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To: Mr Rogers
"“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” - 2 Tim 3"

I think it disingenuous for this verse to be spoken out of its scriptural and historical context in support of either the exclusivity of Scripture as the means of revelation or as a validation for the revision of Canon.

First, there was no single Jewish canon in the first century. Second, the largest Jewish populations lived outside of Palestine in lands in which the lingua franca was Greek. This included the Galilee, Syria and Greece. This population, the audience for much of St. Paul's writings, in fact used the Septuagint which contain the deuterocanonicals. They are referred to the Deutero or second canon because they come after the Pentateuch.

Remember, there were many other faux messiahs and prophets all claiming to be the one, none of which were ressurected. These included Simon of Peraea, Athronges, Menahem ben Judah, Simon bar Kokhba and even the Roman Emperor Vespasian. Paul's direction to adhere to Scripture, limited to the existing Old Testament, and not works in progress or yet unwritten, were the authentication of Jesus and His Gospel message Paul was teaching. Jesus was predicted over 450 times in Old Testament Scripture and this was a proof of His authenticity.

Lastly, the single biggest Protestant objection to the inclusion of the Deuterocanonicals in the Canon was an absence of a Hebrew language copy. This was proved wrong with the discovery of the Essenian manuscripts in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

42 posted on 03/17/2012 9:51:17 AM PDT by Natural Law (If you love the Catholic Church raise your hands, if not raise your standards.)
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To: Natural Law

1 - I quoted it to show that scripture - ALL SCRIPTURE - is good for teaching, and correcting. Thus a writing that is good for general reading, but that is NOT acceptable for doctrine, is NOT scripture. It just doesn’t meet the test.

2 - There WAS dispute about the canon among Jews, with the main division being those who argued for just the Pentateuch, and those including all of what we now call the Old Testament.

Jesus ended that discussion for his followers when he said, “34 Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, 35 so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.”

and, “44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”

“Lastly, the single biggest Protestant objection to the inclusion of the Deuterocanonicals in the Canon was an absence of a Hebrew language copy.”

Not hardly. The objection is the same one Jerome made - that the Jews did not accept the Apocrypha as scripture. Jesus and the Apostles frequently cited the Old Testament for authority. They did not do so from the Apocrypha.

THAT is the main objection by Protestants, and it falls squarely in line with the teaching of the churches for 1500 years. The Council of Trent, in reaction to the Reformation, upped the ante on the Apocrypha - and then screwed up its listing, so that the term Deuterocanonical had to be invented in 1566.


47 posted on 03/17/2012 10:22:28 AM PDT by Mr Rogers ("they found themselves made strangers in their own country")
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