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I was responding to "Appy Pappy," who apparently is one of the people who thinks that the validity of "the new testament" is self-evident (it ain't).

As a Biblical Fundamentalist from the American Southeast (who grew up with Protestant beliefs and who loves Fundamentalist Protestants) one thing that I must admit burns my biscuits is the culturally-engendered belief that "the Bible" means the Protestant Bible (the 66 books of the "old testament" plus the "new testament"), and that this is the self-evident, self-authenticating Word of G-d independent of anything else. And it pains me to say this because for almost five hundred years Protestants have heard very bad and very hypocritical attacks on "sola scriptura" from Catholic and Orthodox chr*stians so that it's hard to criticize the Protestant attitude without sounding Catholic--something I absolutely hate to do.

But anyway, all Fundamentalist Protestants depend for the absolute truth on a book which they received from false religions. Think about it. The "old testament" comes from Judaism and the "new testament" from Catholicism/Orthodoxy. Sincere Fundamentalist Protestants reject these religions as false and mistaken, yet they accept without question the sacred books of these false religions. Perhaps it is the fact that Protestantism was born with the printing press that makes it so difficult for Protestants to understand the concept of a scribal tradition (dependent on oral laws) for transcribing the Biblical text, since their experience has always been that "the Bible" is spat out of a machine. But that wasn't the case until almost six hundred years ago.

The first part of the Bible in history was the Torah. The Torah, alone of all the sacred and pseudo-sacred books on the world, was literally written by G-d before the creation and then dictated to Moses letter-for-letter. The Torah alone did not require canonization by some sort of religious body. It is wholly Divine--in fact, it is the "logos" by which the universe was created. Again, this applies only to the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy) and to nothing else. The later books are not "higher" than the Torah . . . they are lower! The Torah was written and dictated by G-d directly, without any mediation. The Prophetic books were written under the spirit of Prophecy, which is a lower form of inspiration. And the Ketuvim (the Hagiographa) was written under Ruach HaQodesh (Divine inspiration), which is even lower. Revelation isn't "progressive" (if it were, there would be no end of ever newer and higher forms of revelation!). Instead it is "regressive." The Torah is absolute. The other books are in the Bible only because the 'Anshei-HaKenesset HaGedolah (the forerunner of today's Orthodox Rabbinate) "canonized" them. In fact, the other books are time-conditioned and will be of no special use after all has been fulfilled (they are in the Bible only temporarily), whereas the Torah (and the Book of Esther) will be publicly read as Scripture forever. Needless to say, the Sages who canonized the TaNa"KH (the Bible) would never have canonized any book that claimed to be "higher" than the Torah or to predict a future of which the Torah was only the "prototype." The chr*stian misinterpretations of the TaNa"KH are foreign additions from the outside.

Now unfortunately, so far this sounds like the same stuff Catholics and Eastern Orthodox say in their anti-Protestant apologetics. And the tragedy is that these groups often use the fact that the Bible is the product of a scribal tradition to attack Biblical inerrancy and promote the blasphemous documentary hypothesis and other such concepts. Because of this many sincere Fundamentalist Protestants won't listen to the Jewish response to sola scriptura Protestantism--the moment they hear "the Bible didn't drop out of the sky" or the words "scribal tradition" they hear the echoes of higher critical blasphemy and they tune out the message. It is for this reason that Catholicism and Orthodox chr*stianity have perpetrated great evil; they have so blended the concept of a transcribed Bible (the only way the Bible could exist prior to the printing press) with the blasphemies of higher criticism that sincere Protestants assume that the two concepts go together. They do not! The Jewish tradition, within which alone the Bible may be correctly understood, has always opposed the idea that the Torah is derived from pagan mythology or the work of redactors over a great period of time. The entire Torah was dictated to Moses, who wrote it down. But unfortunately many good people will always assume that the mechanically printed Bible, existing independently of an authoritative scribal tradition, is the only way to defend the Word of G-d from blasphemous modern criticism.

Moreover, unlike the Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, the Jewish People received the genuine original Biblical text. All forms of chr*stianity use translations (which give only the ideas, and not the very words of G-d which verbal-plenary inspirationists so defend). Alone of all the peoples of the world the Jewish People are expected to learn to read the original Biblical text. And even more importantly, only the Jewish tradition possesses the (unwritten) rules and regulations for writing the Biblical text down so that it remains unaltered from the day it was first transcribed by Moses himself. No other tradition, however ancient, has this tradition. No other translation, however ancient or traditional, is really the Bible. To trust (in fact, depend upon) the Jewish Oral Laws to preserve the "old testament" text so that chr*stians can have it today while rejecting the traditional Jewish interpretation of the Biblical text (part of the same Oral Tradition communicated from G-d to Moses at Sinai) is to engage in the greatest hypocrisy.

Plus there's another factor. Unlike the ancient Biblie translations in such languages as Greek, Latin, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic, etc., the original, authentic Biblical text consists only of consonants. There are no vowels and no punctuation. The vowels and punctuation are part of the Oral Torah, not the Written Torah. The Torah Scrolls which are read in synagogues (written on scrolls made of the hides of kosher animals and stitched together with threads made of the tendons of kosher animals just as in the days of Moses) have no punctuation or vowels. The written text of the Bible is quite literally a keyhole into which the vowels and punctuation (provided by the Oral Torah) fit perfectly. No other tradition, however ancient, can say this. The Jewish interpretation of the TaNa"KH is the only correct interpretation of the Bible, and that excludes chr*stianity.

Most Protestants believe in J*sus only because their "bible" (ie, the composite TaNa"KH/"new testament" text they use) tells them to. But the first chr*stians didn't have a "new testament" to "authorize" belief in J*sus. And the thing that Protestants sometimes seem absolutely incapable of even contemplating is that if the "new testament" doesn't truly belong in the Bible, then the Bible cannot be said to authorize chr*stianity. The stubbornness of Jews in refusing to consider chr*stianity is no greater than the stubbornness of Fundamentalist Protestants who simply cannot seem to fathom the very possibility that the composite Protestant Bible they know is not the authentic Word of G-d. And when you consider that Fundamentalist Protestants condemn as false the religions from whom they receive their holy book, it is quite maddening.

Unfortunately, Jewish anti-chr*stian polemics tend to sound exactly like Catholic anti-Protestant polemics for the simple reason that chr*stianity has been preaching Protestantism to the Jews for two thousand years (Luther merely took the anti-Torah message of the Catholic Church and applied it quite logically to the "new law"). One Jewish/Noachide site says that Jews believe in the Bible because G-d told them to whereas chr*stians believe in G-d because the Bible tells them to. Actually, the ancient churches (Catholicism, Orthodoxy, etc.), predating the canonization of the "new testament," don't believe in J*sus on the authority of the Bible but the other way around. For all their hypocrisy, the ancient churches do have a historical memory of the days when chr*stianity existed but the "new testament" didn't. Unfortunately, unlike the Jews, they have allowed this knowledge to open them up to modern critical theories that Orthodox Jews have always rejected.

I doubt that this post will win any converts, but I hope it will at least make my frustration easier to understand.