Reminds me of the people who think "the church" means the building.
FYI: Fr. Stephen is NOT Roman Catholic. I thought I’d get that out before everyone starts lobbing shots at the Romans.
The the beginning, there was the Word.
This is so much bull squeeze.
We just went through this in my Church.
There are 5600 manuscripts which exist from which the Scriptures are derived. Several areas of concentration (Byzantine, Caesarian, Alexandrian, and European - need to check my notes, but these are what i remember).
Scripture veracity is ascertained by comparison of manuscripts with each other.
‘Pod.
So while trolling about, why don’t you answer this; Are protestants true Christians? A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will do.
I have to assume your article means that the early Christians had no Christian guide for their canon... Jews have had one since the start of the second Temple:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Assembly
If I remember my history correctly, the first NT scriptures that were accepted by the early church were, the four gospels, Acts, the letters of Paul (except Hebrews), 1 Peter and 1 John.
There were lots of other letters floating around with uncertain authorship or false doctrines.
Then came MARCION who began to collect and edit out anything dealing with the Jews, making them say what HE wanted them to say. Matthew, Mark and John were gone.
The Church then began an effort to also collect all the scrolls and turn them into books, when they realized just how many were floating around out there.
After all was said and done, the Greek OT was accepted, and the NT was what they already accepted with a later addition of 2 Peter, James, additional letters of John, Jude and Revelation. A few early bibles had the fabrication of THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS in them but it was never considered real scripture.
In the Gospels, Jesus quotes from some (all?) the books considered part of the Old Testament canon. Obviously, those then belong. First century Christian writers, including Bible writers, quoted from the same books and letters.
The overall message of the books in the traditional Old and New Testaments is consistent throughout, despite being written (recorded) by 40 different men over a period of 1,600 years. No modern work can compete.
I am wearing my asbestos underwear for this one. -:)
Let's hope you've got your big-boy pants on over them!
With all due respect to the good Fr Freeman, the Jewish historian Josephus (37CE – c. 100CE), clearly lays out the Hebrew canon at the time of Jesus. Josephus refers to sacred scriptures divided into three parts, the five books of the Torah, thirteen books of the Nevi’im, and four other books of hymns and wisdom.
If Josephus who was born after Jesus ministry was able to identify these as being Hebrew cannon, it stands to reason that the cannon was closed and widely agreed upon prior to Josephus writing them down. As such, the Hebrew cannon or “scriptures” would have been set during or before Jesus’s ministry.
Reminds me of the people who think "the church" means the building.
The first mass produced printed book was the Bible, a version based on the Latin edition from about 380 AD. The Bible was printed at Mainz, Germany by Johannes Gutenberg from 1452 -1455.
I have myself made this point numerous times, NRx, but the fact that there is no “Bible in the Bible” proves Judaism, not Catholicism or Orthodoxy or anything else.