Posted on 03/16/2006 5:51:01 AM PST by NYer
Sometimes Protestants, in their overeagerness to distance themselves from Rome, do adopt any non-Catholic group out there. When I was still involved in the Plymouth Brethren, I remember reading a book trying to trace the unbroken line of Brethren-like churches throughout history. I knew that I was reading shoddy history as soon as I saw them extolling the Montanists as a worthy example for the church to emulate - apparently ignorant that Montanus claimed to be the Paraclete and that his wife Priscilla was Jesus Christ reincarnate.
<sarc>Well, at least they weren't Papists!</sarc> ;-)
The Montanists also considered the utterances of their prophets to be new Scripture, IIRC.
Some of those pre-reformation non-Catholic groups are reasonable for Protestants to identify with. The Waldenses and Lollards are decent examples of proto-Protestants. Most of the rest you would not want to associate with. The Albigenses were probably the worst of the bunch. It's sad that they were slaughtered. It's absolutely not sad that their belief system was wiped out.
The Waldenses, at least, were absorbed into Presbyterianism - so that doesn't suprise me.
The Albigenses were probably the worst of the bunch. It's sad that they were slaughtered. It's absolutely not sad that their belief system was wiped out.
Absolutely correct.
"Bishop" and "priest" were well-known words to the English people of Tyndale's time, and had been well-known words for 500 or more years. Tyndale translated those as "overseer" and "elder" to distance the NT church from the Catholic church of his day in the minds of his readers. IOW, he had an agenda.
Oldie but goodie Catholic inside joke: A student asks a Dominican priest about the difference between the Dominicans and the Jesuits. The Dominican replies, "Well, the Dominican order was founded to combat the Albigensian heresy, and the Society of Jesus was founded to combat the Protestant heresy ... tell me, have you met any Albigensians lately?" ;-)
"Since Judaism had excluded these pre-Christian Jewish texts from their canon in about 100 AD, there was a good argument for Christians to follow suit."
There is NO evidence of a settled Jewish Canon in the post-second Temple period until the Aleppo Codex, circa 920 AD.
Maimonedes used the Aleppo Codex to compile the Hilkhot Sefer Torah (Laws of the Torah Scroll) in his Mishnah Torah in which he sets down the exact rules for transcription. His halakhic ruling sets down the Aleppo Codex as the supreme textual authority for the Jewish Scriptures, in effect "closing" the Jewish canon.
The date to which you refer is to the conjectural "Council of Jamnia." The only evidence of such a council being held there is the record of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai reestablishing the Sanhedrin there. Rabban Gamaliel II attracted many of the greatest scholars of the day to Jamnia. Jamnia remained a center of scholarship until the Bar Kokhba revolt in the early 2nd century, AD, when it was completely wiped out by the Romans. There is no record of any such deliberations, decisions or documents coming from Jamnia.
In sum, there is no evidence of a closed Jewish canon until the Middle Ages and certainly no rationale until the rulings of Maimonedes.
Maimonedes established 4 criteria for inclusion into the Jewish canon. All texts must comply with all 4 criteria.
1. All texts must have been written and transmitted in Masoretic Hebrew.
2. All texts must conform to the Law.
3. All texts must have been written in the Promised Land.
4. All texts must have been written before the death of the last prophet.
If you followed the links, you would see that, even in the preview portion of the articles, the encyclopedia addresses the fact that the sections of Daniel were part of the pre-Christian cana.
It is silly to allege that they were written in Greek, rather than Hebrew. The reason the Hebrew texts aren't found is because the Jews acknowledge destroying them. One can only say that the Septuagint versions of Daniel 13 include Greek idioms, but the same can be true for many portions of the Septuagint. The very loose translations of the Septuagint are precisely why Jerome endeavored to write a translation based on the Masoretic texts.
>> As I am sure you are aware, the Apocrypha was not first disputed by Luther. Jerome disputed it in the fifth century. <<
Some people at the time interpreted Jerome's words at the time that way, accusing him of heresy. Jerome strenuously denied that interpretation, considering it outrageous slander. His cordonning off of the deuterocanonicals into an appendix had a very obvious reason: What he was writing was a translation of the Hebrew scriptures, and there were no Hebrew scriptures available to him. He pointed out that the Jews rejected the deuterocanonicals not because he believed the Christians should only accept as scripture what the Jews do... that's ridiculous, since the Jews reject the gospel!... but because he was explaining that there were no manuscripts to translate!
>> The Catholic church itself did not declare the books canonical until the Council of Trent in 1546. <<
Ignoring previous posts, you suffer from a common Protestant delusion about the nature of ecumenical councils. That's the first INFALLIBLE statement; it's not the first statement. They only state something infallibly after a heresy has emerged making a false assertion. the Catholic church upheld the canonical status of the books by word and deed throughout its entire history. Your assertion is like claiming that that the Supreme Court only decided in 2000 that states couldn't change election laws after an election had already been completed.
>> I believe you have misrepresented sola scriptura. <<
Sola sciptura is used 1000s of times a day around here to declare something is false because it is not in the bible. The term is an invention of Luther; I use it as Luther did.
>> This is opposed to the teaching of the Catholic church, which declares that the pope, when acting in the capacity of his office, makes a declaration it is also inerrant (divinely inspired). <<
Infallibility is used to CLARIFY doctrine, not to invent doctrine. Read the phrasing of an infallibly issued text. The Pope is careful to establish that the doctrine is the way that the Church has unanimously interpreted scripture throughout history. Without such an assertion, the Pope is merely stating his opinion.
>> Martin Luther was a godly man (though by no means inerrant) <<
Martin Luther preached people should subscribe to any ungodly passion that occurred to them. His serial adulteries were not moral failures, but actual recommended prescriptions. It is in response to such teachings that the Catholic church asserted that works are an essential element of salvation, not because salvation occurs through works (the Catholic church has proclaimed it does not throughout history, contrary to Protestant misconception), but because, as St. Jude's epistle points out, faith without works is death; Luther's "faith" was not the saving faith, as demonstrated by his wickedness.
The modern Lutheran church's understanding of Sola Fides is not what Martin Luther taught, and is in full accord with the Catholic Church's teachings on Faith and Works, as attested to by the leadership of both churches (Missouri Synod excluded, not because they disagree, but because they refused to consider the issue with them evil Catlicks).
>> The Catholics themselves have rejected books from the Septuagint. III Macabees, I Esdras, and the Prayer of Manasseh. <<
False. The Prayer of Manasseh occurs at the end of the book of Jeremiah in the Catholic bible. "I Esdras" (actually, you mean 3 Esdras) was very rarely published alongside 1-2 Esdras in the Septuagint. Various versions of the Septuagint used either 1-2 Esdras or 3 Esdras; 3 Esdras is merely a truncation of 1-2 Esdras, which has become known as the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.
As for 3 Maccabees, it's authorship was believed to be post-Christian, and no pre-Christian publication of it has ever been found. It is not part of the Septuagint, but is merely an optional addition found in many versions of the Septuagint. It was not deemed inauthentic or heretical. The Catholic church simply could not make the claim for it which it did for the deuterocanonical books, that it had been universally accepted by the entire church since the first preachings of the apostles.
As for your sources, "Jesus is Lord," it is amusing to me that your bible "expert" didn't even know that Susanna and Manasseh are IN the Catholic bible.
His other reasons, debunked;
1. Not one of the apocryphal books is written in the Hebrew language, which was alone used by the inspired historians and poets of the Old Testament. All Apocryphal books are in Greek, except one which is extant only in Latin.
False. At least five of the "apocryphal" books have been proven to have been written in Hebrew or Aramaic. The fact that there is no proof for the other two is thoroughly consistent with the fact that our only pre-Jamnian, Hebrew-language books is the Dead Sea Scrolls, a compilation which also lacks certain books in the Protestant old Testament.
2. None of the apocryphal writers laid claim to inspiration.
Silly. Most of the other OT writers didn't do so either.
3. The apocryphal books were never acknowledged as sacred scriptures by the Jews, custodians of the Hebrew scriptures (the apocrypha was written prior to the New Testament). In fact, the Jewish people rejected and destroyed the apocrypha after the overthow of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
False. The apocryphal books were regarded as sacred scriptures by the Essenes. The Sadducees did reject them, along with all other Old Testament books, except the five books of Moses. The Pharisees' canon was not fixed, and the New Testament actually even makes reference to books which were eventually rejected by Christians AND Jews, such as the Book of Jubilees (also known as the Apocalypse of Moses).
4. The apocryphal books were not permitted among the sacred books during the first four centuries of the real Christian church (I'm certainly not talking about the Catholic religion which is not Christian).
There is no historical evidence of there being ANY church besides the Catholic/Orthodox Church, which accepted the Septuagint in its entirety. Except for a few side-by-side translations, there are no otherwise complete, extant copies of an Old Testament known to history that did not excluded the deuterocanonical books.
>> The Apocrypha contains fabulous statements which not only contradict the "canonical" scriptures but themselves. For example, in the two Books of Maccabees, Antiochus Epiphanes is made to die three different deaths in three different places. <<
This obviously stems from the author's misunderstandings. It's quite silly, actually. Does he not think that anyone ELSE noticed that for the first 1800 years? Also, consider the geneaologies of Jesus and the events around the crucifixion for apparent contradictions.
>> The Apocrypha includes doctrines in variance with the Bible, such as prayers for the dead and sinless perfection. <<
Thus proving only that Martin Luther and his followers misunderstood the bible.
>> It teaches immoral practices, such as lying, suicide, assasination and magical incantation. <<
Nowhere does it condone suicide or magical incantation. As for assassination and lying, those are also depicted in the rest of the Old Testament (reference Deborah and Abraham).
>> No apocryphal book is referred to in the New Testament whereas the Old Testament is referred to hundreds of times. <<
That is both false and a ridiculous standard: There are 22 Old Testament books in the Protestant canon which are never directly referred to in the Old Testament. There are three books in the deuterocanonicals which are, in fact (Wisdom, Sirach and 2 Maccabees). There are also at least two non-canonical books which are referenced.
You're right. Let's just help them along for their on sake.
Well, I don't know about any principals being violated, but I'm certain a number of school secretaries were left brokenhearted and disheveled by the experience.
Politics, more than theology, was the driving force.
That is exactly right.
Overseer and Elder convey the meaning just fine. No need to import new words if the language already has them. "God", "Heaven", and "Hell" are AngloSaxon -- the church had no problems appropriateing those words.
This statement is quite false. Infallibility and inspiration are not the same thing, and the Church emphatically does not claim that Papal statements are inspired or equal to Scripture. (Strictly speaking, inspiration is the positive gift of saying exactly what God; infallibility is the merely negative gift of being prevented from saying what God does not wish to be said.)
In general, I think non-Catholics would be well advised to let Catholics present Catholic doctrine, and I think Catholics would be well advised to let others present their own doctrine. Otherwise, we just waste a lot of time with mischaracterizations of each other's beliefs.
I thought she was supposed to be the Holy Spirit? Or was that Marcion...
First of all, that is not quite accurate. Second, you mentioned Luther's "serial adulteries", which were those? Or are you talking about Luther's friend Phillip of Hesse?
And finally, the JDF was a good intentioned publicity stunt. The LCMS was a participant in the talks until the Appendix of the agreement was added, which basically recended the rest of the document. At that point, signing the document would have been wrong since it really didn't say anything.
Overseer and Elder do nothing of the sort, especially Elder. Since when did people become "elders" in the normal sense of the word through the laying on of hands (Acts 13.28, 1 Timothy 4.14, etc.)? How does "overseer" imply a power to rule the people of God (Acts 20.28)?
The Church used God, Heaven, and Hell beause they already conveyed the necessary meaning in Anglo-Saxon pagan religion. But she also adopted Theology, not Godology, Soteriology, not Heavenology, etc.
You admit to knowing how what you call "Apocrypha" was eliminated. You then understand that Protestant "editors" removed it.
How you can critique the Bible in the unedited format while defending your revised version borders on stunning.
"The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the only organs through which, during the present dispensation, God conveys to us a knowledge of his will about what we are to believe concerning himself, and what duties he requires of us."
Got a Scripture reference for that?
***You admit to knowing how what you call "Apocrypha" was eliminated. You then understand that Protestant "editors" removed it. ***
Actually, they have not been removed in some editions. My 1611 veresion of the KJV has them. My repro copy of the Geneve Bible has them amd I can get a Cambridge version of the KJV with the Apocrypha in it.
The KJV Apocrypha can also be had in a separatly bound volume.
Just ask your Bible Book store to order you one.
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