Apology!
This text is not perfect. The original version ignored quotation marks, such as “gospel” to signal the author's opinion.
  But, more seriously, Wheless could have provided a guide to the possible future. If Jewish power continues, the world faces similar events to those of the early middle ages described by Wheless, disastrous for non-Jews.
  Wheless in 1930 is worlds away from the modern ideas of Jewish psyops against Greece and Rome, and Catholicism as a psyop. Wheless assumes there was hatred between Jews and Roman Catholics; and fails to mention the material reasons for the support of the church—which for its own reasons must have felt thriving and successful.
  Wheless may have considered himself a Jew; he is described as being a banker's son, and was educated at home; he seems to have easily found places to work and (in 1930) may have thought this his duty to the world. So don't expect penetrating comment on Jews, Moslems, or 'pagans'.
—Rae West August 2023
CHAPTER V THE GOSPEL FORGERIES
[STILL TINKERING AT
IT! 150 | SOME
TESTS FOR FORGERY 151 | THE GOSPEL TITLES 152
| THE CANONICITY OF
THE FOUR GOSPELS 154 | THE MARK FABLE BELIES
CANONICITY 155 | THE GOSPELS ACCORDING TO
GREEK PRIESTS 157 | THE FOUR
GOSPELSCHOSEN 158 | WHY FOUR GOSPELS? 159
| INSPIRATION AND
PLAGIARISM 162 | GOSPELS LATE
FORGERIES 163 | 1
Bishop Papias | 2
Justin Martyr | 3
Irenaeus | LUKE
DISCREDITS APOSTOLICITY 166 | FORGERIES IN THE FORGED
GOSPELS 169 | CONTRADICTIONS AND
TRUTH 170 | JESUS
- MAN OR GOD? 172 | UPON THIS ROCK I WILL
BUILD MY CHURCH 174 | THE CHURCH FOUNDED ON
THE ROCK 179 | PETER-ROCK-CHURCH DENIED
AB SILENCIO 182 | GO, TEACH ALL NATIONS
FORGERY 183 | ACTS BELIES THE GO,
TEACH ALL NATIONS FORGERY 183 | THE FORGED GOSPEL
ENDINGS 186 | THE
BAPTISMAL FORGERY 188 | A MEDLEY OF
FORGERIES 188 | THE WOMAN IN ADULTERY
FORGERY 188 | THE
JOHN XXI FORGERY 189 | THE LORDS PRAYER
FORGERY 189 | THE
UNKNOWN GOD FORGERY 190 | THE FORGED EPISTLES,
ETC. 190 | THE
EPISTLE OF PETER FORGERIES 192 | THE GOD MANIFEST
FORGERY 193 | THE
THREE HEAVENLY WITNESSES FORGERY 193]
To Table of Contents
of Wheless' 'Forgery in Christianity'
Home Page of Rae West's site
Whether a Church which
stands convicted of having forged its Creed, would have any
scruple of forging its Gospels, is a problem that the reader will
solve according to the influence of prejudice or probability on
his mind. - Taylor, Diegesis, p. 10.
LET us now take up the holy Evangels and Epistles of
Christ-propaganda. After even our cursory examination of the
welter of Gospels, Acts, Epistles and other pious frauds of
Christian missionary-work, all admittedly forged by holy hands
in the early Christian age of apocryphal literature in the names
of Jesus Christ himself, of the Twelve pseudo-apostles and other
Worthies, including Mother Eve, even the most credulous and
uncritical Believer must feel the intrusion of some question: How
came the four Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, to
be sometime accepted as genuine and inspired? and, Why are there
only Four out of so much greater a number, as we have seen in
circulation and acceptance? The questions are pertinent, and
shall be given fair answer.
This entire aggregation of forged religious writings, under the
guise of genuine Gospels, Acts, Epistles, Apocalypses, falsely
attributed to apostolic writers, is know together as Old
Christian Literature, whether now called canonical or apocryphal.
Of it EB. says that this present distinction does not, in point
of fact, rest upon any real difference in the character or origin
of the writings concerned, but only upon the assumption of their
differing values as sacred or non-sacred books. (EB. iii, 3481.)
Furthermore, the common characteristic and motive of them all is
thus described, or explained: To compose letters under another
name, especially under the name of persons whose living
presentment, or real or supposed spiritual equipment, it, was
proposed to set before the reader, was then just us usual as was
the other practice of introducing the same persons into
narratives and reporting their words in the manner of which we
have examples, in the case of Jesus, in the Gospels, and, in the
case of Peter, Paul, and other apostles, in the Acts. (EB. iii,
3481.)
The Gospel has come down to us, says Bishop Irenaeus (about 185
A.D.), which the apostles did at one time proclaim in public,
and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in
the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith. ...
For, after our Lord rose from the dead [the apostles] departed
to the ends of the earth, preaching the glad tidings of the good
things sent from God to us, who indeed do equally and
individually possess the Gospel of God. (Iren., Adv. Haer, Bk.
III, ch. i; ANF. i, 414.) Bishop Irenaeus and Bishop Papias have
both averred that the Christ lived to old age (even as late as
98-117 A.D.), flatly denying thus as heresy the Gospel stories
as to his crucifixion at about thirty years of age. In any event,
the Apostles, according to the record, scattered to the ends of
the earth, preaching, orally, before they wrote anything at all.
But, says CE., although the New Testament was not written all
at once, the books that compose it appeared one after another in
the space of fifty years, i.e., in the second half of the first
{148} century. (CE. xiv, 530.) That this last clause is
untrue will be fully and readily demonstrated. This statement,
too, contradicts Bishops Papias and Irenaeus, who are,
positively, the only two of the second century Fathers who up to
their times at all mention written Gospels or their supposed
authors, as we have seen and shall more particularly notice.
And CE. says, as is true, of the earliest existing manuscripts
of any New Testament books: We have New Testament MSS. written
not much more than 300 years after the composition of the books;
and it admits (though with much diminution of truth, as we shall
see): And in them we find numerous differences, though but few
of them are important. (CE. xiv, 526.) In this CE. at another
place, and speaking much more nearly the truth, contradicts
itself, saying: The existence of numerous and, at times,
considerable differences between the four canonical Gospels is
a fact which has long been noticed and which all scholars readily
admit. ... Those evangelical records (SS. Matthew, Mark, Luke)
whose mutual resemblances are obvious and striking, and ... the
narrative (that of St. John) whose relation with the other three
is that of dissimilarity rather than that of likeness. (CE. vi,
658.)
But the so-called canonical books of the New Testament, as of
the Old, are a mess of contradictions and confusions of text, to
the present estimate of 150,000 and more variant readings, as is
well known and admitted. Thus CE.: It is easy to understand how
numerous would be the readings of a text transcribed as often as
the Bible, and, as only one reading can represent the original,
it follows that all the others are necessarily faulty. Mill
estimated the variants of the New Testament at 30,000, and since
the discovery of so many MSS. unknown to Mill, this number has
greatly increased. (CE. iv, 498.) Who, then, is inspired to
distinguish true from false readings, and thus to know what Jesus
Christ and his entourage really said and did, or what some
copyists error or priests forgery make them say or do, falsely?
Of the chaos and juggling of sacred texts in the Great Dioceses
of Africa, CE. says: There never existed in early Christian
Africa an official Latin text known to all the Churches, or used
by the faithful to the exclusion of all others. The African
bishops willingly allowed corrections to be made in a copy of the
Sacred Scriptures, or even a reference, when necessary, to the
Greek text. With some exceptions, it was the Septuagint text that
prevailed, for the O.T., until the fourth century. In the case
of the New, the MSS. were of the Western type. On this basis
there arose a variety of translations and interpretations. ...
Apart from the discrepancies to be found in two quotations from
the same text in the works of two different authors, and
sometimes of the same author, we now know that of several books
of Scripture there were versions wholly independent of each
other. (CE. i, 193.)
Bishop Victor of Tunnunum, who died about 569 A.D. and whose
work, says CE., is of great historical value, says that in the
fifth century, In the consulship of Messala, at the command of
the Emperor Anastasius, the Holy Gospels, as written Idiotis
Evangelists, are corrected and amended. (Victor of T., Chronica,
p. 89-90; cited by Dr. Mills, Prolegom. to R.V., p. 98.) This
would indicate some very substantial tinkering with Holy Writ;
which
{149} process was a continuing one, for, says CE.,
Under Sixtus V (1585-90) and Clement VIII (1592-1605) the Latin
Vulgate after years of revision attained its present shape. (CE.,
xii, 769.) And the Vulgate, which was fiercely denounced as
fearfully corrupt, was only given sanction of divinity by the
Council of Trent in 1546, under the Curse of God against any who
questioned it. Though this amendatory tinkering of their two
Holinesses was after the Council of Trent had put the final Seal
of the Holy Ghost on the Vulgate in 1546!
STILL TINKERING AT IT!
The ancient clerical trick of tempering with the Word of God and
amending its plenary Divine Inspiration and Inerrancy, goes on
apace today, even to the extent of putting a veneer of
civilization on the barbarian Hebrew God, and warping his own
barbarian words so as to make a semblance of a God of Mercy out
of the self-styled Jealous God of Holy Writ.
In 1902, after the sacred Council of Trent, in 1546, had put the
Curse of God on any further tinkering with the Inerrant Bible,
His Holiness Leo XIII appointed a Commission of Cardinals, known
as the Pontifical Biblical Commission, to further amend Divine
Inspiration; in 1907, the Commission, with the approval of the
sovereign pontiff, invited the Benedictine Order to undertake a
collection of the variant readings of the Latin Vulgate as a
remote preparation for a thoroughly amended edition. (CE. ii,
557.) This august body has recently laid before His Holiness,
after all these years of labor, the revised text of the
revelations of Moses in the Book of Genesis; and is now worrying
with Exodus and the Ten Commandments in chapter XX thereof.
Associated Press dispatches published to the world today, relate
that the Vaticans International Commission on the revision of the
Bible [is] taking steps to correct one of the most famous
Biblical passages, Exodus xx, 5, now believed to have been
mistranslated! (N.Y. Times, May 18, 1930.) The actual text, and
what the Vatican Commission thinks it should read, are here
quoted so that all may judge of the immense farce and fraud of
this capital falsification;the material tampering being
indicated by italics [Not in this version - RW]:-
Exodus xx, 5as is.
For I the Lord thy God am a Jealous
God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children
unto the third and fourth generation of then that hate me; ...
Dittoas falsified.
For I, the Lord thy God, am a God
of loving-kindness and mercy, considering the errors of the
fathers as mitigating circumstances in judging the children unto
the third and fourth generation!
Even a fool knows that no set of words, humanly or divinely
devisable, could bear such enormity of contrary translation; this
{150} is self-evident. The simple Hebrew words of verse
5 do not admit of a word of tampering in translation. Even the
present translations into modern languages make apparent the
correctness of the familiar rendering. The words of verse
5visiting the iniquities ... of them that hate me, close
with a semicolon, followed immediately by their
antithesis:And showing mercy [Heb. chesed] unto thousands
of them that love me, and keep my commandments. (v. 6; Deut. v.
9, 10.) The Jealous God pursues the progeny of those that hate
him, and shows mercy ... to them that love him. The inspired
correction of the mistranslation leaves verse 6 meaningless and
redundant.
But the two simple Hebrew words chiefly involved make this
fraudulent correction ridiculous and impossible. In Hebrew,
Yahweh says from Sinai: Anoki yahweh elohe-ka EL QANNAI
Yahweh thy God [am a] Jealous God. The only false translation in
this verse is Lord thy God for the 6,000-times falsified Yahweh
thy God, as elsewhere noted. Always qanna means jealousand
is used of the jealous god, husband, wife, etc. The joker in this
false correction is apparent from the word chesedmercy,
hundreds of times used in Holy Writ. There is no Hebrew word
meaning loving-kindness; this is a fanciful rendering given by
the pious translators to the same old word chesedmercy.
Even the Infallible One knowsor can look in a Hebrew
dictionary or concordance and seethat el qanna ... visiting
iniquitycannot be twisted into et chesed and chesed ...
showing chesedmercy to only those that love him. And how
many thousands of corrections of words now believed
mistranslated, would be necessary to whitewash the barbarian
Yahweh of Holy Writ into a whited sepulchre of civilized deity!
SOME TESTS FOR FORGERY
We have seen the debauchery of forgery out of which the Four
Gospels were born. This makes pertinent the critical statement
of one of the latest authorities on the subject: Few genuine
texts have come down to us from beyond the Middle Agesmost
documents reaching us in the form of later copies made by scribes
in monasteries; and he adds: The mere fact that documents have
been accepted for centuries does not itself protect them from the
tests of historical criticism. (Shotwell, See of Peter, Gen.
Introd. xix, xxii.) It is pertinent to add here a paragraph from
CE. which states with entire accuracy the elementary principles
upon which literary criticism rests; due to the application of
just these principles by honest and fearless critics, the Bible
has been stripped of every clerical pretense of inspired
inerrancy and of even common literary and historical honesty; so
that even the inerrant Church has been driven to confess
countless errors and forgeries; even, as we have seen, to the
frank repudiation of the fables of Creation, the Mosaic
authorship of the Pentateuch, and the divine revelation of the
Hebrew religion, which is thus shown to be a very human
evolution. These critical principles have destroyed the vast mass
of Hebrew and Christian apocrypha; and may now be applied to the
New Testament booklets which yet make false pretense to divine
inspiration of truth. Says CE.:
{151}Some
broad principles [of literary criticism] are universally admitted
by critical scholars. A fundamental one is that a literary work
always betrays the imprint of the age and environment in which
it was produced; another is that a plurality of authors is proved
by well-marked differences of diction and style, at least when
they coincide with distinctions of viewpoint or discrepancies in
a double treatment of the same subject. A third received canon
holds to a radical dissimilarity between ancient Semitic and
modern Occidental, or Aryan, methods of composition.
(CE. iv. 492.)
The lines last above in italics point to the most fatal of all
proofsthat of double treatment or forged interpolations,
than which nothing is clearer evidence of tampering and later
fraudulent alterations of text. The most radical dissimilarity
between the ancient Semitic methods of religious composition and
our modern Occidental notions of literary honestyor even
of intelligent forgeryis, that the Hebrew and Greek
religious forgers were so ignorant or careless of the principles
of criticism, that they interpolated their fraudulent new matter
into old manuscripts without taking care to erase or suppress the
previous statements glaringly contradicted by the new
interpolations. Though, as the great masses of the ignorant
Faithful couldnt read, it may have suited the design of the
priests to retain both contradictory matters, either of which
might be used according to occasion to impose on their credulous
Flocks.
When, therefore, in the same document, two statements of alleged
fact or doctrine are found, one of which is in glaring
contradiction of the other, one or the other is inevitably false
and to a moral certainty the work of a later and different hand.
When, furthermore, one of the statements is consonant with the
time and conditions under which it was supposedly written, or to
which it refers, and the contradictory betrays the imprint of the
age and environment in which it was written, later and different
from that of the original, and/or betrays distinctions of
viewpoint or 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 questioned documents of the Four Gospels.
THE GOSPEL TITLES
These Four are themselves forgeries and apocryphal in. the
sinister sense of bearing names to which they have no right, as
well as by their contents being false, with many forged
interpolations or spurious additions. Even if the Four Gospels
were themselves genuine, as we shall see they are not, yet
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 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
{152} the respective authors of those sacred writings.
... That, however, 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 notand were not intended to be represented asthe
real authors of those according to Gospels. The form of the
titles to the Epistlesalso 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 Christs 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 Christs 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
revelationsthe 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,
{153} (ahem!) one of the wonderful Gospels of our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ; but, (ahem!) I dont really know which one.
It is by either Matthew, or Mark, or Luke, or John, Im 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 estIts 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 notcould 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 Apostles 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 writingswith 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
authenticitynow confessed to be false.
{154}
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 Peters preachments, and (probably because
Peter couldnt 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 wasnot. 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 Predecessors 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
halfuntil 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
{155} 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 Christendomif 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 Gospelssimply 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.
{156}
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,
{157} 1); Then there arose a question between some
of Johns 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
GOSPELSCHOSEN
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
{158} Church is built, and makes a bit less
confident the forged assurance that the Gates of Hellto say
nothing of human Reasonshall 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 chosenselectedas 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 contradictionsout 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 {159} 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
{160} 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 estI 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 credidiI 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
{161} 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. Peters 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 Lords 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
{162} 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 Gospels 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.) {163}
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; Marks 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
years 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.
{164}
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 growPapias 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-Nicene 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
{165} 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
Johnvenerable 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, whofor a century and
a halfmention any Gospel-writings at all.
LUKE 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 handnone 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 {166}
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. (Translators Introductory Notice to Apocryphal
Gospels. ANF. viii, 351.)
Such apocryphal gospels would naturally containas they
domany 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-Nicene 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 namesis proven as positively as
negative proofs permit, and beyond a reasonable doubtwhich
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.)
{167}
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
Johnif indeed he knows it at allwith 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.)
{168}
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 Scriptureexcepting always the dozen and
more of Old Testament apocrypha 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.
{169}
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, confessesutterly 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 30,000 (now over 150,000)
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 Gods method of governing the
world! (Dr. Alex. Roberts, Companion to the Revised Version, p.
4.) One may wonder at the writers intimacy with Gods governmental
methods, as well as at Gods 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 {170}
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 thingsdo not need to, he says, because
the Scriptures are favorable to the Orthodoxaccuses 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 Christs words and deeds, so that their presence, instead of
{171} 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.
JESUSMAN 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.
Matthews 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
{172} 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 Lukes genealogy may be seen in the
following table [copying Lukes list] ... The artificial character
is shown by details cited. (CE. vi, 411.) It also explodes the
seventeenth century clerical pretense,heard often
todayin 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. Lukes 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 documentslike 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
{173} 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 says
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 Christs 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 Godhuios Theou, not the Sono
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 Churchs most presumptuous False Pretenseits Divine
founding by Jesus Christthis 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. {174}
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
Matthews 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 Jesusjust 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 CephasRock 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 Jesusas it was notwas 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.
{175}
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
{176} 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, Peters 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
manwhat 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
{177} 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 Marks story substantially verbatim,
Marks verses 27-33, being nearly word for word reproduced in
Matthews 13-16, 20-24 of chapter xvi; the only material verbal
difference being in Peters answer, in verse 16, where Peters
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 Peters 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 Marks 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 Peters 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
{178}
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 Peters 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.) Peters
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 Scorpions 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 [omitted - RW]
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 Churchnor even a Jewish
reformed synagogue!,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 eventthat 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
{179} 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 Churchhe 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 worldproclaimed by
himselfto 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
{180} 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 Lukes
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
{181} 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 Peters
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 latters superior authority.
Thus the admitted principal, if not only proof which the Church
urges for its Divine and Petrine foundation is found to
belike 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.
{182}
GO, TEACH ALL NATIONS FORGERY
Applying Tertullians test of authenticity, that contradictory
passages betray a later interpolation, the closing verses, 16-20,
of the last chapter of Matthewas 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
worldwhich 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 Pauls 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), {183} 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 Caesarea, 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 Masters 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 revelationsome years laterfor 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 Peters 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
peopleof 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 Christs 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
{184} 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;
Peters 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 supererogatoryas 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.
{185}
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. {186}
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. Marks 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 {187}
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
Gores English Divines thus cautiously confess the fraud: Matthews
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 Lords
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 Johns
gospel in the fourth century, was originally in the [apocryphal]
Gospel according to the Hebrews. (Orpheus, p. 235.)
{188}
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 LORDS PRAYER FORGERY
As may be seen by mere comparison, the Doxology at the end of
the Lords 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 Lords Prayer is not the
Lords 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 Lords 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
Lords 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, Marcions 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 Lords Prayer
in Luke, xi, 2-4, is in almost all Greek {189} 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 Lords 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; Pauls 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 Pauls 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
{190} 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, didnt 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 unityof 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 Christs 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.
{191}
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 Pauls 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 Peters life. ... The history of the spread
of Christianity imperatively demands for I Peter a later date
than 64 A.D., the alleged date of Peters death. The second
Epistle, II
{192} 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:
{193} 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. Gregorys 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
{194} 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].
Trents 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
Trinitysuch is The Three Heavenly Witnessesto 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.
*** ****
{195}
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