Good Answer.
And to add to what others have stated, in the past sometimes works were written under the name of the person’s “spirit” that inspired them. Just a cultural thing.
Well when it comes to Torah, we have God’s authority.Good Answer.
The Jews don’t consider the New Testament scripture either. The Jews have no authority to decide what scripture was inspired. Indeed the only one who does have that authority is the Catholic Church.
This seems like a rather odd statement considering that the Catholic Church only chose the works they did precisely because of Jewish Rabbis…Without the Jews, there is no Old Testament, obviously. So to separate them from this like it doesn’t matter what they think makes no sense when all of the apostles were Jews who cared very much about what ancient Jewish tradition said.Good Answer.
The Jews don’t consider the New Testament scripture either. The Jews have no authority to decide what scripture was inspired. Indeed the only one who does have that authority is the Catholic Church.
I am sorry but I don’t see a comparison between not knowing the New Testament authors and not knowing the Old Testament. The New Testament is ultimately important because of what it says, regardless of who wrote it, because it is the story of Jesus and is primarily a historical account of the life of Jesus (although not completely).
Thanks for brining that up, I remember reading that as well. But again, if someone is writing in the “spirit” of a particular person, that doesn’t mean the writer himself is Inspired at all…I just don’t understand why we would assign value to a book that could of been written by virtually anyone. Everyone here makes it sound like it doesn’t matter who wrote them, but at the time they were chosen as infallible books to be in the Christian Bible, those individuals believed that Solomon wrote Wisdom and David wrote Psalms, etc, at least everything I have read suggests that. I suppose I could be wrong on the last point.
Inspiration comes from God not the particular human author, so on one level it doesn’t actually matter who wrote them, as the true author is God. besides we use this book not because of who is supposed to have written it but because it was in use by jewish groups at the time of Christ( in the septuagint), these groups brought that book with them and we kept it in our canon of scripture when we as the church agreed on the canon of new and old testaments in the 4th-5th century as per the authority giver her by Christ.
I understand that the inspiration comes from God, but comes from God to whom? No one believes the books spontaneously fell from Heaven and landed on a Jewish rabbi. Instead, we believe God inspired the author to write the work. But why do we believe that the person who wrote it was actually inspired by God when we don’t even know who that person is? The whole point I am making is precisely that it could be uninspired if we don’t know the author. It could be true, but how can we know if the person who wrote it is uknown and may have very well been an uninspired writer?
No, the author is unimportant, the fact that the church has defined it as being part of the canon of scripture, thats the important bit. There were many good and popular books that didn’t make the final cut as it were(Shepherd of Hermas comes to mind). It was by virtue of the guidance of the Holy Spirit not by textual criticism or fame of author that we have the Bible.
Not exactly, i believe arguments from the long use by jewish communities, and their lack of contradiction of the scriptures in general give them some weight on their own, but ultimately I believe the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, has decided on the canon and thats good enough for me.
I was just using it as an example…as I mentioned earlier, those books in the Bible relating directly to stories, such as the gospels, Exodus, etc…I have no problem with not knowing because ultimately, the story is what is important. It is very easy to see how a story about any of those things would be passed down orally for many generations and it is no surprise that the original authors were not those who actually experienced those things. But when it comes to books of poetry, books of wisdom, and books where the entirety of the book is really not about a story, then I think authorship matters very much, because the whole value of the book is determined by the idea that God inspired it. If God didn’t inspire it, it is basically just a book of poetry or sayings written by some learned philosopher. I guess what I am saying is that if Wisdom or Proverbs could have been written by anyone, then it could just be opinion…and opinion doesn’t really matter all that much. However, the stories in Exodus matter regardless of who wrote them because they tell a historical narrative about allegedly actual events. If you or I see a car crash occur and we both tell our kids about it, their testimonies are not invalid; they may be less likely to be as accurate as if we told it, but the eye witness testimony is still valid. Writing works of poetry and wisdom is very different though, because it only holds value if a divinely inspired person wrote it. Otherwise, it is just opinion. That’s my concern about authorship.
New Testament scriptures, yes you are exactly right regarding your last point…But Old Testament scriptures were determined to be holy well before the Church. The Church essentially verified scriptures already believed to be holy, so on that count, you should believe them to be holy. Are you suggesting that prior to the canon being created, hundreds of years after Christ, no one should have believed the Jewish scriptures to be the Word of God? Because according to your logic, the only validity you give them comes from the Church, who didn’t give them validity until hundres of years later.
Very interesting, I did not know this. Is this because of the concerns I am raising now combined with the belief of sola scriptura?
Note that the Canon of Hebrew Scripture was not completely agreed upon by every group at the time of Jesus, evidence of this is seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Yes, good point. But my question still remains why we should be interested in the wisdom of unknwn individuals who may or may not have been Divinely inspired?