So far the case for a divinely-inspired original Greek New Testament has been lacking. Let's see if this can't be helped along by closing our study with the examination of another related event, which is the canonization of the New Testament.
"Canon" is a word describing the much-fought-over, officially accepted books of the Christian Churches which comprise their holy bible. "Canonization" is the term used to describe the process by which these books became canon. To the untrained ear it all sounds very scholarly and religious.But to those familiar with ancient church history what canonization really means is that the pious liars, cheats, perverts and murderers who comprised the hierarchy of the early Christian Church were the ones who decided irrevocably what books of the New Testament were sacred and what books were to be discarded.
In other word if you carry a New Testament you have the summary of Catholic Theology at its highest and you might as well go to mass.
If this critical assessment seems a bit harsh it is probably because the average Christian has little if any knowledge of the early history of their church or their Bible. Take for example this blunt admission from the Roman Catholic Church about the character of the church fathers of the fourth century: "The primitive disciplined charity of the early Christians had been diluted by self-willed scholars, ambitious politicians, and easy-going laxists" (Knights of Columbus, The Catholic Pilgrimage, p. 4).
What is important in this study is that it was in the fourth century AD that the final New Testament canon was decided for the entire Christian Church! (The Encyclopedia Britannica 14th edition, vol. 3, p. 514). Not a very reassuring thought when one considers, as historian Michael Grant notes, it was a time in which men "crept into the church to secure its benefits”, (Grant, Constantine the Great, p. 161) and doubly ominous when we consider that it was during this time that the present-day, much-worked-over, surviving New Testament MSS. were produced.
Perhaps even more revealing is that the church fathers of the fourth century were not only politically and morally corrupt, in many cases they were not even interested in Christianity. That the bishop of Troy was known to pray to the sun-god at the same time he was holding Episcopal office, is only one example of the kind of church fathers one deals with in early church history (Grant, Constantine the Great, p. 136). Another good example is found in the famous fourth century Council of Nicaea and the man responsible for its organization.
As noted at the beginning of this study the man who promoted Christianity into a world-class religion was the so-called first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great. However, for the sake of considering New Testament origins, let's note a few examples of his Christianity. For instance, long after his alleged conversion Constantine continued his devotion to pagan g-ds. In one case he removed the great Palladium (the large stone phallus or penis of the sun-god) from Rome to Constantinople, his capital city, and set it up as a symbol of his own masculinity. On top of this image he placed a statue of himself in the guise of the sun-g-d Apollo, to which his faithful subjects were commanded to bow and worship (Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, p. 764).
The editors of The Encyclopedia Britannica say of Constantine that, "He was at best only half heathen, half Christian, who could seek to combine the worship of Christ with the worship of Apollo, having the name of one and the figure of the other impressed upon his coins, and ordaining the observance of Sunday [i.e., the day sacred to the sun-g-d] under the name Dies Solis (The Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th edition, Volume VI, p. 301). Apolllo and Mithra were one and the same g-d from two different places, i.e., Greece and Persia, both being mingled in later Roman worship. For those who don't know it, it was at this time that Sunday officially replaced the seventh-day Sabbath within the Christian Church.
As a further example of his lack Christian ethic, historians note that Constantine was guilty of murdering his own son and wife, among countless others. A notorious example of this can be seen in the following. Long after his "Christian" conversion Constantine fell ill and ordered that a large number of children be killed so he could bathe in their blood, and thus effect a magical cure. He was only dissuaded when a group of Christian parents pleaded for mercy (Grant, Constantine the Great, p. 175). Most revealing is that Constantine was not even baptized into the church until he lay on his death bed. On 22 May 337 water was poured on his forehead and the "first Christian emperor" was pronounced saved in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (The Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th edition, Volume VI, p. 301).
However, Constantine's lack of Christianity mattered little to the church notables who gathered for the emperor's great council on May 20, AD 325, at Nicaea. This is because Constantine had long since bought their loyalty, giving away such wealth that the Christian clergy was among the greatest land owners in the empire, often living on palatial estates reviling even the wealthiest subjects. "whose at court dined with Constantine—like Apostles surrounding Christ in paradise," wrote Constantine's official biographer, the church father Eusebius. Historian Michael Grant adds, "…churches became endowed with great wealth, Christian art and architecture increasingly showed the grandeur of imperial ceremonial" (Grant, Constantine the Great, p. 160). But wealth wasn't the only bribery used by Constantine to gain loyalty.
As an added assurance that his will became law in the church, Constantine also relied on the fear that he had instilled in virtually everyone in the empire. Whether this fear came from the thought of loosing their wealth or from falling prey to the routine executions ordered by the emperor doesn't matter. What does matter is that within the church Constantine's control was so complete that it was referred to as Caesaropapism (Grant, Constantine the Great, p. 159-161). Also important to this study is that it was this man who called the famous Council of Nicaea, whose purpose was to decide some fundamental church doctrines.
Take time to let what you now know of Constantine sink in and then ask yourself if the doctrines decided basically by this man for all of Christianity today should be “believed”?
Moreover, it was Constantine who set the agenda and it was he who issued the final statements of decision. And just in case there should be any open dissension, Constantine also let it be publicly known that he would personally deal with those who did not conform to his wishes. Indeed after the Council of Nicaea, when Constantine's decisions had been forced upon the church, Eusebius wrote to the emperor: "We committed an impious act, O prince, by subscribing to a blasphemy from fear of you" (Smith, Constantine the Great, p. 202).
Answer for yourself: How does that make you feel when Constantine’s right-hand man tells him after the Council of Nicaea that “they” had “committed an impious act”…likening it to “blasphemy” because “they feared Constantine”?
Answer for yourself: Are you aware that Nicaea rejected the faith of Yeshua as it had spread into all the world up to that time and gave you instead Constantine’s paganism with Jesus’ name attached?
Answer for yourself: Can you now understand why Bet Emet Ministries is a voice crying in a desert of Biblical ignorance in America today?
Such bullying tactics set the stage for later councils, notably the Council of Ephesus held in AD 449, which erupted into bloodshed. When one group of delegates could not get their way, they went after the other side with clubs, until after the battle, they had enforced their decrees on the Christian Church. As one historian wrote: "Fanatical bands of monks terrorized the assembly of Church notables (Nigg, The Heretics, P. 121). To be fair, these actions were not unheard of. Indeed, bloodshed had long been an established way of doing business within the Christian Church, going back as far as Pope Damascus, who murdered 137 priests and other followers of his rival to gain the papacy. The situation surrounding the Councils of Nicaea and Ephesus was by no means unique (DeRose, The Vicars of Christ, p. 38).
Another prime example of the character of the early church fathers is found in the famous Bishop Eusebius, who attended the Council of Nicaea and who is rightly considered as one of Christianity's greatest liars. It is commonly admitted that he forged a writing known as the Lepers, which were supposedly an exchange between Abgar and Jesus. He falsely declared that he had found the originals and gives a translation of them in his Ecclesiastical History (Wheless, Forgery in Christianity, p. 155). That such an episode was by no means unique to Eusebius comments volumes on the integrity of the early church fathers and the canonization of the New Testament!
It should also give us pause for serious concern when we consider that not only did the earliest complete MSS. of the New Testament surface during this time, as well as the absorption of numerous pagan doctrines, customs and deities into the Christian faith, but it was from this time and among these particular church fathers that the twenty-seven books of the New Testament were selected and officially canonized as holy scripture.
How that came about is briefly, and with a certain amount of gloss, summed up in the following account from a correspondence course lesson offered by a fundamentalist Christian college: "Prior to the fourth century there was no [official] catalogue of the New Testament canonical books. However, even during the time of the apostles, quotations of some of these books were made by writers of the Christian faith.... Clement, Paul's fellow laborer, referred to 1 Corinthians as 'Paul's epistle.' . . . Tertullian (AD 160-220) regarded the four Gospels and most of the books of the New Testament to be genuine.
Eusebius of Caesarea [circa AD 260-340 and the same man mentioned above in the forgery scandal] declared in his Ecclesiastical History (AD 315) that it was, ".... universally admitted that the four Gospels, Acts, the Epistles of Paul, the first Epistles of John, Peter, and Revelation are genuine.... Jerome's residence in Palestine and great knowledge of the sites of bible history qualifies him to make statements as to the authenticity of the books of the New Testament Scriptures. He [the church lather Jerome] assigned authorship of the books to the person whose name the book carried. He assigned the Acts of the Apostles to Luke, and the Epistles of the Hebrews to Paul, noting that there was some doubt as to authorship of this epistle which today is considered anonymous" (Zion Faith College, lesson no. 1, pp. 3-4).
Answer for yourself: Did you notice for yourself that even Christian Colleges sometimes teach the truth when they tell you that the Apostles did not write the Gospels?
As to these reliability of men like Eusebius, Clement, Tertullian and Jerome on the matter of New Testament authorship, we can ignore the questions about their character and merely note that in this instance they are only repeating tradition, which we now knew wasn't reliable because modern critical analysis confirms that manly hands played a part in the composition of each New Testament book.
Regarding the canon itself history tells us that the first known canon was put together by the so-called great heretic, Marcion, in circa AD 150. What is of significance here is that, as Salomon Reinach, notes, "Down to this time all quotations from 'Scriptures' in the works of the Apostolic Fathers, refer exclusively to the Old Testament" (Reinach, Salomon, Orpheus. (New York: Horace Liverlight Inc., 1930), p. 229. In other words, until AD 150 and the time of Marcion the church fathers either didn't know of any "New Testament" manuscripts, or if they did, they seriously doubted their authenticity.
Answer for yourself: So what does that say about the Gospels being written by the Apostles? It tells us the Gospels were the creation of non-Apostles much later after the deaths of the Apostles.
At any rate it was Marcion who collected various books of what would one day be the New Testament—another significant point because Marcion, being notoriously anti-Jewish, deliberately excluded the Old Testament from his teachings. Indeed he even went so far as to purge the writings of Paul and what we now call the Gospel of Luke of what he considered Jewish traits' (Legge, Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity, book II, p. 207). But despite his obvious lack of Christian character, we find this positive statement about Marcion in The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church: "The significance of Marcion lies in the fact that he compelled representatives of orthodox Christianity to deal seriously with the problems of evil, to think deeply about the biblical teaching concerning creation and redemption, to reexamine the Pauline writings, and to decide upon the question of the canon" (Legge, Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity, book II, p. 207).
Relevant to both the question of the canon and Marcion's role in the matter, let's quote biblical historian Robin Lane Fox here about Marcion's tampering with the NT books: "In the 140's an important Christian, Marcion, troubled many of his fellow Christians by producing a 'Gospel' which abbreviated Luke's so as to suit his theology . . . He edited ten letters of Paul, changing and omitting bits which he did not like and also omitted the Epistles to Timothy and Titus. This enterprise played havoc with the written text." Fox astutely comments: "If Christian texts were being changed and edited to this degree, even a gap of a century between the original and its first survival on a papyrus is a long and potentially dangerous time. We simply do not know what may have happened to the author's words at important places. " (Legge, Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity, book II, p. 139-140).
In all fairness it should be mentioned that Marcion wasn't the only early Christian notable who tampered with the New Testament. In an open attempt to write the doctrine of the Trinity into the pages of the New Testament Apollinaris the Elder, and his son Apollinaris the Younger, rewrote the New Testament using Platonic theology" (Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, Volume 2. P. 183). Athanasius is thought by historians to have been Apollinarian, so called from Apollinarius "the younger," who rewrote the New Testament with his father in the platonic dialogues, in an effort to combat those in the Christian Church who taught against the Trinity (The Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th ed., Volume 2, pp. 109, 600). Now pay attention to what I say next and imagine the implications. The significant point here is that a disciple of the two Apollinaris' was a man named Athanasius who was the first to mention all twenty-seven books of the present New Testament in the famous Thirty-ninth Paschal Letter of Athanasius (The Oxford Companion to the Bible, p. 103).
The Encyclopedia Britannica tells us the following:
"The triumph of the Athanasian Canon, indeed, went along with the triumph of Nicene Christianity. And while the movement received its impulse from Athanasius, the power by which it was carried through and established was largely that of his powerful ally the Church of Rome (11th ed., Vol. 3, pp. 876-877). As In the Western Church the canon of Athanasius was likely approved at the synod of Rome in AD 382, being definitely confirmed in 405 by papal declaration. In other words the present New Testament canon was produced inside the Roman Catholic Church and approved by a Roman Catholic pope, which is only natural as Roman Catholicism and early Christianity was one and the same thing! (The Oxford Companion to the Bible, pp. 103-104).
Here is a partial list of the different books that were floating around the Christian world and seriously considered by the early church councils for inclusion in the canon: A gospel written by Jesus' own hand; letters and other correspondences written by Jesus; letters written by the virgin Mary; Pilate's official report to the emperor of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, with Pilate's confession of faith; the reply to this from Tiberius; the trial of Pilate; official documents of the Roman Senate about Jesus, Gospels, epistles, acts, by every single one of the twelve apostles; and official documents of church law and government, written in Greek by the apostles. the number comes to about 50 or more "holy" books (Wheless, Forgery in Christianity, p. 101; also The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VI, p. 656).
As to the Gospels themselves, out of which only tour were finally selected and canonized, at one time there were some 200 different ones circulating in the Christian Church. As late as 450, Bishop Theodore of Cyrrhus said there were at least 200 different Gospels revered by the churches of his own diocese, until he destroyed all but the canonical four" (Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia, p. 467). Here are some of the known (or at least the surviving) Gospels, which, keep in mind, were at different times and in different places accepted as the "infallible word" of God by the faithful of Christ: The Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, the Gospel of Signs, the Gospel of Thomas, Greek Fragments of Thomas, Secret Book of James, Dialogue of the Savior, Gospel of Mary, Infancy Gospel of I homes, Infancy Gospel of James, Gospel of Peter, Secret Gospel of Mark, Egerton Gospel, Gospel Oxyrhynchus, Gospel of the Hebrews, Gospel of the Ebionites and the Gospel of the Nazoreans.
Essentially, Christian history proves one thing: it is only by faith in the early church fathers that present day Christians can accept the canonized New Testament as the word of God.
Although the average Christian can easily repeat some well-rehearsed Jesus legend, or quote one or two favorite passages, they will look at you with a blank stare if you should mention any of the facts related in this study. That is because, to say this one more time, most Protestant and Catholic ministers have deliberately kept their congregations in ignorance of the true history of their church. My only hope is that you, the reader, will take what is written here and go to the nearest library to seek out the books of scholars, both Christian and secular, and use your logic and common sense to make a final determination.
Answer for yourself: Given the history of the New Testament as I have labored to show you, my closing question to you, the reader, is "which part of your New Testament is infallible, inerrant, and inspired and worthy to be followed by you for your faith and practice as you attempt to please God with your life?
Answer for yourself: Which parts of the New Testament are blatant attempts to lead the reader from what Jesus both believed and practiced and what Rome wanted instead?
Answer for yourself: What part of your faith, as inherited from New Testament beliefs, is before God truthful and which is not; and do you know how to spot the lies from the truths when you read the New Testament?
Answer for yourself: Do you want to learn how? Well, Bet Emet is for you then because we will share with you, as we have done here in this series of articles, the hard facts and truth withheld from you whereby you can make an intelligent decision about your faith before God. It is our hope and prayer that armed with these facts you life can be lived more pleasing to God and when you pass into the next world you won't have to stand ashamed before the Creator of the Universe because you have been led by your Church and your Pastor to "believe in the wrong Gospel". Shalom
For further studies in the New Testament and it's canonization I suggest that you go here: http://www.oocities.org/faithofyeshua