Catholic Church fabricated the Scriptures?

[Gottle_of_Geer]

josephdavid:

How can some one make this accusation:

“The Catholic Church burned the books of the bible and spent 560 years fabricating the old and new testament.”

It sounds like a mangled reference to several facts:​

That books were undoubtedly destroyed deliberately by ecclesiastics - such as many of Origen’s: which very likely did contain quotatations from Scripture.

That copies of Scripture were destroyed deliberately during the persecution under Diocletian at the beginning of the fourth century

That at various times books were judged to be apocryphal in the bad sense, and condemned accordingly: the Council of Rome in 495 has left a list of some of these, such as the “Protevengelium of James”

That at a later date, copies of Scripture which, rightly or wrongly, were deemed to be unsatisfactory, were destroyed or impounded or forbidden absolutely. The Ferrer NT in Catalan printed in 1478 was so effectively destroyed by the Spanish Inquisition that only one page of it remains

That copies of the Talmud have frequently been destroyed by Christians. As have books by classical authors - very little remains of the poems of Sappho, thanks to the destructive activity of Christian bishops. There was a considerable amount of Christian vandalism by mob action in the later fourth century: it is not true that the conversion of the Roman Empire was a purely peacable affair; nor that it was quickly accomplished: but that is another subject

That the text of the Bible has been subject to revision, correction, alteration, harmonisation, at many times - this may be what is meant by “fabrication”, become some people cannot tell the difference between fabrication and textual criticism. Which is why some people treat the AV or the Vulgate as perfect, final, and beyond all criticism - but that too is another story.

The worth of the accusation depends largely on what is being talked about. IMHO, several different things may well have been jumbled together: I would like to know why the number of 560 years has been chosen - it sounds as though the questioner may have some particular event in mind. But which one ?

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

Hi Micheal, if you think about it, if all the manuscipts for the Bible itself were destroyed today, I am willing to bet that at least 95 percent of the new testament could be gleemed out of the church fathers writings alone.

 

[tjmiller]

The above is a well-known fact which I learned long ago in apologetics - as a protestant! (That’s how I first learned about the early Fathers…)

 

[tjmiller]

Quotations of the Scriptures in the works of the early Church Fathers "are so extensive that the N.T. could virtually be reconstructed from them without the use of New Testament manuscripts (J. Harold Greenlee, Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism, 54).

“Indeed, so extensive are these citations that if all other sources for our knowledge of the text of the New Testament were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of practically the entire New Testament” (Bruce Metzger, The Text of the New Testament, 86).

“‘Suppose that the New Testament had been destroyed [in the Roman persecutions], and every copy of it lost by the end of the third century, could it have been collected together again from the writings of the Fathers of the second and third centuries?’…That question roused my curiosity, and as I possessed all the existing works of the Fathers of the second and third ceturies, I commenced to search, and up to this time I have found the entire New Testament, except eleven verses.” (Sir David Dalrymple, cited in Our Bible: How We Got It, Charles Leach, 35, 36)