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Taken from; http://wings.buffalo.edu/sa/musl ... -say/ch1.2.3.4.html
Because he performed miracles?
Well then, is Jesus the son of God because he raised the dead? If so, then what about Ezekiel who is said to have raised many more dead bodies than Jesus ever did. Ezekiel is said to have raised a whole city from the dead (Ezekiel 37:1-9)
If we are looking for Godly powers and miracles as proof of godliness then what about Joshua who is said to have stopped the sun and moon for one whole day: (Joshua 10:12-13). Can anyone but God Almighty do this?
Elisha is said to have raised the dead, resurrected himself, healed a leper, fed a hundred people with twenty barley loaves and a few ears of corn, and healed a blind man: (2 Kings 4:35, 13:21, 5:14, 4:44, and 6:11.)
Elijah is said to have raised the dead, and made a bowl of flour and a jar of oil inexhaustible for many days (1 Kings 17:22 and 14.)
To say nothing of Moses (pbuh) and his countless miracles. Of his parting of the sea, of his changing of a stick into a serpent, of his changing of water into blood, ..etc.
And so forth......
Even Jesus (pbuh) himself tells us that miracles by themselves do not prove anything:
"For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect"
Matthew 24:24
So even false Christs can supply great wonders and miracles of such magnitude that even the most knowledgeable among men shall be deceived.
Jesus (pbuh) had a beginning (the begetting) and an end ("and he gave up the ghost") Melchizedec, however, is said to have had no beginning of days nor end of life but was "made like unto the Son of God" !.
"For this Melchizedec, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him; To whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all; first being by interpretation King of righteousness, and after that also King of Salem, which is, King of peace; Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually. Now consider how great this man [was], unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils."
Hebrews 7:1-4
Solomon is said to have been with God at the beginning of time before all of creation, Proverbs 8:22-31.
Well then, is Jesus (pbuh) god because he performed his miracles under his own power while others needed God to perform them for them? Let us then read:
Matthew 28:18 "And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth."
Luke 11:20: "But if I with the finger of God cast out devils."
Matthew 12:28 "But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God."
John 5:30: "I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me."
John 10:25: "the works that I do in my Father's name."
John 8:28-29 "...I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things. And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him."
Acts 2:22 "Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know"
So we see that even the apostle of Jesus (pbuh), Peter "the Rock,"* bore witness many years after the departure of Jesus not that Jesus was "God, the Son of God, who did miracles through his Omnipotence," rather, he openly bore witness before all those present that Jesus was "a man." He then went on to make sure that the masses would not be mislead by Jesus' miracles into thinking that he was more than a man by emphasizing that it was not Jesus who did the miracles, rather, just as was the case with countless other prophets before him, it was God Himself who did these miracles and that God's prophets are simply the tools through which He performed His miracles. In other words, the point that Peter was trying to drive home to these people was for them to remember that just as Moses' parting of the seas did not make him God or the son of God, and just as Elisha's raising of the dead did not make him God or the son of God, so too was the case with Jesus.
What was the goal behind the performance of these miracles? Let us read John 11:42 where we find that just before Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, he made a point of making sure that the crowd would not misunderstand what he was about to do or why he did it, so he publicly stated before God while they were listening that, just as was the case with all previous prophets, the reason why he was given these miracles was in order to prove that God had sent Him and he was a true prophet:
"And I knew that Thou hearest me always; but because of the people standing around I said it, that they may believe that Thou didst send Me.".
John 11:42
Allah Knows Best...
Peace Yall.... |
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Taken from; http://wings.buffalo.edu/sa/musl ... say/ch1.2.3.16.html
Does God have a God?
In John 20:17 we read:
"Jesus saith unto her, ...I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your."
Not only is God Jesus' father, but He is also his GOD. Think about this carefully. Also notice how Jesus is equating between himself and mankind in these matters and not between himself and God. He is making it as clear as he possibly can that he is one of US and not a god. Why did he not just say "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father ." ... and stop !?
Why did Jesus feel it necessary to add the words "...and to my God, and your God." What additional information was he trying to convey to us with these extra words? Think about it carefully.
Allah Knows Best...
Peace Yall.... |
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Taken from; http://wings.buffalo.edu/sa/musl ... say/ch1.2.3.14.html
Does God pray to Himself?
Now, does God pray? Let us read the Bible:
Mark 14:32 "and he (Jesus) saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray."
Luke 3:21: "Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened."
Luke 6:12: "And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God."
Luke 22:44 "And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground."
Matthew 26:39: "And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt."
All of these verses do not speak of Jesus (pbuh) "meditating," "interceding," "consorting," or "consulting," but PRAYING. But to whom? To Himself? To another side of his own personality? Is Jesus not "the same essence" as God, and all are one Trinity? If Jesus and God are not "the same essence" then this means that there is more than one God in existence, and thus, we have just directly opposed verse, after verse, after explicit verse of the Bible, all of which emphasize that there ever was, and ever shall be, only one God.
Further, Jesus (pbuh) and his disciples are continuously being described in the Bible as "falling on their faces and praying" which is exactly the way Muslims pray today (see section 5.6). They pray the way Jesus (pbuh) did. Have you ever seen a Christian "fall on his face" and pray to God as Jesus (pbuh), Muhammad (pbuh), and all Muslims do?
Mr. Tom Harpur says:
"In fact, unless we are prepared to believe that his prayer-dependence on God was nothing more than a sham for our edification, a mere act to set us a good example, it is impossible to cling to the orthodox teaching that Jesus was really God Himself walking about in human form, the Second Person of the Trinity. The concept of God praying - let alone praying to Himself - is incomprehensible to me. To say that it was simply the human side of Jesus talking to God the Father (rather than his own divine nature as Son of God) is to posit a kind of schizophrenia that is incompatible with any belief in Jesus' full humanity"
For Christ's Sake, pp. 42-43.
Think about it, when we are told that Jesus was in the garden earnestly begging and pleading with God to please, please save him saying "let this cup pass from me" and "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" etc., then:
Was this all just a stage play for our benefit?
If not, then since there is only ONE God, and Jesus and God are ONE God, then was Jesus praying to himself? Why?
God has given us the answer in the Qur'an over 1400 years ago. He says:
"And from those who said: "We are Christians," We took their covenant, but they forgot a good part of the message which was sent to them. Therefore We have stirred up enmity and hatred among them till the Day of Resurrection, and Allah will inform them of what they used to do. O people of the Scripture! Now has Our messenger (Muhammad) come to you, explaining to you much of that which you used to hide in the Scripture, and forgiving much. Indeed, there has come to you a light from Allah and a plain Scripture. Wherewith Allah guides him who seeks His good pleasure unto paths of peace. He brings them out of darkness by His will into light, and guides them to a straight path. They indeed have disbelieved who say: Lo! Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary. Say : Who then has the least power against Allah, if He had willed to destroy the Messiah son of Mary, and his mother and everyone on earth? And to Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them. He creates what He will. And Allah is Able to do all things. The Jews and Christians say: We are sons of Allah and His loved ones. Say; Why then does He punish you for your sins? No, you are but mortals of His creating. He forgives whom He will, and punishes whom He will. And to Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them, and unto Him is the return (of all). O people of the Scripture! Now has Our messenger (Muhammad) come unto you to make things plain after a break in (the series of) the messengers, lest you should say: There came not unto us a messenger of cheer nor any Warner. Now has a messenger of cheer and a Warner come unto you. And Allah is Able to do all things."
The noble Qur'an, Al-Maidah(5):14-19
Allah Knows Best...
Peace Yall.... |
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Taken from; http://wings.buffalo.edu/sa/muslim/library/jesus-say/ch2.4.html
When is a book an "inspired" book?
"Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God." Deuteronomy 4:2
Adi ibn Hatim al-Tai'i was a Christian who embraced Islam during the time of Muhammad (pbuh). One day, the verse of the Qur'an, Al-Tawba(9):30-31 was recited before him: "And the Jews said: Ezra is the son of Allah, and the Christians said: The Messiah is the son of Allah. That is their saying with their [own] mouths. They imitate the saying of those who disbelieved of old. Allah's curse be upon them. How deluded are they! They took their rabbis and their monks as lords besides Allah, and the Messiah son of Mary, but they were not commanded but to worship One God. There is no God but Him. Be He Glorified from all that they associate with Him!" When Adi heard this verse, he commented: "O messenger of Allah, we did not worship them." The prophet Muhammad (pbuh) replied: "Did they not make matters lawful and unlawful for you?" (He was referring to the power the monks and Rabbis gave themselves because of their claimed divine inspiration to change laws and regulations). Adi replied "Yes, they did!". Muhammad (pbuh) said: "That, then, is the worshipping of them in association with Allah."
If we were to ask a Christian layman: "Where did the Bible in your hands come from?," they would more than likely tell us "from God!"
If you were now to ask him: "How do you know it is from God? He will reply, "He inspired it to many people who then wrote it down and preserved it for us."
If we now ask: "Are all of these inspired people prophets?" He will answer: "No, they include both prophets and other faultless 'saints', etc.."
"So these prophets and 'saints' signed their names to these documents?" we would ask. They would respond "No. But the Church knows who wrote them, and when they were written, and has irrefutable proof regarding this matter."
If we were to now ask: "would it be possible for any unscrupulous person who had access to the Bible in the past to modify it's books?" They would reply: "Of course not! The church has told us that even the much older Old Testament was preserved with such diligent guardianship that they even counted and recorded every single word and every single letter in it. Thus, the church has justly reassured us that these words never have, and never could be, changed by mankind, even by scribal error or by accident."
"Let us now ask a different question" we would continue. "Are the 'New and Old Testaments' in your hands today the same "New and Old Testaments" available to the apostles of Jesus (pbuh) till the present day?" They would answer "Of course! There has always been only one Bible!"
This is the general gist of any such conversation that is held between a Muslim and a Christian layman regarding their Bible, it's composition and preservation. However, if we were to ask their SCHOLARS the same set of questions we would be amazed to find a tremendous chasm in the responses supplied by the Christian laypeople as compared to their own Christian scholars. If we were to go to a Western library and look up the history of the Bible as recorded by their own eminent Christian scholars throughout the ages, we would find that they tell us that the books of the "New Testament" in our possession today were not officially approved into the New Testament "canon" of "inspired" books until many centuries after the departure of Jesus. Tens of generations of Christians literally lived and died after the departure of Jesus (pbuh) never having known nor seen such a "New Testament" or "Bible" as the one in our possession today.
After the departure of Jesus (pbuh), the apostles and many other people began to write "gospels." Each one of these authors would travel to other lands and be followed by a number of people who would adopt this man's gospel as his "Bible." Now, even the unscrupulous began to write "gospels" and to claim they were from a given apostle or that they themselves were receiving divine inspiration. Many new and innovative teachings began now to be introduced into the religion of Jesus (pbuh). Enmity, hatred and war began to break out between these groups. Each person claimed that they alone held the "true" Gospel of Jesus (pbuh) and no one else. Their beliefs now ran the gamut, from those who believed Jesus (pbuh) to be a mortal messenger of God and nothing more, to those who claimed partial divinity for Jesus (pbuh), to those who claimed Jesus (pbuh) to be a true god, but independent of God himself, to those who called for a "Trinity," to those who claimed that Mary (pbuh) too was a god, to those who believed in two gods, one good and the other evil. This is when the war of the gospels began.
Everyone now cursed and damned everyone else. Christian sects butchered one-another right and left. There were more great debates and councils than you could shake a stick at. However, none of these groups had sufficient might to totally dominate and silence the others for good. They needed an undefeatable ally, so they began to look to the Roman empire for support. The Roman empire was a pagan empire, however, it was the dominant "superpower" of the time. Anyone who could enlist it's aid would have an unconquerable ally at their side and would themselves be undefeatable. On the Roman side, Emperor Constantine was greatly troubled by the swelling ranks of his Christian subjects and the great division among their ranks which did not bode well for the continued stability of his empire.
Most of these fringe sects now began to fade into insignificance and the matter was now left between those who believed in the Unity of God and those who believed in a "Trinity." The Roman empire's support fluctuated between these two groups for a long time until the Trinitarian's finally gained the upper hand and all but wiped the Unitarians off the face of the earth. They selected and collected the "truly inspired" gospels into one volume which later became the "New Testament." They burned all other gospels. Many sweeping campaigns if "Inquisition" were launched. Everyone found possessing any of these "false" Gospels was put to death and his Gospel burned.
This state of affairs continued for many centuries and many people were convicted of heresy and burned to death at the stake for a great variety of reasons. Yet others had their land and property confiscated and were imprisoned. Physical torture was casually used in order to extract a confession of guilt which would then be used to justify a verdict of death by burning. Some of the methods used to extract a confession of guilt were the stretching of limbs on the rack, burning with live coals, and the strappado (a vertical rack). Denial of the charges without counterproof or refusal to confess resulted in the most severe punishments such as life imprisonment or execution and total confiscation of property. The number of those who fell victim to these inquisitions are far to numerous to list here. Examples of these people include the philosopher Giordano Bruno, Galileo, Joan of Arc, and the religious order of knights called the Templars among countless hundreds of thousands of others. If the Trinitarians did not have the power to burn these people at the stake during their lifetime, then they would exhume their bodies after their death and burn them after their death (e.g. John Wycliffe). In the end, over twelve million people were put to death by the Church inquisitions (Apology for Muhammad and the Qur'an, John Davenport).
The inquisitions reached their height around the middle of the fifteenth century in a massive and vicious persecution campaign the major targets of which were the Marranos (converts from Judaism) and Moriscos (converts from Islam), many of whom were suspected of secretly adhering to their original faiths. When things began to quiet down a little, the victor's historians and philosophers wrote their history books explaining how they managed to overcome the wicked, to defeat the blasphemers, and to burn the devils, sorcerers, and witches at the stake. These are the books which have had the greatest influence on the Western history books we have in our hands today. |
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Whenever a scholar of Christianity would stumble upon the truth and begin to write about it his works would invariably be destroyed (e.g. Sir Isaac Newton, the 16th century Spaniard Michael Servetus, etc.). In all cases, it was recognized that there was no need to disprove the author's evidence or refute it, rather, it was sufficient to muzzle the opposition, burn their books, extract a confession from them under duress, and expel them from society or kill them.
Even the Popes themselves would sometimes recognize the falsehood of the "Trinity" and the fact that it was a later fabrication of mankind. One of these popes, Honorius, was officially cursed forty eight years after his death by the Synod which was held in Istanbul in 680 C.E.
Sometimes it is an individual's own silence which proves to be the most deafening proclamation. As we saw in the previous chapters, for the period of a century and more the only "Scriptures" used by the first Jewish followers of Jesus were the Greek Septuagint translations (commonly designated LXX) of the Hebrew Old Testament, "the Law and the Prophets", supplemented by various Jewish apocrypha and the Sibylline Oracles (150 BC to AD 180); these were the only "authorities" appealed to by the early "Church Fathers" when preaching their new faith. Nowhere do they quote the books which we know today as the "New Testament."
Naturally, if the "history" of the Trinitarian Church regarding their chosen Gospels and what are claimed to be the inspired writings of Jesus' first Apostles were true, and these writings had indeed been accepted as authoritative at that time, then they would have been the most precious and potent documents of preaching for their doctrine. Undoubtedly, they would have spoken of nothing else, but would have quoted them and appealed to their authority at every turn as they have been doing through the centuries since. But, for some 150 years, little or nothing besides the Old Testament and these Oracles were known or quoted. As said by the great critic, Solomon Reinach,
"With the exception of Papias, who speaks of a narrative by Mark, and a collection of sayings of Jesus, no Christian writer of the first half of the second century (i.e., up to 150 C.E.) quotes the Gospels or their reputed authors."
Orpheus, Reinach, p. 218
But let us back up a little and study how and when the "inspired" books of the Bible were incorporated into the Christian "canon" of the Bible. We have already given a brief introduction in section 1.2.5 onwards of how the current Gospels of the Bible were introduced as "authentic." Let us now have a very brief look at some of the details. The following was obtained from the book "Izhar ul Haqq" among other references:
In the city of Nicea (modern: Iznik, Turkey), in the year 325 AD, a great conference of Christian theologians and religious scholars was convened under the order of the Emperor Constantine to examine and define the status of these countless Christian Gospels. After a thorough investigation it was decided that the Epistle of Jude was genuine and believable. The rest of our current books of the Bible were declared doubtful. This was explicitly mentioned by Saint Jerome in the introduction to his book. St. Jerome, of course, was a Christian scholar and a great philosopher. He was born in 340 AD He translated the Bible into Latin. He was a famous bibliographer and wrote many books on the Bible. Before the year 325 C.E., it is known that the Gospel of Barnabas was accepted as canonical in the churches of Alexandria. It is known to have been circulated in the first two centuries after Christ (pbuh) from the writings of Irenaeus (130-200AD). After this council, four Gospels were selected out of a minimum of three hundred available and the rest, including the Gospel of Barnabas, were ordered utterly destroyed. All Gospels written in Hebrew were also ordered destroyed.
In the year 364 AD, another council was held in Laodicea for the same purpose. This conference of Christian scholars and theologians not only confirmed the decision of the council of Nicea regarding the authenticity of the Epistle of Jude but also declared that the following six books must also be added to the list of genuine and believable books: The Book of Esther, The Epistle Of James, The Second Epistle of Peter, The Second and Third Epistles of John, The Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews. This conference pronounced their decision to the public. The book of Revelations, however, remained out of the list of the acknowledged books in both the councils.
In 397 another great conference was held called the Council of Carthage. Augustine, the celebrated Christian scholar, was among the one hundred and twenty six learned participants. The members of this council confirmed the decisions of the two previous Councils and also added the following books to the list of the divine books: The Book of the Songs of Solomon, The Book of Tobit, The Book of Baruch, Ecclesiasticus, and The First and Second Books of Maccabees.
At the same time the members of this council decided that the book of Baruch was a part of the book of Jeremiah because Baruch was the deputy of Jeremiah. Therefore they did not include the name of this book separately in the list.
Three more conferences were held after this in Trullo, Florence and Trent (1545-63). The members of these meetings confirmed the decision of the Council of Carthage. The last two councils, however, wrote the name of the book of Baruch separately.
After these councils nearly all the books which had previously been doubtful among Christians were now included in the list of acknowledged books.
The status of these books remained unchanged until the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. The Protestants repudiated the decisions of the councils and declared that there are only 66 truly "inspired" books of God, and not 73 as claimed by the Catholics. The following books were to be rejected: The Book of Baruch, The Book of Tobit, The Letter of Jude, The Songs of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, and The First and Second Books of Maccabees. They excluded these books from the list of acknowledged books.
The Protestants also rejected the decision of their forbears regarding some chapters of the book of Esther. This book consists of 16 chapters. They decided that the first nine chapters and three verses from chapter ten were to be rejected. They based their decision on the following six reasons:
1 These works were considered to be false even in the original Hebrew and Chaldaean languages which were no longer available.
2 The Jews did not acknowledge them as revealed books.
3 All the Christians have not acknowledged them as believable.
4 Jerome said that these books were not reliable and were insufficient to prove and support the doctrines of the faith.
5 Klaus has openly said that these books were recited but not in every place.
6 Eusebius specifically said in section 22 of his fourth book that these books have been tampered with, and changed. In particular the Second Book of Maccabees.
It now becomes apparent that books which had been lost in the original and which only existed in translation were erroneously acknowledged by thousands of theologians as divine revelation. This state of affairs leads a non-Christian reader to distrust the unanimous decisions of Christian scholars of both the Catholic and the Protestant persuasions. The followers of Catholic faith still believe in these books in blind pursuance of their forebears.
It is a prerequisite of believing in a certain book as divinely revealed that it is proved through infallible arguments that the book in question was revealed through a prophet and that it has been conveyed to us precisely in the same order without any change through an uninterrupted chain of narrators. It is not at all sufficient to attribute a book to a certain prophet on the basis of suppositions and conjectures. Unsupported assertions made by one or a few sects of people should not be, and cannot be, accepted in this connection. |
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We have already seen how Catholic and Protestant scholars differ on the question of the authenticity of some of these books. There are yet more books of the Bible which have been rejected by Christians. They include the Book of Revelation, the Book of Genesis, the Book of Ascension, the Book of Mysteries, the Book of Testament and the Book of Confession which are all ascribed to the Prophet Moses. Similarly a fourth Book of Ezra is claimed to be from the Prophet Ezra and a book concerning Isaiah's ascension and revelation are ascribed to him. In addition to the known book of Jeremiah, there is another book attributed to him. There are numerous sayings which are claimed to be from the Prophet Habakkuk. There are many songs which are said to be from the Prophet Solomon. There are more than 70 books, other than the present ones, of the new Testament, which are ascribed to Jesus, Mary, the apostles, and their disciples. In this day and age, some Christian scholars are even making the case for the authenticity of the Gospel of Thomas as the "fifth" Gospel (see "The Five Gospels," written over six years by 24 Christian scholars from some of the USA and Canada's most prestigious universities)
The Christians of this age have claimed that these books are false and forgeries. The Greek Church, Catholic church and the Protestant Church are unanimous on this point. Similarly the Greek Church claims that the third book of Ezra is a part of the Old Testament and believes it to have been written by the Prophet Ezra while the Protestant and Catholic Churches have declared it false and fabricated.
Groliers encyclopedia says under the heading "New Testament, canon":
"The process by which the canon of the New Testament was formed began in the 2d century, probably with a collection of ten letters of Paul. Toward the end of that century, Irenaeus argued for the unique authority of the portion of the Canon called the Gospels. Acceptance of the other books came gradually. The church in Egypt used more than the present 27 books, and the Syriac-speaking churches fewer. The question of an official canon became urgent during the 4th century. It was mainly through the influence of Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, and because Jerome included the 27 books in his Latin version of the Bible called the Vulgate, that the present canon came to be accepted.."
Notice, as mentioned in the previous chapters, how the writings of Paul were the first to be accepted by the Trinitarian church. All other gospels were then either accepted or destroyed based upon their conformance to the teachings of Paul.
As mentioned previously, Lobegott Friedrich Konstantin Von Tischendorf was one of the most eminent conservative Biblical scholars of the nineteenth century. One of his greatest lifelong achievements was his discovery of one of the oldest known Biblical manuscripts know to mankind, the "Codex Sinaiticus," with the monks of Saint Catherine's Monastery in Mount Sinai. In this oldest known copy of the Bible known to humanity we find contained two gospels which would later be discarded by a more enlightened generation. They are "The Epistle of Barnabas" (not to be confused with the Gospel of Barnabas), and "The Shepherd of Hermas." Today, of course, neither of these two books is to be found in our modern Bibles. As also seen in section 1.2, many later "insertions" of the church were exposed through the study of this manuscript. However, following in the tradition of true conservative Christian scholars before him, Tischendorf managed to apply 12,000 "corrections" to this manuscript's 110,000 lines before he was through "transcribing" it (see "secrets of Mount Sinai", James Bentley, Doubleday, NY, 1986, p. 95)
We have already seen in chapter one how "St. Paul" all but totally obliterated the religion of Jesus (pbuh) based upon the authority of his alleged "visions". We then saw how his teachings were based more upon his personal philosophy and beliefs than any attempt to cite words or actions of Jesus (pbuh) himself (e.g. Galatians 2). We further saw how his followers slaughtered all Christians who would not forsake the teachings of the apostles for his teachings and how he was later made the "majority author" of the Bible and countless authentic gospels were burned and labeled apocrypha by his followers. Remember, "St. Paul" is claimed to be the author of Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Phillippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews.
"All the evidence indicates that the words of Jesus were authoritative in the Church from the first, and this makes it the more remarkable that such scanty attention is paid to the words or works of Jesus in the earliest Christian writings, Paul's letters, the later Epistles, Hebrews, Revelation, and even Acts have little to report about them... Papias (ca. AD 130), the first person to actually name a written gospel, illustrates the point. Even though he defends Mark's gospel (Euseb. Hist. III.xxxix.15-16), and had himself appended a collection of Jesus tradition to his 'Interpretation of the Oracles of the Lord' (Euseb. Hist. III.xxxix.2-3), his own clear preference was for the oral tradition concerning Jesus, and the glimpses that Eusebius provides of Papias' Jesus tradition give no hint of his dependence on Mark. Neither do the more frequent citations of Jesus in the APOSTOLIC FATHERS, largely 'synoptic' in character show much dependence on our written gospels"
The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Supplementary Volume, p. 137
The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible contains much more revealing information in this regard, far too much to reproduce here. The reader is strongly encouraged to locate a copy in their local library and read the details.
The popularly accepted dates for the authorship of the current books of the Bible are approximately as follows:
Approx. AD Event / Document
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30 Crucifixion (Ascension) of Jesus
50 First Epistle of Paul
62 Last Epistle of Paul
65-70 Mark's Gospel
70 Epistle to Hebrews
80 Luke's Gospel
85-90 Matthew's Gospel
90 Acts
90-100 John's Gospel and First Epistle
95-100 Revelation
100 I & II Timothy and Titus
Uncertainty about James I & II, Peter, John and Jude does not allow historians to estimate their origin dates. (See "The Early Church And The New Testament," Irene Allen, 1953). We begin to see the degree to which our current religion of "Christianity" is based more on the teachings and writings of Paul than anything else. The Gospels which are popularly believed to have been written first were in actuality written long after the writings of Paul. Now Christian scholars are even beginning to uncover extensive evidence that these Gospels were not even written by their claimed authors. The more Christian scholars study the Bible, the more it becomes painfully apparent that what is popularly referred to today as "Christianity" should more appropriately be named "Paulanity."
As mentioned in section 2.1, even when a book is claimed to be truly "inspired" we still find that the Church cannot say with 100% assuredness who wrote this "inspired" book. As mentioned there, the authors of the RSV Bible by Collins say that the author of "Kings" is "Unknown," the book of Isaiah is "Mainly credited to Isaiah. Parts may have been written by others." Ecclesiastics: "Author. Doubtful, but commonly assigned to Solomon." Ruth: "Author. Not definitely known, perhaps Samuel." and on and on. Is this how a truly unbiased mind defines "inspired by God"? You be the judge.
"Verily, those who conceal that which Allah has sent down of the Book and purchase a small gain therewith, they eat into their bellies nothing but fire. Allah will not speak to them on the Day of Resurrection, nor will He purify them, and theirs will be a painful torment. Those are they who purchase error at the price of guidance, and torment at the price of pardon. What boldness (they show) for the Fire!"
The noble Qur'an, Al-Baqarah(2):174-175
Allah Knows Best....
Peace Yall..... |
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Taken From; http://wings.buffalo.edu/sa/muslim/library/jesus-say/ch5.1.html
A Biblical picture of God
A Muslim believes that God is unlike anything we can imagine. No one can look at him and live. He never tires. He is All-Knowing, All-Seeing, All-Powerful, Perfect. All he needs do is decree a matter and it will be. Yet the language of the current Bible never fails to picture even God himself in undignified terms:
God goes for a stroll:
Genesis 3:8 "And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden."
God can not find Adam (not all-knowing):
Genesis 3:9-10 "And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where are you? And he said, I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself."(from God?)
God does not know if Adam ate from the tree or not (not all-knowing):
Genesis 3:11 "And he (God) said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?"
Before looking for hidden meanings for the above verses, we should consider the following:
1) Read section 2.3.
2) If you were to give your child total, unconstrained freedom to do whatever he wants in your house, you only ask him "don’t play with my stereo." If he then goes ahead anyway and proceeds to dismantle it into fifty different pieces. If you know for a fact that he did it and you know exactly where he has hidden himself (maybe you had a hidden camera somewhere), would you walk all over the house calling out "Where are you my son?," "come out, come out wherever you are"?, or would you storm up to the place where he was hiding, pull him out by his ears, and punish him severely?
3) If you did not know where he was hiding, but knew what he had done without a doubt, would you, once you had found him, ask him: "why are you hiding? Did you break my stereo?" It is important to first attempt to think logically before looking for abstract meanings.
Note: For the Islamic version of this incident please read chapter 15.
God becomes tired and needs to be refreshed:
Exodus 31:17 "It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed."
Notice that the verse does not claim that God Almighty "abstained from work," but rather that He "rested." This implies that it is possible for God Almighty to experience fatigue and that He is not All-Mighty and All-Powerful since He sometimes needs to be "refreshed."
God is not cognizant and/or is not eternally aware (not all knowing, all seeing, attentive and aware):
Psalms 44:23 "Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord? arise, cast us not off for ever."
When God finally becomes cognizant attentive and aware, He acts like a drunkard:
Psalms 78:65 "Then the LORD awaked as one out of sleep, and like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine."
The above verses are responded to by the Almighty in the noble Qur’an as follows:
"And verily We (God) did create the heavens and the earth in six days and no fatigue touched Us."
The noble Qur’an, Qaf(50):38
"Allah! there is no god but He, the Living, the Sustainer and Protector. Neither slumber nor sleep overtake Him. His are all things in the heavens and the earth. Who can intercede in His presence except as He permits? He knows what is before and behind them. Nor do they encompass aught of His knowledge except as He wills. His throne does extend over the heavens and the earth and He feels no fatigue in preserving them. For He is the Most High, the Supreme."
The noble Qur’an, Al-Baqarah(2):255
Jacob wrestles with God. God can not win against Jacob. Jacob sees God face to face:
"And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved."
Genesis 32:24-30
Many people claim the Jacob wrestled with an angel. Does this sound like he wrestled with an angel? Did Jacob (pbuh) say "I have seen the angel of God"? Did he say "I have seen the light of God" or some other statement that might have had an abstract meaning? No! He said "I have seen God" and just so that there would be no doubt in anyone's mind he added the words "face to face." If Jacob (pbuh) had wrestled with an angel, then why would he need to say "my life is preserved"? Do people who see angels die? (Numbers 22:31, 2 Samuel 24:17, 1 Chronicles 21:16, ...etc.). If Jacob had seen the face of an angel then why would he name the place "the face of God"(peni-el), and not "the face of the angel"(peni-malak)? Indeed, this is how the great St. Augustine and many others understood this verse. This brings up another question. How do we reconcile this with point 25 in the table of section 2.2 (regarding seeing God)?
We are beaten over the head four times with the fact that a human (Jacob, peace be upon him) managed to out-wrestle God Almighty, but the translators realizing the fallacy of this concoction continually try to reinterpret this verse and make excuses for it. Notice how we are beaten over the head not once, but four times with the fact that this was GOD who was beaten by Jacob:
1) "I have seen GOD."
2) "FACE to FACE."
3) "And my life is preserved."
4) They called the place "Peniel" ("FACE OF GOD").
Are we now to believe that God wrestled with Jacob all night, He resorted to hitting Jacob (pbuh) below the belt, and in the end was still bested by Jacob ("I will not let thee go, except thou bless me")? When someone has you in a headlock and tells you: "do as I tell you," is he victorious or not?
God forbid! High exalted is He! Illustrious! Mighty! Magnificent! All-Powerful! Neither Moses nor Jacob would ever make such a claim. Nor would the other prophets of God. The great and noble prophets would never dare to claim that God had been reduced to a punching bag to further their own egos. Notice how we are encouraged to believe that it is not sufficient to humbly prostrate oneself before God, bowing down and beseeching Him for His favors in earnest prayer and in all submission. Rather it is necessary to slap Him silly and beat Him into the ground then force Him to bless the victor. Is this not preposterous? Does this not reek of tampering fingers? May God Almighty forgive me for even repeating these words.
God regrets his actions, God can not see the future, God can not change the past:
Genesis 6:6 "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart."
It is not possible to regret doing something unless the result of this action was something bad that had not been foreseen and can not be changed. In Webster's New Dictionary (1990), the word "repent" is defined as follows: to regret, sorrow for, to wish to have been otherwise what one has done or left undone.
Thus, God is claimed to be:
1) Unable to see the future: If I know for a certainty that performing "action" will result in "result," then when "result" comes about I will not regret it unless I was forced in the first place to perform "action." There is a difference between "disliking" something and "regretting" something.
2) Unable to change the past if he wanted to: As per the above Webster's definition, to repent is to "wish to have been otherwise what one has done or left undone." But if God is capable of doing all things, as a Muslim believes, then he does not need to "wish." He simply decrees it and it is.
Also notice that God is not merely claimed to have regretted this action, but to have "grieved at His heart." Webster's defines grief as: Deep sorrow caused by loss, distress. So according to this passage, God felt the deepest sorrow from the bottom of his heart. If one of us felt this kind of torment and was given the means to change matters, would we hesitate? God is not this helpless!
For the Islamic perspective on God Almighty, read the following:
God Almighty: Al-Ikhlas(112):1-4, Kaaf(50):38, Al-Aaraf(7):143, Al-Shurah(24):11-12, Al-Anaam(6):3, Saba(34):27, Al-Zumar(39):1-7, Al-Hashir(59):21-24, Al-Hadeed(57):1-6
Allah Knows Best...
Peace Yall.... |
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It turns out that the same tradition which Katz addressed as 'bogus' result in the exegesis of his own scriptures, the Old Testament.
Since Christianity did not have anything like the 'tradition' to evaluate their own material, we see quite a lot of differences. Let us now examine the great tradition of the Church which Katz wants Muslims to trust and also to see which tradition is really bogus.
This document is divided into the following:
Church Tradition & The Bible
Protestant Church
Roman Catholic Church
Anglican Church
Greek Orthodox Church
Coptic Church
Ethiopic Church
Syriac Church
Church Tradition & Apostolic Fathers
Clement Of Rome
Ignatius Of Antioch
The Didache
Papias Of Heirapolis
Barnabas
Polycarp Of Smyrna
Hermas Of Rome
The So-Called Second Epistle Of Clement
Church Tradition & The Early Lists Of The Books Of The New Testament
Church Tradition & 'Inspiration' Of New Testament Books
The Didache
Epistle Of Clement
Epistle Of Barnabas
Shepherd Of Hermas
Church Tradition & Manuscripts
Church Tradition & The Six 'Disputed' Books
Conclusions
1. Church Tradition & The Bible
It must be made clear that there is nothing like one Bible with a set of books. The number of books in the Bible actually depend upon the Church one follows. Therefore if we follow the Church tradition we end with following Bibles. They differ in number of books in both the Old Testament and the New Testament:
Protestant Church
Historically, Protestant churches have recognized the Hebrew canon as their Old Testament, although differently ordered, and with some books divided so that the total number of books is thirty-nine. These books, as arranged in the traditional English Bible, fall into three types of literature: seventeen historical books (Genesis to Esther), five poetical books ( Job to Song of Solomon), and seventeen prophetical books. With the addition of another twenty-seven books (the four Gospels, Acts, twenty-one letters, and the book of Revelation), called the New Testament, the Christian scriptures are complete.[6]
Roman Catholic Church
The Protestant canon took shape by rejecting a number of books and parts of books that had for centuries been part of the Old Testament in the Greek Septuagint and in the Latin Vulgate, and had gained wide acceptance within the Roman Catholic church. In response to the Protestant Reformation, at the Council of Trent (1546) the Catholic church accepted, as deuterocanonical, Tobit, Judith, the Greek additions to Esther, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah, three Greek additions to Daniel (the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Jews, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon), and I and 2 Maccabees. These books, together with those in the Jewish canon and the New Testament, constitute the total of seventy three books accepted by the Roman Catholic church.[7]
Anglican Church
The Anglican church falls between the Catholic church and many Protestant denominations by accepting only the Jewish canon and the New Testament as authoritative, but also by accepting segments of the apocryphal writings in the lectionary and liturgy. At one time all copies of the Authorized or King James Version of 1611 included the Apocrypha between the Old and New Testaments.[8]
Greek Orthodox Church
The Bible of the Greek Orthodox church comprises all of the books accepted by the Roman Catholic church, plus I Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and 3 Maccabees. The Slavonic canon adds 2 Esdras, but designates I and 2 Esdras as 2 and 3 Esdras. Other Eastern churches have 4 Maccabees as well.[9] (See below)
Coptic Church
Athanasius issued his Thirty-Ninth Festal Epistle not only in the Greek but also in Coptic, in a slightly different form - though the list of the twenty seven books of the New Testament is the same in both languages. How far, however the list remained authoritative for the Copts is problematical. The Coptic (Bohairic) translation of the collection knowns as the Eighty-Five Apostlic Canons concludes with a different sequence of the books of the New Testament and is enlarged by the addition of two others: the four Gospels; the Acts of the Apostles; the fourteen Epistles of Paul (not mentioned individually); two Epistles of Peter, three of John, one of James, one of Jude; the Apocalypse of John; the two Epistles of Clement.[10]
Ethiopic (Abyssinian) Church
Until 1959, the Ethiopic Church was under the jurisdiction of the head of Coptic Church. Hence it is not surprising that its canon of Scripture should parallel in some respects that of the Coptic Church.
The Ethiopic church has the largest Bible of all, and distinguishes different canons, the "narrower" and the "broader," according to the extent of the New Testament. The Ethiopic Old Testament comprises the books of the Hebrew Bible as well as all of the deuterocanonical books listed above, along with Jubilees, I Enoch, and Joseph ben Gorion's (Josippon's) medieval history of the Jews and other nations. The New Testament in what is referred to as the "broader" canon is made up of thirty-five books, joining to the usual twenty-seven books eight additional texts, namely four sections of church order from a compilation called Sinodos, two sections from the Ethiopic Book of the Covenant, Ethiopic Clement, and Ethiopic Didascalia. When the "narrower" New Testament canon is followed, it is made up of only the familiar twenty-seven books, but then the Old Testament books are divided differently so that they make up 54 books instead of 46. In both the narrower and broader canon, the total number of books comes to 81.[11]
Bruce Metzger in his book The Canon Of The New Testament: Its Origin, Significance & Development elaborates more on the books accepted by Ethiopic Church. The'broader' Canon of Ethiopic New Testament consists of the following thirty five books:
The four Gospels
Acts
The (seven) Catholic Epistles
The (fourteen) Epistles of Paul
The Book of Revelation
Sinodos (four sections)
Clement
The Book of the Covenant (two sections)
Didascalia
The contents of the last four titles in the list are as follows. The Sinodos is a book of church order, comprising an extensive collection of canons, prayers, and instructions attributed to Clement of Rome.
Clement (Qalementos) is a book in seven parts, communicated by Peter to Clement. It is not the Roman or Corinthian correspondence, nor one of the three parts of the Sinodos that are sometimes called 1, 2, and 3 Clement, nor part of the Syriac Octateuch of Clement.
The Book of Covenant (Mashafa kidan) is counted as two parts. The first part of sixty sections comprises chiefly material on church order; section 61 is a discourse of the Lord to his disciples after his resurrection, similar to the Testamentum Domini.
The Ethiopic Didascalia (Didesqelya) is a book of Church order in forty-three chapters, distinct from the Didascalia Apostolorum, but similar to books I-VII of so-called Apostlic Constitutions.[12]
Syriac Church
Let us also not forget the Syriac Churches which used to deal with Diatesseron, the four-in-one Gospel, introduced by Tatian which was read in the Syriac Churches for quite some time before it was replaced by Peshitta. Peshitta has again a different number of Books in the New Testament.
This represents for the New Testament an accomodation of the canon of the Syrians with that of the Greeks. Third Corinthians was rejected, and, in addition to the fourteen Pauline Epistles (including Hebrews, following Philemon), three longer Catholic Epistles (James, 1 Peter, and 1 John) were included. The four shorter Catholic Epistles (2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude) and the Apocalypse are absent from the Peshitta Syriac version, and thus the Syriac canon of the New Testament contained but twenty-two writings. For a large part of the Syrian Church this constituted the closing of the canon, for after the Council of Ephesus (AD 431) the East Syrians separated themselves as Nestorians from the Great Church.[13]
Peshitta is still followed by the Christians in the sourthern state of Kerala in India.
Still today the official lectionary followed by the Syrian Orthodox Church, with headquarters at Kottayam (Kerala), and the Chaldean Syriac Church, also known as the the Church of the East (Nestorian), with headquarters at Trichur (Kerala), presents lessons from only the twenty-two books of Peshitta, the version to which appeal is made for the settlement of doctrinal questions.[14]
To make the issue clearer, we are here dealing with different number of books of New Testament followed by different churches all over the world. These are not the different translations of the Bible, the argument which Christian missionaries use to brush the problem under the carpet. Calling another church heretical is not going to work the problem out because there was no single book right from the beginning of Christianity which constituted the New Testament as we would see later, inshallah. The New Testament as we see today, depends upon the Church again(!), is a product of centuries worth of metamorphosis. Under "Canon of the New Testament" the Catholic Encyclopedia says:
The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council.[15] |
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So, the great Church tradition has not made up her mind on the Bible.
Now this would be big enough problem for the Christian missionaries to ruminate, inshallah. Let us now go into the issue of what the Apostolic Fathers refer to during their time.
2. Church Tradition & Apostolic Fathers
It is a frequent claim by the Christian missionaries that the Church Fathers believed that the New Testament was considered as 'inspired' Scripture.
Bruce M Metzger, a noted authority on the New Testament, analyzing the Apostolic Fathers viz., Clement of Rome, Ignatius, the Didache, fragments of Papias, Barnabas, Hermas of Rome, and the so-called 2 Clement concludes the following:
Clement Of Rome
By way of summary, we see that Clement's Bible is the Old Testament, to which he refers repeated as Scripture, quoting it with more or less exactness. Clement also makes occasional reference to certain words of Jesus; though they are authoritative to him, he does not appear to enquire how their authenticity is ensured. In two of the three instances that he speaks of remembering 'the words' of Christ or of the Lord Jesus, it seems that he has a written record in mind, but he does not call it a 'gospel'. He knows several of Paul's epistles, and values them highly for their content; the same can be said of the Epistle of the Hebrews with which he is well acquainted. Although these writings obviously possess for Clement considerable significance, he never refers to them as authoritative 'Scripture'.[16]
Ignatius Of Antioch
The upshot of all this is that the primary authority for Ignatius was the apostolic preaching about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, though it made little difference to him whether it was oral or written. He certainly knew a collection of Paul's epistles, including (in the order of frequency of his use of them) 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, Romans, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, and 1 Thessalonians. It is probable that he knew the Gospels according to Matthew and John, and perhaps also Luke. There is no evidence that he regarded any of these Gospels or Epistles as 'Scripture'.[17]
The Didache
The Didache is a short manual or moral instruction and Church practice. The Church history writer Eusebius and Athanasius even considered to be on the fringe of the New Testament Canon[18]. Assigning the composition of Didache has ranged from first century to fourth century by the scholars, but most of them prefer to assign it in the first half of the second century[19]. Metzger summarizes the book as:
By way of summary, we can see from Didache that itinerant apostles and Prophets still find an important place in the life of the Church, but this authority is declining. Their activity is surrounded by all sorts of precautions and rests ultimately on the authority of the traditional teaching deriving from the Lord, whose manner they must exhibit: 'Not everyone who speaks in a spirit is a prophet, except he have the ways of the Lord. By their ways, then, the false prophet and the true prophet shall be distinguished' (xi. 8). The author refers to the gospel, but he cites only words of Jesus. This 'gospel', which is without doubt the Gospel according to Matthew, is not regarded as a necessary source from which the words of the Lord, with indispensable warrants, come to the faithful, but quite simply as a convenient collection of these words.[20]
Papias Of Heirapolis
By way of summary, Papias stands as a kind of bridge between the oral and written stages in the transmission of the gospel tradition. Although he professes to have a marked preference for the oral tradition, one nevertheless sees at work the causes that, more and more, would lead to the rejection of that form of tradition in favour of written gospels. On the whole, therefore, the testimony of Papias concerning the development of the canon of the New Testament is significant chiefly in reflecting the usage of the community in which devotion to oral tradition hindered the development of a clear idea of canonicity.[21]
Barnabas
Epistle of Barnabas is a theological tract. Both Clement of Alexandria and Origen valued the work highly and attributed its composition Barnabas, the companion and co-worker of the apostle Paul.
Metzger summarizes the position of Barnabas concerning the scripture as the following.
By way of summary, one can see that for Barnabas the Scriptures are what we call the Old Testament, including several books outside the Hebrew canon. Most of his contacts with the Synoptic traditions involve simple sentences that might well have been known to a Christian of that time from oral tradition. As against the single instance of his using the formula, 'it is written', in introducing the statement, 'Many are called, but few are chosen', must be placed his virtual neglect of the New Testament. If, on the other hand, he wrote shortly before or after 130, the focus of his subject matter would not make it necessary to do much quoting from New Testament books - if indeed he knew many of them. In either case he provides no evidence for the development of the New Testament canon.[22]
Polycarp Of Smyrna
By way of summary, the short Epistle of Polycarp contains proportionately far more allusions to the writings of the New Testament than are present in any other of the Apostolic Fathers. He certainly had a collection of at least eight Pauline Epistles (including two of the Pastorals), and was acquainted as well with Hebrews, 1 Peter, and 1 John. As for the Gospels, he cites as sayings of the Lord phrases that we find in Matthew and Luke. With one exception, none of Polycarp's many allusions is cited as Scripture - and that exception, as we have seen, is held by some to have been mistakenly attributed to the Old Testament. At the same time Polycarp's mind is not only saturated with ideas and phrases derived from a considerable number of writings that later came to be regarded as New Testament Scriptures, but he also displays latent respect for these apostolic documents as possessing an authority lacking in other writings. Polycarp, as Grant remarks, 'clearly differentiates the apostolic age from his own time and, presumably for this reason, does not use the letters of Ignatius as authorities骵ven though they "contain faith, endurance, and all the edification which pertains to our Lord" (xiii. 2)'.[23]
Hermas Of Rome
By way of summary, it is obvious that Hermas was not given to making quotations from literature; in fact, the only actual book anywhere named and quoted in the Shepherd ( Vis. ii. 3) is an obscure Jewish apocalypse known as the book of Eldad and Modat. Despite reminiscences from Matthew, Ephesians, and James, Hermas makes no comment that would lead us to think that he regarded them as canonical Scripture. From the testimony contained in the Shepherd, it can in any case be observed how uneven during the course of the second century was the development of the idea of the canon.[24]
The So-Called Second Epistle Of Clement
This work is not the genuine work of Clement of Rome. This is regarded as an early Christian sermon. The style of this work is different from that of 1 Clement. Both date and composition of this work are difficult to determine. It was probably written around 150 CE. Metzger summarizes the contents of this work as:
By way of recapitulation, the unknown author of 2 Clement certainly knew and used Matthew and Luke, 1 Corinthians and Ephesians. There is no trace of the Johannine Gospel or Epistles, or of the Book of Acts. And one can not say more than that he may have known Hebrews, James, and 1 Peter. Of the eleven times he cites words of Jesus, five are not to be found in the canonical Gospels. The presence of these latter, as well as the citation in xi. 2-4 of an apocryphal book of the Old Testament, introduced as 'the prophetic word', shows that our homilist's quotations of divinely authoritative words are not controlled by any strict canonical idea, even in relation to Old Testament writings.[25]
After studying the writings of all the Apostolic Fathers, Bruce Metzger concludes that:
For early Jewish Christians the Bible consisted of the Old Testament and some Jewish apocryphal literature. Along with this written authority went traditions, chiefly oral, of sayings attributed to Jesus. On the other hand, authors who belonged to the 'Hellenistic Wing' of the Church refer more frequently to writings that later came to be included in the New Testament. At the same time, however, they very rarely regarded such documents as 'Scripture'.
Furthermore, there was as yet no conception of the duty of exact quotation from books that were not yet in the full sense canonical. Consequently, it is sometimes exceedingly difficult to ascertain which New Testament books were known to early Christian writers; our evidence does not become clear until the end of second century.[26] |
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We have evidence of the spotty development and treatment of the writings later regarded as the New Testament in the second and third centuries CE. Gradually written Gospels, and collections of epistles, different ones in different regions, became to be more highly regarded.
So for 200 years or so there was nothing like New Testament to begin with. The great Church tradition did not even bother to collect the 'Scriptures' between two covers!
3. Church Tradition & The Early Lists Of The Books Of The New Testament
Now when the Church tradition finally started to make up her mind on compiling the New Testament various lists of books in the Canons of the Bible were drawn. Bruce Metzger gives the following list of the Canons of the Bible drawn at different times in the 'western' Church. Please note that we still do not have the great deal of idea about how many lists were drawn in the Eastern Churches such as Coptic and Ethiopic. The following are the canons drawn at various points of time in the Church history.
To complete the thoughts about how the New Testament evolved, a brief survey of early lists of the books of the New Testament is necessary. The list is taken from Appendix IV of Bruce Metzger's The Canon Of The New Testament: Its Origin, Significance & Development[27].
The Muratorian Canon
The Canon Of Origen (A.D. c. 185 - 254)
The Canon Of Eusebius Of Caesarea (A.D. 265 - 340)
A Canon Of Uncertain Date And Provenance Inserted in Codex Claromontanus
The Canon Of Cyril Of Jerusalem (c. A.D. 350)
The Cheltenham Canon (c. A.D. 360)
The Canon Approved By The Synod Of Laodicea (c. A.D. 363)
The Canon Of Athanasius (A.D. 367)
The Canon Approved By The 'Apostolic Canons' (c. A.D. 380)
The Canon Of Gregory Of Nazianzus (A.D. 329 - 89)
The Canon Of Amphilochius Of Iconium (d. 394)
The Canon Approved By The Third Synod Of Carthage (A.D. 397)
The earliest exact reference to the 'complete' New Testament as we now know it was in the year 367 CE, in a letter by Athanasius. This did not settle the matter. Varying lists continued to be drawn up by different church authorities as can be seen from above.
The Catholic Church proclaims itself to be the authority for the Canon and the interpretation of scripture, therefore the owner of the list of 27 books. Nevertheless, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, entry "Canon of NT" proclaims that 20 books of the New Testament are inherently worth more than the 7 deuterocanonical books (Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, James, Jude, Revelation), acknowledging that the authenticity or reliability of them had already been challenged by ancient Christian authorities.
The Catholic New Testament, as defined by the Council of Trent, does not differ, as regards the books contained, from that of all Christian bodies at present. Like the Old Testament, the New has its deuterocanonical books and portions of books, their canonicity having formerly been a subject of some controversy in the Church. These are for the entire books: the Epistle to the Hebrews, that of James, the Second of St. Peter, the Second and Third of John, Jude, and Apocalypse; giving seven in all as the number of the New Testament contested books. The formerly disputed passages are three: the closing section of St. Mark's Gospel, xvi, 9-20 about the apparitions of Christ after the Resurrection; the verses in Luke about the bloody sweat of Jesus, xxii, 43, 44; the Pericope Adulter |
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It has been said that the great majority of the variant readings in the text of the NT arose before the books of the NT were canonized and that after those books were canonized, they were very carefully copied because they were scripture. This, however, is far from being the case.
It is true, of course, that many variants arose in the very earliest period. There is no reason to suppose, e.g., that the first person who ever made a copy of the autograph of thc Gospel of Luke did not change his copy to conform to the particular tradition with which he was familiar. But he was under no compulsion to do so. Once the Gospel of Luke had become scripture, however, the picture was changed completely. Then the copyist was under compulsion to change his copy, to correct it. Because it was scripture, it had to be right.[34]
After reading all this, does not the Muslim position of the corruption of the Bible hold water? And of course, again which Bible manuscript is inspired?
Now we all know that none of the variants that are there in the Bible have a chain of narration or isnad. So it is very hard to say which one or ones is the true reading and the other the bogus one. So, futher on we read:
Many thousands of the variants which are found in the MSS of the NT were put there deliberately. They are not merely the result of error or of careless handling of the text. Many were created for theological or dogmatic reasons (even though they may not affect the substance of Christian dogma). It is because the books of the NT are religious books, sacred books, canonical books, that they were changed to conform to what the copyist believed to be the true reading. His interest was not in the "original reading but in the "true reading." This is precisely the attitude toward the NT which prevailed from the earliest times to the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the invention of printing. The thousands of Greek MSS, MSS of the versions, and quotations of the Church Fathers provide the source for our knowledge of the earliest or original text of the NT and of the history of the transmission of that text before the invention of printing.[34]
Now if you do not know what the "original reading" is, then there is no point talking about 'believing' in what is supposed to be the "original" reading. So, this is the great Christian Church tradition which cannot even produce two identical manuscripts! Furthermore on "original" reading one can say that since there are no original manuscripts, there is not point talking about "original" reading at all. This search for "original" reading would be a guess work or 'consensus'. Indeed the Acts of Apostles has earned the notoriety for the variant readings.
In fact no book of the NT gives evidence of so much verbal variation as does the Acts of Apostles. Besides the text represented in the oldest uncial Greek MSS, begin with the Codex Vaticanus, often called the Neutral Text and dating back to the second century AD, there is evidence either of a consistent alternative text equally old, or of a series of early miscellaneous variants, to which the name Western text is traditionally applied. The ancient authorities of the Western Text of Acts include only one Greek (or rather bilingual Greek and Latin) uncial MS, Codex Bezae of the fifth or sixth century. But the variants often have striking content and strong early support from Latin writers and Latin NT MSS. It now appears that while both the Neutral and Western texts were in circulation, the former is the more likely of the two to represent the original.[35]
Apart from the notorious variation, we also have the problem of which text is the original text. Since we do not know which one is original, the guess work in pressed into service. This is one such example of guess work. And how come guess work leads to truth?
We have already seen that the there is no original document of the Bible available to us to verify its inerrancy doctrine. Concerning the New Testament documents The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible confirms that:
The original copies of the NT books have, of course, long since disappeared. This fact should not cause surprise. In the first place, they were written on papyrus, a very fragile and persihable material. In the second place, and probably of even more importance, the original copies of the NT books were not looked upon as scripture by those of the early Christian communities.[36]
So, the Qur'an in this aspect is far more better placed than the Bible with all the Qiraa'a associated with it clearly listed with detailed chain of narrations going back to the Companions of the Prophet(P) who in turn learnt the Qur'an from the Prophet(P) himself.
6. Church Tradition & The Six 'Disputed' Books
As we have seen above that the books of Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, James, Jude and Revelation had quite a dubious history of the entry into the canon, it is time that we have a cursory glance over their comparatively recent history.
Zwingli, at the Berne disputation of 1528, denied that Revelation was a book of the New Testament.[37]
Martin Luther condemned the Epistle of James as worthless, an 'epistle of straw.' Furthermore, he denigrated Jude, Hebrews, and the Apocalypse (Revelation). He did not omit them from his German Bible, but drew a line in the table of contents, putting them on a lower level than the rest of the New Testament. In Prefaces to each of these books, Luther explains his doubts as to their apostolic as well as canonical authority.[38]
The reformer known as Andreas Bodenstein of Karlstadt (1480-1541) divided the New Testament into three ranks of differing dignity. On the lowest level are the seven disputed books of James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, Hebrews, and the Apocalypse (Revelation).[39]
Oecolampadius in 1531 under Wurttemberg Confession declared that while all 27 books should be received, the Apocalypse (Revelation), James, Jude, 2 Peter 2 and 3 John should not be compared to the rest of the books.[40]
Early in his career, Erasmus (d. 1536) doubted that Paul was the author of Hebrews, and James of the epistle bearing the name. He also questioned the authorship of 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude. The style of Revelation precludes it from being written by the author of the Fourth Gospel.[41]
The same four books are labeled 'Apocrypha' in a Bible from Hamburg in 1596. In Sweden, beginning in 1618, the Gustavus Adolphus Bible labels the four dubious books as 'Apocryphal New Testament.' This arrangement lasted for more than a century.[42]
Conclusions
With all the gory details of the Church history and the Bible are out, with no clear cut indication of the Bible and its 'inspiration', why would any Muslim even bother to read it? And above all why should a Christian missionaries would push such a dubious set of scriptures down the throat of Muslims? And above all why call it injil?
cAbdullah Ibn Mascud, the well known Companion of the Prophet(P), is reported to have said:
Do not ask the ahl al-kitab about anything (in tafsir), for they cannot guide you and are themselves in error....[43]
If Christianity has got the biographies of the people who transmitted their New Testament or Old Testament as well as their traditions, it would compete with the Islamic science of had顃h. Alas, with no isnad, who is going to believe in their Bible and what is in it? And as the illustrious teacher of Imaam Bukhari had said:
"The isnad is part of the religion: had it not been for the isnad, whoever wished to would have said whatever he liked."
The lack of isnad and people drawing different Canons of the Bible seem to be the problem of people saying whatever they wished. Any one would claim anything and the Bible canon seems to reflect precisely that.
And look how bogus the missionary argument turned out to be!
A Few Questions
As Muslims we are obliged to ask:
Which Bible or the books are inspired? Is it the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Ethiopic, Coptic or the Syriac? Please remember that they contain different number of books. It is just not the "oh! those are different translations".
How can we trust the Church tradition when she herself cannot produce a reliable bunch of books worth calling a Bible?
Why should we trust the Church which cannot even produce a set of manuscripts throughout the centuries which can be relied on instead of the guess work to find which reading is the original?
How do we know that Jesus(P) said what is there in the Bible as there is no way of confirm how his words got transmitted? This is one of the major argument of Islamic traditionalists against the Older scriptures which deal with Israa'iliyat stuff. And they were rejected outright for very obvious reasons.
And if Christian missionaries cannot answer these question, there is no point calling the Bible as a reliable document. Therefore, an unreliable document is worth not calling a 'Scripture'.
Allah Knows Best....
Peace Yall....:hmm: |
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But elsewhere (besides Hug), the matter is far more complicated. At first glance, for example, Frederic Kenyon in 1901 appears to have stated the same simplistic goal for textual criticism: "the ascertainment of the true form of a literary work, as originally composed and written down by its author." A page later, however, he explains that once "the original autograph" is gone, anyone who wishes to "know exactly what an author wrote has to discover it by examination of later copies, of which the only fact certain a priori is that all will be different and all will be incorrect."[12] Where does that leave the search for the original text?
Surprisingly, other handbooks virtually ignore the entire issue and move directly to describing the witnesses available, the making of printed editions, and the practice of textual criticism -- that is, how variant readings are to be evaluated. M. J. Lagrange does this (though the aim of textual criticism can be found in his preface: "to determine as nearly as possible the original text of the manuscript delivered to the public by the author").[13] It is nonetheless surprising that the two manuals most widely used today -- those of Bruce Metzger and of Kurt and Barbara Aland -- also fall into this category. Both of these manuals proceed quickly to the materials of criticism, to critical editions and the history of the text, and to the practice of evaluating readings. Hence, in both manuals the search is rather lengthy for a definition or goal of textual criticism.
The Alands' handbook on The Text of the New Testament aims to provide "the basic information necessary for using the Greek New Testament and for forming an independent judgment on the many kinds of variant readings characteristic of the New Testament textual tradition,"[14] but it is only after 279 pages, when the authors turn to the praxis of textual criticism, that statements relevant to its aim appear. The Alands then set down as the first of twelve basic principles that "only one reading can be original, however many variant readings there may be."[15] A dozen pages later they assert that "it is precisely the overwhelming mass of the New Testament textual tradition ... which provides an assurance of certainty in establishing the original text," for "... there is still the evidence of approximately 3,200 manuscripts of the New Testament text, not to mention the early versions and the patristic quotations [and] -- we can be certain that among these there is still a group of witnesses which preserves the original form of the text...."[16] We know from other writings of Kurt Aland that, on one hand, he can identify the "original text" with the kind of text that can be abstracted from the forty-eight earliest papyri and uncials[17] -- those dating up to and around the turn of the third / fourth century -- when he states that here the early history of the New Testament text "can be studied in the original."[18] On the other hand, elsewhere Aland equates the original with the text of the latest Nestle-Aland and United Bible Society Greek New Testament, when, in referring to this common text, he asserts that it "has passed the test of the early papyri and uncials. It corresponds, in fact, to the text of the early time." This leads Aland to the conclusion that "a hundred years after Westcott-Hort, the goal of an edition of the New Testament `in the original Greek' appears to have been reached."[19] Hence, the aim is to attain the "original" text, but what precisely is it?
Finally, Bruce M. Metzger's Textual Commentary puts the goal in the form of a question: "What is the original text of the passage?"[20] The title of his widely used handbook, of course, implies a text-critical goal: The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration.[21] But it is only well into this latter volume that Metzger refers to "efforts to ascertain the original text of the New Testament,"[22] and later appears the insistence that the textual critic must "rectify the errors."[23] Little else of this nature appears in Metzger's text, although the diligent reader will find a clearer definition tucked away in the preface: "The textual critic seeks to ascertain from the divergent copies which form of the text should be regarded as most nearly conforming to the original."[24]
Now, it is this last kind of qualified statement of the aim of New Testament textual criticism, namely, to establish the text "most nearly conforming to the original" or "as close to the original as possible" that is typical of what one finds elsewhere in numerous handbooks, though in varying forms and occasionally, but not often, with more explicit caveats. For instance, as far back as 1854 Samuel P. Tregelles asserted that:
The object of all Textual Criticism is to present an ancient work, as far as possible, in the very words and form in which it proceeded from the writer's own hand. Thus, when applied to the Greek New Testament, the result proposed is to give a text of those writings, as nearly as can be done on existing evidence, such as they were when originally written in the first century.[25]
Nor should one neglect to point out that Hort's statement cited earlier spoke of presenting "exactly the original words ... so far as they can now be determined from surviving documents."[26] Even Benjamin Warfield's frequently repeated statement regarding "original text" has a qualifier at the end -- though it is not always quoted. Warfield wrote: "The autographic text of the New Testament is distinctly within the reach of criticism in so immensely the greater part of the volume, that we cannot despair of restoring ... His Book, word for word, as He gave it by inspiration to men."[27] It is not necessary to multiply examples,[28] for in expressing the text-critical goal some kind of qualifying phrase, usually along the lines of "the most likely original text," is what most in the field have said or still say.
It should be clear that this review of handbooks on New Testament textual criticism has yielded little clarity regarding the use or meaning of "original text," and it is for this reason that I have pursued the matter at length -- precisely to make the point that over the greater part of two centuries virtually no discussion of this matter is to be found in the very volumes that have been the major guides in the theory and practice of the discipline. At times, as has been shown, the term "original text" may be given an equivalent, such as "autograph," but discussion of the concept is lacking. Although I shall continue my search, the same judgment, I think, can be rendered on virtually all monographs and articles in the field up to the present time -- with the exception of the several recent and current items to be discussed presently. It is significant also that nowhere in any of the examples cited above does "original text" appear in quotation marks.[29] At the same time, simply to speak of "the most likely original text" or that which is "as close as possible to the original," or to use similar qualifiers is clearly another way of putting quotation marks around the term. To reverse the image, these qualifying phrases doubtless represent what most textual critics signify by placing quotation marks on the term "original." Neither the qualifying phrases, nor the caveats, nor quotation marks, however, clarify or define "original" in any meaningful fashion. Most important of all, the term "original" in all of these formulations appears to have in view a single original text of the New Testament writings, with the assumption, I presume, that this "original" is to be identified with the autograph (at least ideally) and apparently with little thought given to questioning this assumption. |
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Now, "original" used in this sense of a single entity or a singular target automatically invokes the notion of "canon," that is, of authority.[30] While many textual critics have in the past and still employ the term with that unspoken bias, others have used the term "original text" to designate an elusive, unrealistic target, for which was then substituted "the earliest attainable or recoverable text" as a reasonable goal for the discipline. Yet, even this redefinition of "original text," unaccompanied as it was by any close analysis, clarifies the problem only slightly, if at all, and only at a superficial level.
In view of the preceding survey, I choose to categorize these manuals and other text-critical studies as representative of the past as far as this issue of "original text" is concerned, and to name as the present or current view a change that is emerging in a small comer of New Testament textual criticism.
An Emerging Use of "Original Text"
As far as I can discover, the pursuit by New Testament textual critics of a more specific, more clearly defined and more critically scrutinized, and hence a more honest meaning for the term "original" has appeared only in the past decade, and primarily in the work of a few members of the Society of Biblical Literature's New Testament Textual Criticism Group and of a creative and forward-looking scholar in the United Kingdom. Basic in their work are two relevant and crucial factors: first, their willingness to examine the assumptions underlying the notion of "original text" and to face the daunting implications of such an analysis; and, second, their insistence that the New Testament text and its myriad variant readings be scrutinized within the theological and sociocultural settings in which they were employed and manipulated. I begin, however, by defining what appears to me to have been a major stimulus for the new phase in our understanding of "original text."
Stimulus from Helmut Koester. The impetus for this new exploration came to some of us during a 1988 Notre Dame University conference on "Gospel Traditions in the Second Century," organized by William L. Petersen,[31] and specifically from a challenge launched there by Helmut Koester. Koester's discussion of "The Text of the Synoptic Gospels in the Second Century"[32] was introduced by the fully acceptable observation that (except for the fragment P52) no second-century manuscript evidence for the New Testament exists[33] and, therefore, severe problems attend the reconstruction of the textual history of the gospels in the first century of their transmission. Koester then startled many by turning on its head the New Testament textual critics' standard claim that they are fortunate to have so many early manuscripts so close to the time the writings originated. In contrast, he aptly observed that "the oldest known manuscript archetypes are separated from the autographs by more than a century. Textual critics of classical texts know that the first century of their transmission is the period in which the most serious corruptions occur." He then added the provocative note that "textual critics of the New Testament writings have been surprisingly naive in this respect."[34]
Working from textual agreements between Matthew and Luke when they use Mark, and from comparisons of the Secret Gospel of Mark with canonical Mark, Koester argued that an earlier form of Mark can be discerned behind the canonical Mark; that the latter represents a revision; and that the former becomes the "oldest accessible text of the Gospel of Mark" -- accessible, that is, through the comparisons adduced. Next, using the gospel material quoted by Justin Martyr (ca. 150), Koester postulated that Justin's aim was to produce "one inclusive new Gospel" by harmonizing or by using a harmony of Matthew and Luke; as he proceeded, Justin reveals a freedom to modify this material (to demonstrate, for example, a more complete fulfillment of prophecy in the events of Jesus).[35] Koester's view is much more complex than this quick summary, but his point -- whether or not his hypothesis is sustained in all of its detail -- is clear and sharp:
[T]he text of the Synoptic Gospels was very unstable during the first and second centuries. With respect to Mark, one can be fairly certain that only its revised text has achieved canonical status, while the original text (attested only by Matthew and Luke) has not survived. With respect to Matthew and Luke, there is no guarantee that the archetypes of the manuscript tradition are identical with the original text of each Gospel. The harmonizations of these two Gospels demonstrate that their text was not sacrosanct and that alterations could be expected ... New Testament textual critics have been deluded by the hypothesis that the archetypes of the textual tradition which were fixed ca. 200 CE ... are (almost) identical with the autographs. This cannot be confirmed by any external evidence. On the contrary, whatever evidence there is indicates that not only minor, but also substantial revisions of the original texts have occurred during the first hundred years of the transmission.[36]
Whether or not textual critics acquiesce in all of these charges, a strong challenge remains, for they are left not only with text-critical questions -- for example, which variants of Mark are most likely original? -- but also with penetrating canonical questions, such as, which Mark is original?
Similar issues arise with respect to the composition of the other Synoptics, the Fourth Gospel, the Pauline letters, and other portions of the New Testament. The relation to the Fourth Gospel of the well-known Egerton Papyrus 2 (currently dated ca. 200) is one such example. Although usually understood as a later excerpt from all four gospels, Koester (retaining a dating in the first part of the second century) views the papyrus as representing a text older than John because, "with its language that contains Johannine elements but reveals a greater affinity to the Synoptic tradition, it belongs to a stage of the tradition that preceded the canonical gospels."[37] If so, the gospel of which these surviving fragments were a part would have been read, without question, as authoritative in some early church(es) and possibly also could have played a role in the composition of our gospels. Again, the question arises, what or where is the original Mark? Or Matthew? Or Luke? Or John?
Now, if the goal of textual criticism is to recover the most likely "original" text, what in actuality is the object of textual critics' research -- a text of the gospels that is somewhat earlier than but very likely similar to the text of the earliest manuscripts, or a text of even earlier and now largely lost predecessor forms of these gospels'? In other words, textual critics face two or more questions rather than one: first, a prior question as to which Mark (or John, or Corinthian letters, or Ephesians, etc.) is "original," followed by the more traditional inquiry as to which variant readings of a particular work are "original." More clearly than before, the multivalence of the term "original text" emerges and confronts textual critics with its complexity.
Incidentally, should the illustrative examples employed here be rejected by some, others could be adduced, given that hypotheses about pre-literary or predecessor literary layers behind many of the present New Testament writings are numerous and of long standing. I have employed these examples from Koester, however, for two compelling reasons. First, his examples were educed in a specifically text-critical context that, as a matter of course, invited scrutiny of the term "original text" in a fresh and provocative fashion, and, second, these examples very directly "jump-started" my own ruminations on the meaning of "original text" and without doubt influenced others as well.[38]
I wish now to invoke, in chronological order, four contemporary views that appear to have departed decisively from the notion of a single "original" text and that favor the multivalence of the term.
Bart D. Ehrman. Bart D. Ehrman's 1993 volume on The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture[39] raises relevant questions about the term, "original text." Ehrman's impressive and startling thesis, now well known, is to trace "the ways scribes modified their texts of Scripture in light of the polemical contexts within which they worked, altering the manuscripts they reproduced to make them more orthodox on the one hand and less susceptible to heretics on the other."[40] Ehrman is concerned with scribes of the second and third centuries who were what he calls "proto-Orthodox Christians," concerned to advance their own christological views against three main groups of detractors: adoptionists, docetists, and separationists. As scribes introduced intentional changes into their texts of writings that were to become the New Testament, they would, as Ehrman says, "make them say what they were already known to mean," thus "corrupting" their texts for theological reasons -- hence, the title of his book.[41] I call this a startling thesis, not because textual critics were unaware that scribes made such alterations in their manuscripts, but because of the direction in which Ehrman shows these changes to have moved -- toward supporting and emphasizing the emerging mainstream theology, or orthodoxy, of the time -- rather than following the previously common theme in textual criticism that heretics twisted the text to accredit their views. In the process, Ehrman treats just short of 180 variation units;[42] needless to say, one need not agree with all of his analyses to recognize his point, nor will the implications for "original text" be missed by many. The issue arises implicitly throughout the work but emerges explicitly in the final paragraphs: |
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[U]nderstanding a text ... involves putting it "in other words." Anyone who explains a text "in other words," however, has altered the words.
This is exactly what the scribes did: they occasionally altered the words of the text by putting them "in other words." To this extent, they were textual interpreters. At the same time, by physically altering the words, they did something quite different from other exegetes, and this difference is by no means to be minimized. Whereas all readers change a text when they construe it in their minds, the scribes actually changed the text on the page. As a result, they created a new text ... over which future interpreters would dispute, no longer having access to the words of the original text, the words produced by the author.[43]
Therefore, which is the "original," the texts altered by the scribes -- now much obscured -- or the scribes' altered texts? Subsequently, Ehrman comments that "[t]he ultimate goal of textual criticism, in the judgment of most of its practitioners, is to reconstruct the original text of the New Testament," but he quickly modifies this statement in a footnote, emphasizing that:
[I]t is by no means self-evident that this ought to be the ultimate goal of the discipline, even though most critics have typically, and somewhat unreflectively, held it to be. In recent years, however, some scholars have recognized that it is important to know not only what an author wrote (i.e., in the autograph), but also what a reader read (i.e., in its later transcriptions).... Thus it is important for the historian of Christianity to know which form of the text was available to Christians in different times and places.... Given these historical concerns, there may indeed be scant reason to privilege the "original" text over forms of the text that developed subsequently.[44]
William L. Petersen. A second example of new views regarding the notion of "original text" appears in a 1994 article by William L. Petersen on "What Text Can New Testament Textual Criticism Ultimately Reach?"[45] Beginning with the classical scholar Paul Maas's statement: "The business of textual criticism is to produce a text as close as possible to the original,"[46] Petersen says that first among the problems in New Testament textual criticism is "the difficulty of defining `original.'" Using Mark as an example, he asks a series of penetrating questions:
Is the "original" Mark the Mark found in our fourth-century and later manuscripts? Or is it the Mark recovered from the so-called "minor agreements" between Matthew and Luke? And which -- if any--of the four extant endings of "Mark" is "original?" And how does the "Secret Gospel of Mark" ... relate to the "original" Mark? It is clear that, without even having to consider individual variants, determining which "Mark" is "original" is a difficult -- and perhaps even impossible -- task.[47]
The burden of his article, however, runs parallel to these particular issues, namely, if the goal of New Testament textual criticism is to produce a text "as close as possible to the original," then it should employ the sources that will facilitate that goal. The papyri, Petersen says, will not do, for they contribute no new readings to the critical text of the gospels (that is, to the gospel text of Nestle-Aland / UBS), though they do frequently extend other manuscript evidence from the fourth century back to the third.[48] Petersen is asserting, I gather, that the early papyri by themselves do not/cannot establish a text anycloser to the original than already exists in the B-text. The abundant Patristic evidence, he continues, "has been largely ignored," especially compared to the papyri; the evidence for this is in the gospel text of Nestle-Aland / UBS, which, again, "shows not a single instance where the text is based solely -- or even principally -- upon Patristic evidence"; rather, Patristic evidence enters the Critical text only when supported by the uncials.[49] Is this, Petersen asks, the proper use of Patristic evidence?
Petersen offers three examples that "demonstrate that by using multiple sources we can both readily and reliably triangulate readings from the second century,"[50] that is, readings solidly attested by second-century Patristic sources that are multigeographic and multilanguage in nature. His exhibits[51] first show that methodologically one can move behind the earliest manuscript tradition -- the entirety of which (except for P52)[52] is from the third century or later. Secondly, Petersen raises the likelihood that some very early readings were excised from the gospel text, doubtless because they were "no longer theologically acceptable,"[53] and therefore did not survive long enough to appear in the manuscript tradition. A telling example is a variant of Matt 19:17 found in Justin ("One is good, [then Justin's variant] my father in the heavens"), which is attested twice more in the second century, as well as in other early sources. Petersen argues impressively that this reading -- at an early time -- must have been well attested in manuscripts, but once it was "redacted away," "excised" from Matthew, it virtually disappeared from our manuscripts (it is in two Old Latin manuscripts of the fifth century), and that it thereby discloses an earlier level of gospel text. Petersen's question, then, is pertinent: "If these readings do indeed reflect a pre-180 manuscript tradition, then why do we not occupy ourselves with its reconstruction?"[54] What he has exposed here is a layer of text beneath what most would consider the "original text" that traditionally has been the object of textual criticism -- that is, he documents a layer constituting an earlier "original" or "originals" that are open to restoration.
The Author's Preliminary Exploration. In 1997 I published an excursus on "The Intersection of Textual Criticism and Canon" in a larger article in Stanley Porter's Handbook to Exegesis of the New Testament,[55] in which Koester's Notre Dame paper was invoked in the manner that I have used it, in opening the issue of multiple "originals." In that article, I also utilized an extended example from Nils A. Dahl on the Pauline corpus. Dahl's example moves in the same direction, and it concerns early recensional activity within that corpus.
As is well known, the phrase, "in Ephesus," is lacking in a small number of witnesses for Eph 1:1, though these witnesses include P46, * and B*. Based on the reading of these witnesses and the general or "catholic" nature of Ephesians, several theories were developed regarding the omission. These theories include the seventeenth century view of Archbishop Ussher that Ephesians was a circular letter intended for several churches and that a blank was left in 1:1 for names of churches using it, as well as the well-known theory of E. J. Goodspeed (1933) that "Ephesians" was written to introduce the first Pauline collection. Dahl, however, interprets this textual variant differently, first by rejecting the reading of the oldest manuscripts, suggesting that the context within Eph 1:1 requires a geographical designation, but then by allowing the possibility that:
[T]he letter was originally issued in several copies with a special address in each of them. In any case, the letter must have had a pre-history before it was published as part of the Pauline corpus. The text without any concrete address is to be understood as a result of a secondary "catholicyzing," [sic] to which we have an analogy in the textual tradition of Romans.[56]
The latter reference, of course, is to Rom 1:7 (and Rom 1:15), where "in Rome" is absent from a few witnesses. Dahl, in an elaborate argument, contends that the short, fourteen-chapter version of Romans -- ending with 14:23 plus the doxology of 16:25-27 placed there by a number of manuscripts -- circulated "in early days" without geographical designation and as another "catholic" epistle of Paul. The well-known text-critical problems involving the doxology serve, in Dahl's view, as "further evidence of the existence of more than one recension of Romans."[57] Like Ephesians, this fourteen-chapter version of Romans "will have to be explained as the result of editorial activity ... between the times of Paul and Marcion."[58] Dahl then points out that the earliest Patristic references do not easily support "a standard edition of the Pauline corpus before 100 A.D." and that "the question whether our whole textual tradition goes back to one archetypical manuscript of the whole collection will need further investigation."[59] What text, then, of Ephesians or Romans is designated by the term "original"?
These issues might well have been explored also by reference to Harry Y. Gamble's The Textual History of the Letter to the Romans,[60] with its extensive utilization of text-critical data.
My earlier exploration went on to raise matters of canon and authority that are parallel to or interactive with issues of multiple originals, and some of these issues will be revisited later in the article. |
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Before the final example of this emerging new view, a brief summary may be useful. Very recently the tasks of New Testament textual criticism have become more intriguing and more challenging as the discipline turns its attention, for example, away from the search for merely one "original text" to an understanding of earlier stages of composition and to earlier texts -- earlier "originals" -- that lie behind what textual critics have become accustomed to consider the "original." In addition, various other "original" texts may have been defined by and during the lengthy canonization process, perhaps, for example, at the point when the gospels or the Pauline letters were formed into collections. Finally, additional "original" texts were created as theologically motivated scribes altered the texts that were their "originals" by making the latter say what they knew them to mean. As a result, on one hand, textual critics have extended the process of textual transmission further into the past as they postulate the displacement of a previously conceived "original" by one or more preceding "originals," so that a text long thought of as "original" suddenly is recognized as derivative. On the other hand, textual critics have pushed the notion of "original" forward in time, beyond what they have usually conceived as the autographs to encompass more recent reshapings of the texts, so that the original "original" is now replaced by a new, successor "original" that circulates in the church and thereby often obscures the earlier, now dethroned original. Within this complex tangle of texts and revisions that find their life settings in a vibrant, developing, and theologically multifaceted church, what, indeed, does "original text" mean? Which "original" or "originals" ought we to seek? Or, to anticipate a more radical question, ought textual critics to seek or emphasize the search for an "original" at all? Finally, as a new dimension, what meanings are carried by the words "canon" and "canonical" as they relate to these newly recognized multiple "originals"?
David C. Parker. My final example of a new current in the discussion of "original text" is the work of David Parker, whocomes to this issue from a different perspective in his introductory volume, The Living Text of the Gospels.[61] Parker begins by challenging the common belief that "the purpose of textual criticism is to recover the original text," followed by a call to examine whether there is an original text to be recovered.[62] Indeed, this question is "the principal theme" of his book.[63] But Parker does not eschew the "attempt to recover early text forms"; he does not,[64] because such a search is "a necessary part of that reconstruction of the history of the text without which ... nothing can be understood."[65] Yet Parker does distinguish the recovery of "earlier forms of the text" from the "original," asserting that "it does not follow that it is also necessary to recover a single original text."[66] He states, "The question is not whether we can recover it, but why we want to."[67] To the question "whether the task of textual criticism is to recover the original text," Parker replies, "[I]t may be, but does not have to be,"[68] and he chooses not to emphasize and often not to seek a single original.
The reasons are clear enough from the several chapter-length examples that he gives and from the larger context of his book. First, the diversity of readings in the manuscript tradition of the gospels (to which he restricts his study) reveals a text that from the beginning grew freely,[69] for "sayings and stories continued to be developed by copyists and readers."[70] Parker affirms that the most dramatic changes in the text occurred in the first 150 years -- "initial fluidity followed by stability."[71] Hence, he characterizes the text of the gospels "as a free, or perhaps, as a living, text,"[72] and he asks again "whether the attempt to recover a single original text is consonant with the character of a free manuscript tradition."[73] The gospels are "not archives of traditions but living texts,"[74] and, therefore, "the concept of a Gospel that is fixed in shape, authoritative, and final as a piece of literature has to be abandoned."[75] As he says elsewhere, "The [free] text indicates that to at least some early Christians, it was more important to hand on the spirit of Jesus' teaching than to remember the letter.... [T]he material about Jesus was preserved in an interpretive rather than an exact fashion."[76]
This conclusion bears on Parker's second reason for choosing not to pursue an original text, one that arises out of important cases where the readings in a variation unit are multiple and do not yield an easily determined original reading, or to any plausible original at all. Two examples include the gospel sayings on marriage and divorce, and the Lord's Prayer. Parker's text-critical analysis of the gospel sayings on marriage and divorce lead him to conclude that "the recovery of a single original saying of Jesus is impossible"; rather, "[w]hat we have here is a collection of interpretive rewritings of a tradition"[77] -- "the early church rewrote the sayings in their attempt to make sense of them."[78] As Parker says of a similar example, the Lord's prayer, which has six main forms in the manuscript tradition:
[A]ll six forms contribute to our understanding. Once we have discovered their existence, they will be part of the way in which we read and interpret the Lord's Prayer. We shall not be able to erase them from our minds, and to read a single original text as though the others had never existed.[79]
His point, of course, is that the church has been and continues to be instructed by all meaningful multiple variants, because these variants disclose how the early church dealt with or thought about theological or ethical issues.
Later, Parker treats an extended passage from Luke (the last three chapters), instead of merely small blocks of material, and finds that variantsin some forty verses of the last 167 provide, as he says, "incontrovertible evidence that the text of these chapters was not fixed, and indeed continued to grow for centuries after its composition,"[80] including "a significant number of passages which were added to the Gospel in order to emphasize its orthodoxy."[81] "We might say," he concludes, "that Luke is not, in these early centuries, a closed book. It is open, and successive generations write on its pages."[82] So, when Parker says that "the Gospel texts exist only as a manuscript tradition"[83] and not in an early, fixed form, he means that statement to apply not only to the past but to the present as well, allowing the richness of the manuscripts, with all of their variants and with the interpretations and insights that they offer, to illuminate not only the culture of the early church but the culture of today as well. Parker is affirming that the full manuscript tradition brings vastly more than restriction to a single original reading or text could ever provide, but this approach does not mean that all variants on divorce, for example, now have the authority traditionally ascribed only to one of those readings. "The tradition is manifold. ... There is no authoritative text beyond the manuscripts which we may follow without further thought"; thus, "... the people of God have to make up their own minds. There is no authoritative text to provide a short-cut."[84]
Parker's bold statements carry us beyond merely the issue of multiple "originals" to a firm de-emphasis on the necessity or desirability of seeking a single "original text" of the New Testament or a single "original" reading in a given variation unit. In all of this discussion, however, a strong, positive thrust remains. Textual critics are encouraged to permit the New Testament's fluid and living text of the past to sustain its free, vital, unbroken, multifaceted tradition in the present and into the future -- with the multiplicity of text-forms presenting "a collection of interpretive rewritings"[85] of that tradition and sweeping textual critics up into the flow that makes them part of that ongoing tradition and also confirms that ancient tradition as very much their own. |
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Have We Moved Beyond the Legitimate Domain of Textual Criticism?
As I pursued these current, progressive viewpoints and contemplated the increasing complexity of defining "original text," I was caught short by my review of a passage I had long ago marked in the Alands' Text of the New Testament:
[T]he competence of New Testament textual criticism is restricted to the state of the New Testament text from the moment it began its literary history through transcription for distribution. All events prior to this are beyond its scope.[86]
Do the views described above violate the parameters of textual criticism? On this definition in the Alands' handbook, any precursor compositional levels, as usually understood and as employed above for illustrative purposes, would appear to be beyond the scope of the discipline. The context of the Alands' statement confirms this exclusion, for they refer to such matters as "composition theories" concerning the Pauline letters and the Fourth Gospel:
None of the composition theories advanced today in various forms with regard to the Pauline letters, for example, has any support in the manuscript tradition.... At no place where a break has been posited in the Pauline letters does the critical apparatus show even a suspicion of any interference with the inevitable deposit of telltale variants. In other words, from the beginning of their history as a manuscript tradition the Pauline letters have always had the same form that they have today.[87]
Yet the context leading directly to this statement in the handbook describes the "utter chaos" of the textual tradition of the end of Romans (that is, the varying placement of the doxology), precisely the text-critical data that form the basis for the predecessor composition theories of Dahl and also of Gamble regarding both Romans and the larger Pauline corpus. Quite clearly, then, such explorations of prior compositional levels in the Pauline letters and elsewhere in the New Testament have been regarded as legitimate text-critical enterprises by various scholars, whenever textual variants, manuscript marks, or other text-critical factors appear to reflect some kind of previous textual or literary layers or some textual disruption.[88] My own judgment also is that such explorations remain within the proper domain of textual criticism.
Moreover, do we not encounter some of the same issues that are involved in the term "original text," when we analyze the phrase in the Alands' previously cited quotation that refers to "the state of the New Testament text from the moment it began its literary history [or existence] through transcription [or copies] for distribution"? When does a writing's literary existence begin? Can the beginning of a writing's literary history be limited to the moment when copies were made and circulated (that is, the time of its "publication")? And if earlier composition levels can be detected, especially when signaled by textual variants, have textual critics not uncovered an earlier "beginning" of that writing's literary history? Or, to move forward in time, could not a literary process (such as revision or rearrangement of the text) have taken place after the first copies were made and released, thereby turning the earlier, copied version itself into a predecessor literary layer of the writing? Hence, the term "beginning" begins to take on multiple dimensions, just as "original" does, and textual critics face the possibility that the text of a writing that has been transmitted, which they presume to have stood at the beginning of that particular writing's history, now can be shown (triggered by textual variants) to have evolved from an earlier "beginning" -- an "original" has had earlier "originals."
Without pursuing this further, perhaps most will agree on the following principle regarding what, in addition to the traditional investigations, falls within the proper domain of textual criticism:
Any search for textual preformulations or reformulations of a literary nature, such as prior compositional levels, versions, or formulations, or later textual alteration, revision, division, combination, rearrangement, interpolation, or forming a collection of writings, legitimately falls within the sphere of text-critical activity if such an exploration is initiated on the basis of some appropriate textual variation or other manuscript evidence.[89]
"Other manuscript evidence" would include marginal or other sigla in manuscripts indicating uncertainty regarding placement of a passage or pointing to another textual problem. The principle enunciated here might be exemplified further under two "categories," with some random examples (though items may slip from one category to the other).
Category 1 looks behind our transmitted texts to preformulations (that is, to "pre-original" compositional levels):
1. Textual variants signaling predecessor literary activity, such as prior compositional levels, versions, or formulations, would provide legitimacy for, among others, the following:
Hypotheses about early sayings traditions or sources, or about early gospel harmonies -- because of variant readings in the sayings of Jesus tradition (including agrapha, the Gospel of Thomas,etc.).
Theories about varying versions, revisions, formulations, partitions, or combinations behind, or interpolations into, or collections of the Pauline letters -- because of variant readings concerning a letter's addressees, the placement of doxologies, etc., and because of manuscript sigla indicating textual problems. (These and similar phenomena might fall into Category 2.)
Consideration of dual versions of Acts or Luke-Acts -- because of extensive textual variation in the B and D textual traditions.
Hypotheses about the ending of Mark -- because the (later) textual tradition provides various endings to adjust for the perceived abruptness in ending the gospel with Mark 16:8. (Could be Category 2.)
Consideration of the pericope adulterae (John 7:53-8:11), its authenticity / inauthenticity, and whether it was part of John, etc. -- because of its several locations in manuscripts of John and Luke, its varying text-forms, its absence from early manuscripts, and because scribal sigla in other manuscripts indicate uncertainty. (Might be placed in Category 2.)
Category 2 largely looks at reformulation, the interpretive recasting of books, and especially of passages already in circulation and use (that is, at "post-original" literary activity), which, when accepted, may obscure the readings of the circulating text or, conversely, when neglected or suppressed, may be obscured by the dominant circulating textual tradition:
2. Textual variants signaling successor literary activity, such as reformulation or adaptation of an earlier level of composition, would provide legitimacy for the following:
Hypotheses about alterations to writings in the interest of orthodox or heretical theology or in the interest of pro- or anti-Judaic sentients or pro-or anti-female views, etc. -- because of numerous textual variants inviting such inquiries. |
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Consideration of rearrangements, additions, dislocations, and interpolations in already circulating writings, such as endings of Mark, portions of John or Pauline letters, etc. -- because of variant readings and varying positions or sigla in manuscripts.[90]
Theories about liturgical embellishments to the Lord's prayer, the
Last Supper, etc. -- because of multiple forms in the textual tradition.
Deliberations over the marriage and divorce sayings in the synoptic
gospels -- because of their tangled textual tradition.
As with the examples cited under category 1, many more examples could
be cited here.
The explorations exemplified in these lists -- and numerous others that might be added -- directly and indirectly invoke the multivalence of the term "original text" and thereby enrich the text-critical discipline by opening the way for fresh insights from the varying interpretations of early Christian thought and life that they reveal. Moreover, recognizing the multivalence of "original text" ensures that New Testament textual criticism will certainly diminish and possibly relinquish its myopic concentration on an elusive and often illusive target of a single original text. Clearly, for some, these investigations of both predecessor and successor compositional activities will challenge not only the traditional object, but also the customary boundaries of New Testament textual criticism; yet, that challenge should be understood as expanding our horizons and making the discipline more broadly relevant than previously to related fields, such as literary-critical, hermeneutical, and church-historical studies.
The Relation of an Elusive, Multivalent "Original Text" to the Concept of "Canon"
Text and canon have been treated together for generations, as scores of books and encyclopedia articles will attest, but more often than not their relationship has been one merely of juxtaposition rather than of interaction.[91] Our concern here is not so much with the long-standing and quite static juxtaposition of the two fields, but with the parallels or interaction between canon and text in the sphere of "authority." "Canon" by nature embraces authority, for it involves "measure," or "standard" -- something measured and meeting a standard. When a Jewish or Christian writing has been measured and accepted as canonical (whether formally by leaders in a given region or informally in the life of a community), that writing and its text acquire authority. The "original text" of the New Testament -- in its common understanding -- also has been viewed as authoritative, and this point at which canon and text cross paths gives rise to penetrating questions. One example might be, if "original" is multivalent, can "canon" escape multivalence?
Textual Variants as Canonical / Authoritative
Several issues raised by the scholars whose views have been discussed in this article lead directly to this interaction between textual criticism and canon, that is, to the point at which they intersect over the concept of authority. One may begin by noting the extensive similarity between Parker's view of "the living text" and the emphasis developed by the "Chicago School" of New Testament textual criticism in the years before and after World War II, for, as I will discuss later in this section, those scholars also viewed the New Testament text as "a living body of literature," which, through scribal changes in a vibrant theological and practical context, opened a window upon the history of the church and its doctrine. I refer especially to the studies of Donald W. Riddle, Ernest C. Colwell, and Merrill M. Parvis, surrounded by their distinguished Chicago colleagues, Edgar J. Goodspeed, Harold R. Willoughby, and Alan Wikgren, and, by extension, to graduates of this University of Chicago program, notably Kenneth W. Clark. The relevant view was summarized and highlighted in ten pages of the introduction to my 1966 monograph on Codex Bezae,[92] in which I labeled it "Present-day Textual Criticism." This designation, I fear, was a quarter-century premature, for it was that long before the major work of Bart Ehrman exemplified this new understanding of textual criticism and nearly thirty years until David Parker engaged in it -- though quite independently, it would appear. What exactly was the view that emerged from Chicago?
Its roots can be traced back directly to Kirsopp Lake in 1904, in the context of his often-quoted evaluation of Westcott-Hort, though many readers may fail to move beyond that evaluation to Lake's programmatic statement. Lake characterized Westcott-Hort's edition as a "splendid failure" -- " ... it was one of those failures which are more important than most successes."[93] As a result, Lake continues, it can no longer be supposed that the textual critic can immediately edit the original text; editing of local texts must come first, and this step complicates the task because the exegete must now "expound the meaning, not of Westcott and Hort's text, but of the ecclesiastical Bibles in use at different times.... We need to know what the early Church thought [a passage] meant and how it altered its wording in order to emphasize its meaning."[94] Thirty-some years after Lake's assessment, Riddle wrote this impassioned paragraph:
The legitimate task of textual criticism is not limited to the recovery of approximately the original form of the documents, to the establishment of the "best" text, nor to the "elimination of spurious readings." It must be recognized that every significant variant records a religious experience which brought it into being. This means that there are no "spurious readings": the various forms of the text are sources for the study of the history of Christianity.[95]
Later Riddle refers to "the unreality of that common abstraction ... the 'original' text from which all variants were derived." He continues:
Of course the New Testament writers wrote something. But what is the use of picturing this original copy? It had no status as a sacred document; no reverence for it as Scripture was accorded it until a century after its writing; it was valued only for its practical value; it was early and frequently copied.[96]
Merrill Parvis echoes these notions regarding "spurious" readings:
All are part of the tradition; all contribute to our knowledge of the history of Christian thought. And they are significant contributions because they are interpretations which were highly enough thought of in some place and at some time to be incorporated into the Scripture itself.[97] |
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Thus textual variants and canon meet in dynamic fashion; not only are the variants that find their way into the canonical text of the church designated canonical, but also those that did not. "Canon" suddenly takes on more than one meaning or level. Parvis, however, goes further. Even when we have approached the autographs, he says, we still have only one form of the tradition. Then, almost lamenting the invention of printing, he states that prior to its use "the Scripture was a living body of literature, which was constantly being enriched as it was interpreted and reinterpreted by each succeeding generation."[98]
A year later, across the Atlantic, Erich Fascher spoke of reflective scribes of the New Testament in this fashion: "The interpreting copyist moves between text and copy and forces his interpretation upon his later readers, since he has yet no knowledge of an authoritative text."[99] This assertion regarding the lack of an authoritative text, and the similar statement by Riddle quoted above, were not, however, to be tolerated by another Chicago scholar, Ernest Colwell. After strong statements that "most variations ... were made deliberately," and that "[t]he majority of the variant readings in the New Testament were created for theological or dogmatic reasons," he turns an old assumption on its head:
Most of the manuals and handbooks now in print (including mine!) will tell you that these variations were the fruit of careless treatment which was possible because the books of the New Testament had not yet attained a strong position as "Bible." The reverse is the case. It was because they were the religious treasure of the church that they were changed.[100]
Colwell adds:
The paradox is that the variations came into existence because these were religious books, sacred books, canonical books. The devout scribe felt compelled to correct misstatements which he found in the manuscript he was copying.[101]
Colwell's statements suggest that textual alteration was encouraged rather than discouraged by the notion of canonicity, which would suggest, in turn, that when effecting a theologically motivated textual reformulation, a scribe was actually making a canonical decision -- an independent (or perhaps a community) enhancement to the New Testament canon. This hypothesis suggests, finally, that canon formation was a process operating at two quite distinct levels: first, at the level of church leaders in major localities or regions of Christianity, who were seeking broad consensus on which books were to be accepted as authoritative; and, second, also at the level of individual scribes (though it might be assumed that usually they would represent a monastic or some other small community), whose interest would be in individual variants that would express appropriately their theological or liturgical understanding of portions of their already authoritative church writings.
From these notions flows a torrent of questions that can be treated here only by referring quickly to some examples, mostly discussed or alluded to in the preceding text of this article. First, however, it might be helpful to remember that gospels and epistles, though scribes copied them word by word, undoubtedly were read holistically in early Christian worship and use, and not discretely as is the tendency in critical scholarship. Early Christians, therefore, would not likely raise the "canonical" questions illustrated here, but would have treated as "canon" whatever text-form of a gospel or letter had reached them in the transmission process. For instance, if they possessed a gospel expanded by harmonization or by liturgical embellishment, they would not likely have noticed or been concerned -- unless the reader or hearer were, for example, an Origen![102] Consider the following inquiries:
First, in what sense were or are competing variant readings "canonical" (for example, in the marriage and divorce sayings), or to what extent were or are variants "canonical" that textual critics now reject but that were once authoritative scripture in the fourth or fifth centuries, or even the seventeenth century (for example, additional endings of Mark, or numerous readings of the textus receptus preserved in the King James Version)?
Second, was or is the doxology in Romans "canonical" after 14:23, after 15:33, or after 16:23, or after both 14:23 and 16:23 where several manuscripts put it? Or was this doxology never part of Romans, as attested by other manuscripts and church writers? And if a fourteen-chapter Romans was a literary successor to a sixteen-chapter Romans, which form of Romans is "original" and which is "canonical"?[103]
Third, was or is Romans "canonical" or "original" with or without "in Rome" in Rom 1:7 and 1:157 Or are both in some sense canonical and in some sense original? The same questions arise about "in Ephesus" in Eph 1:1.
Fourth, the Lord's prayer has six main forms in our textual tradition. Was, for instance, the Matthean phrase (6:13), "but rescue us from evil," "canonical" also in the Gospel of Luke for the numerous manuscripts that have it in their texts of Luke 11:147 Was the final phrase in Matthew's version (at 6:13), "For the kingdom and the power and the glory are yours forever," "canonical" for the many witnesses carrying it (despite the clear evidence that it represents a successor, liturgical rewriting)?
Fifth, was or is the Book of Acts "canonical" in its B-text-form or its D-text-form, or both?
Finally, to change the focus of these questions and to return to one raised at the outset of this discussion, if "original" is multivalent, can "canon" escape multivalence? What does "canon" or "canonical" mean? Just as each of the 5,300 Greek New Testament manuscripts and the perhaps 9,000 versional manuscripts is an "original," so each of these thousands of manuscripts likely was considered "canonical" when used in the worship and teaching of individual churches -- and yet no two are exactly alike. Consequently, each collection or "canon" of early Christian writings during the centuries-long process of canonization was likewise different, whether in the writings it included and excluded or -- more likely -- in the detailed content of those writings as represented in their respective manuscripts, with their varying textual readings. As for the latter -- if one follows the insights of the Chicago School -- interpretive variant readings had authority in one Christian community or another. So "canon" and "canonical," which inherently involve authority, have varying dimensions of meaning at various times and in diverse places, and "canon" is no less polyvalent than "original text."
Proposed Dimensions of Meaning in the Term "Original Text"
It is clear that the notion of multiple "originals" is implicit in some and explicit in others of the several new views surveyed. These various "originals" or, better, "dimensions of originality" might be viewed as functioning in four ways with respect to the New Testament text. However, because the term "original" no longer has its apparent or traditional meaning, an alternate terminology -- terms that do not confuse the issue (as "original" does) but that clarify or at least are neutral -- is required. I shall try the term "text-form" as the common designation in all of the proposed dimensions:
First, a predecessor text-form, that is, a form of text (or more than one) discoverable behind a New Testament writing that played a role in the composition of that writing. Such a predecessor might have affected either larger or smaller portions of a writing. In less careful language,[104] this predecessor is a "pre-canonical original" of the text of certain books, representing an earlier stage in the composition of what became a New Testament book. |
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Post time 6-12-2004 01:33 AM
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