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 Half of New Testament forged, Bible scholar saysBy John Blake, CNN (CNN) - A frail man sits in chains inside a dank, cold prison cell. He has escaped death before but now realizes that his execution is drawing near. “I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come,” the man –the Apostle Paul - says in the Bible's 2 Timothy. “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.” The passage is one of the most dramatic scenes in the New Testament. Paul, the most prolific New Testament author, is saying goodbye from a Roman prison cell before being beheaded. His goodbye veers from loneliness to defiance and, finally, to joy. There’s one just one problem - Paul didn’t write those words. In fact, virtually half the New Testament was written by impostors taking on the names of apostles like Paul. At least according to Bart D. Ehrman, a renowned biblical scholar, who makes the charges in his new book “Forged.” “There were a lot of people in the ancient world who thought that lying could serve a greater good,” says Ehrman, an expert on ancient biblical manuscripts.In “Forged,” Ehrman claims that: * At least 11 of the 27 New Testament books are forgeries. * The New Testament books attributed to Jesus’ disciples could not have been written by them because they were illiterate. * Many of the New Testament’s forgeries were manufactured by early Christian leaders trying to settle theological feuds. Were Jesus’ disciples ‘illiterate peasants?' Ehrman’s book, like many of his previous ones, is already generating backlash. Ben Witherington, a New Testament scholar, has written a lengthy online critique of “Forged.” Witherington calls Ehrman’s book “Gullible Travels, for it reveals over and over again the willingness of people to believe even outrageous things.” All of the New Testament books, with the exception of 2 Peter, can be traced back to a very small group of literate Christians, some of whom were eyewitnesses to the lives of Jesus and Paul, Witherington says. “Forged” also underestimates the considerable role scribes played in transcribing documents during the earliest days of Christianity, Witherington says. Even if Paul didn’t write the second book of Timothy, he would have dictated it to a scribe for posterity, he says. “When you have a trusted colleague or co-worker who knows the mind of Paul, there was no problem in antiquity with that trusted co-worker hearing Paul’s last testimony in prison,” he says. “This is not forgery. This is the last will and testament of someone who is dying.” Ehrman doesn’t confine his critique to Paul’s letters. He challenges the authenticity of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John. He says that none were written by Jesus' disciplies, citing two reasons. He says none of the earliest gospels revealed the names of its authors, and that their current names were later added by scribes. Ehrman also says that two of Jesus’ original disciples, John and Peter, could not have written the books attributed to them in the New Testament because they were illiterate. “According to Acts 4:13, both Peter and his companion John, also a fisherman, were agrammatoi, a Greek word that literally means ‘unlettered,’ that is, ‘illiterate,’ ’’ he writes. Will the real Paul stand up? Ehrman reserves most of his scrutiny for the writings of Paul, which make up the bulk of the New Testament. He says that only about half of the New Testament letters attributed to Paul – 7 of 13 - were actually written by him. Paul's remaining books are forgeries, Ehrman says. His proof: inconsistencies in the language, choice of words and blatant contradiction in doctrine. For example, Ehrman says the book of Ephesians doesn’t conform to Paul’s distinctive Greek writing style. He says Paul wrote in short, pointed sentences while Ephesians is full of long Greek sentences (the opening sentence of thanksgiving in Ephesians unfurls a sentence that winds through 12 verses, he says). “There’s nothing wrong with extremely long sentences in Greek; it just isn’t the way Paul wrote. It’s like Mark Twain and William Faulkner; they both wrote correctly, but you would never mistake the one for the other,” Ehrman writes. The scholar also points to a famous passage in 1 Corinthians in which Paul is recorded as saying that women should be “silent” in churches and that “if they wish to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home.” Only three chapters earlier, in the same book, Paul is urging women who pray and prophesy in church to cover their heads with veils, Ehrman says: “If they were allowed to speak in chapter 11, how could they be told not to speak in chapter 14?” Why people forged Forgers often did their work because they were trying to settle early church disputes, Ehrman says. The early church was embroiled in conflict - people argued over the treatment of women, leadership and relations between masters and slaves, he says. “There was competition among different groups of Christians about what to believe and each of these groups wanted to have authority to back up their views,” he says. “If you were a nobody, you wouldn’t sign your own name to your treatise. You would sign Peter or John.” So people claiming to be Peter and John - and all sorts of people who claimed to know Jesus - went into publishing overdrive. Ehrman estimates that there were about 100 forgeries created in the name of Jesus’ inner-circle during the first four centuries of the church. Witherington concedes that fabrications and forgeries floated around the earliest Christian communities. But he doesn’t accept the notion that Peter, for example, could not have been literate because he was a fisherman. “Fisherman had to do business. Guess what? That involves writing, contracts and signed documents,” he said in an interview. Witherington says people will gravitate toward Ehrman’s work because the media loves sensationalism. “We live in a Jesus-haunted culture that’s biblically illiterate,” he says. “Almost anything can pass for historical information… A book liked ‘Forged’ can unsettle people who have no third or fourth opinions to draw upon.” Ehrman, of course, has another point of view. “Forged” will help people accept something that it took him a long time to accept, says the author, a former fundamentalist who is now an agnostic. The New Testament wasn’t written by the finger of God, he says – it has human fingerprints all over its pages. “I’m not saying people should throw it out or it’s not theologically fruitful,” Ehrman says. “I’m saying that by realizing it contains so many forgeries, it shows that it’s a very human book, down to the fact that some authors lied about who they were.” soundoff (2,165 Responses)« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39Post a comment
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Christ’s take; Stop ministering lies about my Father’s Word!
In the previous letter I mentioned that the church I attended back in 1997 received a visitation from God, and that during that visitation I witnessed the Crucifixion Isaiah saw in his day. Several times over a three month period beginning late February 1997, a prophecy was spoken unto the church. It came forth out of the wife of one of the board members of the church. The prophetic message said, ‘Pray for John, I am going to raise him up’. Outside the church, numerous prophecies were spoken unto me by the same lady; those prophecies testified of a new House that Christ said He was going to build, they testified of God’s anger towards the pastors, preachers, and teachers who minister His Word, they testified of seven sins that God saw in the hearts of those who minister His Word; greed, pride, control, unbelief, indecision, deception and jealously, and they testified that God called many but when they attained money and power through God they forsook God. When I began receiving those prophetic messages that I believed in my spirit were of God through His Son, the word of the Lord came unto me saying, ‘View each message being spoken unto you as a piece of a puzzle. Don’t seek for understanding in them at this time because I have not yet given you the knowledge of that which I have spoken unto you’. The last prophecy spoke unto me was this ‘I will no longer speak unto you through prophecy; I have given you all the pieces of the puzzle that I needed to give you. I have revealed unto you my Father’s plan; it’s time for you to seek my face to hear what my Spirit is saying in my Father’s Word’.
When the prophecy came forth to pray for John that God was going to raise him up, the pastor and congregation began praying for a man in the congregation who was ill at the time; this man was injured in a car accident many years earlier that left him paralyzed from the waist down. Based upon that prophecy, the pastor and congregation believed that this man was going to receive a divine healing and walk. While I would like to have seen a miracle like this appears, there was a conflict in my spirit about this prophecy. I believed in my spirit that the prophecy was of God, but didn’t believe in my heart that John was going to walk. The contradiction between what I felt in my spirit and what I believed in my heart left me believing that the church’s prayers unto God to raise John out of his wheelchair were vain. On the way home from church that Sunday evening, after partaking in the prayer for John that I didn’t believe God was going to answer, I told God that I felt the situation that took place in church that evening was silly. Early the following morning I received a phone call telling me that my stepson had been taken to the hospital; that he woke up in the middle of the night paralyzed down one half of his body. That was an awakening moment for me! Before going to the hospital I sought God to heal my stepson. The response I got back was this ‘the lad is in no pain. I took him down because you are not taking seriously that which I have spoken unto you. When you take seriously that which I have spoken unto thee I will bring the lad up’. Six weeks later my stepson walked out of the hospital and to this very day there is no evidence of Multiple Sclerosis which is what the hospital speculated may have happened.
The lady who prophesied in the church, and unto me, joined the church two years prior to God’s visitation. I began attending that church in 1991. When she joined the church God set it upon my spirit that He was going to reveal something unto me through her that would give me understanding in His purpose for the revelation He had given me in His Son between 1964 and 1971. I was a prisoner of the Cross for nearly twenty-seven years in the sense that the doctrines of the church I attended between 1964 and 1971 did not bear witness of the revelation I received from God in His Son during those years. Neither did the doctrines I received between 1991 and 1997 bear witness of Christ. I sought God many times to reveal unto me His purpose for the revelation He had given me in His Son because I couldn’t understand why the doctrines of the church did not bear the knowledge He had given me in His Son. God answered my supplication during His visitation. The Crucifixion I witnessed of God’s Spirit opened my understanding in the sins my pastor committed against God, and through that knowledge God delivered me from the bondage brought upon me between 1964 and 1971 through religious doctrines that did not bear witness to what God had revealed unto me during those years.
In May of 1997 I left the church and gave my heart unto seeking God for understanding in all the prophecies that I had heard and all the things I witnessed in the church during His visitation. A couple of weeks before I left, the word of the Lord came unto me saying, ‘When John goes up the pastor will go down’. My pastor’s lack of understanding in God’s Spirit was exposed in several closed door meeting between himself, the board members of the church, the lady through whom the Lord spoke, and me. Several of the prophecies spoken unto me were delivered unto the pastor through the mouth of the husband of the lady through whom the Lord spoke unto me through prophecy. The pastor mocked Christ through Sermons he preached on the premise of the prophecies spoken unto me. When he preached his understanding of the prophecies that testified Christ was going to build a new House he deceived the congregation by claiming that God had told him to build a new church. Several members of the church gave financial support for that project; one of the board members gave his entire saving which was never returned when the church was not built. The church was never built. When the Lord sent me before the pastor in a closed door meetings to ask him why he deceived the congregation he became extremely angry with me. That was not the only time the Lord sent me before the pastor, He took me before him a total of nine times; his anger towards me multiplied exceedingly.
A couple of days prior to hearing the prophecy that testified God saw seven sins in the heart of the priesthood, God had given me a vision of a heart that had seven things that looked like spikes sticking out of it. Two on the top on the right side of arch, two on the top of the left side of the arch, one on either side, and one out the bottom. When I heard the prophecy, I understood what I had seen. The day after the prophecy was spoken unto me, the husband of the lady through whom the prophecy was spoken ran into the pastor at the post office. When he got home he told his wife that the pastor had told him God had shown him that he had seven sins in his heart. There was no mistake that God’s Spirit was moving in the church; He spoke to several members of the church through signs, wonders, dreams and visions. The problem was the shepherd leading the flock did not know God’s Spirit therefore his theologies were based upon his own understanding which ultimately created a circus in the church. When he saw the problem he had created he didn’t know how to handle it, so he called in the head of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada to clean up his mess. Two of the board who believed it was God’s Spirit moving in the church along with the pastor, met with the head of the POAC who dismissed the matter; fired the board members and left the pastor to continue in the church to this day.
God’s request unto the pastor and the congregation to seek Him in prayer to raise up John has been a fervent prayer of mine for seventeen years. The Book of Revelation is addressed unto the leaders of the churches. The revelations recorded in the book were given unto John by God through Christ who spoke unto the churches in the first three chapters of the book calling them to repent of their sins. The knowledge revealing what God’s Spirit is saying in the Book of Revelation bears the Testimony of Christ that God gave unto me between 1964 and 1971, and the revelation of the prophecies that His Son spoke unto me in 1997 was the foundation God laid upon which He opened my understanding in His Word.
Today we are living in an era of self-fulfilled prophesies of the Book of Revelation. We are in a terrible mess! Everyone needs to pray to God to raise up John because when Christ fulfills on earth the testimony written in the Book of Revelation He will deliver God’s people out of the hard bondage brought upon them by wrongful translations of the book brought forth by those who claim to be God’s servants.
Revelations 20:12. And I saw the dead small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is called the book of life: and the dead were judged out of things which were written in the books, according to their works.
The dead small and great testify of the patriarchs, the major and minor Prophets, the disciples and Paul. The books they wrote are going to be opened which means God is going to bringing forth the knowledge of books called His Word. For the time is come that judgement must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And IF THE RIGHTEOUS SCARCELY BE SAVED, WHERE SHALL THE UNGODLY AND THE SINNER APPEAR?, 1 Peter 4:17 and 18.
The churches theology that God keeps a set a books of all our deeds on earth and then judges us when are dead is absolutely insane. God’s House is a Divine House made without hands and is manifested through the truth the His Word revealed unto man through God’s Spirit by way of Christ Jesus. The scriptures testify that judgement begins at the House of the Lord. Peter understood the House of God dwelt within him through the knowledge he received from God through Christ by way of God’s Spirit, and that God was going to judge his works according to the knowledge He gave him through His Son. The Book of Life is Christ; his truths of His Father’s Word will reveal the books written by the prophets, the disciples and Paul. If the righteous who wrote the books are going to be judged when He returns what will be the judgement upon those who brought forth a false testimony of the books?
Genesis 1:8 and 9 testifies that God parted the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and that God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas. God called the firmament Heaven. God is a Spirit revealed by His Word which is the waters above the firmament. The waters below the firmament testifies of the gods of man’s imagery. God parted the waters above the firmament from the waters below the firmament by revealing unto man the bondage caused by the foolishness of their imagery. Through delivering man out of their state of darkness (bondage) God revealed himself unto man and he called that union of the two waters Seas. The dry land he called earth testifies of man’s carnal state.
In Revelation 20:13 the scripture testify the Sea gave up the dead. The Sea is God’s Word; the dead speaks of ministers who have no understanding in God’s Word. The truth of God’s Word gives up the dead through revealing those who minister His Word have no understanding in His Word. Death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. Job 38:12 to 17: Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place. That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it? It is turned as clay to the seal; and they stand as a garment. And from the wicked their light is withholden, and the high arm shall be broken. Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? Or hast thou walked in search of the depth? Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? Or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death? There is a way that seemeth right unto a man; but the end thereof are the ways of death, Proverbs 16:25. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace, Romans 8:6. In these scriptures death speaks of a man’s spiritual state. Hell isn’t a fire beneath the earth. We are living in it through man being partakers of self-fulfilled prophecies. Look at what the churches theology of God’s Word has brought in the world, especially throughout the Middle East. The scriptures testify the dead are going to be cast into the lake of fire, testifying God is going to cause the dead to reap what they have sown. In Matthew 16:16 Christ said He would build His church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. His church is the Spiritual House of God that dwelt within the patriarchs, the prophets, the disciples and Paul through the knowledge they received from God by way of His Spirit; and that knowledge bore the Testimony of His Son who is the True and Living Temple of God.
There will be many, both inside and outside the church who will perceive this letter as an attack upon the church. Be not ye one of them. Think ye not that God knew the day He called man to be ministers unto Him that man who defiled His House? Yea, He spoke of it often in His Word. What saith the scriptures, many were called, few were chosen. Be ye not judges lest ye be judged; God is Judge over both the righteous and the unrighteous. In these latter days praise God for the truth of His Word; Seek ye Christ, and work out your salvation with fear and trembling for none shall escape God’s judgement not even the atheist, the scriptures testify every knee shall bow before God.
Being a minister unto God means seeking Him for understanding in His Word, and bringing that knowledge forth. I have made many sacrifices in my life unto God and have suffered many trials and tribulation in search of the wealth of God’s Kingdom which is the knowledge God gave me by way of His Son through His Spirit. When a man giveth his heart unto God he receiveth great wealth, the man’s desire is that God giveth unto His people that which has been given unto him for he knoweth that the richness of God is His Son, who giveth unto man the peace of God through which man prospers in the earth. The wealth that God has freely given unto me is freely being given unto you on the website God commanded me to build. I have never used God’s Word to financially prosper off of nor will that day come. The free will offering on the site is there because God instructed me to put it there and I will surely take the offerings of God’s people before God and do that which God’s commands of me. Your decision of whether or not to make that offering is between you and God. Your decision will not prevent you from freely receiving that which has been freely given unto me. Foreknowing that many will steal God’s Word from the website and try to financially prosper off His Word I ask that ye be watchful and not be taken by deceivers. Know this; there will be no marketing of God’s Word made by me in any form. I am not a merchant; I am a servant.
A few months after I received God’s call, which was in February 1997, a violent storm with high winds and heavy rainfall struck the community where I live. When I looked out my window I was surprised at what I saw. Garbage cans and several other items people keep outside their homes were being tossed around by the winds as though they were feathers. While thinking about what I was seeing, which was something unusual for my area, the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying, I am changing the weather. How does one relate to that? Quite simply I couldn’t. A few days later another storm arose. When I looked out my window I saw three small tornadoes coming from the east. They touched down before reaching the little village where I lived causing minor damage. Later that evening the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying, What meaneth these three tornadoes? I was shocked, then replied, Lord I don’t know, how could I. These three tornadoes saith the Lord, represent the Father, the Son and the Word, and when they make landfall there will be great destruction in the earth, but fear not that day, for that day must need come. From that day to this the weather has drastically changed; tornadoes bearing strong winds, heavy rainfall and hail are common occurrences of our times. And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail, Revelation 11:19.
Shortly after God’s call, God set it upon my heart to pay attention to the President of the United States. When President George Bush Junior was elected President of the United Sates I wept. I felt in my spirit that he was going to do something that would wreak havoc in the earth, what I knew not. When he commanded a military strike on Iraq I felt in my heart that his decision was based upon his religious beliefs which he has recently acknowledged through saying he was on a mission from God when he launched the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. When he took that stand he did not open the door for peace; he closed it, and today we have a Muslim religious regime who believes it is their duty unto God to fulfill the philosophies of a book written by a man who was as misguided in his religious beliefs as was/is President George Bush junior. Today, there are four candidates in the race to become the next President of the United States. Whoever sits in that seat in November will experience the strong hand of God. I believe that President Barrack Obama is the most likely of all the candidates to seek after the truth and righteousness of God.
Ariel
Web-site address: http://www.theresurrection.ca
E-mail address: info@theresrrection.ca
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Everyone is missing the bigger picture. It's not that the disciples were illiterate that is surprising, or that it's mostly forged, or that there are plain inconsistencies that cannot be denied that are eyebrow raising. No, the bigger missed point is that the alleged Son Of God was also apparently illiterate, because he never wrote a darned thing down. You'd think that the Son Of God would know what mankind was like, and therefore would have passed on a permanent written tome right when he was there, instead of relying on hand-me-down stories 100 years after the fact. That, right there, tells me it's all total crap. It makes no sense, and no apologetic can rationalize that one glaring fact.
What about the other half of the new testament? Isn't that forged too?
The Koran was created after the Bible was written, and after Buddhism and Hinduism had already existed for many centuries. The reference to the Angel Gabriel first appeared centuries before in the Old Testament.Moses appeared In the Old Testament centuries before. The Koran was a religion created after exposure to other sects and religions by merchants on the Silk Trade Route.
Where is the Gospel of Jesus Christ? And the Torah of Moses? All that the Christians have now is the new Testament and the old Testament, neither of which is the Gospel of Jesus nor the Torah of Moses, except for fragments of each. Bart Erhman is proving the fact that the Bible is a collection books that were written by anonymous writers who have been proven to be forgers. If you are honest and truthful in your quest for the inerrant word of God as revealed to Jesus and Moses it is preserved in the final Testament the Holy Quran.