by A.S.K. Joommal

The Bible, as we said earlier, was once upon a time the Word of God. As centuries rolled on, human hands wrought havoc with the purity and authenticity of the divine Word. Passages were expunged from and added to the Holy Writ. The present Bible, therefore, can never by any stretch of imagination be called “the inspired Word of God.” Christians may blindly and belligerently maintain that this book is “the inspired Word of God”; this, of course, would be no more than pious loyalty. But we can never attribute divine authorship to this book knowing the facts of its history, the interpolations, the discrepancies, and the innumerable other faults it contains. Loyalty to the book is blind, but a common sense appraisal of it is not.  Faith demands total allegiance to the Bible – with its faults, absurdities, everything. Reason on the other hand, is loath to accept matters that constitute an insult to the human intelligence. 

The Authorized Version differs from the Revised Version, and the Revised Version, again, differs from its one edition to the other. What need has the Word of God to go through so many versions? Were these different versions also inspired? Our Reason says that the true Word of God should have remained unaltered, uncorrupted, unrevised, EXACTLY as it was revealed to Christ. Christ could not have performed a greater miracle than to have seen to it that his teachings (as revealed to him by God Almighty) remained completely intact down the centuries – even to the extent of a comma or a full stop. This would indeed have been a miracle, and the world would have gladly bowed to, and believed in, the ineluctable Truth of this Book. But alas, the Christians themselves deprived the world of what would have been a standing miracle, by manipulating the Word of God. 

Some of the most important interpolations and changes in the “inspired Word of God” are given hereunder. (Were these interpolations also inspired?) 

Authorized Version says: “He that believeth in him is not condemned.” (John, 3:18). 

The New English Bible says: “The man who puts his faith in him does not come under judgement.” 

Try to find verse 21 of Chapter 17 of St. Matthew in the Revised Version. It is not there. Verse No. 21 has been taken out! It used to read thus: “But this kind never comes out except by prayer and fasting.” 

We used to read in Isaiah 7:14: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.” The Revised Version has expunged the word “virgin” and replaced it with “young woman.” The passage now reads: “Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son.” 

Readers will no doubt appreciate the difference this change had made to the passage which has a great bearing on the beliefs of Christians. 

Verse 47 of Chapter 12 in St Matthew’s Gospel has now been removed. It reads: “Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee.” The Revised Version gives verse 46 and then 48, but leaves out verse 47.

John 21: 24-25: In the opinion of Rev. Dummelow, the great commentator of the Bible, these two verses, viz. 24 and 25 are really doubtful, and they “may have been added by the Ephesian elders who first put the Gospel into circulation after the death of the Apostle, and who wished to testify to its genuineness and trustworthiness.” 

Luke 24:51: This is an interpolation and is admitted by all scholars of the Bible. Rev. Dummelow comments upon it as follows: “A few ancient authorities omit these words. If they are omitted, it is possible to regard this event, not as the ascension, but as a miraculous disappearance of Jesus at the end of the interview begun in verse 36.” 

In Peake’s Commentary we read a similar view:  “The words ‘and was carried up into heaven’ are omitted in some of the best MSS…. and have probably crept in from Acts 1:9.” 

Divorced women in Christianity have been having a very hard time. This is due to the fact that the Bible says: “And I say unto you whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, commiteth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.” (Matthew, 19:9). 

But this verse has been shortened to read: “And I say to you whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery.” (Revised Standard Version). 

This means that the ban on the marriage of divorced women has now been lifted!

John 7:53 and 8:1-11, that is, the last verse of the 7^th chapter with its continuation in the first eleven verses of the 8^th chapter which relate the story of an adulteress, is an interpolation. This is admitted universally. The commentary of Dummelow says as follows: “The woman taken in adultery – all modern critics agree that this section (7:53 – 8:1–11) is no original part of the fourth Gospel. It is not the author’s style; it breaks the sequence of our Lord’s discourses, and is omitted by most of the ancient authorities.” 

In Peake’s commentary, we read the following: “The well-known story of the woman taken in adultery has no claim to be regarded as part of the original text of this….. It is supported by no early Patristic evidence. The evidence proves it to be an interpolation of a ‘western’ character.”            

Dr. Weymouth’s “New Testament in Modern English” marks this section as an interpolation. “The Twentieth Century New Testament” has excised it and placed it in such a place as indicates clearly that it has no connection with John. A footnote in “The Complete Bible in Modern English” reads as follows: “The narrative of the sinful woman (7:53 – 8:1-11) is rejected by the most competent authorities as a spurious interpolation.” 

Verse 29 of Chapter 28 of the Acts of Apostles has been removed from the Revised Version. In the Authorized Version it reads: “And when he had said these words, the Jews departed, and had great reasoning among themselves.” 

A part of verse 6, the whole of verse 7, and a part of verse 8 of Chapter 24 of the Acts of Apostles have been removed from the Revised Version. The words which have been removed are: “And would have judged according to our law. But the chief captain Lysias came upon us, and with great violence took him away out of our hands, commanding his accusers to come unto thee.” 

Verse 53 of Chapter 7 of St. John’s Gospel has been expunged. 

The first eleven verses of Chapter 8 of St. John’s Gospel have been expunged from the Bible. Chapter 8 now begins with verse No. 12. 

13. Verse 16 of Chapter 7 of Mark’s Gospel has been removed. 

14.The most important change in Luke’s Gospel is the removal of the words “And was carried up into heaven” from verse 51 of the last chapter. Thus the two references to this ascension of Jesus to the heaven which were to be found in the Gospels have been removed leaving behind no other traces of the ascension in these four books. 

 15.Verses 44 and 46 of Chapter 9 of St. Mark’s Gospel have been eliminated. 

16. Verse 22  of  Chapter  3  of   St.  Luke  ends  thus: “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.” But in the footnote of the Revised Standard Version we are told that other ancient authorities read, “Today I have begotten thee” in place of “With thee I am well pleased.” 

17. Mark   16 : 9  - 20      is  an  interpolation.  Rev. Dummelow says in his Commentary: “Internal         evidence points definitely to the conclusion that the last twelve verses are not by St. Mark. When at the close of the apostolic age an attempt was made (probably in Rome) to collect the authentic memorials of the Apostles and their companions, a copy of the neglected second Gospel was not easily found. The one that was actually discovered and was used to multiply copies, had lost its last leaf, and so a fitting termination (the present appendix) was added by another hand.” 

The unanimous verdict given in the New Testaments of Dr. Weymouth, Dr. Moffat, Ferrar Fenton, and in the Twentieth Century New Testament, is that Mark 16:9-20 is an addition. 

Only seventeen instances of additions to and excisions from the chapters and verses of the Bible are given here. These examples can be multiplied. The question that any intelligent person will ask is this: “What right did any human have to meddle with God’s Word?” Now that the accretions, interpolations and expunctions of the Bible are a fait accompli, the reader may further ask: “Where do we draw the line between the Word of God and the Word of Man?” The answer is that regardless of how pure a text may have been originally, it has no more claim to purity when extraneous matter creeps in. 

Does it befit a rational human being to continue to cling to a belief even after having learnt and understood the errors of such belief? 

The reason why man has been endowed with an intellect is that he should use this faculty to discriminate between right and wrong, between what is true and what is false. If man does not make use of this God-given power, then the position of man is no better than that of the animal. The difference between man and animal is that man has the capacity to REASON, to THINK. An animal cannot reason. It behaves by instinct. REASON it is that distinguishes man from the animal. 

Even FAITH may be arrived at through a process of reasoning. Faith need not be blind. If we insist – and are, in some perverted fashion, proud of the fact – that we adhere to our creed BLINDLY, then this insistence does not do much credit to our intelligence. To be blind means not being able to see; to have one’s whole world enveloped in darkness. It is a blind man that gropes and does not know his way about. Only those who have eyes to see, can enjoy the colour and beauty of their surroundings. This is the essential difference between those who adhere blindly to their creed and refuse to see the light of reason, and those whose “eyes of reason” are wide open and can judge truth from falsehood. 

St Paul made matters worse for Christianity when he proclaimed: “For we walk by faith, not by sight.”

(2 Corinthians, 5:7). 

No doubt it is difficult to abandon one’s deep-rooted convictions by merely reading a book such as this one. “It is easier to burn down your house,” it has been said, “than to get rid of your prejudices.” You might say that the writer of this book is an “unbeliever”, an “infidel”, or any other epithet you may choose to throw at him. This does not solve the problem. It does not answer the question. The fact remains that the Bible contains all those interpolations. How are we going to get around this uncomfortable truth? We cannot evade the issue by saying that the enemies of Christianity have concocted these contradictions and interpolations in order to weaken the faith of Christians. This would be whistling in the dark, because learned scholars and renowned authorities such as Rev. Dummelow, Peake, Fenton and others have, by their research and scholarship, given the lie to the fondly cherished belief that the Bible is the “inspired Word of God”! 

You, the reader, may have been brought up in the Christian faith. That what you know, you have been taught by priests. You have been told to read only certain parts of the Bible that do not arouse your suspicion or critical inquiry. You go thorough life with the complacent belief that whatever your district parson tells you is the truth. You go once a week to church, open up certain chapters of the Bible, read it reverently, listen to the clergyman’s dissertation upon it, and at the end of it, with tightly closed eyes and palms pressed together, you pray on bended knees to God the Father (or is it God the Son? – I shall never know to whom!) to give you your daily bread and not to lead you into temptation (as if God does!), and then come away home with the comfortable thought that you have done your religious duty, pacified the Almighty, and everything is all right with the world. 

The point is that God is not that easily pacified. We have changed His Word. We have polluted, corrupted, adulterated His Divine Book and still have the nerve to call it “the inspired Word of God”! Will God forgive such travesty of words? 

We cannot alter our beliefs overnight because these were taught to us from childhood days. But we can, at least, start thinking! The power of THINKING is a blessing from God. If it is exercised in order to amend our convictions and place things in their correct perspective, then we may least believe that God would be pleased with us for our mental efforts. 

You are not asked to cast off your beliefs and religion like a snake casts off its skin. All that is asked is that you read these pages seriously, thoughtfully, with a view to arriving at the truth. THINKING is the stepping-stone and the road to TRUE faith. Read the instances and the examples given from the Bible and reason with yourself whether God Almighty is capable of acting, behaving and commanding in the manner in which He is presented in the Bible. If your common sense revolts against all that you read in the quotations from the Holy Book, then at least you may be sure that your power of reasoning has not deserted you. It needs a bit of cultivation before it can blossom forth fully. When this happens, you will then be on the road to a true appreciation of the Bible.