M
Muhsen
Guest
Thank you Agarash, but don't think your refuting is very weak and especially you admitted that these copies also contain a few minor discrepancies
And you seems like tired from reading the whole links despite you have challenged me!!!
Mark 16:9-20
here One quick example of Church tampering with the text of the Bible:
Due to a lack of time and space, let us have a quick look at just one specific example. For example, let us study the twelve verses of Mark 16:9-20:
"Nonetheless, there are some kinds of textual changes for which it is difficult to account apart from the deliberate activity of a transcriber. When a scribe appended an additional twelve verses to the end of the Gospel of Mark, this can scarcely be attributed to mere oversight" The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, Bart Ehrman, pp. 27-28
Peake's Commentary on the Bible records;
"It is now generally agreed that 9-20 are not an original part of Mk. They are not found in the oldest MSS, and indeed were apparently not in the copies used by Mt. and Lk. A 10th-cent. Armenian MS ascribes the passage to Aristion, the presbyter mentioned by Papias (ap.Eus.HE III, xxxix, 15)."
"Indeed an Armenian translation of St. Mark has quite recently been discovered, in which the last twelve verses of St. Mark are ascribed to Ariston, who is otherwise known as one of the earliest of the Christian Fathers; and it is quite possible that this tradition is correct" Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, F. Kenyon, Eyre and Spottiswoode, pp. 7-8
Notice how this is by far not a new trend with the Church. Indeed, as we can see, the very first Church Fathers themselves freely allowed themselves to insert whole passages made up of no less than twelve verses when they felt like it, allowing the reader to believe that their words were the words of the apostles of Jesus. In the light of such Church policies, would it be so hard to imagine them making smaller "corrections" here and there to the text?
Well, did all of this Church tampering end with the demise of the first Church Fathers or did their students learn these techniques from them? As it happens, Victor Tununensis, a sixth century African Bishop related in his Chronicle (566 AD) that when Messala was consul at Costantinople (506 AD), he "censored and corrected" the Gentile Gospels written by persons considered illiterate by the Emperor Anastasius. The implication was that they were altered to conform to sixth century Christianity which differed from the Christianity of previous centuries (The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gospel of Barnabas, and the New Testament, by M. A. Yusseff, p. 81)
Sir Higgins confirms that this practice did not even end in the sixth century, rather it continued on into the eleventh and twelfth:
"It is impossible to deny that the Bendictine Monks of St. Maur, as far as Latin and Greek language went, were very learned and talented, as well as numerous body of men. In Cleland's 'Life of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury', is the following passage: 'Lanfranc, a Benedictine Monk, Archbishop of Canterbury, having found the Scriptures much corrupted by copyists, applied himself to correct them, as also the writings of the fathers, agreeably to the orthodox faith, secundum fidem orthodoxam." History of Christianity in the light of Modern knowledge, Higgins p.318
In other words, the Bible was re-written in order to conform to the doctrines of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and even the writings of the early church fathers were "corrected" so that the changes would not be discovered. Sir Higgins goes on to say:
"The same Protestant divine has this remarkable passage: 'Impartiality exacts from me the confession, that the orthodox have in some places altered the Gospels."
Well, how seriously was the text of the Bible affected by so many centuries of such practices? Is it true that all of the changes made by the Church are all "unimportant" and that all Christians should simply "disregard" them all as having no effect on the message of Jesus (pbuh) or his apostles? Well, once again, in order that it not be said that this is simply Muslim propaganda, therefore let us hear from Dr. Lobegott Friedrich Konstantin Von Tischendorf, one of history's most adamant conservative Christians and the man who single-handedly discovered one of the two most ancient copies of the NT available today. He himself was driven to admit after his study of these most ancient copies of the Bible available today that:
"[the New Testament had] in many passages undergone such serious modification of meaning as to leave us in painful uncertainty as to what the Apostles had actually written" Secrets of Mount Sinai, James Bentley, p. 117
In all, Tischendorf uncovered over 14,800 "corrections" to just one ancient manuscript of the Bible, the Codex Sinaiticus (one of the two most ancient copies of the Bible available to Christianity today), by nine (some say ten) separate "correctors," which had been applied to this one manuscript over a period from 400AD to about 1200AD. Tischendorf strove in his dealings with his holy texts themselves to be as honest and sincere as humanly possible. For this reason he could not understand how the scribes could have so continuously and so callously,
"allow themselves to bring in here and there changes, which were not simple verbal ones, but materially affected the meaning"
or why they "did not shrink from cutting out a passage or inserting one."
In the introduction of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible by Oxford press we read:
"Occasionally it is evident that the text has suffered in the transmission and that none of the versions provides a satisfactory restoration. Here we can only follow the best judgment of competent scholars as to the most probable reconstruction of the original text" (emphasis added)
Are the authors of the RSV Bible "critical scholars" whose "presuppositions" are above Muslim understanding? Please note that not a single one of the above quotes came from a Muslim. Are the words of God in the Qur'an, which these Christian scholars are slowly confirming, are they really just an outgrowth of Muslim propaganda and unsubstantiated lies by Muslims? Why then are the most knowledgeable among Christian scholars yearly confirming more and more of the words of God found in the Qur'an? Why? Are Muslim minds simply genetically inferior? When a Christian missionary, priest or Bishop converts to Islam do they automatically lose all ability to reason? Come on, let us be reasonable.
Even Anglican Bishops confirm this basic truth of the Qur'an. In the British newspaper the "Daily News" 25/6/84 under the heading "Shock survey of Anglican Bishops" We read
"More than half of England's Anglican Bishops say that Christians are not obliged to believe that Jesus Christ was God, according to a survey published today. The pole of 31 of England's 39 bishops shows that many of them think that Christ's miracles, the virgin birth and the resurrection might not have happened exactly as described in the Bible. Only 11 of the bishops insisted that Christians must regard Christ as both God and man, while 19 said it was sufficient to regard Jesus as 'God's supreme agent'"
It is further interesting to note that even the most adamant defenders of the Trinity do not refute the fact that the Bible contains many thousands of contradictions or discrepancies between its verses and versions, which they refer to as "variant readings," as a result of their Church's attempts to insert verses validating their doctrines into the Bible (such as the very famous case of 1 John 5:7 among many others and which continues to cause them unending embarrassment and has been removed from all modern Bibles such as the RSV, the NIV, the ASV, etc.), rather, the most they ever do is to try and "trivialize" these errors and sweep them under the rug. For example,
"...the rare parts about which there is still uncertainty do not affect in any way any doctrine" Bible Translations, R.L. Sumner
In the book "The Story of the Manuscripts" by Rev. George E. Merrill, the good Reverend quotes Prof. Arnold as stating:
"there are not more than fifteen hundred to two thousand places in which there is any uncertainty whatever as to the true text.."
As we can see, they do not challenge the fact that the Bible contains many thousands of errors (a result of Church tampering during the Dark Ages), rather they only try to reduce them in number, trivialize them and disregard them. Thus, we have returned to the "how many 'small' pieces will you allow me to cut from your body?" question.
And you seems like tired from reading the whole links despite you have challenged me!!!
Mark 16:9-20
here One quick example of Church tampering with the text of the Bible:
Due to a lack of time and space, let us have a quick look at just one specific example. For example, let us study the twelve verses of Mark 16:9-20:
"Nonetheless, there are some kinds of textual changes for which it is difficult to account apart from the deliberate activity of a transcriber. When a scribe appended an additional twelve verses to the end of the Gospel of Mark, this can scarcely be attributed to mere oversight" The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, Bart Ehrman, pp. 27-28
Peake's Commentary on the Bible records;
"It is now generally agreed that 9-20 are not an original part of Mk. They are not found in the oldest MSS, and indeed were apparently not in the copies used by Mt. and Lk. A 10th-cent. Armenian MS ascribes the passage to Aristion, the presbyter mentioned by Papias (ap.Eus.HE III, xxxix, 15)."
"Indeed an Armenian translation of St. Mark has quite recently been discovered, in which the last twelve verses of St. Mark are ascribed to Ariston, who is otherwise known as one of the earliest of the Christian Fathers; and it is quite possible that this tradition is correct" Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, F. Kenyon, Eyre and Spottiswoode, pp. 7-8
Notice how this is by far not a new trend with the Church. Indeed, as we can see, the very first Church Fathers themselves freely allowed themselves to insert whole passages made up of no less than twelve verses when they felt like it, allowing the reader to believe that their words were the words of the apostles of Jesus. In the light of such Church policies, would it be so hard to imagine them making smaller "corrections" here and there to the text?
Well, did all of this Church tampering end with the demise of the first Church Fathers or did their students learn these techniques from them? As it happens, Victor Tununensis, a sixth century African Bishop related in his Chronicle (566 AD) that when Messala was consul at Costantinople (506 AD), he "censored and corrected" the Gentile Gospels written by persons considered illiterate by the Emperor Anastasius. The implication was that they were altered to conform to sixth century Christianity which differed from the Christianity of previous centuries (The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gospel of Barnabas, and the New Testament, by M. A. Yusseff, p. 81)
Sir Higgins confirms that this practice did not even end in the sixth century, rather it continued on into the eleventh and twelfth:
"It is impossible to deny that the Bendictine Monks of St. Maur, as far as Latin and Greek language went, were very learned and talented, as well as numerous body of men. In Cleland's 'Life of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury', is the following passage: 'Lanfranc, a Benedictine Monk, Archbishop of Canterbury, having found the Scriptures much corrupted by copyists, applied himself to correct them, as also the writings of the fathers, agreeably to the orthodox faith, secundum fidem orthodoxam." History of Christianity in the light of Modern knowledge, Higgins p.318
In other words, the Bible was re-written in order to conform to the doctrines of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and even the writings of the early church fathers were "corrected" so that the changes would not be discovered. Sir Higgins goes on to say:
"The same Protestant divine has this remarkable passage: 'Impartiality exacts from me the confession, that the orthodox have in some places altered the Gospels."
Well, how seriously was the text of the Bible affected by so many centuries of such practices? Is it true that all of the changes made by the Church are all "unimportant" and that all Christians should simply "disregard" them all as having no effect on the message of Jesus (pbuh) or his apostles? Well, once again, in order that it not be said that this is simply Muslim propaganda, therefore let us hear from Dr. Lobegott Friedrich Konstantin Von Tischendorf, one of history's most adamant conservative Christians and the man who single-handedly discovered one of the two most ancient copies of the NT available today. He himself was driven to admit after his study of these most ancient copies of the Bible available today that:
"[the New Testament had] in many passages undergone such serious modification of meaning as to leave us in painful uncertainty as to what the Apostles had actually written" Secrets of Mount Sinai, James Bentley, p. 117
In all, Tischendorf uncovered over 14,800 "corrections" to just one ancient manuscript of the Bible, the Codex Sinaiticus (one of the two most ancient copies of the Bible available to Christianity today), by nine (some say ten) separate "correctors," which had been applied to this one manuscript over a period from 400AD to about 1200AD. Tischendorf strove in his dealings with his holy texts themselves to be as honest and sincere as humanly possible. For this reason he could not understand how the scribes could have so continuously and so callously,
"allow themselves to bring in here and there changes, which were not simple verbal ones, but materially affected the meaning"
or why they "did not shrink from cutting out a passage or inserting one."
In the introduction of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible by Oxford press we read:
"Occasionally it is evident that the text has suffered in the transmission and that none of the versions provides a satisfactory restoration. Here we can only follow the best judgment of competent scholars as to the most probable reconstruction of the original text" (emphasis added)
Are the authors of the RSV Bible "critical scholars" whose "presuppositions" are above Muslim understanding? Please note that not a single one of the above quotes came from a Muslim. Are the words of God in the Qur'an, which these Christian scholars are slowly confirming, are they really just an outgrowth of Muslim propaganda and unsubstantiated lies by Muslims? Why then are the most knowledgeable among Christian scholars yearly confirming more and more of the words of God found in the Qur'an? Why? Are Muslim minds simply genetically inferior? When a Christian missionary, priest or Bishop converts to Islam do they automatically lose all ability to reason? Come on, let us be reasonable.
Even Anglican Bishops confirm this basic truth of the Qur'an. In the British newspaper the "Daily News" 25/6/84 under the heading "Shock survey of Anglican Bishops" We read
"More than half of England's Anglican Bishops say that Christians are not obliged to believe that Jesus Christ was God, according to a survey published today. The pole of 31 of England's 39 bishops shows that many of them think that Christ's miracles, the virgin birth and the resurrection might not have happened exactly as described in the Bible. Only 11 of the bishops insisted that Christians must regard Christ as both God and man, while 19 said it was sufficient to regard Jesus as 'God's supreme agent'"
It is further interesting to note that even the most adamant defenders of the Trinity do not refute the fact that the Bible contains many thousands of contradictions or discrepancies between its verses and versions, which they refer to as "variant readings," as a result of their Church's attempts to insert verses validating their doctrines into the Bible (such as the very famous case of 1 John 5:7 among many others and which continues to cause them unending embarrassment and has been removed from all modern Bibles such as the RSV, the NIV, the ASV, etc.), rather, the most they ever do is to try and "trivialize" these errors and sweep them under the rug. For example,
"...the rare parts about which there is still uncertainty do not affect in any way any doctrine" Bible Translations, R.L. Sumner
In the book "The Story of the Manuscripts" by Rev. George E. Merrill, the good Reverend quotes Prof. Arnold as stating:
"there are not more than fifteen hundred to two thousand places in which there is any uncertainty whatever as to the true text.."
As we can see, they do not challenge the fact that the Bible contains many thousands of errors (a result of Church tampering during the Dark Ages), rather they only try to reduce them in number, trivialize them and disregard them. Thus, we have returned to the "how many 'small' pieces will you allow me to cut from your body?" question.
