We Don't Need to Lie

 

One of the pages on FB that I follow posted the above meme. If one were to look at the bottom they could see that this was originally posted by another page called TRT World. I've added a link to their original post for any who want to check it out.

There are a few things wrong with what TRT reported, the first being the dating of the manuscript as from the 1st Century AD, when the Daily Mail reported on this manuscript back in 2012, they dated it as being 1500 years old - which if accurate, means the manuscript dates back to the 6th Century AD. In reading the article from the Daily Mail, one can see an emphasis is placed on St. Barnabas. And if one were so inclined, just a little bit of digging will offer this other article from the Daily Mail which states the manuscript is the Gospel of Barnabas.

The Gospel of Barnabas is a pseudopigraphical work dating from the Middle Ages. Wikipedia has this to say about the Gospel of Barnabas,

"The gospel's origins and author have been debated; several theories are speculative, and none has general acceptance. The Gospel of Barnabas is dated to the 13th to 15th centuries,[2] much too late to have been written by Barnabas (fl. 1st century CE). Many of its teachings are synchronous with those in the Quran and oppose the Bible, especially the New Testament; some, however, contradict the Quran."

The manuscript in question seems to be a forgery,

In 1985, Turkish media reported that an alleged Syriac-language copy of the Gospel of Barnabas had been found in the city of Hakkâri. [27] In February 2012, the Turkish press reported that the Ministry of Culture and Tourism confirmed that a 52-page biblical manuscript thought to be the Gospel of Barnabas had been deposited at the Ethnography Museum of Ankara.[28] The manuscript was reportedly found in Cyprus in 2000 in a police anti-smuggling operation, and had been in a police repository since then.[29] Photographs of a cover page were widely published, on which can be read an inscription in a neo-Aramaic hand: "In the name of our Lord, this book is written on the hands of the monks of the high monastery in Nineveh, in the 1,500th year of our Lord."[30]

This finding was reported by the mass media as being a 1500-year-old manuscript of the Gospel of Barnabas with prophecies of the coming of Muhammad. No further report has been published. (Ibid)

There are a few other things wrong with the manuscript, as well, which an article from the Vatican Insider covers.

And, discarding all of that, such a find - being this much of a manuscript - would be amazing if it actually came from the 1st Century AD.

The accepted oldest fragment of the New Testament (emphasis on fragment) is the Rylands Library Papyrus P52, which dates roughly from AD 100 to AD 175 (or later). The fragment itself is "about the size of a credit card". 

The text on the fragment comes from the Gospel of St. John.

So, if the other manuscript actually came from the 1st Century AD, that would be huge, and academics would still be talking about this major find. But they're not, and it has been found to have been a hoax.

Another reason this would be a huge find (if it was a biblical manuscript, and not a forged Gospel of Barnabas) is that "The hypothesis that the New Testament text that was read by the Apostles would have preserved the life and sayings of Jesus (as he spoke them in Aramaic – the language of Jesus) before it was translated for those not among them who spoke Greek is not held by the majority of scholars. (source)" This would an amazing asset to those who ascribe to the Aramaic original New Testament theory. The current accepted theory is that the Gospels and the New Testament were written in Greek first.

So no, we don't have an ancient Aramaic biblical manuscript that indicates the usage of icons as early as the 1st Century AD. And we don't need one to justify our use of icons.

There are many reasons why we don't need such a manuscript to justify our use of icons.

First, and most importantly, is the the Church is the Pillar of Truth (1 Timothy 3:15) - the Church declared the proper use of icons is, well, proper in the 8th Century AD during the Seventh Ecumenical Council.

Second, as I showed in my post In Defense of Icons Part 1, the use of icons can be found as mandated by God on the Ark, in the Tabernacle, and later in the Temple - those references are in the Old Testament.

Third, as also covered in my post linked above, we have very early indications of icons used in worship spaces as early as the 3rd Century AD at the Dura-Europos church. This was a church that was built first as a house and later used for worship sometime between AD 233 and AD 256 when the town was abandoned. The use of icons points to an earlier tradition of their use, rarely would something like this just pop into existence; the Jewish synagogue found in Dura-Europos also had icons, suggesting that icons were used by the Jews as well (and indeed they were as one can read in my linked post above). Then, there are also the catacombs which were built in the 2nd Century AD, and also had icons throughout, which if I'm reading that linked article correctly come from around the 4th Century AD (so AD 300s). And as we can see with the earlier dated Dura-Europos, the use of icons didn't just pop up in the catacombs.

We have other early sources that show that icons were being used,

"Early iconoclastic patristic: In the 3rd century, St. Epiphanius in a letter to John, bishop of Jerusalem, tells how in a church at Anablatha near Bethel he had found a curtain painted with the image of Christ or of some other saint, which he had torn down and ordered to be used for the burial of a pauper. The passage, however, reveals not only what Epiphanius thought on the subject, but also that such pictures must have been becoming frequent. Non Orthodox writers point to church fathers who condemned images; such as Origen (186-255), Tertullian (160-240), Eusebius (265-399) and Clement of Alexandria (150-216). Ouspensky defends the early origin of icons by claiming that these people did not remain Orthodox and therefore do not represent the teachings of the Church. Those writers who are skeptical about the early origins of the icon also point to the Council of Elvira, in Spain 300-303. This Council published the following Canon: "It seemed pleasing to us to decree that there should not be paintings in the churches so as not to depict on the walls, that which is honored in worship." Ouspensky claims that the Council of Elvira was simply trying to protect images from being profaned during the Diocletian persecutions he notes that the ruling only refers to wall paintings." (Source)

With such a plethora of sources showing that we Orthodox Christians have been using icons from the earliest times of Christianity, we do not, and should not, need to resort to these "gotcha" tactics that are quite easily proven false with the bare minimum of googling. These kind of verifiably false memes can actually hurt our witness as it can lead people to believe that we will believe any falsehood. And if we will believe any falsehood, what other falsehoods have we fallen prey to? And if we have fallen prey to falsehoods, then the Church is not the pillar of Truth, and our whole religion can be called into question.

Memes can be fun to use. I've used, shared, and created memes. But memes that are so verifiably false shouldn't be shared.

We have the Truth. We do not need to lie to justify the truth.