We need to start our exploration of the New Testament by examining and understanding how the New Testament texts have come to be transmitted down to us. Before the invention of the printing press and modern-type paper, all ancient books were written by hand, thus the word manuscript, and were periodically recopied for preservation and circulation.

The New Testament was written originally in Greek; of this there can be no question. Some men have tried to claim that the New Testament was originally written in Aramaic, a dialect of Hebrew, and then later translated into Greek, but all such men are incapable of presenting a single shred of evidence that points to their contention. If any evidence existed, even fragmentary, we might offer some repudiation, but the fact of the matter is that not one piece of evidence exists. All evidence points to the contrary: Paul wrote letters to believers in Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colosse and Thessalonika, and only a fool would think that any of these people spoke Aramaic or Hebrew. He wrote to men with Greek names, such as Timothy (Timotheus) and Titus. Alexander the Great had conquered the known world three hundred years earlier and had introduced the Greek language throughout the world. Jesus and His students traveled throughout Greek-speaking areas, and the New Testament records that Jesus was able to speak Aramaic and did so when it was necessary, but Greek was still His primary language. Galilee was a Greek-speaking region in the 1st century, and men like Mark and Luke show this in their Greek names. We will look at more of these contentions later in the section entitled Was the New Testament Written in Aramaic?

Thus, the men whom the Mentality of Separation used to write the New Covenant spoke Greek and wrote in Greek, although many of them were certainly fluent in other languages as well. The original manuscripts are not extant today, for reasons we will see later, but a great body of witnesses does exist that points to the original words of the original manuscripts, and through the science of Textual Criticism we shall see how today we can come closer than ever before to knowing with certainty the original words of the New Testament.

With this in mind, let us look at the many different ways the New Testament has been transmitted down to us over the last 1900 years.

Today, the uncial manuscripts are the most important of the Greek witnesses to the original text of the New Testament. They date from the 4th to the 9th centuries AD, and they are written entirely in large capital letters on vellum manuscripts or parchment. Because vellum was always at a premium, a number of conventions were taken to save space when preparing a manuscript on it. There are no spaces between the words, no punctuation, and often-used words, such as Jesus, Christ, and God, are abbreviated. The abbreviation technique was further applied to many common or obvious words where the last letter or syllable could be dropped off, just as we today abbreviate many words or shorten titles. Such shortenings were usually marked by a line drawn above the letter. Many of the texts have critical annotations in the margin and show the writing of more than one scribe and oftentimes of later correctors.

Vaticanus. The Vatican Manuscript, represented by the letter B, is the oldest of the great uncial codices and dates to the early 4th century AD. Until its recent release by the Catholic Church, it was kept hidden in the Vatican Library for at least 600 years. The manuscript was known by scholars to exist in 1475 when it was listed in a catalogue of manuscripts in the Vatican Library, and the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) portion of the manuscript was published in 1587 under the papacy of Pope Sixtus V. However, its New Testament contents were kept a guarded secret. This portion was not seen by scholars until 1815 when Napoleon captured Rome and brought the manuscript back to Paris, where it was studied for a short time. If not for this, it is certain that its contents would still be locked up secure in the Vatican Library today. The Catholic Church considers the manuscript dangerous because it shows so clearly how corrupt their Vulgate is and has become; for this reason it literally took a war before it was seen by scholars.

Dr. Samuel Tregelles, one of the important figures in Textual Criticism in the 19th century, was two-years-old when the Vatican Manuscript was brought to Paris. Later in his life, he would make another step toward finally allowing the text to be freed from Catholic lock and key. With knowledge of the New Testament portion of the manuscript now a matter of public record, Tregelles traveled to Rome to view the manuscript. However, when he arrived, as he later said, they searched his pockets before he could look at the manuscript, allowed him no writing instruments or paper, and two priests were assigned to watch him and distract him when he spent too much time on any particular passage. They also took the book away from him when he stayed on one page too long. Still, Tregelles managed to tell the scholarly world enough of what was in the manuscript that Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) would be forced to make copies of the Vatican Manuscript available to the leading libraries of the world. This pressure was aided by Konstantin von Tischendorf. Before Tregelles ever viewed the text, Tischendorf had waited several months and was finally allowed to see it for six hours. Later, after Tregelles' visit, Tischendorf returned and was allowed to view the text under similar circumstances as was Tregelles. However, Tischendorf managed to copy 20 pages of the text. When the priests found out, the text was immediately taken from him. He published those leaves in 1867, and then in 1868 the Vatican published the entire New Testament. It was not until 1881 that the Septuagint was released. Photographs were released in 1889-90.

Today, the contents of the manuscript are well known. It contains 759 vellum sheets out of an original 820 or so, probably antelope skins, about 10 5/8 inches square, with text in three columns. It contains the entire Bible, both New Testament and Septuagint, except for Genesis 1-46, Psalms 105-137, and the New Testament after Hebrews 9:14.

"The monks of the convent have since your departure learned the value of the parchments, and now they will not part with them at any price."

Tischendorf himself returned to the monastery but was able to secure only one more sheet of the text. He did, however, learn that the entire Septuagint (his chief interest at the time) was contained in the manuscript. Again, in 1859, he returned to the monastery with a commission from the Tsar of Russia, but he could not find the rest of the manuscript. One of the monks, however, invited him into his cell where he showed him his copy of the Septuagint. To Tischendorf's surprise, it was the rest of the manuscript that he had seen back in 1844, and not only did it contain the rest of the Septuagint (with Apocrypha), but also the complete New Testament. Tischendorf tried not to show his excitement this time in front of the monk, but asked if he could look over it in his room. Tischendorf later wrote:

"And there by myself, I gave way to my transports of joy. I knew that I held in my hands one of the most precious Biblical treasures in existence, a document whose age and importance exceeded that of any I had ever seen after twenty years' study of the subject."

Still, it was not for another eight years, in 1867, that Tischendorf persuaded the Tsar to do what was necessary to obtain the manuscript for the Tsar's library and public access. Although Tischendorf had published a copy five years earlier, it was based upon hand-made copies of the actual manuscript. The Tsar paid the monks nine thousand rubles and gave them an Archbishopric in exchange for the codex. After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Communist Jews gained control of the manuscript, but the English government purchased it from the Jews in 1933 for £100,000.

This Sinaitic manuscript is also written on vellum, with four columns per page and with two columns per page in the poetic books of the Septuagint. It was originally about 720 leaves, roughly 15 x 13 1/2 inches, but a great deal of the Septuagint portion has been lost. Only about 145 leaves of the Septuagint still exist, and these contain parts or all of Genesis, Numbers, I Chronicles, Esdras, Esther, Tobit, Judith, I and IV Maccabees, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and Job. Fortunately, the entire New Testament is contained in the manuscript, and also the Epistle of Barnabas and part of the Shepherd of Hermas. In total, there are 393 leaves still existing.

Alexandrinus. The third oldest of the great uncial codices is signified by the letter A, and dates from the early 5th century. This manuscript, with two columns per page, has a nearly complete Septuagint, missing only ten leaves. The New Testament, however, is missing a total of about 37 leaves, with the bulk of those (25) missing from Matthew. 773 leaves still exist (630 of the Septuagint, 143 of the New Testament), measuring 12 5/8 x 10 3/8 inches.

This Alexandrine manuscript was owned in 1625 by Cyril Lucar, then Patriarch of Constantinople. A Calvinist and supporter of the Church of England, he sent the text to England as a gift to King James. It first came into the hands of George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had played a role in the translation of King James' Bible. Obviously alarmed at what he saw, he stalled the presentation of the manuscript. In fact, King James died before he ever got it, and it was finally presented two years later to King Charles I.

This particular text was written in the 5th century, and had found its way into the hands of the Athonite monks of Egypt by the 10th century. It is unclear how Lucar, who was later killed by the order of the Sultan, acquired the text. Tradition holds that the text was written for Thecla, an Egyptian noble lady in 325 AD. This date, of course, is too early, but other evidence does point to an Alexandria, Egypt, origin.

Codex Alexandrinus is particularly important to the study of New Testament Greek because it contains the best extant text of the Revelation, and for the Septuagint because it contains the oldest complete text of several Old Testament books as well.

Ephraemi. Codex Ephraem is the fourth oldest of the uncials, dating from the 5th century, and is signified by the letter C. When the King James translators made their Bible in 1611, they certainly knew of the existence of Codex Ephraem, for it had been brought to Paris by Catherine de Medici (1519-1589). However, as far as they knew, it was just a 12th century copy of the theological writings of St. Ephraem, a Syrian church father from about 350 AD.

It was not until 1834 that Tischendorf applied a chemical treatment to the text and discovered that it was a palimpsest, that is, someone, wanting to make a copy of Ephraem's works, had rubbed out the 5th century copy of the Septuagint and New Testament and then wrote his works on top of it to save from having to buy vellum. Unfortunately, many of the leaves were ruined or thrown away, and today only 64 leaves of the Septuagint and 145 of the New Testament exist. It measures 12 1/4 x 9 inches, being written in a single column. No books of the New Testament are complete and II Thessalonians and II John are entirely missing.

Tischendorf also played a key role in the final availability of this manuscript, for it was he who, in 1843, published a copy of the New Testament and two years later the Septuagint.

Bezae. This manuscript, dating from the 5th century, is the fifth of the great uncials, but it is also the least trustworthy of the five. It is typical of the Western texts, and shows its Catholic influence in the fact that it is a diaglot of Latin and Greek, that is, it parallels the Greek and Latin facing each other on the pages. It is interesting to note that frequently the Latin and Greek are in total disagreement.

It is missing a great deal of the New Testament, and has none of the Septuagint, but the passages it does contain are heavily interpolated with Catholic insertions, some of which have survived into the Textus Receptus, but none of which can be considered original. The Calvinist Theodore Beza discovered the manuscript in Lyons in St. Irenaeus in 1562, although Robert Stephanus had apparently seen the text and used it somewhat in the preparation of a Greek New Testament in 1550. Beza, however, claimed it, and in 1581 gave it to Cambridge University. There it was accessible to the King James translators. It is important to note that the Calvinists readily made available this corrupt text to the King James translators, but they sat on the more valuable and more accurate Codex Alexandrinus.

Codex Bezae is of little textual value, but it is useful for typifying the Western or Catholic expansions into the Greek texts.

Others. There are nearly 300 other uncial manuscripts. Of these, none are complete New Testaments, but some of them are very old (perhaps even older than the ones discussed above), and for the portions that do exist they are very good witnesses. Others are just later copies of the five manuscripts mentioned above or some like them, and contain a multitude of errors all their own

There are literally thousands of minuscule type manuscripts of the New Testament in existence, and they are of secondary importance to the uncial type manuscripts. Minuscule texts are written in running hand or cursive, with or without spaces between the words. All date after the 9th century, when minuscule-type texts began to replace the uncial manuscripts. Even though these texts are more recent than the uncials, they are still important in that they may point to a very ancient uncial text from which they were taken.

Major Families. The minuscule manuscripts can, for the most part, be placed into families or groups. This is because the minuscules can be compared to one another and many show the same set of common errors or idiosyncrasies, showing that they have a common origin or a common source manuscript from which they were copied. The different families can then be given relative value. This makes comparing the many thousands of minuscule texts much easier, as there are nearly 2800. The different texts within a family can also be used sometimes to reconstruct an uncial text that no longer exists, but which was the basis for the minuscule copies.

The papyrus manuscripts are certainly some of the most important tools in ascertaining the original text of the New Testament. In fact, the New Testament was originally penned down on papyrus scrolls. We have been aware for quite some time how papyrus was made by the Greeks and Romans, but until the 19th century we had no papyrus manuscripts. Papyrus becomes brittle when dry and rots when damp, and therefore very few texts have survived. Thus, this most important tool has only recently become available to us.

Papyrus was made by taking the Egyptian papyrus plant and cutting the stems into sections and removing the pith; this pith was cut into thin strips, which were laid beside each other, and then another layer laid down at right angles on top of the first; finally, the layers were beaten together to form a sheet, which could be pasted together to form a scroll. These scrolls, which were rolled out horizontally rather than vertically, were usually about 10 inches in height and no longer than 35 feet (although one scroll known to exist is 133 feet in length). The typical scroll might hold something the length of one of the Gospels. The text is written in columns 2 1/2 to 3 inches wide, about 5/8 of an inch apart from one another, and the text was usually only on one side, the side on which the fibers were placed horizontally. Sometimes both sides would be utilized, but only if the work was particularly long or papyrus was at a premium. This practice is even alluded to in the Bible in Ezekiel 2:10 and Revelation 5:1. However, the papyrus manuscripts that have come down to us are in codex form, with only four being actual scrolls. Whether this was how the books were originally written or not is a subject of debate.

Papyrus was used universally until vellum displaced it in the 4th century, and because papyrus is not durable, no complete or nearly complete copies of the Bible, Old or New Testament, predate that time. However, our oldest witnesses to the text of the New Testament are papyri. In fact, p52 dates from c. 125 AD. It is a fragment of a codex of the book of John (18:31-33, 37-38), and though not all that important regarding the reading of the text, it is very important in showing the early circulation of John's Gospel at that time. Other early important papyrus manuscripts include: p45, from the 3rd century, containing portions of all the gospels on 30 leaves; p46, from c. 200, containing on 86 leaves most of the letters of Paul and the Book of Hebrews; p75 from between 175-225 AD, containing on 102 pages most of Luke and John; and p72, from the 3rd to 4th centuries, containing parts of I and II Peter and Jude.

The reader is encouraged to read Papyrology and the Dating of the New Testament (Separatist Brief 4.09) as a supplement and update to this section of The History of the Bible.]

As can be seen from this small portion of the list of nearly 100 papyrus manuscripts, a great portion of the New Testament text dating back well into the 3rd century [perhaps even 2nd century] can be obtained.

The versions are secondary witnesses to the original text of the New Testament. A version is any translation of the Greek New Testament into another language. We, of course, are only interested in ancient versions because they were translated from very early copies of the Greek manuscripts. Although the versions are not always very useful when it comes to precise grammar or spelling, since, of course, they have been translated into another language, they are very useful in regards to interpolations of words, phrases or verses. For example, if we know that the Pericope of the Woman Taken in Adultery is absent from syrs, a 4th century Syriac translation of the Gospels, then we know that it was absent from the Greek manuscript from which this Syrian version was translated, and this Greek manuscript would be very old, certainly predating the 4th century, and it might have even been 200 years old when the translation was made. Whether it was this ancient or not is of little concern, because we can at least establish that a Greek manuscript commonly being circulated prior to the 4th century did not contain the Pericope. So in this respect, the ancient versions are invaluable. However, it should always be remembered that versions are still only translations, and as such they have all the problems associated with them that we find associated with any translation. By the time we translate one of these versions into English, we only compound its errors, whether it be word choice and the misunderstanding of definitions and usage and idiosyncrasies of the languages, or whether it is the theological prejudice of the translator.

Old Latin. Contrary to what might be assumed, the Greek texts were used for the first two centuries of this era in Rome. In fact, nearly everyone in Rome was bilingual, speaking both Greek and Latin. For this reason, it is unclear where the first Latin translations of the Scriptures were made, some believing Rome, some Pompeii, some Antioch, and some Egypt. It is also unclear when the first Latin translations were made, but if not in the latter part of the 1st century, they were certainly made in the 2nd century. At any rate, the oldest of the Old Latin texts we have today (other than papyrus fragments) dates to the 4th century. There are roughly 65 Old Latin texts that are of concern to the student of the New Testament texts, and they are signified by the letters 'it' with a superscript indicating the particular text.

Vulgate. By 382 AD, there were already a great number of Old Latin manuscripts in existence, and among them were a great number of contradictory readings. Thus, Pope Damascus asked Jerome to create a uniform text, or a common, vulgar text. Many people do not understand that the Vulgate was not an entirely new translation, but was rather a revision of the texts that already existed. What this meant to Jerome was that he was not allowed to deviate too far from the texts that already existed, even if the Greek witnesses had clearly shown him that a particular reading was not original. It is known that he completed his revision of the Gospels in 384, but some doubt whether he finished the rest of the New Testament, for in his later writings he uses a Latin text unlike the oldest Vulgate that we know of, indicating that the rest of the New Testament was done later, perhaps by another person, and then merged with Jerome's Vulgate of the Gospels and the Old Testament. Jerome's Old Testament, after consultation and education from Jew rabbis, was based upon the Hebrew, although he originally had intended just to revise the Old Latin.[1] The Vulgate was not (at first) widely accepted by the Catholics. In fact, Augustine praised Jerome's New Testament work but continued to use and preferred the Old Latin Old Testament which was based on the Septuagint. F.G. Kenyon comments:

With the Old Testament, for which, as described above, he eventually deserted the Greek of the Septuagint and made a fresh translation from the Hebrew, we have nothing here to do. When Jerome's work was completed about 404, it encountered hostile criticism, occasioned not so much by the revision of the Old Latin in the New Testament, as by the wholesale changes caused by the abandonment of the Old Latin (and the LXX from which it was translated) in the Old Testament. ... Consequently its adoption was gradual, and in the process it suffered much contamination.

Thus, the Old Latin represents a far better translation than does the Vulgate, both in substance and in style. The oldest of the Vulgate manuscripts are from the 4th and 5th centuries.

Old Syriac. There are six Syriac manuscripts which are of importance and the manuscripts themselves date from between the 4th century and the 7th century. When the original Syriac translations of the New Testament were made is unknown, but it was perhaps as early as 200 AD. This family is designated by 'syr'.

Peshitta. The Peshitta, or Vulgate Syriac, is a revision of the Old Syriac manuscripts done in much the same way as Jerome's revision of the Old Latin, hence the name. It is believed to have been done by Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa, between 411-35, and some of the nearly 320 manuscripts that still exist do indeed date back to the 5th century, although it is unclear whether they are originals.

Philoxenian and Harklean. These two versions are also both in Syriac. Polycarp produced the Philoxenian Version for Bishop Philoxenus in 508. In 616, Thomas, Bishop of Harkel, either revised or re-edited the Philoxenian manuscript in light of additional Greek witnesses, and also made marginal notes.

Palestinian Syriac. The existing texts so-called by this name are no older than the 11th or 12th century, and are nothing but lectionary fragments. It is believed, however, that the manuscript was made in the 5th or 6th century, and that it shows some of the most ancient Syriac readings, since it is based on more ancient Syriac translations.

Coptic. Coptic was the language of Egypt, and was originally written in hieroglyphs, but by the 1st century it was written with upper case Greek letters (and six additional letters for the Coptic language's peculiar sounds). There are two main Coptic versions, the Sahidic and the Bohairic. The manuscripts of the Sahidic, designated by the symbol copsa, date to the 4th century AD. Those of the Bohairic (copbo) date to the 9th century AD. These are the most important of the Egyptian texts, although some fragments of the New Testament translated into the Achmimic and Fayyumic dialects do exist. In fact, nearly the entire Gospel of John exists in the Achmimic dialect, dating to the 4th century, and there exists also a nearly complete copy of John in the Fayyumic dialect from the early 4th century.

Armenian. Armenia was Christianized by the Syrians in the 3rd century AD, but it is a subject of debate whether the Armenian version is translated from Syriac, Greek, or both. The manuscripts that exist today are not as ancient as some of the other versions, but they too point to an early text type, suggesting that they were translated from an early Greek source or from an early Syriac source. For example, the oldest of the Armenian manuscripts omit the ending of Mark and the Pericope of the Woman Taken in Adultery.

Georgian. The best of the extant Georgian manuscripts date from the 10th century, but most of the New Testament had originally been translated as early as the middle of the 5th century (the Revelation was not translated until 978). Like the Armenian, it is unclear if the parent text was Syriac or Greek. Also, like the Armenian, the ending of Mark is omitted in the best manuscripts, but other curious Syriac interpolations are contained in it.

Ethiopic. The earliest Ethiopic text is from the 6th century and carries little weight in the study of the New Testament. The manuscripts themselves are no older than the 10th century.

Arabic. The Arabic texts are of little value. It is unclear when the first translations were made into Arabic, and it also unclear what the source language was; that is, whether it was translated from the Syriac, Greek, etc. All of the texts seem to have undergone a revision in the 13th century that further complicated the matter.

Gothic. The Gothic version was made in the 4th century for the Goths in Moesia by Bishop Ulfilas. Originally, the Gothic Version contained the Old Testament from the Septuagint and New Testament from the Greek, but most of the text has been lost. The oldest substantial amount is from the 5th century. This is the earliest representative of any literature in the Teutonic language.

Nubian. In the beginning of this century, a great number of papyrus fragments were found containing a few dozen verses in the Nubian dialect. Some of these fragments might be as old as the 4th century AD.

Sogdian. The manuscripts of the Sogdian are very similar in form and in discovery as the Nubian.

Others. Besides these, there are fragments and portions of the New Testament in many other languages, dating anywhere from the 4th century to the 12th and 13th centuries. The most notable are the Old Persian, Slavonic, and the Anglo-Saxon, but like the Nubian and Sogdian they are of little textual importance. They are important, however, in determining how interpolations and textual families have spread throughout the world.

The other witnesses that we have not yet discussed are neither versions nor copies, but are commentaries or documents wherein Scripture was used. The problem with this type of witness is that it is dependent on the honesty of the person who was quoting it. Often, men would slightly twist or modify their quotations to better support their theological positions. Many times, however, the men just quoted from memory or sometimes paraphrased. Still, however, where enough of a quotation exists to be tested against the known text, these witnesses are useful.

Church Fathers. What are called the "Church Fathers" or "Patristic witnesses" are usually commentaries or early sermons on the New Testament (and in many cases the Septuagint) by early writers. These witnesses exist chiefly in Greek and Latin, but also in other languages such as Syriac, and from them nearly the entire New Testament can be reconstructed.

Their value is debatable. On the one hand, the same textual issues arise with the texts of the Church Fathers as with any other manuscript. How do we know that we have the original text of the Church Father? How do we know that his text was not later corrupted? If he wrote in Latin or Syriac, how do we know how faithful his translation of the Greek New Testament was? Did the Church Father lie about a passage or misquote a passage of the New Testament to support his particular heresy? Also, did the writer intend to quote a verse verbatim or only paraphrase the passage? Still, however, if the student of the witnesses understands the circumspect nature of these texts, a great deal of information can be ascertained from them.

For example, many Church Fathers give alternate readings of a passage that they were aware of at the time of their writing. Also, depending upon who quoted a particular interpolation and when he quoted it, we can pinpoint whether an interpolation was of a Western or Byzantine nature, and when it had crept into the texts. For example, at the time of the Arian controversy, there were many ancient Church Fathers who wrote regarding the controversy and took sides on the issue. However, none of these early Church Fathers, on either side of the issue, say anything about I John 5:7, the famous trinity verse. If this interpolation had then existed in any manuscripts, it is almost certain that one side or the other of the controversy would have made use of the verse. But neither does. This allows us to state as a certainty that no version of the early Scriptures contained this verse at the time of Arius.

Lectionaries. Lectionaries were prepared texts of passages from the Bible that were meant to be read each Sunday. They are put in a specific order and collated to form a year's readings (or some other specific period of time). They are in effect another type of manuscript of the New Testament except that the passages are in a different order and are usually annotated, showing the beginning and ending of each passage.

Diatessaron. The Diatessaron does not really fall into any of the classifications already discussed. It was made somewhere around 150 AD by Tatian the Assyrian, and it was originally made in Syriac. He took the four Gospels and wove them together into a continuous stream so that the Diatessaron contained all the various tidbits that are in each separate Gospel, omitting the readings that were held in common. So it might be called the first "Parallel Gospel," for after reading the Diatessaron, one had read all the information in all four Gospels. Today, the Diatessaron exists in Greek and Syriac fragments.

The Peshitta has been used by some men as a tool to claim that the New Testament was written in Aramaic. For example, some have claimed that the Peshitta dates to 200 AD, but this is known today to be entirely false. However, because men have passed it off as the oldest translation of the New Testament, even older than the oldest Greek texts, it has become quite popular recently to use the Peshitta as if it were better or even equal to the Greek New Testament. One English translation is that of James Murdock, D.D., from 1851. He writes in Appendix II of that work:

"Among the Aramaean Christians the tradition is universal, and uniform everywhere, that this version was made at the time when Christianity was first preached ... and, of course, that it was made by some one or more of the primitive Apostles and Evangelists, or by persons who were their companions and associates. Some name Mark the Evangelist; others, Thaddeus the reputed Apostle of Mesopotamia ... the English, and also the Germans before the year 1800, very generally believed, and argued, that it must have been made either near the close of the first century, or early in the second century."

Murdock then goes on to try to make the case that it was translated by one of the Apostles and even hints that Jesus and the Apostles spoke Syriac, or a close dialect, and that it might be from their original writings. Syriac is an Eastern Aramaic dialect, and of course, Aramaic is related to Hebrew, so in truth this is nothing more than a way of arguing that the New Testament was written in Aramaic. This type of totally unfounded nonsense is still being repeated today, and for this reason many people believe that the Peshitta is somehow better than the Greek New Testament. But the Aramaic spoken in the 1st century was not Syriac, and the contention that the New Testament was written in any language but Greek is easily repudiated. Murdock is lying when he implies that the bulk of scholars, even at that time, believed in an early date for the Peshitta.

However, Murdock's contentions were taken one step further by George M. Lamsa, translator of The New Testament, According to the Eastern Text. According to the title page of what is now commonly called "The Lamsa Bible," it was translated from "original Aramaic sources." The lengthy introduction explains Lamsa's contentions, which are that the New Testament was written in Aramaic, and that the Peshitta is the faithful descendant of the original Aramaic text. He makes no distinction between the Old Syriac and the Peshitta manuscripts. Through Lamsa's Bible, a great number of deceived people today believe that the New Testament was originally written in Aramaic and that later, as Lamsa says, it was translated into Greek.

There are many fallacies with Lamsa's statements, and any honest scholar is aware that these contentions are blatant lies. First of all, the language of the Peshitta is Syriac, not Aramaic. It is true, as stated before, that Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic, but so is Arabic. They are not the same. The Syriac of the Peshitta did not become popular until about the 3rd century AD, and it must be distinguished from the Aramaic being spoken in the 1st century. Scholars call the Aramaic of the 1st century "Early Aramaic," and the Aramaic from which Syriac is derived is called "Late Aramaic." By the differences in the languages alone, and the evolution of the Syriac dialect, it can be shown that the Peshitta was not written before the 3rd century. Furthermore, by comparing the Peshitta texts with the Old Syriac manuscripts, it can be established that the Peshitta was not produced until the 5th century. Even if Rabbula did not produce the final form of the Peshitta, it is certain that he began the intermediate editing of the Old Syriac texts that led to the Peshitta.

Lamsa several times comments on how well-preserved the Peshitta manuscripts are, and that of the more than 300 texts, there is very little deviation. This is true. However, there is great deviation between the Peshitta and the Old Syriac which predates it. This is why Rabbula sought to make a vulgar or common edition of those texts in the first place, just as Jerome did with the Old Latin. So while the Peshitta shows little variation, that does not mean that it is a faithful reproduction of anything older than the 5th century, but Lamsa tries to argue that it is a faithful reproduction of the very oldest texts. This is an easily disproved lie.

One of Lamsa's biggest points is that Jesus and His Disciples spoke Aramaic, and therefore wrote in Aramaic. There are two major fallacies involved in this statement: one is that the Syriac of the Peshitta is not the Aramaic of the 1st century, and two, it is an undeniable fact of history that the predominant language of the time in the geographical areas of the New Testament was Greek. Jesus and a great number of the Disciples were from Galilee, and Lamsa contends that the Galileans spoke Aramaic. Again, history disproves this. The historian Josephus was from Galilee; in fact, he was the governor of Galilee and was a Judean priest who spent much time in Jerusalem. Josephus spoke and wrote in Greek, and the predominant language of the entire area was Greek. We have mentioned before that Paul, a Greek-speaking Roman citizen, wrote the bulk of his letters to Greek cities and to Greek-speaking people. Furthermore, Jesus and His Apostles quoted the Greek Septuagint - of this there can be no question. In order to quote the Greek Septuagint, one must speak Greek.

The evidence is so overwhelming that the New Testament was written in Greek that I can say once again that not one shred of evidence exists that points to the New Testament being written in Aramaic, Syriac, Latin, or any other language besides Greek. The oldest Syriac manuscripts in existence date to the 3rd century; the oldest Greek manuscripts in existence date to 125 AD (although some have contended that this text dates to 90 AD). Additionally, it can be proven that the Greek texts are the source of all the Syriac manuscripts, whether Diatesseron, Old Syriac, or Peshitta.

As an example of this, let us look at the Greek New Testament where Jesus is quoted speaking Aramaic, and compare these passages to Lamsa's translation of the Peshitta. Mark 5:41 reads in the AST:

"And taking hold of the child's hand, He said to her, 'Talithe koum,' which is, being translated,
'Little girl, I say to you, rise up!'"

Now if these are the original words of Mark, then it is clear that he was writing in Greek because he found it necessary to translate the Aramaic into Greek so his reader could understand. Also, if the Peshitta were a translation made from the Greek, then it should show that these are the original words of Mark. Lamsa's translation of this passage reads:

"And he took the little girl by her hand, and said to her, Talitha, koomi, which means, Little girl, rise up."

Now if the Scriptures were written in Syriac or Aramaic originally, then a translation of the words talitha koomi would be unnecessary because the reader would naturally understand them. So if Lamsa's translation is correct, then it is impossible for the Syriac to be the original language of the New Testament. Even if the Syriac did not say that and Lamsa's translation is wrong, it still would not matter, because throughout the Syriac there is similar internal evidence that shows that it was a translation of the Greek, while the Greek shows no signs that it was a translation of the Syriac.

Knowing all of this, we need to look at why it has become a popular Jewish contention to claim that the New Testament was written in Aramaic. The first major reason is that claiming the New Testament was written in Aramaic helps the case for the Jewish Masoretic Text. Anyone can look at the Greek New Testament and see that the quotes from the Old Testament are from the Greek Septuagint. The Jews who support the Jewish Masoretic Text often resort to saying that the Greek New Testament is a corruption of the original Aramaic New Testament just as the Septuagint is a corruption of the Hebrew Old Testament. Of course, the reality is just the opposite, and the quotations as contained in the Syriac agree more with the Septuagint than the Jew-perverted Masoretic Text. For example, in Romans 3:11-18, the Apostle Paul quotes Psalms 14:1-3 from the Septuagint. Only Romans 3:11-12 are found in Psalms 14:1-3 as it reads in the Masoretic Text, but Romans 3:13-18 are found exactly, word for word, in the Septuagint and not in the Masoretic Text. This means that the Apostle Paul absolutely had to be quoting the Greek Septuagint, because these five verses only exist in the Greek Septuagint. Now the question is, are these five verses in the Peshitta? And the answer is yes. This means that the author of Romans spoke Greek because he quoted the Greek Septuagint, the only source for the quotation in existence, and then the Syriac was translated from a Greek copy of the book of Romans, because it also contains the quotation. Furthermore, this means that the Peshitta, or what Lamsa calls 'the Aramaic Bible' is a witness against the Hebrew Masoretic Text, and it is therefore ridiculous to assert that the New Testament was written in Aramaic.

The second reason that Jews like to contend that the New Testament was written in Aramaic is to support their sacred name doctrine, which states that the New Testament was written in Aramaic and that the Anointed One's real name was Yahshua, or some similarly spelled name. They get the name Yahshua from the Hebrew for Joshua, and they say that Joshua was a precursor of Jesus and that they were to have the same names. However, when we look to the oldest and most accurate copy of the Old Testament Scriptures in existence, the Greek Septuagint, we find that Joshua's name in reality was Jesus, not Joshua. When we look at the Greek New Testament, we find the name Jesus, not Joshua, for both the Anointed One and for the mentioning of the prophet in Acts 7:45 and Hebrews 4:8. So because of this evidence, the sacred name Jews contend that the New Testament was written in Aramaic and that the writers of the New Testament quoted Hebrew Scriptures and that Jesus' name was Yahshua, and that the Greek New Testament was a corrupted translation of some Hebrew or Aramaic original. Of course, we have already proven the fallacies of these blasphemous statements, but in addition to this, these stupid arguments ignore the historical references both to the name Jesus and to the Anointed One, and that such references support the name of Jesus and the title of Anointed One. Furthermore, it ignores the fact that the Jews hate the name Jesus and have hated that name so much since the 1st century that they, in the form of the Masoretes, changed the Hebrew to remove the name Jesus from it, replacing it with Joshua. This must be the position taken by any honest scholar because the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament and the Old Testament (the Septuagint) show clearly that the name is Jesus.

Thus, we can say with certainty, in the light of over 5000 Greek witnesses to the New Testament, and based upon historical evidence, that it is an absolute impossibility that the New Testament was written in any language other than Greek. Only Talmudic Jews would want to argue that the New Testament was written in Aramaic.

With an understanding of the amount and type of textual evidence available, we can now look at how these texts are used to try and create the original text of the New Testament for translation purposes. Most people have grave misconceptions regarding the text of the New Testament. For example, most people are under the impression that the Textus Receptus, the Greek text from which the King James and most other versions are translated, is somehow the original and authoritative text of the New Testament that has been preserved and handed down from the 1st century, and that all texts that disagree with it are spurious. This simply is not true. The Textus Receptus is the result of textual criticism performed by Erasmus, a Catholic scholar of the 16th century. He was not the first and by no means was he the last scholar who set out to produce a text of the New Testament as close as possible to the original, given the available evidence. But since the first major English translations to be made were based upon his text, including the King James Version, and since the King James Version is widely accepted as divinely inspired, then so too the Textus Receptus has been accepted. But as we shall see, the Textus Receptus is easily proven to be a very poor representation of the Holy Scriptures of Almighty God.

Thus, the first thing that someone must understand is that the manuscripts we have discussed above, the uncials, minuscules, papyri, versions, etc., are all different. They do not contain a uniform text of the New Testament, but rather contain thousands of variant readings. These variant readings are the result of two types of corruption: first, accidental mistakes, and second, deliberate tampering.

The accidental mistakes can be classified and traced. They can be divided into hearing problems and visual problems. Hearing problems occurred when one scribe read the text to be copied aloud to another scribe or number of scribes who made a copy or copies. Visual problems occurred when a scribe looked at the text and made a copy. Of course, all of the visual problems can occur in conjunction with the hearing problems because when one scribe reads the text aloud to other scribes, he can have the same visual problems. These problems can be summarized as follows:

I. Hearing Problems

II. Visual Problems

All of these problems can be appreciated when one understands what it was like to be a scribe. Many of the men who copied the books of the New Testament were professionals who copied many different types of books, secular and religious, and some of them were not familiar with the New Testament, so mistakes that might be obvious to you or me were not so obvious to them. Furthermore, they worked long, monotonous hours in dim lighting and poor conditions. These mistakes can be further understood by sitting down and trying to copy a hand-written book by hand, and then seeing the enormous amount of mistakes that are made. Before going on to discuss deliberate tampering, there is one more type of mistake that lies between accidental and deliberate. Suppose you are a scribe who has been copying a manuscript, and you notice that you left out a sentence or a phrase or a word. Now after you were fortunate enough to notice this mistake, how do you correct it? You cannot erase what you have written. So the common practice was to write the omission or correction in the margin. The problem is that people who read the manuscripts, whether they were monks or commentators or whoever might have read it, sometimes also wrote notes of explanation out in the margin, and of course their explanations were not always right. Then fifty years later, someone finds that manuscript and wants a copy and hires a scribe to make a copy. When the scribe comes to the marginal notes, he assumes that they are corrections to the text and includes them in the body of his copy. Now the marginal note has become added into the text itself. This falls between the accidental type errors and the deliberate type errors because some men purposely wrote their emendations in the margins of whatever texts they could find, knowing that those who would read them or copy them would believe the note to be a correction and not a commentary.

Thus, in a sense, this is the first type of deliberate tampering. There are two other types of tampering.

The first type is where dishonest men intentionally changed the text to support their particular heresy or just to dissuade white men from coming to the truth. An obvious example of this is where the Jews added in the verse, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," so that today they can claim that Jesus forgave them for His murder. Not only did the antichrist Jews add the verse into the New Testament, but when preparing their Masoretic Text (discussed later), they changed a verse of prophesy regarding Jesus (Isaiah 53:12) so that it would appear that it was prophesied that He would forgive the Jews. However, when we look at the Septuagint, we see that this verse is not in there and when we look at the oldest and best texts of the New Testament, we find that the 'Father, forgive them ...' verse is not in there either. The fact that both the Hebrew was corrupted and the New Testament texts changed shows deliberate collusion on the part of the Jews, but in the case of the New Testament, we now have older manuscripts that show that the verse was never in the Sacred Scripture. Although we do not have the original Hebrew, for in fact we have no Hebrew but the c. 1050 AD version of the Masoretic Text, we do have the Greek Septuagint that was used by Jesus and His Apostles and we know that the prophecy is not in there.

An example of Catholic tampering concerns the trinity verse in I John 5:7, a verse inserted into the Greek in the 16th century AD to support the Catholic trinity doctrine. Notice that even though it was not added until the 16th century, this verse has still found its way into all major Catholic and Protestant Bibles, including the King James Version. One more example of tampering, this time by either Jews or Catholics or both, is the Pericope of the Woman Taken in Adultery in the Gospel of John (7:53-8:11). This was added sometime around the time of Jerome as a tool to convince white Christians that the Greek word moix"w (moichos) does not mean mongrelization. Fortunately, again, we now have texts predating this interpolation.

The second type of deliberate tampering occurred when scribes would try to enhance the text. For example, if there was an awkward Greek construction, they might simplify it or smooth it over. If there was an obscure or ambiguous reading, they might try to make it more explanatory. If they were aware of more than one reading in other manuscripts, they might try to combine them, thinking that the original contained both readings. When they worked with parallel passages in the Gospels, they would try to expand the parallel in the passage to include all that the other parallels might say. Many other instances such as these arose where scribes thought they were doing a service by expanding the text or changing the text, but in fact they were corrupting the original divinely inspired words of Scripture.

Thus, there are many ways that manuscripts were corrupted, and this fact cannot be denied because simply looking at the nearly 5600 witnesses and the plethora of variant readings shows conclusively that the errors, interpolations, and alternate readings do exist. Still, there are those who deny this. They say that God would not allow the manuscripts to have been corrupted and that they all agree with one another, but, of course, this simply is not true. For each Greek text in existence, another Greek text can be found that expressly contradicts it. So when men say that Textual Criticism, sometimes called Biblical Criticism, is an attempt to destroy the Word of God, these men are willfully ignorant, because it is in truth an attempt to restore the Word of God to its original form. These men who praise the Textus Receptus as being the real Word of God, even though it contradicts the oldest and best manuscripts, forget that this text itself was compiled through the science of Textual Criticism by a fallible and, in many cases, dishonest man.

Thus, men have called this science Biblical Criticism for propaganda reasons, because they can say that it is 'criticism of the Bible'. But in truth, the science is called Textual Criticism, and it is not just for the New Testament and the Septuagint, but for any ancient manuscript. For all Greek and Latin literature, the rules of the science apply, and just as there are very few manuscripts of the New Testament before the advent of vellum, so too there are very few texts of other classical writings before the advent of vellum.

Now the question always raised is, If all of this is true, will it ever be possible to ascertain the original text of the New Testament or Septuagint? The answer to this question is, Yes, it is possible today. It was not possible at the time of Erasmus and his creation of the Textus Receptus; it was not possible when the King James Version was translated, but it is possible today because of the sheer number of manuscripts and different witnesses that are available, nearly 5600! This huge number of witnesses is how God has preserved His Word pristine, for in those witnesses can be found the original words as they were penned down.

All of this is not possible with other classical Greek and Latin texts. For example, there are only 10 Greek manuscripts in existence of Caesar's Gallic Wars, and none of them are older than the 10th century AD! This means that for 1000 years, copies of the book were made, and mistakes and corrections and emendations were introduced, and parts were rewritten by disagreeing historians. This means that even if all 10 copies of the text that do exist agree with one another, you still could never know if those are the same words Caesar wrote. There are only 2 copies of Tacitus' Annals, and they too are 950 years more recent than when Tacitus originally wrote the document (and it also might be added that great portions of the document are known to be missing). There are only 7 copies of Plato's writings, and 20 of Livy. (It is interesting to note that one of the 20 copies of Livy has a 4th century copy of the book of Hebrews written on the back!)

Another piece of evidence that makes the job of textual criticism easier for the New Testament is the variety of places in which the documents have been preserved. Very early on, copies of the Septuagint and New Testament were widely distributed: in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Greece, Italy, and all of Asia Minor. This makes it nearly impossible for widespread collusion; in other words, it was impossible for the Jews or Catholics to make sure they got every manuscript and corrupted or destroyed them all. This was not the case with the Hebrew Masoretic Text. The Jews admit that they gathered up all older or original Hebrew manuscripts over a period of four or five hundred years and destroyed them after making the corrupted Hebrew Masoretic Text. The result is that today there are no non-Masoretic Text Hebrew Old Testaments, and none older than 1050 AD. But this type of collusion was impossible with the New Testament, because many copies of the New Testament were so widespread at a very early time.

Thus, with the knowledge of the types of errors in the body of witnesses, we must now look at the mechanics of the science of Textual Criticism. There are a few basic principles that must be followed:

First, it must be recognized that the witnesses are not all of equal value. This, of course, has to do with the age and type. For example, an Armenian version is not of the same value as an actual Greek text, and a Gothic fragment is not of equal value to an Old Latin manuscript. In any case, the older the witness is, the more likely it is to contain the original reading. However, these are only generalities and there are exceptions. We can demonstrate this graphically:

The picture above shows nine hypothetical manuscripts, A-I, and their dates. Let us assume that A and D are not extant, but that the scribe who made the manuscript D inserted an interpolation. This means that the copies E-I all contain this interpolation. Now according to the theory of numerical superiority, the interpolation would be accepted as original because 5 manuscripts contain it while only two do not. But of course we know that this is a fallacy. Thus, the 3rd century manuscript B is better than all five of the 5th century manuscripts, and this shows why, generally, the older the manuscript the better. However, in the 12th century hypothetical manuscript C, we see that this is not always true. If the scribe who produced C worked directly from A, and after that time A was lost, then C is better than any existing manuscript (with the possible exception of B), even though it is from the 12th century. One thing that can be said with certainty is that the idea of numerical superiority is never true.

Next, we have the issue of deciding the best reading when alternate readings exist among witnesses of the same value. Even in this case, numerical superiority still does not apply.

First, generally, the shorter of two readings is to be preferred. This is because it was the tendency of scribes to create conflated readings, i.e., if they were aware of more than one reading for a particular passage, they would tend to combine the readings rather than disregard either one.

Secondly, the more difficult or awkward reading is to be preferred. This is because it was the tendency of scribes to smooth out and simplify the reading of the text, either of awkward grammar or ambiguous words. For example, in Jacob (James) 4:4, the vocative feminine of moichalis or Oh female mongrelizers is present. Scribes, not understanding that this was a metaphorical term in reference to the nation of Israel, could not understand why Jacob would only be speaking to women and not men. They assumed he had just made a grammatical mistake and used the wrong gender, so they inserted moichoi, the masculine form, in addition to the feminine form.

With a detailed knowledge of the quality and type of textual witnesses available and a knowledge of the workings of Greek and what types of errors are probable to occur and why, we can honestly apply these techniques to ascertain the original words of the New Testament. It is true that not all alternate readings can be sorted out, for there are some alternate readings that have equal attestation for and against, but it is just as true that none of these 50/50 readings are the source of any major doctrine that is not confirmed elsewhere in the New Testament. This means that there is no 50/50 questionable reading that is of great importance, because it is either of a trivial nature or what it says is confirmed elsewhere in the New Covenant.

With all of this in mind, let us implement the process of textual criticism for an alternate reading in the New Testament. Hebrews 8:11 reads in the Anointed Standard Translation:

"And they will no more teach each one his citizen, and each one his brother, saying, 'Know the Master', because all will know Me, from their little ones to their great ones."

The word citizen is translated for the Greek word politen. However, the King James Version reads neighbor, translated for the Greek word plesion as contained in the Textus Receptus.

Thus, we must look at the manuscripts and witnesses to see which is the correct reading. First, we can look at the oldest witness for this part of Hebrews, p46, which dates from c. 200 AD. When we do, we find that it reads citizen. Next, we look at the oldest uncial witnesses, and we find thatA B and D all read citizen and that C is defective, that is, missing. We also find that the best of the minuscules contain citizen and that the oldest Old Latin, the oldest Syriac, the oldest Coptic, the Armenian, and the Georgian all read citizen.

Next, we consider the case for the reading neighbor. The oldest witness to contain this reading is the uncial P or Codex Guelpherbytanus, a palimpsest from the 6th century. Any weight this manuscript might carry is canceled out by the four older uncials already mentioned which read citizen. Beyond P, the uncial 075 from the 10th century contains neighbor as an alternate reading but citizen as the principle reading. Many later minuscules read neighbor, but as we have shown, the best of the minuscules read citizen.

This evidence is enough to show clearly that the original reading was citizen. We might ask the question, how did the Textus Receptus acquire such an obviously spurious reading? This too can be determined by studying the manuscripts, for we find that the Vulgate reads neighbor. This means that either the text Jerome had read neighbor in the Greek or that he changed it to read neighbor in the Latin, even though his Greek text read citizen. The latter hypothesis is more probable, for we know that Jerome was heavily influenced by the Jews, and we must realize that this passage in Hebrews is a quote from Jeremiah 38:34 in the Septuagint (or 31:34 in the Hebrew Masoretic Text). The reason that this is important is that the best Septuagint manuscripts also read citizen,[2] but the Hebrew Masoretic Text from 1050 AD reads neighbor. So we must assume that at the time Jerome made his Vulgate the Hebrew had already been corrupted by the Jews to read neighbor, and of course we must realize that Jerome was trained by rabbis and used the Hebrew in his Vulgate translation of the Old Testament. So, when he translated Jeremiah, his text in Latin read neighbor because it was based on the Hebrew which reads reya. Then, when he got to the New Testament, he certainly realized that Hebrews contradicted this, and since he had been trained by the Jews to hate the Septuagint, he changed his New Testament manuscript (or used a Jew supplied Greek manuscript) so that it agreed with the Hebrew, even though the original agreed with the Greek Septuagint.

After this time, other Western or Catholic influenced texts began to assimilate this change and it is from these manuscripts that Erasmus, a Catholic and a Vulgate-conformist, produced his Textus Receptus. Thus, not only can we arrive at the original reading of the New Testament passage, and also the Septuagint and even Hebrew, but we can also trace how many of the interpolations found their way into the texts and when and why.

As we have said before, Erasmus was not the first and was certainly not the last to produce a text of the New Testament by comparing manuscripts through the process of textual criticism. Men like Tischendorf have paved the way for modern textual criticism, and the discovery of the papyrus body of evidence in only the last one hundred years has made obsolete all previous works, which deserve no special attention here. Instead, we need to look at the preÎminent work of this century, which incorporates the latest and best evidence, and that is The Greek New Testament, the primary work of Kurt and Barbara Aland and Bruce Metzger, based on the work of Eberhard Nestle.

This work, which has been sponsored by the German Bible Society for nearly 100 years, incorporates in the text an apparatus which shows the alternate readings and the primary witnesses for and against them. Skillfully used, anyone should be able to trace the original words of the New Testament. The problem with the work, however, has not been in telling what the witnesses say, for that is a matter of public record, but the problem is the interpretation by the compilers. In many instances they have chosen to break the ironclad rules of Textual Criticism and include readings into their text which they admit are not original. This makes their text and their interpretation of the evidence in some cases untrustworthy.

As an example of this intellectual dishonesty and theological prejudice, I will cite Luke 23:34. This is, of course, the verse which contains the spurious words, "And Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.'" It has been demonstrated time and time again that these words were not originally in the Gospel of Luke and that since they are in no parallels of the passage they can in no way be considered to have been originally spoken by Christ. I have already mentioned in this present work that the Jews have inserted a self-fulfilling prophecy into their Masoretic Text which apparently prophesies Jesus saying these words, but that prophesy is absent from the Greek Septuagint used by Christ and His Apostles. However, I will once again present the evidence to show the dishonesty of the Alands, Metzger, and others associated with the 4th Edition of The Greek New Testament.

When we look at the oldest papyrus of this part of the Bible, the aforementioned p75 (175-225 AD), we find that these words are entirely absent. They are absent from the uncials1 and B, as well as the corrected D and several others. We find that the earliest Latin, the earliest Syriac, and the earliest Coptic all do not contain the words. We find that the prophesy supposedly foretelling the saying is absent from the Greek Septuagint. We find that a great number of reliable minuscules omit the words. In fact, the evidence is overwhelming.

With this in mind, let us look at Bruce Metzger's A Textual Commentary On the Greek New Testament and read the comment of the Editorial Committee of The Greek New Testament on these words:

"...the logion [i.e., a saying attributed to Jesus], though probably not a part of the original Gospel of Luke, bears self-evident tokens of its dominical origin, and was retained within double square brackets, in its traditional place where it had been incorporated by unknown copyists relatively early in the transmission of the Third Gospel."

Notice that they admit that the words were added by an unknown copyist at an early date (but at least after 225, as we learn from p75). They place the words in double brackets, which according to them means, "enclosed passages which are regarded as later additions to the text, but which are of evident antiquity and importance." Now this means that they are admitting that the words are not original, but are in effect saying, "Well, it sounds like something Jesus would have said, so we will keep it." The true Bible student knows that this sounds nothing like anything Jesus would have said, and even if it did, that cannot be a justification for including it in the text.

The defenders of these men will say that this is of no consequence because it was kept in double brackets, and we know that this means that it is not original. However, it does have a consequence. As an example of this, I would cite the New Revised Standard Version. This translation was finished in 1989, and the preface is written by Bruce Metzger, who represented the translation committee. Remember that Bruce Metzger is the man who wrote the note quoted above regarding these spurious words, so Bruce Metzger admitted that these words are not in the Bible. However, when we turn to Luke 23:34 in the NRSV, we find the words in the text with this small footnote:

"Other ancient authorities lack the sentence Then Jesus ... what they are doing"

Thus, unless someone is familiar with the evidence, he has no idea that what that sentence actually means is that the words are really not in there and that they have been included because Jews would not publish the NRSV without them.

Therefore, it is clear that the men who prepared The Greek New Testament were intellectually dishonest and theologically prejudiced, and that because of this their work fails in many areas. The only work that I am aware of that has incorporated the best evidence of the Greek witnesses, without any preconceived ideas or theological bias, together with a good but literal translation of the Greek, is the Anointed Standard Translation of the New Testament.

In that work, any significant deviations from the Textus Receptus are noted and the evidence supporting the deviation is given and explained so that the reader can decide if the judgment is sound or not. Any readings which are questionable, with equal evidence both for and against them, are retained in the text and placed in open brackets. The dates and types of the manuscripts and witnesses consulted are provided for the reader in an Appendix so that anyone can look at a questionable reading and decide for himself. I feel that if the reader is intellectually honest, he will inevitably agree with the decisions reached on these matters in the Anointed Standard Translation. The last section in this present work discusses the Anointed Standard Translation in further detail.

We have mentioned already the spuriousness of the end of the Book of Mark, specifically Mark 16:9-20. These verses contain two famous sentences: "Preach the gospel to every creature," and "They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them." Though both of these sayings are important to various so-called Christian cults, including the love-everybody missionaries and the snake-handlers, these 12 verses in Mark have long been known to be spurious. Once again, we need only apply the rules of Textual Criticism that we have learned.

When we analyze the evidence for the total omission of these verses, we find that the two oldest extant Greek witnesses of this passage,and B, omit the verses. Furthermore, they are omitted in the best of the Old Latin texts, and in the Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, and Georgian versions. This evidence shows that many different Greek texts, several of which probably date to before 200 AD, did not contain the verses. Then we look at the evidence of the Patristic Fathers, and we find that Clement of Alexandria (c. 200) and Origen were unaware of the existence of these verses in any manuscripts. Later writers, specifically Eusebius and Jerome, knew of these verses but also stated that they were absent from the majority of the manuscripts they had seen.

There is also internal evidence which must be considered regarding these verses in Mark. The verses, when analyzed carefully, do not flow in context with the previous verses. It appears that Mark had already ended his writing and that these verses were appended later and this is why the transition is difficult. Additionally, there are several words in the added verses that are not used by Mark or the whole New Testament elsewhere, including unusual words for which Mark always used a more common word. Also, there are two other endings besides the long ending of the King James and the short ending to which the ancient Greek manuscripts attest. These two additional endings are very poorly supported, but they do show that there was confusion among later copyists and scribes regarding what the original reading should be. Thus, with all of the available evidence analyzed in detail, there can be no doubt that these verses at the end of Mark are not original.

The Pericope of the Woman Taken in Adultery was also previously mentioned. This passage in John 7:53-8:11 contains the famous words, "Go and sin no more." However, these verses too are easily shown to be unoriginal. These verses, if original, would show Jesus forgiving adultery or, better translated, mongrelization or seedline corruption. If this were true, Jesus would be in direct violation of Leviticus 20:10, which states that a mongrelizer or seedline corrupter is to be put to death. But this apparent contradiction is easily settled by applying again the science of Textual Criticism. Looking at the textual evidence, we find that papyri 66 and 75, both from around 200 AD, omit these verses, as do the four oldest codices, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, and Ephraem. Among the versions, the oldest Syriac, Bohairic, Armenian, Sahidic, Peshittic, and Old Georgian omit the verses, as do the best Old Latin and Gothic manuscripts. Among the Patristic Fathers, none mentions the existence of these verses before the 12th century AD. Finally, as with the last verses of the Book of Mark, the internal evidence is decidedly against the inclusion of these verses.

Also, we have mentioned the 'trinity verse' or I John 5:7-8, containing the famous words "...the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one." The textual evidence regarding this passage is astounding: there are only four Greek witnesses in existence that date before the 16th century AD which contain these words. The four texts which do contain it are all very recent, comparatively speaking, and in two of these manuscripts the words are written in the margin in a later hand. The other two manuscripts were made during the lifetime of Erasmus. How these words found their way into the King James Version and other translations is through the Textus Receptus that Erasmus edited. This Catholic scholar originally excluded the words, but in subsequent editions of his text he was forced to insert the words by the Catholic Church. Because the King James Version and other translations were based upon these later editions of Erasmus' text, the words were included, but they cannot be argued to be original in any way.

The textual problems of the New Testament are not always as simple as the omission or addition of whole verses or passages. Many times the passage in question is substantially the same in the correct reading and the popular, incorrect reading, but just a few words or perhaps one clause is different. An example of this is Revelation 13:10, which reads in the King James Version,

"If any man have an ear, let him hear. He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints."

In the AST, this same passage reads:

"If anyone has an ear, let him hear. If to be captive, into captivity he goes. If anyone is to be killed by a sword, by a sword he will be killed. Here is the patience and the persuasion of the Separated Ones."

The meanings of these two passages are quite different. The latter reading of the AST agrees with Jeremiah 15:1-2 in the Greek Septuagint from which the quote was taken. The verse is about fulfillment of destiny, not retribution. When the evidence is examined, we again find that the reading of the AST is widely supported by the best and oldest evidence, and there is no doubt that it is the correct reading.

One final observation should be made. There are many cases in the Greek New Testament where the dropping or addition of a single letter can profoundly change the meaning of a passage. One example of this is in I Thessalonians 2:7, which reads in the Anointed Standard Translation:

"But we were babes in your midst, as a wet-nurse should cherish her children."

The word babes is translated for the Greek word nepioi, but the Textus Receptus and the KJV read gentle, translated for epioi. Notice that the difference in the two words is only a single Greek letter, the initial n. Another more famous example of this type of error is in Luke 2:14, which reads in the AST:

"Reputation in the highest to God, and on earth, peace among men with whom He is pleased."

The reading of the King James Version is of course, "peace on earth, good will toward men." The difference in the two readings is only one Greek letter, s. Thus, every Greek letter of the original text is of the utmost importance. Differences in the texts must be carefully analyzed, from the lengthy interpolations in the end of Mark and also the Pericope of the Woman Taken in Adultery, down to a single letter. Those who attack the process of textual criticism usually state that God would not allow His Word to be corrupted, and God would not allow a faulty translation of His Word to be made. But to these deceivers, the following questions must be asked: How are we to account for the gross contradictions in the many translations today available? How do we determine which one is correct? How do we account for the numerous differences in the Greek texts? Which of those are to be thought correct? The usual answer to these questions is that the King James Version and the Textus Receptus are correct, but the question of why these are correct is never answered. Erasmus used the science of Textual Criticism to create his Greek text, so why is his text not attacked for this reason, just as any other modern day text of the Greek Bible is which has been made using the same science? There is in truth no answer to these questions. Anyone who is truly honest must admit that the process of textual criticism must be used to arrive at the original text of the Greek Bible, and they must further admit that we today have more evidence to successfully do this than ever before. Some will say, "Isn't that egocentric? What about the generations who went before us? Why did not God allow them to have a good text of the Bible?" But those who ask such questions never ask themselves what Christians did before the King James Version. Even the King James Version was based upon the newest information then available, albeit there was not much information available at that time. So there can be no excuse for attacking Textual Criticism, or what is better called Biblical Restoration.

The Old Testament books were originally written in Hebrew, but as we shall see, the Hebrew of today in no way represents the original documents. Herein we are primarily interested in the preservation of the Old Testament, and its transmission down to us.

We will begin this discussion by looking at the Masoretic Text.

The Masoretic Text, other than the Dead Sea Scrolls, is the only existing representation of the Old Testament in Hebrew. The oldest fragments date from the 9th century AD, but the oldest complete texts come from the 10th and 11th centuries AD. However, the Hebrew text that it contains is clearly not the original Hebrew, nor even the Hebrew that was in use in the 1st century AD. The Hebrew of the 1st century AD was closely akin to the Greek Septuagint that we have today; this is clear because, although the Hebrew was little used, when it was used in ancient writing it was clearly in agreement with the Greek Septuagint rather than the Masoretic Text. For example, although Philo and Josephus both used the Greek Septuagint, it is believed by most scholars that they frequently had access to a Hebrew Bible and even consulted it on a few occasions. It is through evidence like this that we see that the then current Hebrew disagreed with the Hebrew Masoretic Text of today. In the 1st century, the Christians and all other Greek speaking Israelites, including 1,000,000 of them who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, used the Greek Septuagint. Jesus and His Apostles wrote in Greek and quoted the Greek Septuagint. Of this there can be no doubt. This is a fact that can be confirmed in any encyclopedia or scholarly book on the subject. As we have already pointed out, we know this because the quotations of the Greek New Testament are exactly aligned with the Greek Septuagint, but in sharp opposition to the Hebrew Masoretic Text. There is, however, no reason to believe that they were in disagreement with the Hebrew that was current in the 1st century AD.

What we do know is that toward the end of the 1st century AD and into the 2nd century, the Talmudic, Edomite Jews were actively attacking the Greek Septuagint because it was used by the Christians. They felt that they could discredit the Christians merely for the reason that they used Greek, and at the same time, they began twisting the Hebrew Scriptures to try and disprove that Jesus was the true Messiah. This controversy roared on until at least the 4th and 5th centuries AD. We have already noted how the early Catholics attacked the Vulgate translation of Jerome because it was the first to be based upon Hebrew, and they continued for a very long time to use the Old Latin because it was based upon the Greek Septuagint. One of the most famous examples of how the Jews attacked the Greek Septuagint regarded the word virgin. The particular verse in question is Isaiah 7:14, which reads in the Greek Septuagint:

"Therefore, the Master Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will conceive in the womb, and will bring forth a son, and you will call his name Emmanuel."

In the Greek, the word for virgin is parthenos, and it literally means a virgin. In the Masoretic Text, however, the word is almah which means a young girl. The usual Hebrew word for virgin, and the word in every case translated virgin in the Revised Version, is bethuwlah. This verse is quoted from Isaiah in the Christian Scriptures in Matthew 1:23. The Jews attacked the Septuagint from the beginning because they claimed that it had been corrupted by the Christians and that the Christians changed the word in the Septuagint to read virgin instead of young woman so that it would support the reading in Matthew. Of course, the Edomite Jews did not believe that Jesus was the true Messiah; this was why they were attacking the Septuagint. The Jews are the ones who changed the Hebrew, replacing the word virgin with young woman. The early motive of the Edomite Jews was to destroy Christianity, not just the Septuagint. But the Christians did not give in, so the Jews changed their strategy. They instead decided to corrupt the Old Testament and gain control of the Christians by giving them a corrupted Old Testament. By the 3rd century they began collecting every Hebrew manuscript they could, and this was easy to do because the Christians used the Greek Septuagint and cared little for the Hebrew. They then began revising the Hebrew documents to support their Jewish contentions. By the time of Jerome, they began taking the soft approach and gave Jerome their new Hebrew for him to use in his translation. But, as we said before, the Christians at first rejected the Vulgate. So the Jews continued working on their text. From the 1st century to the middle of the 5th century, they called themselves Talmudists; from the 5th century to the completion of their text in the 10th-11th centuries, they called themselves Masoretes.

At the end of this time, all other Hebrew manuscripts except for the Masoretic Text disappeared. The fact is that they were destroyed by the same people who had gathered them up ñ the Talmudic, Masoretic Jews. Then the Jews began presenting themselves as the diligent preservers of the Hebrew Bible and began deceiving white Christians. They no longer blatantly attacked the Septuagint but rather touted themselves as being faithful servants of God. To this end, when the Masoretic Text was finished, they counted every letter and word and contrived mechanisms to insure that the manuscripts would be faithfully transmitted, but they did not bother to account for the editing and corruption that they themselves had been doing for the previous 600-700 years. The early English translations of the Bible were based upon the Latin Vulgate, but the Jews intended to deceive the white Christians into translating their Bibles from the Hebrew Masoretic Text. So their new strategy was to win over the stupid Christians, but the old motives were always there. At this time, they had to do an about-face on the issue of virgin. They had learned that the Christians would not accept the Hebrew as long as such blatant blasphemies were contained in it. This deception on the part of the mongrel, Talmudic Jews can be seen in an early Spanish translation of the Masoretic Text. Geddes MacGregor, in his book, The Bible in the Making (pg. 279) writes:

Translations of the Hebrew Bible into various languages, began to appear about that time. In 1422 Rabbi Moses Arragel translated the Scriptures from the Hebrew into Spanish, for the Christian Church and with the assistance of Franciscan scholars, and it is upon that version that the Ferrara Bible, printed in 1553, was based. This famous Spanish Bible was intended to serve the needs of both Jews and Christians. Certain deviations were made in the copies intended for Christian readers. For example, where the copies intended for Jews read 'young woman,' the copies set aside for Christian use put 'virgin.'

Through this means of deception, the atheistic Jews pulled off the grand deception when they convinced the translators of the KJV to use the Masoretic Text instead of the Latin or Greek. Today, the so-called 'Christian' world believes in the lie of the Hebrew Bible, even though all Christians for the first four centuries of Christianity universally used the Greek Septuagint or a translation of it, including the Master Jesus the Anointed and His Ambassadors.

When this so-called controversy is examined from a purely textual point-of-view, then we find that the undisputed facts are the following, and I say 'undisputed' because these facts are admitted even by the most staunch supporters of the Masoretic Text.

In regards to the Masoretic Text, the manuscripts date from around 1000 AD. The manuscripts are admittedly altered from their original form, for vowel symbols have been added and the text has been revised in light of Talmudic tradition. The Masoretic Text is based upon the Hebrew which was rejected by the early Christians, who were the true Israel of God.

In regards to the Septuagint, the oldest manuscripts date to around 325-350 AD (though fragments are much older). It was never purposely changed or edited, but the oldest texts of the Septuagint represent the oldest surviving descendants of an ancient translation made of the Hebrew in the 3rd century BC which was considered divinely inspired by most Judeans at that time. It was universally accepted by the early Christians for the first 400 years of Christianity and was used and quoted from by Jesus and His Apostles, who quoted from it under divine inspiration.

Again, the above facts are admitted even by the supporters of the Masoretic Text. What logic, then, is used to justify the use and preferment of the Masoretic Text? Those who use it believe that the Talmudic, Edomite Jews who murdered Jesus Christ are the chosen people of God and therefore the chosen preservers of God's Word. However, we are told the following by Jesus in John 8 regarding these same Edomite Jews who wrote the Talmud and created the Masoretic Text:

"You neither know Me nor My Father. If you had known Me, then you would have known My Father also. ...Where I go, you are not able to come ... You are from below; I am from above. You are from this world, I am not from this world. ... If you were children of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham. ... You do the works of your father. ... If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I went forth and have come from God. For I have not come from Myself, but that One sent Me. Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to hear My Word. You are of your father the Diabolical One, and the lusts of your father you wish to do. That one was a murderer from the beginning, and he has not stood in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own, because he is a liar, and the father of it" (AST).

Notice that Jesus said that these Edomite Talmudists were not capable of hearing His word, they were not capable of doing anything but the works of their father, who was a liar from the beginning. Now this means that in no way were these Talmudic Jews, who later called themselves Masoretes, capable of being divinely inspired "preservers" of God's Word. Because of the words of Jesus, we must assume this to be a blatant lie.

But even beyond these points, from a purely objective, scientific point-of-view, when we apply the science of Textual Criticism to this controversy, we must again decide in favor of the Greek Septuagint. We remember that the fundamental rule of Textual Criticism is usually that the older the text, the better, and the complete Septuagint version of the Old Testament outdates the complete Masoretic Text version by 650-700 years.

The second rule that we must implement is that not all manuscripts are of the same value. Again, this value issue is clear for these two witnesses: the Septuagint is representative of a 3rd century BC Hebrew text; the Masoretic is representative of a 7th-9th century AD revision of the Hebrew.

Thus, there can be no doubt as to which text is to be preferred. The Septuagint is superior in every way to the Judaized Masoretic Text.

We have already pointed out that the Septuagint was used by the early Christians exclusively as their Old Testament Bible. This is a widely accepted fact, and it is enough to again remind the reader that the quotations of Christ and His Apostles that occur in the New Testament are taken exclusively from the Septuagint. This is the reason why the Christ-hating, Talmudic Jews so vehemently attacked the Scriptures used by the early Christians, the Greek Septuagint. Thus we will look for a moment at the history of the Greek Septuagint.

According to tradition, Ptolemy Philadelphus, who purchased the freedom of Israelites in his territories, arranged for six scholars from each of the twelve tribes to translate the first five books of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek around 285 BC. By this time, a practical knowledge of the Hebrew language was all but lost among the common Israelites. After the conquests of Alexander the Great, Greek had become the common language of the whole world. So Ptolemy gathered together these 72 scholars and in a short period of time they completed the Pentateuch. The Latin name Septuagint, meaning 70, was later applied to the translation, for there were approximately 70 translators.[3] Also, the abbreviation LXX is used for this reason. After the first five books were finished, the translators set out to work on the rest of the Old Testament. When the rest was finished is unclear, but it is certain that the entire Old Testament was complete within 100 years, and there is no reason to think that the entire Old Testament was not finished by the same translators within just a few years, especially considering the fact that the accounts that we have tell us that the first five books, or the law, were completed in just 72 days. Though it may sound curious that 72 translators completed the first five books in exactly 72 days, there is no more reason to doubt this than there is to doubt any other piece of ancient history, for both The Letter of Aristeas and the historian Josephus record in detail the history of the making of the Septuagint. Josephus writes:

"And so he [Demetrius] brought them there and requested them, since they had everything they might need for the translation of the law, to carry out their task without interruption. Thereupon they set to work as ambitiously and painstakingly as possible to make the translation accurate, continuing at their work until the ninth hour, when they took a recess to attend to their bodily wants, for food was liberally supplied them and Dorotheus, moreover, furnished them with many of the dishes prepared for the kingóthis by his command. And early each day they would go to the court, pay their respects to Ptolemy and then go back to the same place and, after washing their hands in the sea and purifying themselves, would betake themselves in this state to the translation of the laws. Now, when the Law had been transcribed and the work of translation brought to an end in seventy-two days, Demetrius assembled all the Judeans at the same place where the laws had been rendered, and in the presence of the translators read them aloud. Thereupon the people expressed their approval of the elders who had interpreted the Law..."

Again, it is unclear when the rest of the Old Testament was finished, but it surely was worked upon at a similar rate. Again, this account is based upon The Letter of Aristeas. Aristeas was an assistant to Ptolemy. Josephus accepted the account given by Aristeas as historical and factual, and may have based part of his story upon other historical narratives as well. However, many, for no real reason, attack The Letter of Aristeas as fraudulent or non-factual. Yet, there is no reason to believe these attacks. In fact, the attacks on the letter can be traced to the Talmudic Jews who sought to destroy the Septuagint in any way possible, and they certainly would have been displeased to find a historical document which states that the High Priest Eleazar personally picked out the 72 elders to make the translation and that the translation was accepted by the Israelite people as accurate and faithful. But if we are to attack The Letter of Aristeas as being totally unfactual, then we should also discredit other ancient historical documents, whether they be of Herodotus or Tacitus. In fact, modern scholarship is showing more and more evidence in support of The Letter of Aristeas. Jellicoe writes:

"After almost two centuries of disesteem it has been rehabilitated to a very considerable extent as a result of the renewed attention afforded it in modern study."

The account of Philo regarding the Septuagint is considered by some to be based upon ancient sources other than Aristeas, and if this is true, and if Josephus had other documents as well, then that would mean that there was independent verification of the facts purported in The Letter of Aristeas. Jews have attacked the Letter, stating that it could not be what it purports to be, that of an eyewitness account, because of minor historical discrepancies. But this argument ignores two things. One, generally, from a document point-of-view, forgeries and frauds are the most accurate in terms of historical chronology, for the fraud is always careful not to give himself away by such anachronisms. Secondly, as Jellicoe points out, the nature of the historical discrepancies pointed out by critics are similar to those in the Book of Daniel and other Old Testament books. In other words, the problem may be that our historical information is inaccurate, not that the Bible or The Letter of Aristeas is inaccurate.

Again, the reason that the Jews seek to discount The Letter of Aristeas, the account of Josephus, and the account of Philo is because these historical documents make it clear that the men who translated the Septuagint were elders chosen by the High Priest himself, and that the document was accepted universally by the Israelites. If these statements are true, then how are the Talmudic Jews to account for the differences between the Masoretic Text and other historical Hebrew revisions and the Septuagint? Instead, the Talmudic Jews would have us accept their Masoretic Text. They have sought to supplant the Septuagint with the Masoretic Text and other versions. They have tried to transfer the high esteem in which the early Israelites and Christians held the Septuagint to their own corrupted Masoretic Text. Thus, it is only natural that they attack The Letter of Aristeas. Indeed, we have seen this corruption take place, for even Augustine believed that the Septuagint was the product of divine inspiration.

This was not an uncommon view, but rather it was the view of most early Christians. Today, however, Jew-deceived Protestants argue that the Masoretic Text is divinely inspired, a complete reversal of the primitive Christian position. Modern-day Judeo so-called Christians vehemently attack the Septuagint, claiming for instance that it was written by Origen or some other 2nd century AD author. They claim that the only way the Old Testament quotations in the New Testament could be so exactly aligned with the Greek Septuagint is if the Septuagint were written after the New Testament. Such men, knowing that the oldest complete copies of the Septuagint are no older than the 4th century AD, commonly claim that this is proof that the Septuagint was written at that time. They have, for over 100 years, claimed that there is no proof that the Septuagint was indeed written in the 3rd century BC. These same Jew-lackeys vehemently attack the credibility of The Letter of Aristeas. They wonder why God has not preserved some proof of the claims of The Letter of Aristeas. But these men have spent so much time attacking the Septuagint and The Letter of Aristeas that they have ignored one of the most important discoveries of the second half of the 20th century. I am speaking of the John Rylands Papyrus 458 and the Papyrus Fouad 266, both of which are 2nd century BC Septuagint fragments of the book of Deuteronomy. Also, from cave four at Qumran, site of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (which we will discuss later), additional fragments of equal antiquity have been found containing parts of Leviticus and Numbers. These fragments prove beyond a shadow of any doubt that the Septuagint was indeed translated and circulated when The Letter of Aristeas claims it was. These fragments predate the writing of the New Testament by over 200 years. In light of such overwhelming evidence only a fool would contend that the Septuagint was written after the New Testament. Still, many of these Judeo so-called scholars remain unreasonably firm in their position that the Septuagint post-dates the writing of the New Testament. These same men never consider the fact that the oldest Masoretic Text manuscripts are nearly 1100 years newer than the John Rylands Papyrus 458. Such is the extent of the Jewish deception.

We have already noted how heated were the attacks of the Jews on the Septuagint by the 2nd century AD. The Jews employed many different strategies of attack, one of which was the production of other Greek translations of the Hebrew. There were three of these made in the 2nd century, one by Aquila, one by Theodotion, and one by Symmachus.

Aquila. The first attempt to Judaize the Greek Scriptures of the Old Testament was made by Aquila, who was a pagan convert to Judaism and who flourished between 117-138 AD. We have already discussed the early controversy regarding the word virgin. A question that remains, however, is whether the Hebrew word almah originally meant virgin and the Jews were just trying to change the meaning to young woman, or whether the Hebrew word almah was not original but had been changed by the Jews. Now if it had been changed by the late 1st century, then this means that there was an organized attempt by the Jews to change the Hebrew text even before the Masoretes. The best fragmentary and historical evidence would indicate that this is true. Swete writes,

"The LXX did not suit the newer school of Jewish interpretation, it did not correspond with [their] received text. An official text differing considerably from the text accepted in earlier times had received the approval of the Rabbis, and the Alexandrian version [Septuagint], which represented the older text, began to be suspected and to pass into disuse [by the Palestinian Jews]."

What Swete is saying is that the Talmudic Jews had as early as the late 1st century adopted a Hebrew text that was markedly different from the original Hebrew, which was better represented by the Alexandrian Septuagint. So by the early 2nd century, the Jews then began attacking the Septuagint by comparing it to their own Hebrew revision and trying to deceive the Christians into believing that the Septuagint was flawed. This means that the word almah was probably inserted into the revision, and other changes were also introduced. Even these changes, however, were not as drastic as those that would later be introduced in the Masoretic Text, but the text was notably different. In order to propagandize among the Greek-speaking Christians, the Edomite Jews felt that they needed a Greek version of their Hebrew revision; by this means they could debate with the Christians, who almost universally spoke Greek. Thus, the Jews drafted Aquila. Aquila was born a pagan, then later claimed to convert to Christianity, but gave up Christianity when he was excommunicated for not giving up astrology. He then became a student of Rabbis Eliezer, Joshua, and Akiba. After many years of studying with the rabbis, the Jews employed him to make a Greek translation of their Hebrew version, which again Swete tells us was different from the original Hebrew represented by the Septuagint. This translation gained wide acceptance among Talmudic Jews; the version is quoted in the Talmud many times and was used by the rabbis in debating Origen, but the Christians never accepted it. The reason for this is very clear: it was full of Jewish lies and deception. Swete comments:

"The version of Aquila emanated from a famous school of Jewish teachers; it was issued with the full approval of the Synagogue..."

In addition to the expected changes in the Greek to make Aquila's version aligned with Jewish contentions, another interesting step was taken by Aquila. Wherever the Hebrew tetragrammaton occurred, which is translated as kurios or Master in the Septuagint, Aquila wrote the Hebrew letters in his text. This was in alignment with the Jewish 'Sacred Name' contentions that we have already discussed. The Christians, never believing in the lie of the sacred name, rejected Aquila's text for this absurdity if for no other reason. Someone who read and spoke Greek would see that this was nonsensical, and could neither read nor pronounce the Hebrew letters inserted in the passage. But the Jews did not believe in the Greek kurios or Master Jesus of the New Testament. Just as the Jews sought to destroy the name Jesus, they also tried to destroy the continuity of the Old and New Testaments and the identification of Jesus as the same Master or kurios of the Greek Septuagint. Thus, the version of Aquila was a failure with the Christians because it was too Jewish. So the Jews next tried to be more deceptive, and they produced two more translations of their new Hebrew through the men Theodotion and Symmachus. Humphrey Prideaux tells us of these men:

"They both of them undertook the making of their versions with the same design as Aquila did, although not wholly for the same end: for they all three entered in this work for the perverting of the Old Testament scriptures; but Aquila did it for the serving of the interest of the Jewish religion, the other two for the serving of the interest of that heretical sect which they were of; and all of them wrested those holy writings, in their versions of them, as much as they could, to make them speak for the different ends which they proposed."

Theodotion. According to Irenaeus, the earliest testimony we have, Theodotion was also a Jewish proselyte from Ephesus. Later writers, however, tell us that Theodotion first converted to Judaism and then became an Ebionite. Prideaux, above, assumes that Theodotion was an Ebionite when he made his translation. However, it is certain that at one time he was a Jewish proselyte, and it is also certain that the Ebionites were essentially the first "Jews for Jesus" type of sect. The Ebionites corresponded in some ways to many of those in the modern day Seventh Day Adventist and Identity movements. They sought to strictly keep the laws of Moses and circumcision, even becoming vegetarians (which was not according to the Mosaic law but was Pythagorean); they criticized and rejected Paul because the Apostle makes it clear that physical circumcision and health laws, etc., are non-issues; they believed that Jesus was the physical son of Joseph; they claimed that the Temple in Jerusalem was the physical house of God; and they rejected all of the books of the New Testament except for Matthew. Eventually, they even rejected Matthew and wrote their own gospel, today known as the Gospel of the Nazarenes. So, in short, the Ebionites were Jews.

Thus, it is certain that Theodotion was, like Aquila, a Jew, but it is likely that he first became an Ebionite before creating his translation. This was done only to appear less Jewish to the real Christians. This was all a Jewish effort to make a corrupted Greek translation that was more palatable to the Christians. Their main aim was to displace the use of the Septuagint among Christians, and they really did not care how they did it. So they had Theodotion make his translation, which was much closer to the Septuagint than Aquila's translation. His main difference was in deleting all the portions of the Scripture that were in the Greek Septuagint but not in the Jewish-revised Hebrew.

Symmachus. From information from Epiphanius and Jerome, it is believed that Symmachus was a Samaritan who converted to Judaism, and then, like Theodotion, became an Ebionite, no doubt for the same reasons as Theodotion. In fact, many believe that Symmachus is identified in the Talmud as flourishing in the 2nd century and being a student of Rabbi Meir. As Theodotion's version seems to have been a revision of the Septuagint, so Symmachus's version was certainly a revision of Aquila's translation. In studying the fragments of Symmachus and of Aquila side by side, it is clear that Symmachus merely attempted to take Aquila's translation and place it in more natural Greek, again trying to make Aquila's version more acceptable to the Greek-speaking Christians. In many cases, he took this to the extreme, producing what can only be called a paraphrase expressing the Talmudic interpretation. Indeed, Swete comments:

"In these and other instances Symmachus seems to shew a knowledge of current Jewish exegesis which agrees with the story of his Jewish origin or training."

According to Origen, there were at least three other translations of the Hebrew into Greek known to him. Who translated them or of what quality they were is unknown. However, of the versions of Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus, it is certain that all three were nothing but Jewish tools to attempt to discredit, displace and remove the Greek Septuagint from the Christians. All three were, for the most part, failures. It was because of these failures that the Jews began to create the Masoretic Text. The early Christians who spoke Greek and read the New Testament in the Greek tongue could not be deceived regarding the Greek Septuagint, for they could see clearly that the authors of the Greek New Testament used and quoted the Septuagint at all times. But the Talmudic Jews knew that given enough time, and especially when most of the world ceased speaking the Greek language, they would be able to present to the world the myth of the Masoretic Text.

Textual Criticism. The issues of Textual Criticism that exist for the manuscripts of the New Testament exist also for the Greek Septuagint. Like the New Testament, there are many different ancient manuscripts and witnesses of the Septuagint, and the process of textual criticism must be employed to determine, as far as possible, the original reading of the text. The Alexandrian, Vaticanus, Ephraem, and Sinaiticus codices that we have already discussed regarding the New Testament also contain most or all of the Septuagint. These codices are representative of the early Christian Bible, with the Greek Septuagint and the Greek New Testament. These are of course the most important of the witnesses to the Septuagint, but there are additionally over 300 Septuagint codices, as well as a great number of minuscules, lectionaries, patristic quotes, etc. Far less work has been done on the text of the Greek Septuagint than has been done on the Greek New Testament, simply for the fact that since the discovery of many of the great uncial texts containing the Septuagint, the scholarship of the Western world has been for the most part Jew-controlled, and the Jews do not want any serious work done on the Greek Septuagint. However, the German Alfred Rahlfs, beginning work during World War I and finishing in 1935, published a critical edition of the Greek Septuagint with all the major manuscripts analyzed. With the exception of a similar work previously compiled by Henry Swete (who had many theological biases), no other work of this nature has ever been undertaken.

Versions of the Old Testament in languages other than Hebrew and Greek are of little importance to the Bible student. While there are many ancient translations of either the Hebrew or Greek into other languages such as Latin, Egyptian, Slavonic, Armenian, etc., these translations are not very useful to the Bible student because they are so far removed from the original writing of the Old Testament. When we study the New Testament, we see that ancient translations of it are based upon Greek texts that were made very close to the original writing; when we study the Old Testament, however, ancient versions, whether based on the Hebrew or the Greek Septuagint, are based upon versions several hundred years removed from any original composition. They are therefore of little value. We should however pay some attention to those manuscripts that have come to be called the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, or Qumran Documents, preserve a body of literature belonging to the Essenian cult, as well as portions of the Old Testament in Hebrew and Aramaic. The documents date to before and during the 1st century AD, some as ancient as the 2nd century BC. However, the manuscripts themselves are of little value for several reasons. First of all, the Israeli government has kept the documents from the general public, so an exhaustive study of their textual content is unavailable. The reason that the Jews have kept a hold on the documents is clear from what documents and statistics have been released. They even fought the Six Day War to gain control of the documents. The Qumran Scrolls of the Old Testament agree with the Septuagint version of the Old Testament to a far greater degree than they agree with the Masoretic Text. Thus, from a statistical point of view, the Dead Sea Scrolls are dangerous to the Jews. At the same time, however, for the most part, the Dead Sea Scrolls do not agree with either the Masoretic Text or the Septuagint, but preserve another type of reading altogether. Thus, the second reason why the Dead Sea Scrolls are of little value is because the Essenes could best be described as crazy. They were a Jewish sect who lived apart from women in a strict, ascetic environment, and, judging from the perverted nature of their other literature, we cannot trust their Old Testament documents simply because they would have been inclined to corrupt the documents to their own benefit. Much the same can be said for the Samaritan Pentateuch, which is essentially a Hebrew copy of the first five books of the Bible written in Samaritan lettering and used by the Samaritans. Much analysis has been done on this work and it contains many places where passages were rewritten to support the positions of the Samaritans. Like the Dead Sea Scrolls, it does not entirely support the Masoretic Text or the Septuagint, but on the average, it supports the Septuagint. Bratton comments:

"But, in spite of orthographic variants, dogmatic changes, interpolations, grammatical corrections of the Hebrew, and accidental scribal errors, the Samaritan Pentateuch in many respects represents a more reliable text than the Masoretic Old Testament, particularly when it agrees with the Septuagint in varying from the Hebrew [Masoretic Text]."

Again, much the same could also be said for the Dead Sea Scrolls, but in any case, the only reliable copy of the Old Testament in any language existing today is the Greek Septuagint.

It should be noted that some of the Hebrew documents from the 2nd century BC preserved in Qumran may predate any Essene tampering. In other words, many of the Dead Sea Scrolls are from a later date after the Essenes were already thriving and producing their own literature, but some of the documents are from the 2nd century BC. These documents are of the greatest value because they contain little or no Essene tampering. Again, however, these manuscripts have not been properly analyzed because the Jews have not let the public see all of them. However, some scant information has been released regarding these most ancient texts. Lampe comments:

From Qumran caves one, four, five and six come biblical texts in Hebrew which, according to reports, are related to the parent text of the Septuagint historical books. Particular interest attaches to Samuel fragments from cave four, because the text-form shows more obvious affinities with the Septuagint than do the others. Of course, it has long been agreed that the parent text of the Septuagint Samuel contained recensional divergences from the Massoretic Text.

What this means is that the oldest existing Hebrew manuscripts agree with the Septuagint, not the Masoretic Text. The importance of Lampe's comment on Samuel is that Jews and Judeos have long argued that the differences in the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text are due to faulty translation on the part of the Septuagint translators, not due to the translators actually having a different Hebrew text than that represented by the Masoretic Text. However, these Hebrew copies of Samuel from the 2nd century BC show clearly that the Hebrew then current was accurately translated in the Greek Septuagint. This means that the Hebrew was later corrupted and changed, and thus the Masoretic Text represents a corrupted and altered version, but the Septuagint represents the ancient original Hebrew. It is information of this sort of which the Jews are so afraid. It is because of this information that the Jews will not release all of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Indeed, Lampe reluctantly comments that the Jewish interpretation of the differences between the Septuagint and Masoretic Text is wrong:

"The present discovery obviously supports the second alternative [that the Hebrew text originally agreed with the Septuagint], and it may be assumed that since the rendering of Samuel is demonstrably a fairly literal translation of the Hebrew parent text the presence of interpretation elsewhere, at least in the historical books, should be admitted only where no other explanation is possible."

We notice how Lampe still tries to defend the Jewish contention. Again, the Jewish contention is that the Septuagint translation is different from the Masoretic Text because of Hellenistic interpretation. But the best evidence on this matter indicates that the Septuagint is, as Lampe himself admits, a literal translation of the original Hebrew. This demands the conclusion that the Masoretic Text is not identical with the original Hebrew, but is a Talmudic, atheistic, Jew perversion. The Judeo, Jew-lackeys like Lampe continue to believe in the divine preservation of the Old Testament Scriptures in the Talmudic, Masoretic Text.

The best work comparing these ancient Hebrew manuscripts with the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text has been done by Eugene Ulrich in his book, The Qumran Text of Samuel and Josephus. From this book we learn that about 10% of I and II Samuel are preserved in the Qumran manuscripts in Hebrew. Ulrich compared these fragments with the Greek Septuagint, the Hebrew Masoretic Text, and the quotations of Samuel by Josephus. Ulrich found readings in these texts which support several arguments. For example, he identified passages where the Qumran version differed from both the Septuagint and the Masoretic readings, while the Septuagint and the Masoretic agreed with one another. He also found instances where all three manuscripts differed from one another, preserving three different readings. What this information indicates is that the Qumran text has problems of its own, where a number of errors either accidental or intentional have crept in. However, these errors seem to be in the minority. The number of readings fitting one of the above descriptions is very small, and most can be explained. The most convincing findings in Ulrich's study concern the number of times the Qumran text corresponds with the Greek Septuagint and not the Masoretic Text as compared with the number of times the Qumran text agrees with the Masoretic Text and not the Greek Septuagint.

For the amount of I and II Samuel that Ulrich was able to compare, which accounted for less that 10% of I and II Samuel, he found 183 readings where the Qumran text corresponds with the Greek Septuagint and not the Masoretic Text. Conversely, he found 18 readings where the Qumran text agreed with the Masoretic Text and not the Greek Septuagint. Of these 18 readings, several of them can easily be explained as common textual errors in the Qumran text and the Masoretic Text. In other words, it can be seen where the same error occurred in the Qumran and the Masoretic Texts, but that the Septuagint preserves the original reading. Thus, there are probably only 9 or 10 actual discrepancies. The same cannot be said for the 183 readings where the Septuagint agrees with the Qumran text but not the Masoretic Text.

If we extrapolate these numbers for the entire books of I and II Samuel, remembering that only about 10% could be analyzed, then we would find over 1800 times where the Qumran and Septuagint texts agree with one another but not with the Masoretic. Similarly, there would be less than 100 instances where the opposite is true, and most of these errors can definitely be shown to belong to the Qumran and Masoretic Texts. Thus, in other words, we find that the oldest Hebrew in existence convincingly shows that the Greek Septuagint is much more accurate than the Hebrew Masoretic Text and that the Masoretic Text, if it could be fully compared with a full-length version of the ancient Hebrew, would contain tens of thousands of mistakes which the Septuagint would not contain.

Furthermore, Ulrich was able to analyze II Samuel 6 in detail. What he found was nearly 100% agreement (if minute differences in spelling are ignored) between the Qumran text and the texts of Josephus and the Greek Septuagint, and, at the same time, striking differences between these texts and the Masoretic Text. Again, this is confirmation that the Greek Septuagint corresponds with the original Hebrew Old Testament and that the Hebrew Masoretic Text contains thousands of errors, most of which are the result of Jewish tampering. The early Christians understood this, and like the Israelites who first translated the Greek Septuagint in the 3rd century BC, they believed that the Greek Septuagint was the product of divine inspiration.

The first time we see any debate over the inspiration of the Septuagint is at the time of Augustine and Jerome. Augustine held the traditional view that the Septuagint was a product of divine inspiration, but Jerome was the first to contend that it was not. Curiously, he began having these opinions after his training by the Jewish rabbis. When we discussed the Vulgate, we pointed out that Jerome and his work was condemned by his contemporaries. Jerome slowly began to appear more and more Jewish in his positions as he got older and his Jewish friends began to have more influence. He spent 34 years living in Palestine with his Jewish friends. Jerome originally intended to use the Greek Septuagint in his preparation of the Vulgate, and even began his work using the Septuagint. He compared it to the Hebrew texts he had and the other Greek translations, such as Aquila's. By 384 AD, even though Jerome had already started his association with the rabbis, he still knew enough truth to write in Letter 32 to Marcella,

"You ask what business can be so urgent as to stop me from a chat on paper. Let me tell you, then, that for some time past I have been comparing Aquila's version of the Old Testament with the scrolls of the Hebrew, to see if from hatred to Christ the synagogue has changed the text; and - to speak frankly to a friend - I have found several variations which confirm our faith."

When Jerome wrote this, he was still revising the Old Latin translations of the Septuagint to form the Vulgate, and even he realized how the Jews were trying to corrupt the Scriptures. At some point, however, his opinions drastically changed, or else he had been lying to the Christians all along as a Jew subverter. Some have theorized that his sudden about-face concerning his Septuagint position was due to an affair he was having with a possible Jewess, but whatever the reason, he later took an entirely Jewish position regarding his work on translating the Hebrew into Latin, starting in 391. Lampe writes:

"There are frequent references to the versions of the later Greek translators, Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, and in many places he sets forth the views of learned Jews. Indeed, he says more than once that part of his purpose was to give to Latin ears the erudition of 'the masters of the synagogue.'"

When Jerome began behaving more and more Jewish, one of his former friends, Rufinus, wrote public attacks of Jerome's Jewish leanings. Rufinus writes in his Apology of Jerome,

"... in which, in recounting the various teachers whom he hired, as he says, from the Jewish synagogue ... It is of Barabbas whom, unlike me, he took as his teacher from the Synagogue, and of Porphyry by whose introduction he and not I had his introduction into Logic. Pardon me for this that I have preferred to be thought of as an unskilled and unlearned man rather than to be called the disciple of Barabbas. For, when Christ and Barabbas were offered for our choice, I in my simplicity, made choice of Christ. You, it appears, are willing to join your shouts with those who say, 'Not this man but Barabbas.' And I should like to know why Porphyry, that friend of yours who wrote his blasphemous books against our religion, taught you? What good did you get from either of those masters of whom you boast so much, the one drawing his inspiration from the idols which represent demons, the other, as you tell us, from the Synagogue of Satan. ... From that other friend of yours, Barabbas, whom you chose out of the synagogue rather than Christ, you learned to hope for a resurrection not in power but in frailty, to love the letter which kills and hate the spirit which gives life, and other more secret things, if occasion so requires, shall afterwards in due time be brought to light."

In this condemnation of Jerome, Rufinus purposely changes the name of Jerome's Jewish teacher Baranina to Barabbas so that he might connect Jerome with the Jews who shouted for Jesus to be crucified instead of Barabbas. The intent of Rufinus is clear: he is stating that Jerome has given himself over to do the bidding of the Jews. He also notes some of the theological consequences of this: Jerome began teaching a physical resurrection and asceticism. Rufinus, an ardent supporter of the Greek Septuagint, says that he chose Christ, not the Jew Barabbas or Baranina from the Synagogue of Satan. Jerome, in response to this work of Rufinus, freely admits the truth of Rufinus's claims. Jerome writes in his own Apology,

"There is nothing to blame in my getting the help of a Jew in translating from the Hebrew."

Elsewhere, Jerome defends specific instances of blatant Jewish influence in the Vulgate, saying that he did not understand how Jewish interpretations here and there would undermine the faith of Christians. This sounds like something one of his Jew rabbis whispered in his ear. Today, even the Catholics have admitted textual problems in Jerome's Vulgate, but they still maintain its supremacy. The preface to the Catholic New American Bible states:

"THE VULGATE SUPERSEDES ALL OTHER VERSIONS. As St. Jerome's work on the Old Testament was a work of private enterprise, it met great opposition. He was accused of changing the text of the Bible, which was familiar to the people in the Itala or Old Latin. However, as time went on, the great merits of his work were recognized. By the 9th Century, Jerome's version was universally accepted. In view of its general adoption, it gradually assumed the name of 'Vulgate,' the 'disseminated' or people's Bible. ... However, it does not mean that it is to be preferred over the Septuagint or over original manuscripts, or that it was entirely free from error."

So the Catholics today seek to maintain both positions. On the one hand, they consult the Vulgate as the basis of their doctrinal positions, such as the trinity verse. On the other hand, they have made translations, such as the New American Bible, that are based on texts other than the Vulgate. The New American Bible, based upon the Greek New Testament manuscripts, does not contain the trinity verse, yet the Catholics continue to teach the trinity based upon the Vulgate. However, the important thing to note here in our discussion of the Old Testament is that even though the Catholics admit that the Vulgate is not to be preferred over the Greek Septuagint, still they translate the Old Testament portion of the New American Bible from the Hebrew Masoretic Text, because that was the text that Jerome used.

Thus, the Jews gained control of Jerome and the Catholic Church and used him to the fullest extent possible in corrupting the white Christian world. We noted in discussing the Vulgate that it was many years until the Catholic Church began using the Vulgate, for it and Jerome both were harshly criticized and rebuked during Jerome's lifetime. But the Jews had managed to plant the seed that would eventually blossom into the acceptance of the Hebrew Masoretic Text and the virtual abolition of the Greek Septuagint, the true Christian Scriptures of Christ and His Apostles.

Augustine wrote in The City of God concerning the inspiration of the Septuagint:

"For while there were other interpreters who translated these sacred oracles out of the Hebrew tongue into Greek, ..., yet the Church has received this Septuagint translation just as if it were the only one; and it has been used by the Greek Christian people, most of whom are not aware that there is any other. From this translation has also been made a translation in the Latin tongue, which the Latin churches use. ... But although the Jews acknowledge this very learned labor of his to be fruitful [Jerome translating the Old Testament from the Hebrew], while they contend that the Septuagint translators have erred in many places, still the churches of Christ judge that no one should be preferred to the authority of so many men [the original Septuagint translators], chosen for this very great work by Eleazar, who was then high priest; for even if there had not appeared in them one Spirit, without doubt divine, and the seventy[-two] learned men had, after the manner of men, compared together the words of their translation, that what pleased them all might stand, no single translator ought to be preferred to them; but since so great a sign of divinity has appeared in them, certainly, if any other translator of the Scriptures from the Hebrew into any other tongue is faithful, in that case he agrees with these seventy[-two] translators, and if he is found not to agree with them, then we ought to believe that the prophetic gift is with them [the Septuagint translators]."

Canonicity is the discussion regarding which books belong in the canon of the Old and New Testament. The word canon simply means standard. Many different methods have been used by different people throughout the centuries to determine which books should and should not be included in the Old and New Testaments. Even by the time the printed Bibles and English translations were being produced, there was still controversy. For example, the original King James Version contained the so-called Apocryphal books. Later, they were dropped. The Catholic Bible of today has a different Old Testament canon than does the Protestant Bible. The Septuagint has books that the Hebrew Masoretic Text does not. Additionally, there are many books written just after the close of the New Testament canon, as well as fraudulent books written much later, that some today have suggested should belong in the New Testament canon. Yet, very few people have ever actually outlined a standard for determining canonicity. Thus, the determination of the canon of the Old and New Testaments is very important.

New Testament Position

The Christian Separatist position on the canon of the New Testament is very simple, and consists of two principles:

1) All books that can be accepted as having been written under divine inspiration and therefore included in the New Testament canon were written before AD 70;

2) All the books of this sort must in no way contradict one another.

Both of these rules are Biblical in origin. The New Testament teaches very clearly that all prophecy and all revelation would be fulfilled and ended at the time of the fulfillment of Matthew 24 and the prophecies of the Book of Revelation. These things constituted the finished work of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ was the Final Revelation of God to man. Since we know historically that all of these prophecies occurred by 70 AD, including Christ returning in the flesh, then there can be no new revelation after that date, for by that date all things were fulfilled. So, while great Christian men may have written great documents after that date, none of these documents can be accepted as divinely inspired and infallible. Thus, the first rule demands that all of the books of the New Testament be written after Pentecost and before AD 70, and indeed we find that starting with the book of Jacob or James in AD 47-48 and ending with the book of Revelation in late 68 AD, all 27 of the commonly accepted books of the New Testament were written between those dates. The second rule must also be applied, for the New Testament teaches clearly that Christians are to be of one mind and one accord, all saying the same things; it is therefore impossible for any of the documents to have even the slightest contradiction. When we analyze the 27 books of the New Testament in an accurate translation and from the original manuscripts, we find and can state categorically that there does not exist one contradiction, even of the slightest nature, in any of the books.

Now when we apply these two rules to other documents of the Christian era which some would accept as canon, most fail on the first rule. For example, I Clement may have been started in 70 AD, but it was principally written and finished after the destruction of Jerusalem. The Epistle of Barnabas was written around AD 75, and the Shepherd of Hermas was written around AD 85. Of course, some documents were written before AD 70, such as the Didache, which was written sometime between 40 and 60 AD, but this book fails the second rule, for while this book is an excellent example of what might be called an early sermon, and while it may be 95% correct, it still shows slight contradiction with books of the New Testament.

Eusebius of Caesarea, who lived between 230-340 AD, discusses a list of books, the canonicity of which was a subject of debate at that time. This included the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, and the Shepherd of Hermas, but also included the Acts of Paul, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Gospels of Peter, of Thomas, and of Matthaias, the Acts of Andrew, of John, etc. All of these books fail our two rules for canonicity. There are many other books that we find being published today, such as those in The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden, which also fail these two rules. Other forgeries were written as late as the 19th century AD, such as the Lost Chapter of Acts, but have found wide acceptance among certain circles through trickery and Jewish deception. Again, however, none of these spurious books can satisfy the two rules of canonicity detailed above.

Old Testament Position

Whereas the writing down of the books that compose what we call the New Testament occurred within a period of only 20-21 years, the compiling of the Old Testament books took over a 1000 years. There is no specific year that we can cite when all of the Old Testament books were to have been written, although it is certain that none were written after the birth of Christ. However, the second canonical rule applies: there must be no contradiction among any of the books, and this also means no contradiction with any New Testament books. However, a third rule can be stated for the books of the Old Testament, which is: Since at the time of Christ and His Apostles there existed a body of literature that is referred to in the New Testament as "the Scriptures," and since we know historically and through quotations made by Christ and His Apostles in the New Testament that these Scriptures were the Greek Septuagint, then any books in the Septuagint used by Christ and His Apostles must be accepted as "the Scriptures." Thus, our task is to determine what books of the Old Testament were commonly circulated in the Greek Septuagint during the 1st century AD.

Now some might suggest that a method for doing this would be to identify all the books of the Old Testament that Jesus and His Apostles made definite quotations from. However, this rule, while helpful, is problematic for two reasons. One, the New Testament only makes positive quotations from 24 books of the Old Testament. The New Testament makes verbal allusions or parallels to a total of 50 books of the Old Testament, but these cannot in many cases be held forth as proof that the New Testament author was familiar with the Old Testament book. Thus, only 24 books of the Old Testament can be positively supported through New Testament quotations, with another 26 supported somewhat through verbal allusions or parallels. Still, this does not include all of the books of the Old Testament. The second reason that using quotations is problematic is illustrated in the apparent quotation from the Book of Enoch in the New Testament book of Jude. Jude 14-15 appears to give a direct quotation from what is called I Enoch. The passage that appears to be quoted is in the very first part of I Enoch. Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have learned that this first part of Enoch was evidently not written until the 2nd century AD, well after the time of the writing of Jude. This means someone wrote an introduction to an already existing book and sought to give it validity by making it appear to be the book of Enoch that Jude refers to. So Jude was not quoting I Enoch, but the author of I Enoch was quoting Jude. Thus, deciding which Old Testament books should and should not be included solely on the basis of quotations in the New Testament is a source of many errors. Another example of this concerns the Book of Esther. Many have attacked the Book of Esther as spurious because it is not directly quoted in the New Testament. This sounds convincing to the layman, but it must be remembered that neither are nearly 20 other books of the Old Testament. By this logic, we must also throw out Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, Obadiah, etc. So this system is ridiculous. Incidentally, it should be noted that there are seven allusions to Esther in the New Testament, although none of these are direct quotations.

Therefore, the only method for canonicity that can be established for the Old Testament is determining which books of the Old Testament were accepted by the early Christians, and by Christ and His Apostles, as "the Scriptures." Since the Septuagint was what they referred to as "the Scriptures," then we must establish what books composed the Septuagint in the 1st century. So far as we know, the books contained in the 1st century AD Septuagint canon include all of the 39 commonly accepted books of the Old Testament that are found, for example, in the King James Version, plus I Esdras, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Sirach, Judith, Tobit, Baruch, the Epistle of Jeremiah, I and II Maccabees, and perhaps III and IV Maccabees. In addition to these eleven books, there was The Song of the Three Children, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, and the Prayer of Manasseh. These last four books were never actually treated as separate books in the Septuagint, but were integrated with other books. The first three were all parts of Daniel, and the last was supplied with the Canticles as the prayer alluded to in II Chronicles 33:18. So these are not stand-alone books, but are sizable portions of Daniel and the Canticles that are not found in the Hebrew text; thus they have been named. However, there are also other sizable portions of Old Testament books that are not found in the Masoretic Text but are found in the Greek Septuagint. For example, nearly 90 verses in Esther are found in the Septuagint that are not found in the Masoretic Text, as well as other large portions of Daniel and others.

Thus, the best evidence at this time would indicate that "the Scriptures" referred to in the New Testament are the Greek Septuagint, consisting of the 39 commonly accepted books, plus the eleven books that are sometimes called the Apocrypha, plus the expanded portions of Daniel, Esther, and the Prayer of Manasseh. The reader may wonder why these eleven books and the other additions are excluded from their Bibles today. However, not all of the books are excluded by all denominations. The Catholics for example include Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, I and II Maccabees and the extended parts of Esther and Daniel in their rightful places, as well as the Epistle of Jeremiah correctly placed at the end of Baruch, all based upon the Vulgate. The omission of III and IV Maccabees and I Esdras was due to Jewish influence on Jerome and other early Catholic scholars, though the date of the authorship of III and IV Maccabees is questionable. So in truth, it was the Protestants who first rejected these books and considered them Apocryphal. In the Septuagint and Vulgate canons, they are correctly integrated with the other books of the Old Testament. Even the first Protestant Bibles, however, did not omit the books. The original King James Version included the books, but, for the first time, placed them at the end of the Old Testament, and raised questions about them. The KJV included all of the books contained in the Vulgate as well as I Esdras and II Esdras, although II Esdras was clearly not a part of the 1st century Septuagint. The reason that the KJV translators moved these books to the end of the Old Testament, setting them off as questionable, is very clear; it is because the King James Version and other early Protestant Bibles were based upon the Hebrew Masoretic Text, which totally omits all of these books, as well as the extended portions of Daniel and Esther. Thus, the question for the reader is, Why did the Masoretic Text omit these books? The reason is obvious when we remember that the Masoretic Text was compiled by Edomite Jews. These books, in the original Greek, are very racist, especially the missing portions of Esther, I Esdras, Wisdom of Solomon, and Sirach. The four Maccabees document how the Edomite Jewish usurpers gained control of the temple and gained political power in Judea during the revolt of Judas Maccabee. The Edomite Jews obviously wanted to suppress this information because it shows clearly, from a historical point-of-view, that they were usurpers and impostors of the white Israelites. Thus, every one of these books and every piece of Scripture that is contained in the Greek Septuagint are very detrimental to the Edomite, Talmudic Jews. It is for this reason that they worked to steal these books from the Christians. They succeeded only in removing III and IV Maccabees and I Esdras from the Catholics, and through the KJV they slowly weaned the Protestants off those books. However, they cannot remove the fact that the 1st century Christians, that Christ and His Apostles, used and read these books in their Greek Septuagints. For many of the so-called Apocryphal books, we may cite specific New Testament verses which confirm that the New Testament authors were familiar with these books. Here are a few of many allusions and paraphrases:

1. Romans 1:18-20 from Wisdom of Solomon 13:1

2. Romans 9:3; 10:1 from Prayer of Manasseh, 8-9

3. I Corinthians 2:10-16 from Judith 8:14

4. Hebrews 1:3 from Wisdom of Solomon 7:26

5. Jacob (James) 3:5-9 from Sirach 5:13

6. Revelation 8:2 from Tobit 12:15

We mentioned when discussing the Old Testament that the Talmudic Jews had begun making a revision of the Hebrew as early as the time of Christ. In this revising process, which saw the word virgin changed to young woman and other such corruptions, the Talmudic Jews also set up their own system for canonicity which allowed them to get rid of the racist books now known as the Apocrypha. They established four rules for Old Testament canonicity:

1) The books had to be in harmony with the Pentateuch;

2) The books had to have been written before the time of Ezra;

3) The books all had to be written in Hebrew;

4) The books all had to have been written in Palestine.

By applying these arbitrary, Jewish rules, the so-called Apocrypha was excluded around the time of the 1st century from the Talmudic Jewish canon, but, of course, these rules meant nothing to the early Christians who viewed these Edomite Jews as of their father the Devil. There is nothing wrong with their first rule, and we too would agree that all of the books of the Old Testament would have to be in total agreement with all of the other books. The second rule, stating that the books had to be written before the time of Ezra, means that all of the Old Testament books would have to have been written before c. 450 BC. However, it is probable that many of the prophetical books, including Malachi, were written well after this time. The exact dates of the writing of many of the books of the Old Testament, including what is called the Apocrypha, cannot be determined. But it is certain that many books were not written until after the time of Ezra. So to apply this rule would not only exclude the so-called Apocryphal books but also many other books of the Old Testament.

The third rule states that the books all had to be written in Hebrew. Many of the so-called Apocryphal books were in fact written in Hebrew, including Sirach, Baruch, Tobit, I Maccabees and several others. But again, the particular language that the book may or may not have been written in is meaningless, because the same Jews who made this rule also believe that for the New Testament to be divinely inspired, it too would have to have been written in Hebrew or Aramaic.

The final rule states that all of the books would have to have been written in Palestine. This rule is again without any basis in the Scriptures, and it cannot be proven or even suggested that most of the other books of the Old Testament were written in Palestine, or that the so-called Apocryphal books were not written in Palestine. So this rule also is meaningless.

Thus, the Talmudic Jews could use these rules to say that any book they desired to discredit was not authentic. It was merely a question of picking and choosing on the Jews' part. So this is the reason that these anti-Jewish books were excluded from the Jewish canon.

These 'Apocryphal' books should not be confused with those books termed 'pseudepigrapha.' This term refers to books which are purposeful frauds, and the name refers to the author claiming a false name. An example of this would be the already mentioned I Enoch. Enoch did not write this book, but someone claiming to be him fraudulently attempted to pass off the book as the work of Enoch. Other examples of this include the Book of Jashar, II Enoch, the Report of Pilate, the Book of Jubilees, the 29th Chapter of Acts, the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Letter of Abgar, etc. There are literally hundreds of such books, both ancient and modern, that men have tried to pass off as legitimate, but all of these books fail the rules of canonicity that we have outlined herein.

For example, the Book of Jashar has existed in three different versions, all written in Hebrew by Jews. The earliest of these was written in c. 1171, the others in 1391 and 1625. Other versions have also been put forward, but they are more recent than even these fraudulent editions. They are all attempts to capitalize on Joshua 10:13 and II Samuel 1:18, which in the Masoretic Text appear to refer to a Book of Jashar. However, in the Greek Septuagint and even in Jerome's Vulgate, we discover that these references say "Book of the Upright." It appears that early translators of the Hebrew Masoretic Text into English simply did not know what the Hebrew jashar meant, and based upon their mistake, Jews have tried to introduce a fraudulent book. Similar stories can be told for the rest of the pseudepigraphal books.

Wyclif's Bible. This is the name of two translations, both of the Latin Vulgate. The first, completed in 1384, was the first complete English version of the Bible. It is unknown how much of it was actually completed by Wyclif. The second was completed in 1397 by John Purvey.

Tyndale's Bible. The chief work of Tyndale was the New Testament, which was the only part of the Bible he completed (in 1525). For this he drew upon both Greek and Latin, especially employing the work of Erasmus and the Textus Receptus. In 1534, a translation of the Old Testament up to the end of Chronicles was published, and this work was later incorporated into the Matthew's Bible.

Coverdale's Bible. This was the first complete, printed edition of the English Bible, published in 1535. However, like its predecessors, the manuscripts upon which it was based were far from original. In fact, it was a translation of the Luther Bible (which was based on the Hebrew of the Old Testament), and relied upon the Latin for some passages.

Matthew's Bible. This translation was made in 1537 by John Rogers, an assistant of Tyndale, under the alias Thomas Matthew. It was based entirely upon the work of Tyndale and Coverdale and it was printed under the King's License, as the third edition of Coverdale's Bible had been.

Taverner's Bible. This was an unimportant revision of the Matthew's Bible appearing in 1539, the work of Richard Taverner.

The Great Bible. This Bible also appeared as an authorized version (1539) and as it underwent seven versions, it was made mandatory that all parish churches own a copy. This, of course, was at a time when only bishops were allowed to own a Bible. It was a revision of the Coverdale Bible based upon the Matthew's Bible and therefore was still not based on the original manuscripts.

Cromwell's Bible. This was the name given to the 1539 edition of The Great Bible as it was produced under the direction of Thomas Cromwell.

Cranmer's Bible. This was the name given to the 1540 edition of The Great Bible. It contained a prologue by Cranmer.

Ulrich, Eugene Charles. The Qumran Text of Samuel and Josephus. Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1978.

Wilson, Edmund. The Scrolls From The Dead Sea. New York: Oxford UP, 1955.