Another good read

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Having been founded by immigrant Christians, the United States of America has always held a special sentimentality and even superstitious awe for the religion of its forefathers and for its sacred book, the Bible. Thus even in an era marked by open debate, cultural pluralism, and a worldview heavily infused by scientific reasoning and realities, many Americans still look to the Bible, not only for personal guidance but for the guidance of American society as a whole -- even to the point of believing U.S. laws (which affect Americans of all religious backgrounds) should be based upon Christian religious doctrine. Indeed, Christian Fundamentalists and certain other members of the religious right view themselves as engaged in a "culture war", in which they (the forces of Good) war with the forces of Satan who are trying to wrest American society away from traditional Christian beliefs.
At the center of the conflict is the mythology of the Bible as the literal word of God, incapable of erring in any detail -- religious or historical. According to this mythology, we have only to read the Bible to know God's will for us. Our sexual conduct is clearly laid out for us. To deviate is to be damned to an eternity of suffering, and to allow others to deviate (i.e. by repealing laws against oral sex, anal sex, homosexuality, etc.) is to condone a lifestyle that leads inevitably to hell. In short, such religious hardliners ask that we turn off our own power of reason, blot out our own personal sensitivities, and blindly follow the Bible's instruction.

Yet, even if one is a Christian willing to turn one's will and one's life over to the care of a higher power, and laying aside, for the moment, the thorny issue of interpreting the Bible's blue print for us (hardly a small matter), there still remains a fundamental flaw in this injunction: Is the text of the Bible truly inviolate? That is, is the Bible truly the direct word of God, uncorrupted by the prejudices and political ambitions of the countless individuals entrusted with its transcription, copying and recopying, translation and retranslation?

To answer this question, let us take a look at the Bible's own history. Behind the mythology of a perfect and inviolate holy book, dictated by God to man via Moses and the Apostles and flawlessly handed down, untouched, throughout the centuries, let us consider the real evidence accumulated by historians and religious scholars.

Historians accept the idea that the Bible is in fact a composite work -- that is, it is not the untouched work of a few men. In actuality it has been added to and subtracted from and otherwise altered over the many centuries of its construction. And while many religious scholars are quick to point out that that this is irrelevant, that nothing has ever been added or omitted that God himself did not cause to have so done, the fact remains that in our modern era this history of changes and omissions has led not to one version of the Bible, but to many. Which then is accurate? And how can we know that what we have now accurately reflects the original Gospel of Christ?

To those raised within a particular Christian faith tradition (Lutheran, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Pentecostal), the version of the Bible they grew up with, and the teachings that accompanied it are the one true Word of God. For hard-core Christian fundamentalists, only the Authorized King James Bible is accurate. Catholics meanwhile find the Authorized KJV unacceptable (as it, for one thing, downplays human free will). Meanwhile, Lutherans point out that both of these books contains texts that shouldn't even be in the Bible! And on it goes. As if all this weren't enough, many modern critics of the Bible reject it as old-fashioned or couched in the rhetoric and bias of centuries past. Hence the creation of the NIV Bible (New International Version), offering a completely new translation from Greek and Hebrew texts, eliminating the biases of the Middle Ages and harking back to the biases of millenia gone by.

Amidst all this comes the question: is this enough? Can we assume that this new and improved Bible with its fresh and authoritative translations, its scholarly interpretations of antique idioms, is correct? Can we now turn to the NIV and say, "At last we have the truth"? Of course not.

Certainly earlier mistranslations of the Bible's text over time have been a significant source of variation and error. And it is also an established fact that additional discrepancies were introduced through scribal error (remember that before the invention of the printing press, all manuscripts were copied by hand) as well as through linguistic error (that is, from not understanding the idioms, or turns of phrase, used in the original language. Intentional errors all crept in, due to the philosophical or political slant of the translators themselves.

Such variances are significant. And in many cases, a fresh translation such as the NIV can certainly remove many of them. But what such a translation cannot repair revolves around a much greater problem -- the insertion and deletion of various texts. Certainly some simply fell prey to accident and decay. But others were deleted for political motives or intellectual prejudice. Some of these texts are once again available to us, but how many remain hidden away or lost to us entirely we may never know. Complicating matters is that in other cases, texts were retained and elevated to spiritual law, despite their questionable origins and their apparent conflict with the teachings of the Gospel.

The result, inevitably, is that the Bible, as we know it today, hosts a rather confused, convoluted, and questionable message -- or body of messages. It is riddled with inconsistencies and incongruities. And yet, because of its long association with American society, and because many Americans today are still brought up to fear and love the Bible as the legitimate Word of God, the text of the Bible is still used to condemn anything that historical Christianity (for reasons often political rather than spiritual) also chose to condemn.

Faced with those ever eager to nudge us backward to the good ole days (when one could freely use the Bible to justify persecution and repression), it is important therefore that we understand exactly where the Bible's mixed message came from, how it was accreted or created, and how modern individuals can evaluate conflicting claims of law and divine inspiration.

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alterations within the old testament


Because the Old Testament books of the Bible are essentially translations of the Hebrew Bible (or Tanach), the story of the Bible's construction and frequent reconstruction begins with that of the first 5 books of the Hebrew Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Also known as the Torah or the Pentateuch, these early books are fabled to have been written by Moses. According to legend, the first four were given by God himself in dictation, while the fifth was wholly authored by Moses.
Rabbinical scholars, studying the Jewish Torah and other texts point out that there is no actual written evidence for this folkloric belief, noting that only four passages are actually credited to Moses by scripture. Christian scholars reached this same conclusion in the 18th century, after extensive textual analysis revealed that while Moses may have contributed to early drafts of the Torah, he certainly could not have written the whole thing himself. To begin with, the final book of the Torah ends with an account of Moses' own death and burial, and is written in the third person. Clearly, this portion at least was added by someone else. As scholars continued their close textual examination, they discovered significant variations of style, language, and ideology throughout the 5 books. The degree and quality of the variations indicated that various authors, living at distinctly different time periods, had composed different portions of the Torah.

Some variations might be explained by the fact that the Torah once existed in many different versions and editions. These were then copied and recopied over the centuries, until they were gathered up by Jewish scribes and cobbled into a single, reasonably consistent text. However, Bible/Torah scholars maintain that this fact, on its own, does not sufficiently explain the anomalies, unless of course what had existed prior to this process was not the Torah as such (i.e. not just different versions of the Torah), but an assortment of other religious texts, edited together to form a single narrative. The resulant work, repackaged as the Torah, was then passed along to later generations and mythologized as having always been a single narrative, told by one single man -- Moses. This mythology (that the Bible was created as a whole, direct from the mouth of God) would later be inherited by Christians, who would use this mythology to justify the torture and execution of anyone who dared question it's contents or construction, an approach epitomized by the Inquisition.

The evidence thus far suggests that the Torah was the collective work of four or five authors and that in all probability it was edited and altered by yet more individuals over the course of time. It is useful to note here that religious scholars place the time of Moses at 3300 to 3450 years before the present. Perhaps, as some conservative religious scholars assert, all this editing and redacting was divinely guided. Perhaps the entire three and a half thousand year process of editing, deleting, and revising was done wholly according to some divine will, and human bias and ambition never entered into it (although this implies that earlier drafts of the Bible were wrong, so how do we know if anyone's gotten it right yet?). And perhaps no part of the text was ever lost due to accident or decay prior to being edited into the final form of the Torah.

Ultimately, we can only wonder. No records survive to tell us what really happened. We know that changes occurred, but no one leaves a memo revealing why. However, if we were to infer from modern experience, such as the changes and revisions that affect state laws and the U.S. Constitution (cf. Sodomy And The Supreme Court), or even from historical changes made to Christian scriptures for political reasons, then we would tend to conclude that in ancient times, as in more recent centuries, spiritual doctrines were frequently altered or even suppressed to suit the political needs and personal beliefs of those in power.

Meanwhile, we certainly do know that the Tanach/Hebrew Bible continued to undergo additions and revisions over time. Additional books (Prophets, Writings) were added, with changes or redactions made here and there to the wording of these texts, possibly to bring scripture into alignment with the moral and political climate of the day.

Eventually, between 300 and 100 BC, under the Roman Empire and Roman Law, Jewish cultural and national identity was crumbling. If the Jews were to continue as a people, and if they were to keep the covenants made with God through Abraham and Moses despite being scattered and increasingly influenced by gentiles, they would need ready access to the scriptures.

But simply copying and distributing more volumes would not be enough. Hebrew was fast becoming the dead language of scholars. The majority of Jews now spoke a dialect of Greek. Greek was also the written language of commerce, personal correspondence, and other mudane tasks. Thus if more Jews were to have access to scripture -- whether through reading it or through having it read to them -- the Tanach would have to be translated into Greek. The resultant translation was called the Septuagint, a name which refers to the seventy scholars who, according to legend, were locked in different rooms and all eventually emerged with the same translation. (Historians claim the Septuagint was more likely the product of a series of translations over time.)

The translation of the scriptures into Greek proved to be an important turning point in the development of the Christian Bible, as we shall see. But before we contemplate such developments, it's important that we make note of two very important but often overlooked facts about the Hebrew language edition of the Hebrew Bible/Tanach, each having to do with the manner in which it was transcribed.

First, prior to the 6th century A.D., the written Tanach consisted primarily of consonants. To be able to actually translate the written text into understandable and meaningful words, one would have to receive special instruction by a teacher or rabbi. Knowledge of this correct interpretation or reading was passed down orally from teachers to students over the generations. Second, as if to further confuse matters, words were written without spaces in between. Thus knowledge of where one word ended and another began was, as with vowel sounds, dependent on the oral tradition.

The significance of these practices is that they opened the door to error and gross mistranslation. This would prove to be a serious problem in the Christian era, as those who had never received such training attempted to decipher the meaning of Hebrew language texts. However, since the discovery of "Old Testament" texts among the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls of Qumran, historians now know that dissent and discrepancies had been creeping into interpretation/transliteration of the scriptures for centuries. Simply put, transcribing the words without vowels or word breaks allowed different people to read different meanings into the text.

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The Co-opting of the Tanach

Translating the Tanach, or Hebrew Bible, into Greek (300-100 B.C.) was to have consequences the Jews had never foreseen. As the teachings of Jesus Christ grew in popularity, his following expanded among the gentiles, most of whom spoke Greek, not Hebrew. The Septuagint, the Greek language version of the Tanach/Hebrew Bible, allowed these Greek speaking Christians access to the scriptures so often referenced by Jesus and the Apostles. No doubt they hoped to gain some greater insight into Jesus' mysterious parables through reading Jewish scripture. In addition, within the Septuagint, the Christians found references and prophecies which seemed to validate their belief that Jesus was the Messiah, the blessed savior long foretold by the prophets of Judaism.
Understandably, most Jews did not appreciate having their holy book co-opted by an upstart religious cult -- especially one that had clearly misunderstood the mission of their (long awaited, and still awaited) Messiah. Worse yet, having propped up their own leader as a false Messiah, these Christians were now spreading his fame, and his heretical teachings, far and wide to all who would listen.

As far as mainstream Judaism was concerned, not only was Jesus not the Messiah, he wasn't even a real prophet. In fact, there had been no new prophets in roughly the 500 years since the closing or canonization of the Prophets portion of the Tanach. To amend this concept and acknowledge Jesus as a true prophet was absurd. His apparent teachings threatened the very foundations of Jewish society: the Law of Moses and the power and leadership of the priests.

Meanwhile, Christians were mixing the Torah and other scriptures of the Tanach (i.e. the Jewish scriptures) with texts generated by their own cult -– and presenting both as co-equal scripture. What's more, the rituals of the Early Christian Church were direcly borrowed from rituals performed in the Jewish synagogue, further blurring distinctions. Finally, the Christians were an evangelical cult, actively seeking and recruiting new members -- Jew and gentile alike. Increasingly, Jewish leaders felt the need to draw a sharp distinction between "true" scripture and the various other writings in circulation. It would not do for Jews, especially those living in far flung posts of the Roman Empire, to become confused about their own religious heritage and doctrine. Such confusion could take them down the same misguided path trod by Christians -– a path which included, among other things, abandoning kosher food rules and all observance of sacrificial duties, as well as the rite of male circumcision.

Such a mode of living might be fine for gentiles, but Jews were the "chosen people", meaning they were required by God to uphold the agreements of their covenant with him, negotiated through Abraham and Moses, which required the very customs and observances that Christians were ignoring. Moreover, it might be said that the common thread (and threat) that ran throughout Jewish scripture was the idea that God abandons his chosen people when they forget to honor that covenant. Without God's support, they would repeatedly found themselves helpless before their enemies -- a point which was surely on their minds after Rome destroyed the Second Temple in 70 A.D.

In response to this disturbing development, Jewish religious leaders convened the Council of Jamnia in 92 A.D., determined to separate true scripture from wannabe texts and outright heresy, Christian or otherwise. According to the Council, for a text to be retained as official scripture, it must:

Conform to the Torah (a.k.a the Pentateuch)
Be written in Hebrew.
Have been written in Palestine.
Have been generated before 400 B.C.
The texts excluded by these criteria, which had been present in the Septuagint, included Baruch, Judith, Sirach, Tobit, Wisdom, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and parts of Daniel and Esther. The Council also excluded a number of other books that once were in circulation as part of the Writings portion of the Tanach, though it is not clear whether any of these were ever truly deemed scripture.

Part of the reasoning behind the "written in Hebrew" requirement was surely the exclusion of Christian influenced works, as almost all of these were written in Greek. But a larger purpose must have been to preserve Jewish culture from annihilation through assimilation. If the Jews could not maintain their national identity as a political entity (that having been already crushed by Rome), then they would need to preserve a cultural identity or risk disappearing as a people. Ultimately, this goal was achieved through maintaining their own separate language, as well as other distinctive practices which set them apart no matter where they emigrated. The irony here is that the Greek language Septuagint, which had originally come into being in order to preserve Jewish culture, was now being abandoned hundred of years later for the same purpose -- to preserve Jewish culture.

Meanwhile, Christians had no problem with using the Septuagint. In fact, its usage was vital to the spread of their religion, as it would be nearly 500 years before the Hebrew language texts of the Tanach/Hebrew Bible became accessible as a stand-alone text -- that is, without requiring oral instruction by a Rabbi. Rabbinical instruction was generally not available nor desirable to gentile Christian converts, but the Septuagint was already available, not to mention highly accessible, being written in a language they already knew, Greek. Christians also found the Septuagint version to be in greater accord with their own doctrines: specifically, only the Septuagint contained references and turns of phrase that supported their own claim that Jesus was the Messiah.

For example, according to Christian mythology, Jesus had been the product of a virgin birth. The prediction that the savior would be of virgin birth could only be found in the Septuagint:

"'Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel' which means, 'God is with us.'"
(Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23)
Interestingly, while Greek translators interpreted the word almah as "virgin" in this passage, it actually means "the young woman". The word which meant "a virgin", was actually besulah. Oddly, elsewhere in the Septuagint, translation is in more in accord with this usage. Not surprisingly, Christian theologians who have acknowledged the error have attributed it to divine action, that is, to God paving the way for correct understanding of Jesus' role. Jews do not share this interpretation.
Ultimately Christianity would retain the Septuagint, paired with assorted New Testament texts, for many centuries to come, although it would modify it drastically by translating it a second time -- this time into Latin. The later revisions of this Latin translation would come to be known as the Catholic Bible.

1,000 years later, the Septuagint would become even more identified with the newly emergent Orthodox Christian Church. Shaking off the Roman Catholic Church's demand of total subservience and obedience, the Greek speaking Orthodox Church established itself as a thoroughly independent entity. Naturally, to avoid the taint of heresy, the Orthodox Church portrayed itself as remaining true to the original Christian Church while the Catholic Church broke away in a strange and offensive new direction. This schism between Rome and Constantinople (formerly heads of the Western and Eastern branches of the Church) would serve as a model for later schisms in the faith, 1500 years after the birth of Christ.

But of course, long before any of these developments came to pass, the Christian faith would continue to fall ever more heavily under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, a body which would profoundly change the nature and purpose of Christian worship, the politics of Western Civilization, and the usage and content of the Bible.

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A New Testament the rise of the christian church

With the rise of the Christian Church as an entity unto itself, a new era in the formation of the Bible had arrived. There were once numerous texts in circulation among the various Christian communities, including various Letters, Gospels, and Acts of the Apostles that are not included in modern Bibles. Naturally the party line parroted by the Roman Catholic Church and various Protestant sects is that all these texts were simply silly, worthless drivel (or worthless yet harmful heresy), correctly removed from the Bible by right-minded religious leaders acting on divine inspiration.
Originally there were roughly 25 or 30 variations of the Gospels alone, but by the time of the Muratorian Canon (180 AD), only four of these were included among the scriptures of the Bible -- Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. The criteria for inclusion were:

The text must not contain heresy. Heresy included anything that the dominant factions within the church disagreed with or saw as a threat to their own ideology.
The text should uphold the authority of the Apostles. By extension, any text which contradicts the alleged views of the Apostles must be discarded.
Texts should validate and even encourage the Christian zeal for martyrdom.
While the last criterion may seem a bit arbitrary and bizarre to some, it actually does make a certain sense, considering that Christianity was an underdog evangelical religion. If people shunned Christianity because it might get them killed, the religion would wither and die out. If people saw dying for the cause as exhilarating (and a ticket to Heaven), they might be more willing to sign on -- regardless of the consequences.
Texts that didn’t make the cut included the Acts of Peter, Paul, John, Andrew, and Thomas, the Letters of Clement, Barnabas, and The Shepherd, as well as many, many others. Certainly some of the texts have been deservedly shunned. Riddled with impossible anachronisms, absurd contradictions, and other easily detected inaccuracies, they were obvious forgeries.

One famous example to fall in this category is the Gospel of Barnabas. Although Church records do note an early Gospel of Barnabas having existed in the 6th century, the famous Gospel of Barnabas was an 14th-century Muslim apologetic forgery. That is, it was written to explain away those aspects of Jesus and his works that were offensive to Muslims, and to bring Jesus into line as a minor prophet in contrast to the later Mohammed. (In the Gospel of Barnabas, Jesus refers to Mohammed as the greater of the two whose shoelaces he is not worthy enough to untie.)

On the other hand, some of the deleted books were written with great authenticity and contained no actual heresy, but they made the Church look bad by mixing honest doctrine with ideas that might appear foolish or shocking. For example, the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians was originally included as part of official Church scripture but was later deleted -- the objection being that Clement likens Christ's resurrection to the rising of the Phoenix from its own ashes. This might have been fine had he referenced the Phoenix as a mythological being, but instead he refers to it as a real bird that existed in the physical world. Readers might draw the conclusion that Christ and his miracles, also referenced by Clement, had no more reality than the imaginary Phoenix.

Additionally, some books were proved to be pseudepigrapha, meaning they pretended to be an additional account of some well-known biblical character, or they were written in imitation of a pre-established biblical author. Examples include The Assumption of Moses, The Books of Adam and Eve, and The Testament of Abraham. Many such texts had once been treated as authentic scripture handed down from antiquity, when in fact they were of relatively recent origin. Such books are generally given away by their anachronisms, referencing events or cultures that had not yet occured or come into existence at the time when the book allegedly written.

It is worth noting that not all scholars agree as to what is and is not pseudepigrapha. For example, there are still some who argue in favor of including The Assumption of Moses as authentic scripture. At the same time, there are books of the Bible that are currently counted as authentic scripture even though they are filled with suspicious discrepancies and anachronisms. Clearly, the basis of selection is less than rational and objective.

The early Church was an institution rife with dissent and political factionalism. Different groups sought to put forth their own vision of Christ as officially vetted Church teaching. Later, the political and ideological entity that emerged as the official Church (and the official state religion of Rome) sought to suppress rival viewpoints and alternative perspectives. Thus many books were removed from the Bible simply for the sake of political maneuvering or spiritual small-mindedness.

The Gospel of Peter, for example, was struck for the following heretical passage: "And they brought two criminals and crucified the Lord between them. But he himself remained silent, as if in no pain." In the minds of Church leaders, the assertion that Jesus showed no sign of pain could have been used to back up Docetae assertions that the body of Jesus was not material (i.e. of flesh and blood), but rather a mere phantom or spiritual projection. The text was therefore excluded from scripture. Meanwhile modern scholars protest that the passage actually aligns with references in Isaiah 53:7 about the silence of the "suffering servant". Hence, Christ's supposed silence during the crucifixion could more rightly be viewed as a testament to his forebearance and his obedience to his "heavenly father".

Ironically, as much as Church leaders (and followers) would like to believe that they were guided by the hand of God in all such decisions, one cannot help but wonder if, in reality, it is the "hand of God" that is redressing their deletions as more and more chance discoveries lead to the recovery of suppressed scriptures. Thus the Gospel of Peter finally re-entered public awareness after a portion of it was discovered in a codex buried with a monk in Akhmîm, Egypt in 1886. This serendipitous find would foreshadow the later discovery of the Gospel of Thomas in Egypt in 1897. Fragmented, the Gospel of Thomas would not be more fully known until 1945 when a complete version in Coptic (an Egyptian language written in Greek derived alphabet) was discovered at Nag Hammadi. (Note that later, in 1958, the caves of Qumran yielded up the oldest Old Testament scrolls ever found, as well as other writings which date to the same era as New Testament works.)

When it was discovered, The Gospel of Thomas greatly intrigued religious scholars as it differed markedly from the canonical gospels handed down by the Church. Unlike the Gospels of Luke, Matthew, Mark, and John, it does not attempt to tell the story of Jesus' life, but rather shares a collection of his sayings. These aphorisms were apparently collected by the apostle Thomas during his time with Jesus and in some instances represent "inner teachings" which Jesus shared -- perhaps exclusively -- with him. The Gospel of Thomas presents a mystical, one might even say metaphysical, side to the teachings of Jesus, placing an emphasis on inner knowing (i.e. through direct attunement to God via the spirit self). No doubt this encouragement to seek spiritual guidance within the self was threatening to Church leaders, who naturally wanted to be in control of spiritual doctrine and, through it, the way in which people acted.


Jesus said, "The Pharisees and the scribes have taken the keys of knowledge (gnosis) and hidden them. They themselves have not entered, nor have they allowed entering those who wish to. You, however, be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves."
It would appear that the situation Jesus described was little changed by the advent of a new religion and a new religious hierarchy. Fear and the lust for power were as much a part of the gentile world as the Jewish world. The new (Christian) set of priests and scribes simply took the new set of scriptures as well as the old ones, blurring the very knowledge they were supposed to pass along.
Unfortunately it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss all of the deleted or excluded texts. In point of fact, there are enough suppressed gospels, lost books, and hidden letters for their discussion to fill several books and websites. But we would be remiss if we did not give mention to the one text that surely gave early Church fathers fits, or at least those of them that knew about it -- the Secret Gospel of Mark.

The Secret Gospel of Mark was rediscovered in 1958 at the Mar Saba Monastery near Jerusalem. Much maligned since its translation, the work has been vilified not for any explicit doctrine but for what might be implied and inferred from the little that is included in its remnant pages. To begin with, the fragments of the Secret Gospel -- and the letter in which it is contained -- point to the teachings of Jesus being two-fold. That is, that the public teachings, only vaguely described in the Bible, were accompanied by private teaching, available only to select individuals through private initiation.

More specifically, it is possible that some of these inner teachings involved a more "sexual Jesus", and that the man who inspired millions to a life of chastity may have incorporated sex into his initiatory techniques. Whether or not this is so, the Secret Gospel of Mark certainly echoed the anti-authoritarian Gospel of Thomas, in that it undermined adherence to religious tradition and encouraged living outside the box. By contrast, the later Christian Church (first Catholic and later Orthodox and Protestant) would emphasize -- upon pain of death -- the absolute necessity of conforming to "tradition" and to the will of those with the power of safeguarding and defining it (whether Pope, Presbyter, or Anglican King).

Additionally, the official teaching of the Church emphasized that the Kingdom of Heaven was either a) far off in another dimension (a place where the souls of the worthy would go upon bodily death) and/or b) that the Kingdom of Heaven would become present on Earth only at the End Times -- that is, after a great Apocalypse (as portrayed in Revelations) and the Judgment Day.

By contrast, both suppressed Gospels, as well as tidbits from within the sanctioned Gospels, imply that according to Jesus, the Kingdom of Heaven is here now. However, to access it -- to experience it -- would require a change of perception, a shift in the beliefs that would allow an ensuing shift in perception (and thus in daily life experience).

Jesus' actual words, "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand" are cited by Modern scholars as a key example of how the teachings of Jesus could be, and were, taken in different ways by different people. St. Clement, from whose letter the scrap of Secret Mark was lifted, comments that there were secret, inner teachings, intended only for those being "perfected"; meaning those who were sufficiently advanced to receive them.

With the passing of Jesus, or perhaps with the passing of the original Apostles (though the Gospel of Thomas implies that most of them had been too dense to comprehend the inner teachings anyway), the possibility for individuals to be initiated into these teachings directly appears to be lost. If there continued to be those among the Church able to conduct such teachings, we as members of the public at large don't hear about it. And certainly, the teachings of most Christian leaders don't betray a philosophy such as is pointed at by the Gospels of Thomas and Mark.

Writings treating this matter exist only in recovered fragments (such as Clement's letter, the Thomas materials from Nag Hammadi, etc.) that hint at the Church's suppression of such doctrines.

With the death of the Apostles, the power of the Church became more and more centered in the Church in Rome. Official doctrine was solidifying; at the same time heresies sprang up as Christian communities sought a more meaningful understanding of their faith. It is as if a vacuum existed, as if they themselves found the mainstream remnants of Jesus' teachings to be insubstantial and insufficient -- as if something more, some further explanation or doctrine were held back from them.

But as each community added on its own additional practices and explanations, it put the Church as a whole in danger of fragmentation. Additionally, in the eyes of Church leaders, commissioned by the Apostles, to add such "filler" is to deviate from what was directly handed down from Jesus and to lose the genuine legacy. Even to emphasize the fragments of teaching captured in the written Gospels, they claimed, is to deny this legacy. Precious little of what was handed down orally from Master to Apostles to community had been transcribed.

Finally, in response to these threats to Church stability and legacy, Clement wrote, "Let us cease to make vain searches, let us come to the glorious and venerable fixed rule (canona) that has been handed down to us." In other words, even if what they've got seems sketchy or dubious, they must stick with it because it's all they've got -- or at least all that is fit to be shared with the mob. To add anything not directly handed down through official channels, from Jesus to the Apostles to the Bishops, is to risk going terribly astray. Meanwhile, Church leaders like himself deliberately withheld the fullness of Jesus' teachings, as unfit for the masses.

As the power of the Roman Church became centered in the person of Clement, and later in his successors, this attitude and approach to doctrine (emphasis on orthodoxy and conformity, suppression of inner teachings) formed the foundation of what would eventually become the Roman Catholic Church. It is this body which would eventually wield astonishing power over the dissemination and distortion of both the Old and New Testament. In addition, through its eventual reign of bloody terror (both before and after the Inquisition), it would profoundly shape and delimit the minds of the Christians regarding the content of the Bible, it's inherent message, and appropriate reaction and conformity to that message.

Interestingly enough, another factor that may have helped shape this outcome of secrecy and suppression was the violent effort of the (pagan) Roman Empire to stamp out the Christian movement. This effort, which escalated after Nero scapegoated the Christians for a devastating fire in 64 A.D., may have effectively wiped out many who were familiar with the earliest doctrines of Jesus and the Apostles, leaving interpretation of the teachings more profoundly to the martyrdom/doomsday cult of Clement and his Catholic successors.

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Distortions of the Roman Catholic Church
Just as the works of the Old Testament would not have survived without being copied and recopied, so too did the survival of the New Testament depend on the work of generation after generation of scribal copyists. But its survival also depended on the practice of making and distributing duplicate manuscripts, because, despite the reverence of early Christians for the written Gospel, decay was not the only threat to its survival. War, accident, persecution, factionalism, and the suppression of heresies all played their role in obliterating the original texts (or autographs) as well as the early copies which were made from them.
Consequently, virtually nothing remains from the early Christian period. The original texts of the New Testament simply no longer exist. The Gospels of Luke, Matthew, Mark, and John only exist as decaying copies of copies -- which themselves may have been heavily edited or marred with accidental errors. What's more, even these early copies are fragmented and few. It should be noted that only 35 of these copies date back to before 400 A.D., and amazingly only 80 manuscript copies date before 800 A.D.

The two earliest fragments of John's gospel, for example, are copies transcribed in 200 A.D. -- at least 100 years after the death of the Apostle himself. Not surprisingly, this fact has caused many to speculate whether the manuscript really represents the words of John at all. Meanwhile, mainstream historians, linguists, and religious scholars agree that the Gospel of John, as we know it, differs markedly from the Gospel of John that was available to the early Christian Church.

Take, for example, the popular story (John 7:53-8:11) in which Jesus saves a woman from being stoned as an adulteress. It is from this passage that Christianity draws the oft-paraphrased advice, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her."

Interestingly enough, this entire story (or periscope) is missing from the earliest version of John. It is also missing from early Latin translations of the text, missing from older versions used in the Holy Land and in fact, according to the 12th century Byzantine scholar Euthymius Zigabenus (the earliest church father to comment on the passage), accurate copies of the Gospel of John do not and should not contain it. Furthermore, if one blocks out the entire little story, John 7:52 flows just fine into John 8:12, lending further credence to the idea that the passage was simply inserted after the fact. Who inserted it, and why, remains a mystery.

In yet another example, in all versions of John (9:35) transcribed after the 5th century one can read the following passage: "Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" [emphasis added]. But if one compares this version to papyri and codices transcribed before the 5th century, one finds this rendering: "Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, Do you believe in the Son of man?" [emphasis added].

Again, the point of these examples is to illustrate the fact that someone, at some point, made significant changes to the Gospel of John. Perhaps in some cases it was an unintended error (it was quite common for scribes to lose their place while copying manuscripts and "paste" a paragraph in where it didn’t belong), or perhaps it was someone's attempt to restore to the record a piece of wisdom that had been lost with the suppression of some other Gospel manuscript. We don't know. But that the phrase "Son of man" could have been replaced by "Son of God" by accident -- and would then be perpetuated unchallenged -- seems ludicrous, given the significance of the wording.

What we do know is that this kind of discrepancy or tampering is not unique to the Gospel of John. As mentioned earlier, we cannot know what the original texts said with any certainty. The original manuscripts are apparently gone. But as we compare the early copies, and compare them also with later versions handed down through other branches of the Church (such as Eastern Orthodox, Coptic Christian, etc.), we do notice all kinds of variations and discrepancies.

In total there are 300,000 discrepancies in the New Testament amongst various early manuscript versions. Significantly, the greatest amount of variation (and revision) is found in the most significant portions of the New Testament manuscripts -- that is, within those parts that most determine official Church doctrine: the birth and death of Christ, the usage of the Eucharist, his time in the garden of Gethsemane, his utterings on the cross, his resurrection, and his ascension to heaven.

The natural question is: how did these discrepancies occur? Naturally some of it must be, as mentioned earlier, scribal error, simple miscopying. But the fact that the bulk of it occurs where it matters most -- where it would have most impacted the politics and policies of the Church -- is terribly suspicious. Are we supposed to believe this is all mere coincidence?

Considering that the Roman Catholic Church (under whose watch most of these discrepancies crept in) is about as forthcoming with such information as the Cold War Kremlin, it may be some time before we get the straight scoop on how and why these alterations occurred and what in fact it means for the validity of Church dogma. In the meantime, it is commonly acknowledged fact that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (i.e. the four Gospels accepted as authentic by the Church) bear all the signs of secondary texts. That is, each one appears to have been pieced together from other, earlier, works, perhaps both written and oral.

And while it is often generously granted that these texts may have been put together from materials written or dictated directly by the Apostles, there is in fact no real proof of this. Additionally, the Church's claims that Hebrews was written by Paul and Revelations by John -- claims made to beef up the authority of the dead Apostles and their successors in authority, the popes and bishops -- are not warranted by the evidence. In fact, historians acknowledge that it is not known who wrote these texts.

Finally, it is important to note that while the Church began its reign with Greek versions of the New Testament texts and Greek translations of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible (i.e. the Septuagint), the growing domination of the Roman Church (vis-a-vis other branches of the early Church) meant that these works would inevitably be translated into Latin. Qualities of translation varied from version to version, culminating in the work of Saint Jerome (342-420) who produced the earliest definitive Latin translation, known as The Vulgate.

Although Jerome allegedly sought to excise errors in the Old Testament translations by referring back to Hebrew texts, modern scholars point out that he could not have done this with much thoroughness (or was simply ignorant of Hebrew/Jewish idioms) for serious errors of translation (and therefore meaning) remained in the Vulgate. Thus both Old and New Testament materials passed down by the Catholic Church were suspect, riddled with errors and perhaps outright forgeries.

None of this stemmed the growing power of the Church in the least. Naturally, the larger an organization grows, the larger the potential for conflict and the greater the fireworks when dissent brews amongst those at the top. In the earliest days of the Church, while the Apostle John still lived, Bishop Clement (head of the Church at Rome) solved this problem by convincing the faithful that stability of the Church and the continuance of the new religion could be had by following a military like organization -- i.e. through absolute obedience to leaders who themselves were absolutely obedient to the man at the top. Oddly enough, Clement finessed himself into the role of man at the top, though the last Apostle was still alive.

Clement's dominant role was inherited and built upon by his successors. Eventually, other branches of the Church withered away, leaving Rome and Antioch (later Constantinople) as twin beacons of the faith. Rome continued to wield a disproportionate influence -- a fact which the Catholic Church explains mythologically by invoking the Apostles Peter and Paul, whom it claims fostered the early Roman Church before their martyrdoms. Whatever the reason for the Roman branches' early importance (some think it may have been foretold by Jesus and thus become a self-fulfilling prophecy), it could only grow in power once it was turned into the official state religion of the Roman Empire.

By 1054, the primacy of the Roman branch of the Church had grown to such proportions that chief Bishop, now called Pope, moved to assert his absolute power over all the entire Christian Church. Thus emerged the Roman Catholic Church and -- as the Constantinople arm of the Church rebelled against this usurpation -- the Eastern Orthodox Church. Eventually, each would develop its own official Bible, rituals, and rules, although having been essentially a joint entity for 1,000 years, much remained common.

The legacy of the Roman Catholic Church has been a powerful one. For centuries, its voice and perspective was the dominant authority on the life and teachings of Jesus, on its proper interpretation, and on the allowable forms of Christian practice and moral life. It is only in recent times that secular and religious scholars have gathered together the alternative Christian voices represented in other early branchings of the Christian Church (such as the Coptic Christian Church, the Syrian Church, etc.) and compared these with various finds being made in libraries and archaeological digs around the mediterranean region and made these available to the general public for reading and study.

Together, these alternative "voices" offer a new way of understanding the teachings of Jesus, even as they introduce further questions and enigmas. At the same time, these same alternative source materials have made it blatantly clear that although the Roman Catholic Church continues to style itself as the divinely-appointed guardian of the Gospel and as the successor of Jesus' ministry, it has in fact for centuries played the role of censor and false prophet, repressing and misconstruing knowledge that had already been suppressed, and thus distorted, by the earliest leaders of the Christian Church. What was once hidden from the spiritually unadvanced for mystical (and perhaps political) reasons was later simply obliterated by Catholicism. Meanwhile, those portions of the teachings that had been public were further distorted and deleted, supplanted by the growing body of Catholic doctrine.

[NEONRACER]

Protestant Christianity reformation of the bible

During the centuries succeeding the death and alleged ascension of Jesus, the Christian Faith evolved from small groups of faithful awaiting the end times and second coming -- surely due any day -- to a vast yet highly organized and orthodox religious bureaucracy that ministered to the massive populations of the faithful on multiple continents. Not surprisingly, a great deal of ritual and doctrine was accreted during this time that had not existed in the early years of the Church.
One such accreted doctrine was the absolute infallibility of the Pope and his absolute power over the entirety of the clergy and the laity. This was the primary doctrine that split the Eastern and Western Churches into the completely independent entities now known as the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. In reference to this absolute power, Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) wrote: "We may according to the fullness of our power, dispose of the law and dispense above the law. Those whom the Pope of Rome doth separate, it is not a man that separates them but God. For the Pope holdeth place on earth, not simply of a man but of the true God." And Pope Nicholas I (858-867) declared, "the appellation of God had been confirmed by Constantine on the Pope, who being God, cannot be judged by man."

Naturally, to be God on Earth is to wield a great deal of (political) power. And the aphorism "absolute power corrupts absolutely" was certainly not disproved by the office of Pope. Under the protection of their office, popes and their lesser brethren committed scandalous acts of hypocrisy, debauchery, and ruthless political maneuvering. Pope John the XII, who frequently drank himself stupid (he is said to have toasted the devil during one drinking binge) and called on pagan gods to help him win at dice, is alleged to have used the Lateran, the papal Palace, as a brothel. During an attempt to unseat him as Pope, he was accused of sacrilege, simony, perjury, murder, adultery, and incest. He responded by excommunicating his accusers. Some accounts claim he was eventually disposed of by a lover's jealous husband.

Pope Leo X (1475-1521), who is alleged to have said "the fable of Christ has been quite profitable to us", was so fond of throwing himself extravagant parties that he emptied the Vatican's treasury. Not a man to be easily thwarted, he funded his spending habits by taking out enormous loans (on behalf of the Church) at 40% interest. As the Church, and the papacy, sank further into debt, he began selling church offices -- that is, appointing to high office anyone willing to pay lavishly for the privilege. He is also credited with inventing the selling of "indulgences".

Although the Catholic Church today swathes the purpose of "indulgences" in thick and murky legalese, to the layperson of the late Middle Ages, purchasing an indulgence simply meant: donating large amounts of money to the Church so that one would not be punished (by God) for one's sins -- past or future. Such a policy especially benefited wealthy sexual sinners who could find pardon for their fornication and adultery without having to actually give it up. Just as happily, their dead relatives, stuck in purgatory for any sins committed in life, could even be hastened on to heaven simply by greasing the holy palms of Roman Catholic officials.

By the 14th century, such unholy goings-on (plus some vicious self-serving politics) led to mounting unrest and attempts, both secular and religious, to throw off the papal yoke. One such effort was John Wycliffe's 1380 translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible into English. Not only did he dare to retranslate the Holy Word on his own, without papal permission, but he also made dozens of copies of his illegal manuscript that they might be distributed (and further copied) among the laity.

Wycliffe's radical actions threatened the spiritual and political power of the Church, introducing the possibility that laypersons could now read and interpret the scripture for themselves. Naturally, this meant they could bypass the indoctrinations of the Catholic Church, including all the accreted traditions and doctrines that helped reinforce its power and the power of the supporting priesthood. As a result, Wycliffe's translation (and the doctrines of his teachings) so enraged the Church that 44 years after his death, the Pope ordered his bones dug up, crushed, and thrown in the river.

The irony here is that when the Church's official text, the Latin Vulgate, was first created by St. Jerome (sometime in the late 4th century), it was intended to serve as translation for the people. That is, Jerome had translated the texts from the original Greek and Hebrew into the language of the common folk of Rome and the Empire: Latin. But 1000 years later, the Roman Empire was no more. Italian had replaced Latin as the common tongue in Rome, and Latin was now taught only to scholars and the clergy. Saint Jerome and his contemporaries would surely have endorsed the creation of English language Bibles -- or German language, or French or any other language spoken by the faithful or by potential converts.

But the Catholic Church had changed much in the thousand years since Saint Jerome. The goal of the Church was no longer to disseminate the written Gospel, but to jealously hoard it and to ensure that the ideas it offered were carefully interpreted by its own agents, to its own advantage. Meanwhile, by presenting the Bible, and the service of Mass, only in the now antiquated language of Latin, the Church excluded everyone but wealthy, well-educated city dwellers from knowledge of the Gospel.

Furthermore, even those who could read and understand the text of the Vulgate were being led astray. 14th-16th century critics of the Late Vulgate version claimed that it twisted the actual meaning of the scriptures, both Old and New Testament. One such critic was Thomas Linacre, an Oxford scholar who had traveled all the way to Italy to learn Greek. Upon reading Greek language manuscripts of the New Testament for himself, Linacre proclaimed, "Either this is not the Gospel... or we are not Christians." So great a departure was the Vulgate from the earlier copies of the New Testament that Linacre felt the Catholic Church was teaching some other religion entirely, one not reflective of the true message of Christ.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church had much at stake in controlling access to the scripture. Alternate translations threatened both the importance and the continuance of the Church. Not surprisingly then, anyone caught in possession of one of Wycliffe's English language manuscripts (or charged with orally transmitting portions thereof) could expect torment and execution. In 1517, for example, seven people were burned at the stake simply for teaching their children an English version of the Lord's Prayer.

But such dealings only served to further damn the Church in the eyes of those who favored the free exchange of knowledge and the free exercise of reason. In 1517, fed up with the Church's doctrines and abuses, an obstreperous and determined German scholar named Martin Luther publicly declared the flaws in their theology by nailing his famed 95 Theses of Contention to the door of the Wittenberg Church.

Luther had read for himself Hebrew manuscripts of the (Old Testament) Bible. And he was aware that several texts included in the Latin Vulgate version were not counted as authentic scripture according to the Hebrew Bible ratified at the Council of Jamnia. Most significantly, it was from these very texts, of spurious nature, that the Catholic Church drew justification for its very lucrative doctrines of purgatory, sin, and the purchase of indulgences. In Luther's view, the Roman Catholic Church was utilizing bogus scriptures to line its own pockets. More importantly, these bogus scriptures conflicted with the very message of the Gospel -- that those who have faith in Christ are saved.

Despite the boldness of his dissent, Luther's "heresy" was not ended in the usual fiery fashion, with an execution at the stake. Instead, aided by very powerful friends, the now-outlaw Martin Luther escaped to create yet another large thorn in the side of the Church -- his own German language translation of the New Testament. And in fact, he would eventually publish an entire German language version of the Bible, minus the offending seven books.

Luther's bold stance soon drew to his side another disgruntled religious scholar and reformer, William Tyndale. Head of the reform movement in England, Tyndale had fled to Germany to escape capture (and execution) while working on his own English language version of the New Testament. Most significantly, Tyndale's association with Luther meant that he (unlike Wycliffe) had access to a printing press. Thus he could produce not dozens of books, but hundreds. After binding, the books were smuggled back to England in sacks of flour and so on, where many were confiscated and burned. Anyone found in possession of the book was also burned. However, Tyndale merely continued to print more books, and smugglers continued to supply them to England.

Eventually, in 1536, Tyndale was betrayed, captured and executed. But his work was carried on by Myles Coverdale and John Rogers -- and scores of others who wittingly or unwittingly smuggled the heretical books into England. Had Tyndale lived but three more years, he would have witnessed an unbelievable reversal of fortunes. In 1539 King Henry VIII, replacing the Roman Catholic Church with his own newly-formed Anglican Church, found himself in need of the very thing that he had killed Tyndale to suppress: hundreds and hundreds of English language Bibles.

Henry's bold, albeit selfish move (he was pissed off at the Church for controlling his sex life and matrimonial schemes), would prove to be a significant turning point in the development of English language Bibles as well as in the power held by the Roman Catholic Church.

[Hulud]

all i got outta that was blah blah blah, cause im not gonna read it lol
its way too fucking long, summary please

[Killer]

.... could u shorten that... lol

[NEONRACER]

It should be read. With all the talk about religion and what is right and what is wrong I would be a good idea for everyone to read this. Don't be closed minded, read it, think about it and then discuss.

[Wedge]

I briefly skimmed it.

Is this just trying to find a basis to falsify the Bible? If so, I will take my time to read it, if you will read "The Case for Christ" by Strobel. I think after reading this, you will delete this thread, if your trying to disprove the Bible.

[NEONRACER]

I am not trying disprove anything. People have made up their minds and are closed to anything to the contrary. What I am trying to do is show people that there are 2 sides to everything. The fact of the matter is there is no proof one way or the other if the Bible is real or not. No matter how long you research it you will not find a difinitive answer. Everyone keeps talking but nobody is posting anything besides their own beliefs to back up what they believe.

[Wedge]

I already know there is no real way to disprove or prove the Bible. I don't like closed minded people either. I encourage everyone to do research, much like you have. I have my own reasons backing up what I believe, just like you.

Any paticular part as to what I should read first?

[NEONRACER]

Read from the top to bottom, it is order. This isn't in no way to bash on anyone but I think most of the fanatics out there have only read one side of things. I don't believe you can make a life altering decision without knowing EVERYTHING there is to know on the subject. I still have not read everything on the subject so I am still trying to learn.

[Wedge]

I don't know that I can read everything on this subject. But like you, I am fascinated to learn more. If I get some time I will try to read it, I enjoy reading all sides. (not saying this is trying to bash it, simple because I haven't read it yet.)