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The unreliability of Biblical
Transmission
Who studies the Bible
carefully will find a number of contradictions and absurdities
in there. For example, it is told in the story of creation
(Genesis (1st Book of Moses) 2.2):
“And on the seventh day God finished his work which
he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his
work which he had done.”
In Isaiah 40.28, however
we read what is more likely to be the truth and agrees with
the contents of the well – known aya of the throne in the
Qur’an (aya al – kursi, Sura 2, Al – Baqara, aya
255):
“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord
is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint nor grow weary, his understanding is
unsearchable.”
Two chapters,
immediately following each other (Genesis or 1st
Book of Moses 1 and 2) tell us a completely different
arrangement of how creation came about, and even the ten
commandments, the essence of the law, are differing in
Exodus (2nd Book of Moses) 20, from what
they are in Deuteronomy (5th Book of Moses)
5; neither the order nor the times given in the genealogy
in Matthew 1.1-17 and in Luke 3.22-38 are in
agreement with each other, and if you look up for the
sentences from the Old Testament, in not a single case you
will find the same wording in the Old and the New Testament.
It is thus obvious that the Biblical texts cannot present the
unchanged word of God, as (Proverbs of Salomon,
30.5-9):
“every word of God proves true he is a shield to
those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, lest he
rebuke you, and you be found a liar”
However, those whom the
scripture was given to, did not pay heed to this warning and
we can therefore hear Jeremiah (8.8-11) say:
How can you say, 'We are
wise, and the law of the LORD is with us'? But, behold, the
false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie. The wise men
shall be put to shame, they shall be dismayed and taken; lo,
they have rejected the word of the LORD, and what wisdom is in
them? Therefore I will give their wives to others and their
fields to conquerors, because from the least to the greatest
every one is greedy for unjust gain; from prophet to priest
every one deals falsely. They have healed the wound of my
people lightly, saying, 'Peace, peace,' when there is no
peace.
God’s
curse for those whose threw His word behind their back and
sold the scripture for a miserable price has been fulfilled in
history. It has been fulfilled for the Jews as it is described
to us in Micah 3.9-12
“Hear this, you heads of the
house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel, who abhor
justice and pervert all equity, who build Zion with blood and
Jerusalem with wrong. Its heads give judgment for a bribe, its
priests teach for hire, its prophets divine for money; yet
they lean upon the LORD and say, "Is not the LORD in the midst
of us? No evil shall come upon us." Therefore because of
you Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a
heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded
height.”
However, not only the Jews,
Christians too, dealt quite carelessly with the divine law,
although they had been ordered, as cited already from Matthew
5.17-19, to keep the law up to the
least:
"Think not that I have come to
abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish
them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven
and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from
the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of
the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be
called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them
and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of
heaven”
A
witness, Paul gives himself, him on whose teachings the church
is built since, will prove to us that not much has been left
of this spirit of the quotation given above. In his first
letter to the Corinthians 9.20-23 he
writes:
“To the Jews I became as a
Jew, in order to win the Jews; to those under the law I became
as one under the law – though not being myself under the law –
that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law
I became as one outside law – not being without law toward God
but under the law of Christ – that I might win those outside
the law. To the weak I became weak that I might win the weak.
I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means
save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may
share in its blessings.”
It’s not for us to examine
his intention to make the pagans, whatever the price may be,
to confess their belief in Christ. For us it is only of
significance that he tried to please everyone in everything,
and thus it is not astonishing that nowadays most of the
Christian holidays are linked with original pagan
customs.
Paul’s
first letter to the Corinthians
10.32-33:
“Give no offence to Jews or to
Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please all
men in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but
that of many, that they may be saved.”
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