|
confirmed by clerical admissions under compulsion from exposure of
|
|||
|
the fraud.
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
185
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
Thus this whole section, says Reinach, is a "late addition" to
|
|||
|
Mark, ."and is not found in the best manuscripts." (Orpheus, p.
|
|||
|
221.) We have seen that CE. includes this section among those
|
|||
|
rejected as spurious up to the time that the Holy Ghost belatedly
|
|||
|
vouched for it at the Council of Trent in 1546, putting the seal of
|
|||
|
divine truth upon this lie. Both these parallel but exceedingly
|
|||
|
contradictory closing sections of Matthew and Mark, are spurious
|
|||
|
additions made after the "end of the world" and "second coming"
|
|||
|
predictions had notoriously failed, in order to give pretended
|
|||
|
divine sanction to the "turning to the Gentiles," after the Jews,
|
|||
|
to whom alone the Christ was sent and had expressly and repeatedly
|
|||
|
limited his mission, had rejected his claim to be Messiah.
|
|||
|
The Gentile Church of Christ has therefore no divine sanction;
|
|||
|
was never contemplated nor created by Jesus Christ. The Christian
|
|||
|
Church is thus founded on a forgery of pretended words of the
|
|||
|
pretended Christ. This proposition is of such immense significance
|
|||
|
and importance, that I array here the admissions of the forgery, in
|
|||
|
addition to the demonstration of its falsity above given. The
|
|||
|
virtual admissions of CE. totally destroy the authenticity of the
|
|||
|
entire spurious section, Mark xvi, 9-20, together with the
|
|||
|
correlated passages of the equally spurious "Matthean addition,"
|
|||
|
copied from Mark, with embellishments into Matthew.
|
|||
|
THE FORGED GOSPEL ENDINGS
|
|||
|
"The conclusion of Mark (xvi, 9-20) is admittedly not genuine.
|
|||
|
Still less can the shorter conclusion lay claim to genuineness. ...
|
|||
|
Almost the entire section is a compilation, partly even from the
|
|||
|
fourth gospel and Acts." (EB. ii, 1880; 1767, n. 3; 1781, and n. 1,
|
|||
|
on "the evidence of its spuriousness.") "The longer form ... has
|
|||
|
against it the testimony of the two oldest Uncial MSS. (Siniatic
|
|||
|
and Vatican) and one of the two earliest of the Syriac Versions
|
|||
|
(Siniatic Syriac), all of which close the chapter at verse 8. In
|
|||
|
addition to this, is the very significant silence of Patristic
|
|||
|
literature as to anything following verse 8." (New Standard Bible
|
|||
|
Dictionary, p. 551.) The acute and careful critical reasonings and
|
|||
|
evidences upon which the foregoing conclusions are based, I have
|
|||
|
omitted from these extracts, to present them in full in the
|
|||
|
following ample review from CE., which, "reasoning in chains"
|
|||
|
fettered upon it by the Trentine Decree, yet fully establishes the
|
|||
|
impeaching facts and substantially confesses the forgery into
|
|||
|
"Mark," while "saving its face" for the "inspiration" of the
|
|||
|
forgery by clerical assumption of "some other inspired pen" as the
|
|||
|
source of the text, which makes it "just as good" as any other,
|
|||
|
when invested with the sanctity of the sanction of the Council of
|
|||
|
Trent. Says CE.:
|
|||
|
"But the great textual problem of the Gospel (Mark)
|
|||
|
concerns the genuineness of the last twelve verses. Three
|
|||
|
conclusions of the Gospel are known: the long: conclusion, as
|
|||
|
in our Bibles, containing verses 9-20, the short one ending
|
|||
|
with verse 8, and an intermediate form [described]. ... Now
|
|||
|
this third form way be dismissed at once -- [as an admitted
|
|||
|
Bible forgery]. No scholar regards this intermediate
|
|||
|
conclusion as having any title to acceptance.
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
186
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
"We may pass on, then, to consider how the case stands
|
|||
|
between the long conclusion and the short, i.e. between
|
|||
|
accepting xvi, 9-20, as a genuine portion of the original
|
|||
|
Gospel, or making the original end with xvi, 8. Eusebius ...
|
|||
|
pointing out that the passage in Mark beginning with verse 9
|
|||
|
is not contained in all the MSS. of the Gospel. The historian
|
|||
|
then goes on himself to say that in nearly all the MSS. of
|
|||
|
Mark, at least in the accurate ones, the Gospel ends with xvi,
|
|||
|
8. ... St. Jerome also says in one place that the passage was
|
|||
|
wanting in nearly all Greek MSS. ... As we know, he
|
|||
|
incorporated it in the Vulgate. ... If we add to this that the
|
|||
|
Gospel ends with xvi, 8, in the two oldest Greek MSS. -- [
|
|||
|
Siniatic and Vatican] -- [also in the Siniatic Syriac, some
|
|||
|
Ethiopic, Armenian, and other MSS.] indicate doubt as to
|
|||
|
whether the true ending is at verse 8 or verse 20. (p. 678.)
|
|||
|
. . .
|
|||
|
"Much has been made of the silence of some of the third
|
|||
|
and fourth century Fathers, their silence being interpreted to
|
|||
|
mean that they either did not know the passage or rejected it.
|
|||
|
Thus Tertullian, SS. Cyprian, Athanasius, Basil the Great,
|
|||
|
Gregory of Nazianzus, and Cyril of Alexandria.
|
|||
|
"When we turn to the internal evidence, the number, and
|
|||
|
still more the character, of the peculiarities is certainly
|
|||
|
striking [citing many instances from the Greek text]. ... But,
|
|||
|
even when this is said, the cumulative force of the evidence
|
|||
|
against the Marcan origin of the passage is considerable. (p.
|
|||
|
678.) ... The combination of so many peculiar features, not
|
|||
|
only of vocabulary, but of matter and construction, leaves
|
|||
|
room for doubt as to the Marcan authorship of the verses. (p.
|
|||
|
679.) ...
|
|||
|
"Whatever the fact be, it is not at all certain that Mark did
|
|||
|
not write the disputed verses. It may be that he did not; that they
|
|||
|
are from the pen of some other inspired writer [!], and were
|
|||
|
appended to the Gospel in the first century or the beginning of the
|
|||
|
second. ... Catholics are not bound to hold that the verses were
|
|||
|
written by St. Mark. But they are canonical Scripture, for the
|
|||
|
Council of Trent (Sess. IV), in defining that all parts of the
|
|||
|
Sacred Books are to be received as sacred and canonical, had
|
|||
|
especially in view the disputed parts of the Gospels, of which this
|
|||
|
conclusion of Mark is one. Hence, whoever wrote the verses, they
|
|||
|
are inspired, and must be received as such by every Catholic." (CE.
|
|||
|
ix, 677, 678, 679.)
|
|||
|
The New Commentary on the Holy Scripture has a special section
|
|||
|
entitled "The Ending of St. Mark's Gospel," in which it reviews the
|
|||
|
evidences in much the same manner as CE., with additional new and
|
|||
|
able criticism; it thus concludes, -- not being fettered by the
|
|||
|
dogmatic decision of the Council of Trent, which CE. so clerically
|
|||
|
yields to in the letter but evades in the spirit:
|
|||
|
"It is practically certain that neither Matthew nor Luke
|
|||
|
found it in their copies of Mark [from which they copied in
|
|||
|
making up the gospels under those names: see pp. 33, 45). ...
|
|||
|
The Last Twelve Verses are constructed as an independent
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
187
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
summary with total neglect of the contents of xvi, 1-8. ... It
|
|||
|
is as certain as anything can be in the domain of criticism
|
|||
|
that the Longer Ending did not come from the pen of the
|
|||
|
evangelist Mark. ... We conclude that it is certain that the
|
|||
|
Longer Ending is no part of the Gospel." (New Commentary, Pt.
|
|||
|
III, pp. 122, 123.)
|
|||
|
More shaming proofs and confessions of forgery of pretended
|
|||
|
words of the Christ there could not be, than of this falsified
|
|||
|
command to preach a forged Gospel to the credulous dupes of
|
|||
|
Paganism. Gentile Christianity collapses upon its forged
|
|||
|
foundations.
|
|||
|
THE BAPTISMAL FORGERY
|
|||
|
The contradictory "baptismal formulas," the simple "in the
|
|||
|
name of the Lord" of Peter in Acts, and the elaborated forgery of
|
|||
|
Matthew, "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
|
|||
|
Holy Ghost," are sufficiently branded with falsity in the preceding
|
|||
|
paragraphs, and may be dismissed without further notice. This
|
|||
|
"Trinitarian Formula" is most palpably a late forgery, never
|
|||
|
uttered by Jesus Christ; for the Holy "Trinity" was not itself
|
|||
|
officially invented until the Council of Constantinople, in 381
|
|||
|
A.D. Admittedly, "of all revealed truths this is the most
|
|||
|
impenetrable to reason"; it is therefore called a "mystery." (CE.
|
|||
|
xv, 52.) Of this Baptism-formula of Matthew, the ex-priest scholar,
|
|||
|
McCabe, says: "It was fraudulently added to the gospel when the
|
|||
|
priesthood was created." (LBB. 1121, p. 4.) Bishop Gore's English
|
|||
|
Divines thus cautiously confess the fraud: "Matthew's witness to
|
|||
|
the teaching of the risen Lord in these verses is widely rejected
|
|||
|
on two grounds. The witness of Acts makes it almost certain that
|
|||
|
baptism at first was into the name of Jesus Christ, and not
|
|||
|
formally into the name of the Blessed Trinity. ... It is quite
|
|||
|
likely that Matthew here expresses our Lord's teaching in language
|
|||
|
which the Lord Himself did not actually use." (New Comm., Pt. III,
|
|||
|
p. 204; ef. EB. i, 474.) Another blasting priestly fraud of
|
|||
|
"Scripture" forgery is thus exposed and confessed!
|
|||
|
A MEDLEY OF FORGERIES
|
|||
|
After the foregoing colossal forgeries within the originally
|
|||
|
forged Gospels of Jesus Christ, there yet remain many other
|
|||
|
viciously dishonest falsifications of text. A little trinity of
|
|||
|
them only will be noted.
|
|||
|
THE "WOMAN IN ADULTERY" FORGERY
|
|||
|
The CE. has admitted that the so-called pericope adulterae,
|
|||
|
was regarded as spurious until the Council of Trent, in 1546,
|
|||
|
declared it divine truth; but Reinach says: "The episode of Jesus
|
|||
|
and the woman taken in adultery, which was inserted in John's
|
|||
|
gospel in the fourth century, was originally in the [apocryphal]
|
|||
|
'Gospel according to the Hebrews.'" (Orpheus, p. 235.)
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
188
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
THE JOHN XXI FORGERY
|
|||
|
The entire chapter xxi of John is likewise a surcharge of
|
|||
|
forgery in that gospel; it may be disposed of with this terse
|
|||
|
comment of EB.: "As xx, 30-31 constitutes a formal and solemn
|
|||
|
conclusion, xxi is beyond question a later appendix. We may go on
|
|||
|
to add that it does not come from the same author with the rest of
|
|||
|
the book." (EB. ii, 2543.)
|
|||
|
THE "LORD'S PRAYER" FORGERY
|
|||
|
As may be seen by mere comparison, the "Doxology" at the end
|
|||
|
of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew (vi, 13): "For thine is the
|
|||
|
kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen," is an
|
|||
|
interpolation into the original text, and is omitted as spurious by
|
|||
|
the Revised Version; it is not in the Catholic "True" Version. But,
|
|||
|
it may be remarked, the whole of the so-called Lord's Prayer is not
|
|||
|
the Lord's at all; it is a late patch-work of pieces out of the Old
|
|||
|
Testament, as readily shown by the marginal cross-references, --
|
|||
|
just as we have seen that the "Apostles Creed" was said to have
|
|||
|
been patched up by inspired lines from each apostle. The Sermon on
|
|||
|
the Mount, in which its most used form is found, is a concatenation
|
|||
|
of supposed logia or "sayings" of Jesus, drawn out through three
|
|||
|
chapters of "Matthew"; it was delivered before "the multitudes"
|
|||
|
which surrounded the Master and his disciples, and in the middle of
|
|||
|
the fictitious discourse. This is not true, according to "Luke,"
|
|||
|
who makes it out a private talk in reply to a question by one of
|
|||
|
the Twelve: "And it came to pass, that, as (Jesus) was praying in
|
|||
|
a certain place, when he ceased one of his disciples said to him,
|
|||
|
Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. And be
|
|||
|
said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father," etc. (Luke xi, 1-
|
|||
|
228 2.) Indeed, the entire "Lord's Prayer" in Matthew, copied from
|
|||
|
Luke and expanded with considerable new material, is as to such new
|
|||
|
matter a forgery, confesses CE.: "Thus it is that the shorter form
|
|||
|
of the Lord's Prayer in Luke, xi, 2-4, is in almost all Greek
|
|||
|
manuscripts lengthened out in accordance with Matthew, vi, 9-13.
|
|||
|
Most errors of this kind proceed," etc. (CE. iv, 498.) I shall
|
|||
|
quote now the whole of CE.'s paragraph, admitting this and other
|
|||
|
"deliberate corruptions" of the New Testament texts, with clerical
|
|||
|
apologetic reasons therefor:
|
|||
|
"(b) Errors Wholly or Partly Intentional. -- Deliberate
|
|||
|
corruption of the Sacred Text has always been rather rare,
|
|||
|
Marcion's case being exceptional. Hort (Introduction (1896),
|
|||
|
p. 282) is of the opinion that 'even among the unquestionably
|
|||
|
spurious readings of the New Testament there are no signs of
|
|||
|
deliberate falsification of the text for dogmatic purposes.'
|
|||
|
Nevertheless it is true that the scribe often selects from
|
|||
|
various readings that which favors either his own individual
|
|||
|
opinion or the doctrine that is just then more generally
|
|||
|
accepted. It also happens that, in perfectly good faith, he
|
|||
|
changes passages which seem to him corrupt because he fails to
|
|||
|
understand them, that he adds a word which he deems necessary
|
|||
|
for the elucidation of the meaning, that he substitutes a more
|
|||
|
correct grammatical expression, and that he harmonizes
|
|||
|
parallel passages. Thus it is that the shorter form of the
|
|||
|
Lord's Prayer in Luke, xi, 2-4, is in almost all Greek
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
189
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
manuscripts lengthened out in accordance with Matthew, vi,
|
|||
|
9-13. Most errors of this kind proceed from inserting in the
|
|||
|
text marginal notes which, in the copy to be transcribed, were
|
|||
|
but variants, explanations, parallel passages, simple remarks,
|
|||
|
or perhaps the conjectures of some studious reader. All
|
|||
|
readers have observed the predilection of copyists for the
|
|||
|
most verbose texts and their tendency to complete citations
|
|||
|
that are too brief; hence it is that an interpolation stands
|
|||
|
a far better chance of being perpetuated than an omission."
|
|||
|
(CE. iv, 498.)
|
|||
|
Thus, as to the "Lord's Prayer" in Matthew, its "variants"
|
|||
|
from Luke are confessed forgeries; every circumstance of the two
|
|||
|
origins is in contradiction. Like the whole "Sermon on the Mount,"
|
|||
|
the Prayer is a composite of ancient sayings of the Scripture
|
|||
|
strung together to form it, as the marginal cross-references show
|
|||
|
throughout.
|
|||
|
THE "UNKNOWN GOD" FORGERY
|
|||
|
At this point I may call attention to a notable instance in
|
|||
|
Acts of a fraudulent perversion of text; Paul's use of the
|
|||
|
pretended inscription on the statue on Mars' Hill, "To the Unknown
|
|||
|
God," on which is based his famous harangue to the Athenians: "Whom
|
|||
|
therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you." This
|
|||
|
omits the truth, for the whole inscription would have been fatal to
|
|||
|
his cause. The actual words of the inscription, together with some
|
|||
|
uncomplimentary comment on "Paul's" manipulation of the truth, are
|
|||
|
presented by the famous Catholic "Humanist" Erasmus. First he
|
|||
|
states the chronic clerical propensity to warp even Scripture to
|
|||
|
their deceptive schemes: "In general it is the public charter of
|
|||
|
all divines, to mould and bend the sacred oracles till they comply
|
|||
|
with their own fancy, spreading them (as Heaven by its Creator)
|
|||
|
like a curtain, closing together, or drawing them back as they
|
|||
|
please." Then he discloses the dishonest dodge of the great Apostle
|
|||
|
of Persecution: "Indeed, St. Paul minces and mangles some citations
|
|||
|
which he makes use of, and seems to wrest them to a different sense
|
|||
|
from that for which they were first intended, as is confessed by
|
|||
|
the great linguist St. Jerome. Thus when that apostle saw at Athens
|
|||
|
the inscription of an altar, he draws from it an argument for the
|
|||
|
proof of the Christian religion; but leaving out a great part of
|
|||
|
the sentence, which perhaps if fully recited might have prejudiced
|
|||
|
his cause, he mentions only the last two words, viz., 'To the
|
|||
|
Unknown God'; and this, too, not without alteration, for the whole
|
|||
|
inscription runs thus: 'TO THE GODS OF ASIA, EUROPE, AND AFRICA, TO
|
|||
|
ALL FOREIGN AND UNKNOWN GODS'"! (Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, p.
|
|||
|
292.) That the original Greek text of Acts used the plural "gods"
|
|||
|
is shown by the marginal note to Acts xvii, 23, in the King James
|
|||
|
Version. From this dreary, exposure of "Gospel" forgeries we pass
|
|||
|
to the forged "Epistles of the Apostles."
|
|||
|
THE FORGED EPISTLES, ETC.
|
|||
|
There are 21 so-called Epistles or Letters found in the New
|
|||
|
Testament under the names of five different "apostles" of Jesus
|
|||
|
Christ. Making a significant reservation which seems to question
|
|||
|
the plenary inspiration of the Council of Trent, "There are," says
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
190
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
CE., "thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, and perhaps fourteen, if, with
|
|||
|
the Council of Trent, we consider him the author of the Epistle to
|
|||
|
the Hebrews." (CE. xiv, 530.) If Paul, the "apostle of the
|
|||
|
Gentiles," didn't write the Letter to the Hebrews, some Church
|
|||
|
Father must have forged it in his name. This was admitted by the
|
|||
|
early Fathers: "Tertullian ascribed it to Barnabas, and Origen
|
|||
|
confessed that the author was not known." (Reinach, Orpheus, p.
|
|||
|
235; CE. xiv, 525; New Comm. Pt. III, p. 596.) "The Epistle to the
|
|||
|
Hebrews," says EB., "had already been excluded from the group [of
|
|||
|
then supposed Pauline Epistles] by Carlstadt (1520), and among
|
|||
|
those who followed him in this were Luther, Calvin, Grotius, etc."
|
|||
|
(EB. iii, 3605.) So CE.'s cautious clerical reservation is
|
|||
|
justified, and the forgery of Hebrews in the name of Paul may be
|
|||
|
taken as established, the inspired Council of Trent to the contrary
|
|||
|
notwithstanding.
|
|||
|
But the entire "Pauline group" is in the same forged class
|
|||
|
with Hebrews, says EB. after exhaustive consideration of the
|
|||
|
proofs, internal and external:
|
|||
|
"With respect to the canonical Pauline Epistles, ...
|
|||
|
there are none of them by Paul; neither fourteen, nor
|
|||
|
thirteen, nor nine or eight, nor yet even the four so long
|
|||
|
'universally' regarded as unassailable. They are all, without
|
|||
|
distinction, pseudographia [false-writings, forgeries]; -- [it
|
|||
|
adds, with a typical clerical striving after saving something
|
|||
|
from the wreckage] this, of course, not implying the least
|
|||
|
depreciation of their contents. ... The group ... bears
|
|||
|
obvious marks of a certain unity -- of having originated in
|
|||
|
one circle, at one time, in one environment; but not of unity
|
|||
|
of authorship." (EB. iii, 3625, 3626.) They are thus all
|
|||
|
uninspired anonymous church forgeries for Christ's sweet sake!
|
|||
|
Besides the so-called Pauline Epistles, another group, i.e.
|
|||
|
those attributed to Peter, John, Jude and James, is known as
|
|||
|
"Catholic Epistles," so called because addressed to the Church at
|
|||
|
large; "not one of them is authentic." (Reinach, Orpheus, p. 239;
|
|||
|
cf. EB., under the various titles.) A third small group, Titus and
|
|||
|
2 Timothy, are called Pastoral Epistles" because they are addressed
|
|||
|
to pastors of churches. These, with Acts and the Book of
|
|||
|
Revelation, complete the tale of the Old-Christian Literature
|
|||
|
finally approved, in 1546, by the Council of Trent as divinely
|
|||
|
inspired, along with the inspired nonsense of Tobias, Judith, Bel
|
|||
|
and the Dragon, and like late Hebrew pious forgeries. With respect
|
|||
|
to the Apocalypse Revelation, attributed to the Apostle John, this
|
|||
|
has long been held to be impossible; nor is Revelation by the same
|
|||
|
writer as the Fourth Gospel falsely attributed to John, as we have
|
|||
|
seen. The results of ancient patristic denials and of modern
|
|||
|
critical scholarship are thus summed up: "John ... is not the
|
|||
|
author of the Fourth Gospel; so, in like manner, in the Apocalypse
|
|||
|
we may have here and there a passage that may be traced to him, but
|
|||
|
the book as a whole is not from his pen. Gospel, Epistles, and
|
|||
|
Apocalypse all come from the same school." (EB. i, 199.) "The
|
|||
|
author of Revelation calls himself John the Apostle. As he was not
|
|||
|
John the Apostle, who died perhaps in Palestine about 66, he was a
|
|||
|
forger." (Orpheus p. 240.) The same can truly be said as to all the
|
|||
|
others.
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
191
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
It is impossible here to review the criticism of the twenty-
|
|||
|
three booklets individually. The comment of EB. on the Epistle to
|
|||
|
the Philippians, as not written by Paul, is, fairly applicable to
|
|||
|
them all: "What finally puts an end to all doubt is the presence of
|
|||
|
unmistakable traces of the conditions of a later period. ... More
|
|||
|
particularly, everything that points to a considerably advanced
|
|||
|
stage in the development of doctrine." (EB. iii, 3709.) This
|
|||
|
principle of criticism will be admitted by anyone; we have read it
|
|||
|
from CE. as "universally admitted" to wit: "A fundamental one is
|
|||
|
that a literary work always betrays the imprint of the age and
|
|||
|
environment in which it was produced." (CE. iv, 492.) Paul and
|
|||
|
Peter are reputed to have died together in Rome under Nero, in 64
|
|||
|
(67) A.D. We have shown the impossibility of the existence of "New
|
|||
|
Testament" writings, and of a "church" during the first several
|
|||
|
generations which daily expected the end of the world and the
|
|||
|
sudden second coming of the Christ to set up the supernatural
|
|||
|
Kingdom of God, among, of, and for Jews only. More especially
|
|||
|
impassible is it, that a Catholic or "universal" Church among the
|
|||
|
far-scattered cities and nations of the Gentiles should have
|
|||
|
existed even in embryo within the scant, say 35 years between the
|
|||
|
reputed death of Jesus about 30 A.D. and the deaths of Paul and
|
|||
|
Peter in 64 (67) A.D. Most impossible would it have been for such
|
|||
|
Gentile Church then to have had the intricate hierarchical
|
|||
|
organization of Bishops, presbyters, deacons, priests, and
|
|||
|
"damnable heresies," portrayed as actually existing and in active
|
|||
|
function, by these apocryphal Epistles. They are self-evidently the
|
|||
|
product of an elaborately organized church, -- just as they are
|
|||
|
more elaborately laid out and their several jurisdictions and
|
|||
|
functions defined in the admittedly forged Apostolic Constitutions
|
|||
|
and Canons, forged in the names of the apostles in the following
|
|||
|
centuries. Nothing from ancient times can be or is more positively
|
|||
|
proven false and forged than every book and text of the New
|
|||
|
Testament, attributed to apostles. Who can now deny this?
|
|||
|
THE "EPISTLE OF PETER" FORGERIES
|
|||
|
Owing to the peculiar importance attributed to them by the
|
|||
|
Church, as among the most unquestionable of its "proofs" of
|
|||
|
authentic divine foundation and sanction, the so-called Epistles I
|
|||
|
and II of Peter call for a few words of special refutation. These
|
|||
|
two Peter books were, in truth, questioned and denied from the
|
|||
|
early days. Bishop Eusebius, the first Church Historian, (HE. III,
|
|||
|
iii, 25), says of II Peter that it was "controverted and not
|
|||
|
admitted into the canon"; and, says EB., "The tardy recognition of
|
|||
|
II Peter in the early church supports the judgment of the critical
|
|||
|
school as to its un-apostolic origin." (EB. iii, 3684.)
|
|||
|
The critical considerations which lead to the rejection of
|
|||
|
both Epistles as "not Petrine" and "not of the apostolic age," may
|
|||
|
be very briefly summarized: That I Peter is addressed to the
|
|||
|
"Sojourners of the Dispersion" in Asia Minor, which was Paul's
|
|||
|
reserved territory. "There is no trace of the questions mooted in
|
|||
|
the apostolic age. ... The historical conditions and circumstances
|
|||
|
implied in the Epistle indicate, moreover, a time far beyond the
|
|||
|
probable duration of Peter's life. ... The history of the spread of
|
|||
|
Christianity imperatively demands for I Peter a later date than 64
|
|||
|
A.D.," the alleged date of Peter's death. The second Epistle, II
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
192
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
Peter, is vaguely addressed to Christians in general (i, 1), yet in
|
|||
|
iii, 1, the writer inconsistently assumes that the First Epistle
|
|||
|
was addressed to the same readers; and he tells them (i, 6 and iii,
|
|||
|
15) that they had already received instructions from him
|
|||
|
(ostensibly Peter), and also letters from Paul. "The relation of II
|
|||
|
Peter to I Peter renders a common authorship extremely doubtful.
|
|||
|
The name and title of the author are different. ... The style of
|
|||
|
the two epistles is different. ... It is late and un-apostolic."
|
|||
|
(EB. Peter, Epistles of, iii, 3678-3685; cf. New Comm. Pt. III, pp.
|
|||
|
639, 653, 654.) "The genuineness of I Peter cannot be maintained.
|
|||
|
Most probably it was not written before 112 A.D." (EB. 2940.) The
|
|||
|
two letters of Peter are Graeco-Egyptian forgeries." (Reinach,
|
|||
|
Orpheus, p. 240.) The Church pretense that I Peter was written at
|
|||
|
Rome ("Babylon") will be judged in its more appropriate place. In
|
|||
|
the early list of supposedly apostolic Books drawn up by Tertullian
|
|||
|
as accepted and read in the several Churches, while he "cites the
|
|||
|
Book of Enoch as inspired, ... also recognizes IV Esdras, and the
|
|||
|
Sibyl, ... he does not know James and II Peter. ... He attributes
|
|||
|
Hebrews to St. Barnabas." (CE. xiv, 525.) Bishop Dionysius
|
|||
|
complains that his own writings "had been falsified by the apostles
|
|||
|
of the devil; no wonder, he adds, 'that the Scriptures were
|
|||
|
falsified by such persons.'" (CE. v, 10.) The "Peter" Books are
|
|||
|
other instances.
|
|||
|
THE "GOD MANIFEST" FORGERY
|
|||
|
In the King James or "Authorized" Version we read: "Great is
|
|||
|
the mystery of Godliness: God was manifest in the flesh," etc. (1
|
|||
|
Tim. iii, 16.) In the "Revised Version" this "God manifest" forged
|
|||
|
interpolation is shamed out of the text, which there honestly
|
|||
|
reads: "He who was manifested in the flesh," etc. Thus the great
|
|||
|
"mystery of godliness," premised in the text, is no longer a
|
|||
|
mystery; and the fraudulent insertion into the text by some over-
|
|||
|
zealous Christian forger, seeking to bolster up an "apostolic"
|
|||
|
pedigree for the later "tradition" of the divinity of the Christ,
|
|||
|
is confessed. This pious "interpolation" was probably made at the
|
|||
|
time and by the same holy hands which forged the "Virgin-birth"
|
|||
|
interpolations into "Matthew" and "Luke." This passage is but one
|
|||
|
of a whole series of "Spurious Passages in the New Testament,"
|
|||
|
catalogued by Taylor, in the appendix to his Diegesis, (p. 421).
|
|||
|
This pious fraud was first detected and exposed by Sir Isaac
|
|||
|
Newton.
|
|||
|
THE "THREE HEAVENLY WITNESSES" FORGERY
|
|||
|
Bishop Clement of Alexandria, writing around 200 A.D., thus
|
|||
|
quotes a comparatively trivial and innocuous passage from the
|
|||
|
forged First Epistle of St. John (v, 7), -- which, through
|
|||
|
fraudulent tampering later became one of the "chief stones of the
|
|||
|
corner" of the Holy Church that the Fathers built: "John says: 'For
|
|||
|
there are three that bear witness, the spirit, and the water, and
|
|||
|
the blood: and these three are one.'" (Clem. Alex., Fragment from
|
|||
|
Cassiodorus, ch. iii; ANF. iii, 576.) This is self-evidently the
|
|||
|
original text of this now famous, or infamous, passage. Turning now
|
|||
|
to the Word of God as found in the "Authorized" Protestant and in
|
|||
|
the Chaloner-Douay Version of the Catholic Vulgate, we read with
|
|||
|
wonder:
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
193
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
"7. For there are three that bear record in heaven, the
|
|||
|
Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
|
|||
|
"8. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the
|
|||
|
spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in
|
|||
|
one." (I John, v, 7, 8.)
|
|||
|
Let us now turn to the same text, or what is left of it, in
|
|||
|
the Revised Version. Here we read, with more wonder (if we do not
|
|||
|
know the story of pious fraud behind it), what seems to be a
|
|||
|
garbled text:
|
|||
|
"8. For there are three who bear witness, the Spirit, and
|
|||
|
the water, and the blood: and the three agree in one."
|
|||
|
Erasmus first detected the fraud and omitted the forged verse
|
|||
|
in his edition of the Greek Testament in 1516. (New Comm. Pt. III,
|
|||
|
p. 718-19.) This verse 7, bluntly speaking, is a forgery: "It had
|
|||
|
been wilfully and wickedly interpolated, to sustain the Trinitarian
|
|||
|
doctrine; it has been entirely omitted by the Revisers of the New
|
|||
|
Testament." (Roberts, Companion to the Revised Versions p. 72.)
|
|||
|
"This memorable text," says Gibbon, "is condemned by the silence of
|
|||
|
the Fathers, ancient versions, and authentic manuscripts, of all
|
|||
|
the manuscripts now extant, above four score in number, some of
|
|||
|
which are more than 1200 years old." (Ch. xxvii, p. 598.) Speaking
|
|||
|
of this and another, Reinach says: "One of these forgeries (I John
|
|||
|
v, 7) was subjected to interpolation of a later date. ... If these
|
|||
|
two verses were Authentic, they would be an affirmation of the
|
|||
|
doctrine of the Trinity, at a time when the gospels, and Acts and
|
|||
|
St. Paul ignore it. It was first pointed out in 1516 that these
|
|||
|
verses were an interpolation, for they do not appear in the best
|
|||
|
manuscripts down to the fifteenth century. The Roman Church refused
|
|||
|
to bow to the evidence. ... The Congregation of the Index, on
|
|||
|
January 13, 1897, with the approbation of Leo XIII, forbade any
|
|||
|
question of the authenticity of the text relating to the 'Three
|
|||
|
Heavenly Witnesses.' It showed in this instance a wilful ignorance
|
|||
|
to which St. Gregory's rebuke is specially applicable: "God does
|
|||
|
not need our lies."' (Orpheus, p. 239.) But His Church does; for
|
|||
|
without them it would not be; and without the forged "Three
|
|||
|
Heavenly Witnesses," and the forged "Baptism Formula" of Matthew
|
|||
|
(xxviii, 19), there would be not a word in the entire New Testament
|
|||
|
hinting the existence of the Three-in-One God of Christianity. The
|
|||
|
Holy Trinity is an unholy Forgery!
|
|||
|
Lest it be thought by some pious but uninformed persons that
|
|||
|
the foregoing imputation may be either false or malicious, we shall
|
|||
|
let CE. make the confession of shame, with the usual clerical
|
|||
|
evasions to "save the face" of Holy Church confronted with this
|
|||
|
proven forgery and fraud. From a lengthy and detailed review, under
|
|||
|
separate headings, of all the ancient MSS., Greek, Syriac,
|
|||
|
Ethiopia, Armenian, Old Latin, and of the Fathers, the following is
|
|||
|
condensed, but in the exact words of the text:
|
|||
|
"The famous passage of the Three Witnesses [quoting I
|
|||
|
John, v, 7]. Throughout the past three hundred years, effort
|
|||
|
has been made to expunge from our Clementine Vulgate edition
|
|||
|
of the canonical Scriptures the words that are bracketed. Let
|
|||
|
us examine the facts of the case. [Here follows the thorough
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
194
|
|||
|
FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY
|
|||
|
review of the MSS, closed in each instance by such words as:
|
|||
|
"The disputed part is found in none"; "no trace"; "no
|
|||
|
knowledge until the twelfth century," etc. etc.] The silence
|
|||
|
of the great and voluminous St. Augustine, [etc.] are admitted
|
|||
|
facts that militate against the canonicity of the Three
|
|||
|
Witnesses. St. Jerome does not seem to know the text, --
|
|||
|
[Jerome made the Vulgate Official Version].
|
|||
|
"Trent's is the first certain ecumenical decree, whereby
|
|||
|
the Church established the Canon of Scripture. We cannot say
|
|||
|
that the Decree of Trent necessarily included the Three
|
|||
|
Witnesses" -- [for reasons elaborately stated, and upon two
|
|||
|
conditions discussed, saying): "Neither condition has yet been
|
|||
|
verified with certainty; quite the contrary, textual criticism
|
|||
|
seems to indicate that the Comma Johanninum was not at all
|
|||
|
times and everywhere wont to be read in the Catholic Church,
|
|||
|
and it is not contained in the Old Latin Vulgate. However, the
|
|||
|
Catholic theologian must take into account more than textual
|
|||
|
criticism"! (CE. viii, 436.)
|
|||
|
A confessed forgery of Holy Writ consciously kept in the
|
|||
|
"canonical" text as a fraudulent voucher for a false Trinity --
|
|||
|
such is "The Three Heavenly Witnesses" -- to the shame and ignominy
|
|||
|
of the Holy Church of Christ, which "has never deceived any one,"
|
|||
|
and which "has never made an error, and never shall err to all
|
|||
|
eternity"! This is not an error, however; it is but one more
|
|||
|
deliberate clerical "lie to the glory of God."
|
|||
|
<div> <div>
|
|||
|
Abbreviations for most often used sources:
|
|||
|
The libraries of the Union Theological Seminary and of
|
|||
|
Columbia University, in New York City, were the places of the finds
|
|||
|
here recorded. Cited so often, space will be saved for more
|
|||
|
valuable uses by citing by their initials, -- which will become
|
|||
|
very familiar -- my chief ecclesiastical authorities, towit:
|
|||
|
The Ante-Nicene Fathers, cited as ANF.; A Collection of the
|
|||
|
extant Writings of all the Founders of Christianity down to the
|
|||
|
Council of Nicaea, or Nice, in 325 A.D. American Reprint, eight
|
|||
|
volumes. The Christian Literature Publishing Co., Buffalo, N.Y.,
|
|||
|
1885. [xxx]
|
|||
|
The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, cited as N&PNF.; First and
|
|||
|
Second Series; many volumes; same publishers.
|
|||
|
The Catholic Encyclopedia, cited as CE.; fifteen volumes and
|
|||
|
index, published under the Imprimatur of Archbishop Farley; New
|
|||
|
York, Robert Appleton Co., 1907-9.
|
|||
|
The Encyclopedia Biblica, cited as EB., four volumes; Adam &
|
|||
|
Charles Black, London, 1899; American Reprint, The Macmillan Co.,
|
|||
|
New York, 1914.
|
|||
|
<div> <div>
|
|||
|
Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
|
|||
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|||
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|||
|
195
|
|||
|
</conspiracyFile>
|