‘mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa *......'

                                                                                Chapter 1

At one point of time in my life, I stopped and questioned myself- if someone proves to the world, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Lord Jesus Christ is only a mere sage, or a Saint with God given supernatural powers like so many appeared throughout the past world history- Still, will I follow the  words of Jesus?

My college days, I started reading voraciously on various philosophical theories, ancient and contemporary and particularly Indian and western philosophy. I was exposed to Hindu Philosophy, by reading Swami Vivekananda's speeches on Hinduism and writings of the great Hindu Philosopher, former Indian President Dr.Rahdakrishnan. I gained more rich knowledge on Hindu philosophies  by reading Shri.Ramanuja who espoused 'Dvita' and Shri. Sankara's 'Advaita' which helped, getting very much deeper into the meaning and the relationship between 'Atma"(Self) vs 'Brahman'(the creator/God vs the Supreme Cosmic Spirit).

On the western philosophical side, the first book I read, by the one among the few great western philosophers and who greatly impressed me was Bertrand Russel.

 I was deeply impressed by the analytic philosophy of Bertrand Russel.The one I read with interest is his 'Why I am not a Christian'. 

I have to squeeze my little brain to understand the writing of German philosopher Nietzsche. His philosophy which was labeled as 'Existentialism' philosophy took me to different level of intellect which helped me to view few important things of life, totally different perspective than the society I lived imposed on me. Interestingly, he condemned institutionalized Christianity and disappointed with the believers not following the Jesus words and deeds, as an example while Jesus refuse to judge people, the followers doing the opposite.

That’s the time, as a Christian I was searching and looking beyond all the attractive mythologies, miracles mentioned in Bible but looking for the true essence of spirituality but on the process very much lost the respect for institutional identities associated with Christianity, called churches. All these churches claimed to be preaching Bible and Lord Jesus words but never failed to criticize each other and have wide array of conflicting doctrines and ideological outlooks.

The more I read, more I realized - seeking true 'spirituality' is not outside of oneself or inside of any four walls -worshiping places or just reading the religious books - but within deep inside-oneself -a soul-searching task and ultimately to reach self-realization.

In my language, in Tamil there is a saying 'Vindi'llar, Kandill'ar - Kandillar Vindi'llar'.  The meaning is the one who realized God, never talk much about him, the one who talks much about God, never realized God. That goes good with the so called religious preachers.

I was influenced on my exploration in Bible History, after started with writings of the famous Erasmus of Rotterdam, a Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and a theologian. Recently I stumbled upon this book by a very popular American New Testament scholar, an authority on New Testament Dr.Hart D Ehrman.


The more I read the history of Bible, I wondered is there a Bible out there with minimal translation errors and without any extra addition (deletion) by the copyist?

Which Bible is very much closer to the original script?

I want to focus on the New Testament where I learned more of the alternation happened than in the Torah or Old Testament.
How can we know the New Testament was translated reliably?

After going through so many papers published by Biblical Scholars, I found some of them are very interesting which I want to share with you. This blog doesn’t have the scope of covering the whole history of these alternations, additions or harmonizing the verses from the original manuscripts. I just was exposing a few to you, for a reading.

Like I read somewhere, the battles over the "right" interpretation are, an ongoing battle within the Churches, of course, it is as old as the Bible itself.

Warning: If you believe the Christian Bible is the infallible and unerring word of God then probably the below materials is not for you. Perhaps you would be better to stick to just watching the TV evangelists.
If, on the other hand, you are seeker of evidence and a rational thinker then the below writings is a great interest to know. I did a wide research on the below subject, reading highly acclaimed, world well known Biblical Scholars. It took almost a year to get enough information to draft. Honestly I am not done yet. Long way to go!

                                                                                                                                                           Chapter 2

What is NOT in manuscript but you find in current edition of Bible?

"It is certain that the New Testament was not written by Christ himself, nor by his apostles, but a long while after them, by some unknown persons, who, lest they should not be credited when they wrote of affairs they were little acquainted with, ..." "Many things have been inserted by our ancestors in the speeches of our Lord which, though put forth under his name, agree not with his faith; especially since--as already it has been often proved--these things were written not by Christ, nor [by] his apostles, but a long while after their assumption, by I know not what sort of half Jews, not even agreeing with themselves, who made up their tale out of reports and opinions merely, and yet, fathering the whole upon the names of the apostles of the Lord or on those who were supposed to follow the apostles, they maliciously pretended that they had written their lies and conceits according to them."

St. Faustus, Fifth--Century French Bishop

I think every true Christian should know the History behind the New Testament.

One simple historical fact is, Jesus, who himself a Palestinian Jew, lived like Jew who kept Jewish customs, himself a Jewish Rabbi (teacher) preached to his Jewish compatriots who accepted the authority of Torah, and taught his Jewish disciples the true meaning of the Jewish law. He read and believed that God's will could be found in the sacred texts, especially the Law of Moses.
His followers were, from the beginning Jews who placed a high premium on the books of their tradition.


But down the century, we lost the importance of knowing the history - the history in which Jesus lived, the geographical history of Christianity and more importantly the history of the first Church(es), history of rivalry among the groups under Jesus disciples and the later formation of different Churches. I believe, most of the denominations will disappear if the real truth comes out of the Christian History after Jesus death.

Any fanaticism if at all exist among the Christian Churches, that will evaporate.

First we have to understand how these  alternations, additions, and deletions happened? Is it intentional or just mere ignorance? What influenced made all these changes happened?

For example, if the Gospel of Mark was first penned in 50 A.D., a second century manuscript will be more reliable than a fifth century manuscript because the latter has had an additional three hundred years for copying errors and intentional alterations.

No original copy of any New Testament book exists.

Like Dr.Ehrman mentioned in his book that not only do we not have the originals, we don't have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. In most instances, they are copies made many centuries later. And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places.

When the originals were first made available, they surfaced and found a niche in one or another of the growing Nazarene or Christian communities around the Mediterranean. Matthew's original was probably the one called "Gospel of the Hebrews," because it was used extensively by the Nazarenes who were called Jewish Christians by those under Hellenistic or Roman culture and influence.

Anyone within these ancient enclaves who desired a copy of these texts, whether for private or community use, was compelled to create a copy laboriously by hand, letter by letter, or to have another do it for them. Many of the notes and marginal comments of these older texts were written into the main body of the new manuscript, obscuring the original wording.Sometimes whole passages were left out or purposely altered to fit a changing doctrinal attitude.

Over the course of time the originals were lost, worn out, or purposely destroyed for a variety of reasons. The Nazarene, or "Jewish Christians," had a motivation to keep the original tradition inviolate and pure. All other groups, including the ones who became dominant and orthodox, had a stake in changing the original gospel and its texts to suit their own urbanized culture and different Romanized view of things. They did not appreciate the existence of the "Jewish Christians" and their more original texts and practices. In fact, they went to great lengths not only discredit them and their eye witness accounts, but even went so far as to successfully legislate their destruction in the fourth century. Many resurfacing manuscripts, such as the Nag Hammadi library, may have been buried as a result of these persecution and book burning campaigns of the fourth century.

The selected manuscripts that survived these factional wars are not accurate copies of the original manuscripts, but rather are altered copies made from the copies of the copies of the originals.

Thousands of these subsequent copies, dating from the 2nd to the 16th centuries, exist in various fragments. It is difficult to discern what the Nazarene originals once said because all of these surviving copies are too distant from the originals and differ from one another, sometimes quite significantly. Many of these differences bear eloquent testimony to a systematic alteration of the original teachings, culture and doctrines of the Nazarene Messiah. The resulting New Testament still has great value, but its doctrines, especially where they differ from known Nazarene beliefs, should be viewed with a degree of skepticism. This is especially true in the areas known to have suffered the most tampering.

Chapter 3

The Greek Manuscripts
There exists about 5,487 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. 2,811 of these are in a form of writing, minuscule, which was not used before the ninth century. 2,279 of these Greek manuscripts are lectionaries, with only 30 of them dating before the ninth century. No two of the 5,487 manuscripts are identical, except for the tiniest fragments, and not one of these 5,487 manuscripts contains the same books and order of books as found in the modern New Testament.


The Codex Sinaiticus comes the closest, but it also contains the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas which are no longer considered scripture by Christians.

It is note worthy that the earlier New Testament manuscripts have different wording than later copies, and where that wording differs, it usually expresses some doctrine now considered heretical by that branch of Christianity that became orthodox and mainstream.


One scholar, in 'The Unauthorized Version', says of these P66 fragments:

"We have two early papyri which overlap across seventy verses of John's Gospel, and even if the plain errors of their copyists are excluded, they differ at no less than seventy small places.."

The early fourth century was a time when the Roman branch of Christianity gained almost total dominance over other rival branches, including the true remnants of original Nazarene "Christianity." They immediately began legislation and persecution against these rival philosophies and their manuscripts.

In an attempt to bring these groups and manuscripts in line with the new orthodox position, Pope Damasus I, the year 382, had Jerome begin revision & unification of Latin Bibles. In 384 Jerome presented Pope Damascus I with new Latin Gospels which became the Vulgate Latin Text recognized as the standard Western Christian Bible. Once in possession of this new "orthodox" bible, the orthodox church systematically eradicated all divergent texts and those who used them, creating the scarcity of first, second and third century source material which now plagues modern Essene scholarship.

Prof. Eberhard Nestle, an expert in original evangelical texts, comments on this situation in his Einf~hrung in die Textkritik des griechischen Testaments:

"Learned men, so called Correctors were, following the church meeting at Nicea 325 AD, selected by the church authorities to scrutinize the sacred texts and rewrite them in order to correct their meaning in accordance with the views which the church had just sanctioned."

The Danish professor of religious history, Detlef Nielsen, says further:

"We have to handle many, partly contradictory texts which were written in the time period of 50 - 150 AD. In the New Testament were no less than four evangelical texts included. One tried to bring about some kind of unity which was presented as an unadulterated, true narrative of the life and teachings of Jesus, complementing each other, and which together -- though apparently unsimilar -- formed the only true evangelical text. In order to bring the various passages in harmony of each other, they were subjected to a thorough revision. As a first measure one rewrote the evangelical handwritten manuscripts, disregarding parts which did not conform, and wrote comments to make them compatible with each other. One then took to the clerical art of interpretation in order to explain the contents in such a way that a unified evangelical text could be created."

One of the oldest evangelical texts is Mark, written by the interpreter of Peter in Rome. Papias is communicating this in his epistle to the presbyter, Johannes:

"Mark, the interpreter of Peter, recorded with great energy, if not with great accuracy, everything that he could remember had been told about Jesus. He himself had never seen the Master. He was just the interpreter of Peter, and could only retell what he had heard at various instances; not always had he got everything well explained to him and commented. One should therefore not reproach Mark ..."

Alphred Resch says:

"Probably many of these manuscripts were kept in old monasteries in the 4th century, like Codex Cantabrigeniensis D. and Codex Syrus Sinaiticus which both marvelously survived. At the time, 382 AD during the pope Damasos, the canonical texts were adopted and in this connection all old documents were destroyed."

Chapter 4

Like I mentioned earlier there are some historical difference within the current New Testament.

One of the scholars suggested we have to read the Bible horizontally, keep all the Gospels open and read and compare same time.

In Mark says that Jesus was crucified the day after the Passover meal was eaten (Mark 14:12, 15:25) and John says he died the day before it was eaten (John 19:14)or when Paul says that after he converted on the way to Damascus he did not go to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before (Gal.I:16-17), whereas the book of Acts says that that was the first thing he did after leaving Damascus (Acts 9:26)- may be these are genuine difference.

..................More to come

Anyone after reading my postings feel hurt and I offended their strong Christian beliefs, all I have to say -  Mea culpa, Mea culpa, Mea maxima culpa!

_______________________________________________________

" mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa *......'

 A prayer from the 16th century, the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite
 "Confíteor Deo omnipoténti et vobis, fratres,
  quia peccávi nimis cogitatióne, verbo, ópere et omissióne:
  mea culpa, mea culpa, mea máxima culpa...."
English Translation:
 "I confess to Omnipotent God, to Blessed Mary ever Virgin,
  to Blessed Michael the Archangel, to Blessed John the Baptist,
  to the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to all the angels and Saints,
  and to you Father: that I have sinned exceedingly in thought,
  word and deed: through my fault, through my fault,
  through my most grievous fault.."