Should books be added to the NT? translations

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I am thinking that maybe books that were considered to be scripture by some in the early church should be added as a second canon called “profitable to be read” like sherard hermes, I enoch, I Clement and others should be added to the NT. What do you all think?
 
Big_Dummy said:
I am thinking that maybe books that were considered to be scripture by some in the early church should be added as a second canon called “profitable to be read” like sherard hermes, I enoch, I Clement and others should be added to the NT. What do you all think?
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They are already available to be read, and the canon of Scripture was determined, once for all, some 1600 years and more ago. If they were not judged to be Scripture then (and the Holy Spirit was the one who assured the authenticity of what was judged), why would you want to (through ‘adding them’) defy the Holy Spirit now?
 
Big,

To do what you suggest would require an “overturning” of the Council of Trent, which, as one of its decrees, officially and infallibly proclaimed the entire canon of both the OT and NT.

The Church has also taught that all revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle, thought to be St. John on the Isle of Patmos around 100 AD.

As the previous poster said, the books you mention have always been available to us to read and to even study as being important. But I seriously doubt they will (or even can) be “reconsidered” for inclusion as part of the NT canon.
 
Tantum_ergo said:
They are already available to be read, and the canon of Scripture was determined, once for all, some 1600 years and more ago.
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Salvatore123 said:
Big,

To do what you suggest would require an “overturning” of the Council of Trent, which, as one of its decrees, officially and infallibly proclaimed the entire canon of both the OT and NT.
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I am no expert but I think you both might be mistaken. Jimmy Atkins discusses the possiblity of a “tritiocanon:” jimmyakin.org/2006/08/tritiocanonical.html

It appears that the canon might not be officially closed. This isn’t to say I think there should be any additions.
 
That said, whether or not the canon is truly closed, I don’t think it is beyond the Church’s power to infallibly declare non-canonical works like 1 Clement to be free from errors of faith and morals and therefore “profitable to read.”
 
Big_Dummy said:
I am thinking that maybe books that were considered to be scripture by some in the early church should be added as a second canon called “profitable to be read” like sherard hermes, I enoch, I Clement and others should be added to the NT. What do you all think?
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Those given the authority and responsibility of determining the Canon had much more direct knowledge than we do 2000 years later. With the guidance of The Holy Spirit Pope Damasus I determined The Canon at the Council of Rome in A.D. 382. That Canon has been confirmed at numerous Church Councile down through the aeons.

I don’t know of anyone today that I would trust to mess with the Inspired Canon.
 
Ignatius said:
Those given the authority and responsibility of determining the Canon had much more direct knowledge than we do 2000 years later. With the guidance of The Holy Spirit Pope Damasus I determined The Canon at the Council of Rome in A.D. 382. That Canon has been confirmed at numerous Church Councile down through the aeons.

I don’t know of anyone today that I would trust to mess with the Inspired Canon.
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Well, said, though Jimmy Atkins has led me to suspect that the authority to determine the canonicity of various writings is still present in the Church’s authority.

I have recently wondered, given the popularity of Gnostic works like the Gospel of Thomas and other heretical “scriptures,” if it might not be a bad idea for the Church to divide the chaff from the wheat and decide which, if any, of the non-canonical works (like 1 Clement) are safe to read and learn from. Perhaps even that is a bad idea.
 
Big_Dummy said:
I am thinking that maybe books that were considered to be scripture by some in the early church should be added as a second canon called “profitable to be read” like sherard hermes, I enoch, I Clement and others should be added to the NT. What do you all think?
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The canon is closed. End of story.
 
ChristIsTheWay,

It is not so much that Jimmy Atkin is “wrong”, as it is that Jimmy Atkin has no more standing or authority on this issue than you or me. Whatever he says is nothing more than personal, LAY opinion, and carries no weight (other than the fact that he works as a Catholic apologist as a protestant convert).

I think the problem with additions to the NT canon rests with two distinctly different issues:
  1. Books written while Jesus or the Apostles were still alive.
  2. Books written after the last Apostle died.
I can see where those works that fall in category 1 MIGHT be taken into consideration for addition to the canon, but only because those works were written during the life of the Apostles (and thus, Christ) AND may have been written by the Apostles themselves.

I do not envision anything in category 2 being made part of the NT canon. I think, by definition, the NT canon contained books that revealed the teachings of Christ, by Christ himself and through the apostles that lived and heard Christ. THAT is why the Church has always been so definitive when it has said that “divine public relevalation” ended with the death of the last apostle, whom tradition states was St. John on the Isle of Patmos around 100 AD.
 
Salvatore123 said:
ChristIsTheWay,

It is not so much that Jimmy Atkin is “wrong”, as it is that Jimmy Atkin has no more standing or authority on this issue than you or me. Whatever he says is nothing more than personal, LAY opinion, and carries no weight (other than the fact that he works as a Catholic apologist as a protestant convert).

I think the problem with additions to the NT canon rests with two distinctly different issues:
  1. Books written while Jesus or the Apostles were still alive.
  2. Books written after the last Apostle died.
I can see where those works that fall in category 1 MIGHT be taken into consideration for addition to the canon, but only because those works were written during the life of the Apostles (and thus, Christ) AND may have been written by the Apostles themselves.

I do not envision anything in category 2 being made part of the NT canon. I think, by definition, the NT canon contained books that revealed the teachings of Christ, by Christ himself and through the apostles that lived and heard Christ. THAT is why the Church has always been so definitive when it has said that “divine public relevalation” ended with the death of the last apostle, whom tradition states was St. John on the Isle of Patmos around 100 AD.
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I think I can more or less agree with all this. The only issue I wished to address was the closing of the canon. So far, I’ve seen nothing establishes a closed canon at Trent or elsewhere.

That said, I don’t expect any additions to the New Testament canon. I do suspect that, in the event of a Catholic-Orthodox reunion, we might add some of the Orthodox canon, like 3 Maccabees, to the canon. That is pure, uneducated speculation on my part. As you have said, I’ve no authority in the subject.
 
Big_Dummy said:
I am thinking that maybe books that were considered to be scripture by some in the early church should be added as a second canon called “profitable to be read” like sherard hermes, I enoch, I Clement and others should be added to the NT. What do you all think?
Click to expand...
Please, NO!!!, then we would have to release another new version of NAB, the NABRERE:eek:
 
Tantum_ergo said:
They are already available to be read, and the canon of Scripture was determined, once for all, some 1600 years and more ago. If they were not judged to be Scripture then (and the Holy Spirit was the one who assured the authenticity of what was judged), why would you want to (through ‘adding them’) defy the Holy Spirit now?
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Bingo!

Along the same lines, it is interesting that the questioning of the real authorship of “Shakespeare’s” plays only started 150 years after his death.
 
interresting so far, but if those were added as a third canon, would that not increase their readership?
 
Big_Dummy said:
interresting so far, but if those were added as a third canon, would that not increase their readership?
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Popularity or readership do not enter into it.
The Canon of The New Testament is a declaration in Truth of which books are God Breathed and Divinely Inspired.
 
The books of the Bible are seen by Catholics as the inspired word of God. The ancient works mentioned in the opening post are are at best edifying, not the inspired word of God. If such works are given reverence as a “second canon,” I presume that they would be specially published by the Church or put in the back of Bibles. Why not add to Bibles other things too that are edifying but also not the word of God? I much admire Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” Why not put that in the back of Bibles? Why not some of the poems of Auden or T. S. Eliot? These also are edifying just like the ancient works the opening post suggested by treated as a second canon.
 
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