2.4 When is a book an
"inspired" book?
"Ye shall not
add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye
diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of
the LORD your God." Deuteronomy 4:2
Adi ibn Hatim al-Tai'i was a Christian who embraced Islam
during the time of Muhammad (pbuh). One day, the verse of
the Qur'an, Al-Tawba(9):30-31 was recited before him:
"And the Jews said: Ezra is the son of Allah, and the
Christians said: The Messiah is the son of Allah. That is
their saying with their [own] mouths. They imitate
the saying of those who disbelieved of old. Allah's curse be
upon them. How deluded are they! They took their rabbis and
their monks as lords besides Allah, and the Messiah son of
Mary, but they were not commanded but to worship One God.
There is no God but Him. Be He Glorified from all that they
associate with Him!" When Adi heard this verse, he
commented: "O messenger of Allah, we did not worship them."
The prophet Muhammad (pbuh) replied: "Did they not make
matters lawful and unlawful for you?" (He was referring
to the power the monks and Rabbis gave themselves because of
their claimed divine inspiration to change laws and
regulations). Adi replied "Yes, they did!". Muhammad (pbuh)
said: "That, then, is the worshipping of them in
association with Allah."
If we were to ask a Christian layman: "Where did the
Bible in your hands come from?," they would more than likely
tell us "from God!"
If you were now to ask him: "How do you know it is from
God? He will reply, "He inspired it to many people who then
wrote it down and preserved it for us."
If we now ask: "Are all of these inspired people
prophets?" He will answer: "No, they include both prophets
and other faultless 'saints', etc.."
"So these prophets and 'saints' signed their names to
these documents?" we would ask. They would respond "No. But
the Church knows who wrote them, and when they were written,
and has irrefutable proof regarding this matter."
If we were to now ask: "would it be possible for any
unscrupulous person who had access to the Bible in the past
to modify it's books?" They would reply: "Of course not! The
church has told us that even the much older Old Testament
was preserved with such diligent guardianship that they even
counted and recorded every single word and every single
letter in it. Thus, the church has justly reassured us that
these words never have, and never could be, changed by
mankind, even by scribal error or by accident."
"Let us now ask a different question" we would continue.
"Are the 'New and Old Testaments' in your hands today the
same "New and Old Testaments" available to the apostles of
Jesus (pbuh) till the present day?" They would answer "Of
course! There has always been only one Bible!"
This is the general gist of any such conversation that is
held between a Muslim and a Christian layman regarding their
Bible, it's composition and preservation. However, if we
were to ask their SCHOLARS the same set of questions
we would be amazed to find a tremendous chasm in the
responses supplied by the Christian laypeople as compared to
their own Christian scholars. If we were to go to a Western
library and look up the history of the Bible as recorded by
their own eminent Christian scholars throughout the ages, we
would find that they tell us that the books of the "New
Testament" in our possession today were not officially
approved into the New Testament "canon" of "inspired" books
until many centuries after the departure of Jesus.
Tens of generations of Christians literally lived and
died after the departure of Jesus (pbuh) never having known
nor seen such a "New Testament" or "Bible" as the one in our
possession today.
After the departure of Jesus (pbuh), the apostles and
many other people began to write "gospels." Each one of
these authors would travel to other lands and be followed by
a number of people who would adopt this man's gospel as his
"Bible." Now, even the unscrupulous began to write "gospels"
and to claim they were from a given apostle or that they
themselves were receiving divine inspiration. Many new and
innovative teachings began now to be introduced into the
religion of Jesus (pbuh). Enmity, hatred and war began to
break out between these groups. Each person claimed that
they alone held the "true" Gospel of Jesus (pbuh) and no one
else. Their beliefs now ran the gamut, from those who
believed Jesus (pbuh) to be a mortal messenger of God and
nothing more, to those who claimed partial divinity for
Jesus (pbuh), to those who claimed Jesus (pbuh) to be a true
god, but independent of God himself, to those who called for
a "Trinity," to those who claimed that Mary (pbuh) too was a
god, to those who believed in two gods, one good and the
other evil. This is when the war of the gospels began.
Everyone now cursed and damned everyone else. Christian
sects butchered one-another right and left. There were more
great debates and councils than you could shake a stick at.
However, none of these groups had sufficient might to
totally dominate and silence the others for good. They
needed an undefeatable ally, so they began to look to the
Roman empire for support. The Roman empire was a pagan
empire, however, it was the dominant "superpower" of the
time. Anyone who could enlist it's aid would have an
unconquerable ally at their side and would themselves be
undefeatable. On the Roman side, Emperor Constantine was
greatly troubled by the swelling ranks of his Christian
subjects and the great division among their ranks which did
not bode well for the continued stability of his empire.
Most of these fringe sects now began to fade into
insignificance and the matter was now left between those who
believed in the Unity of God and those who believed in a
"Trinity." The Roman empire's support fluctuated between
these two groups for a long time until the Trinitarian's
finally gained the upper hand and all but wiped the
Unitarians off the face of the earth. They selected and
collected the "truly inspired" gospels into one volume which
later became the "New Testament." They burned all other
gospels. Many sweeping campaigns if "Inquisition" were
launched. Everyone found possessing any of these "false"
Gospels was put to death and his Gospel burned.
This state of affairs continued for many centuries and
many people were convicted of heresy and burned to death at
the stake for a great variety of reasons. Yet others had
their land and property confiscated and were imprisoned.
Physical torture was casually used in order to extract a
confession of guilt which would then be used to justify a
verdict of death by burning. Some of the methods used to
extract a confession of guilt were the stretching of limbs
on the rack, burning with live coals, and the strappado (a
vertical rack). Denial of the charges without counterproof
or refusal to confess resulted in the most severe
punishments such as life imprisonment or execution and total
confiscation of property. The number of those who fell
victim to these inquisitions are far to numerous to list
here. Examples of these people include the philosopher
Giordano Bruno, Galileo, Joan of Arc, and the religious
order of knights called the Templars among countless
hundreds of thousands of others. If the Trinitarians did not
have the power to burn these people at the stake during
their lifetime, then they would exhume their bodies after
their death and burn them after their death (e.g. John
Wycliffe). In the end, over twelve million people were put
to death by the Church inquisitions (Apology for Muhammad
and the Qur'an, John Davenport).
The inquisitions reached their height around the middle
of the fifteenth century in a massive and vicious
persecution campaign the major targets of which were the
Marranos (converts from Judaism) and Moriscos (converts from
Islam), many of whom were suspected of secretly adhering to
their original faiths. When things began to quiet down a
little, the victor's historians and philosophers wrote their
history books explaining how they managed to overcome the
wicked, to defeat the blasphemers, and to burn the devils,
sorcerers, and witches at the stake. These are the books
which have had the greatest influence on the Western history
books we have in our hands today.
Whenever a scholar of Christianity would stumble upon the
truth and begin to write about it his works would invariably
be destroyed (e.g. Sir Isaac Newton, the 16th century
Spaniard Michael Servetus, etc.). In all cases, it was
recognized that there was no need to disprove the author's
evidence or refute it, rather, it was sufficient to muzzle
the opposition, burn their books, extract a confession from
them under duress, and expel them from society or kill
them.
Even the Popes themselves would sometimes recognize the
falsehood of the "Trinity" and the fact that it was a later
fabrication of mankind. One of these popes, Honorius, was
officially cursed forty eight years after his death by the
Synod which was held in Istanbul in 680 C.E.
Sometimes it is an individual's own silence which proves
to be the most deafening proclamation. As we saw in the
previous chapters, for the period of a century and more the
only "Scriptures" used by the first Jewish followers of
Jesus were the Greek Septuagint translations (commonly
designated LXX) of the Hebrew Old Testament, "the Law and
the Prophets", supplemented by various Jewish apocrypha and
the Sibylline Oracles (150 BC to AD 180); these were the
only "authorities" appealed to by the early "Church Fathers"
when preaching their new faith. Nowhere do they quote the
books which we know today as the "New Testament."
Naturally, if the "history" of the Trinitarian Church
regarding their chosen Gospels and what are claimed to be
the inspired writings of Jesus' first Apostles were true,
and these writings had indeed been accepted as authoritative
at that time, then they would have been the most precious
and potent documents of preaching for their doctrine.
Undoubtedly, they would have spoken of nothing else, but
would have quoted them and appealed to their authority at
every turn as they have been doing through the centuries
since. But, for some 150 years, little or nothing besides
the Old Testament and these Oracles were known or quoted. As
said by the great critic, Solomon Reinach,
"With the exception of Papias, who speaks of a
narrative by Mark, and a collection of sayings of Jesus, no
Christian writer of the first half of the second century
(i.e., up to 150 C.E.) quotes the Gospels or their reputed
authors."
Orpheus, Reinach, p. 218
But let us back up a little and study how and when the
"inspired" books of the Bible were incorporated into the
Christian "canon" of the Bible. We have already given a
brief introduction in section 1.2.5 onwards of how the
current Gospels of the Bible were introduced as "authentic."
Let us now have a very brief look at some of the details.
The following was obtained from the book "Izhar ul Haqq"
among other references:
In the city of Nicea (modern: Iznik, Turkey), in the year
325 AD, a great conference of Christian theologians and
religious scholars was convened under the order of the
Emperor Constantine to examine and define the status of
these countless Christian Gospels. After a thorough
investigation it was decided that the Epistle of Jude was
genuine and believable. The rest of our current books of the
Bible were declared doubtful. This was explicitly mentioned
by Saint Jerome in the introduction to his book. St. Jerome,
of course, was a Christian scholar and a great philosopher.
He was born in 340 AD He translated the Bible into Latin. He
was a famous bibliographer and wrote many books on the
Bible. Before the year 325 C.E., it is known that the Gospel
of Barnabas was accepted as canonical in the churches of
Alexandria. It is known to have been circulated in the first
two centuries after Christ (pbuh) from the writings of
Irenaeus (130-200AD). After this council, four Gospels were
selected out of a minimum of three hundred available and the
rest, including the Gospel of Barnabas, were ordered utterly
destroyed. All Gospels written in Hebrew were also ordered
destroyed.
In the year 364 AD, another council was held in Laodicea
for the same purpose. This conference of Christian scholars
and theologians not only confirmed the decision of the
council of Nicea regarding the authenticity of the Epistle
of Jude but also declared that the following six books must
also be added to the list of genuine and believable books:
The Book of Esther, The Epistle Of James, The Second Epistle
of Peter, The Second and Third Epistles of John, The Epistle
of Paul to the Hebrews. This conference pronounced their
decision to the public. The book of Revelations, however,
remained out of the list of the acknowledged books in both
the councils.
In 397 another great conference was held called the
Council of Carthage. Augustine, the celebrated Christian
scholar, was among the one hundred and twenty six learned
participants. The members of this council confirmed the
decisions of the two previous Councils and also added the
following books to the list of the divine books: The Book of
the Songs of Solomon, The Book of Tobit, The Book of Baruch,
Ecclesiasticus, and The First and Second Books of
Maccabees.
At the same time the members of this council decided that
the book of Baruch was a part of the book of Jeremiah
because Baruch was the deputy of Jeremiah. Therefore they
did not include the name of this book separately in the
list.
Three more conferences were held after this in Trullo,
Florence and Trent (1545-63). The members of these meetings
confirmed the decision of the Council of Carthage. The last
two councils, however, wrote the name of the book of Baruch
separately.
After these councils nearly all the books which had
previously been doubtful among Christians were now included
in the list of acknowledged books.
The status of these books remained unchanged until the
Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. The
Protestants repudiated the decisions of the councils and
declared that there are only 66 truly "inspired" books of
God, and not 73 as claimed by the Catholics. The following
books were to be rejected: The Book of Baruch, The Book of
Tobit, The Letter of Jude, The Songs of Solomon,
Ecclesiasticus, and The First and Second Books of Maccabees.
They excluded these books from the list of acknowledged
books.
The Protestants also rejected the decision of their
forbears regarding some chapters of the book of Esther. This
book consists of 16 chapters. They decided that the first
nine chapters and three verses from chapter ten were to be
rejected. They based their decision on the following six
reasons:
- These works were considered to be false even in the
original Hebrew and Chaldaean languages which were no
longer available.
- The Jews did not acknowledge them as revealed
books.
- All the Christians have not acknowledged them as
believable.
- Jerome said that these books were not reliable and
were insufficient to prove and support the doctrines of
the faith.
- Klaus has openly said that these books were recited
but not in every place.
- Eusebius specifically said in section 22 of his
fourth book that these books have been tampered with, and
changed. In particular the Second Book of Maccabees.
It now becomes apparent that books which had been lost in
the original and which only existed in translation were
erroneously acknowledged by thousands of theologians as
divine revelation. This state of affairs leads a
non-Christian reader to distrust the unanimous decisions of
Christian scholars of both the Catholic and the Protestant
persuasions. The followers of Catholic faith still believe
in these books in blind pursuance of their forebears.
It is a prerequisite of believing in a certain book as
divinely revealed that it is proved through infallible
arguments that the book in question was revealed through a
prophet and that it has been conveyed to us precisely in the
same order without any change through an uninterrupted chain
of narrators. It is not at all sufficient to attribute a
book to a certain prophet on the basis of suppositions and
conjectures. Unsupported assertions made by one or a few
sects of people should not be, and cannot be, accepted in
this connection.
We have already seen how Catholic and Protestant scholars
differ on the question of the authenticity of some of these
books. There are yet more books of the Bible which have been
rejected by Christians. They include the Book of Revelation,
the Book of Genesis, the Book of Ascension, the Book of
Mysteries, the Book of Testament and the Book of Confession
which are all ascribed to the Prophet Moses. Similarly a
fourth Book of Ezra is claimed to be from the Prophet Ezra
and a book concerning Isaiah's ascension and revelation are
ascribed to him. In addition to the known book of Jeremiah,
there is another book attributed to him. There are numerous
sayings which are claimed to be from the Prophet Habakkuk.
There are many songs which are said to be from the Prophet
Solomon. There are more than 70 books, other than the
present ones, of the new Testament, which are ascribed to
Jesus, Mary, the apostles, and their disciples. In this day
and age, some Christian scholars are even making the case
for the authenticity of the Gospel of Thomas as the "fifth"
Gospel (see "The Five Gospels," written over six years by 24
Christian scholars from some of the USA and Canada's most
prestigious universities)
The Christians of this age have claimed that these books
are false and forgeries. The Greek Church, Catholic church
and the Protestant Church are unanimous on this point.
Similarly the Greek Church claims that the third book of
Ezra is a part of the Old Testament and believes it to have
been written by the Prophet Ezra while the Protestant and
Catholic Churches have declared it false and fabricated.
Groliers encyclopedia says under the heading "New
Testament, canon":
"The process by which the canon of the New Testament
was formed began in the 2d century, probably with a
collection of ten letters of Paul. Toward the end of that
century, Irenaeus argued for the unique authority of the
portion of the Canon called the Gospels. Acceptance of the
other books came gradually. The church in Egypt used
more than the present 27 books, and the
Syriac-speaking churches fewer. The question of an
official canon became urgent during the 4th century. It was
mainly through the influence of Athanasius, bishop of
Alexandria, and because Jerome included the 27 books in his
Latin version of the Bible called the Vulgate, that the
present canon came to be accepted.."
Notice, as mentioned in the previous chapters, how the
writings of Paul were the first to be accepted by the
Trinitarian church. All other gospels were then either
accepted or destroyed based upon their conformance to the
teachings of Paul.
As mentioned previously, Lobegott Friedrich Konstantin
Von Tischendorf was one of the most eminent conservative
Biblical scholars of the nineteenth century. One of his
greatest lifelong achievements was his discovery of one of
the oldest known Biblical manuscripts know to mankind, the
"Codex Sinaiticus," with the monks of Saint Catherine's
Monastery in Mount Sinai. In this oldest known copy of the
Bible known to humanity we find contained two gospels which
would later be discarded by a more enlightened generation.
They are "The Epistle of Barnabas" (not to be confused with
the Gospel of Barnabas), and "The Shepherd of Hermas."
Today, of course, neither of these two books is to be found
in our modern Bibles. As also seen in section 1.2, many
later "insertions" of the church were exposed through the
study of this manuscript. However, following in the
tradition of true conservative Christian scholars before
him, Tischendorf managed to apply 12,000 "corrections" to
this manuscript's 110,000 lines before he was through
"transcribing" it (see "secrets of Mount Sinai", James
Bentley, Doubleday, NY, 1986, p. 95)
We have already seen in chapter one how "St. Paul" all
but totally obliterated the religion of Jesus (pbuh) based
upon the authority of his alleged "visions". We then saw how
his teachings were based more upon his personal philosophy
and beliefs than any attempt to cite words or actions of
Jesus (pbuh) himself (e.g. Galatians 2). We further saw how
his followers slaughtered all Christians who would not
forsake the teachings of the apostles for his teachings and
how he was later made the "majority author" of the Bible and
countless authentic gospels were burned and labeled
apocrypha by his followers. Remember, "St. Paul" is claimed
to be the author of Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians,
Ephesians, Phillippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians,
1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews.
"All the evidence indicates that the words of Jesus
were authoritative in the Church from the first, and this
makes it the more remarkable that such scanty attention is
paid to the words or works of Jesus in the earliest
Christian writings, Paul's letters, the later Epistles,
Hebrews, Revelation, and even Acts have little to report
about them... Papias (ca. AD 130), the first person to
actually name a written gospel, illustrates the point. Even
though he defends Mark's gospel (Euseb. Hist.
III.xxxix.15-16), and had himself appended a collection of
Jesus tradition to his 'Interpretation of the Oracles of the
Lord' (Euseb. Hist. III.xxxix.2-3), his own clear preference
was for the oral tradition concerning Jesus, and the
glimpses that Eusebius provides of Papias' Jesus tradition
give no hint of his dependence on Mark. Neither do the more
frequent citations of Jesus in the APOSTOLIC FATHERS,
largely 'synoptic' in character show much dependence on our
written gospels"
The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Supplementary
Volume, p. 137
The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible contains much
more revealing information in this regard, far too much to
reproduce here. The reader is strongly encouraged to locate
a copy in their local library and read the details.
The popularly accepted dates for the authorship of the
current books of the Bible are approximately as follows:
Approx. AD Event / Document
---------------------------------------
30 Crucifixion (Ascension) of Jesus
50 First Epistle of Paul
62 Last Epistle of Paul
65-70 Mark's Gospel
70 Epistle to Hebrews
80 Luke's Gospel
85-90 Matthew's Gospel
90 Acts
90-100 John's Gospel and First Epistle
95-100 Revelation
100 I & II Timothy and Titus
Uncertainty about James I & II, Peter, John and Jude
does not allow historians to estimate their origin dates.
(See "The Early Church And The New Testament," Irene Allen,
1953). We begin to see the degree to which our current
religion of "Christianity" is based more on the teachings
and writings of Paul than anything else. The Gospels which
are popularly believed to have been written first were in
actuality written long after the writings of Paul. Now
Christian scholars are even beginning to uncover extensive
evidence that these Gospels were not even written by their
claimed authors. The more Christian scholars study the
Bible, the more it becomes painfully apparent that what is
popularly referred to today as "Christianity" should more
appropriately be named "Paulanity."
As mentioned in Section 2.1,
even when a book is claimed to be truly "inspired" we still
find that the Church cannot say with 100% assuredness who
wrote this "inspired" book. As mentioned there, the authors
of the RSV Bible by Collins say that the author of "Kings"
is "Unknown," the book of Isaiah is "Mainly credited to
Isaiah. Parts may have been written by others."
Ecclesiastics: "Author. Doubtful, but commonly assigned to
Solomon." Ruth: "Author. Not definitely known, perhaps
Samuel." and on and on. Is this how a truly unbiased mind
defines "inspired by God"? You be the judge.
"Verily, those who conceal that which Allah has sent
down of the Book and purchase a small gain therewith, they
eat into their bellies nothing but fire. Allah will not
speak to them on the Day of Resurrection, nor will He purify
them, and theirs will be a painful torment. Those are they
who purchase error at the price of guidance, and torment at
the price of pardon. What boldness (they show) for the
Fire!"
The noble Qur'an, Al-Baqarah(2):174-175
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