The bible, the word of God. Has it been corrupted? Are there really gospels which were omitted?

Question

For what reason have we been denied access to all of the sacred texts?

Answer 1

The Bible is whole and complete.
Surely it is not a stretch to think that if God can get the Bible made, surely He can preserve it.
The Dead Sea Scrolls represent a huge proof the Bible is unchanged.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient Jewish manuscripts, most of them written in Hebrew, some in Aramaic, and a few in Greek. Many of these scrolls and fragments are over 2,000 years old.
The former director and librarian of the British Museum, Sir Frederic Kenyon:
“The last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed.”
The Bible and Archaeology, pages 288, 289.

Concerning the New Testament, he added:
“Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the N.T. may be regarded as finally established.”

The book, The Story of the Bible, page 113
“It is reassuring to find that the result of all these discoveries is to strengthen the authenticity of the Scriptures, and our conviction that we have in our hands the veritable Word of God.”

Light From the Ancient Past, 1959, pp. 449, 450.
“The close relationship in time between the oldest N.T. manuscripts and the original is nothing less than amazing.
The certainty with which the N.T. is established exceeds that of any other ancient book. The words have crossed the centuries substantially unchanged …..”

Professor Kurt Aland:
“The text of the N.T. has been excellently transmitted, better than any other writing from ancient times.”
The New Testament—Reliably Transmitted, Stuttgart, 1986, pp. 27, 28.
Scholar William Henry Green:
“It may be safely said that no other work of antiquity has been so accurately transmitted.”

Answer 2

When the bishops of the Catholic Church met at the Council of Carthage in 397 AD, to finalize the Canon of Scripture once and for all time (having done much of the preliminary work at the Council of Hippo in 394) they had before them nearly a hundred letters (epistles), about 14 or 15 gospels, and at least a couple of dozen other texts. Of the roughly 140 New Testament texts they studied and discerned, only 27 were accepted as the inspired Word of God, and included in the book they were compiling - the Bible. So, many texts were omitted from the Bible, including at least 10 gospels, but no Scripture was omitted, because Scripture, by definition, is comprised of those writings they accepted into the book. Nothing else qualifies as Scripture.

Answer 3

I'm not sure I'd outright say that the Bible has been corrupted. But there are books that were omitted from all versions and some books which are in, say, the Catholic version, but not others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_the_Bible

The above site shows a neatly arranged table of the various books of the Bible as they appear in five major versions. Depending on if you're Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, there's books you probably haven't read or even heard of.

http://reluctant-messenger.com/council-of-laodicea.htm

Then there's the above site about the Council of Laodicea in 364 AD, where early Church leaders chose which books would be included in the Bible, and which were deemed unworthy. They even list the texts that this Council eliminated from the Bible altogether. These texts are probably lost for all time. If any of them exist today, they are either small scraps and fragments, locked away by the modern Church, or, at the very least, unavailable to the public.

Frankly, I can't see why, if the message of the Bible was what's important, anyone would remove ANY book from its texts. No doubt, there are things said in those missing texts that would be vital to Church doctrine. The two books of Adam and Eve for example. Considering that Creation is vital to Christian beliefs, why would those books be omitted?

My only thought on that is that those books said things that early church leaders did NOT agree with. For example, on the second site, there's an example about how technically, the Sabbath is Saturday, not Sunday. Considering that the Bible outright says that God rested on the seventh day and Saturday is the seventh day of the week, one has to wonder. Well, back in those early days, church leaders didn't want Christians to be observing God's holy day like Jewish folks, so to separate things, they moved the Sabbath to Sunday.

Those missing books, if not outright destroyed, were omitted because there were probably teachings in there that would have likely contradicted what church leaders of the time were wanting to teach. So they simply said "heretical" and tossed them out, even though they probably were very important to the original message. If they weren't, well, they wouldn't be there in the first place now, would they?

Answer 4

Because the other texts are not "sacred" texts. Mostly they are gnostic gospels, mostly written quite lately, like about 150 to 300 AD ... whereas the N.T. books were written mostly circa 50AD to 95AD, perhaps some even earlier.

The OT has been shown by the Dead Sea Scrolls to be remarkably uncorrupted ... with virtually no changes in a thousand years of copying and re-copying. The Greek texts of the N.T. are, also, remarkably consistent.

Sure, there are variations ... a lot of them similar to the variations between color and colour.

And most of the "omitted" non sacred texts do exist in libraries, etc. Fanciful texts like about how Jesus, when a child, made a clay bird and tossed it into the air where it came to life and flew. Yet the Sacred Texts clearly say that it was at the Feat in Cana that Jesus did the first of His miracles.

Why is it that so many refuse to believe what has been believed for nearly 2,000 years and is credible, etc. and, instead, will believe almost anything of questionable origin, etc.?

Answer 5

There were many "gospels" left out of the Bible. At the time of the Council of Nicea in 325 a.d. (Where the Bible as we know it was originally compiled from many separate texts.), there were two main schools of Christian thought and philosophy: the Paulian model and the Gnostic model. The Paulians won, which is why there are no Gnostic gospels in the Bible.

Most of the Gnostics were then wiped out and their sacred texts destroyed. Some of those texts were hidden, however, and have survived to this day. They are know as the Gnostic Gospels.

Answer 6

It's funny actually but people claim theres all these contradictions in the Gospels even though they aren't contradictions at all. But then they get all deffensive over the omitted Gospels, when they were ommitted because of REAL contradictions. People say its a contradiction because one Gospel writer (who was an eye witness) notes there was an angel at Jesus' tomb, and another (who wasnt an eye witness) didnt mention an angel.. but to them.. this is a detramental contradiction? Well how about the omitted Gospels, one claims Jesus never died at all... one claims He died but the Disciples stole the body, one claims He was only "swooned" and then got married and lived with monks. THAT is contradiction. But, many of you would rather believe those anyway. Go figure.

Answer 7

The books of the Old Testament were written from approximately 1400 B.C. to 400 B.C. The books of the New Testament were written from approximately A.D. 40 to A.D. 90. So, anywhere between 3400 to 1900 years have passed since a book of the Bible was originally written. In this time, the original manuscripts have been lost. They very likely no longer exist. Also in this time, the books of the Bible have been copied again and again. Copies of copies of copies have been made. In view of all of this, can we still trust the Bible?



When God originally inspired men to write His Word, it was God-breathed and inerrant (2 Timothy 3:16-17; John 17:17). The Bible nowhere applies this to copies of the original manuscripts. As meticulous as scribes were with the replication of the Scriptures, no one is perfect. As a result, minor differences arose in the various copies of the Scriptures. Of all of the thousands of Greek and Hebrew manuscripts that are in existence, no two were identical until the printing press was invented in the 1500s A.D.



However, any unbiased document scholar will agree that the Bible has been remarkably preserved over the centuries. Copies of the Bible dating to the 14th century A.D. are nearly identical in content to copies from the 3rd century A.D. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, scholars were shocked at how similar they were to other ancient copies of the Old Testament – even though the Dead Sea Scrolls were hundreds of years older than anything previously discovered. Even many hardened skeptics and critics of the Bible admit that the Bible has been transmitted over the centuries far more accurately than any other ancient document.



There is absolutely no evidence that the Bible has been revised, edited, or tampered with in any systematic manner. The sheer volume of Biblical manuscripts makes it simple to recognize any attempts to distort God’s Word. There is no major doctrine of the Bible that is put in doubt as a result of the minor differences that exist between manuscripts.



Again, the question, can we trust the Bible? Absolutely! God has preserved His Word despite the unintentional failings and intentional attacks of human beings. We can have utmost confidence that the Bible we have today is the same Bible that was originally written. The Bible is God’s Word, and we can trust it (2 Timothy 3:16; Matthew 5:18).

Answer 8

You can view quite a lot of them by going to Books a Million. The Nag Hammadi books and gospels, for instance, are readily available.

You have been denied access because men in the early church decided that you should be for one reason or other. Usually because the books contradicted what they wanted to keep in the Bible. Other times, because they didn't like the doctrines in the books. A few times because they were just really ridiculous as opposed to just kinda ridiculous.

Answer 9

The Bible has been preserved through many different translations and as far as the gospels goes... no not one. There are some that say certain things which are definitely contradictory to biblical teaching. We dont have access to the oldest texts and the reason why for the most part is because they currently dont exist.

Answer 10

There are the gnostic gospels which I don't consider sacred because they were written long after the 4 most familiar gospels by ppl wanting to create a basis for their own cultish version of Jesus' life and death.
I don't believe that thegnostic gospels are inspired by God. I believe that the Dead Sea scrolls that were found were gnostic - that is why they were hidden