Anyone that has ever played the game of “Telephone”
knows that a message passed on from person to person never stays the
same, but can even change dramatically. In the same way, the New
Testament was unreliably formed, mistakenly copied and randomly
gathered together. There is no way to be certain that any of the
writings about Jesus we have today have any connection to the
historical Jesus. Two thousand years passing is a long time to keep a
pristine record.
First off, unreliable men penned the New Covenant. The books did not just fall from heaven, perfectly inscribed by the hand of God. Fallible men were the imperfect tool that God chose to use in the writing of ‘His’ book. Even so, “No original author’s copies of any New Testament books have yet come to light”(26). Furthermore, at any time, the authors and the copyists could and did put their opinions down in the text.
Escaping personal bias and perception is a nearly impossible task for any religious fellow. Spiritual reality is not the same as scientific certainty; we know that DNA forms the human body, but we can’t be sure that heaven or hell exists, in the same way we can’t be sure of the accuracy of the Bible. Some stories of the Bible could have come directly from the dreams of men. The writer of Genesis must have had fun with the story of a talking snake persuading a woman to eat some fruit and the author of the book of Revelation, according to a documentary (of which I can’t remember the name), could possibly have been using hallucinogenic mushrooms when he wrote the text. Even the early church leaders had a hard time accepting this apocalyptic letter because of its wild visions and predictions.
Secondly, the New Canon was passed down by imperfect copying. “No two ancient Greek manuscripts of New Testament books are precisely alike”(28). Since exact forms of reproduction were not possible, the church had to make do with rewritten writings. Monks were the main keepers of the text, and their job duties included the making of new copies of the text. While doing this task, the monk could easily rewrite portions to fit in with the churches current theological understanding, basing this on the fact of ‘progressive revelation’. Monks were often underfed and tired from their labors; hungry stomachs and exhausted minds easily contributed to distraction and accidental typos that through the centuries became even more glaring errors.
Thirdly, men who did not even experience Jesus first hand were the arbiters of which books were to be considered orthodox. One disturbing fact is that numerous different writings, often in disagreement with each other, were among the pool from which the Canon was to be ratified. “A large number of Gospels, all purporting to represent Jesus’ authentic teachings, had also been composed”(23). Why some books made it and others didn’t, one can’t be certain. Even the men who wrote the texts did so some time after their encounters with Jesus, thus allowing for fragmented and embellished slips of memory to fall into their documentation.
All in all, a reader of today has no certainty that what he thinks Jesus said was actually what he said. The red letters in our Bible might only be the words of John, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Maybe these guys just got together and decided what type of religion they wanted to create. These apostles might even have just used the writings of someone else off of which to base their own writings. Readers beware of the traditions of men that have crept into the sacred canon. Scholarship is a helpful remedy for the dire situation. Careful study is needed to reproduce the most probable form of what Jesus said. After all, what would Jesus say?
First off, unreliable men penned the New Covenant. The books did not just fall from heaven, perfectly inscribed by the hand of God. Fallible men were the imperfect tool that God chose to use in the writing of ‘His’ book. Even so, “No original author’s copies of any New Testament books have yet come to light”(26). Furthermore, at any time, the authors and the copyists could and did put their opinions down in the text.
Escaping personal bias and perception is a nearly impossible task for any religious fellow. Spiritual reality is not the same as scientific certainty; we know that DNA forms the human body, but we can’t be sure that heaven or hell exists, in the same way we can’t be sure of the accuracy of the Bible. Some stories of the Bible could have come directly from the dreams of men. The writer of Genesis must have had fun with the story of a talking snake persuading a woman to eat some fruit and the author of the book of Revelation, according to a documentary (of which I can’t remember the name), could possibly have been using hallucinogenic mushrooms when he wrote the text. Even the early church leaders had a hard time accepting this apocalyptic letter because of its wild visions and predictions.
Secondly, the New Canon was passed down by imperfect copying. “No two ancient Greek manuscripts of New Testament books are precisely alike”(28). Since exact forms of reproduction were not possible, the church had to make do with rewritten writings. Monks were the main keepers of the text, and their job duties included the making of new copies of the text. While doing this task, the monk could easily rewrite portions to fit in with the churches current theological understanding, basing this on the fact of ‘progressive revelation’. Monks were often underfed and tired from their labors; hungry stomachs and exhausted minds easily contributed to distraction and accidental typos that through the centuries became even more glaring errors.
Thirdly, men who did not even experience Jesus first hand were the arbiters of which books were to be considered orthodox. One disturbing fact is that numerous different writings, often in disagreement with each other, were among the pool from which the Canon was to be ratified. “A large number of Gospels, all purporting to represent Jesus’ authentic teachings, had also been composed”(23). Why some books made it and others didn’t, one can’t be certain. Even the men who wrote the texts did so some time after their encounters with Jesus, thus allowing for fragmented and embellished slips of memory to fall into their documentation.
All in all, a reader of today has no certainty that what he thinks Jesus said was actually what he said. The red letters in our Bible might only be the words of John, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Maybe these guys just got together and decided what type of religion they wanted to create. These apostles might even have just used the writings of someone else off of which to base their own writings. Readers beware of the traditions of men that have crept into the sacred canon. Scholarship is a helpful remedy for the dire situation. Careful study is needed to reproduce the most probable form of what Jesus said. After all, what would Jesus say?
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