Notes and Comments

Notes and Comments By B.A. Rafiq A new version of Bible readings has been made available by the National Council of Churches. The 112 page “Inclusive Language Lectionary” has been prepared with a view to avoid the use of masculine pronouns used in the Revised Standard version for God and Jesus. Thus the injunction to “Let your light so shine before men . . . ” becomes “Let your light so shine before others”. The words “God the Father” changes into “God the Father and Mother.” “Man does not live by bread alone’ now reads, “One shall not live by bread alone”. The Lectionary acknowledges that Jesus was a man but does not take the fact of his maleness as of any significant importance. The recent change in this new version of the Bible is yet another proof of the fact that it has suffered many changes and interpolations at the hands of Christians. The Jews and the Christians have wilfully perverted the text of the Bible in the past and have thus proved by their action that this book is not the word of God. The Encyclopaedia Biblica (653-654) records a Jewish tradition that all the scriptures were destroyed when the Temple was burnt. “The text of scripture, like that of all ancient books, has been considerably altered in the lapse of time through mistakes of copyists and other causes”. (Theological Encyclopaedia by E.O. Davies, London, 1905, p. 12). Rev. J. Paterson Smyth, in the book How we got our Bible, London, p.27), says, “It is rather startling to learn that the earliest Hebrew manuscripts in existence date no earlier than about the tenth century . . . As far as we can learn there seems to have been a gradual rough sort of revision of the Palestine manuscripts continually going on almost from the days of Ezra. About a thousand years ago this process of Hebrew Manuscripts Revision came to an end.” The Encyclopaedia Britannica endorses the same view by saying that “since the fixing of the Massoretic text (between the 6th and 8th centuries of the Christian era) the “task of preserving and transmitting the sacred books has been carried out with the greatest care and fidelity . . . but before that date, owing to various causes, it is beyond dispute that a large number of corruptions were introduced into the Hebrew text.” This proves that the Jews and the Christians have been in the habit of corrup- ting their scriptures and are doing so even now.