Introduction: We must first of all know that the entire Bible is corrupted and unreliable and is mostly filled with man-made laws and corruption!  GOD Almighty Said: "`How can you say, "We [the Jews] are wise, for we have the law of the LORD," when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely?' (From the NIV Bible, Jeremiah 8:8)"

See Also Deuteronomy 31:25-29 where Moses peace be upon him predicted the corruption/tampering of the Law (Bible) after his death.

The Book of Moses predicted that the Law (Bible) will get corrupted.  The Book of Jeremiah which came approximately 826 years after did indeed confirm this corruption.

Most of the articles on this page were sent to me by my two dear friends Rami Abdallah and Qais Ali; may Allah Almighty always be pleased with them.  Most of them originally come from Brother Al-Kadhi's work, and the rest of them come from other brothers' and sisters' work which I mentioned their names on their articles.  The sections that don't have author's name on them are Brother Al-Kadhi's work.

The following links are articles on this page combined together:

Is the entire Bible truely the Word of GOD?
The lie of 1 John 5:7.
The lie of 1 John 5:7 and Timothy 3:16.
The invalidity of the Trinity belief from the Theologians' views.
Who were the real authors of the Bible?
Is the Bible 100% faultless and untampered with by the Church?
Where did our modern Bibles come from?  Some examples of grave defects in the Bible.
Where did the discarded verses come from in the first place?
How many books of the Bible are 'truly inspired'?
How did the Church handle the "differences in the Bibles" problem?
Where did the King James Bible come from?
How did the Church explain all these centuries of tampering?
82% of the words of Jesus are not his.
Did mankind tamper with the Old Testament?
When is a book an 'inspired' book?
Ancient paganism and the dangers of compromise.

Is the entire Bible truely the word of GOD?

No credible Biblical scholar on this earth will claim that the Bible was written by Jesus himself. They all agree that the Bible was written after the departure of Jesus peace be upon him by his followers. So, if the authors of the Bible were people other than Jesus, then did they have Jesus or the Holy Spirit in them guiding their hands and dictating to them word for word what to write? As it happens, once again the answer is no. Who says so? The majority of today's credible Christian scholars do. For example:

Dr. W Graham Scroggie of the Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, a prestigious Christian evangelical mission, says:

"..Yes, the Bible is human, although some out of zeal which is not according to knowledge, have denied this. Those books have passed through the minds of men, are written in the language of men, were penned by the hands of men and bear in their style the characteristics of men...."

"It is Human, Yet Divine," W Graham Scroggie, p. 17

Another Christian scholar, Kenneth Cragg, the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, says:

"...Not so the New testament...There is condensation and editing; there is choice reproduction and witness. The Gospels have come through the mind of the church behind the authors. They represent experience and history..."

"The Call of the Minaret," Kenneth Cragg, p 277

For example, we read in the Bible the words of the author of "Luke":

"It seemed good to me (Luke) also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, (Luke 1:3)"

If you consider the Bible the word of GOD, well, it is quite obvious that  Luke decided to write his Gospel because he wanted to please the president or the
leader at that time Theophilus.  This however has several problems: (1) It compromises GOD because there is a biger purpose than GOD to write the Gospel, (2) It shows that Luke wouldn't have written his Gospel if it wasn't for that leader, and (3) Luke was not inpired when he wrote his Gospel because he said that he decided to write it after he had full understanding of it, which means that he wrote it with his own human words and thoughts and not GOD's.

For a closer look at reliability of the NT and its development dont forget to check out Is the NT really reliable ?

Its a nice direct answer to the highly visited "Christian Think Tank" site.

Is the Bible a Guideline for Human Morality?

The lie of 1 John 5:7 verse.  It was later discovered to be a man made corruption inserted into the Bible:

This section was forwarded to me by my brother in Islam Haleem, a new convert to Islam; may Allah Almighty always be pleased with him.  This page is located at http://wings.buffalo.edu/sa/muslim/library/jesus-say/ch1.2.2.5.html

1.2.2.5 1 John 5:7

The only verses in the whole Bible that explicitly ties God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit in one "Triune" being is the verse of 1 John 5:7

"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one."

This is the type of clear, decisive, and to-the-point verse I have been asking for. However, as I would later find out, this verse is now universally recognized as being a later "insertion" of the Church and all recent versions of the Bible, such as the Revised Standard Version the New Revised Standard Version, the New American Standard Bible, the New English Bible, the Phillips Modern English Bible ...etc. have all unceremoniously expunged this verse from their pages. Why is this? The scripture translator Benjamin Wilson gives the following explanation for this action in his "Emphatic Diaglott." Mr. Wilson says:

"This text concerning the heavenly witness is not contained in any Greek manuscript which was written earlier than the fifteenth century. It is not cited by any of the ecclesiastical writers; not by any of early Latin fathers even when the subjects upon which they treated would naturally have lead them to appeal to it's authority. It is therefore evidently spurious."

Others, such as the late Dr. Herbert W. Armstrong argued that this verse was added to the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible during the heat of the controversy between Rome, Arius, and God's people. Whatever the reason, this verse is now universally recognized as an insertion and discarded. Since the Bible contains no verses validating a "Trinity" therefore, centuries after the departure of Jesus, God chose to inspire someone to insert this verse in order to clarify the true nature of God as being a "Trinity." Notice how mankind was being inspired as to how to "clarify" the Bible centuries after the departure of Jesus (pbuh). People continued to put words in the mouths of Jesus, his disciples, and even God himself with no reservations whatsoever. They were being "inspired".

If these people were being "inspired" by God, I wondered, then why did they need to put these words into other people's mouths (in our example, in the mouth of John). Why did they not just openly say "God inspired me and I will add a chapter to the Bible in my name"? Also, why did God need to wait till after the departure of Jesus to "inspire" his "true" nature? Why not let Jesus (pbuh) say it himself?

The great luminary of Western literature, Mr. Edward Gibbon, explains the reason for the discardal of this verse from the pages of the Bible with the following words:

"Of all the manuscripts now extant, above fourscore in number, some of which are more than 1200 years old, the orthodox copies of the Vatican, of the Complutensian editors, of Robert Stephens are becoming invisible; and the two manuscripts of Dublin and Berlin are unworthy to form an exception...In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Bibles were corrected by LanFrank, Archbishop of Canterbury, and by Nicholas, a cardinal and librarian of the Roman church, secundum Ortodoxam fidem. Notwithstanding these corrections, the passage is still wanting in twenty-five Latin manuscripts, the oldest and fairest; two qualities seldom united, except in manuscripts....The three witnesses have been established in our Greek Testaments by the prudence of Erasmus; the honest bigotry of the Complutensian editors; the typographical fraud, or error, of Robert Stephens in the placing of a crotchet and the deliberate falsehood, or strange misapprehension, of Theodore Beza."

"Decline and fall of the Roman Empire," IV, Gibbon, p. 418.

Edward Gibbon was defended in his findings by his contemporary, the brilliant British scholar Richard Porson who also proceeded to publish devastatingly conclusive proof that the verse of 1 John 5:7 was only first inserted by the Church into the Bible in the year 400C.E.(Secrets of Mount Sinai, James Bentley, pp. 30-33).

Regarding Porson's most devastating proof, Mr. Gibbon later said

"His structures are founded in argument, enriched with learning, and enlivened with wit, and his adversary neither deserves nor finds any quarter at his hands. The evidence of the three heavenly witnesses would now be rejected in any court of justice; but prejudice is blind, authority is deaf, and our vulgar Bibles will ever be polluted by this spurious text."

To which Mr. Bentley responds:

"In fact, they are not. No modern Bible now contains the interpolation."

Mr. Bentley, however, is mistaken. Indeed, just as Mr. Gibbon had predicted, the simple fact that the most learned scholars of Christianity now unanimously recognize this verse to be a later interpolation of the Church has not prevented the preservation of this fabricated text in our modern Bibles. To this day, the Bible in the hands of the majority of Christians, the "King James" Bible, still unhesitantly includes this verse as the "inspired" word of God without so much as a footnote to inform the reader that all scholars of Christianity of note unanimously recognize it as a later fabrication.

Peake's Commentary on the Bible says

"The famous interpolation after 'three witnesses' is not printed even in RSVn, and rightly. It cites the heavenly testimony of the Father, the logos, and the Holy Spirit, but is never used in the early Trinitarian controversies. No respectable Greek MS contains it. Appearing first in a late 4th-cent. Latin text, it entered the Vulgate and finally the NT of Erasmus."

It was only the horrors of the great inquisitions which held back Sir Isaac Newton from openly revealing these facts to all:

"In all the vehement universal and lasting controversy about the Trinity in Jerome's time and both before and long enough after it, the text of the 'three in heaven' was never once thought of. It is now in everybody's mouth and accounted the main text for the business and would assuredly have been so too with them, had it been in their books… Let them make good sense of it who are able. For my part I can make none. If it be said that we are not to determine what is scripture and what not by our private judgments, I confess it in places not controverted, but in disputed places I love to take up with what I can best understand. It is the temper of the hot and superstitious part of mankind in matters of religion ever to be fond of mysteries, and for that reason to like best what they understand least. Such men may use the Apostle John as they please, but I have that honor for him as to believe that he wrote good sense and therefore take that to be his which is the best"

Jesus, Prophet of Islam, Muhammad Ata' Ur-Rahim, p. 156

According to Newton, this verse first appeared for in the third edition of Erasmus's (1466-1536) New Testament.

For all of the above reasons, we find that when thirty two biblical scholars backed by fifty cooperating Christian denominations got together to compile the Revised Standard Version of the Bible based upon the most ancient Biblical manuscripts available to them today, they made some very extensive changes. Among these changes was the unceremonious discardal of the verse of 1 John 5:7 as the fabricated insertion that it is. For more on the compilation of the RSV Bible, please read the preface of any modern copy of that Bible.

Such comparatively unimportant matters as the description of Jesus (pbuh) riding an ass (or was it a "colt", or was it an "ass and a colt"? see point 42 in the table of section 2.2) into Jerusalem are spoken about in great details since they are the fulfillment of a prophesy. For instance, in Mark 11:2-10 we read:

"And saith unto them, Go your way into the village over against you: and as soon as ye be entered into it, ye shall find a colt tied, whereon never man sat; loose him, and bring [him]. And if any man say unto you, Why do ye this? say ye that the Lord hath need of him; and straightway he will send him hither. And they went their way, and found the colt tied by the door without in a place where two ways met; and they loose him And certain of them that stood there said unto them, What do ye, loosing the colt? And they said unto them even as Jesus had commanded: and they let them go And they brought the colt to Jesus, and cast their garments on him; and he sat upon him. And many spread their garments in the way: and others cut down branches off the trees, and strawed [them] in the way And they that went before, and they that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna; Blessed [is] he that cometh in the name of the Lord: Blessed [be] the kingdom of our father David, that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest."

Also see Luke 19:30-38 which has a similar detailed description of this occurrence. On the other hand, the Bible is completely free of any description of the "Trinity" which is supposedly a description of the very nature of the one who rode this ass, who is claimed to be the only son of God, and who allegedly died for the sins of all of mankind. I found myself asking the question: If every aspect of Christian faith is described in such detail such that even the description of this ass is so vividly depicted for us, then why is the same not true for the description of the "Trinity"? Sadly, however, it is a question for which there is no logical answer.

More proofs on the lie of 1 John 5:7 and 1 Timothy 3:16:

The following section was sent to me by a Muslim; may Allah Almighty always be pleased with him.

Sir Isaac Newton On The Bible

In 1690, Sir Isaac Newton (died 1727) wrote a manuscript on the corruption of the text of the New Testament concerning I John 5:7 and Timothy 3:16. It was entitled, "A Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture."   Due to the prevailing environment against criticism, he felt it unwise to profess his beliefs openly and felt that printing it in England would be too dangerous.   Newton sent a copy of this manuscript to John Locke requesting him to have it translated into French for publication in France. Two years later, Newton was informed of an attempt to publish a Latin translation of it anonymously. However, Newton did not approve of its availability in Latin and persuaded Locke to take steps to prevent this publication.  Below are excerpts from "A Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture."

Newton on I John 5:7

Newton states that this verse appeared for the first time in the third edition of Erasmus's New Testament.  When they got the Trinity; into his edition they threw by their manuscript, if they had one, as an almanac out of date. And can such shuffling dealings satisfy considering men?....It is rather a danger in religion than an advantage to make it now lean on a broken reed.  In all the vehement universal and lasting controversy about the Trinity in Jerome's time and both before and long enough after it, this text of the "three in heaven" was never once thought of. It is now in everybody's mouth and accounted the main text for the business and would assuredly have been so too with them, had it been in their books.  "Let them make good sense of it who are able. For my part, I can make none.  If it be said that we are not to determine what is Scripture what not by our private judgments, I confess it in places not controverted, but in disputed places I love to take up with what I can best understand. It is the temper of the hot and superstitious art of mankind in matters of religion ever to be fond of mysteries, and for that reason to like best what they understand least. Such men may use the Apostle John as they please, but I have that honour for him as to believe that he wrote good sense and therefore take that to be his which is the best."

Newton on I Timothy 3:16

In all the times of the hot and lasting Arian controversy it never came into play . . . they that read "God manifested in the flesh" think it one of the most obvious and pertinent texts for the business. "The word Deity imports exercise of dominion over subordinate beings and the word God most frequently signifies Lord. Every lord is not God. The exercise of dominion in a spiritual being constitutes a God. If that dominion be real that being is the real God; if it be fictitious, a false God; if it be supreme, a supreme God."  Newton also wrote a discussion on two other texts that Athanasius had attempted to corrupt. This work has not been preserved. He believed that not all the books of the Scriptures have the same authority.  

Reference A. Wallace, "Anti-Trinitarian Biographies," Vol. III, 1850.

The Validity of the Trinity Belief:

Trinity doctrine doesn't have basic in either NT nor in OT. They depend on human interpretation to form up this doctrine. It is totally pagan.

In the preface to Edward Gibbon's History of Christianity, we read: "If Paganism was conquered by Christianity, it is equally true that Christianity was corrupted by Paganism."

A Dictionary of Religious Knowledge notes that many say that the Trinity "is a corruption borrowed from the heathen religions, and engrafted on the Christian faith." And The Paganism in Our Christianity declares: "The origin of the [Trinity] is entirely pagan."

The Encyclopedia Americana comments: "Fourth century Trinitarianism did not reflect accurately early Christian teaching regarding the nature of God; it was, on the contrary, a deviation from this teaching."

Many of the fundamental beliefs of Christianity which have been for many centuries taken on blind faith (those which differ from the beliefs of Muslims) are now beginning to be challenged by some of the foremost scholars and religious leaders of Christianity today.

An example of this can be found in the British newspaper the "Daily News" 25/6/84 under the  heading "Shock survey of Anglican Bishops" We read that a British television pole of 31 of the 39  Anglican Bishops in England found 19 to believe that it is not necessary for Christians to believe that Jesus (peace be upon him) is God, but only "His supreme agent" (his messenger) as taught by Muslims for 1400 years now and testified to by John 17:3 "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you hast sent."

Who were the authors of the Bible?  Were they really the original Prophets and Desciples?

So, who then are the authors of the books of the Bible? Obviously the Church must know them very well since they are popularly believed to have received divine inspiration from God Himself. Right? Actually, they don't. For example, we will note that every Gospel begins with the introduction "According to....." such as "The Gospel according to Saint Matthew," "The Gospel according to Saint Luke," "The Gospel according to Saint Mark," "The Gospel according to Saint John." The obvious conclusion for the average man on the street is that these people are known to be the authors of the books attributed to them. This, however is not the case. Why? Because not one of the vaunted four thousand copies existent carries its author's signature. It has just been assumed that certain people were the authors. Recent discoveries, however, refute this belief. Even the internal evidence suggests that, for instance, Matthew did not write the Gospel attributed to him:

"...And as Jesus passed forth thence, HE (Jesus) saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and HE (Jesus) saith unto HIM (Matthew), follow ME (Jesus) and HE (Matthew) arose, and followed HIM (Jesus). (Matthew 9:9)"

Did "Matthew" write this about himself? Why then didn't Matthew write for example: "he (Jesus) saw ME, and my name is Matthew. I was sitting at the receipt of custom…" etc.

Such evidence can be found in many places throughout the New Testament. Granted, it may be possible that an author sometimes may write in the third person, still, in light of the rest of the evidence that we shall see throughout this book, there is simply too much evidence against this hypothesis.

This observation is by no means limited to the New Testament. There is even similar evidence that at least parts of Deuteronomy were not written by their claimed author, prophet Moses  . This can be seen in Deuteronomy 34:5-10 where we read

"So Moses....DIED... and he (God Almighty) BURIED HIM (Moses)... He was 120 years old WHEN HE DIED... and there arose not a prophet SINCE in Israel like unto Moses....(Deuteronomy 34:5-10)"

Did Moses write his own obituary? Similarly, Joshua too speaks in detail about his own death in Joshua 24:29-33.

"And it came to pass after these things, that Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, DIED, … And they BURIED HIM … And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that overlived Joshua, and which had known all the works of the Lord, that he had done for Israel ….(Joshua 24:29-33)"

Such evidence is part of the large cache which has driven the Biblical scholars to come to the current recognition that most of the books of the Bible were not written by their supposed authors. For example, the authors of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible by Collins honestly say that the author of "Kings" is "Unknown." But if the author is unknown then why attribute it to God? How can it then be claimed to have been "inspired"? Continuing, we read that the book of Isaiah is "Mainly credited to Isaiah. Parts may have been written by others." Ecclesiastics: "Author. Doubtful, but commonly assigned to Solomon." Ruth: "Author. Not definitely known, perhaps Samuel." and on and on.

Let us have a slightly more detailed look at only one book of the New Testament, that of 'Hebrews':

"The author of the Book of Hebrews is unknown. Martin Luther suggested that Apollos was the author...Tertullian said that Hebrews was a letter of Barnabas...Adolf Harnack and J. Rendel Harris speculated that it was written by Priscilla (or Prisca). William Ramsey suggested that it was done by Philip. However, the traditional position is that the Apostle Paul wrote Hebrews...Eusebius believed that Paul wrote it, but Origen was not positive of Pauline authorship."

From the introduction to the King James Bible, New revised and updated sixth edition, the Hebrew/Greek Key Study, Red Letter Edition

and one book of the Old Testament:

"In tradition, [David] is credited with writing 73 of the Psalms; most scholars, however, consider this claim questionable."

Encarta Encyclopedia, under "David"

Is this how we define "inspired by God"?

I asked a reverand of the local church in my neighboorhod, on what gospel most often quoted and used, he quickly answered, the Gospel of St. John!

Let us examine the Contextual Problems of the Gospel of John - Highly Recommended!

Is the Bible 100% faultless and untampered with by the Church?

Well then, in spite of these facts are the records found in the New Testament known to be 100% completely and fully authentic such that no intentional nor unintentional changes have ever been made by the church to the text of the NT? Well, since our opinion in this matter might be biased, therefore, let us ask the Christian scholars themselves:

"It is well known that the primitive Christian Gospel was initially transmitted by word of mouth and that this oral tradition resulted in variant reporting of word and deed. It is equally true that when the Christian record was committed to writing it continued to be the subject of verbal variation. Involuntary and intentional, at the hands of scribes and editors"

Peake's Commentary on the Bible, p. 633

"Yet, as a matter of fact, every book of the New Testament with the exception of the four great Epistles of St. Paul is at present more or less the subject of controversy, and interpolations are asserted even in these."

Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 12th Ed. Vol. 3, p. 643

Dr. Lobegott Friedrich Konstantin Von Tischendorf, one of the most adamant conservative Christian defenders of the Trinity and one of the Church's foremost scholars of the Bible was himself driven to admit that:

"[the New Testament had] in many passages undergone such serious modification of meaning as to leave us in painful uncertainty as to what the Apostles had actually written"

Secrets of Mount Sinai, James Bentley, p. 117

After listing many examples of contradictory statements in the Bible, Dr. Frederic Kenyon says:

"Besides the larger discrepancies, such as these, there is scarcely a verse in which there is not some variation of phrase in some copies [of the ancient manuscripts from which the Bible has been collected]. No one can say that these additions or omissions or alterations are matters of mere indifference"

Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, Dr. Frederic Kenyon, Eyre and Spottiswoode, p. 3

The Jehovah's Witnesses in their "AWAKE" Magazine dated 8th September 1957 published the following headline: "50,000 Errors in the Bible" wherein they say "..there are probably 50,000 errors in the Bible...errors which have crept into the Bible text...50,000 such serious errors..." After all of this, however, they go on to say: "...as a whole the Bible is accurate."

Throughout this book you will find countless other similar quotations from some of Christendom's leading scholars. Let us suffice with these for now.

New Testament Contradictions

More than just a list of contradictions, since there are detailed comments on each one. Nice reading!

So are all Christians evil and deceitful?

Does this mean that all Christians are conniving traitors to the words of God? Very definitely not! Like all groups of humanity, there is good and bad among their ranks. The Muslim's Qur'an indeed tells us that Christians, as a whole, posses many good and decent qualities. For example, the Noble Quran (The Muslims' Holy Scripture) says:

"...and nearest among them (humanity) in love to the believers (Muslims) will you find those who say 'we are Christians': because amongst these are men devoted to learning and men who have renounced the world, and they are not arrogant. And when they listen to the revelation received by the messenger (Muhammad), you will see their eyes overflowing with tears for they recognize the truth: They pray: 'Our Lord! we believe; write us down among the witnesses'. (The Noble Quran, 5:82-83)"

Where then did our modern Bibles come from?

The Biblical world has in its possession a large collection of ancient manuscripts of the Bible. These ancient copies of the Bible were written in different locations around the world and in different ages. We are told that in our current age there are up to 24,000 such ancient copies of the Bible. These are the manuscripts that the scholars go to in order to produce our modern Bibles (such as the KJV, the RSV, the NIV, etc.). In most cases the most ancient copies of the Bible are the ones held in the highest regard and considered to be the most accurate. This, however, is not a hard and fast rule.

All biblical versions of the Bible prior to the revised version of 1881 were dependent upon the "Ancient copies" (those dated at about five to six hundred years after Jesus). The revisers of the Revised Standard Version (RSV) 1952 were the first biblical scholars to have access to the "Most ancient copies" which date roughly four hundred years after Christ. It is only logical for us to concur that the closer a document is to the source the more authentic it is. Upon discovering these "most" ancient copies of the Bible, what did the scholars of the Bible learn about their "King James Version" (KJV) of the Bible? In the preface of the RSV 1971 we find the following:

"...Yet the King James Version has GRAVE DEFECTS.."

They go on to caution us that:

"...That these defects are SO MANY AND SO SERIOUS as to call for revision"

The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible by Oxford Press has the following to say in its preface:

"Yet the King James Version has serious defects. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the development of biblical studies and the discovery of many biblical manuscripts more ancient than those on which the King James Version was based made it apparent that these defects were so many as to call for revision."

Who says so? Who are these people who claim that the Bible in the hands of the majority of today's Christians contains "many" "grave defects" which are so "serious" as to require a complete overhaul of the text? Well, we can find the answer in the very same RSV Bible. In it, the publishers themselves (Collins) mention on page 10 of their notes:

"This Bible (RSV) is the product of thirty two scholars assisted by an advisory committee representing fifty cooperating denominations"

Let us see what is the opinion of Christendom with regard to these scholars and their work in the revision of the Bible (revised by them in 1952 and then again in 1971):

"The finest version which has been produced in the present century" - (Church of England newspaper)

"A completely fresh translation by scholars of the highest eminence" - (Times literary supplement)

"The well loved characteristics of the authorized version combined with a new accuracy of translation" - (Life and Work)

"The most accurate and close rendering of the original" - (The Times)

"Bias" In NT Development

A balanced look at the status and authenticity of the New Testament texts.

Show me some examples of thesee 'grave defects' in the Bible:

So if these highly esteemed 32 Christian Biblical scholars backed by fifty cooperating Christian denominations tell us that through their study of recently discovered manuscripts of the Bible they have found many grave and serious defects in the King James Version of the Bible then where are some examples of these "defects"? A good question, let us have a look:

In 1 John 5:7 (King James Version) we find:

"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one.  (John 5:7)"

As we have already seen in much greater detail in section 1.2.2.5, this verse is the closest approximation to what the Church calls the holy Trinity. However, as seen in that section, this cornerstone of the Christian faith has been scrapped from the RSV by these thirty two Christian scholars of the highest eminence backed by fifty cooperating Christian denominations, once again all according to the "most ancient manuscripts." However, we find that the noble Qur'an (the Muslims' Holy Scripture) did not need to wait for 2000 years for these Christians to discover this fact. Indeed God revealed it to us fully fourteen hundred years ago:

"O people of the book! commit no excesses in your religion: nor say of Allah aught but the truth. Christ Jesus the son of Mary was (no more than) a Messenger of Allah, and his Word, which he bestowed upon Mary, and a spirit preceding from him so believe in Allah and his messengers. Say not "Three" desist It will be better for you for Allah is one God Glory be to him Far exalted is he above having a son. To him belong all things in the heavens and the earth. And enough is Allah as a disposer of affairs.  (The Noble Quran, 4:171)"

Are there any other examples? Well, how about John 3:16(KJV) ?:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life..(John 3:16)"

This verses is a cornerstone of Christian preaching the world over. Even at american football matches you will find people in the stands holding up massive signs declairing:

"JOHN 3:16"

But as seen in section 1.2.3.10, this fabrication "begotten" has now been unceremoniously removed from the Bible by these most eminent of Bible revisers. However, once again, humanity did not have to wait 2000 years for this revelation. In Maryam(19):88-98 of the noble Qur'an we read:

"And they say 'Allah Most Compassionate has begotten a son!'. Indeed you have put forth a thing most monstrous! The skies are ready to burst (at such a claim), and the earth to split asunder, and the mountains to fall down in utter ruin. That they should ascribe a son to the Most Compassionate. But it is not befitting [the majesty of] the Most Compassionate that He should beget a son. Not one of the beings in the heavens and the earth but must come to the Most Compassionate as a servant. He has taken account of all of them and has numbered them all exactly. And every one of them will come to him singly on the day of judgment. On those who believe and work deeds of righteousness, will Allah most gracious bestow love. Verily, We have made this [Qur'an] easy in your tongue [O Muhammad] that you might deliver glad tidings to those who seek refuge [in Allah] and warn with it a people who are contentious. And how many a generation before them have we destroyed! Can you find a single one of them or hear from them so much as a whisper?"

The reader is encouraged to obtain a copy of the New Revised Standard Version and to compare it to the King James Version. Specifically, notice that the following 17 verses have been omitted outright in the newer and more faithful translations:

Matt. 17:21; 18:11; 23:14; Mk. 7:16; 9:44; 9:46; 11:26; 15:28; 17:36; 23:17; Jn. 5:4; Acts 8:37; 15:34; 24:7; 28:29; Rom. 16:24; and 1 John 5:7.

Further, in the NRSV Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53 - 8:11 are also marked as highly questionable since they do not appear in the most ancient copies of the Bible. This Bible also questions four other verses with footnotes-- Matt. 12:47; 21:44; Lk. 22:43; 22:44. This makes a total of 45 entire verses which are removed entirely or seriously questioned. In addition there are 147 other verses with significant portions missing (eg. Rev 1:11 etc.).

Prior to 1952 all versions of the Bible made mention of one of the most miraculous events associated with the prophet Jesus peace be upon him, that of his ascension into heaven. This great event is mentioned in only two places in the NT. They are:

"So then the lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God  (Mark 16:19)"

and once again in Luke:

"While he blessed them, he parted from them, and was carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.  (Luke 24:51-52)"

In the 1952 RSV Mark 16 ends at verse 8 and the rest is relegated in small print to a footnote (more on this later). Similarly, in the commentary on the verses of Luke 24, we are told in the footnotes of the NRSV Bible "Other ancient authorities lack "and was carried up into heaven'" and "Other ancient authorities lack 'and worshipped him'". Thus, we see that the verse of Luke in its original form only said:

"While he blessed them, he parted from them. And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy."

It took centuries of "inspired correction" to give us Luke 24:51-52 in their current form.

As another example, in Luke 24:1-7 we read:

"Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulcher, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulcher. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.  (Luke 24:1-7)"

Once again, in reference to verse 5, the footnotes say: "Other ancient authorities lack 'He is not here but has risen'" Also, please read entries 16 and 17 in the table in section 2.2.

The examples are far too numerous to list here, however, you are encouraged to obtain a copy of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible for yourself and scan through the four gospels. You shall be hard pressed to find even two consecutive pages that do not contain the words "Other ancient authorities lack..." or "Other ancient authorities add..." etc. in the footnotes..

See:  The Creep Show Bible

Well, the R.S.V. is just one Bible:

So is the revised Standard Version of the Bible the only one that makes these changes? Is it just a matter of the KJV vs. the RSV? Far from it. These very same changes have become so widely acknowledged by the scholars of Christianity that we find the very same changes made to most other modern versions of the Bible, such as the New International Version (NIV), the New American Standard Version (NASV), etc. Go to your local library and have a look.

So, where did these discarded verses come from in the first place?

St. Paul was answerable for having made during his lifetime wholesale changes to the religion of Jesus . Changes which Jesus  himself never authorized to anyone during his lifetime. After his departure the pagan gentiles who accepted Paul's simplified version of "Christianity" continued to adapt it and to introduce into it many of the doctrines of paganism which they had already been practicing for so may centuries. Among these doctrines was the concept of the "trinity" which was a very widely practiced and accepted concept in the pagan beliefs of the surrounding nations of Romans, Greeks, Babylonians, and Hindus many centuries before they were finally officially defined and "recognized" in the fourth century C.E. After this doctrine received the official support of the pagan Roman emperor Constantine, a massive campaign of death and torture was launched against all Christians who refused to renounce the teachings of the apostles in favor of the modified and expanded Pauline doctrines. All but the Gospels acceptable to the Pauline faith were then systematically destroyed or re-written. Rev. Charles Anderson Scott has the following to say:

"It is highly probable that not one of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) was in existence in the form which we have it, prior to the death of Paul. And were the documents to be taken in strict order of chronology, the Pauline Epistles would come before the synoptic Gospels."

History of Christianity in the Light of Modern Knowledge, Rev. Charles Anderson Scott, p.338

This statement is further confirmed by Prof. Brandon:

"The earliest Christian writings that have been preserved for us are the letters of the apostle Paul"

"Religions in Ancient History," S.G.F. Brandon, p. 228.

In the latter part of the second century, Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth says:

"As the brethren desired me to write epistles(letters), I did so, and these the apostles of the devil have filled with tares (changes), exchanging some things and adding others, for whom there is a woe reserved. It is not therefore, a matter of wonder if some have also attempted to adulterate the sacred writings of the Lord, since they have attempted the same in other works that are not to be compared with these."

The Noble Qur'an (the Muslims' Holy Scripture) confirms this with the words:

"Then woe to those who write the book (of Allah/God) with their own hands and then say: 'This is from Allah', to traffic with it for a miserable price. Woe to them for what their hands do write and for the gain they make thereby  (The Noble Quran, 2:79)"

Victor Tununensis, a sixth century African Bishop related in his Chronicle (566 AD) that when Messala was consul at Costantinople (506 AD), he "censored and corrected" the Gentile Gospels written by persons considered illiterate by the Emperor Anastasius. The implication was that they were altered to conform to sixth century Christianity which differed from the Christianity of previous centuries (The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gospel of Barnabas, and the New Testament, by M. A. Yusseff, p. 81)

These "corrections" were by no means confined to the first centuries after Christ. Sir Higgins says:

"It is impossible to deny that the Bendictine Monks of St. Maur, as far as Latin and Greek language went, were very learned and talented, as well as numerous body of men. In Cleland's 'Life of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury', is the following passage: 'Lanfranc, a Benedictine Monk, Archbishop of Canterbury, having found the Scriptures much corrupted by copyists, applied himself to correct them, as also the writings of the fathers, agreeably to the orthodox faith, secundum fidem orthodoxam."

History of Christianity in the light of Modern knowledge, Higgins p.318

In other words, the Christian scriptures were re-written in order to conform to the doctrines of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and even the writings of the early church fathers were "corrected" so that the changes would not be discovered. Sir Higgins goes on to say:

"The same Protestant divine has this remarkable passage: 'Impartiality exacts from me the confession, that the orthodox have in some places altered the Gospels'."

The author then goes on to demonstrate how a massive effort was undertaken in Costantinople, Rome, Canterbury, and the Christian world in general in order to "correct" the Gospels and destroy all manuscripts before this period.

Theodore Zahan, illustrated the bitter conflicts within the established churches in Articles of the Apostolic Creed. He points out that the Roman Catholics accuse the Greek Orthodox Church of remodeling the text of the holy scriptures by additions and omissions with both good as well as evil intentions. The Greek Orthodox, on the other hand, accuse the Roman Catholics of straying in many places very far away from the original text. In spite of their differences, they both join forces to condemn the non-conformist Christians of deviating from "the true way" and condemn them as heretics. The "heretics" in turn condemn the Catholics for having "recoined the truth like forgers." The author concludes "Do not facts support these accusations?"

"And from those who said: "We are Christians," We took their covenant, but they forgot a good part of the message which was sent to them. Therefore We have stirred up enmity and hatred among them till the Day of Resurrection, and Allah will inform them of what they used to do. O people of the Scripture! Now has Our messenger (Muhammad) come to you, explaining to you much of that which you used to hide in the Scripture, and forgiving much. Indeed, there has come to you a light from Allah and a plain Scripture. Wherewith Allah guides him who seeks His good pleasure unto paths of peace. He brings them out of darkness by His will into light, and guides them to a straight path. They indeed have disbelieved who say: Lo! Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary. Say: Who then has the least power against Allah, if He had willed to destroy the Messiah son of Mary, and his mother and everyone on earth? And to Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them. He creates what He will. And Allah is Able to do all things. The Jews and Christians say: We are sons of Allah and His loved ones. Say; Why then does He punish you for your sins? No, you are but mortals of His creating. He forgives whom He will, and punishes [for their sins] whom He will. And to Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them, and unto Him is the return [of all]. O people of the Scripture! Now has Our messenger (Muhammad) come unto you to make things plain after a break in [the series of] the messengers, lest you should say: There came not unto us a messenger of cheer nor any Warner. Now has a messenger of cheer and a Warner come unto you. And Allah is Able to do all things.  (The Noble Quran, 5:14-19)"

St. Augustine himself, a man acknowledged and looked up to by both Protestants and Catholics alike, professed that there were secret doctrines in the Christian religion and that

"there were many things true in the Christian religion which it was not convenient for the vulgar to know, and that some things were false, but convenient for the vulgar to believe in them."

Sir Higgins admits:

"It is not unfair to suppose that in these withheld truths we have part of the modern Christian mysteries, and I think it will hardly be denied that the church, whose highest authorities held such doctrines, would not scruple to retouch the sacred writings" (The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gospel of Barnabas, and the New Testament, M. A. Yusseff, p.83)

Even the epistles attributed to Paul were not written by him. After years of research, Catholics and Protestants alike agree that of the thirteen epistles attributed to Paul only seven are genuinely his. They are: Romans, 1, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philipians, Philemon, and 1 Thessalonians.

How many books of the Bible are 'truly inspired'?

Today, Christian sects are not agreed on the definition of what exactly is an "inspired" book of God. The Protestants are taught that there are 66 truly "inspired" books in the Bible, while the Catholics have been taught that there are 73 truly "inspired" books, not to mention the many other sects and their "newer" books, such as the Mormons, etc. As we shall see shortly, the very first Christians, for many generations, did not follow either the 66 books of the Protestants, nor the 73 books of the Catholics. Quite the opposite, that generation believed in books that were, many generations later, "recognized" to be fabrications and apocrypha by a more enlightened age than that of the apostles and which have since been completely destroyed by the Church. For more on this topic please read section 2.4

Inspired? The bible? Here are 61 Reasons to doubt the Inspiration in the bible.

Christian Missionaries claim that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. Other Christians at least revere the Bible above other scriptures. Most Christians accept the Bible as a moral guide, accept it as an accurate document on the life of Jesus, and believe that it reveals important spiritual truths. But the Bible does not come from God. It contains many contradictions, it advocates atrocities, and its stories are myths based largely on Pagan myths. Because of the undue reverence Christians pay to the Bible, it has become one of the most dangerous books in the world. This section reveals why the Bible isn't due the excessive reverence given to it.

Biblical Prophecy ?
Thomas Paine's Examination of Prophecies
so what about The Book of Daniel And Revelation. ?

But the 'ancient copies' are exact copies of one-another, right?

Well, where do all of these Bibles come from and why the difficulty in defining what is a truly "inspired" word of God? Well, as we have just seen, they come from the "ancient manuscripts" (also known as "MSS" or "authorities"). The Christian world today is claimed to possess anywhere up to 24,000 "ancient manuscripts" of the Bible with a very few of them dating all the way back to the fourth century after Christ (but not back to Christ or the apostles themselves). In other words, they have with them gospels and epistles which date back to the century when the Trinitarians took over the Christian Church. All manuscripts from before this period have strangely perished. All Bibles in existence today are compiled from these "ancient manuscripts." However, any reputable scholar of the Bible will tell us that no two ancient manuscripts are exactly identical.

"In any event, none of [the original manuscripts of the books of the Bible] now survive. What do survive are copies made over the course of centuries, or more accurately, copies of the copies of the copies, some 5,366 of them in the Greek language alone, that date from the second century down to the sixteenth. Strikingly, with the exception of the smallest fragments, no two of these copies are exactly alike in their particulars. No one knows how many differences, or variant readings, occur among the surviving witnesses, but they must number in the hundreds of thousands."

The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, Bart Ehrman, pp. 27

People today generally believe that there is only ONE Bible, and ONE version of any given verse of the Bible. As we have begun to see, this is far from true. All Bibles in our possession today (Such as the KJV, the NRSV, the NASV, NIV,...etc.) are the result of extensive cutting and pasting from these various manuscripts with no single one being the definitive reference. There are countless cases where a paragraph shows up in one "ancient manuscript" but is totally missing from many others. For instance, Mark 16:8-20 (twelve whole verses) is completely missing from the most ancient manuscripts available today but show up in more recent "ancient manuscripts." There are also many documented cases where even geographical locations are completely different from one ancient manuscript to the next. For instance, in the "Samaritan Pentateuch manuscript," Deuteronomy 27:4 speaks of "mount Gerizim," while in the "Hebrew manuscript" the exact same verse speaks of "mount Ebal." From Deuteronomy 27:12-13 we can see that these are two distinctly different locations. Similarly, Luke 4:44 in some "ancient manuscripts" mentions "Synagogues of Judea," others mention "Synagogues of Galilee." This is only a sampling, a comprehensive listing would require a book of its own.

There are countless examples in the Bible where verses of a questionable nature are included in the text without any disclaimer telling the reader that many scholars and translators have serious reservations as to their authenticity. The King James Version of the Bible (Also known as the "Authorized Version"), the one in the hands of the majority of Christendom today, is one of the most notorious in this regard. It gives the reader absolutely no clue as to the questionable nature of such verses. However, more recent translations of the Bible are now beginning to be a little more honest and forthcoming in this regard. For example, the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, by Oxford Press, has adopted an extremely subtle system of bracketing the most glaring examples of such questionable verses with double square brackets ([[ ]]). It is highly unlikely that the casual reader will realize the true function these brackets serve. They are there to tell the informed reader that the enclosed verses are of a highly questionable nature. Examples of this are the story of the "woman taken in adultery" in John 7:53-8:11, as well as Mark 16:9-20 (Jesus' resurrection and return), and Luke 23:34 (which, interestingly enough, is there to confirm the prophesy of Isaiah 53:12).....and so forth.

For example, with regard to John 8:1-11, the commentators of this Bible say in very small print at the bottom of the page:

"The most ancient authorities lack 7.53-8.11; other authorities add the passage here or after 7.36 or after 21.25 or after Luke 21.38 with variations of text; some mark the text as doubtful."

With regard to Mark 16:9-20, we are, strangely enough, given a choice of how we would like the Gospel of Mark to end. The commentators of the NRSV by Oxford Press have supplied both a "short ending" and a "long ending." Thus, we are given a choice of what we would prefer to be the "inspired word of God". Once again, at the end of this Gospel in very small text, the commentators say:

"Some of the most ancient authorities bring the book to a close at the end of verse 8. One authority concludes the book with the shorter ending; others include the shorter ending and then continue with verses 9-20. In most authorities, verses 9-20 follow immediately after verse 8, though in some of these authorities the passage is marked as being doubtful."

Peake's Commentary on the Bible records;

"It is now generally agreed that 9-20 are not an original part of Mk. They are not found in the oldest MSS, and indeed were apparently not in the copies used by Mt. and Lk. A 10th-cent. Armenian MS ascribes the passage to Aristion, the presbyter mentioned by Papias (ap.Eus.HE III, xxxix, 15)."

"Indeed an Armenian translation of St. Mark has quite recently been discovered, in which the last twelve verses of St. Mark are ascribed to Ariston, who is otherwise known as one of the earliest of the Christian Fathers; and it is quite possible that this tradition is correct"

Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, F. Kenyon, Eyre and Spottiswoode, pp. 7-8

"Nonetheless, there are some kinds of textual changes for which it is difficult to account apart from the deliberate activity of a transcriber. When a scribe appended an additional twelve verses to the end of the Gospel of Mark, this can scarcely be attributed to mere oversight"

The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, Bart Ehrman, pp. 27-28

"…The gospel of Mark ends abruptly, at 16.8, and early attempts to add an ending show that it was felt to be incomplete. It is possible that the book was never finished or that it was damaged at an early stage. Yet it may be our knowledge of the other Gospels that makes us expect this one to end with appearances of the risen Lord. Certainly, it ends in an appropriate way for Mark - with fear, human failure, and the call to discipleship …"

The Oxford Companion to the Bible, Bruce Metzger and Michael Coogan, p. 496

Even at that, these verses are noted as having been narrated differently in different "authorities." For example, verse 14 is claimed by the commentators to have the following words added on to them in some "ancient authorities":

"and they excused themselves saying 'This age of lawlessness and unbelief is under Satan, who does not allow the truth and power of God to prevail over the unclean things of the spirits. Therefore, reveal your righteousness now' - thus they spoke to Christ and Christ replied to them 'The term of years of Satan's power has been fulfilled, but other terrible things draw near. And for those who have sinned I was handed over to death, that they may return to the truth and sin no more, that they may inherit the spiritual and imperishable glory of the righteousness that is in heaven'.".

Dr. Lobegott Friedrich Konstantin Von Tischendorf was one of the most eminent conservative biblical scholars of the nineteenth century. One of his greatest lifelong achievements was the discovery of the oldest known Biblical manuscript know to mankind, the "Codex Sinaiticus," from Saint Catherine's Monastery in Mount Sinai. This was one of the manuscripts which influenced the Christian recognition of the need to produce the RSV Bible. One of the most devastating discoveries made from the study of this fourth century manuscript was that the gospel of Mark originally ended at verses 16:8 and not at verse 16:20 as it does today. In other words, the last 12 verses (Mark 16:9 through Mark 16:20) were "injected" by the Church into the Bible sometime after the 4th century. This conclusion was supported by the fact that the early Church fathers of the second century C.E. such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen never quoted these verses. Later on, it was also discovered that the said 12 verses, wherein lies the account of "the resurrection of Jesus," do not appear in codices Syriacus, Vaticanus and Bobiensis. Originally, the "Gospel of Mark" contained no mention of the "resurrection of Jesus" (Mark 16:9-20). At least four hundred years (if not more) after the departure of Jesus, the Church, by way of father Ariston, received divine "inspiration" to add the story of the resurrection to the end of this Gospel and then allow Christianity to attribute these inserted verses to "Mark."

The author of "Codex Sinaiticus" had no doubt that the Gospel of Mark came to an end at Mark 16:8, to emphasize this point we find that immediately following this verse he brings the text to a close with a fine artistic squiggle and the words "The Gospel according to Mark." Tischendorf was a staunch conservative Christian and as such he managed to casually brush this discrepancy aside since in his estimation the fact that Mark was not an apostle nor an eye witness to the ministry of Jesus made his account secondary to those of the apostles such as Matthew and John. However, as seen elsewhere in this book, the majority of Christian scholars today recognize the writings of Paul to be the oldest of the writings of the Bible. These are closely followed by the "Gospel of Mark" and the "Gospels of Matthew and Luke" are almost universally recognized to have been based upon the "Gospel of Mark." This discovery was the result of centuries of detailed and painstaking studies by these Christian scholars and the details can not be repeated here. Suffice it to say that most reputable Christian scholars today recognize this as a basic indisputable fact.

Today, the translators and publishers of our modern Bibles are beginning to be a little more forthright and honest with their readers. As we have just seen, although they may not simply openly admit that these twelve verses were forgeries of the Church and not the word of God, still, at least they are beginning to draw the reader's attention to the fact that there are two "versions" of the "Gospel of Mark" and then leave the reader to decide what to make of these two "versions."

Now the question becomes "if the Church has tampered with the Gospel of Mark, then did they stop there or is there more to this story?. As it happens, Tischendorf also discovered that the "Gospel of John" has been heavily reworked by the Church over the ages. For example,

1.It was found that the verses starting from John 7:53 to 8:11 (the story of the woman taken in adultery) are not to be found in the most ancient copies of the Bible available to Christianity today, specifically, codices Sinaiticus or Vaticanus.

2.It was also found that John 21:25 was a later insertion, and that a verse from the gospel of Luke (24:12) that speaks of Peter discovering an empty tomb of Jesus is not to be found in the ancient manuscripts.

(For more on this topic please read 'Secrets of Mount Sinai' by James Bentley, Doubleday, NY, 1985).

Much of the discoveries of Dr. Tischendorf regarding the continuous and unrelenting tampering with the text of the Bible over the ages has been verified by twentieth century science. For example, a study of the Codex Sinaiticus under ultraviolet light has revealed that the "Gospel of John" originally ended at verse 21:24 and was followed by a small tail piece and then the words "The Gospel according to John." However, some time later, a completely different "inspired" individual took pen in hand, erased the text following verse 24, and then added in the "inspired" text of John 21:25 which we find in our Bibles today.

The evidence of tampering goes on and on. For example, in the Codex Sinaiticus the "lord's prayer" of Luke 11:2-4 differs substantially from the version which has reached us through the agency of centuries of "inspired" correction. Luke 11:2-4 in this most ancient of all Christian manuscripts reads:

"Father, Hallowed by thy name, Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so upon earth. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, as we ourselves also forgive everyone that is indebted to us. And bring us not into temptation."

Further, the "Codex Vaticanus," is another ancient manuscript held by the scholars of Christianity in the same reverent standing as the Codex Sinaiticus. These two fourth century codices are together considered the most ancient copies of the Bible available today. In the codex Vaticanus we can find a version of Luke 11:2-4 even shorter than that of Codex Sinaiticus. In this version even the words "Thy will be done, as in heaven, so upon earth." are not to be found.

When we observe this fact we begin to see why it is that even in our modern Bibles "The Lord's Prayer" in Matthew 6:9-13 is not exactly the same as the version presented in Luke 11:2-4.

With regard to the verse of Luke 24:51 which contains Luke's alleged account of the final parting of Jesus and how he was "raised up into heaven." However, as seen in previous pages, in the Codex Sinaiticus and other ancient manuscripts the words "and was carried up into heaven" are completely missing. The verse only says:

"And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them."

C.S.C. Williams observed, if this omission were correct, "there is no reference at all to the Ascension in the original text of the Gospel."

Some other discrepancies between the Codex Sinaiticus and our modern Bibles are:

Matthew 17:21 is missing in Codex Sinaiticus.

In our modern Bibles, Mark 1:1 reads "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God;" however, in this most ancient of all Christian manuscripts, this verse only reads "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ" Strangely, the very words which are most grating to the Muslim's Qur'an, "the Son of God," are completely missing. Isn't that interesting?

The words of Jesus in Luke 9:55-56 are missing.

The original text of Matthew 8:2 as found in Codex Sinaiticus tells us that a leper asked Jesus to heal him and Jesus "angrily put forth [his] hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean." In our modern Bibles, the word "angrily" is strangely absent.

Luke 22:44 in Codex Sinaiticus and our modern Bibles claim that an angel appeared before Jesus, strengthening him. In Codex Vaticanus, this angel is strangely absent. If Jesus was the "Son of God" then obviously it would be highly inappropriate for him to need an angel to strengthen him. This verse, then, must have been a scribal mistake. Right?

The alleged words of Jesus on the cross "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34) were originally present in the Codex Sinaiticus but was later erased from the text by another editor. Bearing in mind how the Church regarded and treated the Jews in the middle ages, can we think of any reason why this verse might have stood in the way of official Church policy and their "inquisitions"?

John 5:4 is missing from Codex Sinaiticus.

In Mark chapter 9, the words "Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." are again missing.

In Matt. 5:22, the words "without cause" are missing in both the codex Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.

Matt. 21:7 in our modern Bibles reads "And [the disciples] brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set [Jesus] thereon." In the original manuscripts, this verse read "and they set [Jesus] upon them," However, the picture of Jesus being placed upon two animals at the same time and being asked to ride them at once was objectionable to some, so this verse was changed to "and they set [Jesus] upon him" (which "him"?). Soon after, the English translation completely avoided this problem by translating it as "thereon."

In Mark 6:11, our modern Bibles contain the words "Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city." However, these words are not to be found in either of these two most ancient of Christian Biblical manuscripts, having been introduced into the text centuries later.

The words of Matthew 6:13 "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever." Are not to be found in these two most ancient manuscripts as well as many others. The parallel passages in Luke are also defective.

Matthew 27:35 in our modern Bibles contains the words "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots." This passage, once again, is not found according to Rev. Merrill in any Biblical uncial manuscript dating before the ninth century.

1 Timothy 3:16 originally read "And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: which was manifest in the flesh.." This was then later (as seen previously), ever so subtly changed to "And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh…." Thus, the doctrine of the "incarnation" was born.

In all, Tischendorf uncovered over 14,800 "corrections" to the manuscript by nine (some say ten) separate "correctors," which had been applied to this one manuscript over a period from 400AD to about 1200AD (see Fig. 1). Tischendorf strove in his dealings with his holy texts themselves to be as honest and sincere as humanly possible. For this reason he could not understand how the scribes could have so continuously and so callously

"allow themselves to bring in here and there changes, which were not simple verbal ones, but materially affected the meaning" or why they "did not shrink from cutting out a passage or inserting one."

Fig. 1 14,800 "corrections" to only one Biblical manuscript

Irrespective of all of this continuous and unrelenting tampering, due to it's antiquity and completeness the Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most revered and highly respected copies of the Bible available today. However, in spite of this, we find that such ancient manuscripts of the Bible as this do not only differ with the text of our modern Bibles in many hundreds and thousands of words, phrases and even whole paragraphs, rather they even contain in them whole Gospels which were in the first four centuries considered authentic and "inspired" such as the "Letter of Barnabas" and the "Shepherd of Hermas" which are both found in the Codex Sinaiticus. When our modern editors set about their task of harmonizing the text of our modern Bibles with the continually expanding list of more and more ancient manuscripts of the Bible, they do so with the fundamental goal of doing whatever it takes to stay as close to the text of our modern Bibles as humanly possible so as not to fall pray to the ill will of the orthodox who have grown accustomed to the modern "orthodox" reading which it has taken them centuries to achieve. This means that these editors will even go so far as to include in the text of our modern Bibles verses which can not be found in the most ancient manuscripts simply by obtaining the missing text from the most ancient manuscript which does contain it. The other "extra" Gospels are also conveniently discarded since they are obviously "not canonical" and not accepted by the orthodox Church in modern times nor their recent predecessors.

How, then, did the Church handle this problem?

Well, what has been the official Church position regarding these "discrepancies"? How did the Church decide to handle this situation? Did they call upon all of the foremost scholars of Christian literature to come together in a mass conference in order to jointly study the most ancient Christian manuscripts available to the Church and come to a common agreement as to what was the true original word of God? No!

Well then, did they immediately expend every effort to make mass copies of the original manuscripts and send them out to the Christian world so that they could make their own decisions as to what truly was the original unchanged word of God? Once again, No!

So what did they do? Let us ask Rev. Dr. George L. Robertson. In his book "Where did we get our Bible? he writes:

"Of the MSS. of Holy Scripture in Greek still existing there are said to be several thousand of varying worth ... Three or four in particular of these old, faded out, and unattractive documents constitute the most ancient and the most precious treasures of the Christian Church, and are therefore of special interest."

First in Rev. Richardson's list is the "Codex Vaticanus" of which he says:

"This is probably the most ancient of all Greek MSS. now known to exist. It is designated as Codex 'B.' In 1448, Pope Nicholas V brought it to Rome where it has lain practically ever since, being guarded assiduously by papal officials in the Vatican Library. its history is brief: Erasmus in 1533 knew of its existence, but neither he nor any of his successors were permitted to study it... becoming quite inaccessible to scholars, till Tischendorf in 1843, after months of delay, was finally allowed to see it for six hours. Another specialist, named de Muralt in 1844 was likewise given an aggravating glimpse of it for nine hours. The story of how Dr. Tregelles in 1845 was allowed by the authorities (all unconscious to themselves) to secure it page by page through memorizing the text, is a fascinating one. Dr. Tregelles did it. He was permitted to study the MS. continuously for a long time, but not to touch it or to take notes. Indeed, every day as he entered the room where the precious document was guarded, his pockets were searched and pen, paper and ink were taken from him, if he carried such accessories with him. The permission to enter, however, was repeated, until he finally had carried away with him and annotated in his room most of the principle variant readings of this most ancient text. Often, however, in the process, if the papal authorities observed he was becoming too much absorbed in any one section, they would snatch the MS. away from him and direct his attention to another leaf. Eventually they discovered that Tregelles had practically stolen the text, and that the Biblical world knew the secrets of their historic MS. Accordingly, Pope Pius IX ordered that it should be photographed and published; and it was, in five volumes which appeared in 1857. But the work was very unsatisfactorily done. About that time Tischendorf made a third attempt to gain access to and examine it. He succeeded, and later issued the text of the first twenty pages. Finally in 1889-90, with papal permission, the entire text was photographed and issued in facsimile, and published so that a copy of the expensive quartos was obtainable by, and is now in the possession of all the principle libraries in the biblical world."

"Where did we get our Bible?", Rev. Dr. George L. Robertson. Harper and Brothers Publishers, pp.110-112

What were all of the Popes afraid of? What was the Vatican as a whole afraid of? Why was the concept of releasing the text of their most ancient copy of the Bible to the general public so terrifying to them? Why did they feel it necessary to bury the most ancient copies of the inspired word of God in a dark corner of the Vatican never to be seen by outside eyes? Why? What about all of the thousands upon thousands of other manuscripts which to this day remain buried in the darkest depths of the Vatican vaults never to be seen or studied by the general masses of Christendom?

"[And remember] When God took a covenant from those who were given the Scripture: You shall make it known and clear to mankind, and you shall not hide it; but they flung it behind their backs, and purchased with it a miserable gain! How evil was that which they purchased!  (The Noble Quran, 3:187)"

"Say: 'O people of the Book! exceed not in your religion the bounds [of what is proper], trespassing beyond the truth, nor follow the vain desires of people who went astray in times gone by, who misled many, and strayed [themselves] from the straight path.'  (The Noble Quran, 5:77)"

"Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the LORD, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us? Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter's clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not? or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no understanding?  (Isaiah 29:15-16)"

And once again, as was the case in the Codex Sinaiticus, we find that the Codex Vaticanus was reworked by at least two different authors after its compilation. One is estimated to have begun his "correction" shortly after it was completed and another is assumed to have performed his second level "correction" in the 10th or 11th centuries.

Where did the King James Bible come from?

As we have previously seen, after the fourth century C.E., the official Church became that of the Trinitarians. It was not long until all opposition to their views and doctrines was pronounced a heresy and all of their proponents would be severely persecuted or killed. Most of what the Church had defined in its definition of the nature of God and Jesus could not be proven through the scriptures. Thus, in order to ensure as complete and thorough a silencing of the opposition as humanly possible, not only did the Church order that all opposing writings be destroyed and their proponents put to death for blasphemy, but it also saw to it that all scriptures were translated into Latin and then withheld from the masses. No one would be allowed to obtain a copy of the Bible for personal study and worship. If someone wanted to know something about God or His scripture he was required to go to the Church and respectfully ask them in all humility and submissiveness and the Church through its benevolence would dole out whatever portions of the scripture it wished, piecemeal, when and how it wished.

In most situations, however, a shift was made from referring to the scripture itself to referring to their newly defined and continually refined "creeds." The Church would define such creeds in their official councils and then pronounce to the great unwashed masses that in order to enter into heaven they only needed to memorize and recite these official creeds on a regular basis. Religion became big business with the Church selling to the masses patches of land in Heaven which they could purchase either for themselves of for their deceased relatives. Religion became empty acts of kissing crosses and rings of Popes, and the Church became a real-estate agent for Heaven. Thus, the scripture itself all but disappeared from public use. It was no longer the property of the people, rather it became the exclusive property of the Church, to do with as they pleased, with no one to answer to nor anyone to see their actions. This was how censorship was imposed by the Trinitarian Church even upon their own chosen scriptures, and this is how they managed to secure the freedom they would need over the coming centuries in order to refine, correct, and re-write even their own scriptures in order to "clarify" their doctrines in the Bible and then correct the resultant discrepancies, and so on in a never ending downwards spiral.

All of this began to change in 1453 when Johann Gutenberg invented the first printing presses. The first book to be printed on this new press was the Bible. Due to the novelty of this new process it commanded an exorbitantly high price per copy which only the wealthiest of the wealthy could afford. However, the ball had been set in motion in a chain of events that would soon force the Bible out of the hands of the Church and back into those of the people. It had taken close to 1,300 years, however, a light could now definitely be seen at the end of the tunnel and everyone began running towards it.

The Bibles that were now beginning to be printed were copies of the official text as authorized by the Church. These were extremely 'dirty' copies of the Bible. Full of errors. Not from the printing process, rather from the very content of the official texts themselves. The Trinitarian Church had been given complete freedom so many centuries ago by the pagan Roman empire in order to select whatever gospels or epistles they chose and to burn hundreds of others. They were then given total and complete freedom to withhold their chosen books of God from the masses until they could correct and clarify any errors and discrepancies they might find in them. Their power grew to such an extent that they were answerable to no one. This would later become known as the "Dark Ages" and Kings and rulers were subject to the Church which could appoint or remove them as it saw fit. They had achieved ultimate power. This total unrestrained freedom continued for many centuries. In spite of this, when their approved text was finally released to the public in the fifteenth century it still contained massive discrepancies and numerous errors and contradictions between one book and the next, or at times even within the same book itself. They had done their best to repair their major doctrines and insert verses which might later be used to validate them, however, many large discrepancies still remained, and their "correction" of the text had also had the side-effect of generating many more "trivial" and "inconsequential" discrepancies in the details.

The door had now been forced open, the censorship stranglehold released, and the cost of individual copies began to drop dramatically. As far as lay people were concerned any Bible, even one full of errors, was better than none at all. At last, after more than a thousand years the opportunity to read, study and verify the word of God had arrived. Inevitably with this study the thirst from discerning scholars for more accurate translations emerged. What was available to them then was a very degenerated copy, a copy of copies of copies of copies, up to one hundred generations long, having been exposed to slips of the pen, tampering and correction.

The search for cleaner translations was now underway, but the Biblical world would not see the fruits of these efforts for another 350 years. The first printed Bibles were made from a copy of a manuscript that was in the common Roman language, Latin. This manuscript was a much later-generation copy of a text known as the "Vulgate," a Latin translation of the Bible prepared by the Church father Jerome (347-420 CE). The first Bibles came off the press in 1455, and by 1610 the Catholic Douay Bible was printed; which was also based on Jerome's Latin translation, using a copy dating back to around AD 450, and is still used to this day.

Sixty years after the first edition of the Bible was printed, a Dutch scholar named Erasmus in 1516 printed a Greek language version of the New Testament. He used only a half dozen available twelfth century copy manuscripts and a later copy of Jerome's Vulgate translation which he translated back into Greek. This translation had now gone through countless copies and had been converted from Greek to Latin and back to Greek. This mishmash brought about a self-originating, concocted Greek text producing a unique reading never to be found in any other known Greek manuscript. Unfortunately this text became the basis for the received text, the "Textus Receptus," which was later used as the base text of the King James Bible. The unjustified reverence that this Textus Receptus received as the "approved" text of the Church held back more accurate translations for many years. In 1611, King James of England had the Textus Receptus adopted into the official "King James Bible" we find in our hands today. This became the basis for most Protestant translations in Europe until the end of the nineteenth century.

To criticize Church's 'approved' text was akin to sacrilege. It was regarded as the Holy Word, direct from God's mouth; to tamper with this translation was regarded as blasphemous. Some Churches and denominations still hold this attitude even to the present day, although it has since been proven that it contains, by the most conservative estimates, over 2,000 errors. It is interesting to note that Churches which uphold the doctrine of the Trinity generally hang on for dear life to this far-from-accurate translation, adamantly refusing to believe that it contains a single error. Could it have anything to do with the fact that this "approved" text of the Church has been exposed to many generations of modifications of the text, deliberate or otherwise, which have had the interesting end result of making this doctrine so much "clearer" to the reader than it ever was in any of the original manuscripts or with the very first Christians?

The Church maintained its attitude of sanctification and faultlessness toward its received text and this severely stifled the efforts of many to search for a more faithful and correct text. Of those rare individuals who did indeed manage to undertake a search for a more accurate text, the Church managed to maintain a large degree of control over their efforts by financing and supervising their clean-up projects. Thus, these men were torn between loyalty to their financiers and loyalty to the Word of God. However, some courageous scholars pressed on for as clean and accurate a translation as they could get. This required getting as far back in time and as close to the original writings in the copy chain as possible, to the very earliest available copies. Thousands of dedicated scholars have devoted millions of man-hours to this task.

As the original writings of the first disciples and any original Hebrew manuscripts have long since been utterly destroyed, therefore, a massive dragnet went out though the world collecting whatever copies could be found in whatever languages they might be written in. Over the years many more manuscripts were discovered by such men as Griesback, Tischendorf, and Tregelles between 1775 and 1875, who researched and investigated them and based upon the discoveries made from the study of these ancient copies of the Bible, they made many corrections to the then-in-use "received text" of the Bible.

With the passage of time and the discovery of more and more manuscripts, the list of errors in the official Church "Textus Receptus" continued to mount. Eventually, these errors became so many and so serious that any efforts to correct this received text were completely abandoned and it was recognized that it was necessary to produce a completely fresh translation from scratch. In 1881 an attempt at this was made by Wescott and Hort. Armed with the large cache of newly-discovered manuscripts they devised a system to evaluate the age and strength of these manuscripts by applying to them a two-level refining procedure.

The first level of refinement:

This involved resolving the various conflicts between the manuscripts in two ways: First, by evaluating the original author's most likely meaning based upon the internal context; second, by evaluating the position and motivation of the scribes and any possible external pressures that may have been brought to bear upon them in order to distort the original writers meaning, taking into account how all these factors would affect the reliability and accuracy of their work.

The second level of refinement:

This involved dividing all available manuscripts into families. Each manuscript was identified as belonging to one of four families.

1.The Western family group, e.g. codex Bezae and Claromontanus.

2.The Alexandrian family group, e.g., codex Ephraemi, Regius.

3.The Neutral Family group, e.g., codex Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.

4.The Syrian family group, e.g., codex Alexandrinus.

By setting up a family tree for each family group of manuscripts the common older ancestor manuscripts were identified; these would be the more valuable, being closer to the originals. Unfortunately, rather than simply dropping all verses which were found missing from the most ancient manuscripts and recognizing them as later forgeries and insertions, instead it was decided that with the exception of some very extreme cases, all verses which were missing from the most ancient manuscripts would be made up from more recent ones. Combing down the tree in reverse order, where a bit of missing text was found not carried by the previous ancestors it was added from the next most ancient text, and so on if necessary, down the tree until all the available material was incorporated as far as possible into a composite text, weighted in favor of the oldest least corrupt piece of any given text. Thus, a completely new mishmash was created, neither faithfully representing the most ancient manuscripts in their possession nor endorsing the old mishmash officially endorsed by the Church. Oh well, at least part of the truth is better than no truth at all.

Once these scholars were through assembling this mishmash, a Greek translation was directly compiled. Once this new translation was compared to the officially accepted "Textus Receptus" of the King James Bible it could be seen how extensively the old official text deviated even from this compromise half-truth new translation. Since this new text did not force the scholars to recognize the whole truth but only small morsels of it, therefore, it was not long until most of them soon grudgingly abandoned the old text and recognized the validity of the changes made to the new one since they did, after all, only address a fraction of the most major and glaringly obvious errors in the original approved text. This new and revised text was named the "Westcott and Hort" text and it became the basis upon which most modern day Bibles have been compiled, such as the Revised Standard Version, the New International Version, the American Standard Version, etc.

Once cleaner translations started to become available from the start of the 1800s, the old Church sponsored creed-adopted doctrines started to be exposed and take a bashing. Using these cleaner translations, and cross-referencing all scripture statements on any one subject using Bible concordances, a clearer pattern would emerge as to the true original teachings of the Bible. When the old creed doctrines were held up to the light of this examination they failed the test. Foremost among these exposed fabrications of the Church was the doctrine of the Trinity and the relationship of Jesus to God, which were both found to be in no way supported by the Biblical text but were indeed forced upon the text through Church manipulation of the text including insertion of verses and mistranslation of others.

Although this information had come to light from the study of ancient manuscripts of the Bible by well respected Christian scholars, still, ancient prejudices die hard and many Trinitarian denominations preferred to stick with a known faulty text that endorsed centuries of creedal definitions rather than switch over to more accurate translations which would not support these ancient creeds. The Church had spent over a thousand years programming these doctrines into the minds of the masses and such extensive indoctrination would not be easy to correct.

Following the 1880s, numerous examples of even earlier manuscript evidence has come to light. With these earlier reference manuscripts now available, the whole critical process needs to be redone taking this more recently recovered evidence into account. However, as we have seen in the example of the re-translation of the 1880s, no matter how good or ancient the source material, the unwillingness to simply discard all inserted or modified verses in favor of those found in the most ancient manuscripts and the emphasis contemporary scholars place on the 'weighting' aspect in the procedure, thus retaining as much of these insertions and modifications as humanly possible, all of this shall most likely continue to stifle all serious efforts to arrive at the truth and continue to result in translations containing only half-truths. This will especially be the case when the financial backers and the translators are notably biased in favor of a given doctrine or belief.

Following the Westcott and Hort text, other translations have followed, such as the 1900 Bernhard Weiss translation and then the 1901 Eberhard Nestle translation which simply took the consensus of three earlier texts, Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort and the Weiss text. Further developments have been done using this hybrid Nestle text, introducing additional evaluation with numerous newly discovered papyri manuscripts dating back to about 200CE. Sadly, however, the text was also re-evaluated with the evidence of numerous so-called 'Church fathers' (200-700CE) who were mostly severely biased in favor of a given doctrine and very extremely intolerant of any other Christian denominations which would so much as criticize their views. Thus, it would be extremely inappropriate to apply weight to these commentaries of Church fathers who could have very well been involved in the original tampering projects which have resulted in these polluted texts. Far from having a cleaning effect on the text the very opposite would be the case.

Needless to say, the churches has not welcomed all of this public exposure of their previous actions with a whole lot of enthusiasm. However, they have generally responded by carrying on as if nothing had happened, using the same old Bibles, implying to their flock that the newer translations are simply the same Bible but in modern language, or making the appearance of an effort in acquiring newer modern language translations yet keeping them as close to the old versions as possible.

"Then woe unto those who write the Scripture with their own hands and then say: 'This is from Allah,' to purchase with it a miserable price! Woe unto them for what their hand have written and woe unto them for that which they earn [thereby]! And they said: 'The fire will not touch us except for a few numbered days.' Say, 'Have you taken a covenant with Allah so that Allah will not break His covenant, or is it that you say regarding Allah that which you know not?' Verily, Whosoever earns evil, and his sin has surrounded him, they are dwellers of the Fire; they will dwell therein forever. And those who believed [in the strict monotheism of God] and did good deeds they are dwellers of the Paradise, they will dwell therein forever.  (The Noble Quran, 2:79-82)"

"[And remember] When God took a covenant from those who were given the Scripture: You shall make it known and clear to mankind, and you shall not hide it; but they flung it behind their backs, and purchased with it a miserable gain! How evil was that which they purchased!  (The Noble Quran, 3:187)"

"Verily, those who conceal that which Allah has sent down of the Scripture and purchase a small gain therewith, they eat into their bellies nothing but fire. Allah will not speak to them on the Day of Resurrection, nor will He purify them, and theirs will be a painful torment. Those are they who purchase error at the price of guidance, and torment at the price of pardon. What boldness [they show] for the Fire!   (The Noble Quran, 2:174-175)"

"Say: 'O people of the Book! exceed not in your religion the bounds [of what is proper], trespassing beyond the truth, nor follow the vain desires of people who went astray in times gone by, who misled many, and strayed [themselves] from the straight path.'  (The Noble Quran, 5:77)"

How did they explain all these centuries of tampering?

Due to the vast number of changes, omissions, additions and corrections of the Church that Christianity is beginning to discover, most of those who attempt to defend the actions of the Church are switching to a new tactic. That of trivialization of all changes. For example:

"...the rare parts about which there is still uncertainty do not affect in any way any doctrine"

Bible Translations, R.L. Sumner

In the book "The Story of the Manuscripts" by Rev. George E. Merrill, the good Reverend quotes Prof. Arnold as stating:

"there are not more than fifteen hundred to two thousand places in which there is any uncertainty whatever as to the true text.."

Notice how the good Professor manages to first start by alleging that the number of "variant readings" are only a fraction of their true number (according to him only 1500-2000), this number being in the respected Professor's estimation quite minuscule. He then goes on to explain how all of them are undeserving of his attention with only about a dozen being of any doctrinal importance. In this manner, in one paragraph many thousands of additions, omissions, and "corrections" of the church over the ages are suddenly transformed to only a dozen and then quickly reduced to none. Notice how casually and quickly centuries of tampering with the text of the "inspired word of God" is brushed off and justified?. For such men the answer is very simple. All of the changes to the text are all "trivial" and "inconsequential." For them only a few thousand, or a few tens of thousands of errors in the "inspired word of God" is a very acceptable. For them it is just a matter of the "spirit" of the book. For them, some of the words of God are not really that important and can be disregarded. Let us see what Jesus  has to say about such people:

"But he (Jesus) answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.  (Matthew 4:4)"

We also read in the Old Testament:

"that he (God) might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every [word] that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.  (Deuteronomy 8:3)"

"Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish [ought] from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.  (Deuteronomy 4:2)"

Look at it this way. If I were to tell you: "I would like to cut a few small pieces from your body. No more than, say, thirty or forty pieces." Would you then reply: "Fine. So long as you do not cut off any 'important' or 'big' pieces."? Should we not deal with the scriptures of God the same way?

See:  The Bible Just Cant Get It Right

82% of the words of Jesus are not his:

"The Five Gospels," is a 550 page book containing translations of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It was the result of a six year study by 24 Christian scholars from a number of Western universities. They decided to produce a translation of the Gospels which would be uncolored by the translator's personal faith. It was decided that this translation was to give the reader an honest picture of what Jesus  truly said. They scanned the text for the words of Jesus, and collect an index of over 1,500 such sayings. They then tested the validity of each of these sayings, one at a time, to see whether Jesus truly said each one. They then produced a fresh translation, color-coded to show authentic Jesuit sayings and those of an unreliable nature. Their conclusion (page 5) was:

"Eighty-two percent of the words ascribed to Jesus in the gospels were not actually spoken by him."

They go on to reveal that:

"biblical scholars and theologians alike have learned to distinguish the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith. It has been a painful lesson for both the church and scholarship. The distinction between the two figures is the difference between a historical person who lived in a particular time and place...and a figure who has been assigned a mythical role, in which he descends from heaven to rescue humankind and, of course, eventually returns there."

Well then, if 82% of the "words of Jesus" found in the Bible were apparently never spoken by him then where did they come from? Some of the sources demonstrated by the authors are:

"The concept of plagiarism was unknown in the ancient world. Authors freely copied from predecessors without acknowledgment. Sages became the repository of free-floating proverbs and witticisms. For the first Christians, Jesus was a legendary sage: it was proper to attribute the world's wisdom to him. The proverb in Mark 2:17, for example, is attested in secular sources (Plutarch and Diogenes for example)...in the parallel to the Markan passage, Matthew adds a sentence taken from the prophet Hosea (Matt 9:13)."

Also:

"Hard sayings are frequently softened in the process of transmission to adapt them to the conditions of daily living...Variations in difficult saying often betray the struggle of the early Christian community to interpret or adapt sayings to its own situations... Matthew's version of the aphorism "The last will be first and the first last"(Matt 20:16) is softened in Mark 10:31 to "MANY of the first will be last, and of the last MANY will be first"."

And probably most revealing:

"Christian conviction eventually overwhelms Jesus: he is made to confess what Christians had come to believe...The contrast between Christian language or viewpoint and the language or viewpoint of Jesus is a very important clue to the real voice of Jesus, the language of Jesus was distinctive, as was his style and perspective."

The above is only a very small sampling of the very large cache of evidence clearly showing the Bible to have been seriously distorted and altered. To this day it is being continuously edited, corrected, and modified. This is not to say that Christians are not good and honest people in search of the truth. Quite the opposite. Among them are some of the most decent and moral people on this earth. The goal of this book is only to show that the Christian faith as it stands today is not the same one preached by Jesus peace be upon him to his followers nineteen hundred years ago. This is exactly what the Qur'an has been asserting for over fourteen hundred years now.

"O People of the Book! Why do you reject the Signs of God, when you [yourselves] bear witness [to their truth] ?. O People of the Book! Why do you clothe Truth with falsehood, and conceal the Truth, while you have knowledge?  (The Noble Quran, 3:70-71)"

"Say: 'O People of the Book (Jews and Christians)! Why do you reject the Signs of God, when God is Himself witness to all you do?' Say: 'O People of the Book! Why do you obstruct those who believe from the path of God, Seeking to make it crooked, while you were yourselves witnesses? But God is not unaware of what you do'   (The Noble Quran, 3:98-99)"

"Truly, the Religion in the Sight of God is Islam (literally: "the submission"). Nor did those who were given the scripture dissent therefrom except after knowledge had come to them, through envy of each other. But whosoever disbelieves in the Signs of God, [then surely,] God is swift in calling to account.  (The Noble Quran, 3:19)"

"They are not all alike. Of the People of the Scripture there is a party who stand [for that which is right], they recite the revelations of Allah throughout the night, falling prostrate [before Him].  (The Noble Quran, 3:113)"

"And there are, certainly, among the People of the Book, those who believe in God, and in that which was sent down unto you, and in that which was sent down unto them, humbling themselves before God: They will not sell the Signs of God for a miserable gain! For them is a reward with their Lord, and God is swift to take account.  (The Noble Quran, 3:199)"

"O people of the Book! Now has come unto you Our messenger, revealing to you much of what you used to hide in the Book, and passing over much. Indeed, there has come to you from God a light and a plain Scripture  (The Noble Quran, 5:15)"

See:  The Gospel of John and the Hellenzation of Jesus

A small sampling of these contradictions:

"And the chief priests and all the council sought for witness against Jesus to put him to death; and found none. For many bare false witness against him, but their witness agreed not together. And there arose certain, and bare false witness against him, saying, We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands. But neither so did their witness agree together.  (Mark 14:56-59)"

Christian scholars have known, recognized, and documented the many and varied contradictions to be found in the Bible for centuries now. These contradictions are a direct result of the continuous and unrelenting attempts to correct, fix, and amend the Bible in order to make a given doctrine "clear" to the reader. It is the masses who have been kept in the dark in this regard. There is extensive historical and scriptural evidence to be found in the books of the Bible which support this conclusion.   Some Christian scholars estimate the errors in the Bible to be in the range of 14,800-50,000 or even much more. This is why it has become necessary for the Church to demand "blind faith" from the masses.

Matthew is now recognized as not being the author of Matthew (read for example Matthew 9:9). John is also recognized as not being the author of John (read for example John 21:24).... and on and on. These Christian scholars (not Muslims) have even gone so far as to attempt to identify the original documents from which these books were originally derived, such as J, P, Y, Q,...etc.(see section 2.3) . For centuries now, the Qur'an has been bearing witness that the previous books of God had been modified by the hands of the unscrupulous few. Even now when Christians and their universities themselves recognize this to be a historical fact they still do not bother to tell the masses. Some of these Conservative scholars, such as Mr. F.F. Bruce, appear to have completely given up on refuting the proof of distortion and have now resorted to "spiritualizing" the Bible and telling people in effect that the teachings of the Bible are useful anyway even if we don't even know who the inspired authors are.

Others will adamantly refuse to believe that anyone has changed the word of God or that the Bible contains any conflictions whatsoever no matter how much evidence is presented. They are willing to either:

1) Explain it away using abstraction to explain the "true" meanings of the verses presented, or

2) Explain it based upon assumptions of their own not contained in the Bible, or

3) Claim that these matters are all insignificant and that the words remain the inspiration of God even if we don't know who the "inspired" authors were and their narrations contradict one another.

Even at that, they don't attempt to explain all the contradictions presented.   They have developed a system where in one paragraph they manage to reduce many thousands of discrepancies to "only a handful which are at all important," and even before reaching the end of the paragraph, even this "handful" is quickly brushed away as being "only apparent discrepancies."

The problem in many cases is that it is human nature when given a choice between two matters, to take the simpler of the two, sometimes even against one's better judgment. This is indeed how many people lose their life savings to people who tell them that they will invest it for them in a "sure thing," or people who encourage others to participate in lotteries. We would not expect that our land would grow fruit without our having to lavish upon it months of back breaking work. We would not expect that a large company would be willing to pay us a handsome weekly paycheck without our actually doing some useful work for them, however, when it comes to the ultimate reward and the ultimate prize, the Paradise of the Lord of creation, now we are told that it is no longer necessary to work for the ultimate prize.

Paul has made salvation a very easy commodity to come by in Christianity. They only have to "believe." No actual work is required. No one has to work for their salvation (Romans 3:28, etc.). Paul has brought for them the "sure thing" and the short cut to salvation. The commandments of Jesus  which he himself observed faithfully and fully up until the crucifixion, are all discarded by Paul as old, decaying, and ready to vanish away (Hebrews 8:13, etc.). The fact that Jesus  himself told his followers that observing the commandments and selling their belongings shall make them "perfect" is forgotten (Matthew 19:16-21). The fact that Jesus  himself commanded his followers to keep the commandments until the end of time is also forgotten (Matthew 5:17-19). All they need is "faith." They have already been saved. The Law and commandments are merely "extra."

Below is a small sampling of the many and varied contradictions between the verses of the Bible. These are only some of the very simple and obvious examples known today. Other more serious ones require comparisons of many passages with each other (see for example sections 5.2, 5.4 and 5.5) or with historical or scientific knowledge. The reader is encouraged to investigate these examples and to try to analyze the excuses given for them objectively. Please do not accept any and all attempts to justify these contradictions without first analyzing them carefully. When someone tells you that something was a scribal error then remember that the transmitters of even the Old Testament claim that every word and every letter was faithfully counted and recorded and thus, it would be impossible for unintentional errors to creep in. This claim by itself should refute all excuses.

I have seen many such claims of 'numerical miracles' and 'Code finds' in the Bible. Once such claim which I recently came across claimed that the Torah has recently been shown to be statistically valid to over 99.998%. One of those men who became obsesed with this issue was Ivan Panin who spent 50 years writing over 43,000 pages investigating Bible numerics in an attempt to prove that the Bible contains a numerical miracle regarding the numbers seven and eleven, and the position value of letters and other devices.

Firstly, as observed by Gary Miller, the Bible does not state that these things have any relevance. Nowhere has God said: "Behold the miracle of seven and eleven!" Second, these "numerical miracles" are cited in regard to the Bible in order to prove that it is "perfectly preserved." Yet the Bible also contains numerical inconsistencies (see examples in table below) which are then brushed off by these same scholars as being "slips of the pen." So which is it? Is the Bible so perfectly and flawlessly preserved that it contains hidden numerical miracles and messages, and every word and every letter has been counted and recorded, or has the Bible been exposed to "slips of the pen" such that our current Bibles are not 100% completely and fully the absolute unfailing and unerrant word of God? Obviously we can't have it both ways.

For example, Panin himself revised the New Testament based on his ideas. In places where the text does not conform to his theory he decides on the basis of that which fits his scheme. One author of "theomatics" maintained that the anonymous book of Hebrews was written by Paul because this would mean that the total number of books in the Bible credited to Paul would then be equal to fourteen -a multiple of seven. Notice how the text is made to conform to the theory rather than vice-versa?

To take one example of the methods used to attempt to explain the contradictions which have crept into the Bible as a result of centuries of "correction" to its text; the contradiction between Matthew 17:13 and John 1:21 (point 16 below) is explained by Mr. J as: "John is answering the question directly and literally, he is not Elijah, he is John the son of Zechariah.... John was not interested in promoting all kind of speculation about his identity, but to focus attention upon the one he had been sent to prepare the way for." So, if Joe is a vice principal, and someone asks the principal "Is Joe the vice principal?" and the Principal says "yes," then it is OK for Joe to say "I am not the vice principal" because he is "talking within the context that he is Joe" and he wants to "focus attention" on the principal?

Does this sound logical? These apologists' arguments are usually presented with such confidence that people don't bother to analyze them or look any further. The Jews acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah hinges on John admitting he is Elias (Mark 9:12). If John does not admit to being Elias then Jesus'  whole message will lose credibility. Is this how John "focuses attention" on Jesus?

It is inconceivable to think that John, peace be upon him, a prophet of God, would intentionally lie especially in a matter that can totally nullify Jesus' whole message. It is also inconceivable that a prophet of God would remain a prophet of God for many years before the coming of Jesus , fulfilling many prophesies, but neither know that he was sent by God, nor be informed by God that He sent him.

The Qur'an tells us that if the word of God were ever to be tampered with by the hands of mankind then it will be easy to detect this tampering by the contradictions which will inevitably result. We read

"Do they not consider the Qur'an (with care)? Had it been from other than Allah, they would have surely found therein much discrepancy.  (The Noble Quran, 4:82)"

Even the Bible itself gives the same criteria for discovering such modifications,

"For many bare false witness against him(Jesus), but their witness agreed not together.  (Mark 14:56)"

The "witness" of the Gospels in our hands today do indeed "agree not together." This is a result of countless modifying fingers. Thus, as claimed in the Qur'an, this has resulted in it bearing "false witness against him(Jesus)." I hope you find these examples enlightening and informative.

# verse contradicting verse

1 Matthew 2:1 Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king (So Jesus was born between the years 37 B.C. and 4 B.C..)

Luke 2:1-7And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. ([And] this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)... And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. (so Jesus was born about the year 7 C.E. More than ten years later)

2 Acts 9:26-29 and Acts 26:19-21(Paul is saved) Galatians 1:15-22(Was he really?)

3 Acts 9:7(heard voice, saw no man) Acts 22:9(no voice, saw light)

4 Matt.10:2-4, Mark3:16-19 (Jesus apostles' names, the twelfth is Lebbeus who's surname was Thaddeus) Luke 6:14-16 (apostles' names now different, the twelfth in Luke is Judas the brother of James)

5 Matthew 27:5 (Judas hangs himself) Acts 1:18 (Judas falls headlong, his bowels gush)

6 Matthew 11:13-14,17:13 (Elias is John the Baptist) John 1:21 (Elias is not John the Baptist)

7 Luke 3:23-31 + Romans 1:3 ("according to the flesh" 41 men between Jesus and David) Matthew 1:6-16 + Romans 1:3 ("according to the flesh" 26 men between Jesus and David)

8 Matthew 21:12-18 (temple before passing fig tree) Mark 11:12-15 (temple After passing fig tree)

9 Mark 15:25 (crucified by third hour) John 19:14 (not crucified by sixth hour)

10 Matthew 27:32, Luke 23:26, Mark 15:21 (Simon carries the cross) John 19:17 (Jesus carries the cross)

11 Mark 15:23 (gave wine with myrrh to drink) Matthew27:34 (Gave vinegar with gall to drink)

12 Matthew 1:16 (Jesus son of Joseph son of Jacob) Luke 3:23 (Jesus son of Joseph son of Heli)

13 1 Corinthians 15:5 (Jesus seen by twelve) Matthew 28:16 (Jesus seen by eleven)

14 1 Chronicles 7:6 (Three sons), 1Chronicles 8:1 (Five sons), Genesis 46:21 (ten sons) (How many sons did Benjamin have and what are their names?)

15 Acts 9:6-7 Paul falls to ground, others remain standing. Paul receives very simple command. Acts 26-14-18 Paul falls to ground and the others also fall to the ground. Paul receives a long sermon and detailed instructions.

16 Matthew 20:20-21 (The mother of the Zebedee's sons makes the request) Mark 10:35-37 (The Zebedee's sons make the request themselves)

17 (four different accounts of who visited the grave of Jesus)

Matthew 28:1 In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulcher.

Mark 16:1 And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.

John 20:1 The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulcher, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulcher.

Luke 24:10 It was Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles.

18 (four different accounts of who saw what at Jesus' grave) Matthew 28:2-5 And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended f