Alteration of Revelation 3:14 in the 4th century to support the emerging Trinity doctrine

by slimboyfat 171 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • slimboyfat
    slimboyfat

    … and Micah that says the messiah has an ancient origin, and John 6 that says Jesus lives because of the Father. At least six different places that talk about Jesus being created/having a beginning. Seems like quite a lot to me. How many verses do we have saying that the angels were created? I don’t know any but I’d be interested to find out.

    The teaching that God created everything through Jesus is broadly attested in a different parts of the NT from John 1 to 1 Cor 8 to Col 1 to Heb 1.

    John 1.3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

    John 1.10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.

    1 Cor 8.6 yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things cameand for whom we live; and there is but one Lord,Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

    Col 1.16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.

    Heb 1.2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.

    These texts show that God is the source of creation and Jesus was the one through whom God created. Jesus is distinct from God and is obedient to him in creation as in everything.

  • Earnest
    Earnest

    Interesting, slim. In Bart Ehrman's book "The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture" he discusses Hernandez's dissertation on Scribal Habits and Theological Influences in the Apocalypse and says :

    Among his significant conclusions, Hernandez argues that Codex Sinaiticus reflects an anti-Arian tendency in the book of Revelation. Passages that refer to Christ as a creature (3:14), portray him as an angel (10:1), or attribute to him creaturely functions (3:16) are altered in this witness.

    Certainly, if the Greek readers in the fourth century didn't think 3:14 referred to the first creature, why would they alter it?

  • Riley
    Riley

    Hebrews 7:3 I think literally says Jesus has no beginning or end.

  • KalebOutWest
    KalebOutWest

    Slimboyfat:

    and Micah that says the messiah has an ancient origin...

    Micah 5:2 like the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures does not refer to anyone called "the Messiah." The term does not appear anywhere in the Hebrew Bible.

    Verses 5 and 6 of this oracle states that this ruler of Israel will defend God's people against the Assyrians, which the book was highly concerned about.

    While the Jews eventually developed a Messianic theology, the term and doctrine, like the Trinity, were not Scriptural in their foundation. It came from the foundation of the failure of the Hasmonean dynasty and their marriage pact with the Herods.

  • KalebOutWest
    KalebOutWest

    Earnest

    ...if the Greek readers in the fourth century didn't think 3:14 referred to the first creature, why would they alter it?

    The verse has not been altered. We have the original reading. Some did try to change it, but that attempt amounted to nothing. The original reading was not harmed.

    Besides, the Trinity dogma is not based on this text whatsoever. The dogma was set in 325 CE at the Council of Nicea.

    The New Testament Canon was set later, in 393 CE at the Council of Hippo. Revelation had just been recently approved for the Canon by Athanasius in 367 in his Easter letter as the book was questionable in several quarters and not widely known. The Trinty came first.

    The Greek version of Revelation would not be the canonical version of the book for the Church either. It would be the translation into Latin by Jerome around 383. The attempt would not have affect on current critical methodology in translation either.

  • BoogerMan
    BoogerMan

    @ Riley - "Why doesn't the Bible start with god created Jesus and Jesus created everything, instead of "let us create man in our image."

    If the trinity is such a fundamental doctrine, why doesn't the Bible mention the Father, Son, & Holy Spirit together in just one legitimitate verse - and which even remotely hints at a union where all 3 are "equal in power & authority." (1 Cor.15:28)


  • Riley
    Riley

    Mathew 28 19. There is your three in a single verse and a pretty important one as well.

    Wow, that is kind of a drop the mic moment , wouldn’t you say boogerman.

  • Acluetofindtheuser
    Acluetofindtheuser
    How many verses do we have saying that the angels were created? I don’t know any but I’d be interested to find out.

    I know of one only. It's about a cherub being created that eventually watches over the garden of Eden. A uniform made of multiple gemstones lined with gold was made for him on the day of his creation, His office duties also had him walk a path made with stones of fire.

    Ezekiel 28:13-14

    "...on the day you were created they were prepared."

  • KalebOutWest
    KalebOutWest
    If the trinity is such a fundamental doctrine, why doesn't the Bible...

    This is the foundational problem that likely cannot ever be solved because we are talking to people who were exposed to the Watchtower religion (as I assume we all were), which was a cult that brainwashed people.

    Not all of us move away from it at the same pace. It teaches suspicion, automatic hatred and prejudice (if not outright bigotry) for those who teach traditional beliefs, and instills individuals with a mistaken sense of a better understanding of academic scholarship than academics.

    Unless you are an academic, your qualifications with religion is that you are good at getting tricked into joining a cult or having a hard time being convinced to leave the cult you were born into.

    That is not a great qualification for any of us.

    Worse, the Watchtower created and offered a paradox that some obviously still carry with them: that the world was literate, that Bibles were mass produced, and that from these original Christianity sprung forth before Christendom went nuts and invented the Trinity.

    The opposite is true. Until World Wars, many people around the world could not read, even in the West. It was the famous barefoot walk of Mary Jones in Wales that spurred the birth of the Bible socities that made it first possible for common folk to own Bibles in the mid to late 1800s. (That's a long time to wait for yor 1st Bible since Jesus walked the earth.) These Bible societies helped stop the widespread illiteracy in the world via the coulporters who worked for them.

    The Trinity is a dogma, not a doctrine. This is very important because a dogma states a religious truth that did not form from human reasoning or resources. A doctrine is often found via texts or can be explained, but a dogma cannot.

    The Trinity had to be presented in a creed format which is a statement that a dogma is under attack by a heresy. A creed offers counter arguments to those presented by heretics, not reasons for believers to consider a dogma.

    The New Testament Canon itself was an answer to a different heresy that begun in the 2nd century by Marcion of Sinope who claimed that salvation was limited to a select few with special knowledge who rejected the God of Abraham and embraced his own canonical collection. Marcion claimed Paul and Luke also rejected the God of the Jews, and that Jesus himself taught such a gospel. So the Church replied by creating the New Testament Canon which raised Luke among the Apostolic works and highlighted the Pauline epistles above the Petrine. This was not to create a source for doctrine, but to end the Marcionist movement. An entire work by Tertullian exists on this called "Against Marcion."

    While one might indeed find texts indicative of the Trinity formula such as Matthew 28:19, the dogma of the Trinity came before Matthew could be officially cited as an authoritative text for Christian doctrine.

    Not that anyone could or would, as people who were not scribes generally did not read or write. And until the mid to late 1800s, common people did not have the means to own a Bible.

    Once they did, especially in America, it led to the foundation of the American Bible Society. At the same time another event in American history took advantage of the sudden surge in Bible distribution: the Second Great Awakening.

    While there were some advantages to this period in the USA ( the spread of literacy and the Methodist religion to the West), it brought disaster to many like the Great Disappointment, the rise of Mormonism, and an attempting copycat of the great Foreign and American Bible Societies, Charles Taze Russell.

    To try to fight what is ingrained about the Bible in so many is impossible. Why? Like the Trinity "mystery," it is more a feeling for many that somehow the old Watchtower formula of "Bible first" must be true. It's impossible and doesn't matter anyway because we live in a reality where to be Christian is, generally speaking, to be Trintarian, like it or not.

    And that is the problem. Like holidays, Watchtower teaches people to dislike it, to hate it, like the way so exJWs hate Christmas carols even though they have not been a Witness for many years now.

    You might be in the minority, and that is fine, but it won't make the majority incorrect. It doesn't work that way. We are not in the Watchtower anymore. If you want to be Christian and unitarian, that does exist. It's a small number, but that is why there is the word "unitarian."

    But you don't change history in the face of your choice of beliefs. It's like my people, the Jews. Jews don't believe in Jesus at all. (I barely believe in my own people.) But Jesus was real. Resurrected? Maybe. Why not! Jews go one way, Christians another. It doesn't change history.

    Just because we might not belive in the Trinity does not change the fact that the actual Christians that came from the Apostles are the Trinitarians. They were not led by the Devil or trying to twist things like the Watchtower teaches. This is their genuine, Apostolic faith.

    Like Christmas carols to some exJWs, this will never, ever sit well for some. All the evidence in the world will not work. It's called an "emotional scar." This is where you blame the cult, not the Trinity.

  • slimboyfat
    slimboyfat

    Earnest is very knowledgable about the transmission of the NT text and is fully aware that other manuscripts preserved the original reading that Jesus is “the beginning of the creation of God”. The point I made, and that Earnest agreed with, is that scholars have pointed out that the scribe of the famous Sinaiticus Codex saw fit to change the text in his copy during the crucial period in 4th century when Jesus was being elevated to the Trinity. As Juan Hernández says, the text was apparently viewed as a “problem” in that crucial period.

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