The ink of the scholar is more sacred
than the blood of a martyr.
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Mohammed (c.570-629)
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Deliberate attempts have always been made to suppress material
that was considered unsuitable by the Church. As already mentioned
(page 39) Clement of Alexandria is known to have suppressed
gospel material that did not suit him. As he explained in a
letter, referring to the Secret Gospel of Mark:
During Peter's stay in Rome he wrote an account of the
Lord's doings, not however declaring all of them, nor
yet hinting at the secret ones, but selecting those he thought
most useful for increasing the faith of those who were being
instructed. But when Peter died as a martyr, Mark came over
to Alexandria, bringing his own notes and those of Peter,
from which he transferred to his former book the things suitable
to whatever makes for progress towards gnosis. Thus he composed
a more spiritual gospel for the use of those who were being
perfected.... *
Here is confirmation not only that Peter was selective, but
also that Mark subsequently tailored the information. What was
in the original version of the gospel we may never know. The
original was suppressed and its existence denied. Something
similar seems to have happened to the story of Barabbas. The
name Barabbas is composed of the elements bar
(son of) and abba (father). In an early Greek version
of Matthew, Barabbas was called Jesous Barabbas, which
is a transcription of a Hebrew name that translates as Jesus
son of the Father*.
Were there two Jesuses, both claiming to be sons of God, and
both arrested at the same time? It sounds unlikely. We may never
know unless an earlier manuscript turns up. But scholars think
it probable that there is more to the story than is related
in surviving texts.
Other important historical texts also suffered from tampering.
For example Josephus recorded that a Judæan revolt (the
First Jewish Revolt of AD 66) had been triggered by the killing
of James, the brother of Jesus. The relevant passage does not
occur in surviving manuscripts of Josephus, but authoritative
Christian sources (both Eusebius and Origen) quote it. It would
appear that the passage was edited out of the text by the Pauline
line, which had an interest in minimising the importance of
James.
We know of many so-called heretics only through the works of
their Christian enemies. The works of Helvidius are lost, and
we know of them through the writings of St Jerome. Jerome thought
that virginity was better than marriage (the line that came
to be regarded as orthodox), while Helvidius held that Mary
and Joseph had had a normal married life and that Jesus had
younger brothers and sisters. As Jerome's line came to
be orthodox his ideas are well documented while those of Helvidius
are not. Similarly, we know of Gnostic ideas mainly through
the writing of their mainstream Christian enemies. Marcion's ideas for example, or a distorted version of them, are known
through Tertullian's work Against Marcion. Marcion's own writings are "lost", destroyed by the rival Christian
faction that we now call orthodox. When Gnostic writings are
recovered, as at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, it frequently turns out
that Gnostics did not believe what "orthodox" critics
said they believed. And of course in their writings the roles
are reversed. The Gnostics see themselves as holding the true
line, while the line that is now held to be orthodox is represented
as merely another heretical faction*.
As Christian doctrine developed, important early Christian
writers came to be regarded as heretical, and their writings
were destroyed. In this way the mainstream Church sought to
root out any suggestion that its own version of orthodoxy was
flawed. For example the book known as 1 Enoch
was once regarded as scripture. It failed to be accepted into
the biblical canon in the West, and was subsequently "lost".
In the Ethiopian Church, however, it was accepted as scripture
and so survived to be rediscovered by Western Christianity in
modern times. Numerous gospels and letters, also "lost",
are referred to in surviving documents. Origen mentioned a Jewish
apocryphal work called the Prayer of Joseph, which
might have shed considerable light on Jewish ideas about semi-divine
men, but it has been "lost"*.
Origen was a prolific writer but was himself later condemned
as a heretic. Consequently, not one of his scriptural commentaries
has survived in full.
Eusebius refers to writings by one Symmachus that cast doubt
on the gospel attributed to Matthew*
— writings that have since been "lost". He also
mentions the neo-platonist Porphyry, who is known to have written
fifteen volumes against the orthodox line, exposing the scriptures
as fraudulent (he knew what modern scholars have independently
discovered, for example that the book of Daniel could not have
been written when it was purported to have been ). He also pointed
out that the apostles could hardly have been infallible if they
quarrelled with each other as the New Testament said. His works
were banned as soon as the Empire became Christian , and all
fifteen volumes were "lost". Writings explicitly opposed
to Christianity were also destroyed. The work of Aulus Cornelius
Celsus, Truth Established, has also been "lost".
Our knowledge of it comes from Origen's attempt to refute
the book's arguments in Contra Celsum. Similarly
we know of the Emperor Julian's criticisms of Christianity
in his treatise Adversus Christianos only because of
Cyril of Alexandria's attempts to refute them.
Occasionally copies of lost works turn up unexpectedly. The
Epistle to Diognetus was once "lost", but
a copy was discovered in a fish market in Constantinople. Some
works survived for centuries, before someone realised the threat
to orthodoxy, or before negligence took its toll. Hegesippus's works were reputedly extant as late as the seventeenth century.
They have all since disappeared, including five books of memoirs
and a succession list of the earliest bishops of Rome. It is
not known whether they were destroyed or hidden away. Other
works were tampered with to make them orthodox, or to keep them
orthodox. For example the seven letters of Ignatius of Antioch.
suffered in this way. As one authority puts it:
Eusebius clearly knew them all. But in their authentic form
they became known again only in the seventeenth century, for
in the fourth century the Ignatian Correspondence was added
to, both by interpolation in authentic epistles and by the addition
of spurious ones, and this so-called "Long Recension"
all but cast into oblivion any witness to the authentic epistles*.
Christian authorities have been responsible for the "loss"
of countless invaluable historical and religious records over
the last 2,000 years or so: purportedly apostolic and apocryphal
writings, Gnostic and Ebionite writings, classical and philosophical
writings, Jewish writings and the sacred writings of other religions,
all criticism of Christianity, non-compliant histories, anything
savouring of heresy or originality. Later we shall see that
all manner of other works were also destroyed: science, mathematics,
architecture, natural history, medicine, ancient classics —
all writings in fact not currently considered orthodox, and
in practice this meant everything except officially approved
propaganda.
Even the records of Church Councils and ancient biblical texts
were mislaid, destroyed or otherwise "lost". Many
such documents were for example collected for the famous Council
of Trent (1546), never to be seen again. Other records have
also been lost. For example Church records of trials for witchcraft
and heresy are remarkably scanty. Much hard evidence comes from
independent contemporary accounts, secret letters and municipal
records. Other Church records have also been mysteriously lost
— records of torture, show trials, interference in politics,
and so on. Even recent records are prone to get unaccountably
lost. Church records of proceedings against individuals and
political groups even in the twentieth century have been mysteriously
"lost".
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