bibles that are NOT The Bible...

[JonNC]

Check out this: “A New New Testament”, published 2013, by some major denominational leaders who voted on 10 books to add to the “traditional” 27.

The Catholic Magisterium identified, but God was the creator, of the New Testament canon, which the above version opposes. It was the visible human agency through which God publicly communicated His will that: Books will be added to the existing scriptures. These specific 27 books were deemed to be inspired. Other books that were considered then, were deemed to be excluded from the New Testament. The New Testament canon was then CLOSED. The Magisterium continues to maintain the 27 book canon today.

All of these were decisions, not evolutions, made not by Christians in general, but by a single, specific identifiable part of the Church. God didn’t need any Magisterium, but He chose to use this means. The Magisterium’s canon likely did not represent the majority of Christians or the majority of scholars at that time. At present it’s likely a majority of scholars doesn’t accept the Magisterium’s 27 book canon, and in the future a majority of Christians won’t accept it. In the future it will be much harder for Christians to defend the traditional 27 book canon, if they reject the authority of the single, identifiable, currently visible human agency that closed the canon, and keeps it closed.

Unfortunately the people behind “A New New Testament” have far more media and academic clout than the Mormons ever had, when they tried to add books. In the future, those who hold to the traditional 27 will be regarded as quaint, like people today who believe the Earth is flat, based on the Bible. In the future, I predict Protestants will follow whatever canon their denomination or congregation chooses, and there will be many canons. Protestants who are unwilling to break with the traditional 27 books, will take a good, hard look at joining with the single human agency that communicated that canon in the first place, and keeps it closed today.

Some of the people behind it are Catholic.

huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/29/a-new-new-testament-scholars-add-10-new-texts-to-the-christian-canon_n_2976440.html

That said, I am sure that communions such as the Catholic Church and the LCMS will stay well away from this officially. While I am a strong proponent of ecumenism, I’m curious as to why you believe that communions such as the LCMS would be drawn to Rome simply because other communions would take on this new canon.

Jon

 

[commenter]

Some of the people behind it are Catholic.

huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/29/a-new-new-testament-scholars-add-10-new-texts-to-the-christian-canon_n_2976440.html

That said, I am sure that communions such as the Catholic Church and the LCMS will stay well away from this officially. While I am a strong proponent of ecumenism, I’m curious as to why you believe that communions such as the LCMS would be drawn to Rome simply because other communions would take on this new canon.

Jon

Sadly, you are right, some of the people behind it were at least baptized as Catholics. But the 3 I can identify had repudiated the Magisterium before this. In the 1970s the LCWR had rejected the Magisterium part way, but were not yet ready to publicly accept new gospels. Based on 2 of the reviewers, perhaps they and other dissenting groups are ready to take that next logical step, rejecting the Magisterium’s canon.

When I was growing up, the canon of the NT was a given, so deeply established that adding or subtracting from the canon was as unthinkable as a Christian denomination supporting same sex marriage. Today the “other” NT scriptures are far more widely distributed than before, through the media, on college campuses, in religious education, even in a few church services. Unlike the Mormons, who pulled people out of churches, A New New Testament is designed for use IN the churches. It lists the Gospel of Thomas alongside the Gospel of Mathew, so you use both, in conjunction.

A scholar can reject a cult’s faulty translation of Mathew as inauthentic, but no scholar can rule out the Gospel of Thomas, or defend keeping Philemon in the NT on scholarly grounds. That’s not a scholarly decision, it’s an authority decision. Christians are being presented with choices they never really had before, be it gay marriage or the Gospel of Mary. Individuals have always had the option of accepting or rejecting Scripture, but now they can choose: “the Gospel of Mark inspires YOU but the Gospel of Mary inspires ME”.

You know the LCMS far better than I do, so I yield the podium to you on how they will defend the canon. All I want to say is that this is a new challenge, maybe the hardest challenge. “A New New Testament” is like the first big boulder in a landslide.

 

[JonNC]

Sadly, you are right, some of the people behind it were at least baptized as Catholics. But the 3 I can identify had repudiated the Magisterium before this. In the 1970s the LCWR had rejected the Magisterium part way, but were not yet ready to publicly accept new gospels. Based on 2 of the reviewers, perhaps they and other dissenting groups are ready to take that next logical step, rejecting the Magisterium’s canon.

When I was growing up, the canon of the NT was a given, so deeply established that adding or subtracting from the canon was as unthinkable as a Christian denomination supporting same sex marriage. Today the “other” NT scriptures are far more widely distributed than before, through the media, on college campuses, in religious education, even in a few church services. Unlike the Mormons, who pulled people out of churches, A New New Testament is designed for use IN the churches. It lists the Gospel of Thomas alongside the Gospel of Mathew, so you use both, in conjunction.

A scholar can reject a cult’s faulty translation of Mathew as inauthentic, but no scholar can rule out the Gospel of Thomas, or defend keeping Philemon in the NT on scholarly grounds. That’s not a scholarly decision, it’s an authority decision. Christians are being presented with choices they never really had before, be it gay marriage or the Gospel of Mary. Individuals have always had the option of accepting or rejecting Scripture, but now they can choose: “the Gospel of Mark inspires YOU but the Gospel of Mary inspires ME”.

You know the LCMS far better than I do, so I yield the podium to you on how they will defend the canon. All I want to say is that this is a new challenge, maybe the hardest challenge. “A New New Testament” is like the first big boulder in a landslide.

Even though the Lutheran confessions do not technically close the canon, I just don’t see
the LCMS going outside the historic approach in the west. Luther’s Bible had/has 74 books (he included the Prayer of Manasseh in the “Apocrypha”), and I don’t know of any Lutheran thinking, either during the Reformation era or since, that would add other books to the NT. Clearly, our way of practicing hermeneutics is already so conservative, even in how we use the NT Antilegomena, that I can’t imagine even any necessity to consider others.

Jon

 

[John_Lazarus]

Nova Aurelia locuta est, causa finita est. :dts:

 

[concretecamper]

I have read the Luther Tyndale bible is racked with errors. Is it safe to say that this version is not scripture?

Posted from Catholic.com App for Android

 

[commenter]

Even though the Lutheran confessions do not technically close the canon, I just don’t see
the LCMS going outside the historic approach in the west. Luther’s Bible had/has 74 books (he included the Prayer of Manasseh in the “Apocrypha”), and I don’t know of any Lutheran thinking, either during the Reformation era or since, that would add other books to the NT. Clearly, our way of practicing hermeneutics is already so conservative, even in how we use the NT Antilegomena, that I can’t imagine even any necessity to consider others.

Jon

Up till now American culture as a whole has supported the “historic” approach to the NT canon, just as until recently it supported the historic view that life begins at conception. That can change. History is still happening now. People can be persuaded that newly defined (by the media) scriptures are part of history, based on historic insights. We now know more about homosexuality than we did when the “historic” epistles were written; so new epistles can (must) be added, reflecting our own history; and some gospels or epistles, at this point in history, should be dropped. They don’t fit into our history.

We have to look at what’s going on in the secular culture right now, how Catholics and Lutherans are influenced by that agenda. It has been mildly difficult to defend Scripture up till now, as long as the media is just attacking it. It will be extremely difficult when the media promotes rival new testaments against your New Testament. Reference to a “historic approach” has no authority at all against this new challenge. I don’t care how conservative your hermeneutics are, the peeps in the pews and your seminarians are far more exposed to the hermeneutics of Huffington Post, CNN, etc. My point is that certain church structures (Magisterium) that may have seemed like extra baggage as long as the canon was unchallenged, may appear more necessary tomorrow.

 

[JonNC]

Up till now American culture as a whole has supported the “historic” approach to the NT canon, just as until recently it supported the historic view that life begins at conception. That can change. History is still happening now. People can be persuaded that newly defined (by the media) scriptures are part of history, based on historic insights. We now know more about homosexuality than we did when the “historic” epistles were written; so new epistles can (must) be added, reflecting our own history; and some gospels or epistles, at this point in history, should be dropped. They don’t fit into our history.

We have to look at what’s going on in the secular culture right now, how Catholics and Lutherans are influenced by that agenda. It has been mildly difficult to defend Scripture up till now, as long as the media is just attacking it. It will be extremely difficult when the media promotes rival new testaments against your New Testament. Reference to a “historic approach” has no authority at all against this new challenge. I don’t care how conservative your hermeneutics are, the peeps in the pews and your seminarians are far more exposed to the hermeneutics of Huffington Post, CNN, etc. My point is that certain church structures (Magisterium) that may have seemed like extra baggage as long as the canon was unchallenged, may appear more necessary tomorrow.

I won’t dispute your general perspective here. There is much in it that I agree with. I think it more likely that liberal groupings of any communion might be swayed, and the secularists will use it to drive wedges among Christians. If by chance the LCMS were swayed, which I doubt, then you would be right: I would seek out Rome or Orthodoxy.

Jon

 

[Khalid]

I have read the Luther Tyndale bible is racked with errors. Is it safe to say that this version is not scripture?

Posted from Catholic.com App for Android

I’ve never read the Lutherbibel but I have read Tyndale. King James’ Version is almost completely derived from Tyndale: KJV is to Tyndale as ESV is to RSV. And the KJV is most certainly Scripture, being either the most-accurate or second-most-accurate Bible in English. Tyndale’s not quite as good as KJV, and is in even more difficult English than the KJV, with spelling equivalent to an original spelling version of Shakespeare. However, it’s accurate enough - more accurate than the modern English NAB, NRSV, or Jerusalem Bible, and closer in accuracy to something like the RSV-2CE.

 

[chero23]

Seventh Day Adventists have a non-bible parading as a bible. It is called THE CLEAR WORD version. It’s even more slanted and biased than the NWT from Jehovah’s witnesses but its biases are different.

I’m glad that you posted his. I asked my gf on Thursday if they the seventh day Adventist church had or backed a bibl and she said no, but I can see that is not true.

 

[Khalid]

The Clear Word is considered more of a commentary or aid in understanding the “real” Bible even by most SDAs in my experience, not considered a translation in its own right (think of Eugene Peterson’s stated goal for The Message). Kind of like how Ellen Gould’s books ended up a part of the SDA canon in all but name.

For example, Genesis 1:1f in the Clear Word Paraphrase: “This earth began by an act of God. He created the heavens and the earth. The earth was only a mass of created matter floating in space, covered with a vapor garment…”

This can not possibly be considered a translation. It’s barely even paraphrase. It’s a commentary which retells the story of the Bible in such a way as to emphasize or eisegete in to it all of the distinctive SDA doctrines. Even the SDAs I have known would agree with this, and would not consider using the Clear Word Paraphrase as a primary Bible.

Getting back to an analysis of CWP Genesis 1:1f, “This earth began by an act of God” has so much baggage of heresy and Origenism attached to it that I don’t know where to start: but, a clear and simple point is that the author added “…covered in a vapour garment…”

The SDAs are all young-earth creationists (but not necessarily Biblical young-earth creationists, as I attempt to be), but they hew to an old (and now-discredited) creationist hypothesis of the “vapour blanket” first proposed by modern creation science pioneer and SDA George McCready Price in the early 1900s. This vapour blanket supposedly protected the Earth from cosmic radiation before the Flood, and provided water for the Flood as it fell through “the windows of heaven [which] were opened” during the Flood. The idea of a vapour blanket is taught nowhere in the Bible (but it does not contradict it): at one time, in the 1960s, it was a good hypothesis. It’s since been falsified. Such is like the mediaeval Aristotelians translating Genesis 1:16 as “and God created the greater light, which rotates around the earth”.

The vapour-blanket model of creationism is an SDA hobby-horse (even some SDAs deny it), and it’s put in to the CWP. The example should suffice as evidence that it’s likely two of the first seven clauses in the Bible are not even translated, but are paraphrase mixed up with SDA sectarian commentary (in a manner as to make it indistinguishable from the Biblical text, far different than translating what the Hebrew says and putting the vapour blanket idea in a footnote), that the rest of the CWP likely is paraphrase mixed with a strong dose of SDA sectarianism (in a manner as to make the sectarianism indistinguishable from the Word of God written) as well.

Any Bible that has concepts added to it in such a way that they are indistinguishable from the actual Sacred Text is no longer a Bible, but a commentary, in my view: this includes the Clear Word Version, the Message, the Word on the Street, the Voice, early versions of the Living Bible, etc.