Forged books?  In the Bible?

 The New Testament Documents

Let us start from the beginning.  No Biblical scholar on this earth will claim that the Bible was written by Jesus himself.  

They all agree that the Bible was written after the departure of Jesus peace be upon him . 

 Dr. W Graham Scroggie of the Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, a prestigious Christian evangelical mission, says:

“..Yes, the Bible is human, although some out of zeal which is not according to knowledge, have denied this. 

 Those books have passed through the minds of men, are written in the language of men, were penned by the hands of men and bear in their style the characteristics of men….It is Human

Jesus did not write The Gospel;  orally announced the message


 


 knowing that the language Jesus spoke was Aramaic, not Greek,, just like his disciples.


 And so, all conventional encyclopedias agree that Jesus, the disciples and the Jews in general spoke Aramaic.  That Aramaic was the dominant and generally spoken language in the first century.

 Jews were discouraged, even forbidden, from speaking Greek.


 They rejected the Greek language and did not encourage learning the language of the pagan nations around them.


 So if Jesus, a religious Jew, and the disciples, illiterate men as they were, would have been discouraged from speaking Greek and avoided learning and using Greek, how could the New Testament have been written in a language they did not speak or understand well? ?


 


The Gospels were written in Greek, not Aramaic, the language of Christ and the disciples

 The New Testament contains enough inconsistencies to have produced a dizzying array of interpretations, beliefs, and religions,

Christian sects are not even agreed on the definition of what exactly is an “inspired” book of God.  The Protestants are taught that there are 66 truly “inspired” books in the Bible, while the Catholics have been taught that there are 73 truly “inspired” books, not to mention the many other sects and their “newer” books, such as the Mormons, etc.  As we shall see shortly, the very first Christians, for many generations, did not follow either the 66 books of the Protestants, nor the 73 books of the Catholics.  Quite the opposite, they believed in books that were, many generations later, “recognized” to be fabrications and apocrypha by a more enlightened age than that of the apostles.

Even the epistles attributed to Paul were not written by him.  After years of research, Catholics and Protestants alike agree that of the thirteen epistles attributed to Paul only seven are genuinely his.  They are: Romans, 1, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philipians, Philemon, and 


1 Thessalonians.

Paul and his church after him, were responsible of making wholesale changes to the religion of Jesus (pbuh) after his departure and were further responsible for mounting a massive campaign of death and torture of all Christians who refused to renounce the teachings of the apostles in favor of the Pauline doctrines.  All but the Gospels acceptable to the Pauline faith were then systematically destroyed or re-written.  Rev. Charles Anderson Scott has the following to say:

“It is highly probable that not one of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew , Mark ,  John.,and Luke) was in existence in the form which we have it, prior to the death of Paul.  And were the documents to be taken in strict order of chronology, the Pauline Epistles would come before the Gospels.”

We will note that every Gospel begins with the introduction “According to.....” such as “The Gospel according to Saint Matthew,” “The Gospel according to Saint Luke,” “The Gospel according to Saint Mark,” “The Gospel according to Saint John.”  The obvious conclusion for the average man on the street is that these people are known to be the authors of the books attributed to them.  This, however is not the case.  Why? Because not one of the vaunted four thousand copies existent carries it’s author’s signature.  It has just been assumed that they were the authors.  Recent discoveries, however, refute this belief.  Even the internal evidence proves that,

 for instance, Matthew did not write the Gospel attributed to him “...And as Jesus passed forth thence, HE (Jesus) saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and HE (Jesus) saith unto HIM (Matthew), follow ME (Jesus) and HE (Matthew) arose, and followed HIM (Jesus).” (Matthew 9:9)

It does not take a rocket scientist to see that neither Jesus nor Matthew wrote this verse of “Matthew.”  Such evidence can be found in many places throughout the New Testament.  

“The author of the Book of Hebrews is unknown.  Martin Luther suggested that Apollos was the author... Tertullian said that Hebrews was a letter of Barnabas... Adolf Harnack and J. Rendel Harris speculated that it was written by Priscilla (or Prisca).  William Ramsey suggested that it was done by Philip.  However, the traditional position is that the Apostle Paul wrote Hebrews... Eusebius believed that Paul wrote it, but Origen was not positive of Pauline authorship.”

Is this how we define “inspired by God”?

Well, where do all of these Bibles come from and why the difficulty in defining what is a truly “inspired” word of God? They come from the “ancient manuscripts” (also known as MSS).  The Christian world today boasts of an excess of 24,000 “ancient manuscripts” of the Bible dating all the way back to the fourth century after Christ (But not back to Christ or the apostles themselves).  In other words, we have with us gospels which date back to the century when the Trinitarians took over the Christian Church.  All manuscripts from before this period have strangely perished.  All Bibles in existence today are compiled from these “ancient manuscripts.” Any scholar of the Bible will tell us that no two ancient manuscripts are exactly identical.

People today generally believe that there is only ONE Bible, and ONE version of any given verse of the Bible.  This is far from true.  All Bibles in our possession today (Such as the KJV, the NRSV, the NAB, NIV,...etc.) are the result of extensive cutting and pasting from these various manuscripts with no single one being the definitive reference.  There are countless cases where a paragraph shows up in one “ancient manuscript” but is totally missing from many others.  For instance, Mark 16:8-20 (twelve whole verses) is completely missing from the most ancient manuscripts available today (such as the Sinaitic Manuscript, the Vatican #1209 and the Armenian version) but shows up in more recent “ancient manuscripts.” There are also many documented cases where even geographical locations are completely different from one ancient manuscript to the next.  For instance, in the “Samaritan Pentateuch manuscript,” Deuteronomy 27:4 speaks of “mount Gerizim,” while in the “Hebrew manuscript” the exact same verse speaks of “mount Ebal.” From Deuteronomy 27:12-13 we can see that these are two distinctly different locations.  Similarly, Luke 4:44 in some “ancient manuscripts” mentions “Synagogues of Judea,” others mention “Synagogues of Galilee.” This is only a sampling, a comprehensive listing would require a book of its own.

There are countless examples in the Bible where verses of a questionable nature are included in the text without any disclaimer telling the reader that many scholars and translators have serious reservations as to their authenticity.  The King James Version of the Bible (Also known as the “Authorized Version”), the one in the hands of the majority of Christendom today, is one of the most notorious in this regard.  It gives the reader absolutely no clue as to the questionable nature of such verses.  However, more recent translations of the Bible are now beginning to be a little more honest and forthcoming in this regard.  For example, the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, by Oxford Press, has adopted an extremely subtle system of bracketing the most glaring examples of such questionable verses with double square brackets ([[ ]]).  It is highly unlikely that the casual reader will realize the true function these brackets serve.  They are there to tell the informed reader that the enclosed verses are of a highly questionable nature.  Examples of this are the story of the “woman taken in adultery” in John 8:1-11, as well as Mark 16:9-20 (Jesus’ resurrection and return), and Luke 23:34 (which, interestingly enough, is there to confirm the prophesy of Isaiah 53:12).....and so forth.

Gospel of Mark


  Mark was not a disciple of Christ, and did not meet him in his life.


  Some critical scholars reject the early church tradition linking the gospel to John Mark, who was a companion of Saint Peter, and it is generally agreed that it was written anonymously for a gentile audience, probably in Rome, sometime shortly before or after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD . was written after the departure of Jesus peace be upon him . 

Gospel of Luke


Luke was not a disciple of Christ, nor did he meet him in his life .


The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles make up a two-volume work which scholars call Luke–Acts . The author is not named in either volume. Most scholars date the composition of the combined work to around 80–90 AD, although some others suggest 90–110,AD .was written after the departure of Jesus peace be upon him . 

Gospel of Matthew 


, with The Gospels According to Mark and Luke, one of the three so-called Synoptic Gospels (i.e., those presenting a common view).  The Gospel  was composed in Greek, probably sometime after 70 CE, was written after the departure of Jesus peace be upon him . 


with evident dependence on the earlier Gospel According to Mark and  Luke .Numerous textual indications point to an author who was a Jewish .

Gospel of John


The Gospel of John is written in Greek .


The Gospel of John, like all the gospels, is anonymous.


Most scholars estimate the final form of the text to be around AD 90–110.was written after the departure of Jesus peace be upon him . Given its complex history there may have been more than one place of composition, and while the author was familiar with Jewish customs and traditions,