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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 John's 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 “LORD'S PRAYER” FORGERY
As may be seen by mere comparison, the “Doxology” at the end of the Lord's 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 Lord's Prayer is not the Lord's 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 “Lord's 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 Lord's 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, Marcion's 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 Lord's 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 “Lord's 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; Paul's 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 “Paul's” 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,” didn't 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 unity—of 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 Christ's 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 Paul's 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 Peter's life. ... The history of the spread of Christianity imperatively demands for I Peter a later date than 64 A.D.,” the alleged date of Peter's 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.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. 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.)
“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. Gregory's 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].A confessed forgery of Holy Writ consciously kept in the “canonical” text as a fraudulent voucher for a false Trinity—such is “The Three Heavenly Witnesses”—to 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.”“Trent's 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.)
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