And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. - Jude 6
For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast [them] down to hell, and delivered [them] into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; - 2 Peter 2:4
And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him. - Luke 9:35
et vox facta est de nube dicens hic est Filius meus electus ipsum audite - Luke 9:35 (Vulgate)
I Enoch played a significant role in the early Church; it was used by the authors of the Epistle of Barnabas, the Apocalypse of Peter, and a number of apologetic works. Many Church Fathers, including Justing Martyr, Irenaeus, Origen and Clement of Alexandria either knew I Enoch or were inspired by it. Among those who were familiar with I Enoch, Tertullian had an exceptionally high regard for it. But, beginning in the fourth century, the book came to be regarded with disfavor and received negative reviews from Augustine, Hilary, and Jerome. Thereafter, with the exception of a few extracts made by Georgius Syncellus, a learned monk of the eighth century, and the Greek fragments found in a Christian grave in Egypt (c. AD 800), I Enoch ceased to be appreciated except in Ethiopia. The relegation of I Enoch to virtual oblivion by medieval minds should not diminish its significance for Christian origins; few other apocryphal books so indelibly marked the religious history and thought of the time of Jesus.
On the other issue, the document The “Decretum Gelasianum de Libris Recipiendis et non Recipiendis” is helpful in identifying which books were considered apocryphal and subject to elimination, like Enoch. The document itself is traditionally attributed to Gelasius, bishop of Rome 492-496 CE and contains parts which are traced back to Damasus. The document evidently was put together sometime in the 6th century.
Damasus I wound up the clock that resulted in the book burning:
Damasus defended with vigour the Catholic Faith in a time of dire and varied perils. In two Roman synods (368 and 369) he condemned Apollinarianism and Macedonianism; he also sent his legates to the Council of Constantinople (381), convoked against the aforesaid heresies. In the Roman synod of 369 (or 370) Auxentius, the Arian Bishop of Milan, was excommunicated; he held the see, however, until his death, in 374, made way for St. Ambrose. The heretic Priscillian, condemned by the Council of Saragossa (380) appealed to Damasus, but in vain.
It was Damasus who induced Saint Jerome to undertake his famous revision of the earlier Latin versions of the Bible (see VULGATE). St. Jerome was also his confidential secretary for some time (Ep. cxxiii, n. 10). An important canon of the New Testament was proclaimed by him in the Roman synod of 374.
The Eastern Church, in the person of St. Basil of Cæsarea, besought earnestly the aid and encouragement of Damasus against triumphant Arianism; the pope, however, cherished some degree of suspicion against the great Cappadocian Doctor. In the matter of the Meletian Schism at Antioch, Damasus, with Athanasius and Peter of Alexandria, sympathized with the party of Paulinus as more sincerely representative of Nicene orthodoxy; on the death of Meletius he sought to secure the succession for Paulinus and to exclude Flavian (Socrates, Hist. Eccl., V, xv). He sustained the appeal of the Christian senators to Emperor Gratian for the removal of the altar of Victory from the Senate House (Ambrose, Ep. xvii, n. 10), and lived to welcome the famous edict of Theodosius I, "De fide Catholica" (27 Feb., 380), which proclaimed as the religion of the Roman State that doctrine which St. Peter had preached to the Romans and of which Damasus was supreme head (Cod. Theod., XVI, 1, 2).
When, in 379, Illyricum was detached from the Western Empire, Damasus hastened to safeguard the authority of the Roman Church by the appointment of a vicar Apostolic in the person of Ascholius, Bishop of Thessalonica; this was the origin of the important papal vicariate long attached to that see. The primacy of the Apostolic See, variously favoured in the time of Damasus by imperial acts and edicts, was strenuously maintained by this pope; among his notable utterances on this subject is the assertion (Mansi, Coll. Conc., VIII, 158) that the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Roman Church was based, not on the decrees of councils, but on the very words of Jesus Christ (Matthew 16:18).
The increased prestige of the early papal decretals, habitually attributed to the reign of Siricius (384-99), not improbably belongs to the reign of Damasus ("Canones Romanorum ad Gallos"; Babut, "La plus ancienne décrétale", Paris, 1904). This development of the papal office, especially in the West, brought with it a great increase of external grandeur. This secular splendour, however, affected disadvantageously many members of the Roman clergy, whose worldly aims and life, bitterly reproved by St. Jerome, provoked (29 July, 370) and edict of Emperor Valentinian addressed to the pope, forbidding ecclesiastics and monks (later also bishops and nuns) to pursue widows and orphans in the hope of obtaining from them gifts and legacies. The pope caused the law to be observed strictly.
Damasus restored his own church (now San Lorenzo in Damaso) and provided for the proper housing of the archives of the Roman Church.
Journal of Theological Studies 14 (1913) pp. 469-471, THE DECRETUM GELASIANUM.
So does Daniel. The term itself was messianic, but not necessarily predicitng Christ. Those who want to see Christ in it see Christ. Those who don't, don't. Obviously, many early Christians did, but then again early Christianity was not unified any more than it is today. There was a "core" of orthodox Christians surrounded by various sects and cults, and there was fierce competition between them. They all used scriptures in a futile attempt to "prove" each other wrong.
Evidence of heresies is known from +Ignatius' epistles c. 105, AD and from +Irenaeus' life-defining struggle against them in the latter half of the 2nd century.
The term itself, the Son of Man, the Son of God, and the Elect One, in Judaism is never associated with God. Jewish messiah is human, form the the tribe of Judah, of davidic genealogy, a favorite of God, but not divine. The terms listed above are standard Old Testament terminology used for angels and kings.
By the 2nd century, there were some 200 manuscripts of every kind circulating the area, all of them pretending to be of "apostolic" or some prophetic origin. None of them had a seal of authenticity or copyright, including the Gospels.
That various local churches read many, if not most, of them at one time or another is only proves that, if the Spirit does lead, He does not lead individuals but the whole Church.
The "core" of the Church never gave in to heresy although at times orthodoxy was a distinct minority. Arguing that just because some (not all), even if most, used 1 Enoch as scriptural, doesn't make it scripture. When the Church as a whole decided on the Christian canon, 1 Enoch was not one of them. But 1 Enoch was no singled out.
The Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermes are found in the oldest complete Chritsian Bible, Codex Sinaiticus, so there is no reason to believe that similar books were not read everywhere else under the same bishop.
The Church is where the bishop is (eucharistically), but no bishop is the Church! The entire canonization of the Christian Bible shows that, on the individual level, there was no Spiritual guidance. Books were "horse traded" as Forest Keeper says (i.e. Hebrews and Revelation) as a matter of compromise which hardly smacks of divine infallibility.
Yet all major Christian sects and even cults accept the canonization decided by the Church, even though they deny the authority of the same!
When the Church canonized the Cristian Bible, it may or may not have done sone under the guidence of the Spirit. Those who accept it as an infallible collection of "true" books assume it was, but there is no proof of this at all since the canon was neither complete nor universalliy accepted by the Church, and has sincde the official cnaonization undergone further changes and rejections of individual parts.
Your own site shows that the Galasian list of canonized books includes only one letter to Corinthians! Obviously, 2 Corinthians was not part of the canon by the 6th century!
The (third) Council of Carthage that canonized the Bible lists only 13 epsitles of Paul. Somone, at a later date (had to be after the 6th century, considering the date of the Galasian Decree), added a footnote to the Carthagenian Council saying that there were 14 epsitles of Paul!. Hmmmmm.
What most people do not want to see or hear is that the Bible is a travesty of human manipulation and bickering and fraud, full of editing and transcribing errors, and personal whims.
This must be devastating to most people discover (I know if twas for me) and their firts reaction (quite understably), when faced with this truth, is denial and outrage. But the ulitmate test of our faith is in dealing with this reality, and remembering that it is not the bible that gives us faith!
As far as you revealing the date of Decretum Galesianum, which I find curious as to the timing, my argument was about the so-called Damascine list, which is a fraud and which is included in the Galasian Decree as genuine. The Damascene list could not have been attributed to Damascus I, the Boshop of Rome, in 366 AD, as you alleged in your previous post. So, since there is no credibility whatsoever to the list itself or to anything in that document.
But I find it curious, if not surprising, that you would roam such sites, as the Gnostic Tertullian.org, to use as a genuine source of reliable information. It's quite telling.
As Mad Dawg observed, burning books is deplorable by our modern standards, and so is burning people at stake, and so is slavery. But perceptions change all the time and applying the same standards to the ancients as we do to ourselves today is naïve at best, if not outright ridiculous, or dead wrong.
The bigotry of the early Church vis-a-vis the Jews is glaring, and what Martin Luther had to say about them is unthinkable. In those days, however, it was "politically correct."
So, your indignation at book burning might as well extend to all the evils done by human beings all the way up to the present, including our own "potiically correct" standards.
My objection to all of you Bible quoters is that faith is yours and yours only. It is your reality, whether it is real or not in the absolute sense. If you find "proof" or profit in the Bible, so be it, but do not push your faith on anyone, as faith is neither provable nor disprovable.
It is how you live and what you do that tells more about your faith than all the words we have poured out in these forums. So, please do not inundate me with bible quotes unles absolutely necessary. It turns me off because, no matter how you look at it, in the end it is still a human choice. The first thing to relaize, when eschewing all traditions of men, is to start wiht your own.