Did a group of bishops remove certain portions of the bible?

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Sun Nov 14, 2004 11:56 am

Hello,

I have heard sometime ago that certain portions of the bible were removed based on an agreement by bishops all over the world (not too sure about the exact time but I think it wasn't more than 300 years ago).

I believe I have also heard a priest repeat the same story.

I did mention this just yesterday to a group of friends and they were all shocked and said until they get any evidence that such statements remains null and void.

I am a christain and would appreciate it very much if I get responses on this questions.

Thanks for your time and God bless.

Kurieuo · Post by **Kurieuo** » Sun Nov 14, 2004 4:38 pm

Firstly, it's not like any one particular body has control over what comprised the Bible. Rather, it was understanding why certain books had already gained authority amongst the Christians, and then these books ended up forming our canon (i.e., NT).

It is simply just not possible for bishops 300 years or so ago to go changing the Bible. Did they change all the manuscripts too? Maybe in the Douay-Rheims (first Catholic translation of the Bible) agreed upon a particular translation with axed certain words, but then this would only be limited to their own translation.

You may also be interested to read the following article: Is Our Copy of the Bible a Reliable Copy of the Original?

Kurieuo.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Mon Nov 15, 2004 11:47 am

Thanks a lot for your response. I really do appreciate it.

Is it correct to say that the 6 & 7 books of Moses were part of what constitutes the original bible? Why I am asking is this; if Moses actually wrote those books, why are they not part of the bible or is the mystical nature of the books part of the reason for the books not being part of the bible?

I eagerly await any answers on this.

I will be going through the link you sent to me, thanks.

Kurieuo · Post by **Kurieuo** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 6:41 pm

Sorry, it might be just my own ignorance, but I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean in your last post. Could you give more details, and perhaps provide a link to your original source?

Kurieuo.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 2:38 pm

Hi,

I didn't get my information online.

Someone said something about bishops of various churches agreeing on removing certain portions they felt were either controversial or unnecessary. I am certain a Vicar in the Anglican church confirmed the same statement.

But it's difficult for me to prove what was said.

About the 6 & 7 books of Moses, are the books good or bad? Were they actually written by Moses? If positive, why aren't they included in the bible?

I remember reading the first few pages of the 6th I believe and everything I can remember about the pages I read were purely mystical in nature. In fact, I had to close the book when I realised I was losing some sanity.

It's common to hear about the first 5 books in the bible written by Moses. What of the 6th & 7th books?

Thanks for your time and God bless.

Kurieuo · Post by **Kurieuo** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 7:51 pm

What I was really after is more information. What do you mean by the six and seven books of Moses? What are their names? According to my understanding only the Pentateuch is usually attributed to him.

Kurieuo.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 11:02 am

Hi,

Ok. I will send more info once I get hold of the books I am talking about. I have seen them and have attempted to read one of them.

Many thanks for your time.

Afam

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Jan 05, 2005 10:39 pm

In 325 C.E., the council of nicence, a gathering of the church, ordered all Hebrew New testament gospels, destroyed.

In jeramiah 8:8, it talks about how the scribes will lie about the word of god.

I can not recollect off the top of my head, but i will getthe names for you, but several popes and Bishops in the church, did in fact take out, insert and delete entire parts of the new testament during it's history.

4 years ago or so, the ArchBishop of Canterbury went public and admited that you should not believe everything you read in the bible.

Kurieuo · Post by **Kurieuo** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 5:21 am

Did they change people's memories, and the many manuscripts no doubt around at that time also?

Kurieuo.

PS. To ensure you are here for the right purposes, I encourage you to read the board purpose within the discussion guidelines.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 5:20 pm

Change peoples memories? I do not understand. What I do understand, are these things, again:

The first recorded Gospel was written around 50 yeard after Jesus died. Now, there may have been some writings here and there.. but the actually Gospel itself did not exist till that time. Now think, how much could go wrong during that time, between, just plain forgetting certain things, to not remembering something fully. If anyone is 70 yrs old, can you remember what your father said to you 50 years ago? Maybe, maybe not. But when your an old man, i want you to try and remember i Have typed here today, 50 years from now,and lets see what you get when you write it down. The point I am making is this, that manuy of the apostles were probably dead 50 years after christ died... so that means, that they never wrote the gospels... someone else did, someone they may have passed the information along to orally.... and we know how information can be mishandled when passed orally/

For some reason, everyone also wants to resort to the Greek and hebrew languages to translate, when in truth, they need to translate it in Aramaic/Arabic, since that is what Jesus spoke during his ministry.

It is also unfortunate, that The council of nicene ordered the destruction of allk the hebrew gospels. Now, the old testament, was for the most part preserved, because the jews believe in the old testament, and went to great length to preserve it and hide it from such damage... that is why the dead sea scrolls testify to the old testament, but not the new testament. Again, think about what could have happened if the best orginal copy of the gospels we had were destroyed, (saving 1 gospel that I know if, and that is Barnabas, which if any of you believe it is a forgery from the 14th century, ill give you a outline of the hands it exchanged dating from 1st centurey to now), think about what the Church could have done to the gospels, as far as altering them. How would anyone know if the gospels were altered, if there was no more orginal copies, only the church versions now existed. And yes, the popes and archbishops did change information in the bible, go ahead and set time aside to research this and you will the information to be true.

Constantine began what was to become a centuries long effort to eliminate any book in the original Bible that was considered unacceptable to the new doctrine of the church. At that time, it is believed there were up to 600 books, which comprised the work we now know as the Bible. Through a series of decisions made by the early church leadership, all but 80 of those books, known as the King James Translation of 1611, were purged from the work, with a further reduction by the Protestant Reformation bringing the number to 66 in the "Authorized" King James Bible.
What we now have in Bible-based religion, whether labeled as "Catholic", or Protesting Catholic, known as “Protestant", is unrecognizable form either the Hebrew religion, now known as the Jewish religion, or the church established at Jerusalem by the Apostles and disciples of Jesus. The practices of this first church are not practiced by any major religion and they are almost unknown, despite being clearly outlined in the existing New Testament. In its place are doctrines and practices first established in the first "true" Reformation of Christianity begun by Constantine.
There is much controversy over how many books the Bible should actually contain but considering the depth and scope of those few works remaining in the "accepted" Bible, we see but a fragment of incredible wisdom and history. A study of the Lost Books of the Bible is incomplete without a clear understanding that this is not a matter of simple loss, but a campaign by the Roman Catholic Church to purge books variously classified as heretical, dangerous, and corruptive. To the public they are “lost”; to the Church they are “forbidden”. Although the exact number of books purged is known only to the Church, and not shared knowledge, some can be determined by the discovery of their presence in the church prior to the reformation resulting in what became known as the Roman "Universal" Church.
One of the more obvious forms of discovery comes from the surviving books themselves, which sight works not present in the existing collection. Also many do not know that the Apocryphal books were actually included in the King James translation until they were officially purged by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1885. Other writings also connect many books to the first church. Whatever the number before the purge by the formation of Catholicism by Constantine; even one lost book is a great loss indeed.

So, changed peoples memories? No. Ignore then outright, Yes.

As unfortunate as it sounds, Pope Constatine, has created the Bible that we know today, and has created the Christianity that we belong to today.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 5:49 pm

In reference to "Is Our Copy of the Bible a Reliable Copy of the Original"

That is great that we have so many new testament works that have been found! What I do not understand however then, is why we have multiple versions of the bible? No other religion seems to have this problem, except ours.

Also, I can not, for the life of me, find out where these epistles are located so that, if i wanted to, I could actually go and view them, much like we can view the constitution. It is easy for someone to claim we have these things, but unless you can actually view them and read them, and study them, who knows they even exist or even a forgey (Jeramiah 8:8 again states that the book would fall victim to the lieing pens of scribes...) (NOTE: If you read the NIV version of the bible, you wouldn't be surprised when I say that alot of the footnotes for the new testament gospels say that the author of this gospel is UNKNOWN, but they Believe (assume) that is is ... Luke, matthew, etc) Ive always known that the dead sea scrolls are real, you can actuallu study them... the parts of the new testament found, besides some epistles they have been found, i can not, personally, think that they are real unless I can study them.

Give you an example, (again, I am not a muslim), Muslims can actually view the orginal Koran, written over 1400 years ago.. and look at there koran and read it word for word with which is scribed in the original koran (NOTE: Allah (no, he is not the moon god, Allah is the translation of the word God, in arabic) promised to preserve the koran word for word and allow no man to alter it at all..... so far to date, God has not lied)

Kurieuo · Post by **Kurieuo** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 8:42 pm

soulsolstice wrote:That is great that we have so many new testament works that have been found! What I do not understand however then, is why we have multiple versions of the bible? No other religion seems to have this problem, except ours.

Err.. perhaps because it is "translated." Somes translations also focus on different aspects, for example KJV was more interested in getting words right, whereas NIV took whole sentences, evaluated what the author was trying to get across, and translated them into English to make greater sense. If you have a problem with multiple translations, you can always refer back to, or read from original language our translations are based upon. So this is really no problem at all.

soulsolstice wrote:The first recorded Gospel was written around 50 yeard after Jesus died. Now, there may have been some writings here and there.. but the actually Gospel itself did not exist till that time. Now think, how much could go wrong during that time, between, just plain forgetting certain things, to not remembering something fully. If anyone is 70 yrs old, can you remember what your father said to you 50 years ago?

It is debatable whether the earliest Gospel was written 50 years after. For example:
<blockquote>The following facts strongly suggest that both the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts were written prior to 65 A.D. This lends credibility to the author's (Luke) claim to be an eyewitness to Paul's missionary journeys. This would date Mark prior to 65 A.D. and the Pauline epistles between 49-63 A.D.

1. Acts records the beginning history of the church with persecutions and martyrdoms being mentioned repeatedly. Three men; Peter, Paul, and James the brother of Jesus all play leading roles throughout the book. They were all martyred by 67 A.D., but their martyrdoms are not recorded in Acts.

2. The church in Jerusalem played a central role in the Book of Acts, but the destruction of the city in 70 A.D. was not mentioned. The Jewish historian Josephus cited the siege and destruction of Jerusalem as befalling the Jews because of their unjust killing of James the brother of Jesus.

3. The Book of Acts ends with Paul in Rome under house arrest in 62 A.D. In 64 A.D., Nero blamed and persecuted the Christians for the fire the burned down the city of Rome. Paul himself was martyred by 65 A.D. in Rome. Again, neither the terrible persecution of the Christians in Rome nor Paul's martyrdom are mentioned.

History of the Bible: How The Bible Came To Us</blockquote>So say Jesus died about 33 AD. This is only about 30 years after his death these event are being written down.

soulsolstice wrote:Change peoples memories? I do not understand.

For example, it wasn't uncommon among the Jews, for rabbis to memorize entire books of the OT. Memorisation and oral tradition, was far more important in early societies, particularly Judaism. Some feats of this are impressive to say the least. To quote J.P. Holding:
<blockquote>1. Plato says that the Sophist Hippias of Elis "was able to repeat fifty names after hearing them only once."
2. Pliny the Elder reports that Cyrus was able to name every man in his army, and that Lucius Scipio remembered the names of every person in the Roman Empire, and that one named Charmadas "recited by heart any book in the libraries."
3. Seneca boasted of being able to his youth to repeat 2000 names read to him "and recite in reverse order over two hundred verses his fellow students told him..." He does regard this as miraculous, however!

On the Reliability of Oral Tradition by J.P. Holding</blockquote>Now these methods would have been still around at the time of Christ and thereafter. Glenn Miller writes:
<blockquote>Part of this growing confidence in the accuracy of oral transmission, is the growing awareness of the easy-to-memorize structure of many of Jesus sayings. So Stein (SPI: 200):

It is now clearer than ever before that Jesus was a teacher. In fact the Gospels describe him as a teacher forty-five times and the term 'rabbi' is used of him fourteen times. One of his prominent activities was teaching. Like the rabbis, he proclaimed the divine law, gathered disciples, debated with the religious authorities, was asked to settle legal disputes, and supported his teaching with Scripture. He also used mnemonic devices, such as parables, exaggerations, puns, metaphors and similes, proverbs, riddles, and parabolic actions, to aid his disciples and audience in retaining his teachings. Above all he used poetry, "parallelismus membrorum", for this purpose.

Jeremias has listed 138 examples of antithetical parallelism in Jesus' teaching that are found in the synoptic Gospels alone (NT Theology, 15f), and to these over fifty other examples of synonymous, synthetic, chiasmic, and step parallelism can be added (Stein, "The Method and Message of Jesus' Teachings", Westminster, 1978: 27-32).

In light of all this, it is evident that Jesus 'carefully thought out and deliberately formulated [his] statements' (Gerhardsson).

On the Reliability of Oral Tradition (recommend)</blockquote>Thus, the disciples being taught by Jesus, would have been able to put to memory quite reliably Christ's major teachings. Not only this, but the multitudes of people who had gathered to hear Jesus speak, and no doubt the many people whom the Apostles themselves taught after Christ's death. Given these facts, it is quite implausible (and unbelievable) that popes and bishops could have decided to "take out, insert and delete entire parts of the new testament" as you claim.

Kurieuo.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 10:05 pm

I am not sure how you can argue with history? History, as I said, has outlined what the church did. You outlined, best case scenarios and situations. Even 30 years for someone to rememeber something is quite a long time, before it was written. The people you quoted, claimed.. it was claimed that they did those things. I can claim i jumped from a 4 story building and lived without a broken bone. I also liked how you left out, how the author of the article, that spoke about plato, agreed that it was likly exaggerated.

What the church did, was well documented, unlike the history of the new testament.

You still, did not answer, the location of the epistles 4000 pieces of new testament that have been discovered. I have never heard of such discoveries.. and to date, been un able to find where these discoveres reside (IE: Vatican, libaries, etc) It is one thing to say we found something, its another to show it. As I said before, there were many forgeries written after the death of Jesus. So, it would be nice to at least have the ability to actually read and study such articles, like the dead sea scrolls.

Now, let me say I agree that the idea that some of jesus teachings coul dhave been lost through oral transmisson, is just a theory. I am in no way saying that this is the case, however, I am saying that the tampering of the church with the bible, is documented as happening.

Now, where are the original gospels? Are they housed somewhere? Could we reference them to something to see if there authenticity is there? Nope.
So, how can you claim that the church has not tampered with it? If you can not reference with anything to say otherwise? If you are unfamiliar with how evil some of the popes, archbishops and the church at large was during its history, then i suggest you set some time aside and read.... Do you think people who lie, cheat, murder, and steal, would do there upmost ability to keep the Good book in its true and natural state?

Again, I will remind you, The arch bishop of canterbury,about 4 years ago or so (ill try to find the news article fo ryou) very lofty position within the church... through the risk of losing his stature, told the public that you should not believe everything you read in the bible, for it is not all true. He was stripped of his rank and status. Why would a man, of such important and lofty status in the church, risk everything, to make a comment, if it was not true.

I am sorry, that I had to answer this post with my personal opinion, but I will leave you with at least 1 fact from the Good book, concering what I have said.

Jeramiah 8:8

How can you say, 'We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us'? But, behold, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie. (From the RSV Bible, Jeremiah 8:8)"

There is your proof. It is either the inspired word of God being written down, to warn man of this, or a scribe who slipped it in, to let people know what has happened. Either way, it is there.

As far as me claiming, that the churhc did these things, I am claiming them because they are true. Feel free to reference the names and information i gave you in my previous post, about the reformation, and Constatine, and what they did.... before you assume that I am lieing about them.

Mastermind · Post by **Mastermind** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 11:33 pm

If I'm not mistaken, the catholic church didn't turn "evil" until about the 4th century. In addition, we still have the separated eastern church who likely backs up the current bible. As far as I know, te catholics added the Aporcypha to "amend" the Bible. At any rate, I don't see why God would allow his Word to be desecrated in this manner. We need to know what to do to be saved, don't we?

Kurieuo · Post by **Kurieuo** » Sat Jan 08, 2005 3:10 am

I notice you appear to be very opinionative on this topic, believing yourself to be very knowledgable with regards to some sort of Church conspiracy theory, yet then we only have your words. If this is truly grounded in rational enquiry, then please provide references to professional scholars on whom your beliefs are based. Given none, there is no reason why anyone here should accept your opinions as truth.

On the other hand, I've provided a strong case refuting your position, with references to pages that also refer professional scholarship. Thus, not only should you be able to back your own position, but you now need to be able to refute the cases I've made.

So seeing my case has not been tackled in anyway, and you have only provided your opinion on the matter (as you even admit to when you say, "I had to answer this post with my personal opinion"), I see that I can rest my case here for now. Readers can decide for themselves between whether you are correct, or whether my referenced rebuttals make your own unbacked position an implausible scenario.

Kurieuo.