uring the last several years of the life of the apostle Paul (Hebrew “Saul Paulus,” c. 2-68 AD), heresy already was developing astronghold in an attempt to thwart the sacred teachings and doctrines as the very books of the New Testament of the Holy Scriptureswere being penned through the verbal inspiration of God. Wrote Paul about six to seven years before his martyrdom, “O Timothy,keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane
and
vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called” (1Timothy 6:20). Paul also spoke against several heretics, among them Hymenaeus and Philetus (2 Timothy 2:17), and Alexander the coppersmith(2 Timothy 4:14). In Titus 3:10 Paul wrote, “A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject.” And also the apostle Peter (c.1 BC to 68 AD), who wrote in 2 Peter 2:1, “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers amongyou, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.”Some of these “heretics” represented the early yield of “Gnosticism,” a movement comprising an amalgamation of various sects whosechief belief was that
special secret knowledge
was apportioned to some elect persons, who thereby were allocated special spiritual status andglory.
a
The word
gnosis
means knowledge
b
(or science), hence Paul’s early reference to a “science falsely so called.” Thriving during the secondand third centuries, Gnosticism was designated by second century Church Fathers Irenaeus (c. 130-202), Tertullian (c. 160-220), and Hippolytus(c. 170-236) as an aberrant Christian teaching resulting from the syncretism of unsound Christian doctrine with pagan philosophy, or evenastrology and Greek mystery religions.
These three Church Fathers attributed Gnosticism to the magician Simon Magus, who is mentioned inActs 8.
c
By the fourth century, however, 37 Fathers’ written contributions outweighed those represented in the misguidedly celebrated Greek manuscripts Aleph (Sinaiticus) and B (Vaticanus), dated 325-360 AD, by 65.7 percent to 34.3 percent.
d
Nevertheless, heretical teachings based onthis tiny sampling of tainted documents (about 43 all told, eventually) evolved into not only the accepted Christian teachings of the day, but alsothe official establishment of the fledgling Roman Catholic Church (fourth century).
However, this false doctrine embedded within this minusculecollection of manuscripts was abandoned almost entirely by the Church Universal by about the end of the seventh century. Hence, themanuscripts and critical text editions underlying nearly every contemporary Bible version published today were abandoned from the seventhcentury until a textual critic named Friedrich Constantine von Tischendorf (1815-1874) first discovered the NT manuscript Aleph in a waste heapin the St. Catherine’s Monastery, on Mt. Sinai in Egypt, in 1844.
e
Vaticanus B was the first entry appearing in the Vatican Library, back in 1475.
f
Now these 43 or so minority manuscripts, represented foremostly by Aleph and B, remain the foundation of critically edited Greek versions used by modern translators to produce contemporary Bibles. This has been the case since the release of the first new-age pseudo-Biblein 1881, the English Revised Version (or “RV”) New Testament.
g
Most modern biblical textual critics remain entangled in the fourth century web perpetuated by some heretics and scribes of that time, but the inspired real truth of God’s Word has incontrovertibly been proved. Never has anyopponent triumphed over God’s wisdom having appeared in the “unanswered and unanswerable” arguments of the few stalwart orthodoxChristian scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—John W. Burgon (1813-1888), Edward Miller (1825-1901), Frederick HenryAmbrose Scrivener (1813-1891), Herman C. Hoskier (1864-1938), Edward F. Hills (1912-1981), Floyd Nolen Jones,
Donald A.Waite, andothers.
a
J. N. D. Kelly,
Early Christian Doctrines
(Peabody, Mass.: Prince Press, Hendrickson Publishers, 2004), p. 22.
b
Kelly,
Early Christian Doctrines,
22
.
c
Kelly,
Early Christian Doctrines,
22
.
d
J. A. Moorman,
Early Manuscripts, Church Fathers and the Authorized Version
(Collingswood, N.J.: The Bible for Today Press, 2005), p. 116.
e
James Bentley,
Secrets of Mount Sinai: The Story of Finding the World’s Oldest Bible — Codex Sinaiticus
(London: Orbis Publishing, 1985), p. 86.
f
William Henry Paine Hatch,
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1933), Plate XIV.
g
Wilbur N. Pickering, “The Identity of the New Testament Text” in Floyd Nolen Jones,
Which Version is the Bible?,
19
th
ed., rev. and enlarged
(Goodyear, Ariz.:KingsWord Press, 2006), p. 163.
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The document content was researched for more than four years, including the reading of 33 books and papers. Document development spanned parts of 14 months. Both Drs. Floyd Nolan Jones and D.A. Waite approved of the effort in its early stages.
Not much of a talker, are ya Ed?
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