Posted on 04/03/2013 3:43:07 PM PDT by NYer
Q: Okay, so what is the Christian account of how revelation occurred?
As Elmer Fudd might say, “Vewy, vewy swowly.” Divine revelation didn’t happen in a blinding flash—such as God dropping the Summa Theologiae on top of a mountain and waiting for people to invent the Latin language so they could read it. (Though He could have given them magical spectacles that would translate it for them….) It seems that God preferred to slowly unfold His personality and His will for us through the course of tangled, messy human history. We might wonder why, and call up the divine customer service line to ask why in heck human nature arrived in the mail without the instructions. I don’t pretend to know what He was thinking here, but I find it aesthetically fitting that our knowledge of God evolved in much the way that animal species did, over a long time and by fits and starts, with sudden leaps whenever God saw fit, until finally the world was ready to receive the final product: in creation, man, in revelation, the Son of Man. God seems to prefer planting seeds to winding up robots.
So we start with traces of a primitive monotheism among some scattered peoples of the world—which might have been long-faded memories of what Adam told his children about the whole “apple incident,” combined with crude deductions that boil down to “Nothing comes from nothing.” But mankind pretty much wandered around with no more than that for quite some time, and this was when he employed the inductive method to discover the hemorrhoid god.
The first incident in Jewish-Christian scriptures that suggests God revealed Himself to us after that is the rather discouraging narrative of Noah. According to the story, the human race went so wrong so fast that God decided to backspace over most of it, leaving only a single righteous family, trapped on a stinky boat with way too many pets. When they landed, they had no more idea of what to do with themselves than the cast of Gilligan’s Island, so God gave them instructions: We call this the Covenant of Noah. The Jews believe that these are the only commandments God gave to the Gentiles—7 of them, instead of 613—and that the rest of us can please God just by keeping them. That’s the reason that Jews don’t generally try to make converts. (Who are we to run around making things harder for people? Feh!) The Jewish Talmud enumerates the 7 laws of Noah as follows:
Most of this sounds fairly obvious and commonsensical—though we might wonder why it was necessary to tell people to stop pulling off pieces of live animals and eating them. They must have gotten into some pretty bad habits while they were still stuck on that ark.
Q: That ark must have been the size of Alabama…
I know, I know.
Q. …to fit all those elephants, hippos, rhinos, tree sloths, polar bears, gorillas, lions and moose…
Okay, smart guy.
Q. …not to mention breeding pairs of more than 1,000,000 species of insects. Sure they’re mostly small, but those creepy-crawlies add up.
Spoken like a true-believing member of Campus Crusade for Cthulu, complete with a bad case of acne and involuntary celibacy. Maybe you should focus on Onan instead of Noah.
Look, there’s a reason why Catholics don’t read the bible in an exclusively literal sense, and haven’t since the time of Origen (+253). The Church looks at the books of scripture according to the genres in which they were written (history, allegory, wisdom, prophecy, and so on). And this story, clearly, was intended as allegory—which means that on top of some historical content (and there’s flotsam from flood-narratives in the basement of most ancient cultures) the writer piled up details to make a point. Unlike liberal Protestants, we don’t use this principle to explain away Jesus’ miracles and the moral law. Nor are we fundamentalists who take everything in the bible literally—except for “This is my body,” (Luke 22: 19) “Thou art Peter,” (Matthew 16: 18) and “No, your pastor can’t get divorced.” (Cleopatra 7: 14) The Church responded to biblical criticism with appropriate skepticism at first, and accepted the useful parts (like reading original languages and looking for ancient manuscripts), without throwing out the traditional mode of reading the bible in light of how the Church Fathers traditionally understood it.
Q. Why should the Church be the interpreter of the bible?
In the case of the New Testament, the Church had transcribed the books; shouldn’t we own the copyright to our own memoirs? When the list of accepted gospels and epistles was drawn up, there were more surplus candidates milling around than in downtown Manchester, New Hampshire, before a primary—some of them inspirational but probably inauthentic, like the Protoevangelium that tells the story of Mary’s childhood; others creepily gnostic, like the “Gospel of Thomas,” which has Jesus using His “superpowers” to wreak revenge on His schoolmates. (That gospel is always popular, since it shows Jesus doing exactly what each of us would really do in His place.) The decision on which books were divinely inspired was based largely on the evidence of the liturgy: which books had been used in churches for services in the most places for the longest. As I like to tell Jehovah’s Witnesses who come to my door: that bible you’re waving at me was codified by a council of Catholic bishops who prayed to Mary and the saints, baptized infants, and venerated the Eucharist. So you could say that as the original, earthly author and editor, the Church has a better claim of knowing how to read it than the reporters at National Geographic—who every Christmas or Easter discover some new and tantalizing scrap of papyrus containing gnostic sex magic tips or Judas’ “To-do” list.
In the case of the Old Testament, the Church draws heavily on how Jews traditionally read their own scriptures—but with one important and obvious difference. We are the descendants of the faction of Jews who accepted Christ as the Messiah and evangelized the gentiles, all the while considering themselves the “faithful remnant” who’d remained true to the faith of Abraham. So we see throughout the Old Testament foreshadowings of Christ, for instance in Abraham’s sacrifice, and Isaiah’s references to the “suffering servant.” The Jews who were skeptical of Jesus believed that they were heroically resisting a blasphemous false prophet who’d tempted them to idolatry. As the Church spread and gained political clout, and Christians began to shamefully mistreat the people from whom they’d gotten monotheism in the first place, there surely was genuine heroism entailed in standing firm. I often wonder how many Jews would be drawn to Jesus if they could separate Him from the sins committed against their great-grandparents in His name….
The version of the Old Testament that Catholics and Orthodox use is different from what Jews use today. Our version, based on the Septuagint translation into Greek, is somewhat longer, and includes some later documents that Jews accepted right up to the time Saint Paul converted—books that illustrate a lot of the mature developments in Judaism which led up to the coming of Christ. The very fact that Christian apostles were using these books may have led the rabbis to eventually reject them. (Since the biblical references to Purgatory can be found in these books, Martin Luther and the Anglicans also excluded them.) Ironically, the Book of Maccabees exists in Catholic bibles but not Jewish ones, and right up until Vatican II we had a Feast of the Maccabees—which means that you could call Chanukah a Catholic holiday. But don’t tell the judges in New York City, or they’ll pull all the menorahs out of the schools.
I made a fairly charitable observation and this is the response? Your fellow Catholics responding to this thread have disavowed the contention that your church owns the Bible, in case this somehow has managed to escape notice.
Acts 17:11 also serves as a warning for Catholics. The Thessalonians too had a complete Catholic Old Testament, but like too many Catholics they didn't read it.
God has indeed blessed Catholics with a broader Scriptural library, but far too often, our Protestant brothers and sisters draw so much more out of their limited canon than we do out of our fuller one. The sad joke is that in the Deuterocanonicals Catholics have seven more Books that most don't read.
Peace be with you.
Seems like you've misapplied the scripture:
15 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”
The church is the LAST resort; not the first.
Seeing as the earliest writings were done on animal skins, which deteriorated over time, we don't have the "original" autographs. What we do have are copies, sometimes copies of copies. What has survived today is:
2. The Samaritan Pentateuch: Written in paleo-Hebrew, this work only involves the first five books (Torah), the version could be dated to the 3rd to 2nd century B.C. The oldest existing manuscript is dated to the 13th century.
3. The Qumran Manuscripts (Dead Sea Scrolls): Manuscripts found at the Dead Sea, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 50. A portion of every book of the Bible except Esther has been found at this site.
4. Ancient Hebrew Manuscripts: Other ancient Hebrew manuscripts have been discovered, in addition to the Dead Sea Scrolls. These include the Nash Papyrus, Masada, Murabbar’at and the Cairo Genizah).
5. The Septuagint: (250-100 B.C.), the Greek translation of the Old Testament.
6. OT Greek Manuscripts: Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion.
7. Syriac Peshitta: Dated to the 1st century A.D.
8. Jewish Targums: Aramaic paraphrase translations of the Old Testament 3rd and 4th centuries A.D., These translations have a much older tradition dating back to the time of Ezra possibly.
9. Latin Vulgate: A.D. 390-405, Latin Translation by Jerome. (from http://www.truthnet.org/Bible-Origins/10_Old-Testament-Tanakh-Manuscripts/index.htm) This site also lists the history of the parts of the ancient manuscripts including what they contain.
Then once for all stop attributing such motive to posters (i did not feel any need to misinterpret you), rather than getting self righteousness when called on it, and repent and apologize for your past false accusations which were far worse. Your record is one that shows that it is you who too often turns the issue into being about the poster.
If you want to dispute all this, PM me.
Over and out.
The Church is the final authority, should Christians fail to reach agreement.
If Christians agree, they don’t have a dispute in need of settling.
“The most authoritative version of the Hebrew scriptures, which became standardized about A.D. 100, based on manuscript evidence. The name come from the Masorites who were scribes from A.D. 500-1000. They carried on the work of earlier scribes who maintained the Hebrew scriptures. “
What’s the oldest extant Masoretic Text?
“3. The Qumran Manuscripts (Dead Sea Scrolls): Manuscripts found at the Dead Sea, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 50. A portion of every book of the Bible except Esther has been found at this site.”
Including the apocryphal books. So Qumran has nothing to say in your favour.
Again, you had a long and detailed post without answering the pertinent question. What is the oldest extant manuscript that we possess. Manuscript. Not fragments. Manuscript.
So you affirm that the Church does have the biblical authority to settle disputes?
Charitable? I can’t speak for my fellow Catholics, but I don’t believe they appreciate your misrepresentation.
Rome itself is very deviate from the NT church, regardless of a form of magisterium, while SS does not make the individual the supreme authority, as it uphold the principle of magisterial authority based upon Scriptural substantiation, which is how the church began, not under the premise of obedience to an autocratic infallible magisterium.
And which Rome has infallibly declared she is when speaking according to her infallibly declared *scope and subject-based) formula. Thus all that she enlists for support can only mean what she says it means.
In addition, it is Rome that makes the individual the supreme authority, that being an assuredly infallible pope as supreme over councils, which most Catholics seem to believe he is.
“James did not open it up.”
*Sigh*
Argument A.
James had authority over Peter because he opened up the Conference.
Rebuttal A - he was Bishop of Jerusalem and the Conference was held in Jerusalem. It is customary for the presiding bishop to preside over his see.
“He closed it. He declared the decision at the end of the debate, to which Peter only contributed. And his opinion was not the opinion put forward by Peter.”
Not so.
“James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me.”
Paul corrected and Peter affirmed Paul.
“For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.”
Now - we see that Peter, having affirmed Paul’s mission draws back from his earlier affirmation. Paul, rightly argues that Peter ought to remain with his affirmation and not shrink back from it.
So, we see that while Peter had made the correct Judgment - far from Paul accosting and tearing down Peter - Paul insisted that he stick with his earlier decision.
It is noteworthy that you failed to mention that Paul was first affirmed by Peter.
“Can you please tell me where in the catechism it says that in a council, it is the Bishop of the city wherein the council is held who presides over it”
There hasn’t been an ecumenical council held outside of Rome in quite some time. In any case - that is the custom, the resident bishop presides over the council. We see this in Ephesus, in Nicaea, and in Constantinople, where the Pope sent legates.
“So, the Pope is most infallible when he does not make decisions.”
Nonsense. You twist the Gospel. Peter made a decision affirming Paul and Paul insisted that he stick by his earlier decision.
2 Galatians says it very clearly that Peter gave Paul the affirmation to carry on his mission.
I don’t think you should be making this about someone personally. Something about “making it personal” and all.
Please elaborate upon just what in my comment might be viewed as misrepresentation, and understand that your understanding is not the only understanding, far from it, views you’ve espoused are not even being supported by your fellow Catholics in at least one instance, that being Catholic “ownership” of the Bible.
Answer the question.
“You would have me abandon a Church founded in the first century for one founded in the fifteenth?”
Yes or no?
“Isn’t it already proven that you have abandoned the church founded by Jesus Christ for one founded by heretics and Pelagians?”
Yawn. No. Answer the question, that you shrink from.
“I’ll ask you again: Is God sovereign in saving whom He will, according to His own purposes, regardless of merits or demerits in the man He has decided to call, justify and glorify?”
Absolutely. See Romans. Salvation does not require that one be a member of the Church in order to be saved.
“Is Paul correct for arguing that God foreknows and predestinates the Saints, calling them and irresistibly preserving them with His free and unmerited grace?”
Ah, so if God knows with foreknowledge whom will be saved, does that also mean that the damned cannot?
“Don’t dodge and run away from such a fundamental issue.”
Answer my question first.
Same here and that’s one for sure to avoid at all cost.
You’re putting words in other people’s mouths that they did not say. That is misrepresentation.
Saying that ‘certain people’ said X, without pinging them is not right. It permits you to misrepresent what they did say without them having a chance to speak up.
Stop misrepresenting others. :)
If you’re going to debate with me, address my points rather than the points of others. :)
Then you’ve not understood my argument. My argument is that the Septuagint, written by Jews for Jews includes these books. The earliest extant manuscript of the Old Testament is the Codex Vaticanus which includes these books and makes no distinction between them.
Ergo - I can conclude that we ought to follow the Jewish example in the Septuagint by using these books.
I’m sorry but this reply makes no sense. Is it not possible to elaborate and provide specifics?
Again, this reply makes no sense. If I’m to be accused of misrepresentation it’s incumbent upon the accuser to be less vague.
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