Section Two

Chapters Twelve to Fifteen

"My Words Shall Not Pass Away "

"The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand forever" (Isaiah 40:8).

Chapter Twelve

Seeds of Apostasy

St John, the apostle of Jesus Christ is believed to have passed away around 100 AD. Having outlived his fellow apostles, he was able to take an active part in collating their writings into what we now call the New Testament (Eusebius, "Ecclesiastical History", Book III Chapter 24).

So carefully were the writings which form the New Testament chosen, that no Christian Church Council dared to question what the early church had set aside as inspired Scripture until the convening of the papal Council of Trent in 1645 (Dean Stanley, "Essays on Church and State", p 136).

John foresaw that the fledgling Christian Church would come to be seen as an enemy of the pagans. Just as the Prince of Darkness had sought to destroy the Word Incarnate (John 1:14), so the Word of Inspiration would surely come under attack. Therefore, before concluding his Revelation of Jesus Christ, John recorded one of God's most terrible warnings to mankind:

The evil philosophies issuing from pagan countries at the commencement of the Christian era were numerous. Because they contrasted greatly with the quality of love which God had so dramatically demonstrated by sacrificing His "only begotten Son" that all who truly believe might have eternal life (John 3:16; 1 John 5:13), the pagan religions could not compete with Christianity. Therefore, the Arch-deceiver needed to come up with a counterfeit Christianity which in reality was a modified form of paganism. This "Christianity" would play on the people's ignorance and present a pleasing alternative to those un-regenerated hearts, which found the Christian demands of obedience to God's Law irksome.

Dr. B.G. Wilkinson, in his comprehensive work: "Our Authorised Bible Vindicated", notes three warnings given by the apostle Paul as to what the Christian Church could expect:

Paul warns of the intrusion into Scripture of "science falsely so called" (1 Timothy 6:20). Wilkinson reminds us that the Greek word used by Paul for science is "gnosis", which means "knowledge". He notes that the apostle did not condemn knowledge, but "false knowledge" and comments:

Wilkinson backs his argument by quoting Milman:

This phase of the apostasy was foretold in Paul's letter to Timothy:

Wilkinson comments thus:

Celebrated historian Harnack supports Wilkinson's view:

So it is quite clear that the real enemy of Christianity was not the obvious threat of heathenism or paganism, but the more subtle adulteration of Christianity. As we progress through this book we shall see that the above methods of perversion have been incorporated into the spurious renditions of Scripture which remain to this day in various modern versions - namely, Gnosticism, allegorising and Greek philosophising.

We know that this process of Scriptural depravation commenced even during the lifetime of some of the apostles and that the purpose was to destroy the fledgling church:

Then we are told:

Writing of the Gnostic Marcion, Irenaeus shows how the attack continued into the second century:

Justin Martyr was born in Greece of pagan parents in the very year in which John the Revelator is thought to have died (100 AD). He is credited with conversion to Christianity and became a Christian teacher, but could not entirely divest himself of his heathen upbringing and so he clung to some heretical ideas.

One of his pupils was the famed Tatian, who built upon the heresies of his teacher by embracing Gnostic philosophy. He wrote what is known as the Diatessaron meaning "four in one", which he claimed harmonised with the Gospels. But they were so severely corrupted that a Bishop of Syria was astonished to find some of his parishioners actually coming to believe in them as though they were genuine Scriptures. He was so alarmed that he threw out some two hundred copies! ("Encyclopedias", "Tatian").

As the way of pupils who emulate their mentors, one of Justin Martyr's pupils who came to be known as Clemens of Alexandria, did just that. In his college which he founded, he determined that he would not teach true Christianity, but would mix it with pagan philosophy. Commenting on this J.W. Burgon, DD says:

Naturally, such teachings continued to be reflected in following generations. One of Clemens' pupils, Origen, had a penchant for allegorising the Scriptures to the extent that he came to the place where he could say:

With such observations, one is led to ponder just what use for Scripture Origen had in mind. Certainly it was not what the Author of Scripture intended, for had not God said:

It can readily be seen that Clemens' philosophy would enable the Scriptures to be interpreted to support practically any belief or dogma capable of being devised by man. Thus Origen came up with the notion that the soul existed from eternity. After death, it migrated to another form of life commensurate with one's conduct during the human life span (shades of Buddhism!). His fantasies led him to believe that even the stars and planets had souls which, like men, were on trial to learn perfection. ("Our Authorised Bible Vindicated", p 18).

So we see a new type of Bible emerging which Wilkinson describes as "an adaptation of the Word of God to Gnosticism ".

The learned Dr. Scrivener summed up the effect of this tragic prostitution of God's Word, when he wrote some sixteen centuries after Clemens:

We shall now proceed to follow the early Christian Church and see how Origenism came to flood the emerging Roman Catholic Church through Eusebius and Jerome in the fourth century; and how that very distinguished Catholic theologian of the mid-nineteenth century, Cardinal Newman, was able to show what a powerful hold Origen still held over the philosophy of Catholicism:

"I love ... the name Origen. I will not listen to the notion that so great a soul was lost" (Newman, "Apologia pro vita sua", Chapter VII, 3rd Edition p 282).

 

Chapter Thirteen

Early Christian Missionaries

It is easy for present-day Christians to forget that the first Christians, as with Jesus and His disciples, were Jews. With the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD there was a great migration to Syria, including the area around Antioch where the followers of Christ were first called "Christians".

The writings of the apostles, which were in Koine Greek (or the common language of the day), were carefully collected and taken to Antioch where they were translated into Syriac about the year 150 AD. This translation came to be known as the Peshitta, or common language Bible (See Hort, "Introduction", p 143).

Copies of this Bible were eagerly sought by the expanding Syrian Church and were taken by its missionaries eastward into Persia, India and even into China!

But there was also a great need for a Latin translation, for it must be remembered that at the time, the Roman Empire included Asia Minor (now the Western portion of Turkey), Greece, Italy, Southern Europe and parts of Britain. Paul and Barnabas had already introduced Christianity to the Jews and the pagans of Galatia, which was then a Roman province.

The Galatians were descendants of a fiery Celtic race of Gauls who occupied an area in what is now known as France. They had subdued Italy over four centuries earlier, and then, being driven out by the emerging Roman Empire, had remained isolated in Asia Minor. Hence the name "Galatia" (Ridgeway, "The Early Age of Greece", Vol. I p 356).

The Galatians still maintained links with the Gauls and although they used the Latin language of the Roman Empire, they also retained their Gallic language. They were ideally suited to take Christianity westward. To suit their needs the Koine Greek manuscripts from which the Peshitta originated, were translated into Latin in 157 AD. This was a forerunner of what came to be known as the Itala Bible. It was eventually carried westward by Celtic missionaries as far as Britain, for these people also had come to know Latin from their Roman conquerors.

It will be recalled that, after leaving Galatia, Paul continued his missionary journey to Greece. Such places as Athens, Philippi, Thessalonica and Corinth are inseparably connected with early New Testament history. The letters which Paul wrote to the believers were in Greek, so they had received much of the New Testament Canon first-hand. In God's providence, within the lifetime of the generation following the apostles, the civilised world had the benefit of the gospel recorded in Greek, Latin and Syriac languages.

In the middle of the third century, there was born in Antioch one who was to have a lasting influence on Christianity. His name was Lucian. Antioch by this time was a thriving Roman metropolis, but it was also a centre of Greek life and culture.

Perhaps more importantly, it had, by Lucian's time, superseded Jerusalem as the centre of Christianity. When he was about ten years of age, Lucian was brought face to face with the realities of imperial politics when Shapur I, the Persian Monarch, waged war against Rome and took the Emperor captive. Antioch now came under Persian rule. Many Syrian Christians were taken to Persia as captives and with them they took their Peshitta Bibles.

But it was not long before the Roman Empire was revitalised by an energetic Emperor named Aurelian. He regained most of the lost territories, including Antioch. By this time Lucian was a very well-educated man in his early twenties. Erelong, Roman and Alexandrian Bishops arrived, and began pressing their Romanised doctrines onto the Bishop of Antioch. Lucian noticed that the Scriptures which they used were substantially different from those being used by Syrian Christians. Being a committed Christian in the apostolic tradition, he determined to resist the Gnostic philosophy that characterised these Bibles, and to reject the growing notion of the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome who was exalting his position by using deceptive writings of an Apocryphal nature which supported the primacy of Peter (Source - Shotwell and Loumis, "The See of Peter", p 122. Cited by Wilkinson in: "Truth Triumphant", pp 49, 50).

Lucian was associated with the creation of a theological school in Antioch in which he taught and where he strove to protect the Apostolic Church from the inroads of heresy. Wilkinson cites Gilly, Fisher and Eusebius who tell us that in Lucian's day there "Were at least eighty heretical sects all striving for supremacy" and that "Mutilations of the Sacred Scriptures abounded because each took unwarranted licence in removing or adding pages to the Bible manuscripts" ("Truth Triumphant", p 50).

As a counter to spurious Scriptures, Lucian determined to certify the Apostolic New Testament by editing the Peshitta and he also translated the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek. According to Nolan, this version held sway in Constantinople and in most of the East ("The Integrity of the Greek Vulgate", p 72).

Thus we can attribute to this Christian scholar the honour of producing a complete Bible, which established what has become known as the Traditional or Byzantine Text from which eventually came the Textus Receptus Bibles (Received Text) of the Protestant Reformation. (See the "Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church", 1958 p 826).

Like so many of the following champions of the Traditional and Received Text, Lucian met a martyr's death in 312 AD.

The Christians of the early fourth century must have welcomed the news of Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity (circa 313 AD). For long and weary years, they had felt the oppressive heel of Diocletian, the pagan Roman Emperor, who used the forces of the State in a cruel but futile effort to crush their faith.

Did those Christians realise that Constantine's "conversion" was merely a political ploy to unite his Christian and pagan subjects under a form of government that espoused an acceptable mixture of their two philosophies? Where persecution had failed to check the spread of Christianity, it was thought that compromise would bring about peace and unity. Constantine looked around for a form of spiritual authority by which he could control the hearts and minds of both parties. What better authority than a Bible contaminated by Origen's penchant for allegorising Bible events or a Bible that could be interpreted to suit both pagan and Christian philosophies!

B.G. Wilkinson makes this interesting observation:

It so happened that Eusebius, the Bishop of Caesarea, had recently (331 AD), edited Origen's Bible in the Greek. Constantine recognised his work as a fulfilment of his need. He ordered fifty copies to be produced on vellum (animal skins) and had them distributed among the churches around Constantinople. In so doing, it is pertinent to here note that, as Emperor Constantine had assumed the role of spiritual father of the Christian Church, he was in fact laying the foundation of the Roman Catholic system of religion, for the name itself is expressive of the union of a State and a Catholic, or universal church.

But not all Christians were prepared to accept Constantine's judgments on faith and order. Not the least of their objections centred on his Eusebio-Origen Bible which contrasted unfavourably with Lucian's Bible.

In an attempt to overcome this drawback, and in line with the desire of the emerging Roman Catholic Church to cut Western Europe off from Eastern culture and learning, Pope Damasus in 382 commissioned Jerome, one of his learned monks, to bring out a Bible translation in Latin.

Henceforth, the Greek language with its literary treasures was to be shunned by Rome, a fact which played no small part in bringing on the Dark Ages (476 - 1453).

Jerome had access to the famous library of Eusebius and Pamphilius in Caesarea where the many manuscripts of Origen were preserved (Swete, "Introduction to Greek Old Testament", p 86). In his book, "Catholic and Protestant Bibles", Jacobus tells us that among them was a Greek Bible of the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus type (p 4). Jerome used this Bible as the basis of his Latin translation.'

(7- The Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus are considered to be survivors
of the type of Bible ordered by Constantine (Price, "Ancestry" pp 69, 70).)

However, Jerome didn't slavishly follow Eusebius. At that time, Lucian's (Traditional) Greek Bible held great sway around Constantinople, being much preferred to the Bible which Constantine had obtained from Eusebius. This was one reason why Rome was anxious for a Latin Bible. It could also help to wean the Latin speaking populous away from their Greek Bible. Jerome, according to Dr E. F. Hills, consulted old Greek manuscripts and Hills backs his conclusion by citing Hort:

Dr Hills' own conclusions are similar:

Therefore, because Jerome's Bible came closer to the Traditional Text whilst still retaining much of Eusebius' Origenism, it was still highly acceptable to Rome as, what we today would call, an ecumenical Bible. Interestingly, Jerome did not want to include the apocryphal books in his Old Testament, yet at the insistence of the pope he was forced to include them.

Wilkinson sees this as proof that even at this early stage of development, the papacy upheld tradition as being of equal authority with Scripture ("Our Authorised Bible Vindicated", p 46).

Thus around 400 AD, Jerome gave to the Roman Catholic Church a Bible which has been used as a basis for its official Bible translations, eight of which have been produced to the middle of the twentieth century. Jerome's work did not readily gain acceptance with the masses and some nine hundred years were to pass before it came to be known as the Vulgate (Jacobus, "Catholic and Protestant Bibles", p 4).

Such actions which secured for Rome much of the corrupted Origen-Eusebian Bible ensured that, henceforth, the Christian Church would never again be united. Three great branches of Christianity arose, each having its own Bible and liturgy. To the east there was the original Apostolic Church which branched out from Greece and Syria and quickly spread into Persia, India and even into China and Japan. They came to rely on Lucian's Greek Vulgate and the Syriac Peshitta (Burgon and Miller, "The Traditional Text", p 128).

To the west there arose the great Latin communities of Northern Italy and the numerous Celtic communities of Christians who spread from Galatia into what is now France, and from there to England, Scotland and Ireland. These Christians took with them the Itala or Latin Bible, which dates back to the mid-second century. Evidence for this is given by Fulton:

Milan, being strategically placed became a focal point of numerous Church Councils of the Eastern and Western clergy (See Gordon, "World Healers", pp 210, 211, 237, 238).

The third great branch into which Christianity separated lay to the south, in the Roman portion of Italy and in North Africa, especially around Alexandria. It was this branch of Christianity which increasingly gorged itself on pagan philosophy and set up its religio-political headquarters in Rome. Its authority was a mixture of Jerome's Origen-impregnated Bible and the traditions of man. Its Bishop, the pope, declared himself head of all the Christian churches and set about imposing his leadership and corrupt Bible on the rest of Christianity. This battle of the Bibles, on which depends Roman Catholic supremacy in religion and politics, continues to this very day.

 

Chapter Fifteen

Keepers of the Faith

We shall now briefly trace the progress of the Bibles and Christianity in their march westward. About the time that Jerome was engaged in translating and bringing out his Latin Bible there was in Ireland a young slave named Patrick who had been taken from "a land across the Irish Sea". He was born around 360 AD in the Northern Roman province of Strathclyde now known as Scotland. Patrick has left us an interesting record of his early life:

But during his seven years of slavery, Patrick apparently learned obedience through suffering. He had plenty of time to contemplate his duty to the apostolic faith into which he was born. After escaping, he realised that his former captors, whom he had come to know and love in Ireland, themselves were slaves of paganism, and he was determined to return to the land of his captivity as a missionary of Jesus Christ. It is thought that the time of his return to Ireland was around 390 AD (ibid p 82).

Patrick preached from the Bible with remarkable results. The Bible he used was of the Itala line. He set up Bible schools which later grew into colleges and large universities. These schools had no papal connections in that the Bible was their sole authority, neither did they give heed to papal decrees in respect to religious festivals, Sunday observance, and liturgy.

Well after Patrick's death, these schools continued to turn out famous students of the apostolic faith. There was Columba, who enthroned Christ in Scotland; Aidan, who turned England away from its pagan rituals; and Columbanus, with others following who Christianised Germany, France and Switzerland. The schools which they set up became great centres for disseminating their hand-written Bibles. These Bibles were beautifully copied as befitting the execution of a holy task:

The historian Cathcart's comments indicate a very high degree of learning among these early Celtic missionaries:

The indefatigable Columba is credited with establishing over three hundred churches, many of which had schools or monasteries and some of these became centres for the copying of Scripture. Columba himself, is said to have with his own hand, transcribed some three hundred New Testaments. In his numerous writings and poems there is evidence that he used the Itala-type Bible (See Wilkinson, "Truth Triumphant", p 103).

It's highly significant that these and all other churches which revered the apostolic line of Bibles such as Itala, Peshitta and Lucian's Vulgate (as opposed to the Roman Bibles of Eusebius and Jerome), continued to keep the Biblical seventh-day Sabbath as a day of rest. The British Isles was no exception as shown in the following statements:

The Historian Andrew Lang confirms the practice of Sabbathkeeping among the Celtic Churches:

Thinking readers may be perplexed at the thought of two of Rome's proclaimed saints observing the Biblical seventh-day Sabbath [Saturday]. But the sobering facts are that neither Patrick, Columba or the Celtic Churches in general, had any connection with the Bishop of Rome. Wm. Catheart DD says: There is strong evidence that Patrick had no Roman commission in Ireland. As Patrick's churches in Ireland, like their brethren in Britain repudiated the supremacy of the popes, all knowledge of conversion of Ireland through his ministry must be suppressed [by Rome at all costs]" ("The Ancient British and Irish Churches" p 85).

As an adjunct to the footnote on the previous page, it's worthy to note B.G. Wilkinson's astute observation:

Perhaps no other name is more famous in the history of the Apostolic Church's fight against the doctrines and dogma of the papacy than that of the Waldenses. Writers sympathetic to the papacy have attempted to fix their origins to the time of Peter Waldo of the late twelfth century. At the very best, this is a mistake, if not deliberate fraud. Wilkinson reminds us that:

He then proves his point:

Prior to seeking asylum in the Piedmont valleys of Northern Italy due to the increasing hostility of the papacy, the Waldenses were part of the Apostolic Church living around Milan. The reason for their falling out with Rome was due to their insistence that they follow the Bible as their rule of faith. As we have already seen, this Bible was Itala. Wilkinson refers to the historian Comba who makes this significant remark:

(This axiomatic statement by Comba is equally valid today and should be remembered by every Protestant who bears the name seriously).

Helvidius is the name of a notable northern Italian scholar who opposed the emerging papal style of church practices. He had studied under Auxentius, Bishop of Milan, where the church prized its Itala Bible. It contrasted with those being used by Rome, which would include the Greek Bible edited for Constantine by Eusebius. Helvidius publicly challenged the Catholic, Jerome, for using corrupt Greek manuscripts. It was such criticism of Constantine's Eusebius Greek Bible by eminent scholars that had prodded Jerome into caution. So, as we have seen, instead of just translating Eusebius' Bible from the Greek into Latin, he also sought out early Greek manuscripts and ended up with a Bible that was much closer to the Itala, or Traditional Text, yet, importantly, it still retained many corruptions.

It is important to remember the influence which these godly Waldensian scholars had on Jerome, for his Bible became the authorised Latin Vulgate which the Church of Rome authenticated at the Council of Trent. This explains why its progeny the Douay Bible, is closer to the King James Version than most later modern versions which have virtually reverted to the text-type used by Eusebius. We shall enlarge on this phenomenon in section four.

Jovinianus, a learned compatriot of Helvidius, offended Jerome and his followers by his superior scholarship and his condemnation of the heathen superstitions which Jerome nurtured and practiced; for Jerome encouraged an ascetic form of worship which resulted in the pagan monasticism practiced by the priests and other Roman religionists to this day (See Lilly, "Vigilantius and His Time", p 246).

Public proceedings were instituted against Jovinianus in Rome and Milan and, according to A.H. Newman, this forced Jovinianis and his fellow believers to seek refuge in the Alpine Valleys [among the Vaudois or Waldenses] ("A Manual of Church History", Vol. I p 376).

The evidence of history compels us to agree with Wilkinson's conclusions regarding the Waldenses and their Bible:

As to the purity of the Waldenses' Bible in relation to its contemporaries, let us hear from Rome's acclaimed authority, Augustine, to whom the Catholic Church loves to pay saintly homage. Around 400 AD he said:

(Let the reader take heed to the importance of this eulogy coming as it does from one of Rome's revered fathers. In contrast we can only marvel at the contempt and hatred later generated by Rome against the Bible which Augustine so justly acclaimed).

Dr Scrivener confirms the antiquity of the Waldensian's Itala Bible:

It is difficult to imagine any Bibles being closer to the apostle's autographs than the Peshitta and the Itala for the translators of these Bibles could very well have been born during the lifetime of some of Christ's disciples. It is also reasonably assumed that John, in his final years, assisted in collating the books of the New Testament Canon (Eusebius, "Ecclesiastical History", Book III Chapter 24).

Therefore, Christians can be confident that when they read from the King James Version of the New Testament, or any other language translation of the Received Text, they are indeed reading the Word of God, for its pedigree goes right back to apostolic times. Truly we can endorse the sentiments of one of the world's most respected Christian commentators:

How could things have been any different! Had not Jesus Christ promised: "My words shall not pass away"? (Matthew 24:35).

(For a dramatic account of the way in which the Syriac Bible was preserved in isolation in India throughout the period of the Dark Ages, the author recommends his book, "The Inquisitive Christians", available from "New Millennium Publications" P.O. Box 290, Morisset. NSW. 2264. Australia).

Bible Battle TOC