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Lying Pen of the Scribes The Old Testament was copied over and over by a group called the Scribes. In Old Testament times and Christ's time, the Scribes were considered to be liars and corrupters of religion (Jeremiah 8:8)(Mat 5:20, 23:13). So how reliable is the text in the Old Testament? Jeremiah said (speaking for God) "How can you say, 'We are wise, we have the law of the Lord'? Why, that has been changed into falsehood by the lying pen of the Scribes!" Fundamentalists say there is not one error in the Bible, because it is God's word. Christ and the prophets said it was corrupted by the scribes. Observation shows that the Old Testament is full of alterations. The alterations are visible by their lack of continuity with the rest of the text, and their subtle corruptions. An example is Wisdom 2:23. For context, I'll quote the verse before it. It says, (22) "And they knew not the hidden counsels of God; neither did they count on a recompense of holiness nor discern the innocent souls' reward." (23) "For God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him." Verse 23 was sandwiched in by the lying pen of the scribes. It is a throw-back to Genesis, and it's purpose was to contrived a false meaning for the concept in Genesis (Gen 1:26). The Scribes needed a place to put it, so they stuck it into Wisdom 2. First consider the incoherence. The author of Wisdom made reference to "the innocent souls' reward." The next phrase has two parts: the first refers to imperishability; the second refers to the image of God. Imperishability is not a reward for innocence; it is a state of all spiritual beings. Creating man in God's image has even less to due with the rewards for innocence. Secondly, consider the purpose of the scribes. Genesis refers to material creation. It is about the creation of human bodies, not spiritual beings. When God said "let us make man in our image" (Gen 1:26) he was referring to the human body. Spiritual beings use a nonmaterial form similar to a human body for identity and location in the spirit world, as indicated in the Book of Revelation at several places. But corrupters of theology use that quote from genesis to indicate that God created spiritual beings like himself. One error in that is that Genesis does not describe the creation of spiritual beings. Another error is that spiritual beings are not created like God. To promote the error, the scribes wove the saying from Genesis into Wisdom. The word "imperishable" was synthesized to connect a positive quality to the reward for innocence. Notice that Genesis says nothing about imperishability. Then notice that the word "man" is used, which links the synthetic phrase to Genesis. Obviously, man was never imperishable. After making a link to Genesis, the quote from Genesis is altered, as the corrupters interpret it. It refers implicitly to the soul rather than the body by saying "imperishable." And it changes "our image" to "image of his own nature," which implies moral character rather than bodily form. In that manner, corrupters use the quote in Genesis to claim that people acquired the moral character of God when humans were created. Sin then is nothing but a quirk in God's mind, and it was corrected on the cross through atonement. Anyone who claims sin is anything more than that is another enemy that needs to be persecuted like Christ.Second Example, Isaiah 45. Another example is Isaiah 45:5,7. The Scribes describe God as being the source of evil. They added a phrase which doesn't fit the context and is absurd. It says, "I am the Lord, there is no other; I form the light, and create the darkness, I make well-being and create woe; I, the Lord, do all these things (Is 45:6,7). This statement is out of place. The normal message starts at 45. It reads, "I am the Lord and there is no other, there is no God besides me. It is I who.." The message is coherent except for an insert which repeats the first line as a lead-in and then lies about God. It can be known from the rest of the Bible and God's characteristics, as Christ taught, that God is not a source of evil. Both the incoherence of the insert and the false statement show that the lying Scribes were trying to portray God as a source of evil. Old Testament |