Forgery and Heresy in the Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel of Matthew, as it exists today, is not the original work the author first produced. The manu****** has been subject to the pen of a later forger. Such forgery can always be identified by the weird contradictions in ideology the later forgeries introduce into the manu******, since the reason for the forgery is that some forger did not like the ideology of the book, and thus decided to do a little forging to confuse the issue. All this forging makes the ******** of Matthew complex, and it becomes difficult to discern what was and was not the original intent of the author.
The Gospel of Matthew presents us with Jesus, the fundamentalist, who preaches the infallible inerrancy of the Bible.
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law (of Moses) or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law (of Moses) until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17)
This brings Matthew into sharp contradiction with Mark, where Jesus teaches people not to obey the law of Moses. The Gospel of Matthew consists of spin doctored version of Mark's Gospel. Beginning at chapter six, Matthew begins copying Mark's gospel, and such a close literary correspondence is not a coincidence. However, Mark's Gospel is not copied verbatim, but rather is copied and then edited slightly here and there. Matthew's agenda can be discerned by the many small alterations he makes to Mark's account. Whenever Mark presents Jesus as less than a superman, Matthew doctors the account to make Jesus ‘supernatural.' Matthew also destroys every attack on the Torah. So for example, the attack on the food laws in Mark's Gospel is destroyed by Matthew, who makes the controversy one about whether or not you should wash your hands before you eat and the proper way of washing cups and bowls. Neither of these are found in the infallible Torah, which makes them ‘human traditions.' Matthew also white washes the attack on the temple, by having Jesus first use his whip in the temple, and then take a seat and begin teaching from the Law of Moses in the now ‘purified temple.' What all this doctoring of Mark's Gospel reveals is that Matthew had the agenda of a ‘supernatural fundamentalist.'
There are some sharp contradictions to be found in Matthew's gospel, which reveal the work of a later forger. Throughout Matthew's Gospel, Jesus is called ‘The son of David.' However towards the end of the manu****** is found the denial of David. Jesus, Matthew tells us, not related to David. This brings Matthew into sharp contradiction with the rest of the New Testament ********s. For example Paul insists that Jesus was ‘the son of David, according to the flesh.'
The denial of David is closely related to the forgery found at the very beginning of the Gospel of Matthew. The story of the virgin birth is a forgery which was not found in the original ********, but rather added later, probably in the second century. I wrote a piece some years ago analyzing the Origins of the Virgin Birth Story. Based upon a literary analysis of the manu****** I concluded that the story was a forgery which was added to the manu****** at a later time. This literary analysis is confirmed by the findings of archeology. We know from the discoveries of ancient manu******s that copies of the Gospel of Matthew continued to circulate in the second century which do not include the Virgin Birth forgery, which was added to manu****** many decades after the original was produced by a forger.
The image above is of a manu****** of Matthew from the second century, and which is a ‘critical edition' in that it incorporates all the variant versions of the manu****** relating to the **** in question. Here there is no virgin birth story, but rather there is a genealogy in variant forms wherein Joseph is the father of Jesus, and not God or a holy ghost. Variant A became the traditional **** which now concludes the genealogy in our ‘authorized' copies of Matthew. At point B the **** diverges to list the variants in the different manu******s. C denotes the Syriac variant from the second century, wherein Joseph is explicitly referenced as the father of the Jesus figure. The Greek variant (D) is an abbreviated version of the Syriac ****, and states "And Joseph begat Jesus, the one called Christ." Both the Syriac and Greek variants have no ‘virgin birth myth', which is an indication that the virgin birth mythology had not become a part of the authorized lexicon of the Matthew gospel during the second century, but that copies of the manu****** without the virgin birth story were still extant and circulating at that time.
Above is an image of the Syriac variant, which is the source of the abbreviated Greek reading above. The Syriac manu****** includes no virgin birth mythology, since once again it was Joseph who ‘begat Jesus', and the genealogy, in part, reads in translation, ": "Eliud begat Eleazar, Eleazar begat Matthan, Matthan begat Jacob, Jacob begat Joseph; Joseph, to whom was betrothed a young woman, Mary, begat Jesus who is called Messiah."
It could be argued that what we have here are ‘heretical' variants, wherein some heretic ‘removed' the virgin birth story. The only other explanation is that the virgin birth story was not original to the manu******, but was added later, and what we have here are extant versions of the manu****** which were still circulating in the second century without the virgin birth story, which had not at that time become part of the canonical and thus accepted rendition of Matthew (itself a product of cutting pieces from all the variants to come up with a standard version, not in itself a simple task, given the hundreds of thousands of variant readings for all New Testament manu******s in existence, the scale of this problem being very familiar to translators but less well known to the average Bible reader who has been taught to believe that there is something called a ‘canonical ****' which supposedly existed from the beginning and has somehow been preserved and thus copied verbatim into their Bibles. The actual process resembles a cut and paste job and thus the end product is the result of innumerable human value judgments, with what we would call a canon becoming a formal creation only in the fourth century).
It is sometimes said that one opinion is as good as another, or again, everyone is entitled to their opinion. This is a very reactionary position, since it would seem to me that it would make more sense to say that all opinions are equally worthless until proven otherwise, and that no one is entitled to an opinion unless they can make a valid case for holding such an opinion, and in all other cases opinions are questionable things which are best regarded as worthless.
If we are to come to some conclusion as to whether or not ‘the virgin birth story was removed' thus accounting for the early manu****** evidence of no virgin birth story in Matthew, or whether it was added later, which would also explain its absence in early sources, we must also come up with an explanation that will take into account the inconsistencies found in the rest of Matthew's gospel which are found to be linked to the Virgin Birth story.
The denial of David is one example, and here we have a glaring contradiction in Matthew's gospel which must be explained (either he was or he wasn't) and this is significant for the virgin birth story is the polemical denial of David, and so is linked to the explanation of this other contradiction.
Similarly, the denial of David, and thus the Virgin Birth story which is the denial of David encapsulated in myth masquerading as history, is linked to the doctrine of infallibility of the Torah found in the Sermon on the Mount, which once again is contradictory, not only in its proclamation of infallibility of Torah and prophets who condemned the Torah as a fake, but also in that it directly precedes a series of nullifications of the Torah in the Sermon on the Mount.
It is worth considering that the opinion that holds that virgin birth story was ‘removed' is also of the same mind to accept as perfectly valid the deliberate twisting of out of con**** of lines of prophecy and forgery of both prophecy and history. For the supposed ‘prophecy' of the virgin birth, does not mention a virgin (this is a mistranslation) and in con**** the story is about the Assyrians, and has nothing to do with a prophecy about Jesus (the time of the Assyrians was over seven centuries previous to the time of Jesus, and the events the author is referring to were to take place in just a few years, not after hundreds of years, having to do with the fall of the Assyrian empire, which would happen before the baby who was Isaiah's child and was named Immanuel had been completely weaned).
There was no massacre of the infants by Herod, and the prophecy concerning a Nazarene is an invention and does not exist. Therefore the same opinion that holds that the virgin birth story is somehow valid and original, is the same opinion that holds that twisting single lines of prophecy ripped out of con****, or falsifying history or prophecy are valid practices, and given this track record, it seems likely that such an opinion must itself be worthless since the same who hold to such an opinion also have no problem holding to forgery and falsification.
Disrespect for objective facts permeates that ******** known as Matthew, as all that clear editing indicates, which then means that only bad opinion would hold that such a manu****** would be a reputable source for a story as fantastical (not to mention mythological) as the Virgin Birth myth.. The fact that they tolerate the first demonstrates that they would also tolerate the latter.
المفضلات