|
-----Original Message----- Shalom friends, There is much to be learned from the New Testament text, but is it the inerrant word of God? Let me begin by just telling it like it is. Somewhere between 5% and 10% of the New Testament text was altered between the second and fifth centuries. Bart Ehrman just scratches the surface of this problem in his book "The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture." Later we will cover some specifics about these alterations. There are, today, 5366 Greek codices of the New Testament in existence. But there is a major problem here, because there are not even two manuscripts among all these codices that totally agree with each other. There are approximately 100,000 textual variants among these manuscripts. The oldest manuscripts that we have date back to the third century. In spite of this problem the bulk of the New Testament text conforms with both the Torah and Oral Law. The alterations to the NT text, however, do cause a number of theological problems. One obvious corruption is 1John 5:7. Most modern translations do not even include this verse because it does not appear in any of the oldest manuscripts. It does not appear an any manuscript before the fifth century. Sir Isaac Newton wrote an important essay exposing this fraud in 1690 ["A Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture."] This was an obvious attempt to provide a proof text for the doctrine of the trinity. The fourth century church historian Eusebius had access to the very earliest NT manuscripts. In his pre-nicean writings Eusebius reveals that the earliest greek manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew contained only the word "Go" in verse 19 of Matthew 28. This is the only other place in the Bible that references the trinity. [Note: The trinity doctrine was first introduce in the third century by Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus. It was considered heresy at the time.] We also know from Eusebius, Origen, Justin, and others that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew and that the Hebrew manuscript did not contain the first two chapters of today's Gospel of Matthew ["...it contained neither genealogy nor birth account."] This is good news since the genealogy in Matthew presents us with some unique problems (even if we ignore that six generations have been dropped from the list).
Now we have another problem because the genealogy in Luke
is totally bogus. To read more about these genealogies click here:
Many of the obvious corruptions documented by Bart Ehrman
deal with attempts to establish the doctrine of the virgin birth within the NT
text. Nearly all of the ancient pagan religions of Egypt, Babylon, Sumeria, the
Hitites, Persia, etc. had demi-gods who were allegedly born of a virgin during
the winter solstice. Since we know that the virgin birth account in Matthew was
a later addition, this leaves only Luke's account. Since Luke contains a totally
bogus genealogy it casts some suspicion on the reliability of Luke's Gospel. Add
to this the fact that Ehrman has documented several places in Luke's Gospel
where the text was specifically altered where it contradicted the virgin birth
account. To read more about the virgin birth click here: Is the New Testament important? YES IT IS, but it is not the inerrant word of God. Can we establish that Y'shua was the Messiah? Yes we can. I will cover this in my next email.
Kol tov, |