Relax, the Affordable Care Act is Almost Certainly Safe

Note: After the decision was handed down, I made an "update post" here.

Due to my procrastination in posting, this article is much less relevant than when I originally started writing it, but I figure I might as well post it anyway.

After the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Amy Coney Barrett was nominated to replace her on the Supreme Court, and she was just confirmed. Prior to this, and undoubtedly more will follow, there was much fearmongering about the effect she would have on the direction of the Supreme Court, particularly in regards to the Affordable Care Act. There were other things brought up, but the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, took center stage.

It makes sense politically to do so. After all, the Affordable Care Act is quite popular right now, about the most popular it's ever been; it makes more sense to focus on something like that than the more controversial issue of abortion which risks backfiring. More importantly, it's more immediate, with the Supreme Court about to take up a case on it (California v. Texas) to be argued about a week after the election. Warning about the dangers of something that's about to happen definitely plays better than warning about something that might happen down the line.

But is there an actual existential danger to the Affordable Care Act? The answer is, quite frankly, no. There is virtually no chance that the Supreme Court will actually strike it down. At most, they will strike down the currently irrelevant individual mandate and leave the rest of the law intact. Why? Well, that's why you're reading the article!

Most of this article was written before the oral arguments occurred. There is not really much in them that I feel changes this analysis, however.

The Background: 

Before we get into the new case, we need to look at the background. After the Affordable Care Act was passed, there was a lawsuit against it, alleging that its "individual mandate" (the requirement that people buy health insurance or pay a fine) was unconstitutional. 

Now, some people get confused by this. After all, basically every state requires people to purchase car insurance. Why is this a problem, then? The answer is that it's the federal government doing it. Unlike states, which can enact any law so long as it isn't forbidden by the Constitution or a federal law, the federal government's ability to enact law is limited to its "enumerated powers." These are found principally in Section 8 of Article I, though some amendments have added powers. So for the government to enact a law, it must be something authorized by the enumerated powers. There are things the federal government does not have power to do but states can. So it is perfectly consistent for states to have a regulation power but not the federal government.

One of the enumerated powers is that congress has the the power "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes". The phrase "among the several States" is the key point here. It allows the federal government to regulate trade among the states--in other words, it can regulate interstate commerce (commerce between states), but not intrastate commerce (commerce within a state). There is also the Necessary and Proper Clause, which says that congress has power "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers" (including regulating interstate commerce).

There has been much debate, naturally, as to how far this extends, with some taking an expansive view and others taking a much more limited one, and indeed disagreement on that played out in the case in question, National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. This was the first challenge to the Affordable Care Act. It was argued that the individual mandate exceeded the power authorized by the Commerce Clause. The outcome was that 5 justices (John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas) agreed that it exceeded the Commerce Clause. 4 justices disagreed, believing it did not exceed it (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan). However, Roberts opined that the individual mandate qualified as a tax, and thus was justified by a different power granted to congress, the Taxation Clause ("The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises"). It should be noted that Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Breyer, and Kagan did agree with Roberts that it qualified under the Taxation Clause; however, as noted, they believed it also qualified as regulation of interstate commerce.

There were other aspects in the decision, such as the Medicaid Expansion, but they aren't of concern in the current case so I'll skip over them. The point is that we had a majority ruling (5 justices) that it was justified as a tax but a separate majority that it exceeded the commerce clause, with Roberts being the only one in both of those ideas. There were some other legal arguments regarding the Affordable Care Act in other cases but again they do not really relate to the present question.

While I know that was long, it's important to know the background so we can fully understand the next case. Now let's get to it.

The Current Case:

Later on, the Republicans managed to win back the Senate, House, and presidency in 2016 and set about trying to get rid of the ACA and replace it with something they thought was better and didn't include the disliked individual mandate. They weren't able to get the votes together, however, so instead they settled to changing the penalty for the individual mandate to $0. So while you are still technically compelled to buy insurance, there is no functional penalty for not doing so; this effectively abolished the individual mandate.

This, however, launched a new argument. If it's $0, it doesn't qualify as a tax, as they're not collecting tax, right? That would mean that it is no longer justified under the Taxation Clause, and thus it would have to be the Commerce Clause, which the Supreme Court said the individual mandate exceeded, so it would be struck down, right?

And so the Affordable Care Act was challenged in court. Now you might be wondering why the answer to the questions in the previous paragraph aren't both "yes." There are two major problems with the new lawsuit that did not apply to the original.

The first is what is known as standing. In order to sue over a law, you have to actually demonstrate you got injured by it somehow. Many cases have been dismissed for lack of standing. And it is indeed rather counterintuitive to try to argue that someone is injured by a law when there is no penalty for breaking it.

The second, and more important, is severability, and that is what I am going to devote my attention to. Severability means that if a portion of a law is unconstitutional, you don't necessarily have to strike the whole thing down. The main question is how essential the unconstitutional portion is to the larger law. A law regarding the citizenship process that randomly requires first graders to promise to follow the Ten Commandments could have the obviously unconstitutional latter portion removed but leaving the rest intact.

In the original case, there was a strong argument to be made that the individual mandate could not be severed from the law because it was critical to it. I believe even the Obama Administration argued as such in th ecase. But at the moment, the individual mandate is toothless. The idea that such a now-irrelevant portion of the law is critical to the entire thing doesn't make much of any sense. While it is true the congress that passed the law may have seen it as critical, the later congress that zeroed out the individual mandate obviously disagreed (given the fact they zeroed it out). Remove the individual mandate, which does basically nothing, leave the rest intact, and life will go on essentially just as it did before the lawsuit. Even if they accept the argument that the plaintiffs have standing and go all the way up to declaring the individual mandate unconstitutional, it's hard to believe the Supreme Court would somehow conclude the toothless individual mandate is critical. 

But you might ask, if this is so obvious, why did the lower courts say the argument against the individual mandate were correct? This is a claim often brought up by those worrying; "if this case is so silly, then why did lower judges rule in favor of the plaintiffs?" Well, let's look at the chain. First we have the original decision by Reed O'Connor, a Texas federal judge. It claimed the plaintiffs had standing, the taxation argument doesn't work, the individual mandate is unconstitutional according to Supreme Court precedent, and that it can't be severed, and thus the whole thing should go. His opinion got a good amount of criticism for being flawed, even among opponents of the Affordable Care Act. The problem is that O'Connor is, as I understand it, known for being a bit of a conservative activist. People will apparently deliberately file cases in his jurisdiction to obtain favorable results.

But more importantly, O'Connor was the only one to actually declare it to be struck down. This decision got appealed, of course, and the majority opinion of the Fifth Circuit Court said that it agreed with his analysis... up until the point of severability, which it found questionable but did not explicitly say was wrong. So it sent it back to him with instructions to make a new analysis as to what parts would need to be struck down. This court thus never reached a conclusion regarding severability.

Ordinarily this would have gone back to the lower court, a new decision possibly made, and then possibly appealed again if necessary. But wanting a more definite answer quickly, especially considering what a major deal this was, you had a lot of people basically begging the Supreme Court to take up the case right away so people wouldn't be waiting around wondering what was going to happen with the Affordable Care Act. With various states asking the Supreme Court to take it up, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives asking them to take it up, and the Republican-controlled White House asking them to take it up, the Supreme Court apparently said "okay, fine, we'll do this." The Supreme Court taking it up, contrary to what some claim, doesn't indicate that the argument is good, just that everyone needs a resolution right away.

So really we've only got one person who ruled the entire Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional, with the higher judges saying the individual mandate is unconstitutional now but maybe the rest of the law isn't. The claim that judges have bought into the argument the entire Affordable Care Act needs to go isn't true.

But you may think a lot of that is theorycrafting. The Supreme Court has bought into bad arguments before. So let's look at it pragmatically in terms of the justices themselves.

The Pragmatic Analysis:

Three members of the current Supreme Court (Kagan, Breyer, and Sotomayor) all asserted that the individual mandate was justified under the Commerce Clause. It is unlikely that any of them have changed their mind. Thus, all of this quibbling over taxation is of no concern to them. So that's three votes ready. Remember: One needs only five votes to win a case.

Next we come to the obvious case: Roberts. Originally he did apparently believe that the individual mandate was unconstitutional and wanted to strike it down, but was reluctant to take the entire law with it (see here). Ultimately he decided to use the Taxation Clause to justify it, thereby saving himself that problem. But note that fact--Roberts, when there was a much stronger argument that the individual mandate couldn't be severed fro the Affordable Care Act, was hesitant to strike the entire thing down. If he was hesitant then, how much more he would be now!

But you might say that that's relying a bit too much on unknown sources as to what went down behind closed doors. So let's look at actual opinions.

In Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Supreme Court ruled that a portion of the law establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was unconstitutional, but that it was severable from the rest of the law establishing the CFPD; thus, the CFPD could continue to operate. Roberts spends some time in the opinion (joined by Alito and Kavanaugh) discussing severability, affirming a philosophy that would indicate that, yes, the individual mandate is quite severable.

Speaking of Kavanaugh, in the recent decision Barr v. American Assn of Political Consultants, the Supreme Court declared that a portion of the law banning robocalls was unconstitutional... but the rest could stay. Kavanaugh (joined by Roberts and Alito) bluntly states in his opinion:

"Constitutional litigation is not a game of gotcha against Congress, where litigants can ride a discrete constitutional flaw in a statute to take down the whole, otherwise constitutional statute."

Further, in a law review article published back in 2016 (scroll down and click on the "PDF" link to see the whole thing), Kavanaugh made an interesting statement that I feel I must quote at length. Note that NFIB means National Federation of Independent Businesses... he's talking about the original Affordable Care Act ruling here:

Of course, severability principles are their own separate mess. As currently framed, severability doctrine requires the judge to sever the offending provision from the statute, to strike down the entire statute, or to perform some other surgery. In deciding among this menu of op- tions, the court must in part assess what Congress would have wanted and whether the statute would be workable without the offending provision.

But how can the court determine what Congress would have wanted? For instance, in the NFIB case, the dissenters tried to determine whether Congress would have enacted the health care law without the provisions the dissenters deemed unconstitutional. They said no. But how can we know? Is that really what then–Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, then–Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, President Barack Obama, and all the Members of Congress who voted for the bill, would have wanted? Is this even the right question to be asking?

Courts can reform principles of severability as well. For instance, courts might institute a new default rule: sever an offending provision from the statute to the narrowest extent possible unless Congress has indicated otherwise in the text of the statute. This default rule has the benefit of stopping judges from trying to guess what Congress would have wanted, an inherently suspect exercise. And it has the additional benefit of telling Congress what to expect.

Regarding NFIB, some contend that at least the narrowest version of the severability principle could have led to the same bottom line (eliminating the legal mandate but keeping the tax penalties on those who fail to have insurance). Others disagree with that notion. I take no position here on how severability could have been applied in that case, which is an extraordinarily difficult question in its own right.

In any event, for all the reasons mentioned above, it may be worth trading off increased reliance on severability principles in exchange for decreased reliance on clarity versus ambiguity determinations in invoking the constitutional avoidance doctrine.  

This is especially notable considering the fact he refers to the Affordable Care Act case. It is this case in view in which he suggests that perhaps the Court should strive for a narrow severability doctrine, to leave as much of the law intact as possible. While he does couch himself with "I take no position here on how severability could have been applied in that case" the fact he suggests it with this case in view is extremely notable.

Interestingly, there's something else in regards to the Affordable Care Act he wrote. Before it made it to the Supreme Court, various lower courts ruled on it, and he ruled in it. His opinion managed to actually avoid a real discussion of the law on the merits, saying they lacked jurisdiction on the basis that the penalty had not actually been enforced yet. While I've demonstrated there is strong reason to accept he would see the individual mandate as severable, this indicates he may also find the argument of lack of standing plausible.

So we have now counted to 5 justices who seem very, very likely to uphold the law, give or take the largely irrelevant individual mandate. But what of the others? Alito is harder to tell, but it should be noted he joined both Robert's Seila Law opinion and Kavanaugh's Barr opinion.

Thomas and Gorsuch did not join those opinions, but that is because they are now of the belief that the current severability analysis is in error. As I understand it, it amounts to saying the Supreme Court shouldn't be trying to figure out what parts are severable from what, and that they should instead just issue relief for those injured by unconstitutional portions of laws. Under such an analysis, again as I understand it, the individual mandate being unconstitutional would not affect enforcement of the rest of the law.

That leaves Barrett. While people have made much of the fact some of her past writings indicated preference for the dissent in the original case, we should consider a more recent--and more relevant--action she took.

Shortly before Ginsburg's death (and thus without any knowledge she she could be appointed to the Supreme Court in a matter of months), Barrett took part in a "mock court" exercise concerning the upcoming Affordable Care Act decision. She, along with 7 other judges, heard mock arguments about it and then issued a decision. That decision was 5-3. The majority ruled that the individual mandate was unconstitutional, but was severable from the rest of the law. The dissent ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing. The votes were anonymous, but whichever side Barrett fell on, it means she ruled in favor of the Affordable Care Act as a whole. In the confirmation hearings she stated she fell on the "unconstitutional but severable" side, for whatever that is worth.

Obviously, a mock court is a mock court. You could rule differently in an actual decision. But it would seem to me that if we're trying to guess what she'd do, this provides far more proof than statements concerning an earlier case. 

Considering all of this, it would be a stunner if the Supreme Court strikes down the entire Affordable Care Act. In fact, . While I expect there will be fractured reasoning, it is quite likely that we'll see not a single justice vote to strike down anything more than the individual mandate.

Thus the evidence strongly, strongly means there is no reason to worry about it being struck down in total. While there is theoretically the possibility of enough justices deciding to be conservative judicial activists and strike it down, there is also theoretically the possibility that Washington, D.C. will undergo a seismic political shift and will vote overwhelmingly for the Republican presidential candidate in the 2024 election. 

There may be some things to worry about in regards to the Supreme Court in the future, particularly if you're of a liberal persuasion. But the Affordable Care Act being struck down in its entirety is not one of them. 

And so these are my totally random thoughts on the subject, naturally posted past the point people really cared about it, and in less than a year these thoughts will be moot because a decision will be handed down. This is the kind of amazing quality analysis you can expect to find on this blog!

(Other analyses that say similar things to what I have said can be found here and here).

Easter Is Not Ishtar - Part 2

In an earlier post, I explained why the idea that Easter is related to Ishtar (or Eostre) because they sound similar is silly; for the quick recap, that similarity in sound exists only in English, a language that developed centuries after Easter was an established holiday, and for that matter on an island quite a ways away from where Easter was established. So the claims that Easter is pagan based on its name are clearly ridiculous, and quite honestly if you see someone try to argue that, you should basically stop there and give their arguments no more attention. Anyone who claims pagan influence on anything due to a coincidental similarity in sound in a different language centuries after the fact is not credible.

Still, there do exist some claims of pagan connection that are slightly more substantial, and I felt I should address them also, as much misinformation is propagated, even sometimes by Easter defenders.

Now, these arguments of pagan origin or influence in Easter tend to come from two sources: Non-Christians eager to disprove Christianity, and from Christians who are claiming pagan influence on Christianity (usually with a specific target on Catholicism). Some arguments here will only apply to the latter group, but anyone should get at least some benefit from this post.

I had originally planned to put this post up a month or two after the original, but I kept delaying because I wanted to try to improve it. I'm still not sure I'm completely satisfied, but with Easter coming up soon it seemed proper to put this up now while it was at least somewhat relevant.

Naturally, shortly before I posted this article, I discovered another blog that detailed much of the same information, making my post feel redundant:
http://asbereansdid.blogspot.com/2013/04/easter-faq.html
http://asbereansdid.blogspot.com/2010/04/easter-history-part-ii.html

Much of the information is shared, but there is some information there not found in my blog post, and vice versa. I considered incorporating some of the additional information into this article, but decided it would be more proper to link directly for reference. And with that, let's get into my actual blog post!

This will be a long article, so if you want a short version in the style of Summa Theologica, see the end; I'll bold it to make it obvious where it begins.

One argument made is that the Bible never mentions any apostle as celebrating Easter. There is 1 Corinthians 5:7-8, which may be a mention of Easter replacing Passover, but unfortunately is ambiguous. There is also Jesus's command to "do this in memory of me" in establishing the Eucharist, which could be understood to mean an annual commemoration as well. But that is somewhat speculative. So we will, for the purpose of this post, not advance the argument that there is direct mention of Easter in the Bible. I suppose I should briefly note a few Bibles use "Easter" in Acts 12:4 (most notably the King James Bible), but that appears to be an error of translation.

However, using lack of direct mention in the Bible against Easter has a number of problems. One is that just because it is not mentioned does not mean it did not happen; Acts has to compress several decades of events into a relatively short amount of pages, so some things got skipped over. There is, for example, a surprising lack of description of how church services were conducted despite that being something rather important. There would have been little need to mention the celebration of Easter if it were held because that information would have been publicly known to Christians due to their celebration of it, whereas in contrast the events of the growth of the early Church, which was what Acts focused primarily on, would have been something more necessary to record for posterity. For that matter, Acts concludes before Paul's martyrdom, meaning even if there was not Easter celebrated prior to that point, there was the possibility of such a celebration developing between the end of Acts and the deaths of all the apostles.

Of course, someone can claim that under the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, it should be in the Bible if we are to celebrate it. But restricting ourselves solely to what is recorded in the Bible gives no further argument that Easter is in any way pagan or problematic, because there is no statement in the Bible to not celebrate the anniversary of the Resurrection. So while someone could argue there is no command in the Bible to celebrate Easter, there is no command not to either. One could, of course, try to argue that Easter is pagan in origin and the biblical admonitions of taking on such things applies. However, as we will see as this essay goes on, the evidence of that is quite weak. So all we can take from the Bible is we do not know if they celebrated Easter in the apostolic age, though there is data outside the Bible that suggests they did (more on that shortly). But even if they did not, that doesn't mean Easter is actually pagan or that it is in any way wrong to celebrate it.

So when did Easter celebration start? Well, the usual claim of Christianity adopting pagan practices is that it happened around the time of Constantine, and it therefore allegedly adapting pagan practices by taking on aspects of the Roman religion. I saw someone claim that the Council of Nicaea created Easter. But is that really true? Was Easter not celebrated beforehand?

A citation you will see by some who allege it was a later innovation is the following quote from the Encyclopedia Britannica:

"There is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament, or in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers."

Specifically, this is from the 11th Edition, Volume 8, page 828. Setting aside the fact the 11th Edition was published all the way back in 1911 and lacks any information gained in the last century, this is not a particularly effective argument. The Encyclopedia Britannica simply says there is no indication in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers (for clarification, "Apostolic Fathers" refers to Christians who had met the apostles). This is technically accurate. The problem is, we don't have that many of their writings. According to Wikipedia, here is a full list of the writings of the Apostolic Fathers: The Epistle to Diognetus, First Epistle of Clement, Didache, Epistle of Barnabas, 7 epistles of Ignatius, Epistle of Polycarp, Martyrdom of Polycarp, Shepherd of Hermas, and a few scattered fragments preserved in quotations by later writers. That's it. Now I know it's Wikipedia, but it does cite sources, and in any event whether it's exact or not is besides the point; the fact is there are not many. So, the question becomes: If there was an Easter celebration, would any of these writings have a reason to mention it? Given that none of them mention Passover, so the answer seems to be "no."

This is an important thing to remember. The argument "no writer near the time period of X mentions X, so that means it's unlikely that X happened" is by itself not persuasive, particularly in regards to time periods where there have not been many surviving writings. The argument needs to be "no writer of this time period who would have mentioned X in the writings we have from them mentions X, so that means it's unlikely that X happened". It must be demonstrated that these writings would have mentioned X. For example, if we had an early handbook of Christian holy days that did not mention Easter, that would be a reason to be skeptical of claims of early Easter observance. On the other hand, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, an account of the martyrdom of Polycarp, would have little reason to mention Easter at all. (incidentally, this also applies to the skeptical claim that there were not many early non-Christian contemporary references to Jesus--we don't have many writings of that time and even fewer of them with reason to mention Jesus. For more information on that, see here)

So their lack of mentioning Easter celebration does not mean anything. All we can conclude is that we do not know if they celebrated Easter or not.

However, while we do not have writings of the Apostolic Fathers on the subject, we do retain early writings about the Apostolic Fathers, and we can find mentions of Easter in them, including an absolutely critical letter from Irenaeus. But first a little background for that letter.

Towards the end of the 2nd century, Pope Victor I got into a dispute with a group called the Quartodecimans over when to celebrate Easter; specifically, the Quartodecimans wanted to celebrate it on the 14th of the Jewish month of Nisan (the day just before the start of Passover), no matter when in the week it landed, whereas most of the rest of Christendom celebrated it the Sunday after the start of Passover, believing it should be on the same day of the week as the Resurrection. As a result, Victor wanted to excommunicate the Quartodecimans. In response to this, Irenaeus sent him a letter. This portion of it is quoted by Eusebius in his book Church History, and is also available here (#3):

"For the controversy is not merely as regards the day, but also as regards the form itself of the fast. For some consider themselves bound to fast one day, others two days, others still more, while others [do so during] forty: the diurnal and the nocturnal hours they measure out together as their [fasting] day. And this variety among the observers [of the fasts] had not its origin in our time, but long before in that of our predecessors, some of whom probably, being not very accurate in their observance of it, handed down to posterity the custom as it had, through simplicity or private fancy, been [introduced among them]. And yet nevertheless all these lived in peace one with another, and we also keep peace together. Thus, in fact, the difference [in observing] the fast establishes the harmony of [our common] faith. And the presbyters preceding Soter in the government of the Church which you now rule — I mean, Anicetus and Pius, Hyginus and Telesphorus, and Sixtus — did neither themselves observe it [after that fashion], nor permit those with them to do so. Notwithstanding this, those who did not keep [the feast in this way] were peacefully disposed towards those who came to them from other dioceses in which it was [so] observed although such observance was [felt] in more decided contrariety [as presented] to those who did not fall in with it; and none were ever cast out [of the Church] for this matter. On the contrary, those presbyters who preceded you, and who did not observe [this custom], sent the Eucharist to those of other dioceses who did observe it. And when the blessed Polycarp was sojourning in Rome in the time of Anicetus, although a slight controversy had arisen among them as to certain other points, they were at once well inclined towards each other [with regard to the matter in hand], not willing that any quarrel should arise between them upon this head. For neither could Anicetus persuade Polycarp to forego the observance [in his own way], inasmuch as these things had been always [so] observed by John the disciple of our Lord, and by other apostles with whom he had been conversant; nor, on the other hand, could Polycarp succeed in persuading Anicetus to keep [the observance in his way], for he maintained that he was bound to adhere to the usage of the presbyters who preceded him. And in this state of affairs they held fellowship with each other; and Anicetus conceded to Polycarp in the Church the celebration of the Eucharist, by way of showing him respect; so that they parted in peace one from the other, maintaining peace with the whole Church, both those who did observe [this custom] and those who did not."

Polycarp was a disciple of John the apostle, and thus counts as an Apostolic Father. In terms of timing, Polycarp and Anicetus's meeting would have occurred in the mid-2nd century, as that is when Anicetus was Bishop of Rome, meaning Easter was being celebrated then. And both of them said their practices were handed down from their predecessors, going back further.

But things get even worse. Polycarp said that his observance came from the practice of John the apostle. While this is admittedly secondhand information concerning John's observances (Irenaeus is relaying something Polycarp said), it provides some support that one of the original apostles--and the one to which a multiple biblical books are credited--celebrated Easter, which would mean it is of outright apostolic origin. It is true there were disputes as to when the celebration should be held, but there was no dispute as to the celebration itself.

(I do wish to make an aside here. As noted, Pope Victor I had planned to excommunicate the Quartodecimans, but was talked out of it by other bishops, including Irenaeus. This has been used as an argument both for and against the Catholic idea of papal primacy. Those who oppose the idea say that it showed the pope was not considered to have authority over the other bishops because his command was rejected, whereas those who support it argue that it showed he was believed to have the authority, as Irenaeus and the others only told him that he shouldn't do it, not that he couldn't do it. In truth, I do not believe we have sufficient information to make a determination as to which was the case, and that this incident cannot be used as an argument for or against papal authority.)

Of course, this does bring up a question, which is why we do not follow John's example of when to celebrate Easter, when Polycarp can appeal to him but Anicetus does not appeal to any apostle, or at least Irenaeus does not record him as doing so. This is somewhat tangential, I feel, to the overall point--even if there was a change, it can hardly be chalked up to pagan influence by Constantine, which is the focus of this essay. I may go into more depth in a subsequent post, but for now I will give it only a brief treatment.

We must remember that both John and Polycarp had unusually long lives. John is said to have lived into his 90's, and Polycarp his 80's. This allowed Polycarp to, in the mid 2nd century, appeal to John. No other apostle appears to have lived that long and thus a link to them required more people in the chain. Thus, Anicetus could only refer to the presbyters that came before him because he didn't personally know people prior to that. What of the fact that Irenaeus only traces it back to Sixtus, which I have seen some say it demonstrates it began with Sixtus? While it is possible Irenaeus only went back to Sixtus in his list means Sixtus was the originator, it could also be Irenaeus demonstrating that was as far as Anicetus appealed to, that it was as far as Irenaeus was personally sure about it going back to (leaving open the possibility that it went back further), or perhaps it was just an arbitrary cutoff date because Irenaeus didn't feel the need to go back further. Remember that Irenaeus observed Easter Sunday himself, so I expect that whatever the explanation is for where Irenaeus left off, it is not that Sixtus changed it from the "original" method of doing so on Passover.

In any event, the difference in timing was seen as an allowable difference in practice, as demonstrated by Anicetus and Polycarp keeping communion. As did Victor, once he was calmed down. Therefore, celebrating Easter the first Sunday after the start of Passover was equally valid, and it just happened to be the version that most people ended up adopting. An argument that has been made is that the celebration of Easter on Nisan 14 (Passover) was later condemned, which appears to cancel out the idea the difference was allowable in practice. However, a key difference is that the date of Easter here was decided by an ecumenical council of the whole church, not the decision of one single bishop--and that by this time, the Sunday date after Passover was overwhelmingly used anyway as far as I understand.

So did celebrating Easter on Sunday have apostolic origin? That's a bit less clear. Still, Eusebius in Church History V.23.1 (shortly before he provides the above letter from Irenaeus), says:

"For the parishes of all Asia, as from an older tradition, held that the fourteenth day of the moon, on which day the Jews were commanded to sacrifice the lamb, should be observed as the feast of the Saviour's passover. It was therefore necessary to end their fast on that day, whatever day of the week it should happen to be. But it was not the custom of the churches in the rest of the world to end it at this time, as they observed the practice which, from apostolic tradition, has prevailed to the present time, of terminating the fast on no other day than on that of the resurrection of our Saviour."

In any event, Irenaeus's letter gives a strong point of evidence that the celebration of Easter goes back to the apostles. And it certainly demonstrates that Easter predated Constantine by at least a century and a half.

I should head off an objection that the Quartodecimans were simply keeping Passover, rather than a celebration distinct from it (Easter). The problem is that as we can see from Irenaeus's letter (and Eusebius's writings), the celebration was regarded as the same in both cases, even if the date was not. Since the Sunday celebration was clearly distinct from Passover, that means even the Quartodecimans' celebration, while at the same date as the start of Passover, was nevertheless distinctly Christian and was Easter. Furthermore, Irenaeus gives no indication that following the termination of the fast (the date of Easter), Christians actually followed the full Passover routine afterwards. He instead treats it as if the end of the fast is the most important point, rather than the beginning of a festival. So even the Quartodecimans were not really keeping the Jewish Passover, even if they shared the date.

Now, I have been relying considerably on the letter of Irenaeus. One objection may be that what we have is only that which is quoted by Eusebius, and not the original. That is true for a good number of historical works, which were lost and only are preserved through quotations, so that should not really be an issue. But if it is, a source from soon after the time of Irenaeus's letter is The Refutation of All Heresies. The author is disputed (it is attributed to Hippolytus of Rome), but it is dated to the early 3rd century, a century before Nicaea. It briefly discusses the Quartodecimans in Book 8 (Chapter 11). It's not as in depth and takes a harsher view of them, but nevertheless confirms the points made: While the Quartodeciman celebration may have been more closely tied to Passover in terms of the day, the celebration itself was the same as the one celebrated on the Sunday after Passover. Simply put, Easter was a Christian celebration distinct from Passover, and it was being widely celebrated prior to Constantine.

There is in fact another source that may come from before Irenaeus, the Epistula Apostolorum, which can be read here. In Chapter 15, it says:

But do ye commemorate my death. Now when the Passover (Easter, pascha) cometh, one of you shall be cast into prison for my name's sake; and he will be in grief and sorrow, because ye keep the Easter while he is in prison and separated from you, for he will be sorrowful because he keepeth not Easter with you. And I will send my power in the form of mine angel Gabriel, and the doors of the prison shall open. And he shall come forth and come unto you and keep the night-watch with you until the cock crow. And when ye have accomplished the memorial which is made of me, and the Agape (love-feast), he shall again be cast into prison for a testimony, until he shall come out thence and preach that which I have delivered unto you.

I avoided citing this until now because I feel it is weaker than Irenaeus's evidence. While it is generally dated to around 150 AD, which is before Irenaeus (though at about the same time as the Anicetus/Polycarp meeting), its dating is less fixed than that of Irenaeus's, and it exists only in translation from the original, rendering its accuracy less certain. It also largely unmentioned in early Christian literature to my understanding, raising questions of how orthodox it was. Furthermore, I am not sure if "Easter" or "Passover" is the proper translation here. The above translation writes "Passover (Easter, pascha)" which indicates Easter, but another one I found simply used Passover. But whichever it was, it clearly is referring to the fact there is a specific celebration of the death/resurrection of Jesus.

One may argue that these claims of apostolic origin are found outside the Bible and are therefore less trustworthy. But even if one disputes the specific claims of apostolic origins, two critical points remain. First, we can be absolutely certain that whether or not Easter goes back to the apostles, it was celebrated--and was different from the Jewish Passover--before Constantine was even born. Second, the Bible contains no declaration to not celebrate the anniversary of the Resurrection. Simply put, the idea that Easter began with Constantine or the Council of Nicaea does not hold up at all to the historical record.

But someone may then argue that while Easter was celebrated back then as a Christian holiday, the Council of Nicaea turned it into a pagan holiday with the redating. Indeed, the argument that Easter can be weeks away from Passover has been cited as evidence it is of pagan origin and not based on Passover (example: In 2016, Easter was March 27 while Passover was April 23). This argument, however, is incorrect.

First, some history. Prior to the Council of Nicaea, the method of choosing Easter's date for those who celebrated it on Sunday was to take whenever Passover was set, then hold it the Sunday after. There was an obvious problem with this, however: The Jews (specifically, the Sanhedrin) decided when Passover would happen. The Christian community disliked having an important celebration date decided by non-Christians, and there were also concerns (correct or incorrect) about the accuracy of the Jewish dating. As a result, the new mechanism for deciding the date of Easter was to set it on the Sunday after the first full moon after the start of Spring, specifically the Spring Equinox.

To understand why this was done, a quick explanation of the Jewish Calendar must be given. Each month is the length of a lunar month, which is the amount of time it takes for a new moon to become a full moon and then turn into a new moon again. So each month (which is either 29 or 30 days) begins with a new moon and has a full moon midway through. However, as you might have realized, 12 months of 29-30 days fall short of being an actual solar year (the amount of time it takes for the Earth to rotate around the sun). As a result, some years would be a "leap year" in that they would add an additional month at the start of the year to it to make up the difference. This is especially important as Passover is supposed to occur in the spring, and thus without the requisite leap years it would fall behind into the winter. Indeed, the way they decided when to put a leap year back then was any year where not doing so would cause Passover to not occur after the start of Spring. This Jewish site goes into some detail about it:
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3210355/jewish/How-Does-the-Spring-Equinox-Relate-to-the-Timing-of-Passover.htm

So, the requirements for when Passover occurs is that it occurs on the first full moon after the start of Spring. And the rules for Easter were to set it on the Sunday after the first full moon after the start of Spring. In other words, it's the exact same thing, just without having to worry about the complexities of the rest of the Jewish Calendar, such as when to add that extra month.

With all of this in mind, various tenuous claims against Easter no longer hold up. Does the fact it occurs in the spring mean it is of pagan origin? Of course not; Passover also occurred in the spring. Is the fact it is based on the moon mean it is of pagan origin? Of course not; Passover is also based on that. Is Easter pagan because there are various pagan festivals that occur around the world near it? Of course not; the same is true for Passover. Granted, I know some have suggested that Passover is of pagan origin also, but discussing that is beyond the scope of this article. The important thing is, Easter's date is no more pagan than Passover's date.

This, of course, brings us to the earlier objection some raise: If Easter is so based on Passover, why is it sometimes so far away from Passover? In 2016, Easter was on March 27 but Passover on April 23. Doesn't that prove it's unrelated to Passover? Actually, the problem here is not the date of Easter, but the Date of Passover.

The Gregorian Calendar has (on average) 365.2425 days, whereas the Jewish calendar has (on average) 365.2468 days. This means they drift apart 0.0043 days each year, or about 6 minutes. That may not seem like much, but it adds up over the centuries, so that every 232 years they diverge by one day. They've already drifted apart by several days at this point, and (unless a fix is implemented) they'll drift further apart, and eventually we will see Passover occurring in May and even later June. Now it's true that it won't be that extreme for a long time (it will reach May in 3639 A.D. and June in 10517 A.D.), but the point is it's happening and has already happened, albeit not to that extent yet. This site also discusses the problem.

You might ask why a difference of just a few days could put them weeks apart. It is because of the Jewish leap years, where Passover gets pushed forward a month. However, due to the drift, this means in some years in which Passover already is after the Spring equinox and thus there isn't a need for a leap year to push it after, a leap year happens anyway. This is what causes the occasional big difference between the dates of Easter and Passover.

There have been suggestions on how to fix the Jewish Calendar so Passover reverts back to its correct date each year (indeed, the first link in the above paragraph refers to one--note that it mentions that in this fixed version, Passover and Easter are always in alignment), but at present they have yet to be implemented. In any event, the argument "Easter doesn't always fall near the date of Passover!" is fallacious because the problem is in the current Jewish calculation of Passover.

Indeed, as noted above, this was one of the reasons the church decided to devise its own method for calculating Easter in the first place rather than rely on where the Jews put Passover: They were concerned that the Jewish Calendar wasn't getting the dates right. It is not clear if this was accurate, as I don't think we have any Jewish records that tell us on exactly what dates in the Julian calendar they celebrated Passover on. The Sardica paschal table (a Latin translation of a document from the 343 AD Council of Sardica) gives dates of the Jewish Passover from 328 to 343 AD, and some of them do fall prior to the spring equinox. However, this cannot be considered definite proof, as this is not directly from a Jewish source, but rather a translation of a Christian source about the Jewish dates. In any event it is hard to really fault the computation they did eventually come up for Easter as it does avoid any potential errors in the Jewish calendar.

So the idea that Easter got created as some kind of fusion with Roman paganism after Constantine doesn't add up, as Easter was celebrated well before that. Nor does the claim that its date not always matching the week of Passover show it's unrelated to Passover work either, as the problem is actually on the Passover date for those years.

Another argument that is used is that the practices or symbols of Easter are pagan, with Lent, Easter eggs, and the Easter bunny being the ones most commonly pointed to. Even if true, that is only a condemnation of those particular practices; one can simply celebrate Easter while abstaining from them. So this is not an argument against the celebration of Easter. But are even these of pagan origin?

First, we will examine Lent, specifically the act of fasting during it. Once again, examine the quote from Irenaeus. Specifically, this portion:

"For the controversy is not merely as regards the day, but also as regards the form itself of the fast. For some consider themselves bound to fast one day, others two days, others still more, while others [do so during] forty: the diurnal and the nocturnal hours they measure out together as their [fasting] day. And this variety among the observers [of the fasts] had not its origin in our time, but long before in that of our predecessors, some of whom probably, being not very accurate in their observance of it, handed down to posterity the custom as it had, through simplicity or private fancy, been [introduced among them]."

While the length of time varied among different Christians back then, the fact there was a "pre-Easter" time period involving fasting was clearly a thing (again, well before any pagan influence Constantine could have brought). Now, Irenaeus's mention of "forty" is normally taken to refer not fasting for forty days, but to fast for 40 hours, counting it as a day of fasting--the translation I selected is a bit ambiguous, and I wished to mention that most translations render it more explicitly as 40 hours. Nevertheless, even if there is not a statement made of a 40-day fast, we nevertheless see there was a preceding time of fasting; it is actually possible that a 40-hour fast was an inspiration for Lent, but that is admittedly speculation. In any event, a pre-Easter fast is alluded to in the second century and it is noted to go back "long" before that time.

Some arguments attempt to find some pagan practices that lasted 40 days and then claim Lent's length comes from that. But there is a commonality in the Bible itself, namely Jesus's fast of 40 days in the desert. So arguments concerning Lent are a dead end.

Finally we come to the frequent symbols of Easter, namely Easter eggs and the Easter bunny. First, even if these are pagan in origin, that is not a slam on Easter itself. One can easily celebrate Easter without the usage of them. In fact, some countries have essentially no connection with these and Easter. For example, as noted here, Easter eggs and the Easter bunny are barely present in Mexico. I actually believe it would be a good idea to dispense or at least de-emphasize them. In the present day, they seem to distract from the religious meaning of Easter more than anything else, though I admit that things could be different in other countries that utilize them. So even if they are not pagan, there are at least some reasons to utilize them less.

But are they pagan to begin with? Well, I've seen a few people try to ascribe some connection to pagan practices, most commonly (but not solely) the Babylonian religion by pointing to some supposed usage of rabbits or eggs in those pagan religions. But I've noted that such people simply make the assertion without pointing to actual sources for proof. Instead, if any source is given at all, they simply point to someone who themselves do not give any kind of primary source or points to sources of highly questionable accuracy. But even if there was some pagan usage of a rabbit that far in the past, evidence indicates that the Easter bunny emerged originally in the 17th century in Germany. From my understanding, the first reference to the Easter bunny is in a work called "Disputatio ordinaria disquiriens de ovis paschalibus." It can be viewed here:
https://archive.org/details/b30766515/

If this is the first mention, which appears to be the case, then this means the first mention of the Easter bunny is from a 17th century work. So even if there was some major pagan usage of a rabbit way back when, the usage of a rabbit in Easter celebration comes far too late to be a strike against the holiday itself, and the similarity is thus almost certainly coincidental. It is true that this being the first mention does not mean it cannot go back further, but it is difficult to believe that this would have gone all the way back to the foundation of Easter, let alone be a notable part of the holiday, without any references to be found in the interim. (and as a minor note for those who claim this was innovation of the Catholic Church, the Easter bunny originated from Protestant areas)

Given that prior editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica are sometimes cited to attack Easter, it seems correct to quote what the current version has to say on the subject:

The custom of associating a rabbit or bunny with Easter arose in Protestant areas in Europe in the 17th century but did not become common until the 19th century. The Easter rabbit is said to lay the eggs as well as decorate and hide them. In the United States the Easter rabbit also leaves children baskets with toys and candies on Easter morning. In a way, this was a manifestation of the Protestant rejection of Catholic Easter customs. In some European countries, however, other animals—in Switzerland the cuckoo, in Westphalia the fox—brought the Easter eggs. 
(Encyclopedia Britannica article for Easter--note it is possible it was changed since this post was created)

One other citation that people will try to bring up is something from the Catholic Encyclopedia's entry on Easter, which says:

The Easter Rabbit lays the eggs, for which reason they are hidden in a nest or in the garden. The rabbit is a pagan symbol and has always been an emblem of fertility (Simrock, Mythologie, 551). 

I can't do much to verify its citation of Simrock's Mythologie, unfortunately. It's in German, a language I barely understand. Ordinarily I might be able to just use an automated translator to figure it out, but we run into the problem that I looked up multiple versions of this work on archive.org and they have different things on page 551, so I have no idea what edition is being used. Furthermore, they use an odd German font that makes it harder to figure out what the letters are.

So we'll set its source aside and look at the Catholic Encyclopedia itself. Now, the argument is to point out this is the Catholic Encyclopedia, and thus having an obvious Catholic bias, meaning that its admission that the Easter Bunny is pagan is all the more powerful. We run into a number of problems, however. The first problem is that the Catholic Encyclopedia, while having some useful information, is out of date, having been published in the early 20th century.

Second, note that it does not say that the Easter Bunny comes from paganism. It merely says that rabbits have been used as a pagan symbol of fertility. It does not mean that the Easter Bunny was derived from that pagan source--indeed, as has been noted above, it would have made little sense if it did considering the timeline.

Third and perhaps most importantly, we must look at larger context. As noted above, the Easter Bunny was first used in Protestant countries. Indeed, we see it used very infrequently, if at all, in Easter celebrations in countries with strong Catholic traditions. I noted that in Latin America, the Easter Bunny is not used much at all. Those are all countries with strong Catholic backgrounds. Similarly, Italy and Spain, from what I can tell, make no real use of it. See here, here, here, or here for descriptions of Italian Easter celebrations, and for Spain, see here or here. While the Easter Bunny does have more of a presence in the traditionally catholic France, this appears to be a relatively recent phenomenon, and is more heavy in the eastern areas (i.e. those next to and influenced by the much more Protestant-based Germany); see here or here. Now it is true I'm relying on anecdotal evidence for this, but everything I find lines up with this assertion. Ireland does seem to use the Easter Bunny, but remember that it for a long time it was controlled by the Protestant English, whose customs could have easily spread there.

Currently in the United States, the Easter Bunny is used by both Catholics and Protestants. However, with what has been noted about how the Easter Bunny is a Protestant invention that was only adopted by Catholics later on in countries with a very strong Protestant presence, it is quite likely that the writers of the Catholic Encyclopedia intended this note as a small attack on Protestantism, to assert that this part of their Easter custom may have been of pagan origin. Thus, far from being stronger due to being in the Catholic Encyclopedia, this would actually be weaker, as it would be something useful for its Catholic bias in criticizing a primarily Protestant practice.

But even disregarding all of that, we still have the rather obvious problem, as mentioned before, that the Easter Bunny comes so late that it cannot be considered the result of some early pagan influence. I noted the above only because the Catholic Encyclopedia reference gets trotted out frequently enough that I wished to address it.

Easter eggs are more confusing. I have found conflicting information, with some sources saying they arose in the middle ages, but others saying they were probably used by early Christians. For example, the aforementioned Encyclopedia Britannica also states in its Easter article:

The use of painted and decorated Easter eggs was first recorded in the 13th century. The church prohibited the eating of eggs during Holy Week, but chickens continued to lay eggs during that week, and the notion of specially identifying those as “Holy Week” eggs brought about their decoration. The egg itself became a symbol of the Resurrection. Just as Jesus rose from the tomb, the egg symbolizes new life emerging from the eggshell. In the Orthodox tradition eggs are painted red to symbolize the blood Jesus shed on the cross.

From what I can tell, on balance the later date has more evidence, which then falls into a similar problem as the Easter bunny; the practice simply arose too late to ascribe to pagan practice. But even if Easter eggs were invented early enough that it being inspired by pagan practice was plausible, does that mean it is a problem to use them? Well, do you know what pagans also did? They prayed. Should Christians not pray? Of course not. Praying to a pagan god may be pagan, but not prayer itself; similarly, decorating eggs for a pagan deity is pagan, but not decorating eggs for something else, such as a non-pagan religion, or simply for entertainment. Christians nowadays do not use Easter Eggs to celebrate pagan gods or goddesses. So even if they were pagan in the past, which as noted is far from clear, that is not an indictment of the current practice any more than pagans exercising prayer is an indictment of a Christian doing so.

It is also worth pointing out that there were legends that Easter Eggs were the result of Mary Magdalene. Now, it is unlikely that this legend was true, but the question isn't whether the legend is true--it's whether it was the source for Easter eggs, and that seems possible (admittedly, I am unsure of the date of the legend). Of course, it's also possible the legend came later as an after-the-fact explanation. But who knows?

One final thing should be noted, which is that some claim that Easter "hot cross buns" are taken from the pagan practices described in Jeremiah 7:18. The problem, however, is that Jeremiah gives no description of the items other than that they are "cakes," so it seems a stretch indeed to compare it to the buns. More importantly, no one has been able to demonstrate any actual pagan connection; claims invariably just point to Jeremiah 7:18 and assume that's the origin, perhaps throwing in some kind of analysis claiming that the cross in the buns actually has some secret pagan meaning. The problem is that no one has been able to demonstrate that "hot cross buns" were in fact made and consumed around the early Christian period at all. They appear to have instead mostly come into vogue in the last few centuries, obviously far too late for this pagan origin thesis to have any merit. There are claims that they can be traced back to a 14th-century monk named Thomas Roc(k)liffe. Even if that is the case, and it is not clear that this is true, that would still be too late for any kind of plausible pagan origin of the kind described in Jeremiah 7:18. But in any event, the onus is not on me to prove it; it is on those who allege a connection. And they have, at least in what I have seen from them, failed to do so.

So, the conclusions seem obvious. Easter most certainly was not created by Constantine or the Council of Nicaea, and there is at least reasonable evidence of outright apostolic origin. The date is Easter is also not pagan. Attempts to link up Easter eggs or the Easter bunny with ancient pagan practices seems to always be without an actual source to back it up, and these seem to have emerged far too late to be a case of being pagan influence on the holidays--and in any event, many countries have Easter without utilizing those at all.

Claims that Easter is pagan in origin are spread by people who have simply not bothered to do actual research on the subject. Ironically, the Christians who make such claims fall into the same trap that those who claim Jesus was copied from pagan myths (refutations of such claims available here) have in taking sourceless claims without research or relying on badly outdated books from the 19th century.

And now for our summary:


Article 1. Where the Easter holiday is of pagan origin?

Objection 1: It seems that the Easter holiday is of pagan origin. For there is no explicit suggestion to do so found in the Bible.

Objection 2: Further, had it been based on the timing of Passover, as it is claimed, it should be within a week, but some years it is several weeks away.

Objection 3: Further, the Council of Nicaea set the date of Easter to be based on the phase of the moon rather than Passover.

Objection 4: Further, the hare or rabbit was a symbol of spring fertility rites, which are of pagan origin. Eggs have often been used for pagan festivities, and Easter eggs are simply an example of this.

On the contrary, Irenaeus notes that, according to Polycarp, the apostle John and presumably other apostles celebrated Easter. Eusebius also records that Easter celebration is apostolic according to his Church History.

I answer that, as noted, there is evidence that the celebration of Easter is of apostolic origin. Even if one wishes to dismiss the claim of apostolic origin as secondhand information, the controversies concerning its date in the second century certainly show it was a well established celebration long before Constantine was even born and the alleged paganizing occurred.

Reply to Objection 1: There are some Bible passages that may indicate Easter observance. But even if they do not, lack of explicit biblical basis at most would be an argument that Easter celebration is not required, not that it is pagan or wrong to do so.

Reply to Objection 2: The difference between Passover and Easter in some years is the fault of an error in the calculation of Passover, not Easter.

Reply to Objection 3: Passover's starting date is set by the moon (and season) as well. Easter's dating is simply following the same formula; Passover is supposed to be the first full moon after the start of Spring, and thus Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the start of Spring.

Reply to Objection 4: There is evidence, particularly for the Easter bunny, that these arose quite some time after the celebration of Easter was widespread, meaning even if they were of pagan origin, they cannot impugn the holiday itself. Even if they were of pagan origin, their modern usage is not pagan. If someone still finds them problematic, one can easily celebrate Easter without Easter bunnies or Easter eggs, as various countries in the world already do.

[Updated 8-8-20]

"The Forged Origins of the New Testament" by Tony Bushby: An Examination/Review/Critique/Refutation

Note: This is going to be one long post! If you want the quick synopsis, skip down to the "Conclusion" heading. Alternatively, you can read this (shorter but less in-depth) examination that someone else wrote, and which I wish I had discovered before writing this blog post. Still, it's a more cursory look, so hopefully this more in-depth blog post will still be useful.

I happened to stumble across an essay by a Tony Bushby named "The Forged Origins of the New Testament." This was originally published in Nexus Magazine, an Australian magazine that is apparently full of conspiracy theories, but copies of this essay can be found online. But our examination is not the magazine itself, but the essay. Though as we shall see, the magazine should feel thoroughly ashamed for publishing this essay.

At first glance to someone unfamiliar with the subjects it discusses, it appears persuasive due to its high number of professional-looking references cited. The problem is that these references are filled with errors, as will be demonstrated.

Ordinarily I would leave it alone, as it seems fairly obscure nowadays, but as I have seen some people repost it (or the "information" in it) elsewhere, and it does not seem like there are many who have examined its claims. Perhaps that's because much of it is so silly, but not everyone is necessarily aware of that. As a result, I wanted to go through it and examine them all because of just how many errors are in it, especially in its citations. Indeed, some of these quotes are repeated elsewhere online despite the fact that almost all of them are thoroughly inaccurate. So perhaps someone, when trying to find information on those quotes, will stumble across this and will be able to benefit from my work.

The primary goal of this blog post is to examine his various citations and see if they hold up. Along the way, if necessary, I will also comment on some of his arguments, though I may skip over some claims of his that he leaves unsourced. As we shall see, he is quite unreliable when giving a source, so there is even less credence to anything he asserts without a source.

On the examined quotes, we will note which category it falls into:
 
NO CITATION: No citation is given. I will not be assigning this to every time he asserts something without citation, merely the ones I think it is most relevant to respond to and where there really should be a citation. Actually, most of these "No Citation" cases I will note are actually provably wrong.

FALSE CITATION: The quote is not found where it is claimed to be.

CITED WORK CANNOT BE FOUND: Outside of Bushby's writings and those who are simply copying his citations, I have not been able to find any evidence this work exists.

MISREPRESENTED CITATION: The quote is there, but is being taken out of context.

UNRELIABLE CITATION: A citation is made to a work that cannot be considered a reliable source of history.

UNCLEAR  CITATION: The citation is too vague to be able to verify, such as simply pointing to a lengthy work but without giving any information as to where in the work it is.

UNVERIFIED CITATION: I was unable to obtain a copy of the work in order to check it.

ACCURATE CITATION: Correctly quoting from a source without misrepresenting it, with the source having at least some degree of reliability. (this doesn't confirm the accuracy of the information, but shows it is at least worthy of consideration, unlike the above)

Originally the "Cited Work Cannot Be Found" category was simply another part of the False Citation category, but I decided that it is theoretically possible that these might be some extremely obscure book rather than being outright false. While I expect these citations are simply made-up, I do wish to distinguish them from the cases where it's definitely a false citation, rather than ones that are only almost certainly false.

Now we shall begin.


"Our documentary sources of knowledge about the origins of Christianity and its earliest development are chiefly the New Testament Scriptures, the authenticity of which we must, to a great extent, take for granted."
(Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. iii, p. 712) 

MISREPRESENTED CITATION. One thing you will notice when it cites the Catholic Encyclopedia is that, rather than tell us the name of the article, his essay will simply give a volume and page number. Certainly, that is better than nothing, but why not give us the article title as well? The contents of the Catholic Encyclopedia are available online (here and here) and thus including the article name in adiwould allow someone to go over there to check more easily. And Bushby's article is from 2007, by which time these works were available online in this format (or at least the first link). I say this because just looking it up by article is easier than finding it by volume/page number. I think it is best when citing an encyclopedia to give the volume/page number and the article name.

Anyway, one may see the quote here or here. The former is easier to read but the latter does show it on its original "pages."

The problem is, Bushby has cut out portions of the quote (and changed the punctuation, but that is less important). Here is the full thing, with the omitted portions underlined:

"Our documentary sources of knowledge about the origin of Christianity and its earliest developments are chiefly the New Testament Scriptures and various sub-Apostolic writings, the authenticity of which we must to a large extent take for granted here, as the much less grounds we take for granted the authenticity of "Cæsar" when dealing with early Gaul, and of "Tacitus" when studying growth of the Roman Empire."

As we can see, it is saying we take them for "granted" in the same way we take for "granted" accuracy concerning the life of Caesar or accuracy of the historian Tacitus regarding the Roman Empire. The Catholic Encyclopedia article then goes on to outline brief arguments as to why we should take them as authentic. In other words, from the get-go we have a quote taken out of context, and he also cuts out the mention of the "various sub-Apostolic writings" for no apparent reason.

The Church makes extraordinary admissions about its New Testament. For example, when discussing the origin of those writings, "the most distinguished body of academic opinion ever assembled" (Catholic Encyclopedias, Preface)

FALSE CITATION. Looking at the preface here and here, I do not see this quote.

admits that the Gospels "do not go back to the first century of the Christian era" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. vi, p. 137, pp. 655-6).

MISREPRESENTED CITATION. Well, technically the page 137 is false, as the quote is not there (see for yourself). But the quote is in the second pages given (655-6). However, when examined in context (it occurs in the upper portion of the left-most column), this is saying that the titles of the Gospels "do not go back to the first century of the Christian era," not that the Gospels themselves do not. Or more accurately, that the titles were not actually written on them in the first century. I am not fully convinced that the titles do not go back to then (the Encyclopedia itself says that the titles "do not go back to the first century of the Christian era, or at least that they are not original, is a position generally held at the present day" meaning it is still possible it goes back that far), but in any event that is besides the point. The quote has been presented incorrectly as referring to the Gospels when it only referred to their titles. 

In a remarkable aside, the Church further admits that "the earliest of the extant manuscripts [of the New Testament], it is true, do not date back beyond the middle of the fourth century AD" (Catholic Encyclopedia, op. cit., pp. 656-7).

MISREPRESENTED CITATION. First, the quote is not where he claims it is (pages 656-7 of volume 6). It is actually found in volume 8, on page 439 (it can also be viewed here). And it is referring specifically to the Gospel of John. It is saying that the earliest extant manuscripts of the Gospel of John do not date back beyond the middle of the fourth century AD. It is not referring to the full New Testament.

For that matter, the claim that they do not date back beyond the middle of the fourth century AD is now inaccurate! The Catholic Encyclopedia was composed in the early 20th century, which means that it lacks information on manuscripts discovered subsequently. Since then, a number of manuscripts of John have been discovered from well before the fourth century. For example, Papyrus 75 is from the third century and includes large portions of John, and Papyrus 52 is a portion of John from the second century. Papyrus 66 is a mostly complete copy of the Gospel of John and dates to the second or third century. This inaccuracy is not the fault of the Catholic Encyclopedia, which cannot be blamed for being unaware of manuscripts not yet discovered--but it is the fault of Bushby, who cited it without bothering to look up if anything had changed in the meantime. So not only is this claim out of date, he doesn't even get the out-of-date claim right!

This one is especially problematic because he then follows this up with the statement "There is, however, a reason why there were no New Testaments until the fourth century: they were not written until then, and here we find evidence of the greatest misrepresentation of all time." This claim is a major thesis of The Forged Origins of the New Testament. The problem is, as I just pointed out, we have physical copies of the books of the New Testament that predate the fourth century (multiple manuscripts of the Gospel of John alone!). That immediately disproves Bushby's claim that the Gospels were only written in the fourth century, because we have physical evidence of their existence beforehand. Bushby's claim that there were no manuscripts prior to the fourth century comes from him taking an out-of-date source and misrepresenting that source on top of that (rather ironic he engages in such major misrepresentation when talking about what he deems "the greatest misrepresentation of all time").

This simple fact alone, that we have physical manuscripts of the Gospels from before the fourth century, demolishes the majority of his article. I could practically end this post right here. But for the sake of completeness I will continue to assess the validity (or more commonly the lack thereof) of his citations.

The majority of modern-day Christian writers suppress the truth about the development of their religion and conceal Constantine's efforts to curb the disreputable character of the presbyters who are now called "Church Fathers" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. xiv, pp. 370-1).

FALSE CITATION. Volume XIV is available here, and we can see that it is the "Sylvester I" article that is there (it also has the end of "Syllabus" and start of "Sylvester II" but those are not relevant). However, the article on Sylvester I, available here, says nothing to support Bushby's convention (nor does it use the word "Church Fathers" in the article).

They were "maddened", he said (Life of Constantine, attributed to Eusebius Pamphilius of Caesarea, c. 335, vol. iii, p. 171; The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, cited as N&PNF, attributed to St Ambrose, Rev. Prof. Roberts, DD, and Principal James Donaldson, LLD, editors, 1891, vol. iv, p. 467).

FALSE CITATION. The citation here is somewhat confusing, as the only word he actually provides as a quote is "maddened." However, that is also enough to prove it wrong, as the word "maddened" is found nowhere in Life of Constantine (available here).

Could this be due to a different translation? Well, if that is the case, then Bushby gives no indication as to what translation he is using, which is odd given how clear he is about the St. Ambrose cite.

Speaking of the St. Ambrose cite, if you pull out Volume IV and turn to page 467 (available here), we find a work not by Ambrose, but by Augustine, and one that has nothing to do with Constantine in any way--it is an argument regarding baptism. While the Eusebius citation could perhaps qualify as "Unclear" the Ambrose citation makes this quite definitely a False citation.

The "peculiar type of oratory" expounded by them was a challenge to a settled religious order (The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Religion, Literature and Art, Oskar Seyffert, Gramercy, New York, 1995, pp. 544-5). 

MISREPRESENTED CITATION. First, Oskar Seyffert died in 1906. Perhaps the 1995 refers to a re-publishing, but a quick look did not find a 1995 edition. In any event, what is on page 544-5? An entry on rhetoric. The phrase "peculiar type of oratory" is there on page 545 (middle of left column), but this is utterly unrelated to Constantine or Christianity, referring to things that happened in the first century B.C.

Ancient records reveal the true nature of the presbyters, and the low regard in which they were held has been subtly suppressed by modern Church historians. In reality, they were:

"...the most rustic fellows, teaching strange paradoxes. They openly declared that none but the ignorant was fit to hear their discourses ... they never appeared in the circles of the wiser and better sort, but always took care to intrude themselves among the ignorant and uncultured, rambling around to play tricks at fairs and markets ... they lard their lean books with the fat of old fables ... and still the less do they understand ... and they write nonsense on vellum ... and still be doing, never done."(Contra Celsum ["Against Celsus"], Origen of Alexandria, c. 251, Bk I, p. lxvii, Bk III, p. xliv, passim) 

FALSE CITATION. The citations, Book I and Book III are found here and here respectively. Now, the first is Book 1, p. LXVII, and the "p. LXVII" presumably refers to Chapter 67. But we find none of these quotes there--this cannot even be ascribed to a differing English translation, as the subject matter is completely different (it is comparing Greek mythology unfavorably to Christianity). The same is true for Book 3, Chapter 44. Once again we have a false quote.

Clusters of presbyters had developed "many gods and many lords" (1 Cor. 8:5) and numerous religious sects existed, each with differing doctrines (Gal. 1:6).

MISREPRESENTED CITATION. 1 Corinthians 8:5 is referring to how the pagans believed in many gods (8:4 and 8:6 contrast this with Christianity, which believes in only one God). Galatians 1:6 refers only to a specific heretical group that was apparently causing problems among the Galatians. If his point is that there were Christian groups who had some disagreements with each other, then certainly, that is true for any religion. But this was discussing events in the first century, not the fourth, and for that matter the disagreements in doctrine were unrelated to the things he's going to claim they were about. Ultimately, it is irrelevant to his thesis of how Christianity was supposedly invented in the fourth century.

Presbyterial groups clashed over attributes of their various gods and "altar was set against altar" in competing for an audience (Optatus of Milevis, 1:15, 19, early fourth century).

MISREPRESENTED CITATION. The work is not cited, but the work that Optatus of Milevis is known for is called Against the Donatists. One may read 1:15 here (scroll down to see it). But the Donatist controversy was not at all about attributes of God, let alone "various gods." The disagreement between the Donatists and Catholics was whether the clergy had to be without sin for their sacraments to be effective. This had nothing to do with attributes of God. 

The smooth generalisation, which so many historians are content to repeat, that Constantine "embraced the Christian religion" and subsequently granted "official toleration", is "contrary to historical fact" and should be erased from our literature forever (Catholic Encyclopedia, Pecci ed., vol.iii, p.299, passim).

FALSE CITATION. Looking at page 299 of Volume 3, we find nothing related to Constantine. Perhaps this is because it is not the "Pecci ed"--but I cannot find evidence of this edition outside of quotes offered by Bushby. Any search online for Catholic Encyclopedia and Pecci either turns up other writings by Bushby, people simply repeating Bushby's citation of the "Pecci edition", or Catholic Encyclopedia articles that happen to mention someone named Pecci (e.g. the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Leo XIII mentions his father was Lodovico Pecci). A search for these quotes ("embraced the Christian religion" or "official toleration") in the Catholic Encyclopedia does not find these quotes, at least not used in the sense they are presented. While in other cases I could not find evidence the cited work existed I let off with a "Cited Work Cannot Be Found", I do not believe that an alternate version of something like the Catholic Encyclopedia could escape notice. As a result of all this, I will rule this "Pecci ed." to be a hoax, and count it as a false citation.

Simply put, there was no Christian religion at Constantine's time, and the Church acknowledges that the tale of his "conversion" and "baptism" are "entirely legendary" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. xiv, pp. 370-1).

MISREPRESENTED CITATION. And now we switch back to the "Farley" edition, which at least seems to exist. This refers to an article on Pope Sylvester (it can be viewed in the context of the rest of the Encyclopedia here). The words "baptism" and "entirely legendary" are found, but not "conversion." But the statement of his baptism being entirely legendary does not mean that the idea Constantine was baptized was legendary, but that a specific account of it was legendary--and it says nothing about his conversion being legendary. The quote has not only been misrepresented, it hasn't even been quoted correctly if we do set aside context! As for the claim that there was no Christian religion at Constantine's time, no source is given for that. 

Constantine "never acquired a solid theological knowledge" and "depended heavily on his advisers in religious questions" (Catholic Encyclopedia, New Edition, vol. xii, p. 576, passim). 

ACCURATE CITATION. "Catholic Encyclopedia, New Edition" presumably refers to the New Catholic Encyclopedia. Page 576 can be found here though you may need to check it out to be able to read it. For the first time so far, we not only have a quote that is neither false nor misrepresented! Unfortunately for Bushby, this is a claim that is not particularly controversial or important to his thesis.

According to Eusebeius (260–339), Constantine noted that among the presbyterian factions "strife had grown so serious, vigorous action was necessary to establish a more religious state", but he could not bring about a settlement between rival god factions (Life of Constantine, op. cit., pp. 26-8). His advisers warned him that the presbyters' religions were "destitute of foundation" and needed official stabilisation (ibid.).

UNCLEAR CITATION (probably false).  As noted earlier, the lack of indication as to what translation of Life of Constantine is being used makes it impossible to check for certain on this, as he only gives page numbers. The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series translation, however, does not include these quotes anywhere in it. 

The mission failed and Constantine, probably at the suggestion of Osius, then issued a decree commanding all presbyters and their subordinates "be mounted on asses, mules and horses belonging to the public, and travel to the city of Nicaea" in the Roman province of Bithynia in Asia Minor. They were instructed to bring with them the testimonies they orated to the rabble, "bound in leather" for protection during the long journey, and surrender them to Constantine upon arrival in Nicaea (The Catholic Dictionary, Addis and Arnold, 1917, "Council of Nicaea" entry).

FALSE CITATION. The Catholic Dictionary by Addis and Arnold exists, but there is no Council of Nicaea entry, only a general entry for "Council" which does not include the quote. See for yourself. Perhaps it is alluding to its entry for Nicene Councils, but the quotes are not found there either. A search for a number of phrases in the alleged quote turn up nothing.

Their writings totalled "in all, two thousand two hundred and thirty-one scrolls and legendary tales of gods and saviours, together with a record of the doctrines orated by them" (Life of Constantine, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 73; N&PNF, op. cit., vol. i, p. 518).

FALSE CITATION. Okay, this time he does actually specify it's the Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers series translation of Life of Constantine. But this quote is found nowhere in that.

It should be noted, incidentally, that his representations of the Council of Nicaea are completely false. Nicaea was called because of the Arian Controversy, a conflict between the bishops Arius and Athanasius and their followers. While both agreed that Jesus was divine, they had disagreements on exactly what Jesus's relationship with the Father was. I won't get into the theological details here, but the bottom line is that none of this had anything to do with other gods and saviors as Bushby claims.

Because of his Sun worship, he instructed Eusebius to convene the first of three sittings on the summer solstice, 21 June 325 ( Catholic Encyclopedia, New Edition, vol. i, p. 792),

FALSE CITATION. Volume 1, page 792 of the New Catholic Encyclopedia can be found here. The page in question has absolutely nothing to do with what Bushby is talking about. 

and it was "held in a hall in Osius's palace" (Ecclesiastical History, Bishop Louis Dupin, Paris, 1686, vol. i, p. 598).

FALSE CITATION. First, Louis Dupin was not a bishop--I don't think he was even a priest.

Still, he wrote a lot of works, some on history. Now, none of Dupin's books translate out literally to "Ecclesiastical History". The one that comes the closest is "Histoire ecclesiastique du dix-septieme siecle" (Ecclesiastical History of the Seventeenth Century) but this cannot be it; not only is it unlikely a book about the 17th century would say much about Nicaea in the fourth, it was first published in 1714, so it is too late to be the one referred to by Bushby. Further, one can see page 598 of the first volume of the work here (the metadata incorrectly claims it was from 1970 but if you look at the cover you will see it says "M DCC XIV" which is 1714) and it appears to say nothing about Nicaea.

What would seem to be in mind is rather "Nouvelle bibliothèque des auteurs ecclésiastiques" (New Library of Ecclesiastical Authors) which had its first volume published in 1686. Indeed, I believe this and "De Antiqua Ecclesiae disciplina dissertationes historicae" are the only works Dupin had published in 1686, so it would have to be one of them. However, this is found on page 598 of neither of them! "De Antiqua Ecclesiae disciplina dissertationes historicae" ends on page 592, short of the required page length (see here).

However, "Nouvelle bibliothèque des auteurs ecclésiastiques", while having a page 598, does not seem to have anything relevant there either. You can look at it here and even with my lackluster French abilities, I can see there is no mention of Nicaea (which would be Nicée in French), Osius, or palaces. It instead seems to be about letters attributed to early popes

So, of the two works published by Dupin in 1686, neither one says this or anything at all about Nicaea on page 598.

Bushby's specific claim here is not particularly controversial ultimately, and of little importance to his arguments. Nevertheless, his cited source does not appear to back him up at all. And he very specifically says 1686, so unless he made an error there this should not be an issue of me looking at a wrong edition.

In an account of the proceedings of the conclave of presbyters gathered at Nicaea, Sabinius, Bishop of Hereclea, who was in attendance, said, "Excepting Constantine himself and Eusebius Pamphilius, they were a set of illiterate, simple creatures who understood nothing" (Secrets of the Christian Fathers, Bishop J. W.  Sergerus, 1685, 1897 reprint).

CITED WORK CANNOT BE FOUND. This one is a bit of a complicated matter. To explain quickly, the citation itself ("Secrets of the Christian Fathers") appears to not exist. That is why it gets that label. However, even if the work did exist, we run into the additional problem that Bushby's statement above is inaccurate. Sabinus did appear to say something like this, but we have no exact quote from him (only a description of his statement), and Bushby's claim that he was in attendance is false. Now I will explain the reasons for these deductions in detail.

Let us begin with the source offered, Secrets of the Christian Fathers. I can find no evidence this work actually exists. Search for it and you will find a few quotes supposedly from it, like this one... but no evidence the book itself exists. WorldCat, Archive.org, Google Books... it is available on none of them. Until such time as someone can demonstrate proof of its existence outside of people copy and pasting supposed citations from it, I will conclude this is a fraudulent work. This person also tried to find it (though this was in reference to a different "quote" from it) and concluded the same thing as me, that it could not be found and was almost certainly a hoax.

I considered the possibility that perhaps it was a work in another language with the title translated into English, but a search for Sergerus is no more useful. Sergerus finds no matches on archive.org, and searching for Sergerus on WorldCat turns up a few Latin works, but they are by Joannes Theophilus Sergerus and Jo Gottlieb Sergerus, which are obviously incorrect due to having the wrong initials. Even the possibility that this was a typo, and it was supposed to be J.T. Sergerus or J.G. Sergerus seems to be out, as the works are not (when translated into English) "Secrets of the Christian Fathers." The publication dates are wrong anyway.

Is it possible that this is just some really rare book and that's why it doesn't show up on a service like WorldCat or the Internet in general? That seems unlikely. This was supposedly written by a bishop, and one would expect that would result in it being more common. Furthermore, if it is such a rare book that one cannot find a trace of it, the onus should be on Bushby to explain where and how he accessed it. Given the performance we have seen by Bushby so far--and will continue to see throughout this examination--I see no reason to give him the benefit of the doubt on this.

But is the claim itself correct? Well, as far as I can tell, our knowledge of what Sabinus said about the Council of Nicaea comes not from actual quotes by Sabinus, but rather a later historian remarking on Sabinus's (now lost) work. In Book 1, Chapter 8 of Socrates Scholasticus's Church History, he states in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers translation:

"With this end also in view, that if any one should condemn as erroneous the faith professed at this council of Nicæa, we might be unaffected by it, and put no confidence in Sabinus the Macedonian, who calls all those who were convened there ignoramuses and simpletons. For this Sabinus, who was bishop of the Macedonians at Heraclea in Thrace, having made a collection of the decrees published by various Synods of bishops, has treated those who composed the Nicene Council in particular with contempt and derision; not perceiving that he thereby charges Eusebius himself with ignorance, who made a like confession after the closest scrutiny. And in fact some things he has willfully passed over, others he has perverted, and on all he has put a construction favorable to his own views. Yet he commends Eusebius Pamphilus as a trustworthy witness, and praises the emperor as capable in stating Christian doctrines: but he still brands the faith which was declared at Nicæa, as having been set forth by ignorant persons, and such as had no intelligence in the matter. And thus he voluntarily contemns the words of a man whom he himself pronounces a wise and true witness: for Eusebius declares, that of the ministers of God who were present at the Nicene Synod, some were eminent for the word of wisdom, others for the strictness of their life; and that the emperor himself being present, leading all into unanimity, established unity of judgment, and agreement of opinion among them."

Thus we have a summary of what Sabinus said, but no direct quotes. The quote offered does match the summary, but it is not a quote by Sabinus that we know of. Thus it is inaccurate to offer it as such.

But at least it seems to reflect Sabinus's beliefs. However, as far as I can tell, Sabinus was not (as Bushby claims) an attendance at Nicaea--I don't think he was even alive then--which would make that claim false.

Lastly, the question is whether we should take Sabinus as accurate. As noted, he was not in attendance so he would not have firsthand information. Additionally, Sabinus (as noted by Socrates) was a Macedonian, meaning a follower of the bishop Macedonius I of Constantinople, an Arian. But Arians were the ones who lost at the Council of Nicaea. So all we have here is a non-eyewitness who disagreed with the Council's conclusion. This has little value in proving anything about the intellectual level of those at Nicaea.

Thus, Bushby cites a non-existent source to give a false quote (it does seem to be a reasonable summary of Sabinus's thoughts, but still not an actual quote) and claims that he was at Nicaea despite the strong proof against. Taken together, this warrants a False.

This is another luminous confession of the ignorance and uncritical credulity of early churchmen. Dr Richard Watson (1737–1816), a disillusioned Christian historian and one-time Bishop of Llandaff in Wales (1782), referred to them as "a set of gibbering idiots" (An Apology for Christianity, 1776, 1796 reprint; also, Theological Tracts, Dr Richard Watson, "On Councils" entry, vol. 2, London, 1786, revised reprint 1791).

UNCLEAR CITATION (probably false). Now, a copy of An Apology for Christianity can be found here. However, no page number is cited. A search for the words "set", "gibbering", and "idiots" shows nothing. Now, the search function isn't perfect. But I am not going to read through a 200+ work just to try to find a quote that he did not provide a proper source for--and, based on my experience so far, probably is not there anyway. As for Theological Tracts, volume 2 can be found here, but again no page number is cited. The focus of volume 2 appears not to be councils anyway, but concerning the canon of the New Testament.

From his extensive research into Church councils, Dr Watson concluded that "the clergy at the Council of Nicaea were all under the power of the devil, and the convention was composed of the lowest rabble and patronised the vilest abominations" (An Apology for Christianity, op. cit.)

UNCLEAR CITATION (probably false). Again, using the computerized search turns up nothing.

The Church admits that vital elements of the proceedings at Nicaea are "strangely absent from the canons" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. iii, p. 160).

MISREPRESENTED CITATION. The quote is from here. But, as is the pattern so far, this quote is taken thoroughly out of context. What is being referred to here is the precise date Easter is to be celebrated. What is noted is that while a decision was made regarding the date to celebrate Easter, this was not in the canons. This is not related to what Bushby is going on about.

However, according to records that endured, Eusebius "occupied the first seat on the right of the emperor and delivered the inaugural address on the emperor's behalf" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. v, pp. 619-620).

ACCURATE CITATION. An accurate quote for once. It is found here. Interesting how his only verified and accurate quotes so far have been about uncontroversial things.

There were no British presbyters at the council but many Greek delegates. "Seventy Eastern bishops" represented Asiatic factions, and small numbers came from other areas (Ecclesiastical History, ibid.).

FALSE CITATION. The same problems discussed previously in regards to Dupin's Ecclesiastical History apply here as well.

It was at that puerile assembly, and with so many cults represented, that a total of 318 "bishops, priests, deacons, subdeacons, acolytes and exorcists" gathered to debate and decide upon a unified belief system that encompassed only one god (An Apology for Christianity , op. cit.).

UNCLEAR CITATION (probably false). Again, no page number is cited, but a computerized search does not find this quote.

By this time, a huge assortment of "wild texts" (Catholic Encyclopedia, New Edition, "Gospel and Gospels")

FALSE CITATION. There is no "Gospel and Gospels" article, though there is a "Gospel" article. I see no mention of "wild texts" in it, however.

circulated amongst presbyters and they supported a great variety of Eastern and Western gods and goddesses: Jove, Jupiter, Salenus, Baal, Thor, Gade, Apollo, Juno, Aries, Taurus, Minerva, Rhets, Mithra, Theo, Fragapatti, Atys, Durga, Indra, Neptune, Vulcan, Kriste, Agni, Croesus, Pelides, Huit, Hermes, Thulis, Thammus, Eguptus, Iao, Aph, Saturn, Gitchens, Minos, Maximo, Hecla and Phernes (God's Book of Eskra, anon., ch. xlviii, paragraph 36).

UNRELIABLE CITATION. The quote is found in that work, and can be read here. But what is this God's Book of Eskra? If you are unaware of what that is, it is a book in "Oahspe: A New Bible", which was published in 1882. Oahspe is the divine book of "Faithism" and was a lengthy work written by a dentist named John Ballou Newbrough (which makes the mention of "anon." confusing), who claimed that it was all divinely dictated to him--that he would sit in front of a typewriter and would type it out without even knowing what he was writing until he had finished.

Is Tony Bushby a believer in Faithism? I do not know. But unless one is a Faithist, this can hardly be counted as a historical source, as its claims of accuracy depend entirely on whether or not you believe it was in fact a divine dictation. No actual historical source I know of supports the claim made.

Julius Caesar was hailed as "God made manifest and universal Saviour of human life", and his successor Augustus was called the "ancestral God and Saviour of the whole human race" (Man and his Gods, Homer Smith, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1952). Emperor Nero (54–68), whose original name was Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (37–68), was immortalised on his coins as the "Saviour of mankind" (ibid.).

UNCLEAR CITATION (probably false). This book is found here, but no page number is cited in order to look it up. A computerized search for various words or phrases in these quotes does not turn up anything resembling the quotes given by Bushby. But, again, it is at least possible the search function isn't finding them--though it is very unlikely--so I will only mark this as an "Unclear Citation" rather than a False one.

"As yet, no God had been selected by the council, and so they balloted in order to determine that matter... For one year and five months the balloting lasted..." (God's Book of Eskra, Prof. S. L. MacGuire's translation, Salisbury, 1922, chapter xlviii, paragraphs 36, 41).

UNRELIABLE CITATION. Another Book of Eskra reference. As noted before, this is useless as a historical source. I am further confused as to what it means by a "translation" given that the work was in English to begin with.

At the end of that time, Constantine returned to the gathering to discover that the presbyters had not agreed on a new deity but had balloted down to a shortlist of five prospects: Caesar, Krishna, Mithra, Horus and Zeus (Historia Ecclesiastica, Eusebius, c. 325).

FALSE CITATION. This is nowhere to be found in Historia Ecclesiastica. It is, however, from God's Book of Eskra (I think that may be true of some other quotes he uses). Did Bushby--or if he's simply copying these quotes uncritically from another source, the author of that source--realize it would look bad if he cited the Book of Eskra too much, so he pretended it was from a different source to disguise it?

Following longstanding heathen custom, Constantine used the official gathering and the Roman apotheosis decree to legally deify two deities as one, and did so by democratic consent. A new god was proclaimed and "officially" ratified by Constantine (Acta Concilii Nicaeni, 1618).

UNCLEAR CITATION (probably false). The only "Acta Councilii Nicaeni" I can find is this thing, which is not only in Greek (a language I currently lack competence in), but is hard-to-read handwritten Greek so it is well beyond my ability to decipher. Furthermore, it is over 200 pages and impossible to look through to verify the quote as a result. It should further be noted that it is given the year "1580" rather than 1618.

Someone here ("Michael") suggests that "Acta Concilii Nicaeni" is simply a Latin translation of the canons of the Council of Nicaea. If so, one can read an English translation here of the canons; as can be easily seen, nothing of that sort is listed there.

Constantine then instructed Eusebius to organise the compilation of a uniform collection of new writings developed from primary aspects of the religious texts submitted at the council. His instructions were:

"Search ye these books, and whatever is good in them, that retain; but whatsoever is evil, that cast away. What is good in one book, unite ye with that which is good in another book. And whatsoever is thus brought together shall be called The Book of Books. And it shall be the doctrine of my people, which I will recommend unto all nations, that there shall be no more war for religions' sake."
(God's Book of Eskra, op. cit., chapter xlviii, paragraph 31)

UNRELIABLE CITATION. We have already discussed the problems with the Book of Eskra.

"Make them to astonish" said Constantine, and "the books were written accordingly" (Life of Constantine, vol. iv, pp. 36-39). Eusebius amalgamated the "legendary tales of all the religious doctrines of the world together as one", using the standard god-myths from the presbyters' manuscripts as his exemplars. Merging the supernatural "god" stories of Mithra and Krishna with British Culdean beliefs effectively joined the orations of Eastern and Western presbyters together "to form a new universal belief" (ibid.).

FALSE CITATION. These quotes are not found in Life of Constantine. I labeled this one as False rather than Unclear because even accepting the possibility of a different translation, I can find nothing of this sort in Book 4 of Life of Constantine.

Constantine believed that the amalgamated collection of myths would unite variant and opposing religious factions under one representative story. Eusebius then arranged for scribes to produce "fifty sumptuous copies ... to be written on parchment in a legible manner, and in a convenient portable form, by professional scribes thoroughly accomplished in their art" (ibid.). "These orders," said Eusebius, "were followed by the immediate execution of the work itself ... we sent him [Constantine] magnificently and elaborately bound volumes of three-fold and four-fold forms" (Life of Constantine, vol. iv, p. 36). 

MISREPRESENTED CITATION. These quotes are correct, sort of. They can be found here. They are somewhat paraphrased, but this may be due to a different translation. However, all that is stated is that fifty Bibles were produced... all of the previous claims of them being written at or after the Council of Nicaea (rather than simply being copies of already-existing texts) was made up by Bushby.

They were the "New Testimonies", and this is the first mention (c. 331) of the New Testament in the historical record.

NO CITATION. Not a quote or citation, but this is so erroneous I felt the need to respond. Apparently, Bushby is unaware of the various quotations of and references to the New Testament by the early Christians... and even if he wants to claim those are unreliable because our earliest manuscripts of them post-date the Council of Nicaea, we have manuscripts of the New Testament itself that predate Nicaea (a few of which have already been mentioned). This fact utterly destroys his thesis that they were written at or after the Council of Nicaea, and he never addresses this point. Oh, and naturally, no citation is made for this absurd claim of his.

With his instructions fulfilled, Constantine then decreed that the New Testimonies would thereafter be called the "word of the Roman Saviour God" (Life of Constantine, vol. iii, p. 29) and official to all presbyters sermonising in the Roman Empire. He then ordered earlier presbyterial manuscripts and the records of the council "burnt" and declared that "any man found concealing writings should be stricken off from his shoulders" (beheaded) (ibid.).

FALSE CITATION. Again, I can find nothing like these quotes in Book 3 of Life of Constantine.

Some old documents say that the First Council of Nicaea ended in mid-November 326, while others say the struggle to establish a god was so fierce that it extended "for four years and seven months" from its beginning in June 325 (Secrets of the Christian Fathers, op. cit.). 

CITED WORK CANNOT BE FOUND. Once again, Secrets of the Christian Fathers does not appear to exist. 

The Second Council of Nicaea in 786–87 denounced the First Council of Nicaea as "a synod of fools and madmen" and sought to annul "decisions passed by men with troubled brains" (History of the Christian Church, H. H. Milman, DD, 1871).

MISREPRESENTED CITATION. Milman did not write History of the Christian Church. He did, however, write "History of Christianity" a multi-volume set. Naturally, Bushby provides no page number or volume. Still, thanks to searching through the text, I was able to find the first (but not the second) quote here. The problem, outside of the fact that it only has the first quote and not the second, is that the "synod of fools and madmen" being referred to is not Nicaea, but a completely unrelated council, the Council of Hieria (the source refers to it as the "Council of Constantinople" but it is better known as the Council of Hieria).

Constantine died in 337 and his outgrowth of many now-called pagan beliefs into a new religious system brought many converts. Later Church writers made him "the great champion of Christianity" which he gave "legal status as the religion of the Roman Empire" (Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire, Matthew Bunson, Facts on File, New York, 1994, p. 86). 

MISREPRESENTED CITATION. Okay, compared to others this was a relatively small and benign misrepresentation, but it is still one. Now, a revised version of the work can be found here and the quote is there (albeit on a different page than the original, revised version after all). I did manage to get a physical copy of the first edition of the work, which is what's being quoted, and it looks about the same as the linked copy, at least in regards to the section being quoted from. That brings us to a problem. Bushby quotes it as saying he gave Christianity "legal status as the religion of the Roman Empire." The actual work says he gave Christianity "legal status as a religion of the Roman Empire." Christianity did not become the religion of the empire until after Constantine. During Constantine's time, it was simply legally recognized among other religions, which had the effect of ending persecutions and granting various legal rights.

I'll be fair and say that this was a swap of only one word. But that one swap does change the meaning.

Historical records reveal this to be incorrect, for it was "self-interest" that led him to create Christianity (A Smaller Classical Dictionary, J. M. Dent, London, 1910, p. 161).

MISREPRESENTED CITATION. This work is here (oddly, he does not give the author, only the publisher's name, which initially confused me). However, this quote is found on a different page than 161. Beyond that, there are a few problems with this citation. First, this is from 1910--a rather old and outdated source. But even if it absolutely correct on everything, it says "it was probably only self-interest which led him at first to adopt Christianity." (emphases added) So Bushby has taken a "probably" and turned it into a certainty and ignored the qualifier that the self-interest was only "at first." Not only that, it says nothing about Constantine creating Christianity, as Bushby claims here.

Yet it wasn't called "Christianity" until the 15th century (How The Great Pan Died, Professor Edmond S. Bordeaux [Vatican archivist], Mille Meditations, USA, MCMLXVIII, pp. 45-7).

FALSE CITATION. The person cited here is Edmond Bordeaux Szekely. It was not easy to get a copy of this book, for the record. I had to put in an Outerlibrary Loan Request and the loaning library had a requirement that I could not actually check out the book, but could only peruse it in the library.

But having looked at pages 45-47, I can see no statement of such. It says nothing about when the religion was first called Christianity.
 
Still, it is plausible it was not called Christianity until then... not because the religion didn't exist, but because the word didn't yet exist in that form in the English language; prior to that, it likely existed in some similar but slightly different form, sort of like how the word is "Cristianismo" in Spanish.

Also, Szekely is not a particularly reliable source either, but I will save that for a later examination of a quote from him.

Over the ensuing centuries, Constantine's New Testimonies were expanded upon, "interpolations" were added and other writings included (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. vi, pp. 135-137; also, Pecci ed., vol. ii, pp. 121-122).

FALSE CITATION. Once again the apparently fictional Pecci edition is cited. The "Farley edition" does exist (although it seems to just be the regular Catholic Encyclopedia), however, so we can examine that. Anyway, the page is here. This is an entry on Forgery... but it says nothing of the New Testament (or as Bushby for some reason refers to them as, "New Testimonies"). The word "interpolations" is also nowhere to be found. 

For example, in 397 John "golden-mouthed" Chrysostom restructured the writings of Apollonius of Tyana, a first-century wandering sage, and made them part of the New Testimonies (Secrets of the Christian Fathers, op. cit.).

CITED WORK CANNOT BE FOUND. As noted above, there is no real evidence that "Secrets of the Christian Fathers" actually exists.

Even if it did, this is clearly a false statement. We have full copies of the New Testament that predate 397 AD such as Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. Oddly, Bushby will spend much time discussing Codex Sinaiticus, which makes this claim of his all the more befuddling. As for the general claim that the New Testament simply restructured claims about Apollonius of Tyana, see here.

The Latinised name for Apollonius is Paulus (A Latin- English Dictionary, J. T. White and J. E. Riddle, Ginn & Heath, Boston, 1880), and the Church today calls those writings the Epistles of Paul.

UNVERIFIED CITATION (but probably false). As this requires the previous reference to be true to mean anything, whether or not this source is accurate or not is irrelevant. Still, is it true or not? Well, no page number is cited. I looked up Apollonius and there was no entry (see here). Unfortunately, the second volume, which would let us look up Paulus, is not available on archive.org, and even the first volume is from a year other than 1880. There is a shortened version ("for the use of junior students") that is available here that lets us look Paulus up, however, and it says nothing about Apollonius when we look up Paulus. It is, however, possible that this was found in the second volume of an 1880 printing and was omitted in the shortened version. So while we can't count this one completely counted out, it appears unlikely--and is irrelevant even if it is true.

The Church hierarchy knows the truth about the origin of its Epistles, for Cardinal Bembo (d. 1547), secretary to Pope Leo X (d. 1521), advised his associate, Cardinal Sadoleto, to disregard them, saying "put away these trifles, for such absurdities do not become a man of dignity; they were introduced on the scene later by a sly voice from heaven" (Cardinal Bembo: His Letters and Comments on Pope Leo X, A. L. Collins, London, 1842 reprint).

CITED WORK CANNOT BE FOUND. No work of this name appears on WorldCat, and searches for it online only turn up people repeating this claim from this essay. I wondered if perhaps this was an English translation of a name in another language (though if that was the case, Bushby should have specified), but there is nothing from 1842 with "Bembo" in the title on WorldCat either. I did find one person who was trying to figure it out speculate that maybe this was what was in view, but even that is from 1538 (and in non-searchable Latin). Most likely, however, that was giving Bushby too much credit. Aside from Bushby's writings or people repeating claims from Bushby's writings, there is no evidence this work exists, let alone that this quote is found in it and refers to the epistles.

The Church admits that the Epistles of Paul are forgeries, saying, "Even the genuine Epistles were greatly interpolated to lend weight to the personal views of their authors" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. vii, p. 645).

MISREPRESENTED CITATION. This statement is there, as can be seen here or here... but is about a specific collection of the epistles of St. Ignatius! It is thoroughly dishonest to take this quote about a different writer's letters entirely (and only a specific collection of copies of their letters) and act as if it is from St. Paul!

Likewise, St Jerome (d. 420) declared that the Acts of the Apostles, the fifth book of the New Testament, was also "falsely written" ("The Letters of Jerome", Library of the Fathers, Oxford Movement, 1833–45, vol. v, p. 445) .

UNVERIFIED CITATION (probably false). Here we have "Vol. 4-5" but I am not sure if Volume 5 is included in this after all, as I do not see a real division in the document. Nor is there a mention of Jerome. Of course, this could just be another false cite. But just in case, I granted it mercy and will only label it as "probably" false. In any event, it would be odd for Jerome to say such a thing when he assisted in the Latin Vulgate bible, which included Acts.

However, a spectacular discovery in a remote Egyptian monastery revealed to the world the extent of later falsifications of the Christian texts, themselves only an "assemblage of legendary tales" (Encyclopédie, Diderot, 1759) . 

UNCLEAR CITATION. The Encyclopédie by Denis Diderot is a 17-volume work in French. Bushby gives no citation for where this is in that work--and again, experience gives us little reason to believe he is portraying this accurately.

He moves onto a discussion about the Codex Sinaiticus. I will not delve heavily into an examination of his discussion of its history, as he cites no sources to check. Still, he gets it mostly right according to my understanding of the history of the Sinaiticus. Eventually he starts providing sources again:

During his research, Tischendorf had access to the Vaticanus, the Vatican Bible, believed to be the third oldest in the world and dated to the mid–sixth century (The Various Versions of the Bible, Dr Constantin von Tischendorf, 1874, available in the British Library). 

UNVERIFIED CITATION. Living in the US, I hardly have access to the British Library. A search on Worldcat indicates that while it can be found in other libraries, all of those libraries are in Britain. So it cannot be checked by me. But we do know that, whether it was stated by Tischendorf or not, this information is in error. Vaticanus is dated to the fourth century, not the mid-sixth century. Perhaps Tischendorf did give that date, but Tischendorf lived in the 19th century, and we have access to more data now. In any event, Bushby's claim that it is dated to the mid-sixth century is incorrect.

I will be skipping over most of the things between this and the heading "Forgery in the Gospels" because it is not particularly important whether the claims made are true or not (and most of its citations are things I am unable to verify due to lacking access to them). I'll just make a few notes starting with this:

In a series of articles published in the London Quarterly Review in 1883, John W. Burgon, Dean of Chichester, used every rhetorical device at his disposal to attack the Sinaiticus' earlier and opposing story of Jesus Christ, saying that "...without a particle of hesitation, the Sinaiticus is scandalously corrupt ... exhibiting the most shamefully mutilated texts which are anywhere to be met with; they have become, by whatever process, the depositories of the largest amount of fabricated readings, ancient blunders and intentional perversions of the truth which are discoverable in any known copies of the word of God".

You might notice something, which is that Bushby doesn't actually address any of Burgon's arguments. This isn't to say Burgon is right, just that Bushby doesn't interact with these arguments at all. As we will see, Bushby's arguments are poor even if Sinaiticus is the single most reliable manuscript, but it's odd that he'll note Burgon's arguments against the Sinaiticus, but won't actually address any of them. In fact, Bushby appears to get confused. First he makes this remark:

Before I summarise its conflictions, it should be noted that this old codex is by no means a reliable guide to New Testament study as it contains superabundant errors and serious re-editing.

But then in the next paragraph he says:

Serious study of Christian origins must emanate from the Sinai Bible's version of the New Testament, not modern editions. 

So it is not a reliable guide to New Testament study due to superabundant errors, but serious study of Christian origins must emanate from it? Bushby makes a statement and then in the next paragraph turns around and makes an argument that requires his statement in the last paragraph to be false!

 

There is one additional thing I want to note quickly, which is this citation:

 

In 1933, the British Museum in London purchased the Sinai Bible from the Soviet government for £100,000, of which £65,000 was gifted by public subscription. Prior to the acquisition, this Bible was displayed in the Imperial Library in St Petersburg, Russia, and "few scholars had set eyes on it" (The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, 11 January 1938, p. 3). When it went on display in 1933 as "the oldest Bible in the world" (ibid.), it became the centre of a pilgrimage unequalled in the history of the British Museum.   

FALSE CITATION. I originally didn't write anything about this because it didn't seem like the claim was in any way controversial, and I didn't really have access to full copies of this newspaper. However, I did put in a request at my library for a scan of this cited page, and they were able to provide. I know it is the right page, as at the top it says "The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, Tuesday, January 11, 1938" and then it has a 3 in the upper right corner. But there is nothing about Sinaiticus at all that I see, let alone the specific quotes offered. Instead, this page is about business-related stuff; half of the page is information on stock prices! Now, I did only get the one page so maybe he just got the page number wrong and it was somewhere else in the issue, but given the experience we've seen so far with Bushby--and will continue to see--I see absolutely no reason to give him any benefit of the doubt as to this being anything other than a made-up citation.

 
After that, we get to the important stuff starting with the new heading "Forgery in the Gospels".

When the New Testament in the Sinai Bible is compared with a modern-day New Testament, a staggering 14,800 editorial alterations can be identified. 

NO CITATION. But even if this number is correct, it means little. Virtually all of these "editorial alterations" are minor and amount to copyist errors. Even the "larger" ones generally have no actual impact on the core tenets of the Christian faith. If one counts any difference--even a single character being different--as a "change" then yes, you may be able to get to a high number. But again, that means nothing--Bushby has to demonstrate the changes (if they do add up to as high as he claims) actually matter. To be fair, he does try, but not very well.

Of importance is the fact that the Sinaiticus carries three Gospels since rejected: the Shepherd of Hermas (written by two resurrected ghosts, Charinus and Lenthius), the Missive of Barnabas and the Odes of Solomon. Space excludes elaboration on these bizarre writings and also discussion on dilemmas associated with translation variations.

There is not really a citation to check here, but I wished to make a comment. Contrary to his claim, none of these three are considered "Gospels" as none are biographies of Jesus's life. I also have no idea where the claim that the Shepherd of Hermas was written "by two resurrected ghosts, Charinus and Lenthius" comes from. It is odd that, after giving citation after citation after citation (even if almost all are inaccurate), he will drop claims like this with no source whatsoever. A search for these names indicates they are mentioned in the Gospel of Nicodemus, a totally different work. But in any event, this is not really "of importance"--so what if it included some other works? Even if not considered canonical, these works are still considered important and useful. The Church of England rejected the deuterocanonical books as not being canonical, but they still included them in the King James Version because they were viewed as being useful. (much later editions of the King James Version dropped them, possibly to save money on paper)

However, it is what is not written in that old Bible that embarrasses the Church, and this article discusses only a few of those omissions. One glaring example is subtly revealed in the Encyclopaedia Biblica (Adam & Charles Black, London, 1899, vol. iii, p. 3344), where the Church divulges its knowledge about exclusions in old Bibles, saying: "The remark has long ago and often been made that, like Paul, even the earliest Gospels knew nothing of the miraculous birth of our Saviour".

ACCURATE CITATION. This quote is actually true. However, this was also from 1899, making it a rather old source and out of date, though I hesitate to claim that the source was necessarily "unreliable." For anyone wondering, most of the arguments it gives for this are answered here. Still, I will count it as an "Accurate Citation" in that people have made that remark, even if I believe that remark to be in error. It is odd, though, that he says that "the Church divulges" it when the Encyclopaedia Biblica was not written by any church.

Further, he claims this is something not written in "that old Bible" (the Sinaiticus). But the Sinaiticus does mention the virgin birth in Matthew and Luke--those are included in it. Perhaps he is referring to how it is not mentioned in Mark or John, but that's true of all bibles.

It is apparent that when Eusebius assembled scribes to write the New Testimonies, he first produced a single document that provided an exemplar or master version. Today it is called the Gospel of Mark, and the Church admits that it was "the first Gospel written" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. vi, p. 657), even though it appears second in the New Testament today.

FALSE CITATION. "The first Gospel written" is not found on that page (see here). Granted, modern scholars mostly do believe Mark was the first written, but that does not change the fact that this quote is not found in his source (not on page 657 or anywhere else in this volume of the Catholic Encyclopedia, as far as I can tell), nor does it offer any support for his silly contention that Eusebius was the writer of Mark, which is disproved by manuscripts of Mark pre-dating Eusebius, such as Papyrus 45 (which in addition to Mark, also includes portions of Matthew, Luke, John, and Acts).

The scribes of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were dependent upon the Mark writing as the source and framework for the compilation of their works. The Gospel of John is independent of those writings, and the late-15th-century theory that it was written later to support the earlier writings is the truth (The Crucifixion of Truth, Tony Bushby, Joshua Books, 2004, pp. 33-40). 

UNVERIFIED CITATION (probably unreliable). Bushby is citing himself here; as this whole blog post is one big explanation as to why Bushby is unreliable, it wouldn't be wrong for me to simply label this an "Unreliable Citation." But, it still seems wrong to do so if I have been unable to examine it myself, so he gets "Unverified." Certainly, I'm certainly not going to pay money to get a copy of this book, which will cost (at least where I live) about $100 to get. That said, this idea--that Matthew and Luke used Mark and John came last--is not a particularly controversial one anyway. And of course, it still doesn't actually do anything to support Bushby's argument of Eusebius making them.

Following this is the one of the few arguments Bushby offers that is anything close to coherent, so I will go through it and respond to its points.

Thus, the Gospel of Mark in the Sinai Bible carries the "first" story of Jesus Christ in history, one completely different to what is in modern Bibles.

As noted, Vaticanus is of about the same time, possibly a little earlier, as Sinaiticus. But this "completely different" amounts to only small differences except for the ending, which we'll get to shortly.

It starts with Jesus "at about the age of thirty" (Mark 1:9), and doesn't know of Mary, a virgin birth or mass murders of baby boys by Herod. Words describing Jesus Christ as "the son of God" do not appear in the opening narrative as they do in today's editions (Mark 1:1), and the modern-day family tree tracing a "messianic bloodline" back to King David is non-existent in all ancient Bibles, as are the now-called "messianic prophecies" (51 in total).

Bushby is confusing as to what he is referring to. He says "all ancient Bibles" lack them but those are mentioned in early manuscripts. As noted before, the Sinaiticus includes them in Matthew and Luke, for example.

Or by "ancient Bibles" does he refer specifically to Mark, meaning he's using the claim that things mentioned in Luke/Matthew but not Mark are later creations? As well known as it is, the virgin birth is hardly critical to the core of the Christian faith--that's the Resurrection. And Mark's lack of the virgin birth is explored in our earlier link (here it is again). As for the lack of lineages, those not being in Mark does not mean they are false, as it could have been not included for any number of reasons (any biography has to cut some things out). In any event, it is of secondary importance in the grand scheme of things.

Finally, while Sinaiticus does not refer to Jesus as the "son of God" in Mark 1:1, Vaticanus does (so much for that "all early bibles" claim). Most likely, it was left off by accident in Sinaiticus, because (as noted by the NET Bible's footnote for that passage, currently footnote #3 for Mark 1) the sequence repeats a particular Greek symbol an inordinate amount of times which could lead to confusion on the part of the scribe. In any event, the phrase is used elsewhere in Mark, even in the Sinaiticus.

So if Bushby is making the argument that ancient bibles lack Matthew and Luke, he is wrong because the Sinaiticus and earlier manuscripts do include them. If he is simply referring only to Mark, while Mark may lack some things that are mentioned in the other Gospels (which may have been a reason they were written, in order to add the information that Mark did not include) Bushby is only listing things of secondary importance (and in the case of "son of God" Bushby ignores other manuscripts). In other words, while Mark may not include some things of lesser importance, it includes all the most critical information. Bushby, however, seems to feel he has something in regards to Mark's ending:

The Sinai Bible carries a conflicting version of events surrounding the "raising of Lazarus", and reveals an extraordinary omission that later became the central doctrine of the Christian faith: the resurrection appearances of Jesus Christ and his ascension into Heaven. No supernatural appearance of a resurrected Jesus Christ is recorded in any ancient Gospels of Mark, but a description of over 500 words now appears in modern Bibles (Mark 16:9-20).

What he is referring to with Lazarus is unclear, as the raising of Lazarus is not mentioned outside of John. What is conflicting?

But we're at the main meat here, which is the Resurrection. Essentially, he notes how Mark 16:9-20 is not included in the Sinaiticus or other early manuscripts and was most likely added later. Apparently, this is supposed to disprove the Resurrection, because post-Resurrection appearances are not mentioned in Mark and were added later:

The Church claims that "the resurrection is the fundamental argument for our Christian belief" 
(Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. xii, p. 792), yet no supernatural appearance of a resurrected Jesus Christ is recorded in any of the earliest Gospels of Mark available.

ACCURATE CITATION. However, while the quote is accurate (and for the sake of argument we will accept the assertion that Mark 16:9-20 is a later addition), there are several problems with this argument, and I will try to be brief. Even without Mark 16:9-20 and the other Gospels, we still have the account of the women going to the tomb, Jesus not being there, an angel telling them he has risen and to go and see him in Galilee, and they leave. So even if it doesn't go into detail about meeting him, it certainly established a Resurrection occurred. Furthermore, Paul's letters, which probably predate Mark, refer to a resurrection and appearances (most notably in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8). So this argument of Bushby's is essentially a non-entity.

One may ask why Mark would end his Gospel in such a way, however. Some discussion of that can be found here.

A resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ is the sine qua non ("without which, nothing") of Christianity ( Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. xii, p. 792), confirmed by words attributed to Paul: "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is in vain" (1 Cor. 5:17).

ACCURATE CITATION (sort of). Page 792 of the Volume 12 of the Catholic Encyclopedia does discuss the importance of the Resurrection. However, Bushby ignores the various arguments it notes in favor of its historicity. In any event, the importance of the Resurrection is not controversial.

The resurrection verses in today's Gospels of Mark are universally acknowledged as forgeries and the Church agrees, saying "the conclusion of Mark is admittedly not genuine ... almost the entire section is a later compilation" (Encyclopaedia Biblica, vol. ii, p. 1880, vol. iii, pp. 1767, 1781; also, Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. iii, under the heading "The Evidence of its Spuriousness"; Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. iii, pp. 274-9 under heading "Canons"). 

ACCURATE CITATION for the Encyclopedia Biblica quotes, though it should be volume 2 for all of them. Though for the reasons given above, even if the conclusion of Mark is a later addition, it means little.

FALSE CITATION for the Catholic Encyclopedia claim. There is no "Evidence of its Spuriousness" heading that I see on the applicable pages, and a search for that phrase turns up nothing.

I will note his claim of: 

Undaunted, however, the Church accepted the forgery into its dogma and made it the basis of Christianity.

It's almost like there are three other Gospels that do describe post-Resurrection appearances that can be used as a basis without any need for this alleged forgery. Of course, even without the longer ending of Mark or even any of the other Gospels, everything up until that point in Mark is sufficient to establish the idea of a Resurrection, with Paul's letters being extra. An argument that this was added later is simply insufficient to prove that the idea of a Resurrection only arose after the composition of Mark.

The trend of fictitious resurrection narratives continues. The final chapter of the Gospel of John (21) is a sixth-century forgery, one entirely devoted to describing Jesus' resurrection to his disciples. The Church admits: "The sole conclusion that can be deduced from this is that the 21st chapter was afterwards added and is therefore to be regarded as an appendix to the Gospel" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. viii, pp. 441-442; Catholic Encyclopedia (NCE), "Gospel of John”, p. 1080; NCE, vol. xii, p. 407). )

MISREPRESENTED QUOTE. First, even without John 21 they meet Jesus in John 20. But let's see what he left out of that quote. One can find the applicable pages here or, as usual, if you want to read it in a better format see here. After the phrase "appendix to the Gospel" the Encyclopedia continues with: "Evidence has yet to be produced to show that it was not the Evangelist, but another, who wrote this appendix. The opinion is at present fairly general, even among critics, that the vocabulary, style, and the mode of presentation as a whole, together with the subject-matter of the passage reveal the common authorship of this chapter and the preceding portions of the Fourth Gospel." Far from saying it is a forgery, it simply is a statement that it was an appendix added later by its author.

As for the second citation, I am not sure what it is supposed to be. It merely says "p. 1080" without telling me what volume it is in. As for the third (Volume 12, page 407), that is here. It states "Chapter 21 is considered by many scholars to be an addition by the disciples of John, but still in the spirit of the author." This moves it from the author to his disciples, but again this would fall within the first or early second century, not the sixth century.

Setting aside the references, Bushby's claim that it is a "sixth-century forgery" is blatantly incorrect. Even if John 21 was added later--and note that to my knowledge, there is not actually any early manuscript that actually stops at the end of John 20--it certainly wasn't added in the sixth century! Portions of John 21 are found in Papyrus 66 (second/third century) and Papyrus 109 (third century). It is true those portions are fragmentary, but the fact they include portions of John 21 demonstrate John 21 was in existence well before the 5th century. Even if one insists it must be the full chapter, then Bushby is still wrong because the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, which came before the sixth century, do include John 21. It is surprising that, despite holding up the Codex Sinaiticus as a critical witness to the early Bible, he seems thoroughly unaware of what is actually in it.

Modern-day versions of the Gospel of Luke have a staggering 10,000 more words than the same Gospel in the Sinai Bible. Six of those words say of Jesus "and was carried up into heaven", but this narrative does not appear in any of the oldest Gospels of Luke available today ("Three Early Doctrinal Modifications of the Text of the Gospels", F. C. Conybeare, The Hibbert Journal, London, vol. 1, no. 1, Oct 1902, pp. 96-113). Ancient versions do not verify modern-day accounts of an ascension of Jesus Christ, and this falsification clearly indicates an intention to deceive.

FALSE CITATION. Before examining the citation, two things should be noted. First, that "10,000 more words" claim is false. It's simply not true. But as to the more specific claim of it missing "and was carried up to heaven"? Whether or not that was in there in Luke does not matter for the purpose of theology, because the author of Luke mentions it in Acts.

Now let us examine the citation. The article can be found here. The problem is that nothing of what Bushby just stated seems to be in the article, which is discussing several Matthew passages, and not saying anything about the Luke passage in question (for the record, be careful relying on Conybeare's analysis of those Matthew passages anyway, as it is out of date and aspects have come under criticism). So we have another false citation.

Today, the Gospel of Luke is the longest of the canonical Gospels because it now includes "The Great Insertion", an extraordinary 15th-century addition totalling around 8,500 words (Luke 9:51–18:14). The insertion of these forgeries into that Gospel bewilders modern Christian analysts, and of them the Church said: "The character of these passages makes it dangerous to draw inferences" (Catholic Encyclopedia , Pecci ed., vol. ii, p. 407).

FALSE CITATION. Once again the mysterious and apparently nonexistent Pecci edition is noted.

That said, for once something similar to this quote actually can be found in the actual Catholic Encyclopedia. But it's in volume 9 in an article concerning lights and the passages in question are not biblical but from the writings of Gregory of Nazianzus. One may view the article here or if you want to see it in context go here and scroll to page 245. I almost put this as a Misrepresented Citation, but the misquoting (it actually says "The rhetorical character of such passages makes it dangerous to draw inferences") and inaccurate attribution pushed it into False Citation. In any event, it's a thoroughly inaccurate representation.

Furthermore, this does nothing to support his claim of Luke 9:51-18:14 being one big insertion in the 15th century, which is blatantly false anyway. The Codex Sinaiticus, which he's been holding up as his basis, includes those verses. Manuscripts that are even earlier than the Codex Sinaiticus include them. These are from more than a millennium before the 15th century in which it was supposedly added. There is absolutely no support for this claim of his that Luke 9:51-18:14 is some kind of later insertion, let alone one from the 15th century.

Just as remarkable, the oldest Gospels of Luke omit all verses from 6:45 to 8:26, known in priesthood circles as "The Great Omission", a total of 1,547 words. In today's versions, that hole has been "plugged up" with passages plagiarised from other Gospels.

NO CITATION. Well, maybe the source he gives after the next sentence (which is unverified) is supposed to be the source for this, but this is so blatantly inaccurate I'm not going to give him the benefit of that doubt. The earliest manuscript we have for Luke, I believe, is Papyrus 75, which includes the applicable sections (it is somewhat fragmentary, as can be seen in the link, but we retain enough to know that we have the applicable sections). Even if we insist on it needing to be fully complete without fragments, Codex Sinaiticus includes those sections.

Dr Tischendorf found that three paragraphs in newer versions of the Gospel of Luke's version of the Last Supper appeared in the 15th century, but the Church still passes its Gospels off as the unadulterated "word of God" ("Are Our Gospels Genuine or Not?", op. cit)

UNVERIFIED CITATION. The source cannot be checked by me, as noted. But as to the claim that "three paragraphs in newer versions of the Gospel of Luke's version of the Last Supper appeared in the 15th century," I am perplexed as to what he is talking about. Luke 22:20 and 44-45 are missing in some manuscripts, but this hardly amounts to "three paragraphs" (unless one is taking a really loose definition of that phrase), and for that matter appear in manuscripts prior to the 15th century, e.g. Codex Bezae. Not that it makes particular difference either way, given the relative unimportance of these verses.

Adopting the decrees of the Council of Trent (1545–63), the Church subsequently extended the process of erasure and ordered the preparation of a special list of specific information to be expunged from early Christian writings (Delineation of Roman Catholicism, Rev. Charles Elliott, DD, G. Lane & P. P. Sandford, New York, 1842, p. 89; also, The Vatican Censors, Professor Peter Elmsley, Oxford, p. 327, pub. date n/a).

MISREPRESENTED CITATION on the first. This is a very anti-Catholic book and therefore has some bias, so we should be a bit careful trusting its claims. However, even if it is completely accurate, it does not back up Bushby. If we look at the requested page, we see something a bit similar to what is claimed; it says "Pope Clement VIII., in the year 1595, published a decree that all Catholic authors who wrote since 1515 should be corrected, so as not only to blot out doctrines not approved, but to add what were necessary. This process of excision has, as we have seen, been extended to the Fathers." It does not give any citation for this claim, but the "as we have seen" presumably refers to page 85 where the book claims in a heading that "The works of the Fathers are corrupted and mutilated by the Expurgatorial Indices of the Church of Rome" and gives what he claims are examples. I am not able to verify the accuracy of these examples (and I further wonder if some of the things he complains about being removed could have been defensible based on the manuscripts), but what is obvious when you read them is that the claim is that the Catholic Church censored the printed versions of those works when they printed them; it is not saying that the original manuscripts were tampered with. So even if the work's accusations of censorship were true, this is thus of little help to Bushby's argument and thus it is misrepresented.

CITED WORK CANNOT BE FOUND on the second. I cannot find any indication that "The Vatican Censors" exists. I have been able to find works by a Peter Elmsley of Oxford, but none of them carry that title. and the fact name "Peter Elmsley" could very well be a coincidence. Or it could be a made-up work ascribed to a real author. As I cannot find evidence of this work, I will leave it with this label.

In 1562, the Vatican established a special censoring office called Index Expurgatorius. Its purpose was to prohibit publication of "erroneous passages of the early Church Fathers" that carried statements opposing modern-day doctrine.

NO CITATION. Ordinarily I would not bother with this as there is no citation, but here he offers the phrase in question marks as if it was quoted from something. But no source for this is given! The Index Expurgatorius was aimed at contemporary works, so who was the one who stated this quote saying the purpose of the Index Expurgatorius was to change passages of the early Church Fathers?

When Vatican archivists came across "genuine copies of the Fathers, they corrected them according to the Expurgatory Index" (Index Expurgatorius Vaticanus, R. Gibbings, ed., Dublin, 1837; The Literary Policy of the Church of Rome, Joseph Mendham, J. Duncan, London, 1830, 2nd ed., 1840; The Vatican Censors, op. cit., p. 328).

UNCLEAR CITATIONS/CITED WORK CANNOT BE FOUND. We have already discussed The Vatican Censors as apparently being a made-up work. As for the "Index Expurgatorius Vaticanus", it appears to be a reference to the work "An exact reprint of the Roman Index expurgatorius" by Richard Gibbings. The quote in question is found in neither it nor "Literary Policy of the Church of Rome", at least as far as I can tell. Searching does not turn it up, but again the search isn't perfect. Of course, he provides no page to check--the only page provided is for The Vatican Censors, which again appears to not exist. Also, I cannot help but notice that these books are both from the first half of the 19th century; surely there are more up-to-date books on these subjects he could be citing?

Also, I wish to mention that we possess copies of the church fathers from before the 16th century, and thus any supposed changes that occurred as a result of this would be caught anyway. 

This Church record provides researchers with "grave doubts about the value of all patristic writings released to the public" (The Propaganda Press of Rome , Sir James W. L. Claxton, Whitehaven Books, London, 1942, p. 182).

CITED WORK CANNOT BE FOUND. Outside of Bushby's citation here, I cannot find any indication that this "The Propaganda Press of Rome" work exists.

Important for our story is the fact that the Encyclopaedia Biblica reveals that around 1,200 years of Christian history are unknown: "Unfortunately, only few of the records [of the Church] prior to the year 1198 have been released".

UNCLEAR CITATION. No page number or even volume is cited here, so it is not possible to look it up. A search for "1198" in each of the four volumes, however, turns up nothing.

It was not by chance that, in that same year (1198), Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) suppressed all records of earlier Church history by establishing the Secret Archives (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. xv, p. 287).

MISREPRESENTED CITATION. The mention of the Secret Archives is true, sort of (an easier-to-read version can be found here). The problem is that this is being misrepresented. Yes, the "Vatican Secret Archives" were established in 1198, but not to suppress earlier Church history--the point was to set up archives to preserve Church history. This claim of suppressing earlier records is not supported, at least not by the source.

Some seven-and-a-half centuries later, and after spending some years in those Archives, Professor Edmond S. Bordeaux wrote How The Great Pan Died. In a chapter titled "The Whole of Church History is Nothing but a Retroactive Fabrication", he said this (in part):

"The Church ante-dated all her late works, some newly made, some revised and some counterfeited, which contained the final expression of her history ... her technique was to make it appear that much later works written by Church writers were composed a long time earlier, so that they might become evidence of the first, second or third centuries."
(How The Great Pan Died, op. cit., p. 46)

UNRELIABLE CITATION. As noted in an examination of a previous citation, this work is by Edmond Bordeaux Szekely. Unlike Bushby's previous citation of this work, this quote is in fact found in the work. Now its accuracy and how much it proves must be considered.

As noted in regards to that earlier citation, as I was only able to read this work in the library, my examination of the book was not in depth and did involve skimming. But from what I can see, it is very high on speculation, asserting that the origins of Christianity are made up and that the works of the church fathers are from later dates and were forged in order to try to make the gospels look better. It is highly reminiscent of Bushby's essay, although instead of providing sources that turn out to be false, it provides virtually no sources at all (and most of those that it actually does provide are extremely vague to the point it is impossible to look them up).

Bushby tries to build Szekely up as someone who spent "years" in the Archives, but as far as I can tell the only proof we have of this is Szekely's claim that he did. Therefore, the claim that Szekely spent that time in the Vatican archives, and that he learned the truth of the ante-dating of the works from it, comes down to Szekely's own word that this was the case. Is it reliable?

Edmond Bordeaux Szekely has two main claims to fame. The first is him advocating a vegetarian and raw food diet. The second is his claim of discovering the "Essene Gospel of John" (also known as the "Essene Gospel of Peace") that he supposedly translated into English, but various contradictions in his accounts of it, a lack of actual proof of his claims, and other factors have caused it to be dismissed as a forgery by scholars. While I don't like to give my readers "homework", I should note that Chapter 12 of  "Strange Tales About Jesus: A Survey of Unfamiliar Gospels" (pages 81-92) by Per Beskow offers a critique of it, going into more depth about the charges I listed. For those unable to get a copy of the book, some of the information on from this work is referenced on Szekely's Wikipedia page in the "Controversy: The Essene Gospel of Peace" section. Thus, Szekely is highly questionable as a source, given that the evidence seems quite strong he outright made up a gospel and tried to pass it off as genuine.

So ultimately, the only authority for this claim is Szekely himself. This already makes it questionable. But it is worse because Szekely, as we have just seen, is of dubious trustworthiness. This is therefore an Unreliable Source.

Supporting Professor Bordeaux's findings is the fact that, in 1587, Pope Sixtus V (1585–90) established an official Vatican publishing division and said in his own words, "Church history will be now be established ... we shall seek to print our own account " (Encyclopédie, Diderot, 1759).

UNCLEAR CITATION. The supposed quote from the Encyclopédie is cannot be verified because there is no page number or article cited. Again, this is a 17-volume work--further, even searching is not possible because it is in French and the quotes given (assuming they are accurate) is in an English translation and thus we do not know exactly what to search for.

Vatican records also reveal that Sixtus V spent 18 months of his life as pope personally writing a new Bible and then introduced into Catholicism a "New Learning" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. v, p. 442, vol. xv, p. 376).

MISREPRESENTED CITATION. It is true that the phrase "New Learning" is found in those sources (see here and here). The problem is that this "New Learning" has nothing to do with something Sixtus V introduced into Catholicism--it is a reference to Humanism. Bushby has taken a random phrase, wrenched it from its context, and then claimed it meant something totally different.

Further, the citations say nothing about Pope Sixtus V, let alone him writing a new Bible. What I expect this is in reference to is the fact that Pope Sixtus V put together a new edition of the Latin Vulgate Bible. But this hardly qualifies as "writing a new Bible."

The evidence that the Church wrote its own history is found in Diderot's Encyclopédie, and it reveals the reason why Pope Clement XIII (1758–69) ordered all volumes to be destroyed immediately after publication in 1759.

UNCLEAR CITATION. Again, where this is "found" is not stated. The claim that Clement XIII ordered all volumes to be destroyed is a bit exaggerated as well. It was added to the Index of Forbidden Books but that was not really a command to destroy them (outside of papal territories)--governments were free to do so if they wanted to, but it was not required. Perhaps Clement XIII actually did go and ask for them to be destroyed, but if so Bushby doesn't give specific proof of such.

There is something else involved in this scenario and it is recorded in the Catholic Encyclopedia. An appreciation of the clerical mindset arises when the Church itself admits that it does not know who wrote its Gospels and Epistles, confessing that all 27 New Testament writings began life anonymously: 

"It thus appears that the present titles of the Gospels are not traceable to the evangelists themselves ... they [the New Testament collection] are supplied with titles which, however ancient, do not go back to the respective authors of those writings." (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. vi, pp. 655-6)

MISREPRESENTED CITATION. You might have guessed even from what he did quote, but this is in reference to the four Gospels, not the full New Testament.

Even worse, it has been misquoted. The first part (everything up to "evangelists themselves") is properly quoted, but the second part, which comes later, is not. The original text is here and a more readable version is here (the Greek text is transliterated, however). What it actually says is:

"The first four historical books of the New Testament are supplied with titles (Euangelion kata Matthaion, Euangelion kata Markon, etc.), which, however ancient, do not go back to the respective authors of those sacred writings."

In his quote, he removed "The first four historical books of the New Testament" and replaced it with "They [the New Testament collection]." Not only is the bracketed text dishonest, the word "they" is nowhere to be found in the text!

Further, the Catholic Encyclopedia is not even saying that the gospels were not written by those attributed to them, merely that it is unlikely the names were written on the manuscripts originally. They could have left their names off but, later on, people thought it should be actually written on the text and thus it was included as the title, perhaps to help differentiate them. But whatever one thinks of the authorship of the Gospels, the fact remains that the "quote" represented is inaccurate and misleading.

The Church maintains that "the titles of our Gospels were not intended to indicate authorship", adding that "the headings ... were affixed to them" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. i, p. 117, vol. vi, pp. 655, 656).

MISREPRESENTED CITATION. Confusingly, the first quote is from the second source listed here, and the second quote is from the first source. We will begin with the first one. Yet again, context is being withheld. Here is the actual quote:

"Many authors have taken it to mean not "written by", but "drawn up according to the conception of", Matthew, Mark, etc. In their eyes, the titles of our Gospels were not intended to indicate authorship, but to state the authority guaranteeing what is related, in about the same way as "the Gospel according to the Hebrews", or "the Gospel according to the Egyptians", does not mean the Gospel written by the Hebrews or the Egyptians, but that peculiar form of Gospel which either the Hebrews or the Egyptians had accepted."

As we see, it is not being "maintained" that they were not intended to indicate authorship, it is simply noting that some authors claim such a thing. Furthermore, contrary to what Bushby subsequently asserts, this does not remove the gospels as having a connection to the evangelists that they are named after, but could be interpreted to mean the gospel was "drawn up according to the conception of" that person. I actually recommend you look at the original text of the article for a more in-depth explanation than the misrepresentation that Bushby produces. The point is, Bushby has once again misrepresented a quote.

As for "the headings... were affixed to them" that is from here and again is referring only to whether those titles were included by the authors originally or not. it is not a statement one way or the other as to whether or not the work was written by the person it is named after. (for the record, even if it wasn't, it isn't that critical--the accuracy of the Gospels is not fully dependable as to whether it was literally Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John who wrote them).

After that we get more quotes from Tischendorf:

"...how scribes could allow themselves to bring in here and there changes which were not simply verbal ones, but such as materially affected the very meaning and, what is worse still, did not shrink from cutting out a passage or inserting one."
(Alterations to the Sinai Bible, Dr Constantin von Tischendorf, 1863, available in the British Library, London)

CITED WORK CANNOT BE FOUND. A search for "Alterations to the Sinai Bible" at the British Library turns up nothing. Nor is it found in a search on WorldCat. A general search online only turns up people offering this quote. It appears fake.

After years of validating the fabricated nature of the New Testament, a disillusioned Dr Tischendorf confessed that modern- day editions have "been altered in many places" and are "not to be accepted as true" ( When Were Our Gospels Written? , Dr Constantin von Tischendorf, 1865, British Library, London).

MISREPRESENTED/FALSE CITATION. One may find the work here. There are two quotes here, one misrepresented, the other false. The first ("been altered in many places") is misrepresented. Search for the phrase "been altered in many cases" and you will find it... but it is referring to the apocryphal Acts of Pilate, not anything in the New Testament. Meanwhile, I do not find the phrase "not to be accepted as true" anywhere in the document. 

Dr Tischendorf provided part of the answer when he said in his 15,000 pages of critical notes on the Sinai Bible that "it seems that the personage of Jesus Christ was made narrator for many religions". 

UNCLEAR CITATION. "15,000 pages of critical notes" is overly vague. Exactly what document was this in? What was its name? And where in the document was this stated?

This explains how narratives from the ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata, appear verbatim in the Gospels today (e.g., Matt. 1:25, 2:11, 8:1-4, 9:1-8, 9:18- 26), and why passages from the Phenomena of the Greek statesman Aratus of Sicyon (271–213 BC) are in the New Testament. 

UNCLEAR CITATION. What in the Mahabharata do these line up with? Where are these portions of the Mahabharata that the New Testament takes "verbatim"? He does not give us any information on this... and thus I see no reason to give this claim credence, certainly not enough to look through all 200,000-ish lines of the Mahabharata just to try to verify something that Bushby couldn't be bothered to give support for himself. The same applies for Aratus of Sicyon. He then goes on to claim:

Extracts from the Hymn to Zeus, written by Greek philosopher Cleanthes (c. 331–232 BC), are also found in the Gospels, as are 207 words from the Thais of Menander (c. 343–291), one of the "seven wise men" of Greece. Quotes from the semi-legendary Greek poet Epimenides (7th or 6th century BC) are applied to the lips of Jesus Christ, and seven passages from the curious Ode of Jupiter (c. 150 BC; author unknown) are reprinted in the New Testament.

FALSE CITATION. Again, exactly what these statements that were copied, and where they are in the works, is unstated. Normally this would have earned an "Unclear Citation", but Hymn to Zeus is short enough to examine. Here is "Hymn to Zeus." What, exactly, is there that is also in the New Testament? I see nothing.

The only connection I have been able to find from these works is that 1 Corinthians 15:33 seems to take its statement "Bad company corrupts good character" from Menander. But this is not one of the Gospels, is only one brief quote, and it is entirely possible that that this was just some common saying that happened to be in the play... or that it was popularized by the play and came into common usage as a result. It certainly is not 207 words.

So without him providing specifics, this is all, once again, just unsubstantiated assertions that somewhere in these works we can find stuff from the New Testament. I might as well say that Tony Bushby's essay is just taken from an episode of Gunsmoke. It's about as substantiated as his claims.
 
After that he gives claims about Jesus Christ being a copy of Mithra and other pagan deities:

Tischendorf's conclusion also supports Professor Bordeaux's Vatican findings that reveal the allegory of Jesus Christ derived from the fable of Mithra, the divine son of God (Ahura Mazda) and messiah of the first kings of the Persian Empire around 400 BC. His birth in a grotto was attended by magi who followed a star from the East. They brought "gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh" (as in Matt. 2:11) and the newborn baby was adored by shepherds. He came into the world wearing the Mithraic cap, which popes imitated in various designs until well into the 15th century.

Mithra, one of a trinity, stood on a rock, the emblem of the foundation of his religion, and was anointed with honey. After a last supper with Helios and 11 other companions, Mithra was crucified on a cross, bound in linen, placed in a rock tomb and rose on the third day or around 25 March (the full moon at the spring equinox, a time now called Easter after the Babylonian goddess Ishtar). The fiery destruction of the universe was a major doctrine of Mithraism—a time in which Mithra promised to return in person to Earth and save deserving souls. Devotees of Mithra partook in a sacred communion banquet of bread and wine, a ceremony that paralleled the Christian Eucharist and preceded it by more than four centuries.

NO CITATION. As is typical for people who make these sorts of assertions, he cites no actual sources for any of this. Anyway, this nonsense is debunked here and I have already discussed the false Easter/Ishtar connection in a previous post.

If you are looking at a text version of Bushby's work (which is how it is usually posted) it will not include images, but in the original publication Bushby throws in an image of Pope Pius II "wearing a papal version of the Mithraic cap." I may as well respond to that part. As far as I can tell the supposed "Mithraic cap" is just a Phrygian cap (one may see some visual examples of it here--yes, I know it's Wikipedia but it does give a useful overview and some pictures). As you can see, it looks quite different from the pope's hat that Bushby shows.

Christianity is an adaptation of Mithraism welded with the Druidic principles of the Culdees, some Egyptian elements (the pre-Christian Book of Revelation was originally called The Mysteries of Osiris and Isis), Greek philosophy and various aspects of Hinduism.

NO CITATION. No source is given for this--perhaps this is supposed to be a summary of what he wrote before, but as we have seen he has not actually proven any of this. Also, he gives no proof whatsoever for the claim Revelation was originally "The Mysteries of Osiris and Isis", a work that does not seem to be real. 

It is not possible to find in any legitimate religious or historical writings compiled between the beginning of the first century and well into the fourth century any reference to Jesus Christ and the spectacular events that the Church says accompanied his life.

NO CITATION. What! What about all of Gospel manuscripts? Or the writings of the church fathers? Or the references of non-Christians? (see some here).

Certainly, the objection that if the "spectacular" events of Jesus's life happened we should see more documentation of it from contemporary sources is something you will often see skeptics claim. I think there are problems with that argument (see here and here for some examples), but it at least makes some sense. But they rarely will claim that there was no reference all the way into the fourth century, as Bushby does here, because it's such an insane claim.

After this, Bushby goes back to providing sources... but once again, misquotes or misrepresents them. 

 
"It is amazing that history has not embalmed for us even one certain or definite saying or circumstance in the life of the Saviour of mankind ... there is no statement in all history that says anyone saw Jesus or talked with him. Nothing in history is more astonishing than the silence of contemporary writers about events relayed in the four Gospels."
(The Life of Christ, Frederic W. Farrar, Cassell, London, 1874)

UNCLEAR CITATION (probably false). No page number is cited, so I had to try to do a computerized search on archive.org. I chose multiple editions but could find this in none of them.

This situation arises from a conflict between history and New Testament narratives. Dr Tischendorf made this comment:

"We must frankly admit that we have no source of information with respect to the life of Jesus Christ other than ecclesiastic writings assembled during the fourth century."
(Codex Sinaiticus, Dr Constantin von Tischendorf, British Library, London)

MISREPRESENTED CITATION (probably). I add "probably" because he doesn't say where in the 80+ page document this is. I found something similar which may be what is being referred to, though:

"We must also frankly admit that we have no other source of information with respect to the life of Jesus than the sacred writings."
(this is found on page 34 of the Eighth Edition in English, near the start of the "Ecclesiastical Testimony" chapter)

The actual source says "than the sacred writings" (referring to the Gospels) whereas Bushby's supposed quote writes "ecclesiastic writings assembled during the fourth century." If this is the quote being referred to, which seems quite probable, then Bushby has altered it to try to make his point better. Another problem with Bushby's quote is that Tischendorf then goes on to argue why the Gospels can be considered reliable, and Bushby does not interact with Tischendorf's arguments at all.

There is something odd, however. This is cited as "Codex Sinaiticus" as the title, and I did find something with that name (full title was "Codex sinaiticus, the ancient Biblical manuscript now in the British museum"). However, this seems to have been identical to the earlier "When were our gospels written?" document. Perhaps it simply had its title changed and they are the same document. Either way, Bushby is as usual not reliable in this quotation.

There is an explanation for those hundreds of years of silence: the construct of Christianity did not begin until after the first quarter of the fourth century, and that is why Pope Leo X (d. 1521) called Christ a "fable" (Cardinal Bembo: His Letters..., op. cit.).

UNCLEAR CITATION (probably false). We have already noted the issues with the letters of Bembo and how it is not really possible to look up to verify this. However, the original source for this quote of Leo X calling Jesus a fable appears to actually be a satirical work about popes; see here for information on that.

At the end of the article there is a note of other things that Bushby has written. Given the absurdities we have seen above, there is probably little point in saying anything about them; however, I will note that the magazine that published the essay under examination also published another essay by Tony Bushby entitled "The Criminal History of the Papacy" that some have passed around. Sufficient to demonstrate that that essay is about as worthless as the above is the fact that there, too, he cites the "Pecci ed." of the Catholic Encyclopedia, complete with quotes not found in the actual Catholic Encyclopedia. Also again, he offers quotes from "Secrets of the Christian Fathers" by "Bishop" Sergerus. As demonstrated earlier in this blog post, both of these are works he appears to have made up entirely. It adds new errors as well, such as offering a quote from the 1877 work "The Cradle of Christ", a work Bushby claims was written by the Catholic Bishop Frotheringham. The work's title is actually "The Cradle of the Christ" and more importantly, it is actually written by Unitarian clergyman Octavius Frothingham. Bushby further gives no page number for the quote, but based on searching an online version of the work, it does not seem to even include the quote Bushby offers. We see the exact same kinds of problems that we saw in The Forged Origins of the New Testament.

 
And that is the end of it. Let us move onto our conclusion.


CONCLUSION

For those who have read through this entire thing, I expect there is little else to say. Bushby's massive and repeated errors speak for themselves. There's a handful of semi-valid points mixed in there, but they're so drowned out by the sheer sea of absurdity that you should really just throw Bushby's entire essay away. But some people may not have the time to read through this entire post, and a summary will be useful. For this, I will simply list some of the worst cases:

-Bushby repeatedly cites books that do not seem to exist at all, such as "Secrets of the Christian Fathers", supposedly by J.W. Sergerus. No real evidence can be found of this book's existence.
-Bushby cites as historical fact claims made in "God's Book of Eskra", a work written by a 19th century dentist who claimed God dictated it to him.
-Bushby will misrepresent quotes to ludicrous degrees, such as taking a quote about a collection of the writings of St. Ignatius and claiming it refers to the letters of St. Paul or claiming a comment about the "Acts of Pilate" was concerning the New Testament.
-Bushby repeatedly gives quotes that are straight-up false; they don't exist where he claims they do. For example, he gives supposed quotes from Origen's "Against Celsus" but the sections he points to don't have them at all.
-Bushby makes claims that are provably false, like the declaration that Luke 9:51-18:14 is a 15th century insertion despite the fact that they appear, as far as I am aware, in every copy of Luke we have.
-Bushby will make citations so vague it is impossible to verify them, such as offering supposed quotes from a 17-volume French work without saying where in that work it's from.

This is, as indicated in our recent blog post on Lloyd deMause, evidence of how a bunch of impressive-looking footnotes doesn't prove that much, and why it is a good idea to try to verify them if possible. But while there were major deficiencies in deMause's footnotes, they are nothing compared to that of Bushby.

There is one last question, however, that I have puzzled over. Was Bushby being intentionally dishonest with this? Certainly, if he was the originator of these quotes, he was being quite dishonest, given that he made up works and misrepresented so many things. But there are people who will see a quote and share it without looking it up themselves due to assuming it was correctly cited. It could be that Bushby simply saw all these various quotes somewhere else and made use of them, not bothering to confirm them or see if they were reliable sources.

On the other hand, all of the other times I've seen these sources be cited seem to have come after Bushby, meaning they're just following his lead. Perhaps he simply copied them off of offline sources. But honestly, there's so many of these misrepresented or just plain false citations that it's difficult to believe Bushby was just copying from others. And even if he was, he takes considerable blame for not verifying these citations. So whether or not he was intentionally dishonest or not is really just a matter of curiosity. In truth, I would not be surprised if he was just trolling people with his writings, to see how much absurdity he could pack into it and still be taken seriously. Whatever the reason, he has thoroughly disgraced himself with these inexcusable errors.

As our examination has shown, Bushby should not be taken seriously. The magazine that published this should not be taken seriously either. And anyone who tries to point to this essay as proof of anything, or uses its erroneous claims, should not be taken seriously.

Bushby has had several other writings. I do not plan to be doing an examination of them. Quite frankly, if this blog post is insufficient to prove to you that Bushby is without credibility, examining more of his works is unlikely to do any more; however, what I have seen of those other works indicates he is about as bad in those as he is in this. I will note, however, that there is a critique of "The Bible Fraud" (probably his best-known writing) available here for anyone who is interested.

Not everyone has the time or effort to look through things as much as I did, so hopefully this examination will be of use to someone who happened to read Bushby's essay (or someone else using claims from it) and stumbled across this while searching for information on it. Hopefully this has been of use to you!