Forgetting Jesus Freak Bullshit, Let's Stick To History:

[Minimalist]

From the same book:

Early xtian writers who say one thing and then say another!

Pagan critics noticed this as well. Celsus accused the early Christian scribes of unscrupulously altering texts left and right:

 

 

“Some believers, as though from a drinking bout, go so far as to oppose themselves and alter the original text of the gospel three or four or several times over, and they change its character to enable them to deny difficulties in the face of criticism.”20

 

 

The Church Father Origen responded to this charge of Celsus by claiming that he knew of no one who had altered the Gospel except heretics,21 so this was no argument against True Christians, who would never do such a thing. In private writings, however, Origen changes his tune:

 

 

“The differences among the manuscripts have become great, either through the negligence of some copyists or through the perverse audacity of others; they either neglect to check over what they have transcribed, or, in the process of checking, they make additions or deletions as they please.”22

 

 

The two faces of Origen: when confronted with a nonbeliever’s accusation, Origen actually denies that Christians changed texts, but when talking to his fellow Christians, he turns around and complains about the exact same thing himself! Origen was not the only one complaining that “heretics” altered the texts of scripture to make them say what they wanted them to say; it was a very common charge from early Christian writers.23

 

But Bart Ehrman observes that increasingly, the evidence of our surviving manuscripts points the finger in the opposite direction (besides, we must remember Origen himself was eventually condemned as a heretic – so when he complains about “heretics” he may well be talking about Christians we would call “orthodox.”). In his popular book Misquoting Jesus and his well-documented scholarly study The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, he carefully details examples of the “official” Church scribes quietly changing the scriptures to make them less useful to heretical arguments and bring them more in line with their own dogma.