“And here’s a key point: There was a marked religious difference already established by the time of Jesus between the Hellenic Jews and the non-Hellenic Jews. Whereas the Palestinian Jews were divided among the Saducees and the Samaritans (who regarded only the 5 Books of the Law as divinely inspired), the Pharisees (who regarded the Prophets — which includes the Books of David, such as the Psalms, but not Daniel — as inspired, but not the Khetuvim), and the Essenes, who included a much larger canon. Only after Christ did the Jews solidify their canon; it makes little sense to suppose that sometime AFTER this point, somehow the Hellenists added books to the canon.”
This is an old claim based on the alleged council of Jamnia, to which there is no evidence.
“The Council of Jamnia or Council of Yavne is a hypothetical late 1st-century council at which the canon of the Hebrew Bible was alleged to have been finalized. First proposed by Heinrich Graetz in 1871, this theory was popular for much of the twentieth century. It was increasingly questioned from the 1960s onward, and is no longer considered plausible.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Jamnia
It’s actually the same exact claim made on the other thread on this same matter, so we’re literally going through all these same assumptions one by one again.
“But the Septuagint was universally accepted from sects of Christianity which lost contact with Rome long before the Council of Nicea. So you’re arguing that several Christian groups independently added books to the Greek Bible, making no mention of the addition, and with no historical record of their act. “
First of all, this is complete nonsense, every bit of it. Secondly, what you’re trying to claim is that no one knew about these “extra” books that were being added to Bibles, because, even though you just got done admitting that there is no evidence for your position (that the LXX always contained the translated apocrypha with it), you go on to make the reverse claim, that there was no evidence that the LXX always contained these extra books, such as the Shepard of Hermes which is included in the Codex Sinaiticus, or Maccabees up to the 4th book.
I don’t think you have any clue what it is you are writing about here, to be honest. Every comment you make literally feels to me like creative fiction.
How can you even talk about there being no “historical record,” when in the other thread, you got done lamenting to me about Athanasius including the Shepard of Hermes and the Didache as part of the apocrypha, along with Tobit, Judith etc? If anything, the Shepard has a better history than the rest of your apocrypha, because Irenaeus was even aware of who the author was, when it was made, and where it was made.
Do you think you can overwhelm me with nonsensical posts, so that I will suddenly forget the facts and buy your flash fiction?
I’m not referencing the Council of Jamnia. That’s a guess at how the varying groups of Jews came into accord on scripture, but the fact that they had different canons is obvious from the scriptures. To the Sadducees and the Samaritans, Jesus referenced only the Law. To the Pharisees, he referenced the Law and the Prophets. To his own, he also cited the “writings,” which have become known among the Jews as the Khetuvim. The varying, biblically-attested beliefs of these groups corresponds to what is lacking in each canon: Only the Pharisees acknowledge the Resurrection, because there is no mention of it in the Law. The Samaritans refuse to acknowledge even the Temple, because they reject even books such as Samuel-Kings, Ezra-Nehemiah, Judges, etc!
Now, the Jews promulgated a legend that the Hebrew bible existed intact throughout the history of Israel, only growing, that not a jot or tittle had ever been added since the days of Moses, who wrote of his own death in Deuteronomy through prophecy. They insisted for millennia that the MT (and, again, I am including the vowel-free texts which predated it) was the only translation which had ever existed among the Jews. This led Jerome (and after him, Cajetan) to believe that the Septuagint was a poor translation of Hebrew, never imagining that it was a most excellent translation of previous Hebrew bible versions. We now have solid physical evidence that this legend is very, very wrong. (Also, it must be noted that the Septuagint refers to a family of varied translations.)
ALSO: Far from denying it, I will plainly acknowledge (and have done so) that certain groups also retain additional books such as 3 Maccabees, Greek Esra, etc. In fact, in the other thread, I discussed how the Council of Trent wrestled with the fact that some churches accepted these works as part of the canon. But they don’t mysteriously work their way into the canon of all churches across Christendom, in communication with Rome/Nicea/Alexandria/Jerusalem or not, the way the other books do.
(Incidentally, the Shepherd of Hermes would be in the New Testament, had it been universally accepted as canonical.)
One last point:
The Church fathers never condemned the Didache, 3 or 4 Maccabees, Greek Esra, etc. To this day, there is no heresy found within them by the Catholic church, and they contain further support for Catholic doctrines. Neither does the church condemn or refuse to share communion with the churches which do hold them to be canonical (although they do ask Catholics to respect the discipline of those churches, which do not offer communion to Catholics). The sole reason that they were excluded from Western/Catholic bibles was because they had not been *universally* accepted as scriptural. All of which makes the notion that the Catholic church suddenly added seven books all the more ridiculous.