We base most of our knowledge of truth on the bible. So this should be our starting point. The problem is however, there are a lot of things that contractict in the bible. Some say that these are not really contradictions but are appearent contradictions. So what they have to do is go and interpret things in a way that the “appearent” contradictions are not really contradictions at all.

That brings us to a new problem in that how do we know that the interpretation is really right. If the passage needed interpretation then that means that the true meaning of the passage was not really clear in the first place. However, in many cases these passages were not unclear at all, the interpretation was only a means of explaining away the “appearent” contradiction. Then to complicate matters, there are several interpretations of passages, but whose interpretation is one to trust in?

So what has happened here is that we are back to the start — the contradiction is still there. What is appearent is that the contradiction is real in most cases. I’m not concerned about a contradiction such as whether Judas died by hanging himself or whether he fell headlong and his bowels gushed out. This is the classical example of biblical contradiction that is commonly used and commentators will explain this very simple thing away in a very complicated way to make it look like it was not really a contradiction. There are literally hundreds of these kinds of obvious contradictions that are next to impossible to explain away without some extremely complex stretch of the imagination. Even so, this is not a critical issue.

But there are some really significant types of contradictions in the bible. The really sad types of contradictions are the ones that involve basic and central doctrinal points in Christianity that a student of the bible needs to understand. I’m talking about the kinds of doctrinal points such as “who was Jesus?”, “what is salvation? Is it by works or not?”, “What is the trinity? Is it really the truth? Why isn’t it in the bible?”, “Was Mary really a virgin?”, etc. The problem with these are that the contradictions concerning these scriptures are real and not imagined or merely appear to be contradictions. Forgeries can actually be proven. What’s more is there are many inconsistencies that shed even more doubt on the veracity of much of the scriptures. We’re talking about actual contradictions that can be proved by the bible itself.

The very fact that there are thousands of different demominations and sects and cults within Christianity itself is the prime result of the many different ways that the bible must be interpreted. Whenever passages of scripture must be interpreted, this means that it is not altogether clear in its meaning.

To make matters worse, the manuscripts that were used to translate our bibles into English were not only poorest in existence, they were copies of what is called “oral traditions” that were handed down through the ages in the hands of church fathers, some of which, actually stated that they lied for the church.

We know from the words of the church fathers themselves that even the “correctors” who were hired by the church made radical modifications to the scriptures, adding large portions of doctrine that were not there in the original, or cutting out things that they did not deem compatable to the doctrines of the church or their own personal doctrines. After doing this the copy was destroyed (by whom or when no one really knows) that they copied from, which was a modification of another copy.

So what we have are copies of copies of copies, and there are absolutely no originals whatsoever written by anyone who actually knew Jesus Christ personally. All original documents have been either lost, destroyed or (hopefully) hidden. The resultant copies that were extracted from the same origins were so different that they were like different books. In fact, the synoptic gospels — Matthew, Mark and Luke — are a perfect examples of this very thing. Of many copies, several were considered the best and by vote these three were chosen. But the real authors of these gospels are actually not known and the men whose names were used to name these books were long dead when these were written and knew nothing of them.

And what about all the gospels that were not accepted? Even though they were not voted in to be part of the canonized bible, what if they had truths in them from the originals that the winners didn’t contain? These that were declared “apocrypha”, that is “spurious” or “of questionable authenticity”, may have contained truths that Jesus actually taught that the canonical books did not contain. One may not believe this, but how can you prove there aren’t?

So there is really no way at all to know how much or how little of the original teachings of Jesus and his disciples are contained in the canonical bible. And we also have no way of knowing how much or even which passages of the scriptures were invented and inserted because some scribe or church father thought it should be there or because it was a tradition of the roman church, which we know to have been rampant with false doctrines that popes and bishops took the liberty to invent in those days.

The only way we would actually have reliable evidence is if we had the original manuscripts written by the discipes themselves in Aramaic. However, we are told by bible scollars that the originals were written in Greek only in the second century and there were never any gospels written in Aramaic, but the gospels were translated from Greek into the Aramaic. Then there are other scollars that will say just the opposite. The truth is that it is all really just a lot of speculation and no one really knows for sure or can prove anything. The saddest part about all of this is that there is really no way to know what the whole truth of the bible actually is — and what is truth and what is not!

Then you have those that will say that the bible is God’s infallable Word. However, from the church’s own admission and from all the history that has been written about these men who wrote down or copied the words over the centuries since the original words were actually spoken were not exactly “holy”. We are told by historians and the church fathers themselves that there were in many cases ignorant and crafty men who corrupted the word of God and we have absolutely no idea to what extent.

In the 100′s of years following the first century early church Christianity was contantly plagued with fighting, bickering, backstabbing, persecutions, murders, etc., all over the differences in doctrinal beliefs, striving for power and control over the masses, just to name a few. All these horrors influenced the way the our bible was modified and has evolved into the many different and often conficting versions of the bibles that we have today. What is one to believe??

We have to have some kind of proof to back up our claim, otherwise it is merely theory or hypothesis at best. There is no way that we can have much proof of what Jesus actually said and did. I believe that some things it says in the bible is actually true, but that is all it really is… just belief. Without proof it is really only faith based on hearsay, which may or may not be true.

The only way that we could have some reliable evidence of what the original truth was without all the additions, subtractions and modifications that have gone into the resulting editions that we have today is if we had the originals that we could prove that the disciples of Jesus themselves wrote in the tongue that they spoke in their day — Aramaic, and have it faithfully and correctly translated directly to English. But this is only a dream. Alas, all of the original ancient manusripts have been long lost, destroyed or hidden.

– Doug Brown