How We Got Our Bible L9 PT2

Opening

1 Peter chapter 1, 1 Peter chapter 1, and we're going to look at continuing on this early era of Christianity, the first couple centuries after Christ, as we touched on the last lesson. The first couple centuries before the canon was established, there were a lot of heretical groups, believed a lot of different things, and they made no qualms about editing the Word of God. It was very common for these groups to take one particular gospel and kind of make it their own. the gospels, each one kind of has their own flavor, right? Matthew has a lot to do with the kingdom, John has to do with Christ being the Son of God.

They all kind of have a different narrative, a different theme, although they all talk about the same person, and they don't contradict each other, yet they're all from a little different angle. And so some of these Gnostic sects would adopt a particular gospel as their own and then make whatever edits they needed. And they didn't have the same reverence for the Word of God that Christ and the apostles showed toward it. And so we're in what we call from 100 to 300 A.D. in the transmission of Scripture, which means the passing along of the Scripture, the copying and translating of the Scripture down to us. We call it the era of corruption.

And in fact, most, if not all, almost all of the corruptions that entered into the biblical text happened in those first two or three centuries. And that's very important to know. Now, 1 Peter chapter 1, 1 Peter chapter 1 and verse 23, being born again, he says, not of corruptible seed, but of, what's the next word? Incorruptible by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. So Peter tells you a couple things about the Word of God. He tells you that it's alive, and he tells you that it abideth forever. So despite this, despite the efforts at corruption, and when you read the writers of this era, they talk about it.

They talk about different guys who were free, what they say, free with the text. Free with the text. So we're going to look at a little bit of this today, early corruptions of the Scriptures. Now, I think we talked about last lesson, there were three main groups that made an effort. And by the way, when I say the corruption of the Scriptures, I don't say that the Bible that you have is corrupted. I'm saying there were attempts to corrupt it. Does that make sense? I'm saying there were copies floating around that guys had messed with, but the church at large rejected them. Okay, so don't make me say, I'm not, this is not a church where you get up and the preacher says, I don't, this is the best we have.

Oh, a better rendering would be, oh, guys that spent their whole life translating Hebrew and Greek and Latin, they messed up on that one, because I have a word program on my computer, right? That kind of stuff. This isn't that kind of church. So don't misunderstand me, but there were attempts at corruptions. We showed you the verse last week where Paul said, we are not as many which corrupt the Word of God. And so there obviously were attempts to corrupt it. Of course, we know the first person to do that was Lucifer, right? Satan. Yea, hath God said. Did God really say it? Did God really mean what he said?

And so just to clarify that, there's three main groups. There's the heretics. Then there's the Orthodox. That would just be Christians who were just trying to make the Bible make more sense. And we hit one of those verses last week. Really quickly, look at Luke chapter 23. Before we get into this, I just wanted to sum up. I think last week I showed you that. Where was that? Was that in here somewhere? Yeah, this one right here, right? Luke 23, 34, right? Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. All right? That right there, which is in almost all your modern Bibles, but it was sliced out of some early copies.

All right? That right there. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. There it is in Greek. Okay. Why? Well, because it brought up a theological issue. Right? If God forgave Israel, why did he level Jerusalem and kick them out of the land in 70 AD, just a few years later? Right? And if God didn't forgive Israel for what they did, then Christ's prayer wasn't answered. So that brings up a theological conundrum. Right? Well, we understand that there's different types of forgiveness. We understand that sins can be forgiven, but not taken away. And Paul explains very clearly about Christ's prayer. Right? He said, had the princes of the world known what they were doing, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

What do you mean? Do you think those men didn't know they were killing an innocent man? They knew that. Peter calls them murderers. So they committed murder. What they didn't realize is they were crucifying the Lord of glory, God. How could you ever atone for the sin of killing God? Quote, unquote. Does that make sense? So God forgave that level of it. And that because just a few days later, on Acts chapter 2, Peter stands up at Pentecost and says, hey, the promise is to you. Come to Christ. Accept Christ. Right? And so God gave Israel another chance. So Christ's prayer was answered. Right? But if a person doesn't study, right, doesn't understand that, and that's always the modus operandi right there.

Is that if I don't understand the word of God, something must be wrong with it. No, something's wrong with you. Right? You just got to study. Okay? And so this was cut out. Now, and you can kind of see some of the manuscripts that it was cut out of. Right? But it was retained by these. And we already talked about that last week. But that's an example of what would be considered corruptions by the Orthodox. In other words, man, it just doesn't make sense. Maybe it shouldn't be there. Okay? But we don't handle the word of God that way. And thankfully, I think, I know it's in my Bible. Father, forgive them.

By the way, that would take Christ's sayings on the cross from seven to six. You ever heard a sermon on the seven sayings of the cross? Great. It's great, the things that Christ said on the cross. All right, so that's an example. So you have corruptions by heretics. You have corruptions by the Orthodox. And then you have corruptions by self-appointed critics, which we'll talk about in a second. Okay, so we'll get back to this here. Okay, so early corruption of the scriptures by heretics. And we were warned about this. John said, there are many deceivers entered into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

All right, this is what we call early Gnostic heresies. Right? And this is people that didn't believe that God could become flesh. And that is why most of the variant passages in scripture where you have manuscripts that say two different things, they're related to the person of Jesus Christ. And you have to wonder, you have to wonder when most of the variants in the old manuscripts are related to the person of Jesus Christ, what's going on? Right? What's going on? Why do you got to mess with the Lord's Prayer? Why do you got to mess with the resurrection? Why do you got to mess with the Lord's name? Right? But you'll see this.

You'll see this. And so, John warned about this. And it's a doctrine we call Gnosticism, which we'll talk about in a sec. This is one of the really early, and this is just to show you how early corruptions happened. And there's a lot of reasons to talk about this. First of all, it's history of your Bible. But second of all, just because you have an old manuscript that disagrees with the accepted, received text that has been passed down to us, doesn't mean it's legit. Because this guy was born, this guy was born 10 years before, or 15 years before John the Apostle died. Right? And Marcion was an Italian who was known to have corrupted the Scriptures.

He was known to have edited the Gospels. Paul says, well, we got all these verses, all these verses, and there's more. There's more warnings. The book of 1 John and the book of Colossians are your major books where both Paul and John addressed the heresy of Gnosticism. And these guys had no qualms messing with the Scripture. We could talk about just a few of these. Adoptionism was a doctor where Christ was not the son from eternity, but was adopted by God at some point in his life. And they taught that Jesus Christ became the son of God maybe at his baptism. This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.

The Lesson

Right? They just couldn't conceive of Christ being co-equal with God in eternity. Right? Well, I can't conceive of it either. What does that mean? It means nothing at all. He's God. You know? And so, but you understand, and I've talked about this, Christianity came into a very philosophical world. It came into a world that had to make sense of everything. Right? You're not going to make sense of God Almighty. Right? You receive him by faith. All right? Another teaching would be monarchianism. I think I spelled that wrong. I think it's monarchism. I don't know who did that. Who wrote that? What idiot? Who's my editor? Fire my editor. It's me.

All right? The Father alone is God, and the Son and the Holy Spirit are separate, non-divine beings. We call that Unitarianism today. All right? Then we have Arianism, which is old-fashioned Jehovah Witnesses. All right? Christ is not fully divine, but is a created being. He's not fully divine. Well, that's why the book of John is the most butchered book in those times. That's why they just mess with verse after verse after verse in the book of John. Okay? Arius, who was of Alexandria and fought or argued with a guy named Athanasius. All right? These guys were... This guy was... I think he was an elder. And so was a guy named Athanasius.

These guys argued over the doctrine of Jesus Christ, and it brought about the Council of Nicaea in 325, where the church got together and decided there's one God and three persons. Right? But this is the guy that really, really got it going, and he was, was a great debater. And all these guys back then were trained in rhetoric and philosophy, and they could really debate. If you read their stuff, it's like, wow. They're pretty sharp. But actually, even post-Nicaea, after the decision was made by the church at large, that God was manifest in three persons but was one God, and that they were co-equal, a lot of the Greek East got overtaken by this guy's...

I mean, huge sections of the Greek East. What would today be Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Palestine, that area, even Egypt. Just his doctrine went everywhere. And you can see that in some of those old manuscripts. Apollinarianism. Jesus did not have a human mind or soul, but only a human mind or body. These are all just attempts. I could read them. I mean, there's a hundred of them. They're all just attempts to explain something that... Look at 1 Timothy 3. Right? And I know I've said this before, but it's still true. There are things about God and His Word and the truth that we will never understand. It's just the way it is.

Right? We'll get it all in heaven, but this is why the Bible says this. And it's interesting the way... This is the other epistle that hits Gnosticism pretty hard. All right? But 1 Timothy 3, verse 16, and he's telling Timothy how to address the issues of his day. And he says, in verse 16, and without controversy. He says, what does that mean? It means there's no argument about this. No argument here. What's that? Great is the mystery of godliness. It's a great mystery. What's the mystery of godliness? God was manifest in the flesh. That's a mystery. You can't get that. You can't get a being that has existed from eternity past into eternity future with no beginning or no ending.

Can become human like you and I. Right? Manifest in the flesh. Right? We know. We know ourselves. How is that possible? That holy God can be human. It's a mystery. It's just a mystery. By the way, that verse was messed with. That verse right there. Right? Why? There's some copies. They don't say God was manifest in the flesh. They say he was manifest in the flesh. Right? That's an old corruption. Right? We know that. You know. Right? They wouldn't. They wouldn't argue that Christ was in the flesh. They would argue that God himself was in the flesh. But God was in the flesh. First John. Right? John 1.14. Right? The word who was God became what?

Flesh. Do you get it? No, I don't get it. I just believe it. Okay. So. So this type of stuff. Okay. You following me so far? Dude. All right. Speaking of Gnosticism. Here's some. Here's some other ones. Right? Now, Gnosticism is essentially this. It elevates knowledge. You can attain a secret knowledge. Or gnosis. Right? Comes from that Greek word. But the end result of the Gnostic philosophy. And it's essentially a merging of Christian doctrine. And what we call Neo or Middle Platonism. The revival of Plato. Plato in Alexandrian Egypt and the Greek world. Okay. And it essentially. If you could condense it down. It just means that everything physical has something wrong with it.

And is inherently evil. And that spirit is good. Spiritual is good. Okay. And so this is where you would get someone living in a monastery. Denying themselves any type of food or good drink or marriage. Right? And so. And this is where, of course, you would have a problem with God becoming flesh. And we'll talk a little bit more about it. But you have this stuff. Docetism. Christ did not have a real physical body. But only an apparent or an illusory one. Right? Valentinus, who was very early. He lived from 100 to 180 AD. All right? He said that the world was created by a series of emanations from the supreme being.

Salvation comes from knowledge. That's Gnosticism. Of the true nature of the universe. So basically they're arrogant, educated idiots. Okay. Marcionism. God of the Old Testament was different from the God of the New Testament. That's what Marcion taught. Marcion the heretic. He could not see a loving God and the Old Testament God being compatible. So he just made them two different gods. Okay? Moving on. Sethianism. He believed in a supreme God, Sophia, the Demiurge, and Gnosis is the path. That's very similar. Gnosis is very similar to some of the other ones I'm talking about. But I'll talk about that in a second. And then this guy, and this is another guy, Balacidianism, right?

And this was a guy named Balacidius, or Balacides. And he was a teacher in the early era. He was also known to have edited the Gospels for his own doctrine. All right? And he said that the material world was created by an evil Demiurge and that the goal of salvation was to escape from this world and return to the spiritual realm. Okay? What does that sound like? What's that? Sounds like Buddhism. Buddhism. Buddhism has been around for a long time. Right? All this is trying to make Christianity fit into an existing philosophical system. Right? Don't be too hard on them. We do the same thing. Yeah, we do. We'll make the Bible prove whatever we want to prove.

You know? You want to... Never mind. I'll be gone. If I start there, we're done. We're done. Lesson over. Okay? So, right? But the goal of salvation was to escape from this world and return to the spiritual realm. So you see it in Buddhism, but you also see it in monasticism. Right? Or, become a nun. Right? Take vows of celibacy. Keep going on and on and on. Okay. So this is the world into which Christianity came. And early Christianity was rife with this stuff. And that's why Paul and John and Peter talked so much about it. Okay? So, when we talk about Valentinus, right? We'll take an example here. Look at 1 John chapter 3.

And I'll give you an example of corruption in this era. And this is a bad one. And when I say that, I mean that it didn't continue very long. Because it was so bad. But if you see in 1 John chapter 1 and verse 1. And this is one of the great passages on the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Okay? In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was what? Verse 1. And the Word was what? Word was God. You guys there? Did I tell you where to go? Oh. Did I say 1 John? No. 1 John 1. John 1. What's it say up here?

John 1. Yeah, it's not 1 John. Don't go there. I mean, that's good. You can read that. But I won't be there. John 1. In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was what? God. Okay. So the Word's God. Now, who is that Word? Verse 14. The Word was made flesh. All right? So we know that. Jesus Christ, the Word in eternity, right? Was made flesh. Verse 2. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. Now, that's quite a verse. That's what He says in Colossians chapter 1, right?

He's the beginning of the creation of God. All things were made by Jesus Christ. In fact, it says, by Him all things consist. By who? By God? Yes. But He also accredits that to Jesus Christ. Right? So Colossians chapter 1 and Revelation chapter 1, He talks about these things. Okay. So, look what He says in verse 4. In Him was life. And the life was the light of men. So Jesus Christ had life in Himself. And He talks about that in the book of John. That Jesus Christ had the ability to give life. Because life was in Himself. That's why you couldn't keep Him dead. That's why He had to lay His own life down.

No man takes my life from me. I have power to lay it down. I have power to raise it up again. This commandment I have received in my Father. Right? We get that stuff. So, this passage, and especially the book of John, right? Emphasizes the deity, right? Of Jesus Christ. We get that. So, it's picked apart by the Gnostics. And this one is actually traced to this guy, right? And to his followers. And they did all sorts of stuff with this passage. Because they believe that Jesus Christ was an emanation from the Supreme Being. They don't believe that He was, that He created all things. That He was a secondary creation.

Okay. So, I've got the received text up here, right? Got it in Greek. And I've got it highlighted right here, where He says all things were made by Him. Without Him was not anything made that was made. And see that? Again on the end, right there? That means to generate or make. There's a form of it right there. There's a form of it right there. There's a form of it right there. Right? It's like... It's... Again, yeah. Again, yeah, I got it. Right? This is an N-O-N-E. This is a G. This is an E. Right? Beginning. Right there. Right? So, see this right there? That's where you get generate. Right?

That's where we get it in English. Alright? To generate or to make or to create. We call it a generator. We call the book of Genesis the book of beginnings. Right? That's where you get the word beget. All that stuff. Okay. So, those... That's where he's talking about that. Now, he says, And without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life. And the life was the light of men. Okay. What he did... What he did, he taught that Christ was a created emanation, not God. So, he changed the wording, but he also moved the punctuation. Alright? So, what he did is he changed the wording right there.

And it was really subtle. He changed the Uda-N to just Uden. And that changed not anything to just not. He changed not anything to not, essentially. He changed the form of it. Just a little bit of a change right there. Right? Then, he moved the period right here. He moved the period to right here. Moved the period to right here. And so, instead of saying, Uh-uh. Not anything. Not one thing was made without Him. It just says, And without Him, nothing was made. He took out one thing. Right? So, he relegated... Instead of saying that Christ made everything in the universe, He relates it more to just what God was doing after He created Christ.

Then, he moved the period. Right? He took this right here. And he put it at the beginning of verse 4. And he said, That which has been made was life in Him. Which doesn't make any sense at all, by the way. He totally butchers the passage. But essentially, what he said is, That life was made in Him. Instead of, in Him was life. You see the difference? Right? Why? Because all life comes from God. We know that. But he said that life was made in Jesus. And then some life came out of Him. Right? Rather than all life came from Christ. This one even... This one was well known. Well known to have been butchered.

But His disciples copied it. And here's the deal. Now, think about this for a second. This is, say, 150 A.D. Okay? So, John finishes his writings around 100 A.D. Right? So, there's not thousands of copies of the Scripture. So, if you can corrupt a copy of the Scripture early, the earlier you corrupt it, the more it will spread to other copies. Right? If you've got 1,000 copies in the world and then Valentinus comes along and edits a couple of them, it's not going to spread throughout all of them. Because they're already going and they're already being copied. But if there's only a few copies circulated and very early you mess with the text, right?

Then that can, that exponentially can grow and a lot of the texts will be corrupted. And so, the earlier the corruption, the more thorough it was. Right? And that's why you had this issue in the first... I know this is kind of heavy this morning, but it's okay. We're learning stuff, right? Now, so, I think I've got some more here. Well, I've got it right here. 14 great manuscripts from the 3rd to the 14th century have the wording change. 12 have the punctuation change. Now, that's not very many. That's not very many when you consider that there's over 1,000 manuscripts of the book of John. Right? The only problem is, is that some of the manuscripts that have it are early.

So, they're given more weight. Right? And I'll show you this. Okay. Alright. Oh, but I can't remember if Irenaeus said this or Origen or You See. I can't remember who said it. But he said that he copied... He said Valentinus. Yeah, he copied the scripture with his penknife. That's what he said. I can't remember what guy said it. But so early was his editing. Right? 2nd century. That 13 church writers from 180 to 400 quote the texts that have all or part of the corruption. This corruption was fared out by the church but preserved in some manuscripts. Even most modern versions won't translate it, but some do. I think the New American Standard Bible translates it according to Valentinus' corruption.

Which is crazy to me because it's a well-known corruption. It's documented that he corrupted, then he passed it on to Heraklon, then he passed it on to his disciples. You can actually see the record of the corruption. But most of them don't retain it. I think this one does and a lot of Catholic Bibles retain it because it made its way into the Latin versions. All things came to be through him. Without him, nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life. See? There's the punctuation. That came to be is supposed to be in verse 3. And without him was not anything made. What came to be is supposed to be in verse 3.

Right? That's the punctuation move right there. Right? And what does it do? It just softens. It waters down the deity and the authority of Jesus Christ. That's what it does. All right? Now this one was, it was early, it was all over the place, but the church essentially got rid of it. Right? Here's another example. Look at John 1. Here's another example of an early corruption. All right? Aren't you glad you have a Bible? First John, or excuse me, not 1 John. Why do I keep doing that? Who knows? Who knows what pills my wife's putting in my vitamins? Oh, she's not here. That's not fair. All right. John chapter 1, verse 18.

Now look what he says. He says, no man has seen God at any time. No one has seen God in his spirit form. You can't see him. God is, right? God is a spirit. Right? You only see forms that God allows you to see. Right? No man has seen God at any time. What did God say? No man can see my face and live. Right? So he lets you see. He lets you see representations of him. He manifests himself, but not completely. Why? He dwells in the light that no man can approach him to. If you saw God in his fullness, you'd incinerate. Like when they opened the ark in Indiana Jones.

Ah! Right? But even faster than that, just be a bunch of pink mist. Yeah. Be like a nuclear bomb. Seriously. Okay? But look what he says. No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the beginning, excuse me, the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. So the Bible says that the only begotten Son declares the Father. Right? Now we know that only begotten Son to be God. Now, they just couldn't help it with these verses. They couldn't help it. They had to fidget with them. Okay? And so, right? You see it right here. Huh? Monogenase. That's that. All right? Monogenase. That's mono.

See that? And I'll show you that. You'll get this one. This one's an easy one. All right? So it's, it's, monogenase. Has he got an eta on that? Yeah, it's got an eta. All right? Monogenase. All right? So that's, now you'll get this. Mono. All right? Not like the kissing disease. But like, but like only. All right? Like monogamous. All right? Married to one person. All right? You get that? All right? And so they used to teach prefixes in school. I don't know if they still do. All right? And then, and then, genus, like generate. Right? Monogenerate. Right? So, only begotten. All right? That's how that's translated. Only begotten. Okay?

All right? So, no man has seen God at any time. The only begotten. That weos right there. All right? That's the word for son. All right? Now, in Greek, the word for God is theos. Theos. Right? And you'll know that because, if you got, if you got, theos, right? This is, this, this theta here is T-H. Right? That's theos in Greek. Right? So, you get the word theology. Right? Or monotheist. I believe in one God. Or polytheist. Polytheist. I believe in many gods. Okay? So, this is weos. That is son. This is theos. That's God. All right? So, no man has seen God at any time. The only begotten son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

So, Jesus Christ declares God to us. He's God manifest in the flesh. Right? God tapered back for your ability to fellowship with him. Amen. All right? Hallelujah. Thank God for that. Now, it's great doctrine, by the way. Why is it so important? Because everything that we have, that we know, and that we own as Christians is dependent on the doctrine of Jesus Christ. Right? Everything pivots on his person. Okay? So, you'll see this in the old days. All right? This is five Greek manuscripts from the 3rd to the 8th century. All right? It's monogenes theos, which is translated God only begotten. Now, that's not too bad. All right? But it's not son.

It's not son. It's God. God can't be begotten. God, right? The son can be begotten, but God can't be begotten. All right? Then you got this. You got, they put the article here, and that changes how you render it. Homonogenes theos. The only, this one's real bad. And I think this one's in the New World Translation, the Jehovah Witness Bible. The only begotten God. Now, that's real bad. All right? God isn't begotten. All right? And so, that's in five, that's in about seven Greek manuscripts. Right? Now, it's still retained in the critical text, which is consulted for all new versions right here. All right? And we won't get, I don't think we'll get into that this morning.

But, this is another example of what we call the Christological controversies. In other words, arguing about the person of Christ. And some people were so bold as to mess with the Bible to fit there. You don't get to do that, by the way. You don't get to. Are there places in the Bible that I don't understand? Yeah, all over the place. But, I just don't get to do that. All right? Now, this is how corruptions were, these early Christological corruptions were weeded out. All right? And, what does the Bible say? It says, God will purify his words. Okay? So, if you look at a timeline, these are the centuries. Third century.

Does everybody know what the third century is? Just so I know that we're on the same page. Tell me what the third century is. 200 to 300. Good. All right? So, that way I don't have to write the bigger dates for all of them. I can abbreviate. All right? So, 200 to 300. Right? So, 300 to 400. Right? 400 to 500. Okay. We got it. Okay. So, this is the third to the 16th centuries. All right? Speaking of John 1.18, the begotten God, or God only begotten, exists in about seven Greek manuscripts, in the Greek ones. Okay? And then, only begotten Son exists in a thousand plus Greek manuscripts. Okay?

That is, the majority cursive text, which we'll talk about later, copied from the 10th to the 16th centuries. All right? You'll notice that the begotten God is bunched. Right? This one keeps it, and this one keeps it. An 8th century and a 9th century manuscript keeps it. But it's bunched early. It's bunched in these manuscripts right here. Papyrus Fragment 66, Papyrus Fragment 75, which are mid-200s. Right? By Aleph, which is found on St. Catherine's Monastery in Sinai. B, which was discovered in the Vatican Library. Thank you. In the 15th century, they kept it for us. And then this is that rewritten manuscript that we talked about, Ephraim Rescriptus. Okay. It's bunched right here, these corruptions.

And what you see, we still have Alexandrinus in the 5th century that had sun in it. But as time went on, right, they copied the manuscripts that had only begotten sun, and they left these to sit. Right? This is how they were weeded out. Okay? So, and to show you that this is a very early corruption, all right, I've already showed you that the Syrian and the Latin versions came out of a very early era. So, the Syrian versions contained both readings. The Latin versions only retained the only begotten sun reading. Right? So, and the Syrian versions, the Latin versions were started in the 2nd century. Right? So, it's a very early corruption.

But what happened is, is those early corruptions were weeded out. So, you really have two options here. And I'll just, not to get ahead of myself, but when you have a Bible, and it has a footnote, and it says the earliest and best manuscripts say this. These are the ones they're talking about. Every single time. Right? And what they're telling you is that the scholars and the scribes for 12 centuries, right, screwed up, and didn't copy these Gnostic corruptions. Right? And then they dug around in the trash and found them 15 centuries later and told you that they finally found the originals and that the church has been without the word of God for 15 centuries.

That's what they're saying. That's exactly what they're saying. Right? What would we have done? What would we have done? Now, the funny thing about that is, is these are the oldest and best manuscripts. Right? When they tell you that the last, that the last 12 verses of the book of Mark shouldn't be in there, this is the manuscripts they're referring to. Right? They're referring to these two right here. Right? When they tell you that the pericope adultery. Right? The woman taken in adultery that Christ said, neither do I condemn me. It shouldn't be in the Bible. These are what they're referring to. They're referring to the oldest and best. Right?

The oldest and best were known to have been fiddled with. Right? So, you have two options in this area. You have two options. The one is, either the copyist purified the text from 500 to 1450, or they corrupted it. Those are your two options. Right? If you want to really just get it down simply. Okay. All right. That kind of make sense? Yeah. All right. Now, this one here, some of the corruptions were more thorough. This was an obvious one, so it didn't get copied. Some of the corruptions were a little more subtle, so they got copied more often. Okay? But, it's interesting that the reading Only Begotten God, or God Only Begotten, is in the earliest and best manuscripts, and yet, they don't dare translate it in the modern versions.

And I'll show you that in another lesson. That when they say earliest and best, if they actually translated the earliest and best, no one would read it. Because it's just full of that kind of stuff. It's rife with it. And so, they translate the earliest and best when they can get away with it. Why? Do you want me to just tell you? This is what the scholars agree on. There's no final authority but us. Right? And the King James is always wrong. Because if you had a Bible that you could trust, every one of those suckers would be out of a job. They would have to get off their computer and go get a job.

You're welcome. You say, that's not nice. Oh, that's nice. That is nice. All right. Hey, we're moving right along. Praise the Lord. This never happens. What's going on? All right. Early corruption of the scriptures. This is what we call the critics. what Paul said? He said, beware lest any man spoil you. Through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. All right. So he warns you of the critics. And we'll just kind of lead into this, and then we'll finish here. Right? When we talk about controversy and corrupted texts, this is the background of the variants that we just looked at.

All right? Gnosticism emphasized personal spiritual enlightenment over revelation. In other words, it's not what God said. It's what I perceive it to be. Right? We call that... Another thing that we call that is private interpretation. It was adopted by the Roman church, essentially. We know what the Bible says. You don't. Right? I'm not married. I spend all my time in fasting and prayer. Right? I was ordained by someone who was ordained by the Apostle Peter, who has the keys to the kingdom of heaven. And you, you, you, could not possibly understand the Bible. Even though, according to the Scripture, every believer is a priest. Every single believer is a priest.

All right? This comes from Gnosticism. Right? Smarty pants. Educated idiots. Yeah. Educated beyond their own intelligence is what we like to say. Right? Matter... This is, this is, this is what we already talked about. Matter is evil, spirit is good, was a common conclusion. So, two great problems came out of Gnosticism, the Gnostic era in Christianity. All right? Number one, confusion as to how God could take on flesh, which we talked about. Secondly, confusion as to how a human could be holy. This led to what we call asceticism. All right? Extreme asceticism was a nun in a convent bragging that she hadn't clipped her nails in 30 years because that would be attending to the needs of the flesh.

Right? Or Simeon Stylite sitting up on that pole for how many years? 14 years or something in Syria. And people came from all over. This guy's sitting on top of the pole. He lived on top of a pole for decades. Right? Denying his flesh. Right? But that all came out of Gnosticism. Okay? But it also affected attitudes towards Scripture and probably the high priest of Gnosticism or influenced by Gnosticism, even though he battled it. Right? But this guy considered himself much smarter than anybody in here. And he was very intelligent. And he was sincere. He loved God. There's no doubt about it. And a prolific writer. But his name was Adamantius Origen or Origen Adamantius.

Closing

And he started out in Alexandria, Egypt. Right? And this is what he said. And a lot of what you're looking at can be traced back to this guy. Okay? And it's rumored that he actually, he decided to take Matthew 18 literally, where they make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. And he actually did that literally. Okay? And so an extreme aesthetic, right? And this was the era of asceticism. But the Scriptures, he said, are of little use to those who understand them how they are written. Yes. what I'm saying? Poor Brother Joe. You just pick up the Bible and read it and believe it. Yeah, if only you had me.

That's what he's saying. This is what these guys are saying. Right? the King James Bible is written in third grade English? Amen. Can you get this? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Can you get this? For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. Can you get this? He that hath the Son hath life. And he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. Can you get this? Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. We having a hard time registering this morning. Is this over our heads, Dr. Origen? All right? Now, he's a leader of the yea hath God, we call it the yea hath God said society.

That's what, now I apologize for my sarcasm, but I have been sequestered up in that office with this guy. For weeks. Okay? And I've had enough. All right? So if a little bit leaks out, I apologize. All right? This is, but this, this, this, Alexandria, Egypt was the center of philosophy long before Christianity showed up there. Origen moved the school to Caesarea in Palestine, which, that ought to tell you something right there. Right? The major schools and monasteries that butchered the word of God came out of Palestine. You say, man, they're as close as they can get. They're not as close as they can get. Christianity moved to Syria. Jerusalem was leveled in 70 AD.

Right? Do what God, what your New Testament says about Jerusalem, which has rejected their savior? He calls them Sodom and Egypt. You don't go to, Israel has not produced anything spiritual since they crucified their Messiah. Right? You don't go back there to learn anything. You'll end up in hell. Right? Now that's going to change when the Lord Jesus Christ returns and saves his people, the Jews. We understand that. But right now, don't waste your time. Okay? But, much of Greek philosophy and culture were preserved in Alexandria, Egypt. Right? And Alexandria was home to the great library and the great synagogue. This was a hotbed of apostate Jews. So, long before Christianity showed up there, it was a place where people were messing with their Old Testament.

Right? And were philosophizing their way out of revealed truth. So, in the first couple, and I'm just going to simplify this. In the first couple centuries of the Christian era, you had, you, they didn't have internet. Okay? But they were sharp. They read. Right? They read Latin and Greek and their native languages. And when, when a guy devoted himself to study, he read all day long and he didn't have Netflix to distract him. These guys, and you see the, some of those libraries in Europe and so on. These people were sharp. Right? And they were educated. Right? And so, Christianity, which by the way, is by nature, simple and childlike.

Amen, amen, amen. Right? It had to try to appeal to the intellect. And every time we do that, we mess up. We mess up. What's the Bible say? Not many wise, not many noble, not many mighty are called. Christ took a child and put him in the midst. And so, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, some of the, some of the men that continued, Origen moved his catechal school because of persecution from Alexandria to Caesarea in the mid, early to mid third century. Right? And the goal of this school was to reach pagans. Right? And convince philosophers, or convince the intellectual world of Jesus Christ through philosophy, through reason. Right? And so many pagans attended their classes and what they ended up doing was trying to make the scripture palatable to men of reason and men of intellect.

That's in a nutshell what happened here. Right? Now, I mean, I could give you material upon material upon material, but I'm just, I'm really accelerating this. Okay? So, it came to prominence under these guys. But questioning revealed truth was already old in Alexandria when Christianity showed up. So, Origen applied his mystical understanding to determine what God's words really said and meant. Now, we gotta be done. We gotta be done. But I'm just gonna give you a couple of his corruptions. Okay? Mark 1.1, he admits the Son of God, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, because he thought it shouldn't be there. No, seriously. All right?

Ephesians 1.1, he omits to the church at Ephesus because he reasoned there are no people named, therefore it was meant to be a circulatory letter. That was his reason. So, he cuts it out. Right? He takes our Father who art in heaven out of the prayer in Luke 11. Takes it out. Why? Because that's what he says in Matthew. And he says, so Luke probably copied from Matthew. Right? You don't think they could both record the same prayer? I'm telling you, this is the stuff these guys do. Okay? That's why I get a little ornery. It's just after you read them for 40 hours, you're just like, come on, dude.

Right? All right? He agrees with Marcion and admits, deliver us from evil from the Lord's Prayer. Right? He omits, this is a good one, he omits that you should not obey the truth from Galatians chapter 3, verse 1. Right? This is what we call corruptions from critics. there's too much. There's too much. That's okay. what we're going to get into next week? We're going to get into how the church got through this stuff and into the next centuries and got the Bible to you. Okay? Father, we love you, we thank you for the word of God. I pray you bless the next service. It's in your holy name we pray.

Amen. Okay, God bless.