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To: BlueDragon

I don’t respond to attempts at vague irony. If you have a direct and plain question, I’ll answer.

The Septuagint was created as the necessary reading for Jews who find it easier to read in Greek. It included the Deuterocanon. St. Paul, no matter what his personal background was, chose to write in Greek as well. So did the Evangelists, and Peter, and James. Clearly, Greek was to them the language of the Church. The Deuterocanon was a part of the Christian Scripture at the time of St. Paul’s writing, and he said “all scripture” is inspired.


347 posted on 10/05/2014 12:34:18 PM PDT by annalex (fear them not)
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To: annalex; boatbums; daniel1212

That is both misleading and erroneous assertion.

What we were discussing here pertained to what was Hebrew Scripture at that time --- which would be what Paul himself was referring to when he made mention of Scripture.

The abundance of evidence points against the Maccabean books and all the rest of the so-called deuterocanon having been inclusive of the corpus of writings known to Paul himself as Scripture.

There are too many witnesses arrayed against your own assumptions to the contrary.

There was nothing vague in what I said to you, but it was your own vague assumptions and broad generalizations which were under investigation.

If there are any "questions" those are for you to discover the answers for. I already know the correct answers...

Previously, as has been shown and discussed, Josephus witnessed directly as to what the corpus of Jewish Holy Writ was composed of. His testimony did not include the written works in dispute here.

Melito of Sardis, upon purposeful investigation of his own found the same corpus of writings as Josephus wrote of were still regarded by the Israelite Jews to be their own "Scripture" -- which is powerful evidence that the Apostle Paul when himself wrote of that same was NOT referring to those written works which you refer to as deuterocanon.

Previously, you had wrote;

Suggesting as you have that the "unconverted Jews" retained only what they "half a century" [after Christ] "decided to like" -- means you are accusing those Jews of having redacted their own sacred writings.

Continuing along in the conversation, it appeared to me that allegation was based upon nothing more than what you imagine the Greek writings somewhat erroneously, misleadingly labeled Septuagint to have been precisely synonymous/matching to what Paul would have from his own perspective considered to be Scripture.

There is no logical room for assumptions such as you made [as in the immediate above highlighted] which again -- for the second time has been brought to your attention.

At the time of Paul's writings, he did say all scripture was inspired -- but he did not say all Hebrew/Jewish religious writings were inspired -- thus those also "scripture".

Writings such as the Wisdom of Ben Sira (or The Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach or merely Sirach), also called Ecclesiasticus (not to be confused with Ecclesiastes) as the names for that writing indicate -- are but a preaching and collection of allegedly "wise" sayings, and as such were as Targum -- as I have already pointed out to you, although previously when doing so I was less explicit, not previously having singled out this one as Targum-like, early rabbinical period commentary.

That *some* Hellenized Jews who scarcely knew their own religion may have mistaken that writing (and possible others) as belonging to corpus of Hebrew Scripture most certainly does not equate with the Apostle Paul having held that same view.

Again -- the evidence is against those sort of assumptions, leaving it here to be that when Paul wrote of Scripture he was writing of that collection of writings identified by Josephus, and again identified in Targum dating to the 1st century.

That corresponds/agrees with what is now in content (as to 'books' themselves) what is known as Masoretic text -- which as to books the modern "Protestant" OT canon aligns with also.

If the Jews were to have as you previously insinuated -- redacted their own canon --- then you must show that to having occurred rather than merely assert that it did so on strength of further assumption as to the contents of Greek Septuagint circulating at the time of Christ, Paul, the rest of the Apostles, and early Hebrew/Jewish converts in Israel, with it there being also needed to to be established (by yourself, other than on strength of mere assertion) that any Greek inclusion of what Jerome termed Apocrypha was viewed by Paul as "Scripture".

Which is why I set before you twice, and now for a third time;

to which I may as well [again] add Paul to those whom you must show was of the list of those Jews who didn't know their own Scripture, mistaking various spurious writings and Targum-like rabbinical writings for being capital "S" Scripture.

In other words --- lean on something more than concept or notion of what Greek Septuagint may have been composed of, while including consideration that such writings were at the time of Christ written upon scrolls --- not bound in codex or 'book' form.

The scrolls were typically organized after the following manner;
Torah ("Teaching", also known as the Five Books of Moses), Nevi'im ("Prophets") and Ketuvim ("Writings")

This last category, "writings", was widely perceived to have been closed according to Josephus, as daniel1212 in comment #121 on this thread presented

limits his books to those written between the time of Moses and Artaxerxes, thus eliminating some apocryphal books, observing that "(Jewish) history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time."

[snip]

While other have different opinions, in the Tosfeta (supplement to the Mishnah) it states, "...the Holy Spirit departed after the death of Haggai, Zecharaiah, and Malachi. Thus Judaism defined the limits of the canon that was and still is accepted within the Jewish community." Once that limit was defined, there was little controversy. Some discussion was held over Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, but the core and bulk of the OT was never disputed. (Tosfeta Sota 13.2, quoted by German theologian Leonhard Rost [1896-1979], Judaism Outside the Hebrew Canon. Nashville: Abingdon, 1971; http://www.tektonics.org/lp/otcanon.html)

If other scrolls came to be associated in the minds of some Hellenized Jews with those which previously had been their own Holy Writ -- that does not make those additional writings any more to be what Christ Himself came to fulfill, and include what He himself was referring to when He spoke of prophets having prophesied of Himself -- or in other words --- contents of Tanakh.

Some Christians, those in the know of such aspects and significant shadings of consideration towards various Jewish- origin texts which early on circulated with Christianity, later referred some of what you refer to as deuterocanon as "ecclesiastical", fit for reading in church setting, but not inspired and inerrant Scripture.

Previously you had said the Holy Ghost was author of the Septuagint.

One question was posed to you;

You answered;

yet you by-passed the others as she wrote;

"...and why did they? And then, to what version of it are you referring? Do you know the actual history of it?

There are several questions there, all of them inconvenient to the contention that can be more or less boiled down to a simple minded -- "if it was in the Greek Septuagint -- it was Hebrew Holy Writ".

Not only does that argument not fly, but upon critical examination, it no longer even rolls along the ground either.

I would suggest abandoning the little truckload of mix-and-match Catholic apologetic you have been engaging in on this thread, for the arguments won't stand up to scrutiny, despite all the wriggling and wiggling of wording to attempt to retain usage of that same pitiful argumentation.

This guy circles 'round all the usual (or typical) Catholic attempts to use the Apocrypha/deuterocanon as form of RC apologetic weapon and blasts it all smithereens.

I wonder if he ever manned a Vulcan cannon or flew one of these things? hehehh...


482 posted on 10/05/2014 5:01:01 PM PDT by BlueDragon (...they murdered some of them bums...for thinking wrong thoughts)
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