Posted on 02/12/2005 11:59:27 AM PST by NYer
WCC.......I think I saw this image on the History Channel and I think I like the other one better.*~*
*the "bad" (kako) is usually translated as wicked, evil. That you shall receive good for good bad for bad. That doesn't sound like obliteration of sin, or of having your sins "paid" back by sitting in the Purgatory.
Other instances in the NT also point to the same message: that we will receive according to what we have done. That invalidates all three major Christian denominations in their quest for "understanding" what happens after death. Protestants say all we have to do is believe and all our sins will be forgiven. Catholics think they can somehow "earn" their ticket into heaven by payback method, and we believe that if we are Christ-like we will not burn.
As for the prayers for the dead, the only Scrpitural reference is 2 Maccabees, that it is a form of "sin offering" for the departed. Liturgy offers prayers for those who die in sound faith (i.e. in communion with the Church) only. We do not ask for God's mercy for those lost souls who rejected Him in error. It is offered only for those "worthy of sacred prayers" (+Basil ... hmmm, is anyone worthy?).
Orthodox Catechism says that "prayers of the living for the dead are prayers of gratitude to Almighty God, that He has already saved the soul of the departed one, and are not prayers to forgive the sins of the dead."
Nonetheless, we do not know the Mystery of God, and our worship is not sound knowledge but hope that our prayers "could be beneficial to the departed souls" because "though there is no repentance after death, no one knows God's Will concerning His forgiveness of man's sin."
Thus, various customs of hope for the life after death are by no means certainty, and thus far all three major denominations of Christian thought simply approach it consistent with their cultural and traditional manner and not as a matter of sound knowledge.
Jamnia according to Ryle didn't set canon, it appears to merely have affirmed it. And it appears, according to Ryle, that the point of Jamnia was to put an end to disputes over what had become canon. The Apocryphals had been rejected before that point and remained so. The LXX isn't even mentioned at Jamnia. So, how do you remove works from a canon of books by rewriting into Hebrew and sealing it at Jamnia if it isn't even discussed? Much less when the experts say canon was not set at Jamnia but was rather set before that and apparently didn't include the apocryphals.
Other sources state flatly that the apocryphals were not originally part of the LXX and were added later.. further adding that when the vulgate was written, it was known they were not canon and thusly the scribe involved refused to include them as canon as a result. If he knew they weren't canon and others are saying they weren't canon, including the jews, I don't know where your authority comes from on this point. It sure isn't part of history.
That said, my original summary remains. The apocryphals were not in their canon of scripture. That is what the experts are saying. They were added to the LXX at a later date, known to be non-canonical, protested as such by Jerome for all history to record, and thusly were not included at the time of Christ. Saying the LXX existed in the first century when the apocryphals were only added to it later is suspect and misleading. And that is the controversy of the LXX. I will assume you were ignorant of this as I'd hate to think you were openly trying to mistate the record.
What appears to be the case, if I may be so bold, is that someone decided to alter the Judaic canon and didn't have the authority to do so; but, needed someone of well known name to lend Judaic creedance to a canon that heretofore had not existed. Putting the eminent name of Jerome on it might by it credibility even if he included the texts knowing them to be noncanonical and under protest. Whatever the case, it would appear that the attempt has failed and history decided the point properly.
I always found it suspect that people wanted to push prayers to saints and dead family members, etc, knowing that Ecclesiastes flatly denies interaction between the living and the physically dead. If the scripture says it's impossible, it becomes a matter of semantic gymnastics to create a doctrine saying the opposite. Would like to hear your take on that, as I know what my Jewish Pop says about it (agrees with me and more). A little different subject than you were addressing; but...
I, for one, could not care any less. I would like to think I will know Him when I see Him (Lord willing).
That's not what the commandment says. Read Ex 20:4.
Good point. I never thought of it that way.
The Orthodox Church asks for the intercession of the angels and saints. We believe that they are alive and as member of the Church (Triumphant), just as we do on earth (Church Militant), pray for all. The Scriptural backing to show that they can actually "hear" our pleas for intercession is, however, seriously lacking.
Scriptural support for the intercession of the angels is found in Zechariah 1:12-13. But, unlike the saints, the angels are messengers that are specifically sent to a location with a purpose.
Orthodox and Roman Catholic prayers to the saints are pleas, and are not to be confused for worship. Only God is worshiped. Surely, such pleas cannot do much harm, and hope is that that they are beneficial. We are not pleading with the physically dead, but with the spiritually alive.
Kosta50 states things as they are.
To his thoughts I would add one more.
When I ask my friends and family to pray for me, do I sin.
When I pray for someone else, someone I don't know, because I have been asked to, do I sin?
No?
Why, then, does it make any difference whether the friend or family member I am asking to pray for me happens to be a spirit and not a spirit bound to flesh anymore?
What is the distinction? What's the difference?
And why would anyone think their was a difference?
I don't think my friends and family can alter the laws of nature on their own, whether they are alive or dead. I do think their prayers might help, both ways, and what harm is there in asking someone to pray for me?
When I ask my cousin to pray for me, I am not worshipping her as a god nor mistaking her for God.
When I ask God's Mother, Mary, to pray for me I am not doing anything different, and I am not mistaking her for God either.
Really, what IS the big deal here?
Why bother to ask.
The big deal is that there are cultural prejudices at work that have built up on account of philosophies and ancient wars. Some folks want to carry them on to this day, and to call what I do when I ask saints and ancestors to pray for me "worshipping evil spirits" or whatever. I'd say that such folks need to tend to the weeds in their own garden, and stop worrying about mine.
Willow Creek church. Watch their Sunday broadcast some time. Their service starts with the preacher holding a Bible aloft and telling his congregation to do the same. He then offers a congregational response prayer to the Bible.
I will be happy to run that by you again.
BTW, did your stepdad, or you, go to yeshiva?
Most certainly the Jews have their opinion on the subject, and their opinion is that the Hebrew Canon is the Bible.
And Jesus was not the Son of God.
They made the decisions that effectively "closed" the canon of Hebrew scripture at the time of the writing of the Mishna, circa 90-100 AD, at Jamnia and probably elsewhere.
They rejected a number of books from the Septuagint, including the Maccabbees, Judith, Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom, among others, even though by doing so they eliminated the only Scriptural basis for Channukka. Of course they also rejected everything about Christianity, in totum, so why we should give particular authority to post-Christian Jews on the proper Biblical Canon is something of a mystery to me.
Most certainly the Scripture of the time of the Apostles and Jesus included various texts of the Septuagint which were rejected from the Jamnian Canon, but which Christians always used. Perhaps we should go through all of the various New Testament references and cites to the Septuagint books that the Jews excluded from their canon, but that the Christians included in theirs.
Certainly we can pull out the records of council after council of the early Church in which they were wrestling with both the Old and New Testament Canons, and see how various books fared in the opinion of the early Christians.
Been there, done that.
If we do go through the drill, we will discover about 100 references, direct or indirect, in the Christian Testament to Septuagint Canon books that do not appear in the Hebrew Canon. We'll also find that every Council that worked on canonical matters included some of those excluded books in the Old Testament Canon, and excluded some New Testament books. With the Council of Rome in 382 AD we have the first regional council of the Church that produced a list that is identical to the current canon in the Old and New Testaments.
The tale of what was in or out of the Scriptural Canon was an early Christian struggle, with most of the energy focused on the New Testament. There was some dissension over books of the Old Testament as well, but the real heart of the struggle over that was among the Jews, not the Christians. They finally closed their canon about 60 years after the death of Jesus, and a generation after the destruction of the Temple and the end of the High Priesthood.
Jews since then, and especially Jews of today - messianic or otherwise - live in a different religion from the Judaism of the time of Jesus. Today's Judaism is rabbinnical, not templar. And as you know from your father, the primary rabbinnical source material for the Law lies in Maimonedes and the Talmudic dissertations, and not in the Bible itself. Jews of old who insisted on what Protestants call "Sola Scriptura" are derisively referred to as "Karaites". If you didn't attend yeshiva, ask your father about all of this.
It is strange, that modern Christians should rely upon post-apostolic rabbinnical Jews as the final authority in establishing the canon of Christian Scripture, and thereby ignore all of the references of the apostles and Jesus to a different, older Jewish set of Scriptures, the Septuagint. What makes this doubly strange is that, quite unlike Sola Scripturalist Protestants, Jews do not, and never did (other than the Karaites) rely on the entirety of the Old Testament, or the Bible at all, as the final authority in anything. Nor did, or do, Jews believe that every book of the Bible is of equal authority. The Torah stands above everything else. But other than the Karaites, no serious Judaism has ever existed in which a man could pick up the Torah and say "The law is thus and so."
When the Temple was up, there was the Torah, but the final authority on what the Torah MEANT was most certainly not the individual Jew playing Sola Scriptura. It was, rather, the High Priest and Sandhedrin. And since the destruction of the Temple, Judaism has not become Sola Scripturalist. Rather, what The Law is, is what the learned rabbis decide. That is why it is the Talmud that has the authority. Because the Jews know that you cannot read the Torah and understand it. For that, you must consult the rabbis. And the rabbis are extensively trained in the Talmud.
Your father certainly knows all of this.
Now, perhaps he has rejected this all in favor of Protestant Christianity. Certainly that is a choice. Perhaps he is even a minister, a "rabbi" of the Christians, so to speak. All of that is well and good and commendable.
However, being a Jew does not impart any special knowledge about what happened in the First Century and before, whether the texts were Jewish or not. Being a yeshiva-trained Jew means that one has been taught a particular polemic position on the subject, and that position was the anti-Christian position back in the First Century. There is a good reason for Christians to reject the decision of the Jews from the "Council"(s) of Jamnia: Christian pressures and uses of the books from the Septuagint canon that the Jews explicitly REJECTED at Jamnia were a strong REASON for the Councils and the separate Hebrew Canon in the first place. By that point, Christianity was a burgeoning, competing Jewish religion, and the Christians were using Septuagint texts such as the Maccabbees to bash the Pharisaic (and earlier, the Sadducee) position over the head on matters of doctrine. What better way to shore up the anti-Christian polemic than to exclude the offending books from the Hebrew Bible?
That's what happened.
The reason it is important for us is that your starting position is "Scripture Alone". I don't see anything remotely like that (emphasis on the word ALONE) in the Scriptures, nor do the Scriptures establish the canon of Scripture. So, in order to start using the authority you want to rely upon, we have to establish the precise boundaries of what that authority IS.
I find it worrying that you choose to go with the Jews' opinion on this, formed a generation after the Temple went down and two generations after Christ lived, and in doing so adopt THEIR position, which explicitly rejected the canonicity of so many books Jesus, the Apostles and the Christians relied upon.
Now, I know why Martin Luther did that: in Maccabbees, in particular, there are theological concepts that rather dramatically shore up the traditional Christian (which is to say Catholic/Orthodox) position over against what Luther was trying to do.
But this looks to me like a frank, bold amendment of the Bible to remove theologically offensive (to him!) texts. He tried to do the same thing to the New Testament, wanting to eliminate the Epistle of James from the Canon.
I see no authority for Luther to have done any of that, and relying on the fact that the Jews did the same thing two generations after Jesus, to get rid of books that the Christians used to good effect against those very Jews, seems to bolster the case that this amendment of the Canon was a move undertaken without authority.
I don't mind playing Scripture Alone, but to do it, I must insist on the use of the complete Scriptures. If you are going to take things out of the canon, like the Jews did at Jamnia, I want to see the basis of authority for that amendment. Otherwise it undermines your whole enterprise.
You can't say "Scripture Alone", but then tailor what "Scripture" is to fit the philosophical result you wish to achieve. Luther did that, and his followers went along. But on what AUTHORITY? That of the anti-Christian rabbis of Jamnia? What AUTHORITY had THEY to toss out Scriptures that Jesus and the Apostles referred to?
None that I can concern.
Prejudice and desire to acheive a theological result does not authority make.
I anticipate that the next move will be a categorical rejection that Jesus and the Apostles and early Christians referred extensively to the Septuagint books excluded by the Jews at Jamnia (which is why the Jews excluded them). And then I'll have to start trotting out the cites and references. Which will be tiring but perhaps worthwhile.
Scripture doesn't say Scripture ALONE (emphasis on the ALONE part) is the basis of authority, and it doesn't refer to what we call the New Testament as "Scripture" at all ("Scripture" in the New Testament means the Old Testament, the New Testament not existing yet when the words were written). But since certainly the Scriptures are the word of God, and good, I don't mind playing a bit of Sola Scriptura.
But to do it, we have to agree on what "Scripture" is. I am unwilling to use a Canon of Scripture abridged by the Jews of the early Christian era in order to get rid of the Jewish books most persuasive for the Christian argument, unless there is a very strong reason for doing so. I have never heard one.
The strongest argument for the longer Christian canon is that its books were in wide use in Jesus' day, and he and the apostles cite to them so much.
If we could get to a common canon of Scripture, we would have a basis for taking the next step. But as it is, we are asserting competing authorities and cannot get past "Go".
"It's just a piece of CLOTH that is MAN MADE with an image on it. There is nothing special about it.
Needless to say it is a FAKE too!!!"
Those are assertions which are scientifically testable by studying the cloth itself.
Modern forensic science can tell us if the image was painted on, burnt in, or formed by biochemical processes.
Art history can tell us if there is any other work of art that uses anything like this "technique", if it is man made, and can tell us whether the "technique" used to produce it is repeatable by us even today.
If it's a fake, we should be able to make one just like it.
If we can't, and we can't find paint, brushstrokes, or any other forensic traces of human activity creating it, then there is no scientific evidence to substantiate the claim that it is a fake.
We cannot stand with dinosaur bones in our hands and scream that dinosaurs never existed because they mess up our preconceived timelines.
Empirical science roots us in Truth.
Likewise, we cannot assert "It is a FAKE, and MAN MADE" if forensic science finds no evidence of that.
If we are interested in the Truth, we will approach the subject with sober science. Blank assertions unsupported by peer-reviewed science are groundless opinions. They are gratuitious assertions, which can be gratuitously denied by the standard rules of logic.
Please provide me a link to a reproduction that results not in a picture of the Shroud, but an image formed of the same substances.
The cloth is linen. Of course how the cloth was made has been identified. Men made the cloth. The question is, how did the image get on it.
The image on it, which is actually on both sides of the sheet, is about a sixth of the thickness of the human hair. It is composed of chemical changes in the starch coating of the linen fibers, through a biological process. It isn't painted on. And we do not know how to make a clear, precise image using a process like that. Forensics efforts speculate that the gasses emitted from a dead body could have caused the pattern to have formed as it has.
Who wants you to worship a piece of cloth?
What I REALLY hope you will do is keep blindly asserting "It's a FAKE" and similar statements, without evidence, so that I can, bit by bit, counter with the forensic pathologists' findings. It won't convince YOU, of course, but in the battle of ideas, the science to which I cite will certainly cause others to think, and given a choice between concrete facts and blank assertions, more people will be persuaded by the facts.
I eagerly await your next volley, therefore.
Well said. Demonizing those who don't think or do exactly as we do is the rule of thumb for mankind since the beginning. The first thing humans do is commit sin, and their son outdoes his parents by killing his brother out of jealousy.
1) Jamnia, according to the experts, did not set canon.
2) You stated this "The current Hebrew Canon was a creation of the rabbis in 90-100 AD, from the so-called Council of Jamnia. " in #477. (A) If Jamnia didn't set canon(see one above), and (B) the Hebrew version of the canon was a creation of Jamnia, then (C) The Hebrew canon cannot be said to reflect other than the existing canon. If it excluded the apocryphals, then the apocryphals were absent in the greek.
3) Considerations of any peripheral matters are moot if your foundational point is not true. Mentioning citations lends nothing in and of itself and at best MIGHT be supportive if your foundation were correct. The facts lead us elsewhere.
That said, arguments over whether or not the apocryphals were ever cited are immaterial and moot until you can establish your starting claim. The history of Jamnia roundly debunks your posit.
As such, and as it stands, while you've posited that the apocryphals were canon, you haven't shown that factually. While you've posited they were removed from canon at Jamnia and excluded from the Hebrew text is contested by Jamnia. Actually, that's too weak a word - it is refuted by Jamnia. Jamnia would be required somewhere to set canon - it does not. So why did you say it does and then use this as a lynchpin of your story. We don't much even have to address the LXX because it isn't central to Jamnia and everyone else says it was modified later. You state that the Hebrew canon was drawn from the LXX, but if Jamnia didn't set canon, by your own words, you tell us that as of Jamnia, the LXX could not have included the apocryphals.
In conclusion, the apocryphals are not shown to have been canon, much less at the time of Christ. Jamnia didn't set canon and therefore could not result in a different canon strictly for the Hebrews. To change canon, Jamnia would have to have set it. It simply did not do so. If that is the lynchpin of your story, History has removed the pin. Protestant vs. Catholic considerations are immaterial to that. And there is no Jewish conspiracy. Sorry.
When, specifically, was the current Jewish Bible Canon selected? Where, specifically, is the first list of books that forms any semblance of a specific canon, so that we can determine what was "in" the Jewish Canon, and what was not, or even if there WAS a Jewish Canon at the time of Jesus.
The answer is that at the time of Jesus there was no CLOSED Canon. There were Scriptures which were canonical, in the sense that a large body of people recognized them as Scripture and used them such. We have no record before the end of the First Century that tells us what that open canon was. We do know that there was the Greek Septuagint, which was used extensively by Jesus and the Apostles. The wording is different in several passages between the Hebrew Massoretic text and the Septuagint, and the Greek textus receptus has Jesus and the Apostles using the Septuagint version of the language, and NOT the Hebrew Massoretic text version. Indeed, 2/3rds of the citations to what we call the Old Testament in the New Testament are to the Septuagint.
Was the Septuagint a CLOSED Canon? If it was, we don't have a piece of paper from the ancient world that tells us so.
But we DO have Jesus and the Apostles primarily citing to IT when they refer to Scripture, and citing extensively to those books of it which the later Hebrews did not accept into that Canon that has become the Massoretic Text.
If Jesus and the Apostles cite to something as Scripture, and it is in the books of the Septuagint but not in the books of the Hebrew Bible, THAT establishes the those books are Canonical, and that the Jewish Canon is abridged and incomplete. Jesus was God, remember? The Gospels and the New Testament epistles are the Word of God, remember? In the duel between what was in and what was out of the Canon, 100 citations to books as Scripture by Jesus and the Apostles make those books Scripture, regardless of what the later anti-Christian Jews decided was their own canon.
One would thing that this would be self-evident, but Luther dealt you a bad hand, which forces you to use sophistry to try and get around it. Really it's not so hard: the Septuagint contained the books that Jesus and the Apostles cited to. They used the Septuagint. The Hebrew Canon does not contain those books. Therefore, you simply have another clash of Jewish traditions versus Jesus and the Apostle.
I would figure that a Christian would side with Jesus on this one.
But to do that would require backing down.
So, you're asserting that the Mishnaic authors did NOT set a canon of Hebrew Scripture at Jamnia between 90 and 118 AD. You've cited "the" experts. Of course I can cite to other experts who say differently. But that's beside the point, really. When DO you think the Jews set the Hebrew Canon that becames the Massoretic Text? What do your experts say about that? To what specific piece of ancient paper do they point that gives a list of books, and when was that book dated?
The very ancient texts that I point to to show the canonicity of Maccabees are the Gospels and the Epistles of the New Testament. THEY treat these documents as Scripture. Who are your "experts", and what authority have they to tell Jesus Christ that He was in error about what was true Scripture and what was not?
Clearly, I have wasted enough time with this nonsense. Knowing it is critically important for someone like yourself to have the last word - do so and flame away.
Well, according to the history, the canon was set by 150 bc. That gives us a timeframe sufficient to the task.
The answer is that at the time of Jesus there was no CLOSED Canon.
You haven't established that. You've posited it; but, as a matter of logic, you cannot use your proposition as support for itself. There was a set of longstanding works that had been used as canon for ages - that is incontestable. And as time went on, individual works or groups of works were considered and added. That does not mean their was no canon. And whether the Israelites closed the canon by the time of Christ or not, it was closed by Christ at the sealing of the new covenant. So, your task then is to show what that canon was. In absence of evidence to the contrary, given that Jamnia did *not* set canon, we can conclude from Jamnia what the canon was as it matches what existed before Christ arrived. We don't need Columbo for that. If you contend other than what the facts show, we need Columbo because there is nothing there to support it.
Was the Septuagint a CLOSED Canon? If it was, we don't have a piece of paper from the ancient world that tells us so.
You're a bit premature with that question. You must first establish that it even constituted canon. I can have a collection of books for consideration in one work, all that makes it is a collection of books. Until assent is given that it is more than that, nothing more is established. And to the extent that you fail to show the Septuigent ever had that status specifically, then anything you say further is speculation at best. There is your problem with it. And it doesnt' even bare on Jamnia.. no linkage. Before you can ask if it was a closed canon, you first must establish that it ever was canon. Whether Jesus and the Apostles quoted it or something else is immaterial. I can Cite George S. Patton to make a point, it doesn't make his writings scripture - just useful to make a point. This is why I noted earlier that the concept of citation in this regard is immaterial. To say they were quoted as scripture, you'd have to establish that they ever were scripture. Given that no such assent is attributed, you must establish it externally - which has led us here and to a failure to so do.
One would thing that this would be self-evident, but Luther dealt you a bad hand, which forces you to use sophistry to try and get around it.
Ah, not so fast. As I noted, I am not a protestant. And I did not rely on Protestants for my side of this discussion. You are being disingenuous.
The very ancient texts that I point to to show the canonicity of Maccabees are the Gospels and the Epistles of the New Testament. THEY treat these documents as Scripture
That's begging the question. We already know the claim is made that the apocryphals were canon. You haven't established that. And just because someone cites something, doesn't mean they considered it scripture, much less that they werer right in so doing if they did. The larger point is that the very reason we're in this discussion is because the claim is made based on what you are saying now. Essentially, you are again attempting to support your supposition with itself - in a more backhanded way perhaps; but, nonetheless..
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