Corruptions befell the text of the New Testament even before the time of the early Christians considered in this Report1, as this section will show. It makes one doubt if it is even possible to know what the original text of the autographs actually was. Fee notes that, “…no [manuscript] or group of [manuscripts] has escaped some degree of corruption”.
Marcion (d. c. 160 CE), a Turk, certainly revised the text of the New Testament, excising considerable parts of it which disagreed with his own theology and referred to, “…the Jewish background of Jesus.”2 Cross notes that, “…for Marcion the only Canonical Scriptures were ten of the Epp. of Saint Paul (he rejected the Pastorals) and an edited recension of the Gospel of St Luke”.3 Marcion’s own prologues to each of Saint Paul’s Epistles even found themselves included in, “…a majority of the best MSS. of the Vulgate” (ibid.). Metzger4 also notes that Marcion corrupted manuscripts in the 2nd Century. As Marcion is therefore known to have corrupted the Christian Scriptures, his writings must be considered unreliable and so are not used.
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Author: Mark McCabe
Keywords: inerrant, Bible Inerrant, Bible inerrancy, inerrancy, Bible without errors, errors, Bible full of errors, discrepancies, Bible discrepancies, Bible discrepancy, Errancy, Scriptures inerrant, Scriptures without errors, infallible, Bible infallible, Scriptures infallible, textual corruption, Corruption of Bible, Bible is full of mistakes, mistakes, scribal errors, scribes, scriptorium, Copying, transmission, Bible copying, Bible, New Testament, Bodmer papyri, Bodmer, Marcion, Eusebius, Lucian, Tatian, Origen, Jerome, Textus Receptus, Alexandrian, manuscript, mss, Vaticanus codex, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Cinaiticus codex, codex, codice, Scribal error, Scribal forgery, corruption of Scripture, Bible errancy, Bible errors, Scriptural errors
Bible reference(s): John 1:18, 1 John 5:7, 1 Timothy 3:16
Source: “On the Early Christians and Bible Quotes,” 2014, pp. 17-9.
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