A Relationship Between Text Message Volume And Sat Writing Test: Fill & Download for Free

One of the most commonly asked questions about the Bible is the question of whether we can know what the texts that make it up originally said. This question is of interest to a lot of people. Obviously, Christians want to know what these texts originally said because they believe that the writings included in the Bible are directly inspired by God and that they can teach people the right way to live their lives.Meanwhile, many of us who aren’t Christians are interested in knowing what these texts originally said as well because we want to know more about the historical development of Christianity and about what the earliest Christians in ancient times believed.I suppose, then, there’s good news and bad news for everyone. The bad news is that the surviving manuscripts of the texts included in the New Testament contain a wide array of overt discrepancies, errors, and later insertions. The good news is that, in spite of this, in the vast majority of cases, we actually have a pretty good idea of what the texts originally said.For the purposes of this article, I will be focusing primarily on the texts of the New Testament because I know more about them and they were originally written in a language that I have personally studied (i.e. Koine Greek). Many of the general things I am about to say are applicable to the texts of the Hebrew Bible as well, but I will not be focusing on those texts here.No “original Bible”It is important to emphasize that there never was an “original Bible” in the sense that many people today imagine. The texts that now make up both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament were originally written as completely separate documents. It was only later that these works were eventually incorporated into the New Testament canon. In other words, the author of, say, the Gospel of Mark had no idea their work would later be bound together in a single volume with other early Christian writings.The earliest texts that are now incorporated into the New Testament are the seven authentic Pauline Epistles, which were written between c. 49 AD and c. 57 AD. The earliest of the canonical gospels, the Gospel of Mark, was probably written in around 70 AD or thereabouts. The Gospel of Matthew was probably written within a few decades after the Gospel of Mark. The Gospel of Luke and the Book of the Acts of the Apostles were written by the same person, probably in around the late 90s AD. The last of the canonical gospels, the Gospel of John, was probably written sometime between c. 100 and c. 115 AD.The New Testament canon as we know it developed gradually. The four gospels and the Pauline Epistles were already widely agreed to be canonical by middle of the second century AD. By the lifetime of Origenes of Alexandria (lived c. 184 – c. 253 AD), the majority of the canon was basically agreed upon, but there were still some texts whose canonicity was debated. It was not until the late fourth century AD that the canon was definitively finalized.I wrote a detailed account of the development of the New Testament canon in this article I published in August 2019, which I highly recommend reading, because it provides a lot of useful background information. In that article, I also thoroughly debunk the widespread misconception that the New Testament canon was decided by Constantine I. (In reality, Constantine I had virtually no role whatsoever in deciding which texts would be included in the New Testament canon.)ABOVE: Photograph of the text of the Muratorian canon, a text that was originally written in Greek in around the late second century AD listing which works were considered part of the New Testament canon at that timeOriginal texts versus translationsOn some level, there is no doubt that most people reading the Bible today are not reading the texts included in it in their original forms since very few people are reading these texts in their original languages. The books of the Hebrew Bible were mostly written in Biblical Hebrew, although some books have parts that were originally written in Aramaic. The texts of the New Testament, meanwhile, were all originally written in Koine Greek.If you are reading the Bible in English, then, obviously, you definitely are not reading the works contained therein in their original forms. One of my Greek professors once told me that, if you are reading any text in translation, you are “utterly removed” from the original in every sense. I think that is a bit of an exaggeration, but he nonetheless has a very good point, which is that, if you really want to understand a text, you have to read it in the original language.There are a number of passages from the Bible that are widely misunderstood because people always read them in English and not in the original language. The most obvious example I can think of off the top of my head is the First Epistle to the Corinthians 13:4–7. Here is the passage as it is translated in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV):“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”People read this passage in English and assume it is talking about romantic love. They assume that the passage is about specifically how a person is supposed to treat their romantic partner. That’s why you almost always hear this passage read aloud at weddings.This passage is not really about romantic love at all, though. Here is the exact same passage as it is appears in the original Koine Greek:“ἡ ἀγάπη μακροθυμεῖ, χρηστεύεται ἡ ἀγάπη, οὐ ζηλοῖ, [ἡ ἀγάπη] οὐ περπερεύεται, οὐ φυσιοῦται, οὐκ ἀσχημονεῖ, οὐ ζητεῖ τὰ ἑαυτῆς, οὐ παροξύνεται, οὐ λογίζεται τὸ κακόν, οὐ χαίρει ἐπὶ τῇ ἀδικίᾳ, συγχαίρει δὲ τῇ ἀληθείᾳ· πάντα στέγει, πάντα πιστεύει, πάντα ἐλπίζει, πάντα ὑπομένει.”In English, we only have one word for “love,” but, in Greek, there are several different words that are used to refer to several different kinds of love. The specific word for “love” that is used in this passage is ἀγάπη (agápē), which does not normally refer to romantic love, but rather to love in the universal, charitable, Christian sense.When he wrote this passage, Paul was trying to describe how Christians should behave towards their fellow human beings in general, not how they should act specifically in the context of a romantic relationship. I personally think that the word ἀγάπη in this context would be better translated as something more along the lines of “beneficence” or “goodwill.”ABOVE: Fresco from the Catacomb of Saints Marcellinus and Peter in Rome, dating to the fourth century AD, depicting early Christians having an agape feast. In the Epistle to the Corinthians 13:4–7, Paul was talking about love in a universal, charitable sense.Scribes deliberately tampering with textsObviously, because most people are not reading the Bible in the original ancient languages, they are not reading the texts that are contained in the Bible in their original forms. Nonetheless, the question of whether or not the texts included in the Bible exist today in their original forms goes significantly deeper.We do not have the original manuscripts for any of the works included in the Bible. The texts that are included in the New Testament were mostly written in the first century AD and early second century AD, but the earliest fragments of New Testament texts that have survived to the present day date to the middle of the second century AD and the earliest complete texts that have survived date to the fourth century AD.The manuscripts we have, then, are not the originals, but rather copies of copies of copies. It should be noted that this is not at all unusual for ancient texts in any sense. Indeed, there are almost no ancient texts at all that have survived to us in the original autograph manuscripts. Instead, the manuscripts we have are all copies—usually ones from centuries later.For instance, as I talk about in this article I wrote in December 2019, we don’t have the original written version of the Iliad; instead, the earliest surviving fragments come from centuries after the poem was originally written and the earliest complete manuscript copy is from the ninth century AD. We don’t have the original handwritten manuscripts of the dialogues of Plato or the treatises of Aristotle either; instead, all we have are much later copies.Texts in ancient times were copied exclusively by hand. Naturally, the scribes copying these texts didn’t always copy things exactly as they were written. Thus, the surviving manuscripts of the texts included in the Biblical canon contain all sorts of variations and deviations.ABOVE: Illustrated page from a Greek manuscript copy of the Iliad, dated to the late fifth century AD or early sixth century AD.People often talk about scribes deliberately tampering with the texts of the works included in the Bible. It is undeniably true that, in some cases, scribes definitely did tamper with Biblical texts. Unfortunately, many people have gotten the misimpression that the vast majority of scribes copying Biblical manuscripts were dishonest and that the texts of the Bible have all been altered totally beyond all hope of reconstruction.The truth is that the vast majority of variations in the texts of works included in the New Testament are minor, obviously accidental, and often easily recognized. They are, in other words, honest mistakes made by well-intentioned scribes. For instance, the scribe might accidentally leave out a letter, accidentally misspell a word, accidentally leave out a word, accidentally leave out an entire line, accidentally copy a letter twice, accidentally copy a word twice, accidentally copy a line twice, and so on. In some cases, a scribe may have accidentally copied a word incorrectly, mistaking one word for a different, similar-looking word.These kinds of errors are usually fairly easy to recognize. In fact, scribes often corrected their own errors and sometimes even the errors of earlier scribes. If a scribe found that they had accidentally left out a word or a line, for instance, they might re-insert the word or the line with a caret. (Unfortunately, in some cases, scribes accidentally mistook notes written in the margins of texts for parts of the text itself that had been left out and reinserted. We’ll get to that later.)Even when manuscripts disagree and it is hard to tell which one is correct, the vast majority of the time the differences between the texts make very little difference at all in terms of meaning. Texts often have variants such as words that are spelled differently, phrases that are flipped around but retain the same meaning, definitive articles that are included or missing, words that are repeated or not repeated later on in the sentence for emphasis, and so forth. Discrepancies with profound theological implications are generally rare.It is also worth noting that we find fewer discrepancies in the oldest and most reliable manuscripts, while discrepancies are more common in later, less reliable manuscripts. By looking at the earliest manuscripts, we can get a better impression of what the original text said than we can by looking at later ones.Now that we’ve clarified all this, let’s look at just a few famous examples of places where Biblical texts have obviously been changed in ways that are definitely significant. It is worth emphasizing that there are other places where the text has obviously been significantly changed apart from the ones we’re about to look at; the following examples are just ones that I have picked out as especially significant or noteworthy.ABOVE: Mid-tenth century Byzantine manuscript illustration of Matthew the Apostle with Byzantine-era scribal equipmentThe ending of the Gospel of MarkThe Gospel of Mark is the earliest surviving gospel. It is generally believed by scholars to date to around 70 AD or thereabouts, meaning it was written only around forty years after the crucifixion of Jesus. Naturally, it occupies a very important place in the field of Biblical studies. The Gospel of Mark, however, originally had a very puzzling and abrupt ending.In the original Gospel of Mark, the resurrected Jesus never actually appears to anyone at all. Instead, the gospel says that Mary Magdalene (who, contrary to what modern popular culture has led many people to believe, was almost certainly not Jesus’s wife in any sense), Mary the mother of James, and Salome went to the tomb of Jesus on the morning of the day after the Sabbath to find, to their astonishment, that the stone in front of Jesus’s tomb had already been rolled away.Then they went into the tomb to find a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side. The young man told them that Jesus had been resurrected. Then the gospel abruptly ends, saying that the women fled in terror and told absolutely no one of what they had seen because it was too frightening.The original Greek text of the Gospel of Mark 16:1–8 reads as follows:“καὶ διαγενομένου τοῦ σαββάτου μαρία ἡ μαγδαληνὴ καὶ μαρία ἡ [τοῦ] ἰακώβου καὶ σαλώμη ἠγόρασαν ἀρώματα ἵνα ἐλθοῦσαι ἀλείψωσιν αὐτόν. καὶ λίαν πρωῒ τῇ μιᾷ τῶν σαββάτων ἔρχονται ἐπὶ τὸ μνημεῖον ἀνατείλαντος τοῦ ἡλίου. καὶ ἔλεγον πρὸς ἑαυτάς, τίς ἀποκυλίσει ἡμῖν τὸν λίθον ἐκ τῆς θύρας τοῦ μνημείου; καὶ ἀναβλέψασαι θεωροῦσιν ὅτι ἀποκεκύλισται ὁ λίθος, ἦν γὰρ μέγας σφόδρα. καὶ εἰσελθοῦσαι εἰς τὸ μνημεῖον εἶδον νεανίσκον καθήμενον ἐν τοῖς δεξιοῖς περιβεβλημένον στολὴν λευκήν, καὶ ἐξεθαμβήθησαν. ὁ δὲ λέγει αὐταῖς, μὴ ἐκθαμβεῖσθε· ἰησοῦν ζητεῖτε τὸν ναζαρηνὸν τὸν ἐσταυρωμένον· ἠγέρθη, οὐκ ἔστιν ὧδε· ἴδε ὁ τόπος ὅπου ἔθηκαν αὐτόν. ἀλλὰ ὑπάγετε εἴπατε τοῖς μαθηταῖς αὐτοῦ καὶ τῶ πέτρῳ ὅτι προάγει ὑμᾶς εἰς τὴν γαλιλαίαν· ἐκεῖ αὐτὸν ὄψεσθε, καθὼς εἶπεν ὑμῖν. καὶ ἐξελθοῦσαι ἔφυγον ἀπὸ τοῦ μνημείου, εἶχεν γὰρ αὐτὰς τρόμος καὶ ἔκστασις· καὶ οὐδενὶ οὐδὲν εἶπαν, ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ.”Here is the same passage, as translated in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV):“When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “’Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’ So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”The original Gospel of Mark ended right here, with chapter sixteen, verse eight.It is unclear why the Gospel of Mark originally ended so abruptly at this point. One explanation that has been proposed holds that, maybe, the author of the Gospel of Mark meant to write more, but never got around to finishing his gospel. This would explain why the Gospel of Mark has such an abrupt and puzzling ending. It would also explain why the writing style of the Gospel of Mark in the original Greek is so rough and unpolished: because it is only a rough draft that the author originally meant to polish up later.There are problems with this explanation, though. One problem with it is that, while the ending of the gospel may seem abrupt and dissatisfying to us, it may not have seemed this way to the person who originally wrote the gospel. Furthermore, apart from the seemingly abrupt ending and the unpolished language—both of which can be given alternative explanations—there is no evidence that the Gospel of Mark as we have it is unfinished.In any case, regardless of the reason why, this is where all the earliest and most reliable surviving manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark end. The version of the Gospel of Mark contained in Codex Vaticanus, the earliest surviving manuscript containing most of the books of the New Testament, which has been dated to between c. 300 and c. 325 AD, ends right here with chapter sixteen, verse eightLikewise, the version of the gospel found in the slightly later manuscript Codex Sinaiticus (dated to between c. 330 and c. 360 AD) ends with chapter sixteen, verse eight as well. A number of later copies of the Gospel of Mark also end with this verse, including some dating to even much later.ABOVE: The Holy Women at Christ’s Tomb, painted in around the 1590s by the Italian painter Annibale Carracci. The Gospel of Mark originally ended at 16:8 without the resurrected Jesus actually making an appearance.Many early Christians evidently found the original ending of the Gospel of Mark unsatisfying, however, because later authors came in and added multiple different endings to the gospel. The best known alternative ending is the so-called “Longer Ending,” which is the ending found in most traditional English versions of the Bible, including the King James Version.The Longer Ending is quite clearly a summary of the resurrection stories found in the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John, both of which were written decades after the original Gospel of Mark. The Longer Ending exists in a few different versions, but here is the most standard version (which is usually printed in double brackets to show it is not part of the original text):“[[ἀναστὰς δὲ πρωῒ πρώτῃ σαββάτου ἐφάνη πρῶτον μαρίᾳ τῇ μαγδαληνῇ, παρ᾽ ἧς ἐκβεβλήκει ἑπτὰ δαιμόνια. ἐκείνη πορευθεῖσα ἀπήγγειλεν τοῖς μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ γενομένοις πενθοῦσι καὶ κλαίουσιν· κἀκεῖνοι ἀκούσαντες ὅτι ζῇ καὶ ἐθεάθη ὑπ᾽ αὐτῆς ἠπίστησαν. μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα δυσὶν ἐξ αὐτῶν περιπατοῦσιν ἐφανερώθη ἐν ἑτέρᾳ μορφῇ πορευομένοις εἰς ἀγρόν· κἀκεῖνοι ἀπελθόντες ἀπήγγειλαν τοῖς λοιποῖς· οὐδὲ ἐκείνοις ἐπίστευσαν. ὕστερον [δὲ] ἀνακειμένοις αὐτοῖς τοῖς ἕνδεκα ἐφανερώθη, καὶ ὠνείδισεν τὴν ἀπιστίαν αὐτῶν καὶ σκληροκαρδίαν ὅτι τοῖς θεασαμένοις αὐτὸν ἐγηγερμένον οὐκ ἐπίστευσαν. καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς, πορευθέντες εἰς τὸν κόσμον ἅπαντα κηρύξατε τὸ εὐαγγέλιον πάσῃ τῇ κτίσει. ὁ πιστεύσας καὶ βαπτισθεὶς σωθήσεται, ὁ δὲ ἀπιστήσας κατακριθήσεται. σημεῖα δὲ τοῖς πιστεύσασιν ταῦτα παρακολουθήσει· ἐν τῶ ὀνόματί μου δαιμόνια ἐκβαλοῦσιν, γλώσσαις λαλήσουσιν καιναῖς, [καὶ ἐν ταῖς χερσὶν] ὄφεις ἀροῦσιν, κἂν θανάσιμόν τι πίωσιν οὐ μὴ αὐτοὺς βλάψῃ, ἐπὶ ἀρρώστους χεῖρας ἐπιθήσουσιν καὶ καλῶς ἕξουσιν. ὁ μὲν οὗν κύριος ἰησοῦς μετὰ τὸ λαλῆσαι αὐτοῖς ἀνελήμφθη εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ ἐκάθισεν ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ θεοῦ. ἐκεῖνοι δὲ ἐξελθόντες ἐκήρυξαν πανταχοῦ, τοῦ κυρίου συνεργοῦντος καὶ τὸν λόγον βεβαιοῦντος διὰ τῶν ἐπακολουθούντων σημείων.]]”Here is the passage as it is rendered in English in the NRSV:“[[Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went out and told those who had been with him, while they were mourning and weeping. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.”“After this he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them.”“Later he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were sitting at the table; and he upbraided them for their lack of faith and stubbornness, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.’”“So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it.]]”The early Christian historian Eusebios of Kaisareia (lived c. 260 – c. 340 AD) mentions that, in his own time, there were versions of the Gospel of Mark in circulation that included the Longer Ending, but also versions that ended with chapter sixteen, verse eight.The earliest surviving manuscript containing a version of the Gospel of Mark with the Longer Ending is Codex Alexandrinus, which is dated to between c. 400 and c. 440 AD. Some of the manuscripts that include the Longer Ending mark it as probably being a later addition to the gospel.Other people wrote alternative endings for the Gospel of Mark as well. For instance, there is also an ending known as the “Shorter Ending,” which reads as follows:“[[πάντα δὲ τὰ παρηγγελμένα τοῖς περὶ τὸν πέτρον συντόμως ἐξήγγειλαν. μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ ἰησοῦς ἀπὸ ἀνατολῆς καὶ ἄχρι δύσεως ἐξαπέστειλεν δι᾽ αὐτῶν τὸ ἱερὸν καὶ ἄφθαρτον κήρυγμα τῆς αἰωνίου σωτηρίας. ἀμήν.]]”Here is the Shorter Ending again, as translated in the NRSV:“[[And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterward Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.]]”The Shorter Ending is attested without the Longer Ending in Codex Bobbiensis, which is dated roughly to the early fifth century AD. This shows that the Shorter Ending and the Longer Ending evidently arose independently. Some later manuscripts have both the Shorter Ending and the Longer Ending, while others only have the Longer Ending.ABOVE: The Appearance of Jesus Christ to Mary Magdalene, painted in 1835 by the Russian Academic painter Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov. The Longer Ending of the Gospel of Mark includes a mention of the resurrected Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene.The Pericope AdulteraeOne of the most famous stories in the entire Bible, a story that appears in nearly every modern adaptation of the life of Jesus, is the story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery, which is told in the Gospel of John 7:53–8:11. In textual criticism, this passage in the Gospel of John is known as the Pericope Adulterae, which means “the pericope of the adulterous woman” in Latin.The story goes that the scribes and Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the very act of adultery before Jesus. They told him that the law commanded them to stone her to death as punishment and they asked him what he thought they should do with her. Jesus supposedly told them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin cast the first stone.” The scribes and Pharisees, knowing they were not without sin, left and let the woman live.The Greek text of the Gospel of John 7:53–8:11 reads as follows:“[[καὶ ἐπορεύθησαν ἕκαστος εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῦ, ἰησοῦς δὲ ἐπορεύθη εἰς τὸ ὄρος τῶν ἐλαιῶν. ὄρθρου δὲ πάλιν παρεγένετο εἰς τὸ ἱερόν, καὶ πᾶς ὁ λαὸς ἤρχετο πρὸς αὐτόν, καὶ καθίσας ἐδίδασκεν αὐτούς. ἄγουσιν δὲ οἱ γραμματεῖς καὶ οἱ φαρισαῖοι γυναῖκα ἐπὶ μοιχείᾳ κατειλημμένην, καὶ στήσαντες αὐτὴν ἐν μέσῳ λέγουσιν αὐτῶ, διδάσκαλε, αὕτη ἡ γυνὴ κατείληπται ἐπ᾽ αὐτοφώρῳ μοιχευομένη· ἐν δὲ τῶ νόμῳ ἡμῖν μωϊσῆς ἐνετείλατο τὰς τοιαύτας λιθάζειν· σὺ οὗν τί λέγεις; τοῦτο δὲ ἔλεγον πειράζοντες αὐτόν, ἵνα ἔχωσιν κατηγορεῖν αὐτοῦ. ὁ δὲ ἰησοῦς κάτω κύψας τῶ δακτύλῳ κατέγραφεν εἰς τὴν γῆν. ὡς δὲ ἐπέμενον ἐρωτῶντες αὐτόν, ἀνέκυψεν καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς, ὁ ἀναμάρτητος ὑμῶν πρῶτος ἐπ᾽ αὐτὴν βαλέτω λίθον· καὶ πάλιν κατακύψας ἔγραφεν εἰς τὴν γῆν. οἱ δὲ ἀκούσαντες ἐξήρχοντο εἷς καθ᾽ εἷς ἀρξάμενοι ἀπὸ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων, καὶ κατελείφθη μόνος, καὶ ἡ γυνὴ ἐν μέσῳ οὗσα. ἀνακύψας δὲ ὁ ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτῇ, γύναι, ποῦ εἰσιν; οὐδείς σε κατέκρινεν; ἡ δὲ εἶπεν, οὐδείς, κύριε. εἶπεν δὲ ὁ ἰησοῦς, οὐδὲ ἐγώ σε κατακρίνω· πορεύου, [καὶ] ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν μηκέτι ἁμάρτανε.]]”Here is the same passage, as translated into English in the NRSV:“[[Then each of them went home, while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, sir.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’]]”This is one of the most popular stories found in any of the gospels. If you ask someone to name a story from the gospels about the ministry of Jesus, chances are this will be one of the first ones they will name. Unfortunately, as beloved as this story certainly is, it was not originally a part of the Gospel of John. None of the earliest surviving New Testament manuscripts of the relevant portion of the Gospel of John contain this passage.The Pericope Adulterae is missing from Papyrus 66 (dated to c. 200 AD), Papyrus 75 (dated to the third century AD), Codex Vaticanus (dated to between c. 300 and c. 330 AD), Codex Sinaiticus (dated to between c. 330 and c. 360 AD), Codex Alexandrinus (dated to between c. 400 and c. 440 AD), and all the other early manuscripts. The earliest references to the Gospel of John containing the Pericope Adulterae are from the third century AD, but these references are few. Additionally, even some later manuscripts that do contain the Pericope Adulterae mark it as probably being a later addition.The story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery was probably added to the Gospel of John by a later author based on an earlier story about a woman who had been falsely accused. The church historian Eusebios of Kaisareia mentions in his Ecclesiastical History that the story of Christ defending a woman who had been “falsely accused of many sins” was found in the now-lost work Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord, written by the Church Father Papias of Hierapolis (lived c. 60 – c. 160 AD). This story told by Papias is likely the source for the later story added to the Gospel of John.ABOVE: Illustration from 1866 by the French artist Gustave Doré depicting Jesus defending the adulterous woman from the angry mob wanting to stone herThe Comma JohanneumPerhaps the one passage in the whole New Testament that is most widely agreed to be an interpolation is the Comma Johanneum, a passage found in some late Latin versions of the First Epistle of John 5:7–8. Here is the First Epistle of John 5:7–8 as it appears in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts:“ὅτι τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες, τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ καὶ τὸ αἷμα, καὶ οἱ τρεῖς εἰς τὸ ἕν εἰσιν.”Here is the Greek passage, as translated in the NRSV:“There are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree.”Now, here is the version of the passage that appears in some relatively late manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate:“Quoniam tres sunt, qui testimonium dant in cælo: Pater, Verbum, et Spiritus Sanctus: et hi tres unum sunt. Et tres sunt, qui testimonium dant in terra: spiritus, et aqua, et sanguis: et hi tres unum sunt.”Here is the NRSV’s translation of the Latin passage:“There are three that testify in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. And there are three that testify on earth: the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree.”The part of the Latin passage that is not found in the Greek passage is known as the Comma Johanneum.The Comma Johanneum is not found in any of the earliest manuscripts in Greek or Latin. Meanwhile, the passage is conspicuously never mentioned by any of the earliest Christian writers whose works have survived. In fact, some early Christian writers such as Klemes of Alexandria (lived c. 150 – c. 215 AD) actually quote 1 John 5:8 without the Comma Johanneum, indicating that the versions of the epistle they were reading did not include this part of the passage.The earliest definite reference to the Comma Johanneum that can be securely dated comes from a text written by the Spanish Christian writer Priscillian of Ávila sometime around 380 AD or thereabouts. There are a few passages from before this point that some have tried to interpret as referencing the Comma Johanneum, but these are doubtful.The earliest Latin manuscripts containing the Comma Johanneum date to between the fifth and seventh centuries AD. Meanwhile, the Comma Johanneum only appears in a grand total of eight known Greek manuscripts, all of which are extremely late ones dating to the fifteenth century AD and later. Furthermore, in all of them, the passage appears to have been backtranslated from Latin into Greek.The Comma Johanneum appears to have originated from a marginal note made in a manuscript by someone in around the early fourth century AD interpreting the phrase “the spirit and the water and the blood” as an allegory for the Holy Trinity. A later scribe came along and copied that manuscript, mistaking the marginal note for text that had been left out and reinserted. Thus, the marginal note became accidentally incorporated into the text.ABOVE: The Adoration of the Holy Trinity, painted in 1511 by the German Renaissance painter Albrecht DürerThe Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus (lived 1466 – 1536) produced the first printed edition of the New Testament in Greek in 1516. The first edition of Erasmus’s Greek New Testament did not include the Comma Johanneum, nor did the second edition printed in 1519. Erasmus was sharply criticized by clergy and fellow scholars for omitting the Comma Johanneum from his first two editions. Erasmus replied that the Comma simply did not exist in any of the Greek manuscripts.Eventually, Erasmus reluctantly added the passage to the third edition of his Greek New Testament, printed in 1522, largely in effort to appease his critics. He did, however, include a note expressing his serious doubts regarding the authenticity of the passage. The Comma Johanneum appeared in all subsequent editions of Erasmus’s Greek New Testament, which is known today as the Textus Receptus.Most English translations of the New Testament over the next few centuries were based solely or primarily on Erasmus’s Greek New Testament. Thus, nearly all early English translation of the Bible, including the King James Version, include the Comma Johanneum. Later, though, Bible translations began to rely on older, more reliable texts, they stopped including the Comma Johanneum. The NRSV, for instance, only includes the Comma Johanneum as a footnote.The main defenders of the Comma Johanneum today are members of the King James Only movement, who claim that the English King James Bible is directly inspired by God and that it is the only true version of the Bible in English. Members of this movement claim that all English translations other than the King James Version are corrupt and that using these translations will lead people to Hell.ABOVE: Portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger from 1523 of the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus, who produced the first printed edition of the Greek New Testament in 1516What we know and what we don’tThe fact of the matter is, there are a large number of verses in the Bible that have clearly been altered or inserted by later scribes—sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose. The examples I have given here are just a few of the more notable ones. Upon hearing this, it is easy for people to despair and think we have no way of knowing what any of the texts included in the Bible originally said at all. This, however, is exactly the opposite of the kind of response we should be having.Despite all the changes that have been made in various places, the vast majority of the time, scholars actually have a very good idea of what these texts originally said. Sometimes there are difficulties, but, most of the time, there is broad agreement across manuscripts. It is worth noting that there is literally an entire field of scholarly inquiry dedicated to the study of Biblical manuscripts with the goal of sorting out exactly what the texts originally said.Indeed, the very fact that scholars are able to recognize passages that have been altered or inserted by later scribes should give us hope because it shows that we are on the road towards a better understanding of these texts and their histories. We will probably never know with absolute certainty what all the original texts said in all cases, but, in most cases, we have a very good idea of what they said.(NOTE: I have also published a version of this article on my website titled “Can We Know What Biblical Texts Originally Said?” Here is a link to the version of the article on my website.)

I’d attach a brief history of IQ tests and the societies that formed around them.In other words, I'd show rather than tell.(Note: I’ve attempted to make what follows as concise as can be without sacrificing substance. The intended audience is anyone genuinely curious about what relationship their score ought to have to to their identity, especially in cases where that score is high.)Old RootsThe imperial examination system was the chief measure of ability in China for some 1,200 years, spanning the reign of multiple dynasties. It was composed of an escalating series of formalized tests, each lasting for as many as three days, culminating with the jinshi exam that marked the elite of the cognitive elite.Over the course of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), a total of 26,622 jinshi degrees were awarded to a population that encompassed ~2.25 billion births. Put another way, only 1 in every 85,000 persons passed (99.9988%, or 4+ sigma). To be named among those few was an honor that often transcended what the student actually accomplished thereafter. You didn’t just gain the degree — you became a jinshi.Did the system work? Well, we can answer this by considering why it was eventually abandoned: it favored rigidity over creativity, it encouraged students to "learn to the test", and it engendered a persistent, unavoidable culture of cheating. While useful to propping up a bureaucratic empire, it did little to lead to the sort of advancements that define the modern world.In a weird quirk of timing, at the same time that China was reforming their education system away from the examination system, western countries began experimenting with supposed universal intelligence tests, each designed with one of three ends in mind (which roughly followed each other chronologically):Identifying children with "mental retardation" so as to pull them from traditional school systems in favor of asylums and other institutions designed to “save” them from a life of predicted deviancy.Identifying adults with said condition so as to disqualify them from certain occupations (and in some cases to forcibly sterilize them against the “risk” of having children).Identifying supposed high achievers for promotion or eligibility for advanced development programs.Leaving aside the subject of how to best support those with limited cognitive abilities (TL;DR: not the above paths), let’s focus on the other side of the spectrum: is identifying the cognitive elite actually both possible and useful?A Question of AlternativesGiven that higher education and the business world have both long had complex, appropriately dimensional systems for allowing talent to make a way for itself, one wonders what exactly the value of a measure like IQ might be.While debate has long raged (and still rages), the closest thing we have to a consensus seems to be “it’s a good way of identifying bright young people who might need additional forms of support outside the traditional school system”.In a way, this is a noble and necessary thing. Cognitively gifted students often do find themselves in environments ill-equipped to nurture said gifts, and early identification is by far the most reliable way to enable successful intervention.This is why it’s odd that, of all the questions about IQ on the internet, only a minuscule percentage are about children. Most commonly, the questions come from teenagers and adults who’ve taken some online test (which vary wildly and often overstate results for profit) and are now looking for some kind of validation that this number is the explanation for why they’ve not yet met with their hoped for social or career successes.This in turn suggests a deeper question: in cases where an official test taken at a young age didn’t lead to the right series of interventions, is there any real benefit to taking such a test (official or unofficial) in later years?Outsider SyndromeThere’s an essay that’s become something of a canonical "this is the story of my struggle" reference point for those who feel afflicted by their intelligence.It opens with the (slightly exaggerated) bio of the prodigy William James Sidis.At eighteen months he could read The New York Times, at two he taught himself Latin, at three he learned Greek. By the time he was an adult he could speak more than forty languages and dialects. He gained entrance to Harvard at eleven, and gave a lecture on four-dimensional bodies to the Harvard Mathematical Club his first year. He graduated cum laude at sixteen, and became the youngest professor in history. He deduced the possibility of black holes more than twenty years before Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar published An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure. His life held possibilities for achievement that few people can imagine. Of all the prodigies for which there are records, his was probably the most powerful intellect of all. And yet it all came to nothing. He soon gave up his position as a professor, and for the rest of his life wandered from one menial job to another. His experiences as a child prodigy had proven so painful that he decided for the rest of his life to shun public exposure at all costs. Henceforth, he denied his gifts, refused to think about mathematics, and above all refused to perform as he had been made to do as a child. Instead, he devoted his intellect almost exclusively to the collection of streetcar transfers, and to the study of the history of his native Boston. He worked hard at becoming a normal human being, but never entirely succeeded. He found the concept of beauty, for example, to be completely incomprehensible, and the idea of sex repelled him. At fifteen he took a vow of celibacy, which he apparently kept for the remainder of his life, dying a virgin at the age of 46. He wore a vest summer and winter, and never learned to bathe regularly. A comment that Aldous Huxley once made about Sir Isaac Newton might equally have been said of Sidis: “For the price Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship, love, fatherhood, and many other desirable things. As a man he was a failure; as a monster he was superb.”The essay then carries on to discuss the correlation between high intelligence / poor environment and social maladaptation, ultimately ending with:Some of those reading this paper may find the portrait painted here to be completely incredible. Their own experiences were nothing at all like those [of Sidis], nor were those of most of their gifted friends. But the point of this article is not that there’s some special hazard in having an exceptional IQ: There’s not. The point is that the danger lies in having an exceptional IQ in an environment completely lacking in intellectual peers. It’s the isolation that does the damage, not the IQ itself.It’s the exceptionally gifted adult who feels stifled that stands most in need of a high IQ society. The tragedy is that none of the super high IQ societies created thus far have been able to meet those needs, and the reason for this is simple. None of these groups is willing to acknowledge or come to terms with the fact that much of their membership belong to the psychological walking wounded. This alone is enough to explain the constant schisms that develop, the frequent vendettas, and the mediocre level of their publications. But those are not immutable facts; they can be changed. And the first step in doing so is to see ourselves as we are.Note the transition from the first to second paragraph. His contention that isolation causes damage is universally conceded. But his end subject isn’t children or how to better the systems that might improve their lot. It’s the “exceptionally gifted adult”, who he imagines has already been failed to the point of requiring extraordinary remedy. He thus places the onus more on new social institutions to aid said outliers than on said outliers to close the gap between themselves and the systems that are. His “walking wounded” are thus pictured as very bright people who, for whatever reason(s), either can’t or won’t exercise their intelligence in the service of improving their own socialization.The author, Grady Towers, was involved in the development of several high-IQ societies. None became the communities of healing he imagined. Nearly all became what he feared — not only because their members failed to see themselves for what they were, but because they chose to champion the narrative of Outsider Geniuses Who Don’t Need To Come Back Inside.How Outsider Geniuses FareAs to the rise and decline of those communities, an interesting roundup was done up some 20 years ago: A Short and Bloody History of the High I.Q. Societies.For our present purposes, we can boil it down even more:Mensa, being the most open of said societies (1 in 50 qualify), has been the only one to achieve sufficient scale to form meaningful in-person communities. It’s unclear if or how any of this helps members socialize better with the 98% of people who don’t qualify, but I’m told they’re at least good places to find clever puzzles and like-minded hobbyists who share a basic frame of reference.Nearly all the rest were founded by a small group of white men, often predicated on tests (and testing conditions) of their own devising, all with increasingly aggrandized cutoffs. The majority of such societies died out before taking a meaningful breath, with the rest amassing (at best) the same accomplishments as a small-town Rotary chapter.Of the handful of such communities still in existence, the one with the highest bar is The Mega Society. The once holders of the now-retired Guinness Record for “most elite ultra High IQ Society”, their target is those with 1-in-1,000,000 intelligence — i.e., almost 12x more selective than the jinshi exams.While the folks at Mega have no noteworthy accomplishments or alumni to speak of, they’ve amassed a fascinating record of their internal dialogue in the form of a sporadically self-published journal Noesis.Let’s consider one short story from the most recent issue:God FormulaMarcel Feenstra“So, this is it?” said the physicist. “This is it,” said the angel.They were standing in what appeared to be, at first sight, a living room, but what seemed, upon closer inspection, to be an office instead. Or perhaps it was a library. The walls were covered with books, from floor to bottom, and there was a small table, or desk, with a chair.“No other people?” said the physicist. “Not a soul,” said the angel.That could be a good sign, the physicist thought: perhaps this wasn’t Hell after all. “While you should not believe everything you read,” said the angel who must have been reading his mind, “you have nothing to fear. You’re not in Hell. Not in Heaven either, for that matter.”The physicist felt relieved, even though he did not completely understand his predicament. He was dead, obviously, but at least he wasn’t about to undergo eternal torture. Things could have been much, much worse.“I must admit,” said the physicist, “that I don’t quite understand why I am here. I have been an agnostic, if not an atheist, for most of my life. It did not take me long to realize that religion was just an invention to give meaning to life, a desperate attempt to understand the world.”“Ha!” said the angel. “Do you really think that’s different from what scientists do?” The physicist felt insulted that the angel equated science and religion; he wanted to give the same lecture about theories and falsifiable predictions that he had probably delivered countless times before, but it occurred to him that this might not be the time or the place to pick a fight.“So, why am I here?”The angel smiled mysteriously. “You are here because you were so very, very close. Of course, you had no idea, but your ideas and your formulas were beginning to coincide with reality. A few more years, and you might have gotten it exactly right.”Damn: just a few more years, thought the physicist. He did not remember his age.“As you’ve noticed, there are books around us. More than a thousand, to be precise. That’s a lot for humans, and even for angels, but not for God, obviously.”“Obviously,” said the physicist who had no idea where this was going.“You had been working on the concept of infinity reduction – the idea that, in mathematics, a simple formula can describe, predict, or even create, an infinite number of cases. And you had wondered if the same principle could be applied to reality: if some formula, or set of formulas, much more complicated than the ones known to humanity, might explain the history, present and future of the entire universe. Well, you were right!”The physicist could not remember the details of what he had been working on. Was it normal to forget things when you died?“You were right, but you still had quite a long way to go. It is possible to formulate a Theory of Everything, or, as we prefer to say, to write down the God Formula, but it would take thousands of man-years. And a lot of space.”The angel pointed at the books.“Let’s say you knew the exact position of every subatomic particle at the beginning of time, the exact direction in which they were about to move, and the exact speed.”He paused briefly to let his words sink in, but the physicist had no trouble following him; in fact, he already suspected what the angel would say next.“And let’s say you also knew all the different rules that governed their interactions –even the quantum rules that you haven’t quite figured out yet, apparently— then you would be able to calculate, with infinite precision, the state of the universe at any point in time. You would know history, present and future.”“Only if there was no randomness,” the physicist was quick to point out.“The formula would cover randomness as well,” said the angel. “And ideally, it would not be necessary to calculate intermediary states. A bit like…”He briefly paused again, as if he were looking for a good example.“When you want to square a large number, you don’t have to square all the different numbers between zero and that number to get the correct result.” The physicist appreciated that the angel tried to simplify an extremely difficult concept so that he would understand it, but he wasn’t used to others talking down to him. More than once, he had been called the greatest mind of his generation, and he had the impression that this peculiar place enabled him to think more clearly than ever before. OK, he got it: a library full of books was needed to hold the God Formula.“I understand that the formula is really, really long and extremely complicated, but why so many books? Why not a single, God-size volume?”The physicist felt rather clever for asking that question, but the angel replied: “That wouldn’t be very manageable, now would it?” How could he know—perhaps God had huge hands, much larger than his own.“Why am I here?” the physicist asked again.“Oh God…” moaned the angel. “I think you will figure it out very quickly. I will leave you alone, so that you can concentrate, but I’ll be back in a week or so.” And away he was.The physicist looked around the room. The books appeared to be leather-bound, as if they were part of a huge encyclopedia, but there was no text on the spines. No words, no numbers. Any volume could be the first or the last; there was no apparent order, if that concept even applied here.He walked towards a corner of the room, reached for the top shelf and took out the leftmost book. If they followed normal convention in this place, he had a chance of one in four that this was where he should start. And if they didn’t, he thought, every choice was as good as any other.The book was large and heavy. He carried it to the table and put it down, unopened. Then he sat down on the chair.He was a bit nervous. He was about to see what no mortal had seen before. He was thinking much faster now than when he was alive, but still: would he understand? Would he know what was expected of him?He took a deep breath and opened the book. An empty page stared back at him.He leafed through the book, but every page he checked seemed white as virgin snow. He moved his face very close to the page, to see if perhaps it contained some minute print, but as far as he could tell there was not a single word. The book smelled like fresh paper, as if it had been created seconds ago, just for him.This was extremely disappointing, the physicist thought. The angel had told him how close he had been, and while his memories of life before death were rapidly fading, he felt as if his intelligence was increasing by the minute –thoughts racing through his head, his brain almost about to explode. Pretty soon he might be smart enough to understand most, if not everything, of the God Formula.He checked a few more pages, smelled the paper, even licked a page. Nothing.The physicist started to feel a rage he had never experienced before. He was here for a reason! The angel would return in a week, and then what?He banged his fist on the table. Only then did he notice the pen.(Note: I don’t present this story to mock its author. I just found it to be a near-perfect articulation of how a certain set of people see themselves in relationship to the advancement of knowledge — i.e., in outsider terms that scream of a need for a validation that their own approach renders difficult to impossible).ConclusionsIf one were to summarize the past hundred years of intelligence research:What makes for a valuable contribution to society is so multi-dimensional that comparisons to a single metric (IQ) or concept (G) are fundamentally useless. A low IQ is no limit on how much one can brighten the world. A moderate IQ means one has the same magic-making tools as nearly everyone else. And a high IQ only matters to the degree that it’s employed diligently to some useful end. It can be a force multiplier, but only if paired with hard work and strong socialization.The societies that congregate around metrics like IQ are often communities for those who don't possess the right qualities to make it in academia (i.e, hard work and strong socialization) or the competitive world (i.e. hard work and strong socialization).Now, yes, gifted children often lack support, making effective socialization exceedingly difficult. This is no child's fault. Even so, it's every adult's responsibility to make the most of their lot. While a measure of sympathy/empathy should be extended for the handicap that often comes with ill-fitted childhoods, to fail to at least attempt to undo that damage is ultimately a choice.Whatever your number is, the question I’d ask is simple: do you wish to associate with those whose binding quality is sustained maladaptation, or do you wish to pursue the far more rewarding path of seeking whatever adjustments are necessary to join (and improve) the broader world?“Outsider genius” might be a soothing narrative. But when it comes to advancing knowledge and shaping this world for the better, those working together have always and will always accomplish far more than those working alone.Note: For a fuller (and quite fascinating) overview of the development of the Binet-Simon test and the environment from which it emerged, see: Sick? Or slow? On the origins of intelligence as a psychological object.

Q. Is there any correlation between intelligence and criminal activity?--Among those who commit criminal actions, some are intelligent and some are not.-But when a society makes wealth, fame, success as goal of life in whichever way, some intelligent people prefer to achieve that goal by lying without getting caught.-For example1. The Marshmallow TestThe Stanford marshmallow experiment was a series of studies on delayed gratification in the late 1960s and early 1970s led by psychologist Walter Mischel, then a professor at Stanford University. In these studies, a child was offered a choice between one small reward provided immediately or two small rewards if they waited for a short period, approximately 15 minutes, during which the tester left the room and then returned. (The reward was sometimes a marshmallow, but often a cookie or a pretzel.) In follow-up studies, the researchers found that children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes, as measured by SAT scores, educational attainment, body mass index (BMI), and other life measures.From https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment-2. The Marshmallow TestRobertoWhen we designed the experiment in the 1960s we did not film the children. But twenty years later, to record the Marshmallow Test procedure and to illustrate the diverse strategies children use as they try to wait for their treats, my former postdoc Monica L. Rodriguez filmed five- to six-year-olds with a hidden camera in a public school in Chile. Monica followed the same procedure we had used in the original experiments.Monica gave the same instructions to “Roberto,” a neatly dressed six-year-old with a beige school jacket, dark necktie on his white shirt, and perfectly combed hair. As soon as she left the room he cast a quick look at the door to be sure it was tightly shut. He then rapidly surveyed the cookie tray, licked his lips, and grabbed the closest treat. He cautiously opened the cookie to expose the white cream filling in its middle, and, with bent head and busy tongue, he began to lick the cream meticulously, pausing for only a second to smilingly approve his work. After licking the cookie clean, he skillfully put the two sides back together with even more obvious delight and carefully returned the filling-free cookie to the tray. He then hurried at top speed to give the remaining two cookies the identical treatment. After devouring their insides, Roberto arranged the remaining pieces on the tray to restore them to their exact original positions, and checked the scene around him, scanning the door to be sure that all was well. Like a skilled method actor, he then slowly sank his head to place his tilted chin and cheek on the open palm of his right hand, elbow resting on the desktop. He transformed his face into a look of utter innocence, his wide, trusting eyes staring expectantly at the door in childlike innocent wonder.Roberto’s performance invariably gets the most cheers and the loudest laughter and applause from every audience, including, once, a congratulatory shout from the esteemed provost of one of America’s top private universities to “get him a scholarship when he’s ready to come here!” I don’t think he was joking.Excerpt from The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Controlby Walter Mischel-3. The Marshmallow Test: Roberto?Robert Charles Gallo (born March 23, 1937) is an American biomedical researcher. He is best known for his role in the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the infectious agent responsible for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and in the development of the HIV blood test, and he has been a major contributor to subsequent HIV research.From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ro...In 1989, the investigative journalist John Crewdson suggested that Gallo's lab might have misappropriated a sample of HIV isolated at the Pasteur Institute by Montagnier's group.They concluded that the virus used in Gallo's lab had come from Montagnier's lab; it was a virus from a patient that had contaminated a virus sample from another patient. On request, Montagnier's group had sent a sample of this culture to Gallo, not knowing it contained two viruses. The sample then contaminated the pooled culture on which Gallo was working. On 12 December 1985 the Institut Pasteur filed suit to challenge a patent for an HIV test that had been granted on 28 May 1985 to the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In 1987, the two governments agreed to split equally the proceeds from the patent, naming Montagnier and Gallo co-discoverers. Montagnier and Gallo resumed collaborating with each other again for a chronology that appeared in Nature in 1987.In 2008, Montagnier and his colleague Françoise Barré-Sinoussi from the Institut Pasteur were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on the discovery of HIV. Harald zur Hausen also shared the Prize for his discovery that human papilloma viruses lead to cervical cancer,[35] but Gallo was left out.From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gallo--Gallo Admits French Discovered Aids VirusMay 30, 1991|By John Crewdson, Chicago Tribune.WASHINGTON — A controversial piece of scientific history will be officially rewritten this week, with the publication of an acknowledgment by Dr. Robert C. Gallo that the AIDS virus he claimed to have discovered in 1984 was in reality a virus sent to him from France the year before.The letter, which associates said was written at the urging of Gallo`s senior colleagues, appears to put an end to a six-year effort by Gallo and his employer, the National Institutes of Health, to claim the AIDS virus as an independent discovery.By invoking a variety of alternative explanations, Gallo had struggled to persuade the scientific community that his AIDS virus, known as HTLV-3B, was derived from an American AIDS patient and not from a virus sample sent to NIH by Pasteur scientists.Whether Gallo`s cultures became contaminated with the French virus by accident-or, as the French suggested in court, on purpose-ultimately may be resolved by the NIH investigation of his laboratory`s AIDS research.From http://articles.chicagotribune.com/…/9102180196_1_gallo-lab…-4. The Marshmallow Test: Roberto?Lance Edward Armstrong (born September 18, 1971) is an American former professional road racing cyclist. He is the 1993 Elite Men's Road Race World Champion, and he had won the Tour de France seven consecutive times from 1999 to 2005, but was stripped of his Tour de France victories in 2012 after a protracted doping scandal.Armstrong had been the subject of doping allegations ever since winning the 1999 Tour de France. In 2012, a United States Anti-Doping Agency investigation concluded that Armstrong had used performance-enhancing drugs over the course of his career and named him as the ringleader of "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen." Armstrong chose not to contest the charges, citing the potential toll on his family. As a result, he received a lifetime ban from competing in all sports that follow the World Anti-Doping Agency code—effectively ending his athletic career. He was also stripped of all of his achievements after 1998, including his seven Tour de France titles.In the aftermath of his fall from grace, a CNN article wrote that "The epic downfall of cycling's star, once an idolized icon of millions around the globe, stands out in the history of professional sports."From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La...http://www.bbc.com/sport/cycling/21065539-5. The Marshmallow Test: Roberto?DNA was first isolated by Friedrich Miescher in 1869. Its molecular structure was identified by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953, whose model-building efforts were guided by X-ray diffraction data acquired by Rosalind Franklin.In 1962, after Franklin's death, Watson, Crick, and Wilkins jointly received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Nobel Prizes are awarded only to living recipients. A debate continues about who should receive credit for the discovery.From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA-It was generally believed that Franklin was never aware that her work had been used during construction of the model, but Gosling asserted in his 2013 interview that, "Yes. Oh, she did know about that."There is no doubt that Franklin's experimental data were used by Crick and Watson to build their model of DNA in 1953.It should be noted that in their original paper, Watson and Crick do not cite the X-ray diffraction work of both Wilkins and Franklin. However, they admit their having "been stimulated by a knowledge of the general nature of the unpublished experimental results and ideas of Dr. M. H. F. Wilkins, Dr. R. E. Franklin and their co-workers at King's College, London." Watson and Crick had no experimental data to support their model. It was Franklin and Gosling's own publication in the same issue of Nature with the X-ray image of DNA, which served as the main evidence; in which they concluded:Thus our general ideas are not inconsistent with the model proposed by Watson and Crick in the preceding communication.From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin-She never learned the full extent to which Watson and Crick had relied on her data to make their model; if she suspected, she did not express any bitterness or frustration, and in subsequent years she became very friendly with Crick and his wife, Odile.It is clear that, had Franklin lived, the Nobel prize committee ought to have awarded her a Nobel prize, too – her conceptual understanding of the structure of the DNA molecule and its significance was on a par with that of Watson and Crick, while her crystallographic data were as good as, if not better, than those of Wilkins.From https://www.theguardian.com/…/sexism-in-science-did-watson-…-In summary, Watson and Crick had three sources for Franklin's unpublished data: 1) her 1951 seminar, attended by Watson,[72] 2) discussions with Wilkins,[73] who worked in the same laboratory with Franklin, 3) a research progress report that was intended to promote coordination of Medical Research Council-supported laboratories.Watson's portrayal of Franklin in The Double Helix (written after Franklin's death when libel laws did not apply anymore) was negative and gave the appearance that she was Wilkins' assistant and was unable to interpret her own DNA data.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Crick#Controversy"Rosalind Franklin was a very intelligent woman, but she really had no reason for believing that DNA was particularly important. She was trained in physical chemistry. I don't think she'd ever spent any length of time with people who thought DNA was important. And she certainly didn't talk to Maurice [Wilkins] or to John Randall, then the professor at Kings."Quoted by James Watson. Nature, 302: 653. April 1983.From http://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/…/rosalind_franklin.ht…-6. The Marshmallow Test: Roberto?-Ghost composerA ghostwriter is a writer who writes books, manuscripts, screenplays, scripts, articles, blog posts, stories, reports, whitepapers, or other texts that are officially credited to another person.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwriter-Mamoru Samuragochi (佐村河内 守, born 21 September 1963) is a Japanese composer from Hiroshima Prefecture who falsely claimed to be totally deaf. He was the name credited for the video games Resident Evil: Dual Shock Ver. and Onimusha: Warlords. He claimed throughout his career to be deaf which led to foreign media dubbing him a "digital-age Beethoven". In February 2014, it was revealed that most of the work attributed to him over the previous 18 years had been written by Takashi Niigaki.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamoru_Samuragochi-Takashi Niigaki (新垣 隆, born 1 September 1970) is a Japanese composer and music teacher who served as the ghostwriter for Mamoru Samuragochi for 18 years, composing musical works that included the soundtracks for Resident Evil: Dual Shock Ver. and Onimusha: Warlords. He also composed "Hiroshima Symphony No 1", previously credited to Samuragochi until February 2014 when Niigaki publicly revealed that he was the real composer.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takashi_Niigaki-In 2012, after the “Hiroshima” symphony became a surprise hit, Samuragochi told Niigaki that the national network NHK would be shooting a documentary about him. Samuragochi was to compose a new piece for the victims of the tsunami in northern Japan, and the filmmakers would document his creative process. Samuragochi imposed one ground rule: He would not let them film him writing music. “The process is sacred,” he told the director.Since Samuragochi would have a camera crew trailing him 24/7, he asked Niigaki to send the sheet music to his house by courier using a fake name. He reminded Niigaki to use generic, unidentifiable notations and to include blank sheets of music paper, for the “before” shots. Samuragochi wrote in a text message: “It’s an important piece that is going to be played at the end of the NHK special, showing that the genius composer went through hell to compose a song for the victims.”Meanwhile, Samuragochi was pretending to go through hell. During the filming, he “met” a young girl named Minami—she was pre-screened by the producers—whose mother died in the tsunami, and dedicated the requiem to her. For inspiration, he sat alone on the beach where the girl’s mother disappeared, “so that the spirits of the victims come down to him,” according to the film’s narrator. Later, back at his house, he writhed in bed, groaned from the supposed pain of his tinnitus, swallowed dozens of white pills, and crawled around on the floor, apparently too weak to stand. Finally, Samuragochi stumbled into the living room. “It’s finished,” he said. He then disappeared into his study. Twelve hours later, he emerged with the complete score. The camera lingered over the perfectly shaped notes.Fromhttp://www.newrepublic.com/…/japans-deaf-composer-wasnt-wha…-7. The Marshmallow Test: Roberto?Elizabeth Anne Holmes is an American entrepreneur and the founder and former CEO of Theranos, a now defunct company known for its unlikely claims to have revolutionized blood testing using surprisingly small volumes of blood such as from a fingerprick. In 2015, Forbes named Holmes the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in America on the basis of a $9 billion valuation of Theranos. By the next year, following revelations of potential fraud, Forbes revised her net worth to zero dollars, and Fortune named Holmes one of the "World's Most Disappointing Leaders".From Elizabeth Holmes - Wikipedia