Can We Reconstruct The New Testament Using The Early Church Fathers?

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Augustine3

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I’m sure most of us have heard we can reconstruct the entire New Testament less eleven verses using the Early Church Father quotes from the 1st – 2nd century. I’m not sure if that statement is accurate. If it were only less eleven verses, then we would find the story of the adulteress woman in St John’s gospel among their quotes.

Does anybody know which eleven verses the Church Fathers did not quote? Are they the ending to St Mark’s gospel?
 
I’ve got the Fathers in my computer on .pdf. When I get time (pro’ly here at work tomorrow), I’ll do a search using word strings from the “woman taken in adultery” passage and the end of Mark and see what does or does not turn up. If, that is, no one else comes up with a definitive answer between now and then.
 
With only first and second century I would doubt it, but with all the Fathers I am 99.9% sure. Origen would be the one who would have quoted the most Scripture from the early times because he had so many verse-by-verse commentaries, but until you get to the 4th century when commentaries started to flourish all you had prior were letters and so on.
 
Nacho45 said:
I don’t understand the OP’s question.
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The OP is asking this (in my words): If all the New Testaments in the world were to disappear, could we reconstruct it using quotations from the early Church Fathers? And would that reconstruction include two questionable passages – the pericope of the woman caught in adultery (Gospel of John) and what is called the extended ending of the Gospel of Mark.

Did I get it right, Augustine3?

Okay, today I’ve got 8 hours sitting at a post outside an empty, inactive factory. I’ll give it a try, and if I don’t get bogged down, I’ll try to get through all the ante-Nicean Fathers. Wish me luck.
 
DaveBj said:
The OP is asking this (in my words): If all the New Testaments in the world were to disappear, could we reconstruct it using quotations from the early Church Fathers? And would that reconstruction include two questionable passages – the pericope of the woman caught in adultery (Gospel of John) and what is called the extended ending of the Gospel of Mark.

Did I get it right, Augustine3?

Okay, today I’ve got 8 hours sitting at a post outside an empty, inactive factory. I’ll give it a try, and if I don’t get bogged down, I’ll try to get through all the ante-Nicean Fathers. Wish me luck.
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Thank you for explaining. I suppose I am a little off today and tired. Now that I understand, I see it is an excellent question. My apologies for being slow on the uptake.
 
DaveBj said:
The OP is asking this (in my words): If all the New Testaments in the world were to disappear, could we reconstruct it using quotations from the early Church Fathers? And would that reconstruction include two questionable passages – the pericope of the woman caught in adultery (Gospel of John) and what is called the extended ending of the Gospel of Mark.

Did I get it right, Augustine3?
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You’re exactly right! 👍

I did a skim over the 1st and 2nd century Church Father Writings. The NT quotes match our modern bibles. I don’t understand what’s the problem these hyper-skeptics have about the New Testament’s preservation. The evidence is there in the 1st and 2nd century writings by multiple people living in different regions; what else do they want? The original preserved or something??
 
DaveBj said:
I’ve got the Fathers in my computer on .pdf. When I get time (pro’ly here at work tomorrow), I’ll do a search using word strings from the “woman taken in adultery” passage and the end of Mark and see what does or does not turn up. If, that is, no one else comes up with a definitive answer between now and then.
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I look forward to that. Do you go to Sacred Heart parish?

–Iggy in Madison, Al
 
Ignatius said:
I look forward to that. Do you go to Sacred Heart parish?

–Iggy in Madison, Al
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I do 😃

Okay, I did my survey. Before I give my results, I want to explain my methodology.

The famous 37-volume set of the Church Fathers was translated in the 19th century. I have not done a complete study of the men who did the translations, but I believe that for the most part they were Reformed or Presbyterian theologians and scholars. When translating the Fathers’ citations from Sacred Scripture, they tended to use the wording from the KJV. Therefore, I picked two text strings that are unique to each of the passages in question: “in the very act” and “and sin no more” from the John 8, and “upbraided them” and “take up serpents” from the supposed extended ending of Mark. I also expanded my search to all 9 volumes of the Ante-Nicene Fathers.

Here are my results, which are pretty meager.

I found only one citation of any kind from John 8:1-11, and that was only the phrase “go and sin no more,” quoted completely out of context in Section 6 of Pope Callistus’ 2nd Epistle, which was written to the bishops of Gaul.

Of the “longer ending” of the Gospel of Mark, I found three citations (only three citations in over 9,000 pages of material!).

Mark 16:17-18 was quoted in Book 8, Section 1, Paragraph 1 of the Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, which is a compilation of teachings from various sources.

Verses 15-18 were paraphrased in Chapter 14 of the Gospel of Nicodemus, from the Apocrypha of the New Testament. Not exactly a reliable source.

And last but not least, the whole disputed section of Mark 16 was quoted in Section 55 of the Diatessarion of Tatian, a harmony of the Gospels.

Back to the OP’s original question – if we were trying to reconstruct the entire New Testament from the known writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, the pericope about the woman taken in adultery would be completely missing, while the “longer ending” of Mark would still be questionable.

This has been fun. We’ll have to do it again some time.
 
DaveBj said:
I do 😃

Okay, I did my survey. Before I give my results, I want to explain my methodology.

The famous 37-volume set of the Church Fathers was translated in the 19th century. I have not done a complete study of the men who did the translations, but I believe that for the most part they were Reformed or Presbyterian theologians and scholars. When translating the Fathers’ citations from Sacred Scripture, they tended to use the wording from the KJV. Therefore, I picked two text strings that are unique to each of the passages in question: “in the very act” and “and sin no more” from the John 8, and “upbraided them” and “take up serpents” from the supposed extended ending of Mark. I also expanded my search to all 9 volumes of the Ante-Nicene Fathers.

Here are my results, which are pretty meager.

I found only one citation of any kind from John 8:1-11, and that was only the phrase “go and sin no more,” quoted completely out of context in Section 6 of Pope Callistus’ 2nd Epistle, which was written to the bishops of Gaul.

Of the “longer ending” of the Gospel of Mark, I found three citations (only three citations in over 9,000 pages of material!).

Mark 16:17-18 was quoted in Book 8, Section 1, Paragraph 1 of the Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, which is a compilation of teachings from various sources.

Verses 15-18 were paraphrased in Chapter 14 of the Gospel of Nicodemus, from the Apocrypha of the New Testament. Not exactly a reliable source.

And last but not least, the whole disputed section of Mark 16 was quoted in Section 55 of the Diatessarion of Tatian, a harmony of the Gospels.

Back to the OP’s original question – if we were trying to reconstruct the entire New Testament from the known writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, the pericope about the woman taken in adultery would be completely missing, while the “longer ending” of Mark would still be questionable.

This has been fun. We’ll have to do it again some time.
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Thanks very much for those references. I would love to get my hands on that PDF copy

Here’s a cool website for the others. Click onto the Church Fathers (Ante-Nicene) links and scroll to the bottom. There you’ll find “Index of Scripture References”

The earliest reference I can find to the pericope adulterae is Eusebius’ ambiguous reference. Nevertheless this website clearly demonstrates the vast scripture quotes from the Ante-Nicene Church Fathers.
 
Augustine3 said:
Thanks very much for those references. I would love to get my hands on that PDF copy

Here’s a cool website for the others. Click onto the Church Fathers (Ante-Nicene) links and scroll to the bottom. There you’ll find “Index of Scripture References”

The earliest reference I can find to the pericope adulterae is Eusebius’ ambiguous reference. Nevertheless this website clearly demonstrates the vast scripture quotes from the Ante-Nicene Church Fathers.
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The PDF was downloaded from a CD-ROM, The Master Christian Library, that I bought at the flagship bookstore of the Pentecostal denomination that I grew up in, back in the mid-90s. I bought it specifically because it had the Fathers in it, and it was reading the Fathers that started my decade-long trip into the Catholic Church (What?! The apostle John isn’t even cold in his grave, and the Church has already fallen into Catholic heresies!!! 😃 ) The texts are available on-line, but I haven’t found any in .pdf format.

Thanks for the link.
 
DaveBj said:
I do 😃

Okay, I did my survey. Before I give my results, I want to explain my methodology.

The famous 37-volume set of the Church Fathers was translated in the 19th century. I have not done a complete study of the men who did the translations, but I believe that for the most part they were Reformed or Presbyterian theologians and scholars. When translating the Fathers’ citations from Sacred Scripture, they tended to use the wording from the KJV. Therefore, I picked two text strings that are unique to each of the passages in question: “in the very act” and “and sin no more” from the John 8, and “upbraided them” and “take up serpents” from the supposed extended ending of Mark. I also expanded my search to all 9 volumes of the Ante-Nicene Fathers.

Here are my results, which are pretty meager.

I found only one citation of any kind from John 8:1-11, and that was only the phrase “go and sin no more,” quoted completely out of context in Section 6 of Pope Callistus’ 2nd Epistle, which was written to the bishops of Gaul.

Of the “longer ending” of the Gospel of Mark, I found three citations (only three citations in over 9,000 pages of material!).

Mark 16:17-18 was quoted in Book 8, Section 1, Paragraph 1 of the Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, which is a compilation of teachings from various sources.

Verses 15-18 were paraphrased in Chapter 14 of the Gospel of Nicodemus, from the Apocrypha of the New Testament. Not exactly a reliable source.

And last but not least, the whole disputed section of Mark 16 was quoted in Section 55 of the Diatessarion of Tatian, a harmony of the Gospels.

Back to the OP’s original question – if we were trying to reconstruct the entire New Testament from the known writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, the pericope about the woman taken in adultery would be completely missing, while the “longer ending” of Mark would still be questionable.

This has been fun. We’ll have to do it again some time.
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Iranaeus quotes the long ending of Mark in against heresies. Year 170 approx.

Papias speaks of a “woman accused of many sins” speaking to Jesus in the first or very early second century.
 
dronald said:
Iranaeus quotes the long ending of Mark in against heresies. Year 170 approx.

Papias speaks of a “woman accused of many sins” speaking to Jesus in the first or very early second century.
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But that’s the point. Papias (or Eusebius speaking of Papias, rather) claimed that the story is in “the Gospel according to the Hebrews.” So there’s the question of whether the story he is referring to is similar to or an earlier version of the one we have today tucked in John 8, if indeed it is the same one. For one thing, Papias’ woman is accused of “many sins” (which a few people have argued is closer to the woman in Luke 7 than in John 8) but in the version we have in our Bibles adultery is the only charge specifically stated.

Granted, when the author Tyrannius Rufinus translated Eusebius into Latin decades later (ca. AD 402) he did change “woman accused of many sins” into “adulterous woman,” but that only reveals how Rufinus understood the passage to mean and does not necessarily represent Papias’ or Eusebius’ original reference.
 
DaveBj said:
Iranaeus, or Eusebius quoting Iranaeus? It didn’t show up on my searches.
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Chapter 10, book 3. Against heresies:

"Also, towards the conclusion of his Gospel, Mark says: So then, after the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God; (Mark16:19) confirming what had been spoken by the prophet:"*
 
patrick457 said:
But that’s the point. Papias (or Eusebius speaking of Papias, rather) claimed that the story is in “the Gospel according to the Hebrews.” So there’s the question of whether the story he is referring to is similar to or an earlier version of the one we have today tucked in John 8, if indeed it is the same one. For one thing, Papias’ woman is accused of “many sins” (which a few people have argued is closer to the woman in Luke 7 than in John 8) but in the version we have in our Bibles adultery is the only charge specifically stated.
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I agree, that’s why I said this passage by Eusebius is ambiguous. I don’t know if we can use this as a “proof text” when it brings more questions like what is this Gospel according to the Hebrews?
 
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