Posted on 12/04/2006 7:52:47 PM PST by Pyro7480
No the weren't considered scripture until they passed the Canon test, authored by an Apostle or someone with a close association with an apostle.
Other religions can make any claims they want, but they do not worship a risen saviour-which is what makes Christianity different and our fruit different as well That is a flawed argument. Difference doesn't change the essence. We are all different, yet essentially human. All religions claim 'changed lives' and those that are apocalyptic claim also salvation.
Well, this difference does since we are the only 'religion' to claim our founder is still alive.
Don't you mean 'alleged' inconsistencies? You have no facts, just a clear hatred for the Bible and its truth No, I mean inconsistencies. There is no hatred of the Bible or its truth. Nonetheless, human hands and minds have changed it over and over again.
Well, there are no errors or inconsistencies in the Bible.
What God gave, He preserved as well.
And you are going to tell me you believe in evolution? The Vatican told Galileo that the craters on the Moon they could see with his telescope were an 'optical illusion' created by the devil who wants us to believe that celestial bodies are not perfect, as all things in heaven [!] are. Well, there are craters on the moon, and the 'heaven' is not the sky above and 'celestial spheres' are not perfect. If you want to wager on a myth, that's fine with me. God did create this world, but not as we imagine.
The Catholic Church was not following the Bible, it was following Aristole.
The Creation occured exactly as God described it in Genesis 1.
No, according to your reasoning, any ancient document you read cannot be held to be true due to the fact that we do not have the originals to check with the copies Ancient documents usually have other corroborating evidence. If they don't, no one is expected to accept them on faith.
Ancient docutments have far less evidence than to the Bible manuscripts.
The Bible manuscripts number in the thousands and are corroborated by the Church Fathers's writings, who quote them as well, and by church lectionaries that used them.
My Greek NT does have Kata and the name of the author. Show me the original, or even the oldest copy of the original, and then quote one author who before 150 AD credits anything quoted from the gospels to any of the authros we claim.
In the Greek Texts, Critical and TR, the authors are named in the headings.
Those headings were in the Greek texts before 150 as the text.
Take, for instance 1 Clement 13 (c 96 AD), "let us remember what the Lord Jesus Christ said..." and proceeds with quotes found in Matthew 5, 6, and 7 without mentioning the author.
That was a common practice among church fathers, who quoted scripture without naming who they were quoting.
They assumed that the scriptures were so well known that everyone would know who they were citing.
+Ignatius, likewise, in his First Letter to the Smyrnians (about 110 AD) quotes from Mat 3:15 without giving the author.
Again, that was a common practice.
Christ did not name Isaiah whom he read from in Luke 4.
Even today people will quote scripture without naming the source 'judge not, lest ye be judged'.
The first to make vague (namless) refrences to Apostolic authors was +Justin the Martyr (c. 150 AD), mentioning their "memoirs."
It was well known who wrote the books since that was the reason they were accepted as part of the Canon, their authorship.
Peter states in 2Pe.3 that Paul had written scripture.
It was +Irenaeus (c. end of 2nd century) who for the first time mentiones authors by name, SS. Luke, Mark, John, and Matthew in that order in his , 10.1, 10.5, 11.1, and 16.2). After +Irenaeus it becomes common to reference Gospel authors.
No, the Gospel authors were already well known before Ireaneanus mentions them by name.
What do you think he did, make the names up?
+Irenaeus referrs to the books by quoting the first sentence in them. That was the standard method in the ancient world, Hebrew or Greek.
So?
The heading in the Gospels would not be the first sentence, they would be the heading, as they are in the Greek Text today.
CHAPTER II
THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCUMENTS: THEIR DATE AND ATTESTATION
1. What are the New Testament documents?
THE New Testament as we know it consists of twentyn seven short Greek writings, commonly called ‘books’, the first five of which are historical in character, and are thus of more immediate concern for our present study. Four of these we call the Gospels, because each of them narrates the gospel-the good news that God revealed Himself in Jesus Christ for the redemption of mankind. All four relate sayings and doings of Christ, but can scarcely be called biographies in our modern sense of the word, as they deal almost exclusively with the last two or three years of His life, and devote what might seem a disproportionate space to the week immediately preceding His death. They are not intended to be ‘Lives’ of Christ, but rather to present from distinctive points of view, and originally for different publics, the good news concerning Him. The first three Gospels (those according to Matthew, Mark and Luke), because of certain features which link them together, are commonly called the ‘Synoptic Gospels.
The fifth historical writing, the Acts of the Apostles, is actually a continuation of the third Gospel, written by the same author, Luke the physician and companion of the apostle Paul. It gives us an account of the rise of Christianity after the resurrection and ascension of Christ, and of its extension in a westerly direction from Palestine to Rome, within about thirty years of the crucifixion. Of the other writings twentyone are letters. Thirteen of these bear the name of Paul, nine of them being addressed to churches and four to individuals.
THEIR DATE AND ATTESTATION
Another letter, the Epistle to the Hebrews, is anonymous, but was at an early date bound up with the Pauline Epistles, and came to be frequently ascribed to Paul. It was probably written shortly before AD 70 to a community of Jewish Christians in Italy. Of the remaining letters one bears the name of James, probably the brother of our Lord; one of Jude, who calls himself the brother of James; two of Peter; and there are three which bear no name, but because of their obvious affinities with the fourth Gospel have been known from early days as the Epistles of John. The remaining book is the Apocalypse, or book of the Revelation. It belongs to a literary genre which, though strange to our minds, was well known in Jewish and Christian circles in those days, the apocalyptic.’ The Revelation is introduced by seven covering letters, addressed to seven churches in the province of Asia. The author, John by name, was at the time exiled on the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea, and reports a series of visions which symbolically portray the triumph of Christ both in His own passion and in the sufferings of His people at the hand of His enemies and theirs. The book was written in the days of the Flavian emperors (AD 69-96) to encourage hard-pressed Christians with the assurance that, notwithstanding the apparent odds against which they had to contend, their victory was not in doubt; Jesus, not Caesar, had been invested by the Almighty with the sovereignty of the world.
Of these twenty seven books, then, we are chiefly concerned at present with the first five, which are cast in narrative form, though the others, and especially the letters of Paul, are important for our purpose in so far as they contain historical allusions or otherwise throw light on the Gospels and Acts.
2. What are the dates of these documents?
The crucifixion of Christ took place, it is generally agreed, about AD 30. According to Luke iii. I, the
activity of John the Baptist, which immediately preceded the commencement of our Lord’s public ministry, is dated in ‘the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar’. Now, Tiberius became emperor in August, AD 14, and according to the method of computation current in Syria, which Luke would have followed, his fifteenth year commenced in September or October, AD a7.1 The fourth Gospel mentions three Passovers after this time; the third Passover from that date would be the Passover of AD 30, at which it is probable on other grounds that the crucifixion took place. At this time, too, we know from other sources that Pilate was Roman governor of Judaea, Herod Antipas was tetrarch of Galilee, and Caiaphas was Jewish high priest.
The New Testament was complete, or substantially complete, about AD 100, the majority of the writings being in existence twenty to forty years before this. In this country a majority of modern scholars fix the dates of the four Gospels as follows: Matthew, c. 85-90; Mark, c. 65; Luke, c. 80-85; John, c. 90-100.4 I should be inclined to date the first three Gospels rather earlier: Mark shortly after AD 60, Luke between 60 and 70, and Matthew shortly after 70. One criterion which has special weight with me is the relation which these writings appear to bear to the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70. My view of the matter is that Mark and Luke were written before this event, and Matthew not long afterwards.
But even with the later dates, the situation’ encouraging from the historian’s point of view, for the first three Gospels were written at a time when man, were alive who could remember the things that Jesus said and did, and some at least would still be alive when the fourth Gospel was written. If it could be determined that the writers of the Gospels used sources of information belonging to an earlier date, then the situation would be still more encouraging. But a more detailed examination of the Gospels will come in a later chapter.
The date of the writing of Acts will depend on the date we affix to the third Gospel, for both are parts of one historical work, and the second part appears to have been written soon after the first. There are strong arguments for dating the twofold work not long after Paul’s two years’ detention in Rome (AD 60-62)Some scholars, however, consider that the ‘former treatise’ to which Acts originally formed the sequel was not our present Gospel of Luke but an earlier draft, sometimes called ‘ProtoLuke’; this enables them to date Acts in the sixties, while holding that the Gospel of Luke in its final form was rather later.
The dates of the thirteen Pauline Epistles can be fixed partly by internal and partly by external evidence. The day has gone by when the authenticity of these letters could be denied wholesale. There are some writers today who would reject Ephesians; fewer would reject 2 Thessalonians; more would deny that the Pastoral Epistles (I and ~ Timothy and Titus) came in their present form from the hand of Paul.’ I accept them all as Pauline, but the remaining eight letters would by themselves be sufficient for our purpose, and it is from these that the main arguments are drawn in our later chapter on ‘The Importance of Paul’s Evidence’.
Ten of the letters which bear Paul’s name belong to the period before the end of his Roman imprisonment.
These ten, in order of writing, may be dated as follows: Galatians, 48; I and 2 Thessalonians, 50; Philippians, 54; I and 2 Corinthians, 54-56; Romans, 57; Colossians, Philemon, and Ephesians, c. 60. The Pastoral Epistles, in their diction and historical atmosphere, contain signs of later date than the other Pauline Epistles, but this presents less difficulty to those who believe in a second imprisonment of Paul at Rome about the year 64, which was ended by his execution.’ The Pastoral Epistle can then be dated c. 63-64, and the changed state of affairs in the Pauline churches to which they bear witness will have been due in part to the opportunity which Paul’s earlier Roman imprisonment afforded to his opponents m these churches.
At any rate, the time elapsing between the evangelic events and the writing of most of the New Testament books was, from the standpoint of historical research, satisfactorily short. For in assessing the trustworthiness of ancient historical writings, one of the most important questions is: How soon after the events took place were they recorded ?
3. What is the evidence for their early existence? |
About the middle of the last century it was confidently asserted by a very influential school of thought that some of the most important books of the New Testament,including the Gospels and the Acts, did not exist before the thirties of the second century AD. This conclusion was the result not so much of historical evidence as of philosophical presuppositions. Even then there was sufficient historical evidence to show how unfounded these theories were, as Lightfoot, Tischendorf, Tregelles and others demonstrated m their writings; but the amount of such evidence available in our own day is so much greater and more conclusive that a firstcentury date for most of the New Testament writings cannot reasonably be denied, no matter what our philosophical presuppositions may be.
The evidence for our New Testament writings is ever so much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors, the authenticity of which noone dreams of questioning. And if the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond all doubt. It is a curious fact that historians have often been much readier to trust the New Testament records than have many theologians. Somehow or other, there are people who regard a ‘sacred book’ as ipso facto under suspicion, and demand much more corroborative evidence for such a work than they would for an ordinary secular or pagan writing From the viewpoint of the historian, the same standards must be applied to both. But we do not quarrel with those who want more evidence for the New Testament than for other writings; firstly, because the universal claims which the New Testament makes upon mankind are so absolute, and the character and works of its chief Figure so unparalleled, that we want to be as sure of its truth as we possibly can; and secondly, because in point of fact there is much more evidence for the New Testament than for other ancient writings of comparable date.
There are in existence about 5,000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament in whole or in part. The best and most important of these go back to somewhere about AD 350, the two most important being the Codex Vaticanus, the chief treasure of the Vatican Library in Rome, and the wellknown Codex Sinaiticus, which the British Government purchased from the Soviet Government for £100,000 on Christmas Day, 1933, and which is now the chief treasure of the British Museum. Two other important early MSS in this country are the Codex Alexandrinus, also in the British Museum, written in the fifth century, and the Codex Bezae:, in Cambridge University Library, written in the fifth or sixth century, and containing the Gospels and Acts in both Greek and Latin.
Perhaps we can appreciate how wealthy the New Testament is in manuscript attestation if we compare the textual material for other ancient historical works. For Caesar’s Gallic War (composed between 58 and 50 BC) there are several extant MSS, but only nine or ten are good, and the oldest is some goo years later than Caesar’s day. Of the 142 books of the Roman History of Livy (59 BC-AD 17) only thirty five survive; these are known to us from not more than twenty MSS of any consequence, only one of which, and that containing fragments of Books iii-vi, is as old as the fourth century. Of the fourteen books of the Histories of Tacitus (c. AD 100) only four and a half survive; of the sixteen books of his Annals, ten survive in full and two in part. The text of these extant portions of has two great historical works depends entirely on two MSS, one of the ninth century and one of the eleventh. The extant MSS of his minor works (Dialogue dc Oratoribus, Agricola, Gcrmania) all descend from a codex of the tenth century The History of Thucydides (c. 460-400 BC) is known to us from eight MSS, the earliest belonging to c. AD 900, and a few papyrus scraps, belonging to about the beginning of the Christian era The same is true of the History of Herodotus (c. 488-428 BC). Yet no classical scholar would listen to an argument that the authenticity of Herodotus or Thucydides is in doubt because the earliest MSS of their works which are of any use to us are over 1,300 years later than the originals.
But how different is the situation of the New Testament in this respect! In addition to the two excellent MSS of the fourth century mentioned above, which are the earliest of some thousands known to us, considerable fragments remain of papyrus copies of books of the New Testament dated from 100 to 200 years earlier still. The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri, the existence of which was made public in 1931, consist of portions of eleven papyrus codices, three of which contained most of the New Testament writings. One of these, containing the four Gospels with Acts, belongs to the first half of the third century; another, containing Paul’s letters to churches and the Epistle to the Hebrews, was copied at the beginning of the third century; the third, containing Revelation, belongs to the second half of the same century.
A more recent discovery consists of some papyrus fragments dated by papyrological experts not later than AD 150, published in Fragments of an Unknown Gospel and other Early Christian Papyri, by H. I. Bell and T. C. Skeat (1935). These fragments contain what has been thought by some to be portions of a fifth Gospel having strong affinities with the canonical four; but much more probable is the view expressed in The Times Literary Supplement for 25 April 1935, ‘that these fragments were written by someone who had the four Gospels before him and knew them well; that they did not profess to be an independent Gospel; but were paraphrases of the stories and other matter in the Gospels designed for explanation and instruction, a manual to teach people the Gospel stories’.
Earlier still is a fragment of a papyrus codex containing John xviii. 31-33, 37 f, now in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, dated on palaeographical grounds around AD 130, showing that the latest of the four Gospels, which was written, according to tradition, at Ephesus between AD 90 and 100, was circulating in Egypt within about forty years of its composition (if, as is most likely, this papyrus originated in Egypt, where it was acquired in 1917). It must be regarded as being, by half a century, the earliest extant fragment of the New Testament.
A more recently discovered papyrus manuscript of the same Gospel, while not so early as the Rylands papyrus, is incomparably better preserved; this is the Papyrus Bodmer II, whose discovery was announced by the Bodmer Library of Geneva in 1956; it was written about AD 200, and contains the first fourteen chapters of the Gospel of John with but one lacuna (of twenty two verses), and considerable portions of the last seven chapters.’
Attestation of another kind is provided by allusions to and quotations from the New Testament books in other early writings. The authors known as the Apostolic Fathers wrote chiefly between AD 90 and 160, and in their works we find evidence for their acquaintance with most of the books of the New Testament. In three works whose date is probably round about AD100-the ‘Epistle of Barnabas’, written perhaps in Alexandria; the Didache, or ‘Teaching of the Twelve Apostles’, produced somewhere in Syria or Palestine; and the letter sent to the Corinthian church by Clement, bishop of Rome, about AD 96— find fairly certain quotations from the common tradition of the Synoptic Gospels, from Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, Titus, Hebrews, 1 Peter, and possible quotations from other books of the New Testament. In the letters written by Ignatius, bishop of .Antioch, as he journeyed to his martyrdom in Rome in AD 115, there are reasonably identifiable quotations from Matthew, John, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1 and Timothy, Titus, and possible allusions to Mark, Luke, Acts, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, Philemon, Hebrews, and 1 Peter. His younger contemporary, Polycarp, in a letter to the Philippians (c. 120) quotes from the common tradition of the Synoptic Gospels, from Acts, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Hebrews, I Peter, and I John. And so we might go on through the writers of the second century, amassing increasing evidence of their familiarity with and recognition of the authority of the New Testament writings. So far as the Apostolic Fathers are concerned, the evidence is collected and weighed in a work called The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, recording the findings of a committee of the Oxford Society of Historical Theology in 1905.
Nor is it only in orthodox Christian writers that we find evidence of this sort. It is evident from the recently discovered writings of the Gnostic school of Valentinus that before the middle of the second century most of the New Testament books were as well known and as fully venerated in that heretical circle as they were in the Catholic Church.’
The study of the kind of attestation found in MSS and quotations in later writer’ is connected with the approach known as Textual Criticism.’ This is a most important and fascinating branch of study, its object being to determine as exactly as possible from the available evidence the original words of the documents in question. It is easily proved by experiment that it is difficult to copy out a passage of any considerable length without making one or two dips at least. When we have documents like our New Testament writings copied and recopied thousands of times, the scope for copyists’ errors is so enormously increased that it is surprising there are no more than there actually are. Fortunately, if the great number of MSS increases the number of scribal errors, it increases proportionately the means of correcting such errors, so that the margin of doubt left in the process of recovering the exact original wording is not so large as might be feared; it is in truth remarkably small. The variant readings about which any doubt remain’ among textual critics of the New Testament affect no material question of historic fact or of Christian faith and practice
To sum up, we may quote the verdict of the late Sir Frederic Kenyon, a scholar whose authority to make pronouncements on ancient MSS was second to none:
‘The interval then between the data of original. composition and the earliest extant evidence become so small to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scripture have come down tous substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.’
http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/ffbruce/ntdocrli/ntdocc02.htm
At a very early date it appears that the four Gospels were unites in one collection. They must have been brought together very soon after the writing of the Gospel according to John. This fourfold collection was known originally as ‘The Gospel’ in the singular, not ‘The Gospels’ in the plural; there was only one Gospel, narrated in four records, distinguishes as ‘according to Matthew’, ‘according to Mark’, and so on. About AD 115 Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, refers to ‘The Gospel’ as an authoritative writing, and as he knew more than one of the four ‘Gospels’ it may well be that by ‘The Gospel’ sans phrase he means the fourfold collection which went by that name.
By the time of Irenaeus us, who, though a native of Asia Minor, was bishop of Lyons in Gaul about AD 180, the idea of a fourfold Gospel had become so axiomatic in the Church at large that he can refer to it as an established and recognised fact as obvious as the four cardinal points of the compass or the four winds:
‘For as there are four quarters of the world in which we live, an d four universal winds, and as the Church is dispersed over all the earth, and the gospel is’ the pillar and base of the Church and the breath of life, so it is natural that it should have four pillars, breathing immortality from every quarter arid kindling the life of men anew. Whence it is manifest that the Word, the architect of all things, who sits upon the cherubim and holds all things together, having been manifested to men, has given us the gospel in fourfold form, but held together by one Spirit.”
One thing must be emphatically stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognising their innate worth and generally apostolic authority, direct or indirect. The first ecclesiastical councils to classify the canonical books were both held in North Africa-at Hippo Regius in 393 and at Carthage in 397-but what these councils did was not to impose something new upon the Christian communities but to codify what was already the general practice of those communities.
http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/ffbruce/ntdocrli/ntdocc03.htm
Roman Catholics call it the 'mass', Christians call it the Lord's Supper.
We do it in rememberance of Christ's death on the cross, we are not reenacting it in violation of Heb. 6:6
There were many false books competing with Christianity, but the local churches were able to filter them out. That is not the way Christian history relates how the Canon was formed. I don't know where you get your information, but a number of letters were read at the MASS that today are not part of what we call "Scripture". One example is the first letter of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians.
One thing must be emphatically stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognising their innate worth and generally apostolic authority, direct or indirect. The first ecclesiastical councils to classify the canonical books were both held in North Africa-at Hippo Regius in 393 and at Carthage in 397-but what these councils did was not to impose something new upon the Christian communities but to codify what was already the general practice of those communities. http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/ffbruce/ntdocrli/ntdocc03.htm
False churches accepted apocyrpha books in both the Old and New Testament.
False Churches later denied what was accepted by the Universal Church. What happened? Those cats from 1000 years later suddenly have a "revelation"?
Even Jerome did not accept the Old Testament Apocrypha as part of the Canon, viewing it as a secondary work, likewise with Athansisus.
The Apocrypha did not become 'offical' for the RCC until Trent.
Ever figure out what Jn.15:2 means? I'm sure you and your self-proclaimed infallibility will soon tell me...
No, I just figured you might actually get around to reading it.
But why should any Roman Catholic read what he doesn't believe.
Espically since when it is so much easier to have someone else do your thinking for you-like big Papa.
But why should any Roman Catholic read what he doesn't believe.
Espically since when it is so much easier to have someone else do your thinking for you-like big Papa
Let me know if you can say something without making a false accusation or some other negative comment towards another Christian...
Regards
Obviously you don't know that there were many books read in churches as 'scripture" that were later thrown out. The Epistle of Barnabas is the most glaring one (which actually forms part of the 'canon' of Codex Sinaiticus). So much for the 'canon' test.
Well, this difference does since we are the only 'religion' to claim our founder is still alive
God is alive in all religions. He is the founder of all of them.
Well, there are no errors or inconsistencies in the Bible
Fundamentalism is the same no matter what color or creed.
What God gave, He preserved as well
Except human beings. He allowed us to fall into error.
The Catholic Church was not following the Bible, it was following Aristole
Oh, I see...LOL!
The Creation occured exactly as God described it in Genesis 1
Don't be silly. Dark Ages are over.
Ancient docutments have far less evidence than to the Bible manuscripts
The Bible has no evidence whatsoever. There is not a trace of historical evidence of anything that is described in the NT. Even the authors of the four Gospels are anonymous.
The Bible manuscripts number in the thousands and are corroborated by the Church Fathers's writings, who quote them as well, and by church lectionaries that used them
That is a banal argument that only fundamentalists find "rational." Individual books are actually fewer than the copies of Homer's works (works of one author). Of course, we know that there ARE dozens if not hundreds of different authors of the Bible, so naturally there will be more books that Homer's work.
In the Greek Texts, Critical and TR, the authors are named in the headings
Show me the oldest copies.
That was a common practice among church fathers, who quoted scripture without naming who they were quoting
Well, the 'common' practice became uncommon suddenly in 180 when +Irenaeus started using authors as reference. Why did he do that? And why did all other subsequently acquire the practice?
Peter states in 2Pe.3 that Paul had written scripture
2 Peter was not written by Saint Peter. Neither was 1 Peter. 2 Peter was written specifically to bridge the animosity between +Peter and +Paul as evidenced in 1 Clement.
It was well known who wrote the books since that was the reason they were accepted as part of the Canon, their authorship
Don't make things up. The writers before +Justin the Martyr speak of the Gospel (singular), that is the Good News of Christ. They did not refer to any particular book. There were different scrolls in different churches and they were considered "the Gospel" regardless who wrote them. As it turns out, a lot of these scolls later on 'became' uncanonical.
That's why your "canon test" is a joke. There is no evidence of any fail-proof canon test being applied. The only criterion that applied was that a scroll was read in the church. It was presumed to be 'canonical.'
No, the Gospel authors were already well known before Ireaneanus mentions them by name. What do you think he did, make the names up?
No, he was going by the established tradition of the Church. That's right, tradition of men, lacking any material proof, accepted on faith. You seem to subscribe tot he same.
Don’t be wasting the bandwidth.
No, anything that was in the church that quoted Christ's teachings was considered a "Gospel" (Good news). The authors were unknown because non of those books was signed.
Today, we know that many of the NT books are not written by the people who were traditionally credited as authors. These include the half of +Paul's Epistles, the Acts, Gospel of John, the Apocalypse of John, 1 Peter and 2 Peter deutero-canonicals, etc.
There is much reason to doubt the book of Daniel, the Torah's authorship and so on. The only books that have some historical and other eivdence are the historical books, but then they have also been shown to be extremely exaggerated. king david's 'vast' kingdom was anything but that, etc.
By the time of Irenaeus us, who, though a native of Asia Minor, was bishop of Lyons in Gaul about AD 180, the idea of a fourfold Gospel had become so axiomatic in the Church
Agreed. But that axiomatic 'knowledge' was based entirely on trandition of men, not any solid evidence of authroship.
One thing must be emphatically stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognising their innate worth and generally apostolic authority, direct or indirec
Well, I have no objection to that...except I would say overvhelmingly more indirect than direct.
I'm with you! It's a good name, too, seeing as how "Murphy's Law" is already taken. :)
I am very surprised at the last two.
Rats. I remember finding two separate, seemingly credible enough polls before, but after a half hour of looking now, I cannot find them. What I did find now were several polls supporting my contention, but they are so old they are not worth citing. (Plus, they used small sample sizes.) They were from the NYT, Time, and USA Today. The basic idea was that around 60% of Catholics favor marriage for priests and around 70% favor remarriage for divorced Catholics. Based solely on my own personal experiences with lay Catholics, these numbers seem positively tame. However, it should be noted that my personal experiences, for whatever reason, have not included contact with especially devout AND learned Catholics. This is wholly unlike my experiences here with my FR Catholic friends.
Ping to 12,230. I regret that I am unable now to find the polls I found earlier. I was reasonably satisfied they were unbiased as against Catholics. But to answer your question, I do believe they were polls of American Catholics. (The ones I found now were definitely all American.) Vis-a-vis the social views of the laity, how would you describe American Catholics vs. "rest of the world" Catholics?
Not only do I believe you, but I'd Want to do it! :)
Alex and I had a long chat the other day, off this forum, about how knowing a language lets one get "inside" the mind of a culture and leads to a fuller understanding of that culture. As it happens we were both speaking about Greek, but its a pretty obvious observation no matter what the language. Its implications are, however, huge if one's religious belief is going to be based solely in writings done 2000+ years ago in a language one doesn't understand, or understand well and set in a culture which bears virtually no likeness to the one the believer lives in. (emphasis added)
I echo Quix's comments about transcendence. I agree with him that the Holy Spirit has made sure that core Christian doctrine has survived time and languages. Regarding what I underlined, I would only add that my beliefs are not based on a language I do not understand. They are based on translations of that language which I trust. You have your own translations of that language that you trust.
That is fine, but what I always object to is the monopoly of truth claimed, even in the translations. I maintain that it's the interpretation that is the difference, not the translations. 98% of the time I have been perfectly fine with any quotes from "Apostolic-favored" translations.
When you all say that you have an appreciation because you know Greek, I take that to mean that you have an agreement with others who have taught you to read Greek in a certain way, and translate it in a certain way. That's not bad, that's good. You have more freedom than I do to decide certain things for yourself, and I envy and respect that. AND, yet the major points and true direction of your personal theology have absolutely nothing to do with your knowledge or appreciation of Greek. That is driven by the Church, and translators and interpreters that have been accepted by the Church. Again, this is no criticism. I just see it as both of us relying on different people for the interpretation and translation of the Greek language. I might be at a personal disadvantage as respecting you, but the people we trust for our respective theologies were all heavyweights.
Most non-Orthodox Christians live in such a world, but the majority of them, Roman Catholics and traditional Anglicans, worship liturgically and the centrality of the various liturgies in their lives provides a context for the translated words they read in scripture.
I don't have any problem in acknowledging the interconnection. However, this same interconnection does not help to refute traditional Protestant arguments (positions) concerning the assertion that error did enter the Church.
A lot of good wise points in your post.
Thanks for the ping.
There is certainly merit in that view. Nonetheless, you'd agree that something is lost in translation simply because different languages lack linguistic and conceptual equivalence.
Based on my own experience, I know that, for one reason or another, so many English coloquialisms cannot be translated into some of the languages I know. Instaead, they must be imported wholesale into another language.
Thus, the Russian tea maker is called samovar in English, and underground publications are know as samizdat in English as well as in Russian. But to an English-speaking person, these words are really meaningless, and represent no more than a label.
The same can be said of just about any other foreign word integrated into daily English, such as Orthodox, or Theotokos. As labels, they are associative rather than meaningful.
But, I will agree with Quix and you that the "core [my emphasis] Christian doctrine has survived time and languages". We can probably make the same claim with respect to the Hebrew OT, yet I am deeply convinced that to truly experience AND comprehend the Hebrew Old Testament is to read it in Hebrew, as the rabis seem to find a lot more in their verses than we do in ours.
The question is not whether something is lost in translation, but how significant that loss is. It depends on what we define as 'significant'. I would say that when it comes to Faith, living the fullness of the Faith is significant.
Some believe it can be achieved by reading asnd comprehending; others believe it is not. But, as Kolo aptly observes, the Orthodox, Catholics and some Protestants (traditional Anglicans and Lutherans) experience their faith through Liturgy.
The Orthodox Wiki says "Worship is faith in action. In the words of Georges Florovsky: 'Christianity is a liturgical religion. The Church is first of all a worshipping community. Worship comes first, doctrine and discipline second'. Orthodoxy sees people as liturgical creatures who are fully complete when glorifying God.
We can discuss the merits of the liturgical worship as opposed to non-liturgical Protestant approach, but it is clear that some Protestant sects condition their fellowship with God entirely on reading and comprehension of the written word, in which case excellence in Greek and Hebrew seems inevitably the way of becoming 'fully complete' in their relationship with God.
Thanks for your kind words.
Good points in your post.
“I echo Quix’s comments about transcendence.”
And I, like Kosta, agree with both of you. I also agree that to an extent, and perhaps in spite of what follows, I believe the Holy Spirit did preserve at least some level of “core” Christian belief among most Protestants, Trinitarian and Christologic theology primarily as expressed in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and the dogmas of the Council of Chalcedon.
“However, this same interconnection [Liturgical praxis and community as a context for scripture] does not help to refute traditional Protestant arguments (positions) concerning the assertion that error did enter the Church.”
That’s a rather broad statement, FK, that I KNOW no Orthodox Christian would disagree with. Roman Catholics might disagree, but not we Orthodoxers. Error has flowed into The Church time and again throughout history, but in the end, The Truth prevails and heresy and apostasy are cut off and rejected. In Eastern Christianity we have extensive experience, up close and personal, with heresy, heretics and heresiarchs. Our ancient “Orthopraxis” within a Liturgical Community centered on the Eucharist, assures that The Church will shake off heresy when it shows up. Our Eucharistic theology and ecclesiology are rooted firmly in the Mystical Supper and the First Council at Jerusalem. Within 70 years of those events, +Ignatius of Antioch explained that theology simply and clearly and in so doing described what The Church in fact was doing in his lifetime. He tells us that the “fullness” of The Church exists in what we now would call a single diocese, a relatively small unit. He tells us what the early Church believed about the Eucharist and what we still believe. In any event, small groups can maintain “orthodoxy” fairly easily if they are interconnected, something large, top down groups have a problem with if error of one sort or another infects the top. Conversely, divorced from an “orthodoxy” of both belief and praxis, small groups can spin off into basic heresy, no matter what the reason for the break. It is in this area that I see the fundamental problem with Protestantism. Any honest person can see and today understand the motivation of the Reformers in their break with the medieval Latin Church. That said, aside from the Lutherans and the Anglicans, the rejection of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist took the very core out of the community and for this reason the Pope could say that Protestant groups are not strictly churches at all but rather “ecclesial groups”. Our Orthodox assurance of “orthodoxy” lies within The Church itself. Let me put it this way. We trust the scriptures because they are “within” The Church. We trust the consensus patrum because the Fathers wrote and taught and preached “within” The Church and The Church accepted what they wrote and taught and preached. We do this because by definition The Church is centered on Christ in the Eucharist and is so structured as to recognize and deal with error. This is not to say at all that Protestantism is inevitably destined to preach heresy. I don’t believe that at all. I listen most Saturday mornings to a pretty fundamentalist radio bible program from Canada. My wife laughs at me, but the preaching is generally pretty good and the hymns are wonderful. But there can be no assurance that what is preached in Protestant ecclesial groups is over time “orthodox” Christianity because these groups are not anchored in the Eucharist.
I can understand why so many of the spiritual children of the great Reformers of the West rejected the Real Presence. So much of what the medieval Latin Church did certainly could have been viewed (erroneusly in my opinion) as “magic” and demonic magic at that. Given that those people were as much social as religious revolutionaries, they were naturally prone to view the opposition as evil. There was a lot of evil in the Latin Church of those days and for many Western Christians, no practical, human way apparent to address that evil save by the Reformation. But within a generation, the centrality of the Eucharist, which both Calvin and Luther recognized, was gone, replaced by sola scriptura (in a way, I am convinced, that Luther certainly never intended).
From a strictly Eastern Christian pov, that rejection of 1500 years of Eucharistic theology, completely unchanged at least in Orthodoxy, led inevitably to error in Protestant groups which sola scriptura simply cannot deal with.
By all of this, I most certainly DO NOT mean to say that Orthodoxy has a monopoly on Theosis. Orthodoxy as a general proposition does not claim that. The mystery of the economia of salvation is just that, a mystery and it is plain that the “sporoi”, the seeds, of Faith exist in human belief throughout the world and down through the ages.
Thanks for your kind
reasonable
and educational points.
Aha, therein is your 'error'! You listen to Canadians. :)
Truth be told, I (of all people!) very often listen to Christian Family Radio and find most of the sermons "orthodox" and wonder how come we can't find the same level of agreement and common thread of Christian unity on the FR (wouldn't it be nice if we could?).
[+Ignatius] tells us that the “fullness” of The Church exists in what we now would call a single diocese
He said "the Chruch is where the bishop is." In other words, the Church is not made up of (local) "parts". Every church (lower case 'c') no matter how large or small, how metropolitan or provincial, that makes Eucharistic offers, contains the fullness of our Faith.
As the NT shows us, out of the twelve, one was the devil. If the Church were a top-down "organization" and infected top will lead the whole Church into error, as you observe. But with each church being "fully" Church it is practically impossible.
Our Portestant friends can argue that they only took the autonomy given to bishops in the Church one step further and gave it to every believer, thereby decreasing the likelyhood of everyone following others into error even further, as each member of the church becomes his or her own "bishop".
It makes sense, but it is not scriptural. The Bible tells us that not everyone is appointed to be an apostle, or a teachier, and that royal priesthood is God given.
In the liturgical makeup of the Church the wisdom and the knoweldge of all the saints and prophets is contained in one unit, something no individual can claim. God did not, and does not, reveal everyting to one person. Instead, He uses many people for His purpose because, I believe, no one person could absorb and handle the entire Truth.
Thank you, Quix, most kindly.
Thanks for the ping and your clear perspective to prayerfully ponder.
You may be unaware of this thread which demonstrates the kind of Christian SPIRITUAL unity that is possible on FR WHEN we CHOOSE to relate thusly:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/1811920/posts?page=1
I have just put up today’s ONE ANOTHER at post #119 and my personaly response, devotional for yesterday’s is at post #90.
Blessings DEATH DEFYING CLEANSING THE HELL OUT OF ALL OF US, this Good Friday
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