Matthew 28:19 – Trinity corrupted verse

BroRando · Jul 26, 2021

Mungo said:
See post #18 or are you just ignoring posts that show you are wrong?

I think I'll stick with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:11)

Enoch111 · Jul 26, 2021

BroRando said:
Where's the scripture of people being baptized in a different formula?

For all we know Luke simply abbreviated the formula when writing in Acts. So here are the actual facts, whether you wish to believe them or not. I am quoting extensively from Plummer's commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (with my sub-headings):

QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN RAISED
"With regard to our Lord's command to baptize, as recorded here, several questions have been raised to which an answer ought to be given, 1. Is ver. 19, as we have it in our Bibles, part of the genuine text of Mt.? 2. If it is, does it give the substance of words actually uttered by our Lord? 3. Does it order the use of a particular baptismal formula?

THE GENUINENESS OF THE VERSE IS BEYOND QUESTION
I. The question of the genuineness of the verse may be answered with the utmost confidence. * The verse is found in every extant Greek MS., whether uncial or cursive, and in every extant Version, which contains this portion of Mt. In a few witnesses the conclusion of the Gospel is wanting, but there is no reason for believing that in these witnesses the verse or any portion of it was omitted...It is incredible that an interpolation of this character can have been made in the text of Mt. without leaving a trace of its unauthenticity in a single MS. or Version. See Burkitt, Evangelion da- Mepharreshe^ ii. p. 153. The evidence for its genuineness is overwhelming…

EUSEBIUS IS THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS CREATED CONFUSION
The chief argument is that Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea (A.D. 313-339), where he had access to a great library, often quotes this passage and habitually omits, or stops short of, the words which speak of baptism. Therefore the original text was simply, ' Go and make disciples of all nations,' perhaps with the addition ' in My name.' Dr. Chase has conclusively shown the fallacious character of this argument Eusebius quotes the verse, with the command to baptize into the name of the Trinity, when he requires the command for his purpose ; when he requires the rest of the verse, but not the command, he omits the latter.

HORT (THE OPPONENT OF THE KJB) STRONLY SUPPORTED THE VERSE
…Writing on 1 Pet. i. 2, Dr. Hort says: "The three clauses of this verse beyond all reasonable question set forth the operation of the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Son respectively. Here therefore, as in several Epistles of S. Paul (i Cor. xiL 4-6; 2 Cor. xiii. 14; Eph. iv. 4-6), there is an implicit reference to the Threefold Name. In no passage is there any indication that the writer was independently working out a doctrinal scheme : a recognised belief or idea seems to be everywhere presupposed. How such an idea could arise in the mind of any apostle without sanction from a Word of the Lord, it is difficult to imagine: and this consideration is a sufficient answer to the doubts which have been raised whether Mt, xxviii:19 may not have been added or recast by a later generation,^ The strongest case among the passages named is 2 Cor. xiii. 14, on which see the present writer's notes in the Cambridge Greek Testament. But there are other passages which might be added : 2 Thes. ii. 13-15 ; Eph. ii. 18, iii. 14-17 ; Heb. vi. 4-6 ; i Jn. iii. 23, 24, iv. 2 ; Rev. i. 4, 5 ; Jude 20, 21.

IT IS ASSUMED THAT CHRIST COULD NOT POSSIBLY HAVE SAID THESE WORDS
3. One reason for doubting whether our Lord ever uttered anything like the command to baptize as recorded by Mt. is the thought that He would not be likely to prescribe a set form of words for this purpose. And this thought is strengthened by the fact that nowhere in the N.T. do we read of the Trinitarian formula being used.

JUSTIN MARTYR IN THE 2ND CENTURY CONFIRMED MT 28:19
Justin Martyr, writing a.d. 150-160, tells the heathen that Christians use the Trinitarian formula, which, however, he paraphrases, so as to make it more intelligible to outsiders. He says that they make the purification in water after the manner of a new birth, " in (lit on) the Name of the Father of the universe and Sovereign God and of our Saviour Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit" (Apol i. 61).*

TERTULLIAN CONFIRMS IT
And Tertullian is witness as to what was customary less than fifty years later.

THE 2ND CENTURY DIDACHE CONFIRMS IT
The Didache (7) exactly follows Mt. " Having first taught all these things, baptize into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit in living water " ; where "living water" probably means river-water or spring-water, as distinct from what is stagnant."

GRACE ambassador · Jul 26, 2021

keithr said:
Matthew 28 (WEB): (19) “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, (20) teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you”.

When I was baptised, about 27 years ago, I was insistent that I should be baptised in Jesus’ name, and not in the name of “the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”, as is mentioned in Matthew 28:19. I was convinced of the error of the Trinity doctrine, and I strongly suspected that this was a corrupted verse – but I had no evidence to support that suspicion at that time. Now, 27 years later, and after someone on this forum claimed that they had evidence of the corruption, I have researched it and finally found evidence that vindicates my suspicion. This is a brief summary of what I found.

My suspicions were mainly based on the fact that his disciples didn’t obey that command. There are only four cases which are recorded in the New Testament where it mentions the disciples baptising in somebody's name, and in all cases they were baptised in the name of Jesus only. In particular, when Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, just days after Jesus' command in Matthew 28:19, he said:

“Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:36-38, WEB).

I don’t think Peter forgot Jesus' command so quickly, especially considering that Jesus said, “the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and will remind you of all that I said to you” (John 14:26).

Also, Luke’s and Mark’s version of the Great Commission don’t mention baptising in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. They wrote:

“And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Luke 24:47). “And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark 16:15-16).

If we suspect that a verse has been corrupted from the original writing, then normally we would seek the oldest copy that we have; the older the manuscript the more likely that it is a faithful copy (remembering that this was many centuries before the invention of printing presses, so all books were written by hand). Unfortunately, we don’t have any New Testament manuscripts older than the 4th century AD, mainly because in AD 303 the Roman Emperor Diocletian ordered that all Christian sacred books should be burnt. Diocletian's first "Edict against the Christians" prohibited Christians from assembling for worship, and ordered the destruction of their scriptures, liturgical books, and places of worship across the empire. Very few manuscripts survived, and in the only codices which would be even likely to preserve an older reading, namely the Sinaitic Syriac and the oldest Latin Manuscript, the pages which contained the end of Matthew are missing (which I think is suspicious!).

However, while we don’t have manuscripts from the first three centuries, we do have other documents where the writers have quoted from the copies of Matthew that they had access to during those times. In particular, Eusebius Pamphili, or Eusebius of Caesarea, was born about 270 A.D. and died about 340 A.D. He became a Trinitarian, and later in life he assisted in the preparation of the Nicene Creed (325 A.D.).

The Encyclopedia of Religion & Ethics states, “The facts are, in summary, that Eusebius quotes Matthew 28:19 21 times, either omitting everything between 'nations' and 'teaching’, or in the form 'make disciples of all nations in my name', the latter form being the more frequent”.

Fraternal Visitor, in The Christadelphian Monatshefte, 1924, page 148, states, "Codex B. (Vaticanus) would be the best of all existing MSS if it were completely preserved, less damaged, (less) corrected, more easily legible, and not altered by a later hand in more than two thousand places. Eusebius, therefore, is not without grounds for accusing the adherents of Athanasius and of the newly-arisen doctrine of the Trinity of falsifying the Bible more than once."

So it seems as though the few copies of the Matthew manuscripts that they had were altered not long after the Council of Nicaea.

There is now even better proof than this though. It was known by the Catholic Church that the Jews had preserved a copy of the original Gospel of Matthew in the Hebrew language. The fact that it exists is proof that God wanted it preserved. There have been many attempts to destroy the credibility of this very valuable Hebrew Gospel, because it is the only existing manuscript that proves Matthew 28:19 did not originally contain the Trinitarian baptismal formula. Catholics and Protestants have no other reason to cast doubt on the validity of this manuscript. In fact, early writers claim that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew:

“As having learnt by tradition concerning the four Gospels, which alone are unquestionable in the Church of God under heaven, that first was written according to Matthew, who was once a tax collector but afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, who published it for those who from Judaism came to believe, composed as it was in the Hebrew language” (Origen circa 210 A.D., quoted by Eusebius, Church History, Book 6, Chapter 25, Section 4).

In 1987 Dr. George Howard published an English translation of Shem Tov's Matthew Hebrew Gospel. A scanned copy of part one of the second edition of the book is available for download at http://www.kingdomofyisrael.org/s/w...spel-of-MATTHEW-by-George-Howard-Part-One.pdf (56.1MB). To just see the last page, Dr. G. Reckart, of the Apostolic Theological Bible College, has published the pages showing the Hebrew text and the English translation of the end of Matthew 28 on a web page – see Mathew 28:19 Fraud Exposed, and follow the links in that page for more evidence and arguments that prove the verse was corrupted.

The translation into English of verses 19-20 is “Go, and (teach) them to carry out all the things which I have commanded you forever”.

So it seems that the Catholic Church has willingly lied about Matthew 28:19 and the Catholics in general (including the Eastern Orthodox) have lied to the world!

From Acts 4 (WEB):

8) Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “…
10) in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, …
12) There is salvation in none other, for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, by which we must be saved!”

Precious friend, like you I had 38 years of Mass Confusion, Until The
Precious LORD Led me To HIS Word Of Truth, Rightly Divided.
You may find that some research about the "name to be baptized in"
is a moot point, IF God, In HIS Word Of Truth, Shows us That
HE "Does Not" Require the OT ritual {under LAW}, for us, Today,
Under HIS PURE GRACE:

"Main denomination Divider" Poll & 13 Bible baptisms

Please Be Richly Encouraged, Exhorted, and Edified!
God's Simple Will!

BroRando · Jul 26, 2021

Enoch111 said:
For all we know Luke simply abbreviated the formula when writing in Acts. So here are the actual facts, whether you wish to believe them or not. I am quoting extensively from Plummer's commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (with my sub-headings):

QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN RAISED
"With regard to our Lord's command to baptize, as recorded here, several questions have been raised to which an answer ought to be given, 1. Is ver. 19, as we have it in our Bibles, part of the genuine text of Mt.? 2. If it is, does it give the substance of words actually uttered by our Lord? 3. Does it order the use of a particular baptismal formula?

THE GENUINENESS OF THE VERSE IS BEYOND QUESTION
I. The question of the genuineness of the verse may be answered with the utmost confidence. * The verse is found in every extant Greek MS., whether uncial or cursive, and in every extant Version, which contains this portion of Mt. In a few witnesses the conclusion of the Gospel is wanting, but there is no reason for believing that in these witnesses the verse or any portion of it was omitted...It is incredible that an interpolation of this character can have been made in the text of Mt. without leaving a trace of its unauthenticity in a single MS. or Version. See Burkitt, Evangelion da- Mepharreshe^ ii. p. 153. The evidence for its genuineness is overwhelming…

EUSEBIUS IS THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS CREATED CONFUSION
The chief argument is that Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea (A.D. 313-339), where he had access to a great library, often quotes this passage and habitually omits, or stops short of, the words which speak of baptism. Therefore the original text was simply, ' Go and make disciples of all nations,' perhaps with the addition ' in My name.' Dr. Chase has conclusively shown the fallacious character of this argument Eusebius quotes the verse, with the command to baptize into the name of the Trinity, when he requires the command for his purpose ; when he requires the rest of the verse, but not the command, he omits the latter.

HORT (THE OPPONENT OF THE KJB) STRONLY SUPPORTED THE VERSE
…Writing on 1 Pet. i. 2, Dr. Hort says: "The three clauses of this verse beyond all reasonable question set forth the operation of the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Son respectively. Here therefore, as in several Epistles of S. Paul (i Cor. xiL 4-6; 2 Cor. xiii. 14; Eph. iv. 4-6), there is an implicit reference to the Threefold Name. In no passage is there any indication that the writer was independently working out a doctrinal scheme : a recognised belief or idea seems to be everywhere presupposed. How such an idea could arise in the mind of any apostle without sanction from a Word of the Lord, it is difficult to imagine: and this consideration is a sufficient answer to the doubts which have been raised whether Mt, xxviii:19 may not have been added or recast by a later generation,^ The strongest case among the passages named is 2 Cor. xiii. 14, on which see the present writer's notes in the Cambridge Greek Testament. But there are other passages which might be added : 2 Thes. ii. 13-15 ; Eph. ii. 18, iii. 14-17 ; Heb. vi. 4-6 ; i Jn. iii. 23, 24, iv. 2 ; Rev. i. 4, 5 ; Jude 20, 21.

IT IS ASSUMED THAT CHRIST COULD NOT POSSIBLY HAVE SAID THESE WORDS
3. One reason for doubting whether our Lord ever uttered anything like the command to baptize as recorded by Mt. is the thought that He would not be likely to prescribe a set form of words for this purpose. And this thought is strengthened by the fact that nowhere in the N.T. do we read of the Trinitarian formula being used.

JUSTIN MARTYR IN THE 2ND CENTURY CONFIRMED MT 28:19
Justin Martyr, writing a.d. 150-160, tells the heathen that Christians use the Trinitarian formula, which, however, he paraphrases, so as to make it more intelligible to outsiders. He says that they make the purification in water after the manner of a new birth, " in (lit on) the Name of the Father of the universe and Sovereign God and of our Saviour Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit" (Apol i. 61).*

TERTULLIAN CONFIRMS IT
And Tertullian is witness as to what was customary less than fifty years later.

THE 2ND CENTURY DIDACHE CONFIRMS IT
The Didache (7) exactly follows Mt. " Having first taught all these things, baptize into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit in living water " ; where "living water" probably means river-water or spring-water, as distinct from what is stagnant."

The Historian Eusebius of Caesarea (263-339), had extensive access to the Library that kept a copy of the original text of Matthew. Eusebius was also a Bishop whom quoted the Shem Tov Book of Matthew some seventeen times and all quotes of (Matthew 28:19) were quotes of one accord with no variations, (In My Name).

However, between the years 315 and 325 CE the Hebrew Book of Matthew was shelved or in some manner hidden away. "The Greek version used by Eusebius poured more widely these verses, but in no way changing the sense of the Hebrew text, because when he quotes in his Ecclesiastical History (Book 3, Chapter 5:2) part of Matthew 28:19, he writes:

“Poreuthentes mathêteusate panta ta ethnê en to onomati mou” or
“Go and make disciples of all nations in my name.”

"In fact, Eusebius refers to this passage well over a dozen times in the same form as the above quotations. Now you must also be aware that this quotation by Eusebius is also earlier than our earliest manuscripts for this verse. Hence, it is quite possible that a corruption occurred around the time the Arian controversy broke out under Constantine's reign. The following quotation is particularly interesting:

For he did not enjoin them “to make disciples of all the nations” simply and without qualification, but with the essential addition “in his name”.

Wrangler · Jul 26, 2021

Enoch111 said:
For all we know Luke simply abbreviated the formula when writing in Acts.

The extent people go to rationalize their doctrine!

It is much more reasonable to suppose ONE verse, Matthew 28:19, was expanded to comply with doctrine than many verses were "abbreviated" to cause confusion.

Wrangler · Jul 26, 2021

Enoch111 said:
EUSEBIUS IS THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS CREATED CONFUSION

Well, there are other speculators who cause confusion ...

Enoch111 said:
For all we know Luke simply abbreviated the formula when writing in Acts.

Wrangler · Jul 26, 2021

Enoch111 said:
EUSEBIUS IS THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS CREATED CONFUSION

Funny, I was just reading in 2 Chronicles that 400 false prophets were proven wrong by 1 true prophet. Democracy is not how truth is determined.

BroRando · Jul 26, 2021

Wrangler said:
The extent people go to rationalize their doctrine!

It is much more reasonable to suppose ONE verse, Matthew 28:19, was expanded to comply with doctrine than many verses were "abbreviated" to cause confusion.

Jesus stated, "Go in through the narrow gate, because broad is the gate and spacious is the road leading off into destruction, and many are going in through it; whereas narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are finding it." (Matthew 7:13-14)

Mungo · Jul 27, 2021

BroRando said:
I think I'll stick with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:11)

So you are ignoring anything that contradicts your claims.
You were prepared to quote Cardinal Ratzinger and Origen when it suited you.
Just shows how dishonest your posting is.

Marymog · Jul 27, 2021

BroRando said:
The trinity doctrine never acknowledges Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those not acknowledging Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.” (2 John 7) The foreign doctrine removes Jesus Christ by omission and teaches a different Jesus as it promotes a false baptism by replacing Christ with its own doctrine.

Towards the end of the first century, the Apostle John wrote, “Young children, it is the last hour, and just as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared, from which fact we know that it is the last hour.” (1 John 2:18) For 1,900 years, ‘the god of this system of things has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, so that the illumination of the glorious good news about the Christ, who is the image of God, might not shine through.’ (2 Corinthians 4:4) “Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son.” (1 John 2:22)

The Catholic Encyclopedia, II, page 263: “The baptismal formula was changed from the name of Jesus Christ to the words Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by the Catholic Church in the second century.”

Read more...

Hi,

I can’t find that quote in the Catholic encyclopedia II. Can you provide the link where you found that? Thank You.

keithr · Jul 27, 2021

Enoch111 said:
This Hebrew corruption of the Greek is your "proof"? Everyone knows that all the Gospels were written in Greek. So this is highly suspect.

You obviously didn't read my first post, which includes:

“As having learnt by tradition concerning the four Gospels, which alone are unquestionable in the Church of God under heaven, that first was written according to Matthew, who was once a tax collector but afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, who published it for those who from Judaism came to believe, composed as it was in the Hebrew language” (Origen circa 210 A.D., quoted by Eusebius, Church History, Book 6, Chapter 25, Section 4).

keithr · Jul 27, 2021

Mungo said:
This is Origen's statement on that verse (Rom 6:3):
You may perhaps also be asking this: Since the Lord himself told the disciples to baptize all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, why does the Apostle employ here the name of Christ alone in baptism? For he says, “We have been baptized into Christ,” although surely it should not be deemed a legitimate baptism unless it is in the name of the Trinity.
(Commentary on Romans 5:8 [ca. A.D. 250]).

This seems suspicious too. It mentions "the name of the Trinity", but the Trinity wasn't officially formulated until the Council of Constantinoble in 381 A.D., 130 years later. (The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD declared that God and Jesus were a duality, with the pagan Roman emperor Constantine coming up with the formula expressing the relation of Christ to God - “of one substance with the Father”.)

Mungo · Jul 27, 2021

keithr said:
This seems suspicious too. It mentions "the name of the Trinity", but the Trinity wasn't officially formulated until the Council of Constantinoble in 381 A.D., 130 years later. (The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD declared that God and Jesus were a duality, with the pagan Roman emperor Constantine coming up with the formula expressing the relation of Christ to God - “of one substance with the Father”.)

Why is it suspicious? The definition of the Trinity did not happen until 381 but it didn't burst onto he scene as something novel.

The actual term was used well before.

From This Rock, July 1991

Theophilus of Antioch
"It is the attribute of God, of the most high and almighty and of the living God, not only to be everywhere, but also to see and hear all; for he can in no way be contained in a place. . . . The three days before the luminaries were created are types of the Trinity: God, his Word, and his Wisdom" (Ad Autolycus 2:15 [A.D. 181]).

Tertullian
"And at the same time the mystery of the oikonomia is safeguarded, for the unity is distributed in a Trinity. Placed in order, the Three are the Father, Son, and Spirit.
(Against Praxeas 2:1-4; 9:1 [A.D. 213]).
And that is a cut down version of a quote discussing the Trinity.

I can also give you early quotes that explicitly talk about the Trinity without actually using the term.
For example
Athenagoras of Athens
"The Son of God is the Word of the Father in thought and actuality. By him and through him all things were made, the Father and the Son being one. Since the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son by the unity and power of the Spirit, the Mind and Word of the Father is the Son of God. And if, in your exceedingly great wisdom, it occurs to you to inquire what is meant by 'the Son,' I will tell you briefly: He is the first- begotten of the Father, not as having been produced, for from the beginning God had the Word in himself, God being eternal mind and eternally rational, but as coming forth to be the model and energizing force of all material things" (Supplication for the Christians 10:2-4 [A.D. 177]).

Mungo · Jul 27, 2021

Marymog said:
Hi,

I can’t find that quote in the Catholic encyclopedia II. Can you provide the link where you found that? Thank You.

Good luck with getting that.
JWs are very deceitful in their quotes as I showed with the Cardinal Ratzinger quote

keithr · Jul 27, 2021

Mungo said:
Why is it suspicious? The definition of the Trinity did not happen until 381 but it didn't burst onto he scene as something novel.

The actual term was used well before.

I wasn't aware of the term Trinity being used before 381 A.D. I still think it's supsicous that nobody thought at the Council of Nicaea to mention the Trinity, after 2 months of debate, if the whole point of that Council was to decide on who Jesus was, and his relationship to God. This would seem to imply that the Trinity was not accepted as truth by the 300 or so bishops who attended.

Mungo · Jul 27, 2021

BroRando said:
Now, I showed you several scriptures how believers in Jesus Christ were baptized. In HIS NAME.... For so great was the virtue attaching to his appellation that the Apostle says, "God bestowed on him the name above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth." It was right therefore that he should emphasize the virtue of the power residing in his name but hidden from the many, and therefore say to his Apostles, "Go ye, and make disciples of all the nations in my name.’ (Demonstatio Evangelica, col. 240, p. 136)

I don't know what col 240 means but page 136 of Demonstatio Evangelica says nothing like that quote.

Another quote from BroRando's link in post #5 says
“The Demonstratio Evangelica” by Eusebius: Eusebius was the Church historian and Bishop of Caesarea. On page 152 Eusebius quotes the early book of Matthew that he had in his library in Caesarea. According to this eyewitness of an unaltered Book of Matthew that could have been the original book or the first copy of the original of Matthew. Eusebius informs us of Jesus’ actual words to his disciples in the original text of Matthew 28:19: “With one word and voice He said to His disciples: “Go, and make disciples of all nations in My Name, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” That Name is Jesus Christ.

This is another deceptive quote.
Yes, Eusebius writes as quoted but the context is about evangelising barbarians and Christ's command to go out and preach the gospel.
There is not a full stop at the of that sentence but it continues "and He enjoined the effect to His Word; and in a little while every race of the Greeks and Barbarians was brought into discipleship and laws were spread among all nations opposed to the superstition of the ancients.....and then he goes on a lot more. The point is he was not discussing baptism but going out to spread the gospel. He only needed the first part of Mt 28:19 to make his point. The rest was superfluous.

Mungo · Jul 27, 2021

keithr said:
I wasn't aware of the term Trinity being used before 381 A.D. I still think it's supsicous that nobody thought at the Council of Nicaea to mention the Trinity, after 2 months of debate, if the whole point of that Council was to decide on who Jesus was, and his relationship to God. This would seem to imply that the Trinity was not accepted as truth by the 300 or so bishops who attended.

You are grasping at straws. The issue was not the Trinity but Jesus.

It is quite clear that the concept of Trinity, and the actual word, was used by the early fathers before 325.

Robert Gwin · Jul 27, 2021

keithr said:
Matthew 28 (WEB): (19) “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, (20) teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you”.

When I was baptised, about 27 years ago, I was insistent that I should be baptised in Jesus’ name, and not in the name of “the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”, as is mentioned in Matthew 28:19. I was convinced of the error of the Trinity doctrine, and I strongly suspected that this was a corrupted verse – but I had no evidence to support that suspicion at that time. Now, 27 years later, and after someone on this forum claimed that they had evidence of the corruption, I have researched it and finally found evidence that vindicates my suspicion. This is a brief summary of what I found.

My suspicions were mainly based on the fact that his disciples didn’t obey that command. There are only four cases which are recorded in the New Testament where it mentions the disciples baptising in somebody's name, and in all cases they were baptised in the name of Jesus only. In particular, when Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, just days after Jesus' command in Matthew 28:19, he said:

“Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:36-38, WEB).

I don’t think Peter forgot Jesus' command so quickly, especially considering that Jesus said, “the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and will remind you of all that I said to you” (John 14:26).

Also, Luke’s and Mark’s version of the Great Commission don’t mention baptising in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. They wrote:

“And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Luke 24:47). “And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark 16:15-16).

If we suspect that a verse has been corrupted from the original writing, then normally we would seek the oldest copy that we have; the older the manuscript the more likely that it is a faithful copy (remembering that this was many centuries before the invention of printing presses, so all books were written by hand). Unfortunately, we don’t have any New Testament manuscripts older than the 4th century AD, mainly because in AD 303 the Roman Emperor Diocletian ordered that all Christian sacred books should be burnt. Diocletian's first "Edict against the Christians" prohibited Christians from assembling for worship, and ordered the destruction of their scriptures, liturgical books, and places of worship across the empire. Very few manuscripts survived, and in the only codices which would be even likely to preserve an older reading, namely the Sinaitic Syriac and the oldest Latin Manuscript, the pages which contained the end of Matthew are missing (which I think is suspicious!).

However, while we don’t have manuscripts from the first three centuries, we do have other documents where the writers have quoted from the copies of Matthew that they had access to during those times. In particular, Eusebius Pamphili, or Eusebius of Caesarea, was born about 270 A.D. and died about 340 A.D. He became a Trinitarian, and later in life he assisted in the preparation of the Nicene Creed (325 A.D.).

The Encyclopedia of Religion & Ethics states, “The facts are, in summary, that Eusebius quotes Matthew 28:19 21 times, either omitting everything between 'nations' and 'teaching’, or in the form 'make disciples of all nations in my name', the latter form being the more frequent”.

Fraternal Visitor, in The Christadelphian Monatshefte, 1924, page 148, states, "Codex B. (Vaticanus) would be the best of all existing MSS if it were completely preserved, less damaged, (less) corrected, more easily legible, and not altered by a later hand in more than two thousand places. Eusebius, therefore, is not without grounds for accusing the adherents of Athanasius and of the newly-arisen doctrine of the Trinity of falsifying the Bible more than once."

So it seems as though the few copies of the Matthew manuscripts that they had were altered not long after the Council of Nicaea.

There is now even better proof than this though. It was known by the Catholic Church that the Jews had preserved a copy of the original Gospel of Matthew in the Hebrew language. The fact that it exists is proof that God wanted it preserved. There have been many attempts to destroy the credibility of this very valuable Hebrew Gospel, because it is the only existing manuscript that proves Matthew 28:19 did not originally contain the Trinitarian baptismal formula. Catholics and Protestants have no other reason to cast doubt on the validity of this manuscript. In fact, early writers claim that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew:

“As having learnt by tradition concerning the four Gospels, which alone are unquestionable in the Church of God under heaven, that first was written according to Matthew, who was once a tax collector but afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, who published it for those who from Judaism came to believe, composed as it was in the Hebrew language” (Origen circa 210 A.D., quoted by Eusebius, Church History, Book 6, Chapter 25, Section 4).

In 1987 Dr. George Howard published an English translation of Shem Tov's Matthew Hebrew Gospel. A scanned copy of part one of the second edition of the book is available for download at http://www.kingdomofyisrael.org/s/w...spel-of-MATTHEW-by-George-Howard-Part-One.pdf (56.1MB). To just see the last page, Dr. G. Reckart, of the Apostolic Theological Bible College, has published the pages showing the Hebrew text and the English translation of the end of Matthew 28 on a web page – see Mathew 28:19 Fraud Exposed, and follow the links in that page for more evidence and arguments that prove the verse was corrupted.

The translation into English of verses 19-20 is “Go, and (teach) them to carry out all the things which I have commanded you forever”.

So it seems that the Catholic Church has willingly lied about Matthew 28:19 and the Catholics in general (including the Eastern Orthodox) have lied to the world!

From Acts 4 (WEB):

8) Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “…
10) in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, …
12) There is salvation in none other, for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, by which we must be saved!”

Like many things in the Bible Keith, what is stated actually means something else. Being baptized in all their names is not actually possible as the holy spirit is not named in the Bible. It is in the Bible however so it must have a reason for being there, an important meaning for Christians. Our take on it is:

What does it mean to be baptized “in the name of the Father”? It means that the baptismal candidate recognizes our heavenly Father’s office and authority. Jehovah God is thus acknowledged as our Creator, “the Most High over all the earth,” and the Universal Sovereign.—Psalm 83:18; Isaiah 40:28; Acts 4:24.

To be baptized ‘in the name of the Son’ means to recognize Jesus’ office and authority as God’s only-begotten Son. (1 John 4:9) Those qualified for baptism accept Jesus as the one through whom God has provided “a ransom in exchange for many.” (Matthew 20:28; 1 Timothy 2:5, 6) Baptismal candidates must also acknowledge the “superior position” to which God has exalted his Son.—Philippians 2:8-11; Revelation 19:16.

Baptism ‘in the name of the holy spirit’ implies recognition of that spirit as having its source in God and as exercising its function according to the divine will.

Thanks for posting this topic sir.

keithr · Jul 27, 2021

Mungo said:
This is another deceptive quote.
Yes, Eusebius writes as quoted but the context is about evangelising barbarians and Christ's command to go out and preach the gospel. ...
He only needed the first part of Mt 28:19 to make his point. The rest was superfluous.

BroRando's quote was from chapter 6, which is titled "Against Those who think that the Christ of God was a Sorcerer" (see Eusebius of Caesarea: Demonstratio Evangelica. Tr. W.J. Ferrar (1920) -- Book 3 - search for the line beginning (132)). He finished the paragraph with:

"What similar daring has been shewn by the ancient sorcerers before the time of Jesus, or even after Him, which would make it plausible that He was assisted in His sorcery by others? And if the only answer to this is that no one has ever been like Him, for no one was the source of His virtue, surely it is time to confess that a strange and divine Being has sojourned in our humanity, by Whom alone, and for the first time in man's history, things unrecorded before in human annals have been effected."

Nevertheless, it still quotes Matthew 28:19-20, from the manuscripts that Eusebius had, and shows what Matthew originally wrote.

TheslightestID · Jul 27, 2021

Seems to me, baptising in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are just fine, but I fail to see how that justifies the Trinity.

Those three are of the holiest that exist, but that doesnt mean they all three make up God. As I see it, God is God, the all powerful, Jesus is his son (duh) and the Holy Spirit, is our helper...three individual things, and the Bible is very clear on that.

Then men got their dirty little hands on it, and unfortunately, some choose to agree with men over Gods word.

Matthew 28:19 – Trinity corrupted verse

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