What about the so-called New Testament? because nowhere does the ‘New Testament’ calls itself the New Testament, and nowhere the Old Testament calls itself the Old Testament. And also the word “Bible” is unknown within the pages of the Bible. God forgot to give a title to ‘His’ books!) Why does every Gospel begin with the introduction According To … According To … Why “According to?”
Because not a single one of the vaunted four thousand copies extant carries its author’s autograph! Hence the supposition “according to!” Even the internal evidence proves that Matthew was not the author of the first Gospel which bears his name.
“And as Jesus passed forth thence, he (Jesus) saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he (Jesus) saith unto him (Matthew), follow me (Jesus) And he (Matthew) arose, and followed him (Jesus).” (Matthew 9:9)
Without any stretch of the imagination, one can see that the “He’s” and the “Him’s” of the above narration do not refer to Jesus or Matthew as its author, but some third person writing what he saw and heard a hearsay account. If we cannot even attribute this “book of dreams” (as the first Gospel is also described) to the disciple Matthew, how can we accept it as the Word of God?
And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.
We are not alone in this discovery that Matthew did not write the “Gospel according to St. Matthew” and that it was written by some anonymous hand. J. B. Phillips concurs with us in our findings. He is the paid servant of the Anglican Church, a prebendary of the Chichester Cathedral, England. He would have no reason to lie or betray to the detriment of the official view of his Church! Refer to his introduction to the “Gospel of St. Matthew”.
Phillips has this to say about its authorship:
“Early tradition ascribed this gospel to the apostle Matthew, but scholars nowadays almost all reject this view.” In other words, St. Matthew did not write the Gospel which bears his name. This is the finding of Christian scholars of the highest eminence not of Hindus, Muslims and Jews who may be accused of bias.
Let our Anglican friend continue: “The author, whom we still can conveniently call Matthew” “Conveniently” because otherwise every time we made a reference to “Matthew” we would have to say “The first book of The New Testament” Chapter so and so, verse so and so. And again and again “The first book” etc. Therefore, according to J. B. Phillips it is convenient that we give the book some name.
So why not “Matthew?” Suppose its as good a name as any other! Phillips continues: “The author has plainly drawn on the mysterious ‘Q’ which may have been a collection of oral traditions.” What is this “mysterious ‘Q’?’ ‘Q’ is short for the German word “quella” which means “sources.” There is supposed to be another document a common source to which our present Matthew, Mark and Luke had access.
All these three authors, whoever they were, had a common eye on the material at hand. They were writing as if looking through “one” eye. And because they saw eye to eye, the first three “Gospels” came to be known as the Synoptic Gospels.
Wholesale cribbing
But what about that “inspiration” business? The Anglican prebendary has hit the nail on the head. He is, more than anyone else, entitled to do so. A paid servant of the Church, an orthodox evangelical Christian, a Bible scholar of repute, having direct access to the “original” Greek manuscripts, let him spell it out for us. (Notice how gently he lets the cat out of the bag): “He (Matthew) has used Mark’s Gospel freely” which in the language of the school- teacher “has been copying wholesale from Mark!” Yet the Christians call this wholesale plagiarism the Word of God?
Does it not make you wonder that an eye-witness and an ear-witness to the ministry of Jesus, which the disciple Matthew was supposed to be, instead of writing his own first hand impressions of the ministry of “his Lord” would go and steal from the writings of a youth (Mark), who was a ten year old lad when Jesus upbraided his nation? Why would an eye-witness and ear-witness copy from a fellow who himself was writing from hearsay? The disciple Matthew would not do any such silly thing. For an anonymous document has been imposed on the fair name of Matthew.
Plagiarism or literary kidnapping
Plagiarism means literary theft. Someone copies ad verbatim (word for word) from another’s writing and palms it off as his own, is known as plagiarism. This is a common trait amongst the 40 or so anonymous authors of the books of the Bible.
The Christians boast about a supposedly common cord amongst the writers of the 66 Protestant booklets and the writers of the 73 Roman Catholic booklets called the “Holy Bible.” Some common cord there is, for Matthew and Luke, or whoever they were, had plagiarised 85% word for word from Mark! God Almighty did not dictate the same wordings to the synoptists (one-eyed). The Christians themselves admit this, because they do not believe in a verbal inspiration, as the Muslims do about the Holy Quran. (See “Al-Quran The Miracles of Miracles”)
This 85% plagiarism of Matthew and Luke pales into insignificance compared to the literary kidnapping of the authors of the Old Testament where a hundred percent stealing occurs in the so-called Book of God. Christian scholars of the calibre of Bishop Kenneth Cragg euphemistically calls this stealing, “reproduction” and take pride in it.
Perverted standards
Dr. Scroggie most enthusiastically quotes in his book Scroggie most enthusiastically quotes in his book (Is the Bible God’s word?) a Dr. Joseph Parker for his unique eulogy of the Bible:
“What a book is the bible in the matter of variety of contents! … whole pages are taken up with obscure names, and more is told of a genealogy than of the day of judgment. stories are half told, and the night falls before we can tell where victory lay. where is there anything” (in the religious literature of the world) “to correspond with this?”
A beautiful necklace of words and phrases undoubtedly! It is much ado about nothing, and rank blasphemy against God Almighty for authorising such an embarrassing hotch potch. Yet the Christians gloat over the very defects of their book, like Romeo over the “mole” on Juliet’s lip!