What Church Is Most Biblical?

[Mannyfit75]

Here is a commentary from Jimmy Akin concerning the Deutrocanonical Books:

The Christian acceptance of the deuterocanonical books was logical because the deuterocanonicals were also included in the Septuagint, the Greek edition of the Old Testament which the apostles used to evangelize the world. Two thirds of the Old Testament quotations in the New are from the Septuagint. Yet the apostles nowhere told their converts to avoid seven books of it. Like the Jews all over the world who used the Septuagint, the early Christians accepted the books they found in it. They knew that the apostles would not mislead them and endanger their souls by putting false scriptures in their hands—especially without warning them against them.

But the apostles did not merely place the deuterocanonicals in the hands of their converts as part of the Septuagint. They regularly referred to the deuterocanonicals in their writings. For example, Hebrews 11 encourages us to emulate the heroes of the Old Testament and in the Old Testament “Women received their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they might rise again to a better life” (Heb. 11:35).

There are a couple of examples of women receiving back their dead by resurrection in the Protestant Old Testament. You can find Elijah raising the son of the widow of Zarepheth in 1 Kings 17, and you can find his successor Elisha raising the son of the Shunammite woman in 2 Kings 4, but one thing you can never find—anywhere in the Protestant Old Testament, from front to back, from Genesis to Malachi—is someone being tortured and refusing to accept release for the sake of a better resurrection. If you want to find that, you have to look in the Catholic Old Testament—in the deuterocanonical books Martin Luther cut out of his Bible.

The story is found in 2 Maccabees 7, where we read that during the Maccabean persecution, “It happened also that seven brothers and their mother were arrested and were being compelled by the king, under torture with whips and cords, to partake of unlawful swine’s flesh. . . . **ut the brothers and their mother encouraged one another to die nobly, saying, 'The Lord God is watching over us and in truth has compassion on us . . . ’ After the first brother had died . . . they brought forward the second for their sport. . . . he in turn underwent tortures as the first brother had done. And when he was at his last breath, he said, ‘You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life’” (2 Macc. 7:1, 5-9).

One by one the sons die, proclaiming that they will be vindicated in the resurrection.

“The mother was especially admirable and worthy of honorable memory. Though she saw her seven sons perish within a single day, she bore it with good courage because of her hope in the Lord. She encouraged each of them . . . [saying], ‘I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws,’” telling the last one, “Do not fear this butcher, but prove worthy of your brothers. Accept death, so that in God’s mercy I may get you back again with your brothers” (2 Macc. 7:20-23, 29). This is but one example of the New Testaments’ references to the deuterocanonicals.

The early Christians were thus fully justified in recognizing these books as Scripture, for the apostles not only set them in their hands as part of the Bible they used to evangelize the world, but also referred to them in the New Testament itself, citing the things they record as examples to be emulated.**

ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/DEUTEROS.htm

 

[Mannyfit75]

The Fathers Speak

The early acceptance of the deuterocanonicals was carried down through Church history. The Protestant patristics scholar J. N. D. Kelly writes: "It should be observed that the Old Testament thus admitted as authoritative in the Church was somewhat bulkier and more comprehensive than the [Protestant Old Testament] . . . It always included, though with varying degrees of recognition, the so-called Apocrypha or deuterocanonical books. The reason for this is that the Old Testament which passed in the first instance into the hands of Christians was . . . the Greek translation known as the Septuagint. . . . most of the Scriptural quotations found in the New Testament are based upon it rather than the Hebrew… . . In the first two centuries . . . the Church seems to have accept all, or most of, these additional books as inspired and to have treated them without question as Scripture.

Quotations from Wisdom, for example, occur in 1 Clement and Barnabas. . . Polycarp cites Tobit, and the Didache [cites] Ecclesiasticus. Irenaeus refers to Wisdom, the History of Susannah, Bel and the Dragon *, and Baruch. The use made of the Apocrypha by Tertullian, Hippolytus, Cyprian and Clement of Alexandria is too frequent for detailed references to be necessary" (Early Christian Doctrines, 53-54).

The recognition of the deuterocanonicals as part of the Bible that was given by individual Fathers was also given by the Fathers as a whole, when they met in Church councils. The results of councils are especially useful because they do not represent the views of only one person, but what was accepted by the Church leaders of whole regions.

The canon of Scripture, Old and New Testament, was finally settled at the Council of Rome in 382, under the authority of Pope Damasus I. It was soon reaffirmed on numerous occasions. The same canon was affirmed at the Council of Hippo in 393 and at the Council of Carthage in 397. In 405 Pope Innocent I reaffirmed the canon in a letter to Bishop Exuperius of Toulouse. Another council at Carthage, this one in the year 419, reaffirmed the canon of its predecessors and asked Pope Boniface to “confirm this canon, for these are the things which we have received from our fathers to be read in church.” All of these canons were identical to the modern Catholic Bible, and all of them included the deuterocanonicals.

This exact same canon was implicitly affirmed at the seventh ecumenical council, II Nicaea (787), which approved the results of the 419 Council of Carthage, and explicitly reaffirmed at the ecumenical councils of Florence (1442), Trent (1546), Vatican I (1870), and Vatican II (1965).*

Same source link:

 

[Mannyfit75]

The Reformation Attack on the Bible

The deuterocanonicals teach Catholic doctrine, and for this reason they were taken out of the Old Testament by Martin Luther and placed in an appendix without page numbers. Luther also took out four New Testament books—Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation—and put them in an appendix without page numbers as well. These were later put back into the New Testament by other Protestants, but the seven books of the Old Testament were left out. Following Luther they had been left in an appendix to the Old Testament, and eventually the appendix itself was dropped (in 1827 by the British and Foreign Bible Society), which is why these books are not found at all in most contemporary Protestant Bibles, though they were appendicized in classic Protestant translations such as the King James Version.

The reason they were dropped is that they teach Catholic doctrines that the Protestant Reformers chose to reject. Earlier we cited an example where the book of Hebrews holds up to us an Old Testament example from 2 Maccabees 7, an incident not to be found anywhere in the Protestant Bible, but easily discoverable in the Catholic Bible. Why would Martin Luther cut out this book when it is so clearly held up as an example to us by the New Testament? Simple: A few chapters later it endorses the practice of praying for the dead so that they may be freed from the consequences of their sins (2 Macc. 12:41-45); in other words, the Catholic doctrine of purgatory. Since Luther chose to reject the historic Christian teaching of purgatory (which dates from before the time of Christ, as 2 Maccabees shows), he had to remove that book from the Bible and appendicize it. (Notice that he also removed Hebrews, the book which cites 2 Maccabees, to an appendix as well.)

To justify this rejection of books that had been in the Bible since before the days of the apostles (for the Septuagint was written before the apostles), the early Protestants cited as their chief reason the fact that the Jews of their day did not honor these books, going back to the council of Javneh in A.D. 90. But the Reformers were aware of only European Jews; they were unaware of African Jews, such as the Ethiopian Jews who accept the deuterocanonicals as part of their Bible. They glossed over the references to the deuterocanonicals in the New Testament, as well as its use of the Septuagint. They ignored the fact that there were multiple canons of the Jewish Scriptures circulating in first century, appealing to a post-Christian Jewish council which has no authority over Christians as evidence that “The Jews don’t except these books.” In short, they went to enormous lengths to rationalize their rejection of these books of the Bible.

 

[Mannyfit75]

Rewriting Church History

In later years they even began to propagate the myth that the Catholic Church “added” these seven books to the Bible at the Council of Trent! Protestants also try to distort the patristic evidence in favor of the deuterocanonicals. Some flatly state that the early Church Fathers did not accept them, while others make the more moderate claim that certain important Fathers, such as Jerome, did not accept them.

It is true that Jerome, and a few other isolated writers, did not accept most of the deuterocanonicals as Scripture. However, Jerome was persuaded, against his original inclination, to include the deuterocanonicals in his Vulgate edition of the Scriptures—testimony to the fact that the books were commonly accepted and were expected to be included in any edition of the Scriptures.

Furthermore, it can be documented that in his later years Jerome did accept certain deuterocanonical parts of the Bible. In his reply to Rufinus, he stoutly defended the deuterocanonical portions of Daniel even though the Jews of his day did not.

He wrote, “What sin have I committed if I followed the judgment of the churches? But he who brings charges against me for relating the objections that the Hebrews are wont to raise against the story of Susanna, the Son of the Three Children, and the story of Bel and the Dragon, which are not found in the Hebrew volume, proves that he is just a foolish sycophant. For I was not relating my own personal views, but rather the remarks that they [the Jews] are wont to make against us” (Against Rufinus 11:33 [A.D. 402]). Thus Jerome acknowledged the principle by which the canon was settled—the judgment of the Church, not of later Jews.

Other writers Protestants cite as objecting to the deuterocanonicals, such as Athanasius and Origin, also accepted some or all of them as canonical. For example, Athanasius, accepted the book of Baruch as part of his Old Testament (Festal Letter 39), and Origin accepted all of the deuterocanonicals, he simply recommended not using them in disputations with Jews.

However, despite the misgivings and hesitancies of a few individual writers such as Jerome, the Church remained firm in its historic affirmation of the deuterocanonicals as Scripture handed down from the apostles. Protestant patristics scholar J. N. D. Kelly remarks that in spite of Jerome’s doubt, “For the great majority, however, the deutero-canonical writings ranked as Scripture in the fullest sense. Augustine, for example, whose influence in the West was decisive, made no distinction between them and the rest of the Old Testament . . . The same inclusive attitude to the Apocrypha was authoritatively displayed at the synods of Hippo and Carthage in 393 and 397 respectively, and also in the famous letter which Pope Innocent I dispatched to Exuperius, bishop of Toulouse, in 405” (Early Christian Doctrines, 55-56).

It is thus a complete myth that, as Protestants often charge, the Catholic Church “added” the deuterocanonicals to the Bible at the Council of Trent. These books had been in the Bible from before the time canon was initially settled in the 380s. All the Council of Trent did was reaffirm, in the face of the new Protestant attack on Scripture, what had been the historic Bible of the Church—the standard edition of which was Jerome’s own Vulgate, including the seven deuterocanonicals!

 

[Mannyfit75]

It is ironic that Protestants reject the inclusion of the deuterocanonicals at councils such as Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), because these are the very same early Church councils that Protestants appeal to for the canon of the New Testament. Prior to the councils of the late 300s, there was a wide range of disagreement over exactly what books belonged in the New Testament.

Certain books, such as the gospels, acts, and most of the epistles of Paul had long been agreed upon. However a number of the books of the New Testament, most notably Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, and Revelation remained hotly disputed until the canon was settled. They are, in effect, “New Testament deuterocanonicals.”

While Protestants are willing to accept the testimony of Hippo and Carthage (the councils they most commonly cite) for the canonicity of the New Testament deuterocanonicals, they are unwilling to accept the testimony of Hippo and Carthage for the canonicity of the Old Testament deuterocanonicals. Ironic indeed!

 

[BrianH]

Manny says-The Christians from the first Century all the way to the present use the so called Deutrocanonical Books.

Manny, can you or can you not, prove the deutrocanonicals were considered canonical by first century Christians?
The lists we have from Christians in the 3rd and 4th century differ as to what they believe should be in there. Are you to have us believe that 1st century Christians agreed and then they disagreed later?
Remember, we have NO complete copies or lists of the Septuagint from the 1st century, so how can you say they all used the deutrocanonicals?

 

[Mannyfit75]

Manny, can you or can you not, prove the deutrocanonicals were considered canonical by first century Christians?

Read the citation I provided.

The lists we have from Christians in the 3rd and 4th century differ as to what they believe should be in there. Are you to have us believe that 1st century Christians agreed and then they disagreed later?

Read Jimmy Akin citation of Biblical Canon. The 7 Deutrocanonical Books were commonly used by Christians. There no compile list. Biblical Canon develop overtime. There was a heresy called Marcionism which deny the usefulness of the OT (Hebrew Canon of Scripture). In this response, the Catholic Church condemned the heresy, and this help move the Church to compile a list of Scripture. If you read the historical context of the passage. These books have always been used. St. Paul used it, and the Other Apostles, and even Jesus.

Remember, we have NO complete copies or lists of the Septuagint from the 1st century, so how can you say they all used the deutrocanonicals?

The originals were destroyed. The only we have are copies.

 

[BrianH]

Jesus
Paul
and the Apostles never called the deutrocanonicals scripture. They “used” and quoted several books not considered scripture.
And furthermore the earliest copies DO NOT contain all of the books of the deutrocanonicals!

 

[Mannyfit75]

Jesus
Paul
and the Apostles never called the deutrocanonicals scripture. They “used” and quoted several books not considered scripture.

According to who? Of course they weren’t called Deutrocanonical. They were part of Scripture. Like I said, the Jews themselves did not close their own Canon of Scripture until the Council of Jamnia in 90 AD.

And furthermore the earliest copies DO NOT contain all of the books of the deutrocanonicals!

According to who?

Wrong. The Qumram contain fragments of the Deutrocanonical Books. According to who?

For example, some of the texts of Samuel from Cave 4 follow the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Bible translated in the third to second centuries B.C.E. Indeed. Qumran has yielded copies of the Septuagint in Greek.

 

[BrianH]

According to who? Of course they weren’t called Deutrocanonical. They were part of Scripture. Like I said, the Jews themselves did not close their own Canon of Scripture until the Council of Jamnia in 90 AD.

You have not proved the 1st century Christians considered them scripture.
Not that you have mentioned it but someone will, there are times that Jesus agrees with the Proto-Maoretic text against the Septuagint. There are times that Jesus agrees with the
Septuagint against the Masoretic text.
Craig Evans also lists examples of “agreements with the Aramaic”!

Wrong. The Qumram contain fragments of the Deutrocanonical Books.

 

[Mannyfit75]

And furthermore the earliest copies DO NOT contain all of the books of the deutrocanonicals!

I stand corrected. I found this in the NewAdvent.org:

The ancient Greek Old Testament known as the Septuagint was the vehicle which conveyed these additional Scriptures into the Catholic Church. The Septuagint version was the Bible of the Greek-speaking, or Hellenist, Jews, whose intellectual and literary centre was Alexandria (see SEPTUAGINT). The oldest extant copies date from the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, and were therefore made by Christian hands; nevertheless scholars generally admit that these faithfully represent the Old Testament as it was current among the Hellenist or Alexandrian Jews in the age immediately preceding Christ. These venerable manuscripts of the Septuagint vary somewhat in their content outside the Palestinian Canon, showing that in Alexandrian-Jewish circles the number of admissible extra books was not sharply determined either by tradition or by authority. However, aside from the absence of Machabees from the Codex Vaticanus (the very oldest copy of the Greek Old Testament), all the entire manuscripts contain all the deutero writings; where the manuscript Septuagints differ from one another, with the exception noted, it is in a certain excess above the deuterocanonical books. It is a significant fact that in all these Alexandrian Bibles the traditional Hebrew order is broken up by the interspersion of the additional literature among the other books, outside the law, thus asserting for the extra writings a substantial equality of rank and privilege.

newadvent.org/cathen/03267a.htm

The website further explains:

It is pertinent to ask the motives which impelled the Hellenist Jews to thus, virtually at least, canonize this considerable section of literature, some of it very recent, and depart so radically from the Palestinian tradition. Some would have it that not the Alexandrian, but the Palestinian, Jews departed from the Biblical tradition. The Catholic writers Nickes, Movers, Danko, and more recently Kaulen and Mullen, have advocated the view that originally the Palestinian Canon must have included all the deuterocanonicals, and so stood down to the time of the Apostles (Kaulen, c. 100 B.C.), when, moved by the fact that the Septuagint had become the Old Testament of the Church, it was put under ban by the Jerusalem Scribes, who were actuated moreover (thus especially Kaulen) by hostility to the Hellenistic largeness of spirit and Greek composition of our deuterocanonical books. These exegetes place much reliance on St. Justin Martyr’s statement that the Jews had mutilated Holy Writ, a statement that rests on no positive evidence. They adduce the fact that certain deutero books were quoted with veneration, and even in a few cases as Scriptures, by Palestinian or Babylonian doctors; but the private utterances of a few rabbis cannot outweigh the consistent Hebrew tradition of the canon, attested by Josephus–although he himself was inclined to Hellenism–and even by the Alexandrian-Jewish author of IV Esdras. We are therefore forced to admit that the leaders of Alexandrian Judaism showed a notable independence of Jerusalem tradition and authority in permitting the sacred boundaries of the Canon, which certainly had been fixed for the Prophets, to be broken by the insertion of an enlarged Daniel and the Epistle of Baruch. On the assumption that the limits of the Palestinian Hagiographa remained undefined until a relatively late date, there was less bold innovation in the addition of the other books, but the wiping out of the lines of the triple division reveals that the Hellenists were ready to extend the Hebrew Canon, if not establish a new official one of their own.

 

[Mannyfit75]

The most explicit definition of the Catholic Canon is that given by the Council of Trent, Session IV, 1546. For the Old Testament its catalogue reads as follows:

The five books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), Josue, Judges, Ruth, the four books of Kings, two of Paralipomenon, the first and second of Esdras (which latter is called Nehemias), Tobias, Judith, Esther, Job, the Davidic Psalter (in number one hundred and fifty Psalms), Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Canticle of Canticles, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Isaias, Jeremias, with Baruch, Ezechiel, Daniel, the twelve minor Prophets (Osee, Joel, Amos, Abdias, Jonas, Micheas, Nahum, Habacue, Sophonias, Aggeus, Zacharias, Malachias), two books of Machabees, the first and second.

The order of books copies that of the Council of Florence, 1442, and in its general plan is that of the Septuagint. The divergence of titles from those found in the Protestant versions is due to the fact that the official Latin Vulgate retained the forms of the Septuagint.

 

[Mannyfit75]

A. THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON (INCLUDING THE DEUTEROS) IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

The Tridentine decrees from which the above list is extracted was the first infallible and effectually promulgated pronouncement on the Canon, addressed to the Church Universal. Being dogmatic in its purport, it implies that the Apostles bequeathed the same Canon to the Church, as a part of the depositum fedei. But this was not done by way of any formal decision; we should search the pages of the New Testament in vain for any trace of such action. The larger Canon of the Old Testament passed through the Apostles’ hands to the church tacitly, by way of their usage and whole attitude toward its components; an attitude which, for most of the sacred writings of the Old Testament, reveals itself in the New, and for the rest, must have exhibited itself in oral utterances, or at least in tacit approval of the special reverence of the faithful. Reasoning backward from the status in which we find the deutero books in the earliest ages of post-Apostolic Christianity, we rightly affirm that such a status points of Apostolic sanction, which in turn must have rested on revelation either by Christ or the Holy Spirit. For the deuterocanonicals at least, we needs must have recourse to this legitimate prescriptive argument, owing to the complexity and inadequacy of the New Testament data.

All the books of the Hebrew Old Testament are cited in the New except those which have been aptly called the Antilegomena of the Old Testament, viz., Esther, Ecclesiastes, and Canticles; moreover Esdras and Nehemias are not employed. The admitted absence of any explicit citation of the deutero writings does not therefore prove that they were regarded as inferior to the above-mentioned works in the eyes of New Testament personages and authors. The deutero literature was in general unsuited to their purposes, and some consideration should be given to the fact that even at its Alexandrian home it was not quoted by Jewish writers, as we saw in the case of Philo. The negative argument drawn from the non-citation of the deuterocanonicals in the New Testament is especially minimized by the indirect use made of them by the same Testament. This takes the form of allusions and reminiscences, and shows unquestionably that the Apostles and Evangelists were acquainted with the Alexandrian increment, regarded its books as at least respectable sources, and wrote more or less under its influence. A comparison of Hebrews, xi and II Machabees, vi and vii reveals unmistakable references in the former to the heroism of the martyrs glorified in the latter. There are close affinities of thought, and in some cases also of language, between 1 Peter 1:6-7, and Wisdom 3:5-6; Hebrews 1:3, and Wisdom 7:26-27; 1 Corinthians 10:9-10, and Judith 8:24-25; 1 Corinthians 6:13, and Ecclesiasticus 36:20.

 

[Mannyfit75]

You have not proved the 1st century Christians considered them scripture.

Yet they quoted the books from Tobit, Macabbees, Sirach, and 2/3 of the NT is taken from the Septuagint’s translation of Issiah 7:14. In the Hebrew, “a woman shall conceive and bear a son.” While the Greek translation said, “a virgin shall conceived and bear a son…”

Not that you have mentioned it but someone will, there are times that Jesus agrees with the Proto-Maoretic text against the Septuagint. There are times that Jesus agrees with the
Septuagint against the Masoretic text

.

He quotes the Septuagint more than he did the Masoretic Text.

Craig Evans also lists examples of “agreements with the Aramaic”!

He did.

Qumran contains copies of lots of things. And Qumran in no way shape or form has writings from Christian authors claiming the deutrocanonicals are scripture. The vast vast majority of the Tanakh found at Qumran were in Hebrew. Regardless, Qumran contains no complete copies, but only minor fragments of Greek. Are you disagreeing with this?

Well, it had the Greek translation in fragments. They didn’t have a list. It took them a while to comple a list of Canon of Scripture. True, not all of Deutrocanonical Books are found in our old manuscript, like the Maccabbees… though it did have others.

Are you claiming that Qumran has complete copies of the Septuagint??
That will be news to every Biblical scholar alive today!

They have the Hebrew fragment of the Greek translation found in the Septuagint.

 

[BrianH]

Yet they quoted the books from Tobit, Macabbees, Sirach,

Quoting from a book does not mean they considered it scripture. Several things are quoted in scripture that are STILL not considered scripture from anyone, Protestant, Orthodox, OR Catholic.
Are you seriously contending that any outside source quoted in the NT should then considered part of the canon?

and 2/3 of the NT is taken from the Septuagint’s translation of Issiah 7:14.

66% of the New Testament comes from one verse in the OT?

He quotes the Septuagint more than he did the Masoretic Text.

Lee Martin McDonald, James A. Sanders, Editors: The Canon Debate; Craig A. Evans, The Scriptures of Jesus and His Earliest Followers, p 191-194, 2002

• Did Jesus Recognize a Specific Text of Scripture?

Did Jesus recognize a specific text form of scripture? It does not appear so, for his usage of scripture is allusive, paraphrastic, and-so far as it can be ascertained-eclectic. We find agreement with the proto-Masoretic text, with the Hebrew under-lying the Septuagint (perhaps even the Septuagint itself), and with the Aramaic para-phrase. *

 

[jmcrae]

“Every time hoes hou appears in the Authorized Version of the New Testament, (the OT Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew original, is irrelevant) it DOES indicate the previous activity (or lack of activity in this particular case) stops or changes.”

Mat 18:30 And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should pay the debt.

Mat 18:34 And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him.

Okay, so far.

Mat 26:36 Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. (hoes hou was translated “while” here)

So, in this particular instance, “heos hou” does not signify an immediate change in status - the disciples continue to remain “here” even after the event signified by the “heos hou.” So, here we see one example (and one is really all we need) where “heos hou” does not, in fact, signify a change in status.

Luk 12:50 But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!

Okay …

Luk 13:21 It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

But the three measures of meal continue to remain in the bread. The bread has become leavened, but it did not cease to be bread - the change in status signified by the “heos hou” is not a reversal of circumstances.

Act 23:12 And when it was day, certain of the Jews banded together, and bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul.

Okay …

Act 25:21 But when Paul had appealed to be reserved unto the hearing of Augustus, I commanded him to be kept till I might send him to Caesar.

The proconsul was not going to set him free when he got in touch with Caesar, though - St. Paul remained in chains until his death, which was after his meeting with Caesar.

2Pe 1:19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:

The light didn’t cease when the sun came up - instead, it became even brighter. Again, not a reversal of circumstances - just a change.

So, we see that sometimes “heos hou” signifies a reversal, sometimes it signifies a change of surrounding circumstances without any change in the active subject itself, and sometimes it signifies the duration of a continuing activity. So, because of that, we cannot say that the “until” in the passage from Matthew signifies anything other than Joseph’s change of status from fiancé of Mary to step-father of Jesus.

 

[BrianH]

Mat 26:36 Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder

So, in this particular instance, “heos hou” does not signify an immediate change in status - the disciples continue to remain “here” even after the event signified by the “heos hou.” So, here we see one example (and one is really all we need) where “heos hou” does not, in fact, signify a change in status.

Yes, there is absolutely a change in status. Jesus was with them and now he is not and he takes 3 of them with him. It is in no way, shape, or form the same. If everything remained the same, heos hou would not be there. It is never used for something to remain the same.

**Luk 13:21 It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. **

But the three measures of meal continue to remain in the bread. The bread has become leavened, but it did not cease to be bread - the change in status signified by the “heos hou” is not a reversal of circumstances.

Who said it ceased to be bread? It changed, or the entire analogy does not make sense. Are you saying this verse indicates something staying the same? Why then would Christ use an example of something staying the same in this context? That would defeat the purpose. The Kingdom of God is like…something that stays the same !!! Tell me you are not serious!

**
Act 25:21 But when Paul had appealed to be reserved unto the hearing of Augustus, I commanded him to be kept till I might send him to Caesar. **

The proconsul was not going to set him free when he got in touch with Caesar, though - St. Paul remained in chains until his death, which was after his meeting with Caesar.

Oh my my. Do not reach here. Read it again. This has nothing to do with chains. It has everything to do with geography and the geograpy DID change. Goodness.

The light didn’t cease when the sun came up - instead, it became even brighter. Again, not a reversal of circumstances - just a change.

Yes, a change, just like what happened to Mary’s virginity until after the birth of Christ

 

[jmcrae]

Mat 26:36 Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder

Yes, there is absolutely a change in status. Jesus was with them and now he is not and he takes 3 of them with him. It is in no way, shape, or form the same. If everything remained the same, heos hou would not be there. It is never used for something to remain the same.

But they remain sitting. The object of “heos hou” is the sitting, not that Jesus was going up to pray. But the sitting doesn’t change - only the location of Jesus.

**Luk 13:21 It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. **

Who said it ceased to be bread? It changed, or the entire analogy does not make sense. Are you saying this verse indicates something staying the same? Why then would Christ use an example of something staying the same in this context? That would defeat the purpose. The Kingdom of God is like…something that stays the same !!! Tell me you are not serious!

The active object of “heos hou” is the three measures of meal. The three measures of meal did not depart from the bread once it was leavened - they stayed in it. The only thing that changed was that the bread became leavened.

**
Act 25:21 But when Paul had appealed to be reserved unto the hearing of Augustus, I commanded him to be kept till I might send him to Caesar. **

Oh my my. Do not reach here. Read it again. This has nothing to do with chains. It has everything to do with geography and the geograpy DID change. Goodness.

Except that the object of “heos hou” is the chains - which remained even after he was sent to Caesar.

Yes, a change, just like what happened to Mary’s virginity until after the birth of Christ

From the examples above, we can see that just because the object of “heos hou” was her virginity, there is no need for it to have changed - “heos hou” signifies that a change has occurred, but it does not signify that the active object has necessarily changed - sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t.

What this means is that we cannot make any conclusions either way, based on this passage - it doesn’t actually tell us anything specific. So, we rely on the Early Fathers - those “brothers of Jesus,” who surely would have known who their own mother was - who tell us that Mary remained a virgin for her entire life.

 

[BrianH]

What this means is that we cannot make any conclusions either way, based on this passage - it doesn’t actually tell us anything specific. So, we rely on the Early Fathers - those “brothers of Jesus,” who surely would have known who their own mother was - who tell us that Mary remained a virgin for her entire life.

*"Irenaues, who was a bishop in France at the end of the 2nd century and recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church. In his book, Adversus Haereses (Book III, Chapter 21), he wrote the following two passages:

“To this effect they testify, [saying,] that before Joseph had come together with Mary, while she therefore remained in virginity, "she was found with child of the Holy Ghost;

And as the protoplast himself Adam, had his substance from untilled and as yet virgin soil (“for God had not yet sent rain, and man had not tilled the ground” Genesis 2:5 ), and was formed by the hand of God, that is, by the Word of God, for “all things were made by Him,” John 1:3 and the Lord took dust from the earth and formed man; so did He who is the Word, recapitulating Adam in Himself, rightly receive a birth, enabling Him to gather up Adam [into Himself], from Mary, who was as yet a virgin.”*

Tertullian:“But whenever a dispute arises about the nativity, all who reject it as creating a presumption in favor of the reality of Christ’s flesh, willfully deny that God Himself was born, on the ground that He asked, “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?” First of all, nobody would have told Him that His mother and brethren were standing outside, if he were not certain both that He had a mother and brethren, and that they were the very persons whom he was then announcing, — who had either been known to him before, or were then and there discovered by him; although heretics have removed this passage from the gospel, because those who were admiring His doctrine said that His supposed father, Joseph the carpenter, and His mother Mary, and His brethren, and His sisters, were very well known to them…We have all been born, and yet all of us have not either brothers or mother. He might with more probability have had even a father than a mother, and uncles more likely than brothers. Thus is the temptation about His birth unsuitable, for it might have been contrived without any mention of either His mother or His brethren. It is clearly more credible that, being certain that He had both a mother and brothers, they tested His divinity rather than His nativity, whether, when within, In this very passage indeed, their unbelief is evident. Jesus was teaching the way of life, preaching the kingdom of God and actively engaged in healing infirmities of body and soul; but all the while, whilst strangers were intent on Him, His very nearest relatives were absent”

 

[jmcrae]

And yet, these same “brethren” gave Mary the title “Virgin” when they gave us the Apostles’ Creed - while not giving any other person that title, who did not die in the state of virginity. Therefore, if Mary was still alive at the time of the writing of the Apostles’ Creed, then she was still a virgin at that time - and if she had already died, then she died in the state of virginity. I don’t see any way around that.

The two Jameses that are mentioned in the Bible as Apostles have Alphaeus and Zebedee for their fathers; not Joseph - so we also know that “James the brother of Jesus, a fellow Apostle” was not actually a son of Mary and Joseph.