…
What I also discussed was the study of ancient texts, and was met, by and large, with some people simply closing their ears and saying, “I can’t hear you. I’m just gonna keep saying you don’t know the books of the Bible without the Roman Catholic Church.” Something clearly contradicted by the First Vatican Council:
These books the Church holds to be sacred and canonical not because she subsequently approved them by her authority after they had been composed by unaided human skill, nor simply because they contain revelation without error, but because, being written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and were as such committed to the Church. [First Vatican Council, Session 3, Ch. 2, 7; emphasis mine]
Which is why I was very happy to see Darryl1958’s post:
That is what I have been discussing this whole time. Any Roman Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, etc., can study and see why the Gospel of Barnabas is not an inspired book, let alone why we can’t say it came from the apostolic era.
Now does part of this involve what the early church felt? Yes, but it’s more than that, and I’ll explain again a bit for those who might be coming to this thread for the first time or haven’t read back. I mentioned earlier that even early Christian enemies such as Celcus identified the gospels as four, and identified them by the authors they’re named after (Matthew, Mark, etc.). That’s very strong historical evidence against atheists, Muslims, etc., especially those who would argue that the early church only gave credence to the names so they had some kind of authority over and against the Gnostic texts. I also brought up the theology shown by the work: for example, if it displays theology that comes from a later time period, then clearly it couldn’t have been written in the time it claims. If it represents something such as Second Temple Judaism (as the letters of Paul do), then it must come from the first century, aka the era the apostolic church was in. This was erroneously called “holy tradition” earlier in the thread, but, as I pointed out then, I don’t see how something that existed before the time of Christ and believed even by Caiaphas and Annas, who nailed Jesus to the cross and persecuted the early Christians, could be considered a Christian tradition - one might as well call rabbinical Judaism holy tradition.
Again, these two are just examples of what we can look for inside a text to know if the beliefs around its authorship are sincere. It’s an interesting subject that is worth studying because it will grow your faith in what books belong in the Bible, and how we know they come from where they say they come from, and aren’t just accepted on blind faith.
