.................................SCANDAL at NICEA
"CHURCH CENSORS BIBLE! 61 BOOKS BANNED!"
You've been hearing about it for some time now. It's
all over the media. The horrible secret is out: Every-
one has just learned that the Holy Bible was "censored"
by the Roman Catholic Church in 325 AD at the Council
of Nicea. You can hardly turn on a talk show without
someone repeating this claim. But is it true?
No. How could it be? One of the rulings of Nicea
was that Rome only ruled over Europe, while Alexandria
had charge of Africa and Antioch had charge of Asia and
the Middle East. The Roman Catholic domination we are
now so familiar with was not officially declared until
55 years after the Council of Nicea.
Okay, but what about all the changes in the Bible we
keep hearing were made by that Council? Didn't Nicea
edit books or verses out of the Bible?
No. The subject never came up at that council. And
we have all the Council rulings, plus reports by several
attendees, to absolutely prove that the Council never
issued any such rulings, nor even discussed such ideas
as censoring or changing the Bible in any way.
On the contrary, the Arian debate was over whether or
not to add A SINGLE WORD to the Creed, not the Bible.
And that one word was disputed precisely because it was
NOT found in the New Testament's vocabulary anywhere.
[For the details on the Council of Nicea, by a Jewish
historian with no pro-Vatican bias, see: "WHEN JESUS
BECAME GOD" by Richard E. Rubenstein, Harcourt, Brace
& Company(NY, 1999).]
In other words, EVERYONE AGREED ON THE WORDING OF THE
NEW TESTAMENT (and Greek version of the Old Testament),
right down to the intimate details of every single word
used in its vocabulary. All the bishops of the church
were using the same Bible in 325 AD. No one suggested
"adding" a book or "changing" the wording as a way to
help resolve the dispute over this one word.
Moreover, earlier canon lists and manuscripts show that
the Bible in use before the Council was really the same
one in use after it. The great Nicean censorship we keep
hearing about never happened. The story is a hoax.
[See especially "THE NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS" in many
volumes (in progress) by Reuben Swanson, William Carey
International Press(Pasadena, 1995-present). Allows a
comparison of all variations in the earliest manuscripts.]
In other words, we're being "had" by a modern religious
legend--a myth repeated so often it has taken on a life
of its own, being repeated in books and articles as if it
has some sort of academic "source" somewhere. Yet there's
not a word of truth in it. Of course, that does not mean
the Council of Nicea was free of scandal. On the contrary,
hired gangs of thugs roamed the streets intimidating the
bishops, beating some. Venal plots against the Arians and
mob rule typified the real "Council." But censoring the
Bible was one of the few evils that did NOT occur there.
Okay, you say, but maybe some OTHER early church council
censored the Bible and took books out. Did that happen
at any council before or after Nicea?
Surprisingly, it was mostly just the opposite. Although
there were a few books--like BARNABUS, SHEPHERD OF HERMAS,
CLEMENT, and THE APOCALYPSE OF PETER--that had been read
widely in the Church and thought to be genuine Christian
writings (vs books by heretics & con artists), the debate
never really was over those texts. Christians were already
reading them, but hardly anyone thought they were part of
the New Testament handed down by the Apostles. SHEPHERD
OF HERMAS, for example, was known to have been composed
in the last half of the second century. People read it,
but they knew it was not Apostolic in origin.
Book binding wasn't very good then. So the 4 Gospels
were usually bound separately from the rest of the New
Testament to keep the Bible from being too big to bind.
There were thousands of these Gospel books produced over
the period from within a century after the Apostles down
to the 16th century, yet we have no ancient New Testament
manuscript with any other gospel but the familiar MATTHEW,
MARK, LUKE, and JOHN. Old manuscript copies of "complete"
Bibles--with both Old and New Testaments--remained very
difficult to assemble until the Crusades. Complete Bible
collections were rarely made. Breaking the Bible up into
smaller books was easier for research. They could refer
back and forth between books, and more than one person
could use a Bible if it were in multiple sections--a good
thing in days when a local church had only one Bible for
the whole congregation.
[Our book, "THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE BIBLE," contains
a Bibliography of hundreds of sources documenting the
statements in this article.]
THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS
The little dialogue called "THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS" never
seems to have made it into anyone's Bible. Not even the
Gnostics at Nag Hammadi where it was found put it in with
the New Testament books. No one did. The idea that this
so-called GOSPEL OF THOMAS was somehow "taken out" of the
Bible is another one of those myths people believe, but
which has no evidence at all behind it.
A "GOSPEL OF THOMAS" is mentioned by some early Church
fathers, but never as a legitimate part of the Bible, and
when they do quote from it, it is from a totally different
text than the one found in the 5th century AD "Library" at
Nag Hammadi. The text quoted by the very early Christian
writers is about the CHILDHOOD of Jesus. This "INFANCY
GOSPEL OF THOMAS," as it is now called, has no connection
in subject, style or viewpoint with the other "GOSPEL OF
THOMAS" of Nag Hammadi.
Nor is there much evidence for an early version of this
Nag Hammadi THOMAS. The few pieces of papyri that quote
this THOMAS cannot be with certainty dated earlier than
around the start of the 4th century. They come from piles
of fragments found at Oxyrinchus in Egypt. Again, while
some would like to speculate about THOMAS being as old as
the late 1st century--and a popular myth even "dates" it
to the 30's AD!--all this is totally undocumented. Without
quotations in early authors or datable fragments, THOMAS
remains a relatively late text compared to the 4 Gospels
which are well-attested as existing by the late 1st or the
very early 2nd century (as even harsh critics would date
them) when several eyewitnesses of Jesus were still living.
Nobody took THOMAS seriously. Even the Nag Hammadi Library
bound it together with the pagan REPUBLIC OF PLATO, but not
with any New Testament books. On the other hand, fragments
of the 4 Gospels exist from between 60 and 135 AD--perhaps
200 years earlier than any fragments of THOMAS.
Even if THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS were genuine and as early as
the day of the Crucifixion itself [and it obviously is not],
it is a short, confused dialogue at an unstated time & place
of little value for historical purposes. It simply contains
no reference to the actual life of Jesus. It is merely a
few rambling questions and answers. Hardly a chapter's
worth of text. It is disappointing to anyone but a scholar.
In fact, if we had never heard of Jesus, this "GOSPEL"
would be a real puzzle. It never explains who these people
are, when the lived, or why we should care about this very
strange discussion they are having, with its bizarre half-
quotations from the 4 Gospels. Without the New Testament
as a background, this ill-defined dialogue could have been
attributed to some obscure ancient Gnostic sect whose ideas
apparently never got far. Indeed, if the text of THOMAS
had not borrowed the names of Jesus and a few Apostles, it
would be recognized as just another piece of arcane Gnostic
philosophy and treated like the other Gnostic writings that
were found with it. Of course, if the Gnostics could have
stood on their own, they would not have ever needed to wrap
themselves up in the authority of the New Testament by pre-
tending to have been part of it.
Notice how you never see Christian books pretending to be
part of some Gnostic tradition? John, for example, whose
style of writing sounds much like the Gnostics, went out of
his way in his epistles to condemn the Gnostics so that no
one would have any grounds for misidentifying him. Why is it
that every heretic and Gnostic in the early Christian era
was trying to use the New Testament to boost his authority,
but none of them ever cited THOMAS or other Gnostic writings
as their authority? If the New Testament was later and less
reliable than THOMAS, why didn't anyone cite THOMAS instead?
Scholars have found evidence for "Q"--a supposed original
collection of "sayings" of Jesus shared by several of the
New Testament writers. This may have been part of the first
HEBREW GOSPEL OF MATTHEW mentioned by several early Church
fathers. But every word of "Q" as we now have it is found
right in the New Testament itself. Every word. Speculation
about hypothetical other parts of the original "Q" document
that are now "lost" is a nice parlour game for some critical
scholars, but--without any hard evidence--there is no proof
a word of "Q" is lost.
THE REAL BIBLE CENSORS
You'd never guess who it was, but some Christians DID in
fact censor their Bibles. It was none other than that other
popular group among our modern myth-makers, the creators of
the Aramaic New Testament.
Most people know this text from the English translation
of it done by George M. Lamsa. What most do not realize--
unless they read Lamsa's footnotes and Introduction--is that
the "original" Peshitta Aramaic New Testament edited no less
than 5 books out of the Bible: REVELATION, 2 PETER, 2 JOHN,
3 JOHN, and JUDE. Aramaic texts of these books did exist,
but the churches under the Bishop of Babylon and the East
did not like them because they criticized Babylon and other
eastern churches. So they edited them out around 300 AD.
Another popular myth contends that this Aramaic text was
the "original" New Testament and that the Greek text came
later. Is that true?
Hardly. Anyone with a copy of the Aramaic New Testament
--even in Lamsa's doctored English version--can see plainly
that MATTHEW in his Aramaic text contains in the very first
chapter the smoking gun that proves it is translated from
a GREEK original. It says: "IMMANUEL, which is INTERPRETED,
('translated') 'God with us.'"
Now why would an Aramaic (Hebrew dialect) Bible need to
"INTERPRET" the well-known Hebrew/Aramaic name "IMMANUEL"
to an ARAMAIC readership? Interpretating is needed for a
FOREIGN language. Obviously, this verse was not written
in Hebrew or Aramaic, but in ANOTHER language, namely the
Greek tongue. Its Greek readers needed an INTERPRETATION
of Hebrew terms--something that occurs often Lamsa's New
Testament, proving it was not originally an Aramaic text,
but a Greek work.
Further proof is found in the epistles, which are often
written to gentile Christians in Greek cities. They are
sometimes instructed to read these epistles aloud in the
church. Imagine the confusion if the text had been read
in Aramaic to these Greeks in Greece!
Luke's Gospel and ACTS are addressed to a Greek man he
calls "Theophilus"--who would hardly be written to in a
language other than Greek, which Luke as a physician, was
required to know well, since most medical texts and terms
were Greek.
Moreover, the early church fathers specifically single
out MATTHEW as the only New Testament book to ever have
a Hebrew original, and that text obviously is not the one
found in the Aramaic manuscripts available to Lamsa, who
claimed to be using the oldest Aramaic text available.
The irony is that all the claims of antiquity for this
Aramaic New Testament only serve to push back the date of
the Greek text from which it is so clearly translated.
Lamsa and other defenders of the Aramaic text claim it
is dated to the 1st century. Many scholars have smiled at
this claim, but a few have taken it seriously. Even so, it
is clear that the New Testament underlying the Aramaic is
a Greek work--even in the case of MATTHEW. Since MATTHEW
has been found in a few Greek fragments from the late 1st
century, any translation into Greek must have taken place
well before the end of the 1st century--that is, within
the lifetime of John and other eyewitnesses of Jesus. The
Aramaic text of Lamsa must date after that time.
THE PAGAN CRITICS CITE THE TRADITIONAL NEW TESTAMENT
One of the most powerful proofs for the historical basis
of the Greek New Testament is its citation by pagan Greek
authors who attacked Christianity, beginning in the latter
1st century and continuing unabated until about 100 years
after the Council of Nicea. These pagans had no reason to
endorse the Greek New Testament, yet they repeatedly cite
it as having 4 Gospels, and as teaching a virgin birth,
miracles, the atoning of sin by the Crucifixion, and a
Resurrection for both Jesus and for His followers.
The pagans ridiculed these teachings they found in the
New Testament--and thereby provided unassailable proof for
the existence of these Gospels and their doctrines at very
early times. Among the teachings being attacked centuries
before the Council of Nicea was the divinity of Christ--
which the pagans could not believe possible in light of
the Crucifixion's brutal suffering.
Celsius, a pagan critic of the 2nd century, wrote:
"The assertion that some God or Son of God has come down
to the earth as Judge of mankind is most shameful...Is it
that God wants to give us knowledge of himself for our own
salvation in order that those who accept it may become good
and be saved...?"
Porphyry, a 3rd century philosopher and occultist, wrote:
"[It is stupid] to accept that the Divine [One] had
descended into the womb of the Virgin Mary, that He had
become an embryo, that after His birth he had been wrapped
in swaddling clothes, stained with blood, bile and worse...
Why, when He was taken before the High Priest and Governor,
did He not say anything worthy of a divine man? He allowed
Himself to be struck, spat upon on the face, crowned with
thorns...allowing Himself to be assaulted like some rabble
from off the streets..."
Lucian of Samosata in Syria, in the 2nd century, tried
to portray Christians as naive:
"The poor wretches have convinced themselves...that they
are going to be immortal and live for all time, as result
of which they despise death...Furthermore, their lawgiver
persuaded them that they are all brothers of one another
after they have transgressed once and for all by denying
the Greek gods and by worshipping that crucified Wise-Man
Himself and living under His laws..."
Porphyry, writing scarcely 200 years after the deaths of
Peter and Paul, took pains to point out "contradiction" in
the FOUR gospels, citing exactly the same four scriptures
that have down to our day. Porphyry says nothing of any
GOSPEL OF THOMAS (or any other outside gospel). He cites
nothing of the apocryphal apocalyses or pseudo-epistles.
Writing half a century before Nicea, Porphyry quotes from
a New Testament indistinguishable from our own.
The pagan critics and the early Church fathers haggle
over the same verses in the same books in the same canon.
There is no debate over the GOSPEL OF THOMAS or any other
Gnostic text or apocryphal book. The pagan critics are
not interested in such writings. Their total focus is on
the New Testament text as we still know it.
How strange it is to read the pagan critics and realize
they do not take seriously these silly Gnostic gospels
our modern scholars now deem so important.
You'd think our modern critics would be embarrassed by
the lack of interest their pagan forebears show these odd
Gnostic ravings. How can it be the pagans knew so much of
the New Testament and so little of these other texts? Did
the pagans ignore the Gnostics because they were so few
compared to the New Testament-toting Christians? Were the
Gnostics a minor theological backwater not worth the time
of pagan critics? It certainly seems our scholars have
greatly inflated the importance of the Gnostics and their
writings.
Indeed, if it were not for mainstream Christian works,
we not only wouldn't know what the Gnostics were rambling
on about so incoherently, we wouldn't even know who the
Gnostics themselves were. Not only does the New Testament
explain who Jesus and the Apostles are(which the Gnostics
often fail to explain), but Church writers are often the
only ones to preserve the names and works of the Gnostic
heretics known to us. The pagans, on the other hand, do
not pay any attention to these marginal heretics.
THE EVIDENCE OF ANCIENT SCROLLS
Some 20,000 manuscripts or fragments of the books of
the New Testament are known. It is the best-attested of
all the works of ancient literature, having more evidence
in support of it than ALL THE REST OF ANCIENT LITERATURE
COMBINED. It is in a class by itself. To deny the text
of the New Testament is to dismiss the validity of the
entire written ancient history of mankind--for none of
it can pass the tests the New Testament passes.
Not only are there more copies of the New Testament,
but the New Testament manuscripts are far closer to the
times of their composition by the original authors than
any of those manuscripts of other ancient writings that
no one dares question. We have no manuscripts of Julius
Caesar's GALLIC WARS copied within half a dozen centuries
of his lifetime, yet we have Gospel texts written within
decades of the Apostles. Was Julius Caesar literate? Is
he really the author of his works? No one dares ask such
questions, yet the evidence for his authorship is puny,
compared to the voluminous ancient attestation for those
who wrote the New Testament books.
The New Testament is verified by quotations in the very
writings of its enemies. Taking all the quotations of it
by friend and foe prior to the Council of Nicea, we could
reconstruct better than 90% of it with little trouble.
More amazing still is the condition of the manuscripts
found in so many old monasteries. These crumbling texts
reveal an astonishing variety of book sequences, but the
selection of books almost never exceeds the collection we
now find in our modern Bibles.
The astonishing thing is how often our modern books are
MISSING. That is, books like REVELATION show up early in
the Christian era, only to disappear during the Medieval
period, and then return with the Reformation. HEBREWS is
another book that appears and disappears, but finally is
rescued in the end.
The surprising conclusion is that our Bibles are not at
all censored, but rather, they are RESTORED from a period
of censorship that arose in the 4th century and continued
off and on until the Reformation.
THE BATTERED BIBLE
The canon of the Old Testament has never been in doubt.
The Jewish people have preserved its books, even the order
of the scrolls, extremely well. For a time, scholars had
convinced themselves that Jewish rabbis fiddled with the
text during the Middle Ages. Yet the Dead Sea Scrolls were
found to have so many copies of the Hebrew Scriptures in
virtually the same text still used in the synagogues that
no one but anti-Semites and the ignorant dares anymore to
utter that old slander about rabbis changing the Bible.
The New Testament was also not in doubt at first. Those
early church fathers who quote it have made it possible to
not only determine that the list of books was virtually the
same as we now have, but even the text itself can nearly
be reconstructed in its entirety from their citations, they
were so numerous and wide-ranging. Irenaeus (c.140-202AD), a
disciple of Polycarp, a disciple of the Apostle John, cites
every New Testament book but PHILEMON in his writings. There
can be no doubt that by the early 2nd century New Testament
books were regarded as a sacred collection, or canon, and at
least John, if not other Apostles, must have had a hand in
selecting which books belonged in this collection.
This is not to say that there was universal acceptance of
this canon of books, but the dissenters stand out for their
REMOVAL of books from the standard canon we now have. There
are hardly any indications of ADDITIONS to the canon which
involve "heretical" texts. Instead, there were occasional
efforts to add "BARNABUS" or "HERMAS" or other "orthodox"
Christian writings, but few took such efforts seriously.
Certainly no one wished to add the 3rd century writings
of Origen to the Bible, or any "late" documents; the books
of the New Testament were limited to writings of Apostles
and disciples of the Apostles under their direction (like
Luke under Paul's direction). Clement was thought to have
been Paul's personal disciple, but his epistles were done
after Paul's death (as Clement himself says); so Clement's
epistles were not part of the canon, albeit one manuscript
of the Bible(out of thousands)did append them to the text
of the New Testament--probably for convenience. There is
no mention anywhere of anyone actually believing Clement's
epistles belonged in the canon itself.
Only one other book besides "BARNABUS," "HERMAS," and
"CLEMENT" has ever been found bound with the New Testament
canon: "THE APOCALYPSE OF PETER." So what was this book?
Our earliest reference to "THE APOCALYPSE OF PETER" is
found in the Muratorian Canon, which is to be dated partly
to about 160 AD, at the earliest. Part of this document
may date to a later period, for it seems to locate the
book of REVELATION in two different positions in the New
Testament Canon: Before Paul's epistles [an early location]
and at the very end [an apparently late development]. So
the reference to "THE APOCALYPSE OF PETER" which follows
immediately after the latter mention of REVELATION would
suggest a later date than 160 AD. However, if the date is
160 AD, a time when disciples of the Apostles still ruled
the church, then we should be aware that the Muratorian
text says that "THE APOCALYPSE OF PETER" was not allowed
to be read in some churches because it was deemed spurious.
It is clear that "THE APOCALYPSE OF PETER" was in doubt
from the early church, by the middle of the 2nd century.
Yet many obviously were willing to take it seriously even
though Apostolic church authorities had not given it their
full endorsement, which would have silenced the doubters.
What was it about this disputed text that caused such
conviction by so many that it might actually be genuine?
Was it something in the text itself, or something else?
Was it something--a tradition--that everyone knew and
accepted as true, something even the Apostolic leaders
could not dispute, that led early Christians to believe
Peter had had a special "Apocalypse"(ie "Revelation") and
that this text just might be what Peter wrote down?
There was precisely such an early church tradition. It
and this article are documented in "THE SECRET HISTORY OF
THE BIBLE," our new book [ORDERING].
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