Bible Uncensored

By M. B. Osborne

The Bible is commonly referred to as “God's Word”, exempting its contents from human scrutiny for centuries. But, what if God’s words actually have less to do with this scripture than ministries are willing to admit? If you’ve ever had questions about the Bible or wondered how or if it impacts your life and the lives of others then this book is for you and anyone curious enough to experience how the Bible unknowingly affects them, whether theist or atheist. The impact of the Bible on multiple religions is largely misunderstood. Many believe that biblical contents only apply to Christians who read it. Yet, the Bible has impacted every major religion in the world, and continues to do so for religions that neither believe in nor read it.

Bible Uncensored is uncharted territory that takes a unique investigative look into what the Bible really is, what it really is not and how it has been used for almost two thousand years to build the wealthiest, most influential and most destructive empires in the world. This first-of-its-kind book about censorship and supremacy promises to deliver truth that everyone needs to know, but most are reluctant to talk about. Millions of people have wondered in silence about the oddity of biblical events and interpretations. While millions more have posed questions about scripture and have yet to get answers that make sense. These wonders and questions are finally addressed and answered in the most objective analysis of the Bible ever found in the 20th and 21st centuries.

This book is designed to answer questions about spiritual constructs that have never been answered before. It promises to deliver truth about scripture that no one has ever before exposed as part of a supremacy doctrine. Bible Uncensored is truth that the world needs now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M. B. Osborne
• Release date: Dec 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005912505

M. B. Osborne

Dr. Osborne is a graduate of Brown University, received a medical doctorate from The Medical College of Virginia and is a Diplomat of the National Board of Medical Examiners. She is on the voluntary faculty as an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences of George Washington University School of Medicine and a recognized expert on human behavior. She has been writing since high school, beginning with short story fiction and continuing with her first memoir: ‘The Inner World of a Suicidal Youth’, Praeger Publishers, Greenwood International 2007; Revised edition 2019 on Google Play Books and Amazon. For many years, Dr. Osborne has maintained a personal endeavor to utilize her professional expertise within the context of belief and behavior.

Book preview

Bible Uncensored

By

M.B. Osborne

Dedicated to a future of unity and nonviolence for all

Copy Editor

C. Tara Osborne

Technical Editor

M. E. Osborne

Bible Uncensored

www.bibleuncensored.blogspot.com

Copyright October 1, 2020

M. B. Osborne

The Library of Congress has catalogued this book as follows: Bible Uncensored, nonfiction, includes bibliographical references.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of M.B. Osborne

@bibleuncensor

Book cover designed by: Public Co and TrickyPhotoshop

ISBN: 9781005912505

Publisher: Smashwords, Inc.

Table of Contents

Section 1: The Nature of Censorship

Chapter 1 Prelude

Chapter 2 God of War

Chapter 3 Lies by Omission

Chapter 4 Slave Bible

Chapter 5 Living Hell

Chapter 6 Diversity’s Masterpiece

Chapter 7 Hail Mary

Chapter 8 Con Artists

Section 2: Behind the Obvious

Chapter 9 Erasing History I

Chapter 10 Exclusivity

Chapter 11 Enoch

Chapter 12 Normalizing Violence

Chapter 13 Erasing History II

Chapter 14 Die Botschaft Gottes

Chapter 15 Crafty

Section 3: Where We Go from Here

Chapter 16 Enslaved to Lies

Chapter 17 Race to Messiah

Chapter 18 Hexapla-Tetrapla

Chapter 19 50 Bibles

Chapter 20 God-complex

Chapter 21 Christians today and the Bible’s way

Chapter 22 Final Disclosures

Bibliography

Index

Section 1: The Nature of Censorship

You will know the truth and the truth will be making you free John 8:32

Chapter I Prelude

What is in the Bible?

Much like food and water, billions of people around the world, myself included, turn to the Bible to enrich their souls. Just as food is supposed to sustain and improve our physical health, the Bible is supposed to help sustain and improve our emotional, social, and spiritual health. The growing 21st century movement to eat better quality foods is a reflection of increasing desires to improve health and wellbeing. Increasingly, we are reading labels, eliminating trans fats, buying organic, buying cage-free and grass-fed, and reexamining the adverse health impact of foods that can taste good yet worsen health over time. Spiritual nourishment is no different. Just as we scrutinize adulterants, processing centers, and breeding conditions for farm animals, we need to scrutinize what goes into the construction of the Bible for similar reasons, spiritual health.

The United States has one of the largest populations in the world of people who use the Bible for religious study and reference. The Bible is a form of communication that is unlike any other. Most communication vehicles, such as books, cellphones, internet carriers, newspapers, magazines, news radio and news TV productions, are produced through subsidiaries of a small number of organizational giants: Verizon, Disney, AT&T, Comcast and Viacom/CBS. Divestures and acquisitions occur regularly but these giants control a large share of how, if, when and what kind of information the public has access to. Commonly, the more exclusive the rights to a communication tool, the greater the potential for abuse of power.

About thirty-five years ago, there were approximately 50 companies responsible for producing different mediums and technologies used to distribute information. By 1994, the number was reduced to approximately 20 companies. These numbers have continued to decrease resulting in the small number of giants listed above. That’s a lot of power to control what we read and hear and, ultimately, influence what we think, feel, and say. Since these giants compete with one another, they aren’t considered monopolies.

Unknowingly, these communication giants have been collectively competing with an organization that maintains a monopoly on the most effective and influential communications tool in the world. The organization is the Christian Church, also known as the church, and its communication tool is the Bible. The church is not listed on the internet as a communications organization or as a company at all, which is why the giants don’t recognize it as competition.

But it is and, based on the magnitude of its world-wide influence and affluence in the absence of expensive marketing campaigns, the church is in the lead. Invisible in its use as a commodity, the Bible is more effective at influencing billions of people and bringing affluence to millions of people than any tool possessed by any of the giants. Because, unlike the giants, the church has exclusive control over this communication commodity, making it a communication empire that remains invisible to the research and marketing systems communication giants use to contend with their competitors.

The expansive reach of communications controlled by extremely wealthy people influences what we believe and how committed we become to what we believe. The Bible is a central communication tool used in homes, courthouses, celebrations, funerals, and religious ceremonies. The Bible is also the key tool used throughout the world for evangelism, which is the act of trying to convince people to subscribe to the Christian belief system as a way of life. The Hebrew Bible is not used as an evangelism tool but, instead, is studied among people who self-identify as being Jews. Nevertheless, evangelism of the information in the Hebrew Bible still occurs, as the Christian Bible’s Old Testament (OT) contains the same information as is in the Hebrew Bible. Billions of people have converted to a variety of Christian denominations based on what they read in the Bible and how ministers and priests interpret the scriptures for them. Many people, myself included, find comfort and spiritual peace when reading parts of the Bible. The list of positive emotions that people have derived from reading the Bible is long. These emotions and convictions are largely based on a belief that everything in the Bible is God’s word, delivered in writing primarily through men. Reading the Bible often carries the same meaning as communicating and building a relationship with God.

The word bible comes from a Greek word, biblos, which means books or scrolls. Religious texts, defined as written scripture, were not collectively called a Bible until around the 3rd-4th centuries AD. The word bible is also named after a religious capital of the ancient civilization of Phoenicia, named Byblos (present-day Lebanon), where papyrus was produced. Byblos was considered the center of the spread of religious ideas through writings on the papyrus it produced. What do you see when holding this book called the Bible? You see a book that contains multiple sections, referred to as books. Every Bible book contains multiple chapters referred to as books of the Bible. Each book of the Bible is a compilation of information drawn from many different biblical manuscripts. A biblical manuscript is a scroll that contains handwritten copies of portions of text. These scrolls vary in size, from small with a single verse to large with multiple verses. Every book of the Bible reads as a standalone-document.

The word divine is an adjective defined as: of, from, or like God. Terms commonly used in referring to the Bible are: divine scriptures, divinely inspired manuscripts, and divine communication. The meaning behind all of these terms is that the Bible contains only words from God that were transmitted through men to write them down. Within these books of the Bible, between sections of melodic prose and epic stories, there is evidence that men made changes that were not of God. The changes have more to do with the words and desires of men than of God. The more obvious evidence of absent divine communication in parts of the Bible are the multiple inconsistencies found within and between biblical stories. While people would have challenges keeping a story straight, an Almighty God would not. These inconsistencies are reliable indicators that men made changes that were not necessarily inspired by God. Those changes include, removing, altering, and even exaggerating parts of scripture.

The table below shows differences in the number of books found in different Bibles, depending on which denomination and, in other instances, which groups of people are using it. One Orthodox Bible has more books than others and Hebrew Bibles have the least number of books. The Hebrew Bible, which contains Old Testament (OT) books, has a much longer construction period than the New Testament (NT). The Jews’ decisions about choosing which sacred texts to include in the Hebrew Bible overlapped by about 200 years with the Christians’ decisions about sacred texts for the NT. Rabbis don’t agree that the NT is God’s word; this is not censorship, instead it is a different belief system. If Christian patriarchs did not agree that an ancient manuscript was divinely written, then they did not include it in the construction of the Bible. On this table, you will notice that many books of the Bible that were not included in the Hebrew Bible were included in Christian Bible Old Testament (OT). The Bibles listed under the column entitled revision were reconstructed based on either the Catholic or Protestant Bibles.

The Protestant Bible today is divided into two sections: The Old Testament (OT) and the New Testament (NT), but this was not always the case. Prior to 1666AD, most Protestant Bibles, including the King James Version (KJV) of 1611AD and Geneva Bible of the 1500sAD, had a third section called the Apocrypha, which was located between the OT and NT. First known as the Jewish Apocrypha, these were ancient scriptures written by mostly Jews but not accepted as sacred manuscripts when the Hebrew Bible was declared sacred (canonized). Jewish Apocrypha are distinct from Christian Apocrypha, which include books written by Jews and Christians. Originally, Christian Apocrypha were defined as books that were so sacred and secret that they were to remain hidden from all but a select few. Some of the books of the Christian Apocrypha were taken from the much larger collection of Jewish Apocrypha. In Christianity, the word Apocrypha evolved over time to mean: writings that were hidden because of their questionable value to the church. Today, Christian Apocrypha carry mixed messages as either sacred and useful for educational purposes or false and heretical, reflecting a different type of mystery surrounding the book selection process for the Bible.

The same scriptures deemed sacred and secret in the early church were later declared heresy by the Protestant Church. Before 1666AD, many of these Apocryphal books were sacred enough as scripture to be included in the Protestant Bible. Some of the Jewish Apocrypha books remain part of Catholic and Orthodox Bibles today. To clarify, the construction of the Hebrew Bible did not contain information about more than 30 books forbidden as Apocrypha, yet some of the same books were allowed in Christian Bibles as divine words. That some of the same ancient books are considered sacred scripture by some religions and forbidden heresy by other religions is part of the problem with the Bible.

The Hebrew Bible is known as the Tanakh and consists of OT books also found in the Protestant Bible. The Hebrew Bible reflects the earliest evidence of how people were selective in deciding which books, or sections of books, they would accept as divinely inspired and which they would reject. The process of constructing the Christian Bible involves a thick veil of mystery that differs from the construction of the Hebrew Bible. The mystery involves the earliest first century Jews, called Nazarenes, who followed Jesus, and possessed some of the earliest biblical manuscripts about Jesus’ life and ministry. These manuscripts were written in Hebrew and Aramaic, the languages that Jesus spoke, and were housed in the Jerusalem Church. The Nazarene biblical manuscripts were destroyed by opponents from the church of Rome, and these opponents wrote multiple critiques of the Nazarene texts before destroying them. Through a process of reverse engineering, some of the texts in these early Nazarene manuscripts are known today. Reverse engineering extracts quoted Nazarene texts from critical papers that their opponents disseminated over many years. The destruction of the Nazarene manuscripts by the church of Rome was based on heresy, defined as any belief that was contrary to dominant religious doctrine. In ancient times, heresy accusations were regularly used to justify censorship, as well as other behaviors.

The OT timeline begins in the book of Genesis, but none of the subsequent OT books follow in chronological order. The New Testament (NT) timeline in the first four books is centered around Jesus and his choice of twelve disciples to support his ministry. Jesus named these twelve disciples apostles (Luke 6:13-14). The NT begins with the book of Matthew, which has content similar to the next three NT books called Mark, Luke, and John. Mark is believed to have been written first (around 70AD), Matthew second, Luke third, and John fourth (around 100AD). Because these first four NT books focus on different aspects of the life of Jesus, they are referred to as the Gospels.

‘The Gospel of Matthew is a later copy of the Gospel of Mark, using 92% of its text. It is anonymous. and it wasn't until about 150. AD that the author Matthew was assigned. It was written after the fall of the Jewish temple in 70AD, in Syria, and almost definitely written before 100. AD. It went through several versions, probably edited by different authors, until it reached its final form by the 3rd century. The first two chapters, the birth of Jesus and the genealogy, were not found in the early versions.

Matthew was not written by an eye-witness of Jesus. We know this because it is a copy of Mark. No eye witness of such an important person would have needed, or wanted, to simply copy someone-else's memories about him. It is written in Greek and not in the native tongues of anyone who met and followed Jesus, and it was written too late to reasonably be the memóires of an eye-witness… The Ebionites had a very early version of the Gospel of Matthew. There were many versions and editions of the gospels in the early years of Christianity. The Ebionites, being such an early group of Christians, had access to the earlier, less edited, version of Matthew… It appears likely that this Aramaic Matthew was somewhat different from the Matthew now in the canon. In particular, the Matthew used by Ebionite Christians would have lacked the first two chapters, which narrate Jesus' birth to a virgin - a notion that the Ebionite Christians rejected. There were doubtless other differences from our own version of Matthew's Gospel as well.’ (1st Century Christian Ebionites by Vexen Crabtree, The Human Truth Foundation, 2012; Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faith We Never Knew, by Bart Ehrman, Oxford University Press 15 Sept 2005)

The mystery surrounding the NT continues. While some believe that the Ebionites removed the first two chapters of the Aramaic version of Matthew, others believe that the Ebionites possessed the more authentic book that never had the first two chapters. Ebionites are the Nazarenes who were renamed Ebionites by their opponents in Rome. The name Nazarene carried the status of a close association with Jesus, who was known as Jesus of Nazareth and referred to as a Nazarene in the NT (Mark16:6). Initially led by James, Jesus’ brother, the Nazarenes were a religious group of people who had first-hand knowledge about Jesus and his teachings. As part of the slander and oppression that went with heresy accusations, the church in Rome referred to Nazarenes as Ebionites, which is derived from the Hebrew word ebyonim, meaning poor ones. The name Ebionite is the derogatory renaming of the Nazarenes by the church in Rome as a method of discrediting their differing beliefs about Jesus.

More than half of the NT was written by a man named Saul. Saul was a very intelligent person, skilled at reading and writing at a time when most people were illiterate. Saul had many skills as a self-professed apostle who grew his following separately from the twelve apostles appointed by Jesus. Saul changed his name to Paul and assigned the name Christianity to the belief system of his rapidly growing numbers of followers. The term Pauline Christianity is used to distinguish between Paul’s doctrines and those of the Nazarenes.

While both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles have Genesis as the first book, specifics about biblical timelines differ between them. Jews date Genesis as the beginning of the world and of the first man, Adam, to around 4004BC; about 6,000 years ago from today. Christians date Genesis as the beginning of the world and of the first man, Adam, to around 5554BC; about 7,500 years ago from today. Ancient mummies have been radiocarbon dated to 9,000 years ago. Scientists have carbon dated artifacts like an ivory sculpture of a human figure, known as Venus of Hohle Fels, to about 35,000-40,000 years ago. Flutes made from bone are carbon dated as constructed 42,000-43,000 years ago. Ancient toolkits are dated to about 100,000 years ago. The most ancient stone tools are dated from 1.76 to 2.6 million years ago. Radiocarbon dating can be accurate to within 50,000 years when used for organic materials like ivory and bone. For inorganic materials like the stone tools, dating may be less accurate, as it is done using the layers of earth sediments surrounding the tools when discovered. The scientific dating process is not without errors, which may explain why it does not align with either of the man-made handwritten biblical timelines. As carbon dating of organic materials becomes more accurate, it may reveal that neither biblical timeline is accurate. While the Bible is not a scientific document it is a historical document. Reporting history with timeline discrepancies is important to understanding the pattern of inconsistencies often found when information is removed, added, or revised as is common with censorship.

The King James Version (KJV) is the Protestant derivative of both the Orthodox and Catholic Bibles, which themselves are also derivatives of multiple ancient manuscripts handwritten on animal skins or papyrus in different languages, including dead (no longer spoken) languages of Latin and Ge’ez. The KJV was also more commonly used for taking the oath of political offices. Swearing in using parts of the Bible as an oath book, has its origins in 9th century AD England. By the 12th century AD, English courts required jury members and people testifying to take an oath on the Bible. This became a standard legal procedure in England and later, in America. The tradition of using a Bible became a standard procedure for public servants taking the oath of office. The George Washington Inaugural Bible, used to swear-in the United States of America’s (U.S.A.) first and several subsequent presidents, was a KJV. While a different Bible was used for the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, it was also a KJV; the same Lincoln Bible was used for the inauguration of the 44th and 45th U.S. presidents. Unlike the Jefferson Bible, which was a KJV that Jefferson had heavily edited, the Lincoln and George Washington Bibles were not revised and only carried the presidents’ names to assign ownership of the books. The Jefferson Bible was not used for a swearing in ceremony. Worldwide, most public servants, especially presidents, have oath of office ceremonies and many use the word God in the oaths they recite. But using the Bible for such ceremonies is more common in the USA.

No parts of the earliest known manuscripts that became part of the Bible were in English. Instead they were handwritten in Hebrew, Aramaic, Ge’ez, Greek, and Latin. Some Bibles are presumed to be literal (word for word) translations of ancient manuscripts, like the translated King James Version (KJV) used by people of various Protestant denominations of Christianity. While other Protestant translations are presumed to be thought-for-thought, like the New Living Translation (NLT) of the Bible. And still others are believed to be hybrid translation styles, like the New International Version (NIV). Regardless of translation style, the number of books in most Protestant Bibles has remained unchanged since the 18th century AD. Similarly, the number of books in the Catholic Bible remain the same between translations, though different from Protestant Bibles. Many people inherently trust that the English translations of ancient manuscripts are accurate. The Dead Sea Scrolls are more than 900 documents that consist of passages of the Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, and many scriptures categorized as Apocrypha. These scrolls have been dated as being from 1800 to more than 2000 years old. The scrolls were discovered in caves in Palestine in 1947AD and are believed to be the oldest copies of biblical text ever found. The oldest manuscript of NT text is a small fragment of one of the gospels and dates to the second century AD. Other NT manuscripts are dated after the second century AD, along with manuscripts that were rejected from inclusion in the NT. The NT, along with ancient scriptures written in early AD but not included in the NT, was constructed from fragments of biblical manuscripts covering over 2.6 million pages of biblical text. These manuscripts are in Greek, Latin, Ethiopic, Syriac and other languages. Many of the scriptures that were not included in the Bible have been more recently translated into English. While scrolls dated to late BC and early AD are considered ancient, they are still deemed to be copies of originals that remain undiscovered.

Which Bible includes the entirety and accuracy of God’s words: the Hebrew Bible, the Protestant Bible, the Women’s Bible, the Roman Catholic Bible, the Eastern Orthodox Bible, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo (EOT) Bible, the Slave Bible, Hitler’s Bible, the Crusader Bible, or the Jefferson Bible? Since the BC era, there have been many biblical manuscripts, not included in the most common Bibles, yet believed by different communities and cultures as divinely inspired in authorship. Divinely-inspired books, like Enoch and Jubilees, are found in the EOT Bible but not in any of the other Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant or Hebrew Bibles. There are multiple ancient manuscripts that complement OT and NT history, yet were not included in the Bible for reasons that will be detailed in later chapters.

‘Publication of the King James Bible in 1611 set the standard for English Scripture for some 300 years. [A] volume from the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., is one of only two surviving first editions of the King James Bible’s New Testament.’ (National Geographic Dec 2018 p.66)

Around 367AD, an Egyptian bishop by the name of Athanasius became the first religious patriarch to list the 27 books of the New Testament (NT) as the only books to be included in the NT. Despite disagreement from different patriarchs in the church, Athanasius had political ties that overrode objections. Athanasius’ decision meant erasing more than 40 manuscripts that would comprise books of the Bible that were accepted by other religious patriarchs as divinely inspired. The criteria he used for eliminating the other manuscripts was not based on divine involvement in inspiring the scriptures, but instead was based primarily on the opinions of the more powerful religious and political leaders as to whether or not they agreed with the content.

For most of the first 1500 years in the AD era, anything that the popes and bishops disagreed with was defined as heresy. Bishops went on to add additional criteria for including Bible books: the book had to be ancient, meaning, connected to one of Jesus’ closest followers and agreed upon by other bishops and cardinals throughout the world. Any NT book that did not meet these criteria was considered heresy. This was the 4th century in the Roman Empire, and, given the cultural landscape, consensus was unlikely. Except for one particular European nation that had a mostly literate population in the 8th-15th centuries AD, the more than 90% illiteracy rate in Europe took about three centuries, from 16th-19th AD, to shift to a majority of literate citizens. Being unable to read and write, the belief systems of most people were at the mercy of religious patriarchs and their oral interpretations of the Bible. Lay illiteracy became an exploited resource that allowed the Christian Church to grow more rapidly in dominance and power. Biblical interpretations went unchallenged for centuries and access to the Bible was the sole right of religious patriarchs for more than a thousand years.

There was considerable disagreement among ancient Christian patriarchs about the lack of evidence as to who actually authored each of the 27 books that became the NT. For instance, the books of Hebrews and Second Peter were accepted into the 27 even though there was little agreement among the religious patriarchs as to who wrote them. There were several scriptures that were widely accepted as divinely inspired by ancient religious leaders who were overruled so that these scriptures did not make it into the NT. Most people have probably not heard of the scriptures listed below that were rejected from the final cut. This list of scripture is not found in any of the major Bible categories:

Shepherd of Hermas,

The Gospel of the Nazarenes,

The Gospel of the Ebionites,

The Gospel According to the Hebrews,

Didache of the Apostles,

The Gospel of Truth,

The Gospel of the Savior,

The Gospel of Mary,

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,

The Proto-Gospel of James,

The Acts of Thecla,

On the Origin of the World,

The Apocalypse of Peter,

The Apocalypse of Paul.

The year 325AD made history as the first religious council of the Christian Church, otherwise called the Council of Nicaea. It was organized and led by a Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, in what is now Turkey. The earliest Christian Church was known as the Pauline Church which was named the Roman Catholic Church. Most existing Christian churches today are denominational branches of the Catholic Church. Throughout this book, the use of the word church is intended to refer to the Roman Catholic Church and the churches that branched off from it. The main branches are Orthodox and multiple different Protestant denominations. The first church of Jesus-followers, the Jerusalem Church of Nazarenes, will not be subsumed under the word church used throughout this book.

The Council of Nicaea was held the year after Constantine gained his title through conquests and the year before he put to death his eldest son and second wife, the mother of his three younger sons. In other words, Christian bishops were directed by a political military dictator to determine the content of doctrine that would be used as the rule of religious law throughout the empire, and eventually, throughout the world. These new doctrines were enforced overtly in the beginnings of the Nicene Creed and covertly through the revisions and removals of divinely inspired manuscripts based on the subjective definition of heresy. Many religious leaders of that era continued to question and disagree with these decisions because they believed that Christianity was being manipulated and corrupted. Objections were suppressed in different ways, from excommunication to exile to execution.

Unlike truth which often stands on its own merits, lies tend to be convoluted, resulting in inconsistencies. With the right questions and new pieces of information, lies fall apart like a domino effect. Lies are inherently confusing, while truth is often crystal clear. Many people whom I’ve talked to about the Bible would disagree. Since I was a child, I was taught that, while the Bible can be confusing, it is still the infallible words of God as spoken through others. In fact, it may seem confusing, but was a common refrain in response to questions I posed about