Do You Think Christianity...?

Question

Has Lost It's Original Message? Has It Been Distorted As It Traveled Through History?

Answer 1

This may sound strange coming from a Christian but the answer a resounding yes!

Both the Bible and Christianity as a whole has been seriously distorted over the past 2000 years. The Bible has been mistranslated, mishandled and mismanaged to the point that it bears little resemblence to what what originally written and the books contained in the Bible are only a fraction of what was read by the first Christians. As a Bible researcher, I've discovered many, many discrepancies between the original Hebrew and Greek scriptures and the man-made Bible of today.

The Bible (any version) as we know it today is a man-made product. It has been translated from the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures based on the translators' personal beliefs, biases and agendas. Some versions have even been translated from previous translations! The only way to even get close to the true word of God is to study the original texts...or I should say...as close as we have to the original, since no "original" scriptures still exist.

Allow me to present some facts about the Bible and Christianity, starting with the books that in our Bible:

There are believed to be around 600 books (known as the "Lost Books of the Bible") that were commonly read by both Christian and Jews that never made it in to the Bible.

Though there is no specific list or accounting of all the books that made up the complete Bible in scripture, there are over 20 books mentioned in the Bible, but not found there. This is proof that many have been removed and there is evidence that many more fell under the same fate.

In the Catholic Church, the Bible is the Douay Bible consisting of 73 books. In the Protestant church only the 66 books that were approved by the Synod of Dordrecht in 1618 are in what is known as the Authorized King James Bible.

15 of the books found in the original King James Bible, known as the Apocrypha; do not even appear in the "Authorized" King James Bible the modern Protestant Church approves.

Eusebius, a little known figure in the Christian reality, was the first court-appointed Christian theologian in the service of the Emperor Constantine. Constantine commissioned Eusebius, personally, to produce fifty excellent copies of the sacred scriptures but gave no instruction what books Eusebius should include or, on what authority or criteria that decision should be made. He was given sole authority over this project and, therefore, became the first editor of the Bible we have today.

We know which New Testament books he accepted because those books are in the King James Bible. The Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas are in Eusebius' original Bible known as the Codex Sinaiticus. This leaves nine New Testament books that were used and accepted prior to this change, but excluded solely on the original judgment of one man, Eusebius. Those few books we actually know were purged, at this time, are:
The Acts of Andrew
The Acts of John
The Acts of Paul,
The Apocalypse of Peter
The Epistle of Barnabas
The Gospel of Hebrews
The Gospel of Matthias
The Gospel of Peter
The Gospel of Thomas
The Shepherd of Hermas
The Teachings of the Apostles
(There are several other "Gospels" rejected but not specifically named by Eusebius)

Getting back to translations, here's some history on that subject:

Most of the Old Testament scriptures were originally written in ancient Hebrew, a language substantially different than the Hebrew of today. These writings were passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years on scrolls made of animal skin, usually sheep, but sometimes deer or cow.

The Jewish scribes who painstakingly produced each scroll were perfectionists. If they made even the slightest mistake in copying, such as allowing two letters of a word to touch, they destroyed that entire panel (the last three or four columns of text), and the panel before it, because it had touched the panel with a mistake. While this may sound somewhat fanatical, it demonstrates the level of faithfulness to accuracy applied to the preservation of God’s Word throughout the first couple of thousand years of Biblical transmission. Although there are no original texts still in existence, it's safe to say that the copies available are reliable sources.

By 500 AD the Bible had been translated into over 500 languages. Just one century later, by 600 AD, it has been restricted to only one language: the Latin Vulgate! The only organized and recognized church at that time in history was the Catholic Church of Rome, and they refused to allow the scripture to be available in any language other than Latin. Those in possession of non-Latin scriptures would be executed! This was because only the priests were educated to understand Latin, and this gave the church ultimate power… a power to rule without question… a power to deceive… a power to extort money from the masses. Nobody could question their “Biblical” teachings, because few people other than priests could read Latin. The church capitalized on this forced-ignorance through the 1,000 year period from 400 AD to 1,400 AD knows as the “Dark and Middle Ages”.

The King James or Authorised Version of the Bible is an English translation of the Christian Bible first published in 1611. The New Testament was translated from the Textus Receptus (Received Text) edition of the Greek texts, so called because most extant texts of the time were in agreement with it. The Old Testament was translated from the Masoretic Hebrew text.

Many claim that the Authorized King James Bible is the inspired work of God, and that all changes and mistranslations are the direct work of God and any research that questions it is wrong. This is not supported by the historical reality. King James did not encourage a translation of the Bible in order to enlighten the common people; his intent was to deny them the marginal notes of the Geneva Bible, the favored Bible of the time. The marginal notes of the Geneva version made it popular with the common people and contained over 300,000 words that questioned many concepts of orthodox religion.

King James I of England was a devout believer in the "divine right of kings", a philosophy claiming a king's power came from God, thus the king then had to answer to no one but God. The reasoning was that if a king was evil, that was a punishment sent from God. The citizens should then suffer in silence. If a king was good, that was a blessing sent from God. If one considers King James himself as inspired by God, the public record must be considered carefully in that judgment.

That record shows King James was a known homosexual, practiced bestiality, proved himself to be a great coward, and was a sadist who personally supervised the torture of those caught up in the witchcraft trials of Scotland.

I don't believe it's necessary go into any detail concerning versions published after 1611 since the King James Version is the most widely used and accepted Bible in the world and the history I've given so far should suffice to prove my point. So far though, I've only talked about the Bible, not Christianity as a whole. I'd like to present a few facts about Christian beliefs and customs that are, unfortunately, not commonly known.

First of all, there is no Biblical edict stating that we should attend a church service on Sunday mornings. In fact, Sunday is not even the Sabbath!

The Jews have been observing the Sabbath from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday for thousands of years. In the 4th Century AD, Emperor Constantine outlawed observing the Sabbath on Saturday and changed it to Sunday. This was done purely for political reasons. Sunday was a pagan day of worship (of the Sun) and Constantine knew he could have more control over his sujects if he were to harmonize Christianity with paganism. This, however, is not the only change he made.

Both Christmas and Easter were "created" by Constantine for the same reason. Christmas coincides with the Winter solstice and the pagans celebrated the fact that the days would start getting longer. This was the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. Constantine imported the Saturnalia festival into the Christian religion hoping to take the pagan masses in with it.

As for Easter, it was named after Eostre (a.k.a. Eastre, Ishtar or Astarte). She was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe. Her name was derived from the ancient word for spring: "eastre." Pagan religions in the Mediterranean area had a major seasonal day of religious celebration at or following the Spring Equinox.

I could go on, giving much more evidence that Christianity has changed drastically from it's roots. I could provide a comparison between translations found in the Bible to those in the original scripture, I could show where the churches of today neither practice nor teach what was in those scriptures or even what's in the Bibles that they claim to follow. I could also show many examples of how today's Christians do not know or follow the truth of the scriptures but this answer is already way too long and in order to cover all the aspects the way I'd like to, it would require me to write a full blown article, many pages long in order to do so.

I hope I've provided enough inforation to show that Christianity has changed considerably from where it started.

Answer 2

Sometimes it has gotten better as it travelled through history. As Christians realized that Jesus and his first followers were wrong about the end of the world happening in their lifetimes, they adapted and changed their beliefs in light of what happened. Unfortunately, there have also always been fundamentalists who pretend such things are not in the Bible and yet claim to believe the whole Bible and to take it literally.

Answer 3

I do think Christianity hasn't moved along with the times as much as it might have done. If religion is to survive at all it needs to be relevant to the people and the days they are living in. Since I stepped back from it, it seems surly and growly and still spits out fire and brimstone. I think an update, with emphasis on spirituality, would be good for all religions not just Christainity.

Answer 4

I guess it is matter of faith. You either believe it or not. I might believe in god, but not religious studies provided by major or non-major religious groups. You could choose not to believe in Christianity, but you could still believe in god. What "joseph" said above is not necessary all false. In theory, even though not proven in "scientific" term, bible says things that are supernatural, which must be true to one self, if he/she believes it. Of course you need faith. You will never be able to disprove god or prove god in scientific term unless someone invents a time machine so we can travel back. Same thing goes with bible or history.

As far as communist goes as stupid "joseph" mentions on his comment, it is false as far as how he describes it. I would say joseph needs to read "communist manifesto" or even read history before saying something like that.

If you are asking this question to Christians, they will do what joseph did. They will quote from bible. Well, there you have it. You will never know with only bible, but to christians, bible is the only thing betters. Some times, and some christians do not think beyond bible.

Answer 5

Yes. It has -

The message will always be that we must face a Holy God on Judgment Day that sees lust as adultery (Matt 5:28) and hatred as murder (1 Jn 3:15). We will all be guilty. We are all derserving of hell. But because God is rich in love and mercy He sent His Son Jesus to take our punishment on the cross and rose from the dead and defeated death to save us from Hell. He now commands us to repent (Acts 17:30-31) which is turning from and forsaking our sin, and to trust in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.

Answer 6

Original message, no.
Distorted? Yes, but there has always been those ready to correct the problem. We are seeing more problems now than ever before though.

Answer 7

More likely, it's an unintended side effect of a much more useful survival mechanism.

In his book "The God Delusion", the biologist Richard Dawkins hypothesized that humans evolved a sort of "blind acceptance of authority" gene; and this would be a useful trait for quickly and easily passing on important survival tips to future generations of humans -- "Don't eat those berries, they'll make you sick." "Don't go out of the cave after dark, there's predators out there." "Putting manure on the crops will help them grow better." And so on.

Unfortunately, those tribal elders also passed on a lot of nonsense along with the useful advice; but the minds of primitive humans couldn't distinguish between the two. Out of these passed-down nonsense behaviors, religion was born. You can see the evidence in the way that much of Mosaic law (rules about eating shellfish and pork, circumcision, etc.) is also sound hygenic and health advice.

Answer 8

I would call it an evolving religion. As societies change, the doctrine also changes. I wouldn't call it distorted, just different. Most changes are for the good. History shows us how it was run in the Dark Ages.

Answer 9

The word of God will stand forever- so therefore nobody can mess with God's word and it cannot be changed. They can try! But the truth still remains the truth!
Many have gone away from the truth, after myths and wordly matters....but it is the one who "endures till the end" who will be saved as the Bible says!

1 Peter 1:25
but the word of the Lord stands forever." And this is the word that was preached to you.

Answer 10

The church at times have distorted it's meaning, - the Bible preserves the original meaning.

Isaiah 40:8
The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.

Answer 11

There is still one original Church that Jesus started.

This is why I became Catholic.

Peace!