The Council of Jamnia

[fdesales]

I don’t see it as Monday morning quarterbacking nor do I see how the logic fails.

The first four books of the NT describe events at the end of the Old Covenant and the beginning of the New Covenant but were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit during the New Covenant.

This “OT/NT” separation, or Old Covenant/New Covenant relation/separation is entirely a work of Christianity after the fact. THIS is why it is “Monday morning QB’ing”. At the time, the Jews rejected the Christian consideration that the Gospels were inspired. Because of this, the Christians no longer considered the Jews worthy of determining the contents of Scriptures. Not because the Jews were “experts” on the Old Covenant and Christians relegated to them the authority. That argument fails miserably because the OT Deuterocanonicals ARE INDEED part of the OLD COVENANT! What now? Because the Jews of Palestine deny the Septuagint as inspired with the pressure of Christianity, we must heed them - since THEY are the “experts”?

The separation WE make NOW is after the fact. There was no fine delineation that hinged upon the “Old Covenant” vs “New Covenant” writings were one could define, as you do, where the Jews were valid interpreters of the Canon, and then, they were not anymore with this New Covenant. There is no cutoff date based UPON this Old Covenant vs the New Covenant.

Thus, we must regard INSPIRATION as a CLAIM made by the respective communities. It is not self-evident that ANY individual book (except perhaps Revelation) is indeed “Scriptures”, in the NT. Same with much of the OT. It is the Christian community that defines FOR ITSELF what is Scriptures, based upon THEIR claim that the Spirit was inspiring their writings - not on some time-stamp (Old Covenant/New Covenant) where “as of this date, the Jews are no longer worthy of defining the Canon” since they are relegated as authorities ONLY on the Old Covenant…

This is what I mean about “Monday morning QB’ing”. The Church decided FOR HERSELF that HER divines wrote God-inspired writings, and had nothing to do with separation between the OLD Covenant or the NEW Covenant. This applied to which OT Scriptures to use…Since the CHURCH defined the Canon base upon HER CLAIM of what was inspired (rather than on an artificial date of old/new covenant start/end) and REJECTED the Jewish rejection of the Gospel, it is logical to say that WE TODAY reject the argument that the Jews had any authority to define the limits of the OLD Testament because it was during “their” time “before” their offical “old covenant period” ended.

The reason why the Church ACCEPTS the OT Deuterocannonicals, obviously, has NOTHING to do with this artificial delineation that you make. Thus, the logic that transcends the argument about Jamnia and its supposed authority is sound. We do not accept the Gospels because the Jews were no longer valid (because their time expired at the “cutoff time” you speak of). We accept the Gospels and the Deuterocanonicals because the Church TELLS us they are inspired, not because "Jews are experts on the Old Covenant, Christians on the New).

SemperReformada:

As for the OT / NT differentiation it seems to me you are making a distinction without a difference. Can one be a part of the New Covenant and reject the gospels? Isn’t the New Testament an account of the New Covenant which Jesus mediates?

Exactly my point and why the Jewish choice of the Hebrew vs Septuagint OT is worthless to Christians. NOT because the Jews were the OT canonists and Christians were the NT canonists…

SemperReformada:

I don’t see how accepting the OT which was entrusted to the Jews means you have to then accept the Jewish decision to reject the NT.

There are several versions of the OT “entrusted to the Jews”, correct?

THEIR determination of which is inspired is not important to us because they also reject the Gospels. Their ability to choose which books are inspired are not limited to the OT. There was no such delineation then. As a community, we reject their community’s choices, and this has nothing to do with “old covenant/new covenant” separation.

If they cannot correctly chose which “version” of Scriptures written before Christ is correct, why would we listen to their decision to not include the Gospels in what was Scriptures?

Thus, the argument that “the Jews chose the Hebrew version, not the Septuagint” is meaningless to us, since they ALSO chose to reject the Gospels. That they rejected the Septaugint is thus a meaningless argument to use for NOT selecting the OT Deuterocanonicals as Scriptural, as Protestants do. This logic fails since the supposed experts of the “old covenant” chose a different set of OT than the Church of the NT time.

Regards

 

[Analyticalpoet]

Do you realize that Jerome included prologues to each book of the deutero’s in the Vulgate and in these prologues he made it clear that the deutero’s were not on par with canonical scripture? This in no small way was part of the reason many rejected the deutero’s.

Exactly how was Jerome obedient? The early councils were local councils and did not set dogma or infallibly rule on the canon (even thought Carthage and Hippo clearly included the deutero’s). Jerome did include the deutero’s but also expressed his misgivings on each of the detuero’s in his prologues which were included in the Vulgate too.

Luther rejected the canonocity of the deutero’s but had Luther been a faithful Catholic he was well within his right to do so. Remember Luther lived before Trent and Trent was the first infallible, dogmatic declaration of the canon. Even at Trent we see the Tridentine fathers debating whether or not the dc’s should be included as part of the canon.

While St. Jerome lived well before the Council of Trent and was contributing to the discussion of the Apocrypha, his obedience despite of his objections is what is key here HE TRANSLATED THE SEPTUAGHINT (that is his obedience). He subjected himself to the Holy See, and to the already established Tradition that was set forth by the Councils of Rome, Carthage, Hippo. All of these councils, though local, began defining the Canon of Scripture and were not done apart from the Apostolic Tradition of the Church. These synods were merely defending the more commonly used Septuaghint from attacks made by people like Marcion and the likes, who either sought to descredit the Old Testament all together or to severly abridge It so as to support their heresies.

Along with these synods, authoritative opions of Canonical Scriptures were already present from Church Fathers such as Origen, and St. Augustine for the Apocrypha, and St. Athanasius of Alexandria against. Whatever their opinions, they contributed to the debate on the Canonicity of Scripture.

The Council of Trent, which you seem to agree with is authoritative, took what was already there and affirmed it, and repudiates Luther. The question is if Luther lived after the Council of Trent would he have accepted it? By the looks of it he would not have. Luther may have had the “right” to question Canonicty as it was not infallibly defined, but he had no right in defying the Bishop of Rome.

 

[beeliner]

I’m very curious to see how others view this “council.”

Well, it’s an interesting discussion, and I’m not trying to pick a fight with anyone who has participated. There are, however, certain errors and anachronisms in the first few posts which should be addressed.

1. It is meaningless to say that Jamnia ‘rejected the message of the New Testament’, since there was no ‘New Testament’ until decades later. Some writings that became part of the NT existed when Jamnia is supposed to have taken place and others did not.
2. It doesn’r really matter whether such a council ever took place, the Jewish canon was closed sometime in the latter part of the 1st century AD, with around AD90 being the best guess, and at that time several writings included in the LXX were regarded as being too recent to be canonized - the selection was by date and not content.
3. The claim that these books were excluded because they somehow supported the tenets of Christianity is preposterous. They were all written before Christ’s birth, most of the passages which might be seen as presaging Christianity are from the protocanon, notably Isaiah and several of the minor prophets, and praying for the dead (yortzeit), mentioned in Maccabees, remains a common custom among Jews today, notwithstanding that the book was excluded from the canon.
4. The exclusion was for liturgical purposes only. The many stories in the excluded books remain well known to Jews today - the books are simply no longer used in worship. Even so, several of them, notably Sirach, were so popular at the time of the closure of the Jewish canon that they remianed clandestinely in use for years if not decades in certain circles.
5. It is very unlikely that the criteria used in closing the Jewish canon were in any way influenced by Christianity.
6. The best treatment of the closure of the canon is probably in the Encyclopedia Judaica, which explores the subject at considerable length.
7. Luther did not exactly ‘reject’ the deuterocanonicals, he simply claimed that they contained no doctrine, but were nonetheless worthy of study.

 

[Jolly_Joe]

Luther didn’t say they contained no doctrine. He didn’t even say they couldn’t be used as a support of a doctrine. What he said was they were not authoritative for doctrine.

If you talked to your priest, he could be said to talk doctrine, he could be said to support doctrine, but he ultimately wouldn’t be authoritative in doctrine.

 

[beeliner]

Luther didn’t say they contained no doctrine. He didn’t even say they couldn’t be used as a support of a doctrine. What he said was they were not authoritative for doctrine.

If you talked to your priest, he could be said to talk doctrine, he could be said to support doctrine, but he ultimately wouldn’t be authoritative in doctrine.

Any more nits to pick?

 

[Jolly_Joe]

I wasn’t trying to pick on you, I see people spend a lot of time talking about the mistaken positions.

 

[beeliner]

I wasn’t trying to pick on you, I see people spend a lot of time talking about the mistaken positions.

Well, OK, I have no doubt that many Catholics misinterpret certain tenets of Lutheranism and vice-versa.

Still, I’m not sure that I perceive a difference between ‘containing doctrine’ and ‘being authoritative for doctrine’. If it’s not authoritative, then it seems to me, by definition, it’s not doctrine. And that brings us to the bigger question:

BY WHAT AUTHORITY did he claim that they were not ‘authoritative for doctrine’? It would have been like an army corporal (Luther) telling a five-star general (the Church) that his orders were ‘not authoritative’.

And this is my problem with Protestantism in general. Luther and the other reformers were right, and quite courageous, in standing up against the abuses and corruption within the Church’s temporal leadership of the time. That had little to do with Church doctrine. The only serious abuse of doctrine I know of was the selling of indulgences.

But then they took a giant step further by starting to change doctrine - ALL SORTS of doctrine. Luther had his ‘salvation by faith alone’, completely opposed to Christ’s entire mission and teachings, Wesley claimed to have devised a ‘Method’ of salvation outside the community established by Christ on Peter, and so on.

So again I ask, and I think every Catholic asks, BY WHAT AUTHORITY?

But this is probably beyond the scope of this thread. Maybe we should start a new one.

 

[Jolly_Joe]

Did you study the resources he used for his translation? It’s right there. I listed them earlier. He followed the canon as taught him by the Catholic Church.

It was taught by the Vulgate, by the Glossa ordinaria and by both of the other Latin translations, one of which labelled them as nonscripture and the other put them in a separate section. Those translations had the blessings of the Popes and the scholars of the Catholic Church of Luther’s time.

Certainly he questioned other books such as James an Revelation and so did others of his time, but in the end he didn’t innovate the canon. His translation stuck to it just as it was taught him by the Catholic Church.

The only parts of the Vulgate of his time he didn’t translate were three books in the appendix of the Vulgate. 1 and 2 Esdras of the Protestant Apocrypha, and the false Paul’s letter to the Laodicians which was very common in the Bibles in Germany at Luther’s time.

The Gloss ordinaria was commonly called the tongue of scripture in Luther’s time. He was given his copy of the commentary by his Bishop.

Cardinal Cajetan, the leading scholar of Rome, was sent by the Pope to deal with Luther. He gives a good summary statement of the canon he accepted in his commentary on the Old Testament.

“Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed amongst the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, as is plain from the Prologus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clearly through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage.” (In ult. Cap. Esther. Taken from A Disputation on Holy Scripture by William Whitaker (Cambridge: University, 1849), p. 48.

Notice how Cajetan has no difficulty understanding the difference between the books as far as authority for doctrine.

He gives an important insight into the thoughts and teachings on the canon at the time of Luther for he was the teacher of Rome of Luther’s time. He and others never really challenged Luther on the canon because it appears they agreed with Luther. Or better Luther agreed with them.