Where We Got the Bible

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NELLA
The Early Christian church was not the Roman church. i will take anyone to task on that and succeed. If the Roman church existed before Scripture was written, then why does it not mention the church centered in Rome?? Thats a very fair question.
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Essentially, the question of whether the Early Christian Church and the Catholic Church are one in the same is for another thread…I’d appreciate it if you’d start one Nella…as to the scriptures not mentioning the church being centered in Rome…that too belongs in the other thread…except to say that some of the books the Church rejected DO point out that early on the Church became centered in Rome…specifically, the Letters of Clement…the first of which is considered by most scholars to be authentic…the second being suspect…point out that older church communities (Corinth) defered to the Roman church on policy and theology…and that when Rome in the person of Clement wrote back…they expected to be obeyed. What should also be remembered is that the Church becoming centered in Rome was a natural evolution of the Church…since, at that time…Rome WAS the center of the world, and Rome laid claim to the two super apostles…Peter and Paul…that scripture doesn’t mention Rome being the center is questionable as well…Paul continually points out a desire to travel to Rome…Peter mentions Rome in his epistle under the guise of “babylon.” Besides which…the scriptures show that Peter was appointed as the head of the Church (I give to you the keys…tend my flock…)…and as has been stated by the Church fathers…where Peter is, there is the Church.One other fact to remember in your criticism is that the writers of the NT were more concerned with something other than the arguement of where the Church was “centered”…they were concerned with SURVIVAL. Arguements about where the church was “centered” make no sense in the writings of the Apostles because it was not then a real issue.

Thanks for the info on the book…sounds like a good read.
 
Yerusalyim said:
NELLA

Essentially, the question of whether the Early Christian Church and the Catholic Church are one in the same is for another thread…I’d appreciate it if you’d start one Nella…as to the scriptures not mentioning the church being centered in Rome…that too belongs in the other thread…except to say that some of the books the Church rejected DO point out that early on the Church became centered in Rome…specifically, the Letters of Clement…the first of which is considered by most scholars to be authentic…the second being suspect…point out that older church communities (Corinth) defered to the Roman church on policy and theology…and that when Rome in the person of Clement wrote back…they expected to be obeyed. What should also be remembered is that the Church becoming centered in Rome was a natural evolution of the Church…since, at that time…Rome WAS the center of the world, and Rome laid claim to the two super apostles…Peter and Paul…that scripture doesn’t mention Rome being the center is questionable as well…Paul continually points out a desire to travel to Rome…Peter mentions Rome in his epistle under the guise of “babylon.” Besides which…the scriptures show that Peter was appointed as the head of the Church (I give to you the keys…tend my flock…)…and as has been stated by the Church fathers…where Peter is, there is the Church.One other fact to remember in your criticism is that the writers of the NT were more concerned with something other than the arguement of where the Church was “centered”…they were concerned with SURVIVAL. Arguements about where the church was “centered” make no sense in the writings of the Apostles because it was not then a real issue.

Thanks for the info on the book…sounds like a good read.
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Cool!:cool: And when we see this other thread I can point out that Corinth would defer to Rome, because it was a Roman colony in Greece, and it was natural for a Roman colony to seek out information from Rome. 👍
 
Montalban said:
That’s okay as an answer to Catholics, but what about us Orthodox?

Where does the Bible say that it contains all that is necessary?

If it’s so all-encompassing, why even have bible commentaries?
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I think back then since the Church was one. I do believe the Orthodox Church is also responsible for the canonization of Biblical Canon.
 
The key here is apostolic succession, of which only two denominations can make a valid claim…the various Catholic (Latin, Armenian, etc) and the Orthodox. It’s the authority of the Apostles which allow the canonization of the bible…
 
I’ve not read the book, nor do I have it. However, one question I have is in how we (Catholics) view the likely oral and/or textual tradition that preceded the written scriptures. From my non-scholar’s learning, Matthew, Mark, and Luke contain parallel stories, language, and sequencing in a manner that’s consistent with their use of a common historical source, the text of which is now lost to us. Scholars refer to this as the “Q” gospel. There remains speculation that there were other common sources for some, and that John comes from a distinct tradition in itself, more from the Hellenized Jewish perspective (again, going on my non-scholarly memory).

In the canonical gospels appear to contain distinctly different scopes, with Mark being the smallest, starting with the preaching of John the Baptist and Jesus at the beginning of his ministry, Matthew outlining the lineage of Jesus, Luke telling the infancy stories, and John reaching back to the time before creation. So too do the post-Resurrection accounts differ in scope and length.

Luke begins:
“1 Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us, 3 I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received.” (NAB Translation)

The text here itself discusses “many” compilers of the narrative of events, and that the author of Luke undertook an “investigation” of events, suggesting that there were a lot of different accounts by the time this particular Gospel was written. The author decided to “write it down in an orderly sequence,” indicating that the prior body of literature may have lacked sequential flow.

My question, part of “Where We Got the Bible,” goes back further still, namely, to how the inspired authors drew on existing information. Were these pre-Gospel stories Gospels in themselves? Might they have included the extracannonical works, such as the Gospel of Thomas, itself being without sequence, as well as the more prevalent “Q” accounts? Is there an “official” church position on how these stories were compiled?
 
Cool! And when we see this other thread I can point out that Corinth would defer to Rome, because it was a Roman colony in Greece, and it was natural for a Roman colony to seek out information from Rome.
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Not so much. Remember, when Clement was writing to Corinth the Church was being persecuted, so just because Rome was the seat of government it doesn’t necessarily follow that Christian Communities would submit themselves to the authority of the Church at Rome…yes, that Rome was the seat of government does lend itself naturally to the gravitation of leadership to Rome, but the Roman Church exerted, and the other churches submitted to the Authority of Rome based mainly on the claim of the Roman Church to the Super Apostles Peter and Paul.
 
Yerusalyim said:
NELLA
What should also be remembered is that the Church becoming centered in Rome was a natural evolution of the Church…since, at that time…Rome WAS the center of the world, and Rome laid claim to the two super apostles…Peter and Paul…that scripture doesn’t mention Rome being the center is questionable as well…Paul continually points out a desire to travel to Rome…Peter mentions Rome in his epistle under the guise of “babylon.”
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I once had a medieval history class (ca. 500-1500 AD) in which the professor asserted that there were five major Church centers in the late Roman and early Medieval periods, centered, I believe, in Rome, Alexandria, Hippo, Damascus, and another location that I can’t recall. His assertion was that Rome became the prime reference for theological matters because it had the biggest libraries, and pretty much stored everything. The other areas were engaged more in “frontline” theological debates, but used Rome as a central reference point as a result of its extensive libraries. He seemed to be quite secular in his worldview, so I’m wondering if there’s any credibility behind his argument. Thoughts?
 
And there is at least some truth to that arguement…there were other Major Centers of Christianity…Antioch was probably the 5th location mentioned. The Primates that occupy these sees are held in special honor in both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches…and I’m not necessarily sure that it was the libraries…especially since from AD300 on Rome itself was really a back water community with everything moving East with Constantine…but the instructor correctly points out…theological conflict took place in other places…such as the birth of Arianism in Alexandria…but Rome was refered to for guidance. Rome, too, had it’s fair share of heresies to battle.
 
Yerusalyim said:
And there is at least some truth to that arguement…there were other Major Centers of Christianity…Antioch was probably the 5th location mentioned. The Primates that occupy these sees are held in special honor in both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches…and I’m not necessarily sure that it was the libraries…especially since from AD300 on Rome itself was really a back water community with everything moving East with Constantine…but the instructor correctly points out…theological conflict took place in other places…such as the birth of Arianism in Alexandria…but Rome was refered to for guidance. Rome, too, had it’s fair share of heresies to battle.
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Antioch was it! Sorry, just haven’t reviewed my college notes since then. I guess the question would be in historical terms, WHY it was that Rome was the reference point for the rest of Christianity. Better informed Catholics than me would probably assert that it was Roman primacy that explains this history. I guess this could be the equivalent of today’s oversight by Rome of Catholic theologians

However, I recall that my professor’s somewhat secular perspective was that Rome became the center today because the other areas died out… in other words, its low-risk behavior ensured its longevity, while the radicalism of the Eastern and Mediterranean churches sparked such conflict that they didn’t last. In statistical terms, that would be an example of “regression to the mean.”

I don’t have the historical gumption to know one way or another, outside of faith.
 
I’m a bit of a history buff myself and I disagree with your professor. Truth be told the preimenence of the Eastern Church foundered because of the onset of Islam…those Churches that remained became quite isolated.
 
My brother/friend repo man

Hi

Would you kindly give a reply to my following post, if you like , no compulsion or anybody else.

Thank you for responding. I don’t want to debate with you I will only discuss to understand what you believe and to make you understand what I believe.

My faith is not based on a circular logic, which could be termed as a blind faith.

Only those person who receive Word of revelation from the mouth GodAllahYHWH, they also get inspiration. JesusYeshuaIssa did receive Word of revelation from the mouth of GodAllahYHWH, so he could receive inspiration from GodAllahYHWH also. The disciples could not be inspired from GodAllahYHWH as they did not receive, to my knowledge, any revelation from God.

I am not criticizing your religion, I only want to understand the truth with reasons.

Thanks
 
paarsurrey said:
The ultimate truth about Jesus is that:
  1. JesusYeshuaIssa did not leave the Word of God or anything in writing revealed on him from GodAllahYHWH in the form of stone tablets as was in the case of Moses.
  2. Or anything written by JesusYeshuaIssa himself as a biography when he left from Galilee, after the incident of Crucifixion, alongwith his mother Mary in search of the lost ten tribes of the house of Israel, he died natural and peaceful death in Kashmir, India.
  3. Jesus left nothing behind authenticated by him, in possession of the Church, as there was none in existence.
  4. We do respect the NTGospels which have account of Jesus life, but it does not have much utility for a non-Catholic except that we may treat it as a book of history subject to scrutiny, internal as well as external, for each bit of event for finding truth in it on merit.
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I think we must all acknowledge that our faiths rest upon some degree of second-hand information. Within Islam, I have heart it said, Muhammad was not known to be literate, and so the verses of the Quran were transcribed by others close to him, sometimes years later. And I understand that the validity of the Hadith are judged on the basis of the reliability of second-hand sources through whom they were communicated.

Within Christianity, we must acknowledge as well that many of the books of the Bible were written some time after the death of Jesus, including the Gospels. However, we do have relatively contemporary writings of the fathers of the Church who lived in time periods overlapping Christ and we have the writings of Flavius Josephus who mentions early Christians.

I would just suggest that we acknowledge that neither of us can prove definitively that their holy book is free of the influence of intermediaries. Yet both Christianity and Islam find little problem in dealing with their own intermediaries; both seem to have problems with the others’.
 
I’ve always wondered, does it really matter where the chair of Peter is located? What if a natural disaster happened tomorrow and destroyed Vatican City(God forbid) and it was moved to Madrid, Spain? Would that be the collapse of the Catholic Church? I’ve just never seen the point in this argument. :confused:
 
It matters, but it doesn matter. For some 70 years the Popes were in France rather than Rome. The important thing is the Episcopal See that the Pope occupies. The pope is the pope because he is the Bishop of Rome. A bishop can occupy their see from afar, but that’s not the recommended way to go about it. If (God Forbid) the Vatican was somehow destroyed, the Pope would most probably occuppy his see from one of the Catherdrals in Rome or near by…BUT, even if he occuppied his see as Bishop from the North Pole, it is being the Bishop of Rome which makes him the Pope.
 
fnr said:
I think we must all acknowledge that our faiths rest upon some degree of second-hand information.
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Hi

You may agree on your own that your faith is based on second hand information, it might be actually third, or fourth - - - hand. May faith is surely based on first hand revelation of Word from the mouth of GodAllahYHWH on the heart of Muhammad, which is till as fresh as on the day it was revealed, I have no doubt about it.

Thanks
 
paarsurrey said:
Hi

You may agree on your own that your faith is based on second hand information, it might be actually third, or fourth - - - hand. May faith is surely based on first hand revelation of Word from the mouth of GodAllahYHWH on the heart of Muhammad, which is till as fresh as on the day it was revealed, I have no doubt about it.

Thanks
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No disrespect, but didn’t Muhammad’s friends transcribe the Quran? I do not mean to imply that they did it in errancy, only that they did it.
 
fnr said:
No disrespect, but didn’t Muhammad’s friends transcribe the Quran? I do not mean to imply that they did it in errancy, only that they did it.
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Hi

The primary method employed by Muhammad under guidance from GodAllahYHWH was that Muhammad learnt whatever Word of Revelation was sent by God by heart or memorized it. From Muhammad’s mouth his companion learnt, and from their mouth the next generation, and so on and so forth, till our own times the method is still in vogue.

Please visit any nearby Mosque (of any denomination) and ask that you want to meet a Hafiz/Qari of Quran, and you request the person to recite the Quran, he would recite Quran in Arabic without even referring to the written Quran.

There are thousands such people in Muslims, if not in Millions. Writing was not used as a primary source but as a secondary source. Writing was also used as the era of writing was just to usher in and those who could not memorize the whole Quran for them it were a convenient mode, nevertheless it was not needed at that time.

There are no two texts/version of Quran in Arabic; you may search the whole world.

Thanks
 
fnr said:
No disrespect, but didn’t Muhammad’s friends transcribe the Quran? I do not mean to imply that they did it in errancy, only that they did it.
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And Muhammed got a revelation he later admitted came from Satan.
 
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