How Tradition Gave Us the Bible

It's still a jolt for some people to realize this, but the Bible did not fall down out of the sky, leather-bound and gold-monogrammed with the words of Christ in red, in 95 AD. Rather the canon of Christian Scripture slowly developed over a period of about 1500 years. That does not mean, of course, that Scripture was being written for 1500 years after the life of Christ. Rather, it means that it took the Church some fifteen centuries to formally and definitively state which books out of the great mass of early Christian and pseudo-Christian books constituted the Bible.

The process of defining the canon of Scripture is an example of what the Church calls "development of doctrine". This is a different thing than "innovation of doctrine". Doctrine develops as a baby develops into a man, not as a baby grows extra noses, eyes, and hands. An innovation of doctrine would be if the Church declared something flatly contrary to all previous teaching ("Pope John Paul Ringo I Declares the Doctrine of the Trinity to No Longer Be the Teaching of the Church: Bishop Celebrate by Playing Tiddly Winks with So-Called 'Blessed Sacrament'"). It is against such flat reversals of Christian teaching that the promise of the Spirit to guard the apostolic Tradition stands. And, in fact, there has never ever been a time when the Church has reversed its dogmatic teaching. (Prudential and disciplinary changes are another matter. The Church is not eternally wedded to, for instance, unmarried priests, as the wife of St. Peter can tell you.)

But though innovations in doctrine are not possible, developments of doctrine occur all the time and these tend to apply old teaching to new situations or to more completely articulate ancient teaching that has not been fully fleshed out. So, for example, in our own day the Church teaches against the evils of embryonic stem cell research even though the New Testament has nothing to say on the matter. Yet nobody in his five wits claims that the present Church "invented" opposition to embryonic stem cell research from thin air. We all understand that the Church, by the very nature of its Tradition, has said "You shall not kill" for 2,000 years. It merely took the folly of modern embryonic stem cell research to cause the Church to apply its Tradition to this concrete situation and declare what it has always believed.

Very well then, as with attacks on sacred human life in the 21st century, so with attacks on Sacred Tradition in the previous twenty. Jesus establishes the Tradition that he has not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them (Mt 5:17). But when Tradition bumps into the theories of early Jewish Christians that all Gentiles must be circumcised in order to become Christians, the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) is still necessary to authoritatively flesh that Tradition out. Moreover, the Council settles the question by calling the Bible, not to the judge's bench, but to the witness stand. Scripture bears witness to the call of the Gentiles, but the final judgment depends on the authority of Christ speaking through his apostles and elders whose inspired declaration is not "The Bible says..." but "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us..." (Acts 15:28).

In all this, the Church, as ever, inseparably unites Scripture as the light and Sacred Tradition as the lens through which it is focused. In this way the mustard seed of the Kingdom continues to grow in that light, getting more mustardy, not less.

How then did Tradition develop with respect to the canon of Scripture?

In some cases, the Church in both east and west has a clear memory of just who wrote a given book and could remind the faithful of this. So, for instance, when a second century heretic named Marcion proposed to delete the Old Testament as the product of an evil god and canonize the letters of Paul (but with all those nasty Old Testament quotes snipped out), and a similarly edited gospel of Luke (sanitized of contact with Judaism for your protection), the Church responded with local bishops (in areas affected by Marcion's heresy) proposing the first canons of Scripture.

Note that the Church seldom defines its teaching (and is in fact disinclined to define it) till some challenge to the Faith (in this case, Marcion) forces it to do so. When Marcion tries to take away from the Tradition of Scripture by deleting Matthew, Mark and John and other undesirable books, the Church applies the basic measuring rod of Tradition and says, "This does not agree with the Tradition that was handed down to us, which remembers that Matthew wrote Matthew, Mark wrote Mark and John wrote John.

Matthew also issued among the Hebrews a written Gospel in their own language, while Peter and Paul were evangelizing in Rome and laying the foundation of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also handed down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, set down in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord who reclined at his bosom also published a Gospel, while he was residing at Ephesus in Asia. (Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 3, 1, 1)

In other words, there is, we might say, a Standard of Roots (based on Sacred Tradition) by which the Church weighs her canon. So when various other heretics, instead of trying to subtract from the generally received collection of holy books, instead try to add the Gospel of Thomas or any one of a zillion other ersatz works to the Church's written Tradition, the Church can point to the fact that, whatever the name on the label says, the contents do not square with the Tradition of the Church, so it must be a fake. In other words, there is also a Standard of Fruits. It is this dual standard of Roots and Fruits by which the Church discerns the canon -- a dual standard which is wholly based on Sacred Tradition. The Church said, in essence, "Does the book have a widespread and ancient tradition concerning its apostolic origin and/or approval? Check. Does the book square with the Tradition we all learned from the apostles and the bishops they gave us? Check. Then it is to be used in public worship and is to be regarded as the word of God."

It was on this basis the early Church also vetoed some books and accepted others -- including the still-contested-by-some-Protestants deuterocanonical books of Tobit, Wisdom, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Sirach and Baruch as well as some pieces of Daniel and Esther. For the churches founded by the apostles could trace the use of the Septuagint version of the Old Testament in public worship (a Greek translation of the Old Testament which includes all these books) back to the apostles. In fact, many of the citations of Old Testament Scripture by the New Testament writers are, in fact, citations of the Septuagint (see, for example, Mark 7:6-7, Hebrews 10:5-7). Therefore, the Body of Christ living after the apostles simply retained the apostles' practice of using the Septuagint on the thoroughly traditional grounds, "If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for us." In contrast, the churches had no apostolic tradition handed down concerning the use of, say, the works of the Cretan poet Epimenides (whom Paul quotes in Acts 17), therefore they did not regard his works as Scripture, even though Paul quotes him. It was by their roots and fruits that the Church's books were judged, and it was by the standard of Sacred Tradition that these roots and fruits were known.

These Root and Fruit standards are even more clearly at work in the canonization of the New Testament, especially in the case of Hebrews. There was, in fact, a certain amount of controversy in the early Church over the canonicity of this book (as well as of books like 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation). Some Fathers, especially in the west, rejected Hebrews (in no small part because of its lack of a signature). Yet the Church eventually accepted it. How? It was judged apostolic because, in the end, the Church discerned that it met the Roots and Fruits measure when stacked up against Sacred Tradition.

The Body of Christ had long believed that Hebrews said the same thing as the Church's Sacred Tradition handed down by the bishops. Thus, even Fathers (like Irenaeus) who rejected it from their canon of inspired Scripture still regarded it as a good book. That is, it had always met the Fruits standard. How then did it meet the Roots standard? In a nutshell, despite the lack of attestation in the text of Hebrews itself, there was an ancient tradition in the Church (beginning in the East, where the book was apparently first sent) that the book originated from the pen of St. Paul. That tradition, which was at first better attested in the east than in the west (instantaneous mass communication being still some years in the future) accounts for the slowness of western Fathers (such as Irenaeus) to accept the book. But the deep-rootedness of the tradition of Pauline authorship in the East eventually persuaded the whole Church. In short, as with the question of circumcision in the book of Acts, the status of Hebrews was not immediately clear even to the honest and faithful (such as Irenaeus). However, the Church in council, trusting in the guidance of Holy Spirit, eventually came to consensus and canonized the book on exactly the same basis that the Council of Jerusalem promulgated its authoritative decree: "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us..."

Conversely, those books which the Church did not canonize as part of the New Testament were rejected because, in the end, they did not meet both the Root and Fruit standards of the Church's Sacred Tradition. Books like the Didache or the Shepherd of Hermas, while meeting the Fruit standard, were not judged to meet the Root standard since their authors were not held to be close enough to the apostolic circle -- a circle which was, in the end, drawn very narrowly by the Spirit-led Church and which therefore excluded even Clement since he, being "in the third place from the Apostles" was not as close to the apostles as Mark and Luke (who were regarded as recording the gospels of Peter and Paul, respectively). The Church, arch-conservative as ever, relied on Sacred Tradition, not to keep adding to the New Testament revelation but to keep it as lean and close to the apostles as possible. This, of course, is why books which met neither the Root nor Fruit standards of Sacred Tradition, such as the Gospel of Thomas, were rejected by the Church without hesitation as completely spurious.

Not that this took place overnight. The canon of Scripture did not assume its present shape till the end of the fourth century. It was defined at the regional Councils of Carthage and Hippo and also by Pope Damasus and included the deuterocanonical books. It is worth noting, however, that, because these decisions were regional, none of them were dogmatically binding on the whole Church, though they clearly reflected the Sacred Tradition of the Church (which is why the Vulgate or Latin Bible--which was The Bible for the Catholic Church in the West for the next 1200 years looks the same as the Catholic Bible today). Once again, we are looking at Sacred Tradition which is not fully developed until a) the Reformation tries to subtract deuterocanonical books from Scripture and b) the Council of Trent in the mid-1500s finally makes that Tradition fixed and binding. This is the origin of the myth that the Catholic Church "added" the deuterocanonical books to Scripture at Trent. It is as historically accurate as the claim that the Catholic Church "added" opposition to embryonic stem cell research to its tradition during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II.

In summary then, the early Church canonized books because they were attested by apostolic tradition. The books we have in our Bibles (and the ones we don't) were accepted or rejected according to whether they did or did not measure up to standards which were based entirely on Sacred Tradition and the divinely delegated authority of the Body of Christ.

Good. Then you should understand the distinction of "eidolon" and why the translation "graven image" is misleading to modern English speakers.

If we're going to discuss the original language of the Tanakh, you should refer to the Hebrew word p'sel rather than the Greek eidolon. The meanings in this particular case are essentially the same, but nevertheless, the Septuagint is merely a translation, not the original Scriptures.

In any case, you're trying to read much into a single word absent of its context. After saying, "You shall not make an idol" (to use your prefered translation), the command continues, "or any likeness of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them" (Exo. 20:4-5). The implication in the Hebrew is that it is the act of bowing down to and serving (tabedam, to serve and worship, as in Deu. 13:5) a piece of "religious art" which makes it into a p'sel.

This understanding is borne out in an example that I gave in post 130: God commanded Moses to make a serpent of brass, a piece of "religious art" as it were, and put it on a pole that all who looked on it might be healed of the bite of the asps He sent upon them as punishment (Num. 21:8). Strangely enough, this serpent was actually a type of the Messiah, who was lifted up on a cross and made sin for us (John 3:14, 2 Co. 5:21). Yet, when the people burned incense to it (an act of worship just as bowing down is), it became an idol, and Hezekiah had to destroy it (2 Ki. 18:4).

Thus, by performing the outward act of bowing down to a statue of Mary, an act that would be termed worship if done by a Hindu to a statue of Vishnu, what might otherwise be a simple piece of religious art becomes a p'seh.

Would this make keeping the Sabbath on Sunday wrong or sinful?

Insofar as we define sin as "missing the mark" (the literal translation of both the Greek and Hebrew word), yes: It misses the mark of correct Biblical understanding.

Fortunately, it's not the unforgiveable sin, and we are saved by God's grace, received in trusting Yeshua the Messiah, not by keeping all of God's Appointed Times in just such-and-such a way. I don't generally make it an issue except with two groups of Christians:

1) Those who want to rag on me for supposedly following rabbinical traditions instead of the Bible--my point to them is that if they're going to follow church tradition where it does conflict with Scripture, they shouldn't hassel me about following Jewish traditions in instances where they don't.
2) Those claiming that their denominations traditions are the original apostolic church, e.g., Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. My point to them is that a) God rates obedience over lineage, and b) the Apostles were Torah-observant Jews (cf. Acts 21:20ff), not Roman Catholics.

Catholics do not bow down to statues.

I attend mass at least weekly and I do not see anyone bowing down to statues. Nor do I. We bow before a cross, we bow before an altar of God and we stand or kneel during prayers to God.

The statues and icons etc which may adorn the church are akin to artwork. We do not pray to artwork but to the sacred beliefs they may inspire. When I was a Methodist worshipper there was a nativity scene displayed behind the altar, and a dove above the altar. We did not pray to them.
But an observer not familiar with the rituals and rites, watching the congregants in prayer at the altar rail following communion, would have concluded that Methodists prayed to statues in stables, and to doves, and to large wooden crosses.

Do you believe Jews worshiped the Ark of the Covenant? Or what it represented? It seems from scripture as well as Jewish tradition that God Himself was quite invested in this venerated piece of sculpture, striking dead those unfortunate enough to be clumsy or irreverent with it.

It might behoove you to study the origin and meaning of the rituals of the mass and to attend before scorning.
The rituals of the mass may derive in large part from those of the synagogues in which Jesus and his Apostles prayed and taught. In fact, the Catholic Church with its rituals has been described as "A Synagogue....with Jesus".

Protestants who split from the Church have not made the Church stronger. Current developments among the various protestant sects have opened my eyes. I am going home.

I am not there yet. But I am aware that it was Christ's vision that there be one Church. I do not see it as being Methodist, Lutheran, Evangelical or Baptist... but Catholic, with reforms brought about by demands of the faithful for scriptural adherence. Believe it or not my Catholic study group is more attuned to scripture, more hungry to learn, more open to discuss, than any adult group I was part of in the Methodist Church.

the Apostles were Torah-observant Jews (cf. Acts 21:20ff), not Roman Catholics.

OK, I'll bite. How did the Apostles square with being "torah-observant Jews" after the moment that Peter recognized Chist to be the Son of Man?

from Matthew 16: Peter Confesses Jesus as the Christ
13 When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?”
14 So they said, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
17 Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
19 And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

I think Constantine a great Christian saint?

Let me put that in the form of a question, then: Was Constantine, called "the Great" in the Catholic Encyclopedia, a Christian, a saint, and in good standing with the Church despite his refusal to be baptized for 25 years?

No evidence?

I made an assumption based on your Catholicism. If I was in error, I apologize. Speaking of evidence, however, let's not forget what led up to that point: You claimed that I "pervert [my] Torah with [my] psuedo Mithraism." Care to show some, or do you withdraw the charge and confess to slander?

Very generous number.

It depends on the congregation, but that's what I've found in those I know, your snide words aside. Some have fewer, some have more.

Surely not those you've listed below. They'd never heard the word "trinity".

"Trinity" is simply a convenient shorthand expression for the belief that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all equally One God, often expressed as "Three Persons"--and while the Apostles and Prophets did not originate the term, they clearly understood the concept and expressed it throughout their writings.

That's a concept you adopted from proto-orthodox and orthodoxy.

It's a concept that I tested by the Scriptures and have found to be true, if often poorly expressed by many of those who profess to believe in it.

You also accept their canonization but then reject most other things these same people attempt to give you.

The RCC and EO churches did not "give" me the canon, as if they wrote them. They merely recognized the canon that the Holy Spirit gave. Thus, the Church (by which I mean the true Church, not the RCC) is not the originator of the canon, it is merely the recognizer of it. The Church is not the mother of the canon, but its daughter. The Church is not the master of the canon, but it's minister.

Such as the perpetual virginity of Mary,

Which is disproven by the Scriptures on multiple fronts:

1) Yeshua had brothers (adelphos, not anepsios, "cousin") and sisters.
2) Matthew records that "And Joseph, being roused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took his wife, and did not know her until she bore her son, the First-born. And he called His name Yeshua ("Yah's Salvation")" (1:24-25).
3) The essence of marriage in Hebrew, Biblical thought is that "a man shall leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two of them shall be one flesh" (Mat. 19:5, cit. Gen. 2:24). A marriage in which there was no sexual intercourse would have been a sham marriage, and a matter of both spouses defrauding the other. Thus Sha'ul (Paul) writes:
Do not deprive one another, unless it is with consent for a time, so that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer. And come together again so that Satan does not tempt you for your incontinence.
(1 Cor. 7:5)

The fact is that the entire "perpetual virgin" myth is a perfect example of imposing a Platonic Greek ideal on a distinctly Jewish document, the sacred Scriptures.

papal authority,

The day the popes declared to be above the Scriptures is the day they lost their authority in all things Scriptural.

apostolic succession.

When the bishops, cardinals, and popes live as the Apostles did, teach what the Apostles taught, and do the deeds of the Apostles, then maybe I'll listen to the claim of apostolic succession. Until then, I reiterate that to God, obedience is far more important than lineage (Mat. 12:48-49, Luke 11:27-28).

Your approach is rather smorgessboardlike.

Only in the sense that I look at the buffet of competing traditions, and compare them all with Scripture: Those that match, I heed; those that do not, I throw out.

Just like Yeshua did.

OK, I'll bite. How did the Apostles square with being "torah-observant Jews" after the moment that Peter recognized Chist to be the Son of Man?

Simple; because Yeshua said point-blank

Do not think that I have come to destroy the Torah or the Prophets. I have not come to destroy but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, Till the heaven and the earth pass away, not one yod (the smallest Hebrew letter) or one tittle (the decorative hooks on the end of some Hebrew letters; i.e. the least penstroke) shall in any way pass from the Torah until all is fulfilled. Therefore whoever shall break one of these commandments, the least, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of Heaven. But whoever shall do and teach them , the same shall be called great in the kingdom of Heaven.
--Matthew 5:17-19

In regards to "binding and loosing," you have been grossly misinformed on just how much authority that gives one. The authority to bind and loose is the authority to make rulings on what the Jews call halakah, lit. "the way you should walk"--that is, rulings on how one should apply the Torah (and by extension, the other Scriptures) to one's life. It does not give one the authority to change the least letter of the Scriptures, as Yeshua makes clear in the quote above.

I've written a fuller treatment of the subject here, and a longer essay on why the New Covenant doesn't do away with the Torah here if you're interested.

Catholics do not bow down to statues.

I attend mass at least weekly and I do not see anyone bowing down to statues.

That may be true in your parish, but clearly many Catholics do bow down to statues. I've seen it personally, and I've got a number of Catholic and ex-Catholic friends who will admit that that is the norm. Besides, quite aside from the picture I've posted, notice how few of your brethren are trying to deny that Catholics literally, physically bow down to statues--the counter-arguments have all been along the line of, "Well, what's really in my heart is such-and-such, so it's okay."

As far as religious artwork goes, I have no problem with it, and neither does God; but as soon as people start performing physical acts of worship towards the artwork, it becomes an idol, as I explained and gave a Biblical example of in post 282.

Do you believe Jews worshiped the Ark of the Covenant?

I already answered this in post 130: Yes, but their prayers were always directed not to the cherubim, nor did they ask the cherubim to intercede for them. They prayed to the invisible "YHVH God of Israel, who dwells between the cherubim" (2 Ki. 19:15, cf. Exo. 25:22).

It might behoove you to study the origin and meaning of the rituals of the mass and to attend before scorning.

This is way off subject, but I have. It might behoove you to study the Seder and to study the difference between a physical type and a literal transubstantiation.

Protestants who split from the Church have not made the Church stronger.

We didn't split; we were kicked out for trying to correct errant tradition with Scripture.

But I am aware that it was Christ's vision that there be one Church.

One Church founded on His Word, not on the traditions of men. Unity in error is no virtue, and dissent for the truth is no vice: Otherwise, the Church would have given up the truth of the Messiah to stay unified with the synagogues.

God bless.

"Your stance would work if you had a direct pipeline to God to get His judgment on your daily learning, but I imagine you don't have that."

But I do, as do we all if we exercise it.

A) 2 Tim 2;15 Study to show thyself approved, a workman that need not be ashamed rightly dividing the "Word of God" It doesn't say rightly dividing the Catholic teachings, nor the teachings of the Pope.

B) James 1;5-6 "If anyone lacks wisdom let him ask of the Father who gives generously, and does not hold back." God gives us the wisdom we ask for.

C) 1 Cor 2;11-16 paraphrased states that if we have received Christ, then we have the spirit residing in us. If we have the spirit residing in us, then the spirit will teach us.

D) According to 1 Tim 2;5 We have a mediator in Christ himself. This means that we need no man to mediate for us.

This being said I do not dispute the need for a church family, I just dispute absolute power of the church to mediate, and or dictate for God. The church is comprised of men, and men are fallible, as am I and if someone shows me my fallacy using scripture, then I yield, but without scripture, I hesitate to yield to the teachings of any man.

In closing, we are able to be lead directly by God in studying his Holy scriptures, and we are accountable to check any teaching we have been brought for both accuracy, and relevancy.

I pray for you all the blessings Christ has in store for you, and I am done with this aspect of the conversation.

Blessings, and Grace.

Not even them, and anyone who claims to have such authority is a liar and a false prophet:

All the things I command you, be careful to do it. You shall not add to it, nor take away from it.
If a prophet (i.e., one claiming to speak for God) rises among you, or a dreamer of dreams, and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder which he foretold to you occurs, saying, Let us go after other gods which you have not known, and let us serve them, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For YHVH your God is testing you to know whether you love YHVH your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
You shall walk after YHVH your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments, and obey His voice, and you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him. And that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken to turn you away from YHVH your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slaves, to thrust you out of the way in which YHVH your God commanded you to walk. So you shall put the evil away from the midst of you.
--Deuteronomy 12:32-13:5

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