Question on the canon of scripture

[Bishopite]

While the decalogue was transmitted by God in a special way, the rest of the OT wasn’t transmitted that directly or maybe physically would be a better term to use here.

Even if God wrote the OT himself with His own hand, you still have the issue of how did the non-witnesses recognize what was and what wasn’t scripture.

For example, if God revealed a prophecy to you, you may be certain it is from God but how would I or my grandchildren’s grandchildren know that the prophecy was from God? Short of God revealing it to the non-witnesses directly they still had to rely on some other fallible source didn’t they?

They recognized what was scripture from what was Traditioned down to them via sacred oral Tradition. If God revealed a prophecy to someone in the OT, that persons prophecy had to come true otherwise they would be stoned to death. And even though that source is fallible, when God uses that source to pass down oral Tradition or to authortitatively proclaim some teaching over God’s people, then God guides that authoritative source infallibly; an example of this is the Apostles who were fallible men who God used infallibly to write scripture and pass down sacred Tradition. Through sacred Tradition the Catholic church recognized those infallible books and the fallible ones. During few centuries post Apostolic period, there were three catagories that books were estentially labeled.

1. Accepted books— i.e., all four gospels since they we always attributed to the Apostles and always used in the church everywhere and were first century writings according to the early church fathers which is a valid source as Protestant theologians also affirm.
2. Rejected books–i.e., the gnostic gospels because they were NEVER attributed to an Apostle nor used in the church’s liturgy and found to be second and third century creations.
3. Distputed books-- i.e., Hebrews, 2,3 John, Revelation and I believe 2 Peter also but it evades my memory at this time.
   Anyway, it was these disputed books that the Catholic church recognized as being infallible and did so through sacred Tradition for that was the criteria by which the church recognized what was the infallible word of God. God lead the Catholic church infallibly to recognize the infallible books. Apostolicity was a criteria for canonization but no one knows for sure who wrote the book of Hebrews but the church knows it is true through sacred Tradition being passed down in the liturgy.

Remember that the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God and I maintain they had no link to an infallible source so they had to have some way of discerning the scriptures. Now, I have never heard the Jews claim that they had anything remotely like what you guys believe your magesterium to be.

Actually, that’s not quite correct. The Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God, however they lost them post Apostolic period after Jesus established a church Mt 16:15-19, 1 Tim 3:15 and a new covenant of grace/love and handed that over to the Apostles (Luke 10:16, 2 Thes 2:15, 3:6, 1 Cor 11:2).

While they had the Ummim and Thurmim ( I don’t have my Bible handy so I am quite sure I didn’t spell these two words correctly), they only had them for a time before they were lost.

Actually the Jews lost all ability to recognize any new revelation after Jesus entrusted it to the Apostles. And there are a number of examples of oral Tradition in the NT. Mt 2:3, 23:2, Jude 9 and 14,1 Peter 3:19 and Paul in Acts 20:35 where he quotes Jesus as saying “it is better to give than to receive” even though this statement of Jesus is never found in the gospels.

Of course God is infallible but I don’t recall the Jews ever claiming that God through some unwritten tradition revealed the OT canon to them. If you have knowledge of such a claim please share it.

The Old Testament canon wasn’t fixed at the time of Christ being all revelation hadn’t ceased; the Jews didn’t know when all revelation would end, so their was no fixed canon in the OT.
The first citation of the entire OT canon in any authoritative sense was in 382 AD under Pope Damasus at the council of Rome where all of the 27 New Testament books were cited in a fixed canon and is found here…
home.inreach.com/bstanley/canon.htm

There were a number of differing canons during Jesus’ time, NONE of them were fixed canons. There was the Palestine canon which contained the OT books Protestants have, then there was the Saducee canon which contained the first five books of the OT (pentateuch) and then there was also a Quumron canon (I’ve been told) which no one really knows for sure what was in that canon. And there was the Alexandrian canon which contained the dueterocanonicals of the OT and from which Jesus and the Apostles quoted the LXX some 300 out of 350 times in the NT.
catholicapologetics.org/ap030500.htm#box14