About The Holy Bible: A LectureIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
About The Holy Bible: A Lecture
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Christian scholars admit that they do not know. They admit that, if the
four gospels were written by-Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, they must
have been written in Hebrew. And yet a Hebrew manuscript of any one of
these gospels has never been found. All have been and are in Greek.
So, educated theologians admit that the Epistles, James and Jude, were
written by persons who had never seen one of the four gospels. In these
Epistles--in James and Jude--no reference is made to any of the gospels,
nor to any miracle recorded in them.
The first mention that has been found of one of our gospels was made
about one hundred and eighty years after the birth of Christ, and the
four gospels were first named and quoted from at the beginning of the
Third Century, about one hundred and seventy years after the death of
Christ.
We now know that there were many other gospels besides our four, some of
which have been lost. There were the gospels of Paul, of the Egyptians,
of the Hebrews, of Perfection, of Judas, of Thaddeus, of the Infancy, of
Thomas, of Mary, of Andrew, of Nicodemus, of Marcion and several others.
So there were the Acts of Pilate, of Andrew, of Mary, of Paul and Thecla
and of many others. Another book called the Shepherd of Hermes.
At first not one of all the books was considered as inspired. The Old
Testament was regarded as divine; but the books that now constitute the
New Testament were regarded as human productions. We now know that we do
not know who wrote the four gospels.
The question is, Were the authors of these four gospels inspired?
If they were inspired, then the four gospels must be true. If they are
true, they must agree.
The four gospels do not agree.
Matthew, Mark and Luke knew nothing of the Atonement, nothing of
salvation by faith. They knew only the gospel of good deeds--of charity.
They teach that if we forgive others God will forgive us.
With this the gospel of John does not agree.
In that gospel we are taught that we must believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ; that we must be born again; that we must drink the blood and
eat the flesh of Christ. In this gospel we find the doctrine of the
Atonement and that Christ died for us and suffered in our place.
This gospel is utterly at variance with the other three. If the other
three are true, the gospel of John is false. If the gospel of John
was written by an inspired man, the writers of the other three were
uninspired. From this there is no possible escape. The four cannot be
true.
It is evident that there are many interpolations in the four gospels.
For instance, in the 28th chapter of Matthew is an account to the effect
that the soldiers at the tomb of Christ were bribed to say that the
disciples of Jesus stole away his body while they, the soldiers, slept.
This is clearly an interpolation. It is a break in the narrative.
The 10th verse should be followed by the 16th. The 10th verse is as
follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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