On the patristic witness to the integrity of the New Testament

Vivificat! - News, Opinion, Commentary & Reflections from a personal Catholic perspective ^ | 6 September 2009 | TDJ

[Teófilo]

…and its consequences upon sectarian teachings.

Folks, OK, so me and my tables. Blame it on a personal idiosyncrasy that favors tabular data organization. But before we go deeper into it, consider this statement: if we were to suddenly lose every single manuscript of the New Testament, we will be able to rebuild it almost word-for-word from the written words of the Fathers of the Church alone. This fact has holds some profound consequences, as we will see further below. But now, the table, the source also being The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict:

Early Patristic Quotations of the New Testament  

Writer		Gospels		Acts		Pauline Epistles		General Epistles		Revelation		Totals
Justin Martyr		268		10		43		6		3 (266 allusions)		330
Irenaeus		1,038		194		499		23		65		1,819
Clement of Alexandria		1,107		44		1,127		207		11		2,406
Origen		9,231		349		7,778		399		165		17,992
Tertullian		3,822		502		2,609		120		205		7,258
Hippolytus		734		42		387		27		188		1,378
Eusebius		3,258		211		1,592		88		27		5,176
GRAN TOTALS		19,368		1,352		14,035		870		664		36,289

The profusion of New Testament quotes in the early Fathers should dampen on all the alternative theologies purporting to “restore” the Word of God to the Church, or the entire Church, to its “original” message or plan. This is so because the orthodox Fathers quoted pretty much verbatim, or alluded directly, to the books and letters of the New Testament as we now have them. Some of the religious systems more affected by this “dampening effect” are:

• Islam. Muslim assert that their prophet represents “the seal of the prophets” and that their revelation is thus the pure, unspoiled “word of God.” As a consequence, although they claim to respect the Gospel or the injil as they call it, they allege that it has been corrupted at the root. Some of them go as far to say that the apostles themselves aided and abetted this corruption. Therefore, if the Islamic claim is to be held as true, one would have to admit that the corruption started at the source itself, at the very moment the original copies of the New Testament were being written. That the New Testament was a lie from the get-go protect them from the need to provide the textual evidence necessary to substantiate the lie. In exchange, we are compelled to accept as objective, historical truth their distortion of the Trinity – composed according to them of God, Jesus and Mary – or that someone else than Jesus died on the cross, or that Mary gave birth under a palm tree. The textual evidence is substantive enough to reject the Koran as a primary text, but rather, as a secondary text derived from previous Christian, and because of their denial of Jesus’ death on the Cross, from Gnostic writings.

• Mormonism. A constant of religious system’s “revealed by angels” seems to be the accompanying compulsion shown by their founders to set aside orthodox Christianity as the legitimate expression of the Gospel and of the Church of their day in favor of new “restorations” of the Christian Church according to new “understandings” of the Christ-event. Mormonism shares these exact traits with Islam. Of interest to this short essay is Mormon assertion that the Christian Church – specifically, the Orthodox and Catholic Church – distorted or mistranslated the received Scriptures, particularly the New Testament, a catastrophe that their Church of Latter-day Saints has come to correct. However, as we have seen, there is no manuscript evidence to substantiate their claim for Scriptural corruption. By the time the Church could exercise enough civil power to bring to bear, the only thing left for the Church to do was to collect all the inspired writings into one volume, the writings themselves having been already written and received as inspired during the previous 350 years. The tables shown in this and the previous post shows that there was very little time, a lot of surviving manuscript evidence, and too many second-hand citations from which to substantiate such an egregious deviation. They are in fact, none.

• The sects born from “the Great Disappointment.” These include the Seventh-Day Adventists, the Jehovah Witnesses, and other sects that derive from the Millerite end-time Great Disappointment of 1844. Each of these sects have sought to “correct” or “reestablish” the “true church” or “congregation” of Christ by rescuing “forgotten truths” from oblivion and tearing down old ones, that, they said were invented by the Catholic Church, then recently emancipated by Constantine and through the subsequent Nicene settlement. They invariably accuse the Catholic Church of falling into a variety of doctrinal apostasies, ranging from the ditching of the “seventh-day” Saturday in favor of Sunday observance, to inventing the divinity of Christ and the Trinity. The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the parent corporation of the Jehovah Witnesses, has gone as far to deny Christ’s death on a “tau” Cross and his bodily resurrection from the death, pretty much along the same lines as Mohammed did 1,300 years before. 

I contend that, if the student of Scripture were an honest seeker and considered the available textual evidence carefully, he or she would have to conclude that no “bait-and-switch” operation ever occurred and that the same Church that received the ipsima verba of Christ was the same one that treasured, transmitted, and canonized His words during the 300 years elapsing from the time the words were said, to the time they were bound together into one volume. Of course, this finding will be a very disconcerting one for the sectarian, from the Muslim down to the Mormon, the Seventh-day Adventist, and the Jehovah Witness, who would see their claims of utter separation, exclusivity, and truthfulness undermined by the textual evidence spread right before their eyes. For this evidence shows without a doubt the true character of the person, work, death and redemption brought by Jesus Christ, True God and True Man, which has been faithfully handed down in Word and Sacrament by the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church throughout the ages. Therefore, no supersession, reformations, or restorations were ever needed to add or to subtract to what the Church has handed to us down to our own day.

Would they see this truth? I don’t think so. I don’t expect the sectarians voting themselves out of existence in light of the Truth, so, the conversation and the blogging will continue, if not by me, then by others. May the Almighty God, Father, Son, and + Holy Spirit bless us all and guide us all into the fullness of Catholic truth.

[Teófilo]

Typos. Blunders. Mine.

[Teófilo]

PING!

[wendy1946]

The comtrast between I-slam and the LDS church on one hand and ordinary Christianity and Judaism on the other is interesting. The main difference is that I-slam and Mormonism involve a belief in prophesy within our own age of the world. As Julian Jaynes pointed out, the last real prophet died somewhere around 600 years before Christ and the first paragraph of Romans appears to echo that assessment.

[Elsiejay]

Please cite a Julian Jaynes source. I’d like to read his definition of a prophet and understanding of what a prophet does, for I find nothing in the opening verses of Romans that forecloses the existence of prophets other than those that Paul here cites without specificity, including prophets of much later vintage.
Thank you.

[ModelBreaker]

“As Julian Jaynes pointed out, the last real prophet died somewhere around 600 years before Christ and the first paragraph of Romans appears to echo that assessment.”

Respectfully, Wendy, Jaynes was a shrink with a pretty wild and unproven theory about the evolution of consciousness. But his new testament scholarship was pretty poor, if you are paraphrasing him correctly.

Paul is quite clear that the gifts of the spirit include prophecy. That doesn’t validate Islam or Mormonism because they are quite inconsistent with scripture. But one would have to ignore large chunks of the new testament to conclude that legitimate prophecy ended in 600 BC. As between Paul and a shrink who thinks God is an auditory hallucination, I’ll take Paul any day.

[wendy1946]

My mistake the reference I intended is in the first paragraph of Hebrews thus:

1 God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,

2 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath heir of all things,

[wendy1946]

Jaynes was a shrink prof at Princeton by vocation and a philologist (what Nietzsche used to do for a living) by avocation. Studying the old part of the Iliad and other literature of the same era he noted that at every point at which you or I would have to stop and figure out what to do or make some sort of a decision, the people in such literature were being TOLD what to do by inner voices which they referred to as gods and goddesses.

It dawned on him that what we call schizophrenia might have been normal at that time. He then went to the neurophysiologists at Princeton, explained the problem, and asked if there was anything in the human brain which might cause one to hear voices when no voices were present; he didn't really expect any sort of an answer, but figured it was at least worth asking.

What they showed him was that there was a right-brain analog of the speech center (left brain) and a bridge crossover between the two and that for all intents and purposes that right-side analog to the speech center appeared to be a neural equivalent of the human appendix and serve no purpose but, that when that right brain analog to the speech center was stimulated with electrical probes, more often than not, subjects claimed to be hearing voices as real as if you or I were speaking to them.

Jaynes determined that in the age of the Iliad or at least of the old part of the Iliad, people were simply using this right brain area which we no longer use. Or at least trying to use it... Jaynes investigated the age from roughly the exodus to the time of Alexander; he did NOT investigate the antediluvian age or the possibility that prior to the flood and the incident associated with the tower of Babel, this right brain thing might have been associated with the normal and workable means of human communication.

In the age between Exodus and Zechariah, humans went on trying to use the human brain the old way and this included religious practices meant to communicate with God and the spirit world directly. These practices included prophecy, the Greek oracles, "familiar spirits" as in the ghost story in 1 Samuel involving the "witch of Endor", idolatry, and electrostatic devices including the pyramids, the ark (of the covenant), and similar primitive capacitors which picked up static charge from the air and which Etrurians called "ka - mer" (spirit catcher) and from which our word "camera" likely derives.

Some of these practices worked for a long period of time. They all involved trance states and Jaynes' right brain analog to the speech center, and they all involved static electricity, which was more in evidence in our world then than it is now. The Greek city staes ran on information from the Oracles for centuries.

And then the whole thing broke down. The information coming back from oracles and prophets turned into mush. Israelites at the time of Zechariah began to view prophets as unclean spirits and Zechariah noted:

ZEC 13:2 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered: and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land.

ZEC 13:3 And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the LORD: and his father and his mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth.

ZEC 13:4 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision, when he hath prophesied; neither shall they wear a rough garment to deceive:

ZEC 13:5 But he shall say, I am no prophet, I am an husbandman; for man taught me to keep cattle from my youth.

In other words, Zechariah is admonishing parents to kill young children who go on trying to use their minds and brains the old way since it no longer works and since nothing good could ever come of it past his point in time.

Likewise the question of crime in the OT. There are two kinds of crime in the OT, i.e. minor crime like rape, murder, armed robbery, and arson, and really bad serious crime such as making up dolls and statues to worship. The first commandment basically says, "Thou shalt not commit idolatry", and this is because the practice of idolatry had come close to turning the planet into an insane assylum; sacrificing children and waging wars at the behest of stone idols is not a formula for success in life.

When Zechariah quotes the Lord as saying:

"I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered: and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land."

he (Zechariah) is saying that the entire thing which Jaynes calls "bicameral" or two-chambered had ceased to work altogether and that prophets henceforth would be viewed on a par with idolatry.

Jaynes assumed that the bicameral system passed away due to social changes; much more likely is that some change in the Earth itself, most likely involving static electricity or the lack of it, finally caused the old paradigm to stop working. From that point forward, the very ability to use the human brain and mind in the old way was ground altogether out of the human race by a very rapid process of attrition.

Very rarely you get some sort of a throwback like Joan of Arc but even in those cases whatever they are doing is not reliable or reproducable, and getting burned at the stake is nobody's idea of a happy ending. My own take on the end of the 100 year war is that there was a bigger factor than Joan involved in the little ice age and the lack of the food base to get people big enough to pull those 140-lb English bows beyond some point.

But any sort of a claim of prophecy either in Roman times (St. John "the devine"), 600 AD (Muhammed MHBH), or 1850 (Joseph Smith) should be looked with a whole lot of skepticism. The book of revelations apparently was included in the Bible by some sort of a 5-4 vote; if I'd been thee, I'd have voted against it.

[ModelBreaker]

“But any sort of a claim of prophecy either in Roman times (St. John “the devine”), 600 AD (Muhammed MHBH), or 1850 (Joseph Smith) should be looked with a whole lot of skepticism.”

I read Jayne’s book when it came out. It’s probably still on my shelves somewhere. IMHO, he selectively quotes scripture to get to his hypothesis.

The prophecies regarding John the Baptist and Jesus’ births? John the Baptist’s recognition and description of Jesus? Jesus prophecies that he would be killed and return in three days? Jayne’s sort of has to ignore all of those to get where he wants to go. Then you have Paul’s description of the gifts of the spirit, including propecy. He’s obviously not describing things from (relative to him) ancient times.

So while Jaynes has a kind of cool theory, it has little evidential support. The argument you make regarding later prophecy does little to support it, to wit:

“Very rarely you get some sort of a throwback like Joan of Arc but even in those cases whatever they are doing is not reliable or reproducable, and getting burned at the stake is nobody’s idea of a happy ending.”

When was prophecy every reproducible? Every prophet was a one-off. And, that Joan came to a bad ending proves nothing. A lot of folks who prophesy come to bad endings—Jesus and John the Baptist are just the most obvious examples from after 600 BC.

All that said, I agree that prophecy must be carefully examined (as described by Paul) for consistency with scripture. That is why Mohammed and Joseph Smith fail and Revelation succeeds. Revelation reveals matters in the context of existing scripture and is consistent with existing scripture. Mohammed and Joseph Smith both tried to overturn existing scripture. That’s the original point of the thread, which is well taken. To wit, we know the contents of the new testament almost word for word. Any theology that depends on the argument that the new testament was actually different than the currently understood text, is almost certainly heretical.

[wendy1946]

Jesus prophecies that he would be killed and return in three days?

That's not prophecy. Jesus didn't have to go into any sort of a trance state to come up with that statement; he knew he was capable of doing that and determined to do it.

Again the first paragraph of Hebrews makes a careful distinction between prophets and Christ and notes that prophets were something of past ages. Jesus' ministry was in this world with ordinary people. You do not read about Jesus flying off to heaven on a magic carpet or an F18, sitting around in a cave until he started to hallucinate, or holding his head in a hat with two stones until he managed to "translate" a formula for brewing beer into the "book of Abraham(TM)"...

[Teófilo]

In other words, Zechariah is admonishing parents to kill young children who go on trying to use their minds and brains the old way since it no longer works and since nothing good could ever come of it past his point in time.

Etc.

A unique exegesis. I don't think that's the literal sense of these verses at all. The prophet is simply saying that the degree of corruption among the people would be so great that parents will threaten the lives of their own children if they claim to prophecy.

Frankly, the connections you are making between modern neurologic findings and the Old Testament verses you quote only exist in your imagination. They are examples of "eisegesis" or "reading into" the verses a worldview, a meaning, and an intent absent from the mind of the original writer.

If you wish to build a case against "ecstatic" prophecy, by all mean do so and say so. But mixing and matching between some scientific insights and the literal meaning of Scripture - the meaning that the author intended to the audience he was was addressing - is what gives "syncretism" a bad name.

-Theo

[wendy1946]

The language of the section of Zechariah I quoted is unambiguous.

[Teófilo]

Let me put it to you this way: what the prophet says is one thing, and what you say the prophet said is another. There is no correspondence at the level of meaning between what he said and what you say he said.

As a student of Scripture, I’m interested in finding out the literal sense of the verse in question. To achieve that understanding, I first seek to determine this sense using various lexical and textual tools which will help me understand what the human author meant to tell the audience he had in mind. It is in this primary sense where I will be able to hear the Word of God as God intended it.

Now, you’re not offering a window into the literal sense, but you’re using the words of the prophet as a vessel in which to pour your own fancy opinions. I am not interested in your opinions as much as I am interested to understand the original sense in which the biblical verses were said and meant to be understood.

So there we stand. You’re not doing any biblical exegesis, at least not in the way I understand these terms. I don’t think you are contributing any real, objective knowledge to the discipline of biblical exegesis. So, thanks, but no thanks.

Cordially,
-Theo

[chesley]

I read Jaynes book a couple of years ago. although I am not a psychologist, I do have a good understanding of both English and technoese. I thought it was wildly improbable.

My wife, who is a psychiatric social worker and does have some training in the field also thought it was bogus.

Which doesn't prove anything. But as near as I can tell from a quick google search, the hypothesis still is not widely accepted in the field.

[wendy1946]

Jaynes limited himself to an evolutionary view of his own findings and that forced him to try to defend the untenable idea that man had simply evolved into a state in which societies were governed by a system of what he termed 'auditory hallucinations', and that this 'bicameral' system later disappeared for sociological reasons; that part of the theory was untenable.

Nonetheless his findings wrt the right side analog to the speech center and its usage at the time the old part of the Iliad was written remain valid and the thing he did NOT investigate was whether or not the thing he had discovered might have represented normal human communication during the antediluvian period and in fact represent the basis for comprehending the story related to the tower of Babel and the final end of the antediluvian communication system.

[chesley]

As I recall his argument, neither the right not the left side of the brain was ‘conscious’ during this time.

Achilles was not conscious, Hector was not conscious. Neither were the poets that composed the Illiad. Great cities were built without conscious thought. Poetry was better, more inspired. I definitely remember this argument in the book.

I found it untenable. But I admit to not being an expert in psychology.

[wendy1946]

The book had nothing to do with psychology as I recall. It was about philology and neurophysiology. Jaynes was an amateur philologist.

[chesley]

And I know less about them. But. If valid, or maybe even if not, psychologists would be using these theories in therapies. IMO anyway.