How We Got Our Bible L9

Opening

Let's look at a, thank you brother, let's look at a couple verses here, John 16 and verse 13. How be it when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth. And so Christ promised that He would guide the church into truth and that they would continue in the truth after He was gone. Look at John 17, 17 and verse 17. And it's interesting to note that in the early days of Christianity, as it moved through different cultures, different philosophies, was received by different ethnicities and, some groups didn't have that much reverence for the actual words that were written. And so they would take a letter, they would take a Gospel, and they would edit it, and they would make it their own.

And that's why there's just a, just a smattering proliferation, really, of different manuscripts in the first couple centuries of corrupted Gospels and different readings. And, this, these few chapters right here are, are especially edited, because of the truth. And, because there's, there's a spirit that, that doesn't want to submit to the truth. He says in John 17, 17, Sanctify them through thy truth, then what's He say? Thy word is truth. Okay, quickly, look at 1 John chapter 4. 1 John chapter 4. So, the Lord promised that He would, through the apostles, through the prophets of the New Testament, whose office expired in the first century, He promised that He would deliver His people the truth, and it would be something that they could continue in.

In 1 John chapter 4, where He speaks much of discerning truth and error, because, of the heretical groups that sprang up alongside Christianity. Okay, so, heresy didn't come in two centuries after the apostles. Heresy was there from the very start, right? Christianity entered a world that lived in and with the spirits, right? Right? Much, much, much more aware and interested in the other dimensions, in the spirits, than our materialistic world. 1 John chapter 4, look what he says in verse, verse 16. And we have known and believed that God, the love that God hath to us, God is love. that's not it. Sorry, verse 6. We are of God, and he that knoweth God heareth us.

He that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of what? Spirit of truth. And so, right from the beginning, and we'll be talking about this. Right from the beginning, there was error, and there was, there was truth. And people needed something to judge the truth and judge the error by. look at 2 John. 2 John, in verse 4, he said this. He, he said, I rejoice greatly that I found thy children walking in, and what's he say? In truth. Look at 3 John. In significant little books toward the end of your New Testament, they say some pretty powerful things about the expectation to walk in truth, and the hope and the desire that they do walk in truth, and the, the, the, encouragement and exhortation to continue the satisfaction that they do.

3 John, look at verse 3, I rejoice greatly when the brethren came and testified the truth that is in thee, even as thou walkest in the truth. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth. He says in verse 8, we therefore ought to receive such as that we might be fellow helpers to the truth. And so, what, what were Christians to do? They were to know the truth. They were to discern the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Paul tells them in 1 John, he says that every spirit that confesseth not that Christ come, confesseth that Christ comes in the flesh is of God, confesseth not that Christ has come in the flesh.

He's not of God. This was to combat, that, that, the Gnosticism, which we'll talk about, that was prevalent in that era. the early Christian controversies, many of them centered around, they, they're called Christological controversies. They centered around the person of Christ, if he was God, right? And, and so John addresses that and Paul addresses it in Colossians. And so, they're, they're, look at the, what he says in verse 12, Demetrius hath a good report of all men and of the truth itself. And so, they, they're given something to measure heresy by, and that word, as we've already seen, is promised to continue. Now, where we left off last week was, we were talking about how, the, the age of the, of the existing manuscripts we have.

We, I think we talked a little bit about how most of them are gone. And we use the example of Tatian's diatesterin that was supposedly written around about 170 AD, which is very old. And all we had, all we knew about it was that many of the old writers said that it existed. And then, as time went on, we found out that what they wrote about it actually happened. That's a good thing to remember with history is that somebody wrote it down, don't just dismiss it. it's common to do that today among historians. But the record, written record is a very important thing and a powerful thing. Okay, and so there was a, a paucity of, of manuscripts, in the first couple centuries for a variety of reasons.

And I think that's where we left off. We talked about what happened to the originals, and this is where we left off last week. Okay, so what did happen to the originals? and, you got Antioch in the background there, which was the center of New Testament Christianity, in the book of Acts. And of course, number one, look at Colossians chapter four, Colossians chapter four. And this one's pretty simple. They wore out. Why? Well, they were made of papyrus. All right. let me see. I'll show you something here. This is papyrus. Okay. Now that's very old papyrus, right? But you can see that papyrus was made out of reeds, right? Dried and pressed and woven, right?

And you can see the plant material. You can see it fraying. Papyrus, when it was actually used, if it was used regularly, didn't last more than 50 years. Imagine, look at Colossians chapter four. Look at Colossians chapter four. And we'll look at some of this, but look at Colossians chapter four and verse 16. And when this epistle, Paul gives the Colossians, instructions. When this epistle is read among you, right? Cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans. And that you like, right? Wise read the epistle from Laodicea. So what did Paul say? Paul writes the Colossians a letter. And what's he say? Pass it along. All right.

Now, it's just like an old newspaper. when you preserve an old newspaper clipping of, whatever, your son's greatest basketball game or, your grandpa's write up that he donated to the lodge or whatever. Right? You put it in something plastic and you preserve it. But this is a letter getting passed around and it's made out of papyrus. So if papyrus was cared for, it could last maybe two, maybe 125 years. though the papyrus fragments that we have are almost all of them found in Egypt in most of the time in dumps. Right? Egypt is the driest climate in the world. Right? And so most places that paper is thrown away, it rots.

Right? We know that. We know that Egypt is an archaeologist's dream because of the low humidity. Right? We understand that. And so as a general rule, they just wore out. They wore out. And so you also see a Revelation one verse four. Paul wrote that first, that book of Revelation to seven churches. Now, I don't know if he had Thomas Jefferson's little doohickey thing where he could double his, his letters. But if that letter was passed around, it probably wore out pretty quick. Right? Paul wrote to the saints in Bithynia and all of Asia Minor. All right? Well, very simply, they were worn out. They were worn out. and, also, some, some were carelessly copied and so they were discarded.

The Lesson

We've already talked about that. Someone, very early on, not everybody was like it right from the get go. You have to imagine this, the, the, the, the, the Bible or letters, epistles ended up with people. They didn't all have the same degree of reverence for them. Early, you can imagine in early Christianity that they understood that the Old Testament was the word of God. But you could see how they would assume that Paul and Peter were more like commentators on the 39 books of the Old Testament. These guys are opening up the scriptures to us. Right? Meaning the Old Testament. Right? Now, I think very soon they understood that these men were God's men.

Very soon. But you can imagine that some places they didn't. Okay? And so, now, and this is very important to remember. in, there were more or less 10, persecutions sanctioned by the Roman emperors in the first two centuries of the church. one of the most severe was under Decius, but it was short from 249 to 251 AD. where Cyprian said the whole world is devastated. People were killed. Churches were burned. scriptures were burned. But the, the most systematic persecution of the church where there was an effort to literally snuff them out of the empire was under Diocletian in the early part of the fourth century. And, whole regions were wiped out of Christians.

And there, they actually made it a point to, take scriptures and destroy them. And so a large portion of those first two centuries of documents, they're just gone. They're just gone. They burned them. Of course, the Lord said that his word would not pass away. And we know that he didn't. Now, there's another thing that happened. And this was something that would be common in the days, when paper and parchment was hard to come by. Right? You didn't go down to Staples and buy a, a box paper. Books used to be super expensive. Right? And they, it was, it was a major investment to buy a book. All right. And so, and everything was hand copied.

Right? Some of those illuminated gospels that we find in museums from the middle ages, the early middle ages, which I'll show you pictures of, up, some of them took a year to produce one. It took such care with them. and so very valuable, very precious. Now, but so paper and parchment, excuse me, would be reused. parchment. Paul talks about parchments in Timothy. And Timothy parchment is essentially made of very thin animal skins, like goat skins. When it was very valuable, they called it vellum. And that was normally made from antelope. And, there's manuscripts written on vellum. Okay. But what they would do is they would reuse their parchment. So, for example here, this is, Ephraim E.

Rescriptus is what this is. Can anyone guess what that is? I mean, just like. Right? Here's. Here's, this is how they name stuff. Right? Then they call it this. They call it. See that? Right? Ephraim, obviously. Right? Rescript. Rewritten. Right? The actual term for it is called palimpsest. And it's where they blot out or wash out. They use a chemical to wash off the ink of that parchment and then write over it. Okay? So, one of the oldest manuscripts we actually have is Ephraim Rescriptus. It's from about 425 A.D., give or take. It's paleographically dated, which means they look at the writing style and tell you the dates. It's kind of subjective.

But, what they, what they did, if you look under here, you can see, you can see the new writing and then the old writing that they brought out with a chemical. Here's another, here's another picture right here. Right? And so, it was blotted, what they did is they brought it out with a chemical. See it back here? Right? And so, this is a, this is a commentary by Ephraim the Syrian. And, that someone did, oh, somewhere around 900 or 1000 A.D., right? And, and someone noticed something on it and applied a chemical and brought out that old writing behind it that was blotted out. That cool? All right. But, something to be said for that, which you have to ask yourself, right?

When you find a manuscript that has been blotted out and written over, you have to wonder the value of that manuscript. Why did they, why did they do that in the first place? They didn't even replace it with a Bible. Right? They replaced it with something else. Okay? But, they were written over. Why? Well, because they considered a copy fine. Right? They considered a copy of the original. You understand that you have in your lap a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. You understand that, right? So, everything that's written in your Bible, right, has an ancient witness somewhere. In other words, it showed up here because somewhere a long time ago, it was in a manuscript.

Right? You have evidence that it was there because it's here now. Copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. And so, this is another thing that happened to what we call the quote unquote originals. All right? Now, another thing is that they were replaced because of, and this is what we're going to talk about, corruptions and standardization. In other words, in the first couple centuries, there wasn't a standardized system of how they were going to copy and preserve the scriptures. The Bible was moving very fast. It was an oral gospel. A lot of people had, they had a full Old Testament, but only pieces of the New Testament.

Right? And as things began to be gathered, and everyone came to understand that, hey, this was an apostle. The spirit bears witness to that. They understood that there were 27 inspired books. Things began to be standardized. Then, from there on out, they knew what to copy and what to keep. But, in those first couple centuries, you had all sorts of groups that believed all sorts of things. And they did all sorts of mutilation of the Gospels. And this happened more in the first couple centuries than any other time in church history. And so, a lot of the early copies were simply thrown away. They were buried. They were thrown in the trash because someone had got a hold of them and changed them.

And we're going to talk about that. So, we're talking about what happened to the originals. Now, we ask the question, did the Lord, who promised to preserve his word, not account for the difficulties that his church would face? And we've already learned in the Old Testament that, of course, the Lord did. Right? And we have to, when we look at the scripture, we have to always understand, and we call this confessional theology. Alright? We start with this. God promised to preserve his word. That's where we start. We don't start with, maybe God's word is somewhere, and I'm going to apply some scientific method to find it. Right? You're done. Without faith, it's impossible to please him.

Right? The modern scholars call this confessional theology. In other words, you're an old school traditionalist, right? Blind faith type stuff. But if you don't have that, what are we even doing here? Right? And so, we always have to remember this. Okay. So, moving forward, what happened to the originals? And I've already showed you some of this. Okay? But, persecutions wiped out manuscripts in many cities in the third century. Right? Up to Diocletian. Burned them like crazy. Alright? And then, this area right here, this area where your Bible comes from, right? The Greek New Testament. Your New Testament comes from. This area right here maintained the Bible in Greek. And this whole part of the empire went Latin.

It all went Latin. Latin replaced Greek, and then Latin declined. And you have the European languages. Of course, we know that beginning in the 7th century, Islam takes over the bottom half of this map. Right? So, that also adds a lot of disruption. We might come back to that. But, okay. So, we're talking about what happened. Okay? It's made of reeds from the plant. We got that. It was used up to about the 7th century. Bible manuscripts were copied in papyrus. It began to be used less and less. Okay? But, it has a useful life expectancy of plus minus 100 years, which we already talked about. Okay? Then, when we talk about the next thing that was used, and this started to be used in the 4th century, was parchment.

This is Washingtonianus. This is actually in Washington D.C. And, most of these manuscripts, they don't keep them on permanent display because they don't want them a constant, they can't have them constantly exposed to light. Right? So, they'll bring them out for a certain time. Right? Then, they'll put them back. So, there's seasons when you can see this stuff. But, this is parchment made from animal skins. All right? This is four Gospels. It's dated to around 400 A.D., which is stinking old. That's old. All right? Here's another picture of it. Right? But, parchment can last for a long time if it's preserved in the right conditions. All right. Now, having said that, is God worried about the originals?

Yes. That's what we have to think about. Okay? What do I have here? Deuteronomy 17, 18. The King of Israel, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, he shall write him a copy of this law. What does it say? A what? A copy of this law. Right? The Lord, the Lord knew that this stuff was written on perishable material. So, what does he say? Make a copy. All right? And so, the king was to copy himself, write himself a copy, and then he was to trust it. Trust it. Jesus Christ affirmed the authority of the copies and called them scripture. Right? Jesus Christ wasn't looking at the originals when he went into the temple and said, this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.

All right? Remember this. God rewrote the originals that Moses broke. You think about that for a second. That even the Ten Commandments that were bouncing around in the Ark of the Covenant, right, were not even originals. Why? Because Moses broke the originals. The Lord said, I'll just make another one. All right? And so, all of the stress about where are the originals. Now, you have what God wants you to have. You have. And so, the Lord said, hew the tables of stone lighting to the first. Look, this is another good example here. Do you remember when the king, Jeremiah, Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah the word of God?

Right? Jeremiah wrote it down and gave it to the king. Right? And the Bible says when Jehudai had red three or four leaves, he, the king, cut it with the pen knife and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth until all the roll was consumed in the fire. Oh, excuse me. Where are we going here? That stinking clicker. All right? That's my fidget. It's my fidget thing. That's what it is. Right? What did the Lord tell Jeremiah to do? Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah after that the king had burned the roll, saying, this is all in Jeremiah 36. Take thee again another roll and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll.

But that's not all. Look at verse 32. Then took Jeremiah another roll and gave it to Baruch the scribe, who wrote therein from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the book which Jehoiakim, king of Judah, had burned in the fire. Then he says this, and there were added besides unto them many like words. So even the original book of Jeremiah, the second copy, was an improvement on the original. Right? All of the stress on, oh, we just got to find out what Paul really said. You have what Paul said. You have what Paul said. The Lord preserved it for you. He promised that he would preserve it for you.

And that's where you have to start. And now, okay. Now, what God actually said about his words. This is what God said about his words. The words of the Lord, Psalm 12, 6 and 7. The words of the Lord are pure words as silver tried in a furnace of earth. What's he say? Purified seven times. David said about it, thy word is very pure. Right? The Lord likens his word to essentially a crucible. Right? A clay furnace of earth where the ore is poured, the fire is put to it, and it's purified. Now, why would the word of God need to be purified? The word of God need to be purified because right from the beginning, there were satanic efforts to corrupt it.

Right? And so, obviously, we understand that we don't go in like Joseph Smith and add or subtract from the words of God. We understand that. We understand that God has the right to purify his own words. He did it with Jeremiah. Right? And so, every word of God is pure. He is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Alright? That Bible is called a living book. It liveth and abideth forever. Now, we need to understand this principle in this very... Go to Revelation. Go to Revelation chapter 12. This is a universal principle. It's all through the Bible. Right? This is what the scholar, this is what the amillennialist, this is what the humanist, this is what the materialistic philosopher, when he goes to determine the words of God, this is what he will not take into account.

He will not take into account, A, God's promise to supernaturally preserve his word, and B, the devil's active interest in destroying it. They think everything has to do just with human effort and human error. They don't see that the spirit of God lives and breathes in this book. And in the translations of his book. He has to have. Have you never felt the spirit when you read his word? You read it in Greek? Right? This is a living book. Hallelujah. Amen. And now, what's he say? Revelation chapter 12, right? Revelation chapter 12, verse 1. There appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, the moon under his feet.

We know this to be Israel. And upon her head a crown of 12 stars. And she being with child, but we know it's also a type of Christ. She being with child cried, and travailing in birth, pain to be delivered. Okay? So here's a woman about to bring forth a very special child. Like the Bible says, he's to rule all nations with a rod of iron. Right? So God is doing, this is a special woman. She's clothed with the moon and the stars about her head. Right? And she's bringing forth a very special man child. So what do you think happens next? Verse 3. And there appeared another wonder in heaven.

And behold, a great red dragon. Who's that? That's the devil, right? Leviathan, right? The serpent, right? And having seven heads and ten horns. Verse 4. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, did cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman that was ready to be delivered for to devour her child as soon as it was born. Get it. God puts Adam and Eve in a garden. It's a perfect garden. And he walks and talks with them. And what happens in Genesis 3? Who shows up? Satan. Right? Every time the Lord, every time the Lord, listen, Joseph is born, right? The birthright.

Joseph, right, is born. Devil tries to get rid of him. We understand. Every time God does something, the devil's right there. Right? Jesus Christ is born in Bethlehem of Judea, right? What happens? Herod, full of the devil, goes and kills every baby two and under, trying to get rid. We know what he was doing, but we know what the devil was doing through him. We know that a woman great with child has to saddle a donkey and travel across that plateau, right? Right before she's getting ready to have a baby. Right? I don't understand what's going on here. Then came Amalek, the Bible says. As soon as Israel has a victory, or as soon as God blesses them, then came Amalek.

Right? So we should not be surprised that as soon as the New Testament was given through the apostles, that there would be efforts to corrupt it. Right from the beginning, because this happens over and over and over again. Does that make sense? Right? Jesus Christ shows up. Right? He's baptized. Starts his earthly ministry. Heaven opens. This is my beloved son whom I'm well pleased. What's the next thing that happens? Goes into the wilderness and he's tempted by the devil. Three times. Right? The devil is always trying to interrupt. He's always trying to throw a monkey wrench in the work of God. The same thing happened in the church. Okay? And so, men corrupt the words of God.

And they do it. Look at 2 Corinthians chapter 2. 2 Corinthians chapter 2. When did this start? Almost immediately. It already started in Paul's day. And we have plenty of historical evidence for it. All right? You got a picture there of Marcion. Marcion the heretic. You see when he lived and died. Right? So, John was still alive when Marcion was born. 85 AD. Right? Died around 160, they think. All right? He was in Italy. And he is known to have taken copies of the gospel and edited them for his benefit and for his beliefs. Right? He didn't even hide it. Okay? So, right from the beginning, this started. Look what Paul says in 2 Corinthians, I think it is.

2 Corinthians. Did I say first or second? Okay. Chapter 2. Look at verse 17. Look what Paul says. We are not as many, which what? Which corrupt the word of God. Right? And we have many quotes of this. Jovinian. He was a Roman in the fourth century. He spoke of the corruption of Greek manuscripts in regards to asceticism and the monastic life and the perpetual virginity of Mary. He spoke out about this. So did Helvidius. Origen, Lucian, and Hysechius. Maybe I'll talk about some of these. They were all said in different parts of the Roman Empire to attempt their own revisions of the Bible in about 250 AD. Some of these guys were trying to ferret out the corruptions of Marcion, but other ones were trying to improve the Bible based on textual criticism, which was basically, I don't think he should have written it that way.

Right? You already had this. You had it going on very early. Very early. Now, and Paul warns about it. Right? You can see the verses. I put them up here. John said, for many deceivers are entered into the world who confess not that Jesus has come in the flesh. Paul said that all they which be in Asia be turned away from me. That's in his day, 60 AD. Right? Paul said that they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables. Very common in early Christianity to mix the Gospels with whatever your native religion was. Right? And if you are a Greek, you mixed it with Plato and Aristotle.

Right? If you were a Persian, you mixed it with Zoroastrianism. Right? And on and on we go. Okay? Paul says, after my departing shall grievous wolves entering and not sparing the flock. John talks about men who say they are apostles. Now, when we talk about the early corruption of the scriptures, there's three main ways that it was corrupted. Okay? Number one. And when I say corrupted, I say attempts to corrupt it. Your Bible is not corrupt. Right? So get what I'm saying here. Okay? I'm not saying, yeah, we're still trying to ascertain what the Bible says because it's been corrupted right from the beginning. That's what your neologians think today.

This is why men have now gone so far as to say that the church invented Christianity. Because of the variety and different readings that they find in manuscripts in the first couple centuries, they assume that Christianity was fabricated. Right? But what they're using for proof is they're using manuscripts that were known to have been corrupted. There was also a pure line. So keep in mind what I'm saying here. I'm not saying here that the church lost the truth. Okay? What I'm saying is that there were attempts to corrupt it. Right? Now, there's three groups. Heretics, Orthodox, and Critics. Those are the three main groups. Now, when we talk about heretics, we talk about people like Arius of Alexandria.

That's where we get the word Arianism. All right? John talks about this doctrine in his day. He says, every spirit that confesseth not that Christ is come in the flesh. All right? And in very simple terms, what is this? People could not conceive that something mortal, that something of this earth, could also be God. So they made up different ideas of how Christ was God. Maybe he was a lesser God. Maybe he was more like an angel. He didn't actually have flesh and blood. Right? On the cross, that was an apparition. That was just a miracle. Right? The blood and the water that came out. All these things to fit their idea that God cannot be manifest in the flesh because that's difficult to understand.

And the Bible calls it a mystery. How did God hunger? Do you understand that? No, I believe it. Right? But this is, Christianity came into a very philosophical world. Okay. So you had doctrines like this. Adoptionism. Christ was not the son from eternity, but was adopted by God at some point in his life. Okay? So at some point in his life, he was made the son of God. Before that, he was just a human. Right? Why? Made sense to them. Monarchism, which is today what we call Unitarianism. The Father alone is God and the Son and Holy Spirit are separate non-divine beings. We know that not to be so. Arianism is Christ is not fully divine, but is a created being.

Arianism took over much of the Eastern Church in the fourth century. Much of the church in the East was taken over by this guy's doctrine, including the emperor and a lot of the church fathers. They did not believe that Jesus Christ was God in eternity past. Apollinarianism, Jesus did not have a human mind or soul, but only a human body. They came up with everything to help them explain what the Bible calls the mystery of godliness. Okay? Then there were the Orthodox corruptions. Paul said this, Of your own self shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. All right? So all of these verses here, Paul talks about false brethren who came in privily despite our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus.

Peter said there shall be false teachers among you. Okay? So the other people that corrupt the scriptures were Orthodox. Now, for the most part, the Orthodox corrupted the scriptures not by changing them, but by allegorizing them. But there were some exceptions. All right? Why? Because two centuries after Christ, these doctrines started to creep in. The perpetual virginity of Mary, which Jerome here, a great Bible scholar as far as manuscripts and languages go, he was hardcore believing the perpetual virginity of Mary, argued for it. Baptismal regeneration, apostolic authority, allegorical prophecy, right? No literal return type of stuff. These things were creeping into the church, and sometimes they made their ways into some copies.

Okay? Then we, now here's an example. I'll give you an example here. This is Luke, go to Luke 23. Where are we at here? Luke 23. Okay? In other words, in the early days of Christianity, before the text was settled for everybody, they came across things that they didn't understand. Do you ever come across things in the Bible you don't understand? What are we supposed to do? Just believe it and keep reading. Right? It's God's word. We don't, I, none, nobody understands everything. Right? And so, and you hear this today all the time. I'm not trying to be, I'm trying to be kind here, but a guy will say, this text doesn't make sense and so it was probably translated wrong.

Or the translators messed it up here. There's an error in the Greek manuscripts. Because, he doesn't give God a chance to explain himself. Rather, he, he automatically assumes that there, that, that, that the, that the translators or God messed up in giving him the word of God. Very common. Right? It was common. It's common now. It was common back then. All right. So, and this is a very, for some reason, most of what we call variations in the early manuscripts center around the person and work of Jesus Christ. Which is very weird to me. To me, that's a spirit, Brother Newt. You know? When you mess with Christ's prayer in the garden, that's weird.

When you mess with Christ's sayings on the cross, when you mess with the words of the Last Supper, those, these are precious things. Precious things. When Jesus Christ said, talking to Nicodemus, that he was in heaven and on earth at the same time, John 3, 13, and you take out which is in heaven, just take it out. Right? It, it, most of these are around the person of Christ. And that is because of those early Arian and Gnostic ideas. Okay? they tried to reconcile their idea of what Christ was with the scripture. And some men had no qualms with making edits. Okay. Now, Luke, Luke 23. Are you following me?

Is this too heavy? Are you, are you getting it? Everybody understands, we all understand there's variant readings, right? Some of you have read a Bible or you have a Bible and it'll have a note there. And it will tell you, this is not found in some of the most ancient readings. Have you ever seen that? Right? or as I like to say, yea hath God said. Yea hath God said. And we're going to get to that. Right? We're going to have to spend a few weeks on this, but this is going to help. This is going to help us. Okay? We need to understand that corruption started very, very early.

Okay? where did I say go? Luke 23, 34. All right. Here's an example. Okay? Luke 23, 34. Okay. Then said Jesus. Right? Ha de Jesus elegen. Right? Then said Jesus. Right? Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Now that's, that's, have you ever heard a sermon on the seven sayings on the cross? That's one of the seven sayings. Without that saying, there's six sayings. Right? This saying is very precious because Stephen in the spirit of Christ said the same thing for the people that killed him. All right? Father, forgive them. Right? For they know not what they do. Right? This is the manuscripts, the old manuscripts that we don't find it in.

Right? And these are the old manuscripts that we find it in. And all I'm doing here is showing you that very early, these guys were looking at two different things. They were looking at two different things. So, P-75 is a papyrus fragment found in Egypt. Right? It's dated anywhere from 200 to 350. They want it to be early. They really want it to be early. And a lot of new research on it is showing they won't let them carbon date these things. They won't let them. Okay? Aleph is Sinaiticus. That's the famous manuscript dated to about 360 Aleph. It's the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It was found in St.

Closing

Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in the mid-19th century, supposedly. It is the most corrected manuscript we have in existence. And what I mean by that is they can see where someone wrote something and then later corrected themselves. Because either it didn't make sense or they were looking at a different copy. So, Aleph originally had this in there. And then the same scribe that wrote it originally went back and corrected himself and said, No, it's not in there. Father, forgive them for that. B, this is the famous vellum manuscript found in the Vatican Library that they kept for us. Thank you. It's dated to about 340. Doesn't have it in there.

Right? That's the most corrupt manuscript in existence. It has readings that you can't even believe. All right? About 400 A.D. Latin A. That's Vercelliensis, I think. 350 A.D. is the date. The Sinaitic Syriac, which is basically related to this one right here. All right. So, these are manuscripts. Now, from around the same time, we have manuscripts. Notice how none of these are super early because, like I said, they got worn out and burnt. Right? The existing manuscripts take us back to the 4th century. That's the 300s. That's about outside of a few papyrus fragments that are very generously dated. Okay. Alexandrinus, Aleph, right? This is Ephraim Rescriptus right here. All these Latin versions that come to this date.

The Pashido Syriac, which is the standard Bible of the Syrian church. There's probably 50 copies of this from the 4th and 5th centuries. Right? All of these retain it. All right? And I'm only showing you this to show that corruption happened very early. Okay? So, today you don't have this. Today you don't have this. In the Greek New Testaments that modern versions are translated from, they put Luke 23, 34 in brackets. Meaning, eh, our best manuscripts say it shouldn't be here. But they don't dare. They don't dare take it out of your Bible. Anybody's Bible. Most modern versions keep this in there. Not to get ahead of myself. Even though their two favorite manuscripts don't have it in there.

And one thing you need to know about this. They don't dare translate everything in their two favorite manuscripts. People would throw a fit. All right? That's one thing to remember. Okay? But, so, but what you see is you see a variation of readings. Okay? Right? Now, what about the writers in the early church? All right? Marcian actually wrote about it. The heretic. Tatian and his diatestrine. Justin Martyr. These are all the, outside of this one, these are all the dates of their death. Okay? Marcian died in 160. Justin Martyr in Palestine died 165. Hegesippius died in 180. Irenaeus in Gaul died 202. All of these guys, 24 of them actually, these are some of the early ones.

These guys all predate any of these manuscripts. Right? And they read that verse in Luke 23. Right? So they had a copy in front of them that had Luke 23. And they preached it. Right? But, when we go back, we find that some of the manuscripts don't have it. So, what does that tell you? It tells you that someone was messing with the Word of God. Right? And, be careful with the oldest and best argument. We'll talk about that more later. Be careful about that. But that's just an example. That's an example right there of how... Oh, good. I got it right here. Right? Variations in copies used by the church from 100 to 226 AD.

Okay? So, this is maybe oversimplified, but it's good. All right? The first two centuries after John had the most variations and corruptions. Then what happened is most of those were weeded out. They were weeded out, and the text became standardized. Right? In the Western church, it became the Latin Vulgate. And then in the Greek church, it became what we call the Textus Receptus. In the Syrian church, it became what we call the Peshitta, or the Received Syriac. Okay? So, that's why when you get past this era right here, you have a more standardized text, and they tend to... All the manuscripts that we have tend to agree with each other.

Right? We don't have a variation again until the modern era when some of these were dug up and reinserted. Right? Because they're considered the oldest and the best. All right? Now... But that's what happened. We call this era the era of corruption. This is the reading... This is the reasons for the... Here's another example. This is Luke 2.14. To men of goodwill or goodwill towards men. All right? Right? In the early centuries, you have both... You have both readings. Right? Then, as time went on, the blue represents to men of goodwill. Right? Peace on earth to men of goodwill or peace on earth to goodwill toward men. Right? Two different readings.

All right? As time went on, this disappeared in most traditions. Right? And it just became this reading right here. The point is, we're in the era of corruption right now. That's where we're at. What did Paul say? Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men. Oh, Timothy, keep that which is committed that I trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so called. Okay. I think that we're going to leave it right there because it's... We got... It's... It's 1025. Yeah. So we'll get into some of this other stuff next week. All right. Or two weeks from now, right?

Two weeks from now. We're going to Mexico tomorrow. Okay. God bless you. You are dismissed.