The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets

by Richard B. Westbrook

We find that this volume of little pamphlets is called the “Authorized Version” of the New Testament.

We inquire who authorized this version, and find that it was gotten up by certain men, mainly Englishmen, in the year 1603 by the “special command” of James, who is called “king of Great Britain, France, and Ireland,” and who was addressed by these gentlemen, mostly clergymen, as “the Most High and Mighty Prince, Defender of the Faith,” etc.

It now becomes a matter of superlative importance to determine the basis upon which this version of the New Testament was made. It is well known that in 1881 a New Version was published, and Rev. Alexander Roberts, D. D., a member of the committee of revisers, issued a little book entitled Companion to the Revised Version, to be circulated with it. This is the latest and highest authority by which to settle the question of the basis or standard of our “Authorized Version” of the New Testament. It is stated on its title-page that it is “Translated out of the Original Greek;” and it is safe and fair to let Dr. Roberts, the mouthpiece of the New Version Committee, tell us upon what Greek manuscripts this version of King James was based. After giving a history of the different Greek editions of the New Testament (the first of which was completed in 1514, and its publication formally sanctioned by Pope Leo X. in 1520), he inquires, “Which of the foregoing Greek texts formed the original from which our common English translation was derived?” “To this question the answer is, that Beza’s edition of 1589 was the one usually followed.” Beza’s edition was based on Stevens’ edition of 1550, and that was derived from the fourth edition of Erasmus, published in 1527. Beza, Stevens, Erasmus! In reference to the edition of Erasmus he said himself, “It was rather tumbled headlong into the world than edited.” But the question now comes up, What was the basis of the edition of Erasmus? Dr. Roberts shall answer: “In the Gospels he principally used a cursive MS. of the fifteenth or sixteenth century,”... “admitted by all to be of a very inferior character.”... “He procured another MS. of the twelfth century or earlier, but Erasmus was ignorant of its value and made little use of it.”... “In the Acts and Epistles he chiefly followed a cursive MS. of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, with occasional reference to another of the fifteenth century.”... “For the Apocalypse he had only one mutilated MS.” Dr. Roberts adds: “He had no documentary materials for publishing a complete edition of the Greek Testament.”

The point we here raise is, that it is an admission made by the best orthodox authority that our “Authorized New Testament” was formed out of MSS. dating no farther back than the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, and that even these were hastily and unskilfully used or not used at all.

But the question naturally arises, Have not earlier MSS. come to light, substantially confirming what we have in King James’ Version? The answer is, that there are now in existence about two thousand MSS. containing parts of the New Testament, with about one hundred and fifty thousand variations, mostly trivial, but some very important; but no scholar, orthodox or liberal, will dare to pretend that any of these date any farther back than the fourth or fifth century; and he would be a reckless man, feeling bound to lie for what he might regard as the truth, who would contradict the admission of Dr. Roberts, that there are only five copies of the New Testament, at all complete, of a greater antiquity than the tenth century, nor who would dare to question the statement of the Rev. George E. Merrell in his recent Story of the Manuscripts, that “there is a wide gap of almost three centuries between the original manuscripts of the evangelists and apostles and the earliest copies of their writings which have yet been discovered.” Whether there ever were original manuscripts or accurate copies are questions which it would be prudent to hold for consideration until we have made further investigations. When we reverently listen to our ministers as they expound the Word, and learnedly tell us how certain sentences should have been translated from the “original Greek,” let us not laugh in their faces, but respectfully ask them whether they do not know that there is no original Greek Testament or any certified copy, and that all we know upon these matters is highly conjectural and wholly unauthenticated.

The principal MSS. of the New Testament were unknown for a thousand years after the Christian era—to wit, those from which our “Authorized” New Testament was compiled—and their real origin cannot be traced, and even their accepted date is purely a matter of conjecture. The Alexandrian, Vatican, and Sinaitic MSS., supposed to date from the fourth and fifth centuries, are of uncertain and suspicious origin, and their date is a matter of simple guess by parties whose prepossessions would incline them to make them as ancient as possible. How easy it is for the best scholars to be imposed upon is shown from the fact that the experts of the British Museum would probably have been swindled by the recent Syrian forgery of the very ancient book of Deuteronomy but for the discovery of the fact by a French scholar that the “ancient document” was in fact only a year or two old, the product of a skilled copyist! The fact is, little or nothing is actually known by historical and documentary verification of the origin or dates of the MSS. upon which our New Testament is based.

The next question that arises in a rational mind in this connection is this: Have we in these twenty-seven little pamphlets all that has been written upon the subjects to which they relate? The answer to this question is very embarrassing. It is an undoubted fact that the ecclesiastical council that selected the books composing the New Testament had at least fifty Gospels, from which they selected four, and more than one hundred Epistles, from which they selected seventeen, and that from nearly a score of books professing to be records of the “Acts of the Apostles” they selected one, which Chrysostom in the fifth century says “was not so much as known to many.” Then there are forty-one New-Testament books now extant, called apocryphal, relating to the teachings of Jesus and the apostles, and besides the canonical and apocryphal books extant there are sixty-eight New-Testament books mentioned by the Christian Fathers of the first four centuries which are not now known to be in existence. Besides these, more than fifty books, written in the second century by more than twenty distinguished persons, have mysteriously disappeared. The fact should also be emphasized that the adoption of the New-Testament books in the early part of the fourth century, as we now substantially have them, was followed by the disappearance and probable destruction of all books that could throw light upon the books received, and all the supposed copies of our Gospels to that period have been lost or destroyed. The fact to be kept in mind is this, that the New-Testament books which we now have were selected from scores and hundreds of writings claiming equal authority by a few self-appoint-ed men, who had very few qualifications and many disqualifications for the work they undertook for all coming generations. We have but a trifling proportion in number of the ancient records regarding Jesus.

But we now take up the little pamphlets as we have them, and try to arrange them in order of time. The oldest writings of the New Testament are the Epistles of Paul. And here we find ourselves embarrassed by the fact that biblical criticism shows that not more than five—some say four—of the Epistles ascribed to Paul were written by him—viz. First Thessalonians, Galatians, First Corinthians, Second Corinthians, and Romans. The other nine ascribed to Paul were doubtless written by unknown second-century authors. The same uncertainty prevails in regard to the authorship of several, if not all, of what are called the General or Catholic Epistles, as well as of the Acts of the Apostles and the book of Revelation.

It is impossible to fix the dates of the New-Testament books except approximately. There is a great diversity of opinion. The earliest were probably written in the last half of the first century, and the latest certainly in the last quarter of the second century. Certain it is that no evidence can be found of the existence of our four Gospels until the latter part of the second century, about one hundred and fifty years after the alleged death of Jesus. It is therefore true what Prof. Robertson Smith, D. D., the learned Scotch Presbyterian minister, asserts, that our four Gospels are “unapostolic digests of the second century.” From the Apostolic Epistles we learn nothing of the life and teachings of Jesus. With Paul, Christ was an idea rather than a person. Not a syllable do we find in his writings of the miraculous birth of Jesus, no reference to the Sermon on the Mount, much less to the miracles ascribed to him. He rather boasted that he had learned nothing of him from his disciples, but what he knew he had received at the time of his own miraculous conversion. He dwells upon the death and spiritual resurrection of Jesus, not upon his life; and the only words of Jesus quoted by Paul, “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” are not found at all in the Gospels. All that Paul ever claimed to know about Jesus as a person he learned in a vision, and it is to be taken for what it is worth.

We are absolutely driven to the Gospels for information regarding the alleged founder of Christianity, his birth, his life, his teachings, and his death. And here the fact should be faced that Jesus never wrote anything about himself, his mission, or his doctrines. We should not even know that he had learned the art of writing but for the incident mentioned in one of the Gospels (John 8:6) that on a certain occasion he stooped down and wrote in the sand; and now our learned New Versionists come along and snatch this from us by declaring that the beautiful story about the kind treatment of the woman taken in adultery is an interpolation not found in the best early MSS., so that we are not even sure that Jesus wrote anything even with his finger in the sand, or that he even knew how to write! Nobody pretends that Jesus ever directed his disciples or any one else to write down what he said and did, but, on the other hand, he often forbade his disciples to tell what he said and did; and much of what he is reported to have said was so obscure that the disciples themselves continually misunderstood him. Two reasons have been assigned for this omission of Jesus to write himself or to commission others to write down his sayings. The first is, that he said nothing which could not be found in then existing writings (as can easily be shown), and the second is, that he was so sure that the world was about to be destroyed, and that his own kingdom would so soon be set up and established upon the general ruin, that it was useless to write down what was said and done in the short remaining period of mundane history.