Alternative Religion/ Library

“THE IDEA OF INSPIRATION”

Before sketching the welter of these lying works of Christian hands and childish minds, we may define, by high priestly authority, the status of the problem of divine inspiration, and just how the notion of “canonicity” or official inspiration, came to be, now attributed to, now withdrawn from, this heterogeneous mass or mess of pious scribblings, and finally clung to only 27 of yet asserted sanctity. These admissions are very illuminating.

 We have aeen that the Hebrew Old Testament itself “reveals no formal notion of inspiration,” though, we are assured, “the later Jews must have possessed the idea” (CE. iii, 269);—thus only an idea or notion somehow acquired, but not through divine illumination, for as we read, of all the mass of Jewish holy forgeries “each of them has at one tune or another been treated as canonical” or divinely inspired. (EB. i, 250.) Whether the Christian notion or idea as to the divine inspiration of their own new forgeries was of any better quality may now appear.

The New Testament and the inspired Apostles are silent on the subject and left the matter to serious doubts and disputations for many centuries: “There are no indications in the New Testament ... of a definite new Canon bequeathed by the Apostles to the Church, or of a strong self-witness to Divine inspiration,” admits the CE,. (iii, 274); that is, there is nothing in the 27 booklets which would lead to the suspicion of their “inspiration” or truth. There was then no Church for them to bequeath to, nor was the Canon settled, as we shall see: “It was not until about the middle of the second century—[when we shall see the books were really written]—that under the rubric of Scripture the New Testament writings were assimilated to the Old. ... But it should be remembered that the inspired character of the New Testament in a Catholic dogma, and must therefore in some way have been revealed to, and taught by, Apostles”! (Ib. p. 275.) This is a strikingly queer bit of clerical dialectic, and leaves the question of the “some way” of revelation to the Apostles and of their transmission of the “dogma” to posterity, in a nebulously unsatisfying state.

Further, the dubious and disputed status of the sacred writings through centuries, and the ultimate settlement of the controversies by the ‘ipse dixit' of a numerical majority of the Council of Trent, in 1546,—after the Reformation had forced the issue, is thus admitted: “The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is, from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic defination of the Tridentine Council. ... And this want of a organized distribution, secondarily to the absence of an early fixation of the Canon, left room for variations and doubts which lasted far into the centuries.” (CE., iii, 274.) The ‘modus operandi' of the Holy Council in ultimately “canonizing” Jerome's old Vulgate Version, and its motive for doing so, are thus exposed by the keen pen of the author of the Rise and Fall: ⁹³

 “When the Council of Trent resolved to pronounce sentence on the Cannon of Scripture, the opinion which prevented, after some debate, was to declare the Latin Vulgate authentic and ‘almost' infallible; and this sentence, which was guarded by formidable anathemas, secured all the books of the Old and New Testament which composed that ancient version. ... When the merit of that version was discussed, the majority of the theologians urged, with confidence and success, that it was absolutely necessary to receive the Vulgate as authentic and inspired, unless they wished to abandon the victory to the Lutherans, and the honors of the Church to the Grammarians.” (Gibbon, A Vindication, v, 2; Istoria del consiglio Tridentino, L. ii, p. 147.) A number of these books were bitterly disputed and their authenticity and inspiration denied by the leading Reformers, Luther, Grotius, Calvin, etc., and excluded from their official lists, until finally the Reformed Church followed the example of the Church hopeless of reform and swallowed the canon whole, as we have it today,—minus, of course, the ‘Tobit,' ‘Judith,' and like inspired buffooneries of the True Bible.

Such books and the vicissitudes of their authority are thus described: “Like the Old Testament, the New has its deutero-canonical [i.e. doubted] books and portions of books, their canonicity having formally been a subject of some controversy in the Church. These are, for entire books: the Epistle to the Hebrews, that od James, the Second and Third of John, Jude, and Apocalypse; giving seven in all as the number of the N.T. contested books. The formerly disputed passages are three: the closing section of St. Mark's Gospel, xvi, 9-20, about the apparitions of Christ after the resurrection; the verses in Luke about the bloody sweat of Jesus, xxii, 43, 44; the Pericope Adulterae, or narrative of the woman taken in adultery, St. John, vii, 53 to viii, 11. Since the Council of Trent it is not permitted for a Catholic to question the inspiration of these passages.” (CE. iii, 274.) Besides the forgery of the above and other books as a whole, we shall see many other instances of “interpolated” or forged passages in the Christian books.

 “THE LYING PEN OF THE SCRIBES”

Speaking of the doubtful historicity of the celebrated AEsop of the famous Fables which go under his name, a critic well states a valid test of historicity: “We may well doubt, however, whether he (AEsop) ever existed; we have the most varied accounts of him, many of which are on their face pure inventions; and the fables which passed under his name were certainly not written until long after the period in which he is supposed to have lived.” (NIE. i, 191.) We may have occasion to apply this test to the personality of Jesus of Nazareth and sundry apostolic personages; in any event it is peculiarly applicable to the numerous Christian stories and fables treating of them, which on their face are pure inventions, and which were admittedly forged in the names of Jesus; himself and of all of his Apostles and of many of the shining lights of the new Christian faith, just as we have seen was done in the Jewish forgeries; in the names of the Old Testament notables from Adam on down the catalogue. ⁹⁴

 Leaving for the moment aside the 27 presently accepted booklets of the N.T., and admitting the many Christian forgeries of Christ-fables, CE. thus apologetically explains: “The genuine Gospels are silent about long stretches of the life of our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and St. Joseph. This reserve of the Evangelists did not satisfy the pardonable curiosity of many Christians eager for details. ... Enterprising spirits responded to this natural craving by pretended gospels full of romantic fables, and fantastic and striking details; their fabrications were eagerly read and accepted as true by common folk who were devoid of any critical faculty and who were predisposed to believe what so luxuriously fed their pious curiosity. Both Catholics and Gnostics were concerned in writing these fictions. The former had no motive other than that of a PIOUS FRAUD.” (CE. i, 606.) The motive above admitted for feeding with pious frauds the “natural craving” of the ignorant and superstitious Christians for marvel-mongering by the Church, is confirmed by a distinguished historian: “A vast and ever-increasing crowd of converts from paganism, who had become such from worldly considerations, and still hankered after wonders like those in which their forefathers had from time immemorial believed, lent a ready ear to assertions which, to more hesitating or better-instructed minds, would have seemed to carry imposture on their very face.” (Draper, The Intellectual Development of Europe, i, 309.)

This being thus frankly confessed, our clerical writer describes the general character of these pious frauds: “The Christian apocryphal writings in general imitate the books of the N.T.) and therefore, with a few exceptions, fall under the description of Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses.” (CE. i, 606.) Further apologizing for these Christian forgeries, and giving a smear of clerical whitewash to the forgers, it is speciously pleaded, that “the term apocryphal in connection with special gospels must be understood as bearing no more unfavorable an import than uncanonical.” They were forgeries pure and simple; and their pious value is urged, that “the apocryphal Gospels help us to understand the religious conditions of the second and third centuries,”—as indeed they do, in a light very damaging to any suspicion of truthfulness, common honesty, or anything above the most mediocre intelligence of the pious Fathers and Faithful who put these gross fabrications into circulation in the name and for the sake of Christ. Their pious plea is: “Amor Christi est cui satisfecimus.” (Ib. p. 606.) Of these pious frauds it adds: “The quasi-evangelistic compositions concerning Christ ... are all of Orthodox origin.” (Ib. p. 607.)

 “CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES”—FORGED

 When the new Faith went forth to conquer the Pagan world for Christ, the pious Greek Fathers and priests of the Propaganda soon felt the need of something of more up-to-date effectiveness than Old Testament text and Sibylline Oracles, they needed something concrete out of the New Dispensation to “show” to the superstitious Pagans to win them to the Christ and his Church: something tangible, visible; compellingly authentic proofs. Like arms of proof for the holy warfare, the invincible weapons of truth—“the whole armour of God”—they forged outright for the conquest of the unbeliever. What more convincing and compelling proofs of Jesus ⁹⁵ the Christ, his holy Apostles, and their wondrous works of over a century ago, than the following authentic and autograph documents and records, held before doubting eyes:

• A “GOSPEL” WRITTEN BY JESUS CHRIST'S OWN HAND;
• LETTERS AND PORTRAITS OF JESUS CHRIST AND HIS PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE;
• LETTERS WRITTEN BY HIS VIRGIN MOTHER;
• PILATE'S OFFICIAL REPORT TO THE EMPEROR OF THE TRIAL AND CRUCIFICTION OF JESUS, WITH PILATE'S CONFESSION OF FAITH;
• THE REPLY OF TIBERIUS, AND THE TRIAL OF PILATE;
• OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS OF THE ROMAN SENATE ABOUT JESUS, GOSPELS, EPISTLES, ACTS, BY EVERY ONE OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES;
• OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS; OF CHURCH LAW AND GOVERNMENT, WRITTEN IN GREEK, BY THE APOSTLES;
• RECORDS OF THE EARLIEST “POPES” AND “APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION;
• SCORES OF OTHER PIOUS FORGED DOCUMENTS TO BE RELATED BELOW.

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