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 Tob'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!”
