gnostic handbook

Chapter Twelve:
Restoring the Bible
Restoring the Bible
When we consider the Bible and the nature of the Gnostic tradition we need to grapple with
many questions. The first major issue is the corruption and distortion that has crept into the Bible
and the process of restoring it to its original Gnostic form. The process of restoring the Bible
is a difficult task because it involves a wide range of problems. Obviously, there is the simple
issue of what books should be in the Bible, what books have been edited and changed and
what texts have been tampered with. But there is far more, there are many sections in the Bible
which have been added in, words have been translated in obscure and contradictory ways and
terms which had specific applications at the time of writing have been twisted out of context.
Still, this is a beginning, and the first step to Biblical understanding is context. So much of the
Bible can only be comprehended in terms of the surrounding passages, the flow of the book
and the period it was written in. The verse structure of the Bible is artificial, it was only added
in for ease of reading with modern translations, hence, many of the stops, passage divisions
and paragraph forms, which we take for granted, are simply arbitrary. To give you a classic
example - what did the criminal on the cross actually say to Jesus in Luke 23:43
And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me
in paradise
or
And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee To day, shalt thou be with me
in paradise.
There were no comma's in the original edition, so did Jesus say that the criminal would be in
paradise today (ie. ascend to heaven on his death) or did Jesus simply say the criminal would
be in paradise sometime and simply use a turn of phrase to intimate how he was speaking, " I
say unto thee today ". This is a clear example of how modern grammatical composition, when
added into the Bible, can be used to produce misleading theology. In the above example, we
see how certain denominations using modern translations are able to use the first form of the
verse in an attempt to prove that we go straight to Heaven when we die. Even though this concept
is based on a dubious use of grammar, especially dubious if we understand that the grammar
was added in by translators for easy reading; nothing more, nothing less.