Alternative Religion/ Library

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.)

“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.)

 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, confesses—utterly 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.)

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 God's method of governing the world”! (Dr. Alex. Roberts, Companion to the Revised Version, p. 4.) One may wonder at the writer's intimacy with God's governmental methods, as well as at God's 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 things—do not need to, he says, because the Scriptures are favorable to the Orthodox—accuses 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.)

“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.)

JESUS—MAN 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.

Matthew's 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 Luke's genealogy may be seen in the following table [copying Luke's list] ... The artificial character” is shown by details cited. (CE. vi, 411.) It also explodes the seventeenth century clerical pretense,—heard often today—in 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. Luke's 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 documents”—like 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 say's 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 Christ's 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 God—huios Theou,” not “the Son—o huious”: the definite article is a clerical falsification. 

Next>

<Return to Start

Return to Texts Index