Bible Origins

[fermat]

I read your post and it shows you can copy and paste erroneous information.

From a practical standpoint, the Bible didn’t just fall out of the sky looking like it does today. There were lots of books that were considered Scripture by some early Christians and not by others.

God didn’t give us a canon on tablet somewhere. He didn’t leave a complete Bible lying around for us to us as a reference. The act of physically selecting the canon had to be done by a human being(s), guided by the Holy Spirit. The question simply is to who has the authority? If you go to a book store today and buy a Bible, it going to be exactly like (or almost exactly like, if you are a Protestant) the Bible set forth in 4th century. Someone had to do that. Who was it?

 

[Rustyxcv]

I have recently come to the amusing realization that, in fact, Lectionaries are older than Bibles in the history of the Church. The epistles (letters) of Paul, John, and Peter were sent around to the various early churches and copied and read at worship services (we have 1st century testimony to this in the “Didache”), some FOUR HUNDRED years before the first complete Bibles were collected and bound (in the form of the Canon that we know today).
– Things were much the same in the pre-Christian synagogues and the Temple. The scrolls of the Torah, and the Prophets, and the Wisdom were all kept separately. Cobbling them all together into one bound book is a relatively modern phenomenon.
– Rusty

 

[jmcrae]

Man, this is long! Whew! I agree that the NT authors mostly used the LXX. I am knowledgeable of that particular historical fact and do not deny it. However, as Dr. Douglas Kelly in his lectures on Systematic Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, said, the use of the LXX was more because of the wide use of Greek during that time due to the eminence of the Roman Empire and the hellenization of the known world. Moreover, a lot of Jews were scattered across the western world and did not even know the Hebrew language anymore. However, as you yourself admitted, it is still by no means conclusive proof to the canonicity of the Apocrypha. In spite of the wide use of the LXX, not one book of the Apocrypha was quoted as Scripture by the NT authors.

Nor was about half of the rest of the Old Testament. For example, one finds no quotes from the Book of Esther, the Book of Daniel, the book of Job, nor most of the other Wisdom books, and I think about half of the Minor Prophets are also left out.

 

[jmcrae]

Including them in their own respective translations still does not prove that they are canonical. Luther translated from Jerome’s Vulgate, which included the Apocrypha, so it is but natural to translate everything as well. As I have pointed out in my other posts herein, even Jerome and the early church fathers did not consider it to be scripture. Please don’t make me repeat them. Just read my earlier posts. Most of them I just quoted from noted church history professors and theologians. They are not infallible of course. Only Scripture is.

Jerome wasn’t an idiot - he knew that his Bible was going to be the source of all future Bibles in the Church, and that it was going to be the source for the Lectionary at every Mass henceforth and forever more. He would not have included anything in it that was “iffy”.

The reason he included the Deuterocanon of the Old Testament (which you mistakenly refer to as the Apocrypha) is that he later became convinced that it was legitimately part of the inspired canon of Scripture, just like the 27 books of the New Testament (which were likewise condemned by the Jews of his time. along with the Deuterocanon.)

It’s true that in the beginning, he was influenced by the Palestinians, but then he did his homework and realized that they were wrong.

 

[jmcrae]

I have recently come to the amusing realization that, in fact, Lectionaries are older than Bibles in the history of the Church. The epistles (letters) of Paul, John, and Peter were sent around to the various early churches and copied and read at worship services (we have 1st century testimony to this in the “Didache”), some FOUR HUNDRED years before the first complete Bibles were collected and bound (in the form of the Canon that we know today).
– Things were much the same in the pre-Christian synagogues and the Temple. The scrolls of the Torah, and the Prophets, and the Wisdom were all kept separately. Cobbling them all together into one bound book is a relatively modern phenomenon.
– Rusty

Good point!

Yes - until St. Jerome put all of the books into one codex (basically, a box of pages all bound together) there had never before been such a thing as what we today would call “a Bible.”

 

[james62]

In all humility, I do not claim to kow ALL of their teachings or ideas. Moreover, what they did was to merely reflect the accepted OT canon during their time and to prove that the Apocrypha was not considered part of it. They are not speaking as auhtoritatively on their own. This just proves that the usage of the apocrypha as scripture was only done later on in the history of the RCC.

I really hate to argue with you, but you are just plain wrong, at least as far as i understand this part of history thus far. The “apocrypha” was ALREADY part of the Greek Septuagint even before Jesus was born. These were “THE SCRIPTURES” of the first century Jews and later that century it was easily adopted by the first century Christians. To support your claim, it would seem we should have some New Testament writing that makes an exception every time it mentions “scriptures”, i.e., when Luke quote Peter in Acts 1:

“Brothers, the Scripture (save for them 7 pesky books) had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago . . .”

or quoting Paul in Acts 17:

“As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures (but, of course, he never reasoned from those 7 pesky books)…”

The examples like this could go on throughout the NT. In a nutshell, neither history, logic, nor Christian tradition is on your (the Protestant) side. Have you ever seriously examined the “catholic side” of this issue? I hadn’t, but when i did, my mind was quickly changed.

 

[james62]

I’ve just read a book giving the reasons for the exclusion of the Apocrypha. Check out the Book THE NEW EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT by Josh McDowell. He discusses the OT canon on pp. 26-32. Citing Geisler and Nix, he lists ten historical testimony of their exclusion from tha canon by the early church by Philo, Josephus, Jesus and the NT writers, Jewish scholars at Jamnia, Absence of any Christian council recognizing the apocrypha as inspired for nearly 4oo years, Origen, Cyril and Athanasius, Jerome, saying that the church reds them “for example of life and instruction of manners,” but does not “apply them to establish any doctrine.” He also outlined samples from the Apocrypha to show its inaccuracy and errancy, as cited from Ralph Earle’s How We Got Our Bible.

It would be too lengthy for me to

So…does this mean Josh (and therefore Geisler and Nix) side with all the philosophical, religious and spiritual beliefs of Philo, Josephus, and the Jewish scholars at Jamnia? If not, then why does he not side with the early church on this foundational issue???

As for him stating that “Jesus and the NT writers” have historical testimony excluding part of the Greek Septuagint from what should be called “scripture”, i would love to see such “evidence.” It truly seems like Prots end up digging through history to see first of all IF someone agrees with their personal viewpoint, and if they do, they shout it from the mountain tops…even if that said ancient authority is not “Christian”.

How odd is that???

 

[Rustyxcv]

Ah dear friends! So much ink spilt! Such silliness! “Come let us reason together. . .”
– The Bible, our name for “it” – comes from the Greek “ta biblia” = the books (PLURAL!) – so –
– Item #1 – The Bible is not an “it” – The Bible are a them! It is not ONE book, it is MANY books, set aside for the teaching of God’s people. Be careful! There is only one Holy One and that ONE is GOD. Let not your respect for the “ONE”-ness of the Bible begin to approach or supplant the ONE-ness of GOD; lest you border on blasphemy.
– Item #2 – The Bible is the Word of God . . . well, yes and no. JESUS is the Word of God. And the Vicar of Christ is his supreme agent and place-holder here on earth, so perhaps, in some limited sense, he too is, as it were, the Word of God. He is certainly God’s mouthpiece. But, the Bible contains the words of God spoken in the past to God’s holy people: the Patriarchs, the children of Abraham, the Jews, the Church. The Bible itself (ooops! “themselves”!) testifies that JESUS is the Word of God (see John’s Gospel). Again, insist not that the Bible is the WORD of GOD too strongly; you may begin to border on blasphemy.
– Item #3 – Oh how I loath the terms “Apocrypha” and “Deuterocanonical”! Only in the field of Bible-olatry (and in the unfortunate Catholic pro-Reformational field of Modern-Critical-Biblical-“Scholarship”) do we have TWO proper names, with capital letters no less, for a SEVERED LIMB!!! Isn’t it amusing that Protestants spend more time talking and writing about not using the Apocrypha than Roman Catholics spend actually using it – LOL. " . . . I went upon the stair // to meet the man who wasn’t there . . ." – a poorly remembered poetical fragment that comes to mind.
– sigh – I suppose calling those several books and fragments of other books “Apocrypha” or “Deuterocanonical” is easier than calling them “The-Books-that-Protestant-Mission-Societies-in-the-Early-19th-Century-Omitted-when-They-Realized-How-Much-they-Could-Save-on-Printing-Costs-and-Shipping-Weight-when-Producing-Bibles-for-Export-to-the-Mission-Fields-in-Africa-and-Asia.” I admit that is rather a mouthful and that it would rather cumbersome to use that phrase every time (perhaps we could shorten it to “the Books that PMS” – sorry, the Devil made me do it!). You do know that until the early 19th century ALL Protestant Bibles included these books, albeit in a separate section. That’s 300-400 years with those “dangerous” texts tagging right along.
– Hmmmm? 300-400 years??? That’s how long it took the “Bible” to get canonized in the first place. Interesting . . .
– God’s richest blessings to you all! – Rusty