[don-o]

And this part boggles my mind. How can anyone think they didn't have the Gospels and the epistles within the first generation or two?

You must account for what was normative and authoritative in the interim. It cannot be disputed that there was not a, what we call "New Testament." Polycarp and Ingatius had to fulfill their bishoprics without it. They defeated heresy without it.

You have to account for that. The heresies they refuted could not be refuted by Old Testament Scripture, because the Incarnation and the Resurrection had rocked the world. The heretics, like Marcion and the Gnostics were coming at the Church with ideas that rationalized or mystified the Incarnation.

So without a New Testament, they refuted the heresies and forged a link in the chain of orthodoxy (right belief). How do you account for that?

[Springfield Reformer]

youi mean this Polycarp, the one that quoted from most of the books of the New Testament?

http://www.ntcanon.org/Polycarp.shtml

Check out the quote tables. Either the chap had a blazing amazing photographic memory, or he had some of those NT texts laying around.

I’ll look at Ignatius later, but I think you see where this is going.

Peace,

SR