Base audacity of those who did not blush to palm their own
spurious productions on the great men of former times, and,
even on _Christ_ Himself and His Apostles, so that they might
be able, in the councils and in their books, to oppose names
against names and authorities against authorities. The whole
Christian Church was, in this century, overwhelmed with these
disgraceful fictions.
Dr. Giles speaks still more strongly. He says:
But a graver accusation than that of inaccuracy or deficient
authority lies against the writings which have come down to us
from the second century. There can be no doubt that great numbers
of books were then written with no other view than to deceive
the simple-minded multitude who at that time formed the great
bulk of the Christian community.
Dean Milman says:
It was admitted and avowed that to deceive into Christianity
was so valuable a service as to hallow deceit itself.
Bishop Fell says:
In the first ages of the Church, so extensive was the licence
of forging, so credulous were the people in believing, that
the evidence of transactions was grievously obscured.
John E. Remsburg, author of the newly-published American book, _The
Bible_, says:
That these admissions are true, that primitive Christianity
was propagated chiefly by falsehood, is tacitly admitted by
all Christians. They characterise as forgeries, or unworthy
of credit, three-fourths of the early Christian writings.
Mr. Lecky, the historian, in his _European Morals_, writes in the
following uncompromising style:
The very large part that must be assigned to deliberate
forgeries in the early apologetic literature of the Church
we have already seen; and no impartial reader can, I think,
investigate the innumerable grotesque and lying legends that,
during the whole course of the Middle Ages, were deliberately
palmed upon mankind as undoubted facts, can follow the history
of the false decretals, and the discussions that were connected
with them, or can observe the complete and absolute incapacity
most Catholic historians have displayed of conceiving any good
thing in the ranks of their opponents, or of stating with common
fairness any consideration that can tell against their cause,
without acknowledging how serious and how inveterate has been
the evil. It is this which makes it so unspeakably repulsive
to all independent and impartial thinkers, and has led a great
German historian (Herder) to declare, with much bitterness,
that the phrase "Christian veracity" deserves to rank with the
phrase "Punic faith."
I could go on quoting such passages. I could give specific instances of
forgery by the dozen, but I do not think it necessary. It is sufficient
to show that forgery was common, and has been always common, amongst
all kinds of priests, and that therefore we cannot accept the Gospels as
genuine and unaltered documents.
Yet upon these documents rests the whole fabric of Christianity.
Professor Huxley says:
There is no proof, nothing more than a fair presumption, that
any one of the Gospels existed, in the state in which we find
it in the authorised version of the Bible, before the second
century, or, in other words, sixty or seventy years after the
events recorded. And between that time and the date of the
oldest extant manuscripts of the Gospel there is no telling
what additions and alterations and interpolations may have
been made. It may be said that this is all mere speculation,
but it is a good deal more. As competent scholars and honest
men, our revisers have felt compelled to point out that such
things have happened even since the date of the oldest known
manuscripts. The oldest two copies of the second Gospel end
with the eighth verse of the sixteenth chapter; the remaining
twelve verses are spurious, and it is noteworthy that the maker
of the addition has not hesitated to introduce a speech in
which Jesus promises His disciples that "in My name shall
they cast out devils."
The other passage "rejected to the margin" is still more
instructive. It is that touching apologue, with its profound
ethical sense, of the woman taken in adultery--which, if
internal evidence were an infallible guide, might well be
affirmed to be a typical example of the teaching of Jesus.
Yet, say the revisers, pitilessly, "Most of the ancient
authorities omit John vii. 53--viii. 11." Now, let any
reasonable man ask himself this question: if after an
approximate settlement of the canon of the New Testament,
and even later than the fourth or fifth centuries, literary
fabricators had the skill and the audacity to make such
additions and interpolations as these, what may they have
done when no one had thought of a canon; when oral tradition
still unfixed, was regarded as more valuable than such
written records as may have existed in the latter portion
of the first century? Or, to take the other alternative,
if those who gradually settled the canon did not know of
the oldest codices which have come down to us; or, if knowing
them, they rejected their authority, what is to be thought
of their competency as critics of the text?
Since alterations have been made in the text of Scripture we can never
be certain that any particular text is genuine, and this circumstance
militates seriously against the value of the evidence for the
Resurrection.