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Word Gems
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Biblical documents were edited
by church politicians, a re-writing
of history, to support a particular
church view and political agenda
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Preview and Summary: The ancients themselves, in their writings, comment that the "holy" biblical documents were altered, many times and in many ways, to suit political purposes.
- Origen, writing in the third century, laments that biblical manuscripts were often edited and interpolated to suit the needs of the changing theological climate: "It is an obvious fact today that there is much diversity among manuscripts, due either to the carelessness of the scribes, or the perverse audacity of some people in correcting the text; or again to the fact that there are those who add or delete as they please, setting themselves up as the correctors."
- The pagan philosopher Celsus: Christians "altered the original text of the gospels three of four times, or even more, with the intention of thus being able to destroy the arguments of their critics." This is correct. A study of over 3000 early manuscripts has shown how scribes made many changes.
- It is common knowledge among scholars that sometimes even whole sections were later added to a particular text; e.g., the latter half of the 16th chapter of Mark is a fabrication, added much later, and not part of early manuscripts - yet today this section appears as "infallible" text in Bibles. See the following sub-article.
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