Fundamentals: The Overwriting of the NT Corpus (Part One)

[Rebbe]

FUNDAMENTALS: THE OVERWRITING OF THE NT CORPUS [1]

1 JOHN 5.7 AND THE GREAT TRINITY HOAX


Copyright © BRI 2013 All Rights Reserved Worldwide by Les Aron Gosling,
Messianic Lecturer (BRI)

CAUTION: BRI Yeshiva notes are not available to the general public. They are not for distribution. They are not for reproduction. The notes may also bear little or no resemblance to the actual audio or video recorded BRI Yeshiva lecture.

"The mind of man cannot fully understand the mystery of the Trinity. He who would try to understand the mystery fully will lose his mind. But he who would deny the Trinity will lose his soul" (Harold Lindsell & Charles Woodbridge, A Handbook of Christian Truth, 51,52).

"The state of monarchy is the most supreme thing upon earth, for kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself are called gods...and so their power after a certain relation compared to divine power...for if you will consider the attributes to God, you shall see how they agree in the person of a king...to dispute what God does is blasphemy...so it is sedition in subjects to dispute what a king may do in the height of his power. I would not have you meddle with such ancient rights of mine as I have received from my predecessors..." - King James 1st

"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one" (1 Jn 5.7 KJV  -  and an explicit fraud).

Some years ago we were holding the Yeshiva in a modern Community Centre in the beautiful south-east Queensland rain-forests near Tallebudgera close to the border of NSW. In those days I would give an occasional examination on the previous week's lecture to gauge both student response and growth and appreciation of that which I had taken hours to prepare for them. I no longer give examinations but I am still busily preparing all of those associated with the IMCF for their "finals" which will come to all of us before we "cross over" or, indeed, when God's Kingdom comes. But on one such occasion I handed out a sheet of paper on which was a question which went something like the following:

"Which volume of this list of books would YOU say was the most perverted and satanic?"

I then listed a number of volumes including the classic Gone With the Wind, Karl Marx's Das Kapital, Wuthering Heights, the Holy Bible, the Origin of Species by Darwin, My Life and Loves by Frank Harris, and Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible. There were some others from memory but they presently slip my mind.

I asked for only one title to be circled and then at the conclusion of the day's lecture I asked an assistant to gather the papers (they were to be collected face down and without any indication of identity being shown). Nearly all circled the Satanic Bible, and one or two others circled Das Kapital. The following week they were all surprised to find that I had marked them all with an F. They wanted to know which book was the most vile of them all. When I responded "the Holy Bible" there were more than a few persistent murmurs and a Community Centre Auditorium filled with shocked responses.

Then I explained gently and carefully that while I greatly respected God's Word, and deeply treasured and loved the volume which gives us the knowledge of Yeshua and his love for a lost humankind and the Way to salvation through Grace, the Holy Bible was the one book which the Dark Lord wanted so badly to discredit. What Satan delights in is to try every way he can to bring about a dirty blotch on God's Grace and character. To achieve this he simply gets well-meaning "believers" to overwrite the inspired words of Grace with anything that can detract from the glory of God which shines in the face of our Messiah the Lord Yeshua.

So, in this new series of Fundamentals I want to explain which statements found in the New Testament are to be treated with utter disdain and then deleted from the text. There will be general agreement when it comes to some of the texts or passages which I will point out but there may be some others which you might have difficulties disowning as they may well be associated with treasured memories. But what I will attempt to do is to explain why these verses have been tampered with and what the true intention of God actually is as understood in a doctrinal sense (which may well collide with the plain written statements in your own particularly favoured version of the Scriptures).

We all should desire to know and appreciate the biblical revelation the way God originally intended it, under inspiration of the holy Spirit, and not to be content with a perversion of the original text (as best as we can understand it).

Firstly however, we need to reflect on a few facts.

It is not uncommon to read that the Bible (as we have it today) was the product of a total rewrite in the fourth century during the reign of Constantine the emperor of Rome. At the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE the Bible was changed. Some precious volumes were eradicated at that time by order of the emperor and his bishops and what was left was essentially changed to suit the new Faith of the Roman empire. Well, this is the charge, and I can assure you all that it is a charge that is utterly without foundation -- it is absolutely false. I have no idea who first came up with this nonsense but its been quoted and re-quoted and expressed so often that people just accept it as an indisputable fact. It was Adolf Hitler who said "Repeat a lie long enough and loud enough and eventually everyone will believe it." He was right.

Listen! There were sectarian divisions which occurred as the new Catholic Faith emerged during the 4th century. This is true. There were persecutions which came as a result of Constantine's radical reforms, and many bishops and entire churches had to flee the bounds of the empire for very fear of their lives. This is also true. Major changes in ritual and ceremony were introduced at that time as well as a total distancing of the church from the Jews and Sabbath-keepers were among the disfavoured. Equally true. The Council of Nicaea was convened to settle the dispute between Arius and Athanasius of Alexandria -- this was the Trinitarian controversy. At this Nicene Council, Constantine sought to consolidate and unite his empire. In political terms it was one; in theological reality it was two. He "determined to call a council of the entire church. It would settle the issue, and he would enforce its decision with the power of the state. In calling the council, Constantine was not primarily concerned with establishing a true view of Christ's relationship to the Father. His aim was to maintain a united empire. It was the task of this council to formulate a Christology that would serve this end" (Harry R. Boer, A Short History of the Early Church, 1976, 114,115).

The Council of Nicaea rejected Arius and his views and anathematised all who were sympathetic to them. But the emperor went against the vast majority of his bishop's opinions and ultimately banished Athanasius a decade later to Gaul and recalled Arius from his exile! But a rewriting of the entire Bible at that time is a preposterous fallacious nonsense. And THAT is VERY true!

Critics challenge Christians with a smirk: "How can anyone believe what they read in the NT? We do not possess the original documents!" Remarkably, some rabbis take the same approach.

My response is simple and straightforward. On that basis and criteria, how can any of us be expected to accept ANY of the modern printed classics of the ancient writings of Homer, Polybius, Hesiod, Plato, Tacitus, Pliny, Herodotus, even Julius Caesar? How can any of us just accept the Tanack? After all, the earliest mss copies of the holy volume come from only a few centuries ago (comparatively speaking).

The NT has over 20,000 copies of early manuscripts (mss) that can be used for the purpose of comparison between ancient NT scrolls and texts -- whereas the earliest copies of the Hebrew Bible itself date from largely modern times. The Aleppo Codex dates to c.920 CE and the Leningrad Codex comes from around 1008 CE. The 10th century CE therefore mark the earliest complete codex. There are, of course, Greek translations of the Jewish Tanack (Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus along with fragments of the LXX. The oldest complete ms dates from the 4th century CE and the oldest fragments from 2nd century BCE). The Qumran finds pushes the date of the Tanack mss back to between 150 BCE and 70 CE. We can delight in the finding of an entire scroll of Isaiah (1QIsa) and one incomplete scroll of the same prophet (1QIsb). There are some notable differences between the contents of these scrolls and the present scroll of Isaiah.

By contrast the NT mss are in abundant supply. There are almost 6000 complete or fragmented mss in Greek, 9300 mss in Latin, and over 10,000 mss in ancient Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Slavic, Gothic and Armenian. The NT references located in the writings of the Church Fathers alone could virtually reconstruct the entire NT codex!

In reference to the textual evidence for the New Testament, Bruce Metzger noted:

"One should consider... the number of manuscripts which preserve the text of the ancient classics. Homer's Iliad is preserved by 457 papyri, 2 uncial manuscripts, and 188 minuscule manuscripts. Among the tragedians the witnesses to Euripides are the most abundant; his extant works are preserved in 54 papyri and 276 parchment manuscripts, almost all of the later dating from the Byzantine period... the time between the composition of the books of the New Testament and the earliest extant copies is relatively brief. Instead of the lapse of a millennium or more, as is the case of not a few classical authors, several papyrus manuscripts of portions of the New Testament are extant which were copies within a century or so after the composition of the original documents" (The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Its Corruption & Restoration, 1992, 33-35).

There are myriads more mss and fragments of early NT documents than there are authentic ancient ms copies of Tacitus, Pliny, Herodotus or other early historians. Most mss of the historical classics are never held in any doubt as far as translations are concerned, but biblical critics do not view the NT codex in the same way – even though we are in possession of an amazing abundance of early mss. It is estimated that there is only 1% of all NT words which are causing difficulty in textual analysis. I repeat: 1%.

Caesar's Gallic Wars was penned in the first century before the birth of Yeshua, yet the earliest of only ten existing mss of the Wars came a full thousand years later. There exist only 5 mss of Aristotle's Poetics in existence, but the earliest copy we have comes 1400 years after he lived. But these ancient historical works are never questioned. The same goes for Plato. There are only 7 remaining mss of his works dating from 300 BCE but again, the earliest copy of his works comes almost a millennium after he died.

Finds of early NT mss are increasing every year, for annually two, three or four entirely new Greek mss are unearthed to add to the already teeming number of ancient mss of the NT. They date from the 2nd to the 15th century when the printing press was created. In fact there exist fragments of John's Gospel which date to the mid-to-late first century along with 5000 other NT mss! Not only is this the case, but as recently as 2008 a cache of 47 ancient mss of the NT were discovered in Albania, and 17 of them are unknown to modern biblicists.

However, all this is largely irrelevant to today's lecture. The first major textual perversion that I wish to point out is found in 1 John 5.7. Some Bibles still include it, like the AV (KJV), but a number of Bibles will have a footnote to the text as to the verse being an addition to Scripture. And an addition it really is! It has absolutely no right to be there.

In the King James Version it reads: "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one."

The Greek scholar Marvin Vincent dismisses the words "in heaven, The Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one" as constituting a rejection "by the general verdict of critical authorities" and then lists the most formidable of them (Marvin Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, Vol.11, 1887, 366).

In cases of this nature, we often find that footnotes in Bibles can shed light on certain difficult textual issues. Consider the following:

The NIV has a footnote: "Late manuscripts of the Vulgate testify in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. And there are three that testify on earth; the (not found in any Greek manuscript before the sixteenth century)."

The Darby footnote suggests these words have been inserted "by some here without adequate warrant."

That Roman Catholic priests were up to their usual shennanigans can be seen if we look at the footnotes of The Translator's New Testament (1973)...

"1 John 5:7. witness. The AV has a long insertion at this point, referring to the three heavenly and the three earthly witnesses. This is not found in any of the old Greek manuscripts or the Early Fathers, though it is in most of the Latin manuscripts. When Erasmus produced the first printed Greek Testament, he omitted the passage because he could not find it in any of his Greek manuscripts. There were complaints, and the complainants undertook to produce a Greek manuscript which included the words. This they did and so Erasmus made the addition and it became part of the standard text for many years. It is very doubtful, however, if the Greek manuscript was genuine, and the words are not included in any modern edition or translation" (542).

The erudite F.F. Bruce tells us, "The verse that appears in the AV ...is not in the original Greek text, nor in any Greek manuscript earlier than the fifteenth century, nor in Jerome's Latin text, nor in the RV, nor in the RSV, nor in the Jerusalem Bible, nor in the NEB, nor in many other authorities too numerous to mention. J.N. Darby does not have it in his New Translation (1871), and refers to it [negatively] in a footnote...The interpolation first appears in a Latin treatise by a Spanish Christian named Priscillian who died in AD 385. Erasmus felt obliged to include it (reluctantly) in his third edition of the Greek New Testament (1522) because of an incautious promise he had made, and so it found its way into successive early printed editions of the Greek New Testament and thence into the AV" (F.F. Bruce, Answers to Questions, 1972, 134).

We can see from these various authoritative admissions that the early manuscripts (Greek) did not include 1 John 5.7, and it first appeared, according to yet another authority, "in two old Latin manuscripts of the sixth and eighth centuries and in some manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate, but not the oldest ones." This authority went on to say that Erasmus "did not include it in his first edition of the New Testament in Greek (1516) nor in his second (1519). When criticised for the omission, he rashly said that if anyone could show him a Greek manuscript containing the passage he would insert it, and the sixteenth-century Codex Montfortianus containing it was brought to his attention. [Because of his honesty] he felt obliged to include the reading in his third edition (1522), and it was this edition that Tyndale used in making his translation of the Greek Testament (1525). From Tyndale the verse found its way into the King James Version. It is universally discredited by Greek scholars and editors of the Greek  text  of  the  New  Testament"  (Edgar J. Goodspeed, The Goodspeed Parallel New Testament, 1943, 557).

Trinitarian John Thurmer (Chancellor of Exeter Cathedral) confesses: "Mainstream Christianity, Eastern and Western, Catholic and Protestant, cleaves to the Trinity. But it often seems to do so almost without knowing why. For some it is enough that "the Church teaches"... For others, it is "what the Bible teaches" though the doctrine of the Trinity is not, in any developed and explicit form, found in the Bible" (John Thurmer, A Detection of the Trinity, 1984, 11).

Adds Ethelbert Stauffer, "It is self-evident that Father, Son, and Spirit are... linked in an indissoluble threefold relationship. On the other hand, the NT does not actually speak of [the Trinity]. WE SEEK THIS IN VAIN in the triadic formulae of the NT" (in Gerhard Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, III, 108).

As we have already noted above the text does not exist in the Spirit-breathed Scriptures of God. It is entirely spurious and reflects the thinking of a lonely, uninspired monk closeted somewhere away from the real world in some reclusive monastery. It is absent from ancient Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Slavonic texts. It is located in a 16th century Greek manuscript, a 12th century ms in the margin written by a later hand, a third Greek ms of the 15th century, and finally a fourth Greek text of the 11th century in a marginal rendering written by a 17th century hand! The very fact this verse WAS NEVER USED in any of the early Trinitarian controversies (and this is a matter of historical fact) should be enough to discredit its insertion in the first letter of John the apostle.

So why would an uninspired Italian monk somewhere in a cave, some centuries after Christ, deliberately insert a verse of his own into a letter from John the apostle, in order to foster the pagan idea of a Triad of gods (Tritheism) into the Christian religion? Was that his motive? Or ought we look more deeply into the question?

In my view it was a deliberate attempt (and a successful one at that) to promote the idea of GOD as "closed Being." That is, God had ONE "eternally begotten SON and God the Father, God the Son, and God the holy Spirit were a manifestation of the pagan eternal triangle into which no man or woman could ever penetrate. ONE son, NO daughters, and most certainly NO other begotten children. This idea of a closed Triad sat very well with the utterly incompetent King James VI of Scotland/James the 1st of England and Ireland, of 1611 fame. (Mary Queen of Scots was his mother.) The King had a very dark and sinister "Neronian"- complex personality and nature. Very few people realise this dark fact of historical interest. James was a depraved despot (admitted freely by all) who was influenced by the demons of his own psychosexual mental deformity and his religious views would not tolerate any expression of God reproducing Himself. For James was a homosexual but not in the sense of merely being "gay." Oh no, not at all. James was a cruel streak of perverted misery who enjoyed blood-lust and who "murdered his young lovers and victimised countless heretics and [especially] women. His cruelty was justified by his [view of the] 'divine right' of kings" (Otto J. Scott, James 1. The Fool as King, 1976). James, who is credited with giving us the Authorised Version of the Bible himself was an atheist who declared "There is no God!" and who took enormous delight in personally supervising the torture of women accused of witchcraft. He also enjoyed hunting, not so much for the "sport" itself, but to tear open the caught beast and to roll about in its blood, and there are even some who have claimed that he used the dying beast in a fit of beastiality.

Whatever the case in relation to animals, apart from his especial loathing of women, the king wanted a Bible that would both depose and replace the popularity of the contemporary Geneva Bible for the main reason it declared that a king was subject to God. James did not want to hear this for, if there indeed was a god of some sort, he wanted it to be the other way around. Of course, the KJV has translations of certain sections of the biblical revelation that favour the king and emphasises the subjection of the populace or "laity" to kingly authority. But the KJV is not a translation -- rather it is a mere version -- despite its introduction which mentions the AV as "newly translated out of the original tongues." It was actually a revision of The Bishop's Bible of 1568, which was a revision of The Great Bible of 1539, which was based on three previous English versions.

If "King James Bible Only" enthusiasts realised these facts I wonder how many would continue their hopeless battle cry of "ONLY the AV is correct!" stance. One wit on the Internet has suggested with tongue in cheek that perhaps we should be speaking in future of the KJV as the Gay-JV? I might also add that so egocentric was James, and so hate-filled toward Christ, he called himself "The Prince of Peace." This blasphemer who refused to sleep in the same bed as his "repulsive" wife and who publicly drooled into the open mouths of his lovers, much to the disgust of his court, was afflicted endlessly with gout, kidney stones, and rheumatoid arthritis finally succumbing to death during a raging dysentery attack.

This is the King James very few know anything about! Christians assume that because of his link by name to a version of a Bible that he had to be a man of integrity and wholesome character. Nothing could be further from the truth of the matter. It was Sir Walter Raleigh who publicly joked about his sovereigns. His regent, he said, had followed "King Elizabeth" as "Queen James" (Catherine D. Bowen, The Lion and the Throne, 1957).

The bottom line of the Trinity doctrine is simple: Deity in a closed Triad could not reproduce Himself/Herself -- what a tragedy biblical "scholars" of 1611 could not, and would not, substitute the view of "Tri-unity" for "Trinity." A triune Deity can and has begotten other children. God's people for the past 2000 years, both sons and daughters, are stark evidence of ultra-Cosmic reproduction. Not as Yeshua, who was uniquely conceived. But we Christians, if we are authentic disciples, have been impregnated by the seed of God nevertheless!

What an ASTONISHING REVELATION is this utterly WONDERFUL, yet STAGGERING truth!

For, if you truly possess the holy Spirit of God (the very holy Spirit of new birth or conception: either concept will suffice) then you are [a] potential GOD and ONE with the UNITY of DEITY ITSELF!

Now the words of Our Lord can make better sense when he says in his heartfelt prayer to the Father,

"Holy Father, keep through your own name [we carry God's name just as any son or daughter carries their father's family name] those whom you have given me, that THEY MAY BE ONE as we are... that THEY MAY BE ONE as you Father are in me, and I in you, that THEY ALSO MAY BE ONE IN US... and the glory which you gave me I have given them that THEY MAY BE ONE even as we are ONE - I in them and you in me that THEY MAY BE MADE PERFECT IN ONE" (Jn 17.11,21-23).
  
So hostile were the KJV revisionists toward the truth of God that they changed the idea of an intimate "Sonship" to an aloof, legal "adoption" under the direct influence of James 1 of England. This was because they realised that Yeshua would "only" be the firstborn of many brothers and sisters and therefore, because Yeshua was his "only" Son, God could "only" ever adopt other children (See KJV Rom 8.15,23; Gal 4.5; Eph 1.5; N.B. The NASV and Darby also follow the KJV in this regard. The NIV wavers between "sonship" in Rom 8.15 and "adoption" in verse 23. The NIV also opts for "adoption" in the Ephesian text. And, so, the intimidation of scholarly pressure brought to bear in relation to church tradition). The Greek word in these passages ought to be translated "Sonship," not "adoption."

According to the established church we Messianic believers could be His children, but only legally, by adoption. But this flies in the face of the biblical revelation. While adoption is a wonderful gift for a child without parents (or a child of abusive parents) it is only the case on a human level. When it comes to God the Father He doesn't adopt children... rather, God begets -- engenders -- children. Converted believers ARE authentic literal sons and daughters of God. This has always been God's intention, to reproduce Himself in human beings and bring them through their gestation into His sacred Realm of Godhead. Momentarily we exist in a form of material reality -- a subset of THAT OTHER (REALITY) -- that consists of probably ten dimensions, maybe more. One "day" we will all manifest IN That which transcends even the dimensions of our multiverse. Astrophysicist Hugh Ross believes that Deity exists in "11 dimensions: nine spatial dimensions (which mathematically would permit rotation in and out of three-dimensional spaces) and at least two dimensions of time" (Hugh Ross, Beyond the Cosmos, 1999, 46,59).

For those who would attempt to understand the doctrine of the Trinity I well recall a cartoon showing a Roman Catholic nun, ruler in hand, standing in front of her class of little children all seated with their hands clenched together on their desks. The Quicunque Vult ("whosoever wishes [to be saved]," the opening announcement of the Athanasian Creed) appears in chalk on the massive blackboard. The nun is speaking to the class, "There are three Persons in one God, not three Gods but three of one substance in one God, one Father, one Son, one Holy Ghost, not three Fathers, three Sons, or three Holy Ghosts. We cannot divide the Persons for all three are indivisibly one God, and the Holy Ghost particularly proceeds, he is not created nor yet begotten. The Father is not created, nor made, nor yet begotten, but the Son is begotten, not made, nor created, neither does he proceed. Now is that clear?" To which the children with one voice respond: "Oh yes Miss!"

Oh yes Miss! my foot. "He who would try to understand the mystery," wrote Lindsell, "will lose his mind." We cannot help but agree with him. Nevertheless this lecture  has made an attempt to explain (not the unfortunate doctrine of the Trinity as such) but the position the perverted Freemason King James took in ensuring the belief of a closed Triad to be sustained in his "Authorised Version" of 1611.

It's high time to reject theological nonsense, continue seeking after a sometimes elusive truth, and at the same time to expand the parameters of our biblical ignorance.