Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Conservative til I die
How do you know which books are Canon?

This is easy. OT Canon are those book which were Canon to the Jews - those book written either by a prophet or written during the time of a prophet(s). NT Canon are those book known to have been written by an Apostle or a companian of the an Apostle.

The Jews NEVER considered the Apocryphal books to be Canon

349 posted on 09/11/2002 4:19:49 PM PDT by realpatriot71
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 332 | View Replies ]


To: realpatriot71
The Jews NEVER considered the Apocryphal books to be Canon

Prior to Jesus’ time, the Jews did not have a sharply defined, universal canon of Scripture. Some groups of Jews used only the first five books of the Old Testament (the Pentateuch); some used only the Palestinian canon (39 books); some used the Alexandrian canon (46 books), and some, like the Dead Sea community, used all these and more. The Palestinian and Alexandrian canons were more normative than the others, having wider acceptance among orthodox Jews, but for Jews there was no universally defined canon to include or exclude the “deuterocanonical” books around 100 A.D.

The Apostles commissioned by Jesus, 5 however, used the Septuagint (the Old Testament in Greek which con- tained the Alexandrian canon) most of the time and must have accepted the Alexandrian canon. For example, 86 percent of Old Testament quotes in the Greek New Testament come directly from the Septuagint, not to mention numerous linguistic references. Acts 7 provides an interesting piece of evidence that justifies the Apostolic use of the Septuagint. In Acts 7:14 St. Stephen says that Jacob came to Joseph with 75 people. The Masoretic Hebrew version of Gen. 46:27 says “70,” while the Septuagint’s says “75,” the number Stephen used. Following the Apostles’ example, Stephen clearly used the Septuagint. In the mid-twentieth century, Dead Sea Scrolls scholars discovered older Hebrew manuscripts that agree with the Septuagint rather than the Masoretic texts. The Septuagint was not only used by the Apostles, but in some cases it was more accurate.

6 (We also know from other ancient Christian documents, like the Didache 7 and Pope St. Clement’s Letter to the Corinthians, that the apostles’ successors not only used the Septuagint, but quote from all of the books in the Alexandrian canon as the authoritative word of God.) There is no divinely inspired “table of contents” for the Bible, therefore, Christians need an authority, like the infallible Church established by Christ, to discern which books are the divinely inspired ones. (Indeed, even if there were such a “table of contents” list, we would need an authority to tell if the list itself were inspired.) Even many Evangelical Protestant Bible scholars admit this:

While we know that at the time of Jesus there were different canons of the Old Testament because the canonical process was not yet complete, the glorious truth is that God has invited humans to be partners in the putting together of Scripture. I think the implications are that you cannot have Scripture without the community of faith [in other words, the Church]. It’s not just a private revelation. God gives us Scripture, but then the [Church], by God’s guidance, has to choose what’s in and what’s out.”

Full discussion here.

404 posted on 09/12/2002 8:46:13 AM PDT by Aquinasfan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 349 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson