For yet another, they were not translated into all the many languages of Christendom (that was not even considered possible in the earliest days).
What evidence do you have for this belief that translation was impossible? That’s a new one to me. Greek, Latin, and Syriac pretty much covered it for most early Christians.
So how did the early Christians get the Gospel truths under their belt?
If you’re talking about the laity, including uneducated laity (as your remark about illiteracy implies), then that’s irrelevant to what we are talking about. Even if it were true–which it obviously wasn’t–that laypeople never read Scripture at all and only clergy did–that would be irrelevant to the question of whether the NT existed in canonical form before the fourth century. Please stick to this point.
By the preaching of the Church and the tradition of Church authority. Paul preached the Gospel in all the communities he visited long before he later wrote the epistles to those same communities. None of the 4 Gospels was available in written form until after the deaths of Peter and Paul, when Mark wrote the first Gospel. So what Scriptures are you talking about when you insist the Scriptures were all written and available to all in the earliest days?
Again, I didn’t say that. I said “by the second century.”
The NT books were written to be read. Obivously they were available to some people as soon as they were written, and they seem to have been spread quite widely quite fast. But I rested my case on evidence pertaining to canonical acceptance. You have not responded to that point.
You talk about Peter letter referencing Paul.
As Scripture–in a manner that implies that this is a foregone conclusion (“as they do the other Scriptures”). That is one reason why many scholars think the letter can’t be by Peter. If the letter really is by Peter, then Paul’s letters were accepted as Scripture by the first, not the second century. But I’m simply making an argument for the second century.
But you can’t find anyone (including Peter) referencing the Gospel of Mark, or any of the later Gospels, can you?
Of course I can, and I did–Irenaeus. There’s also the evidence of Papias from the early second century, though we only have him in fragments quoted by later writers (including Irenaeus). And there’s the Muratorian canon.
Note again that I did not claim that the NT existed as canonical Scripture in the first century (though if II Peter is by Peter, then a very large and important part of it did). My argument rests on the second century not the first. The second century is not the fourth. If you want to say, in future, that the NT didn’t exist as we know it until the second century, I won’t disagree with you.
How can you say the Scriptures were all presents to the early Christians when all four Gospels were not written until after the deaths of Peter and Paul
Because, again, I am talking about the second century.
and all four Gospels were not available to be read by all Christians in one book
Apart from the fact that I can’t see why “availability in one book” is so important to you, this isn’t true. While the first extant codex with all 27 books dates from the fourth century, we have fragments of a
papyrus codex from the third century (probably the first half) with all four Gospels. And as with Sinaiticus, this is just the first
extant manuscript. It’s probable that there were earlier codices that have been lost.
with any kind of canonical authenticity until the 4th Century?
And that’s where you’re just wrong, as I showed above. Irenaeus refers to all four Gospels as canonical, in the late second century.
Please stop asking the same question over and over,
Only when I get a satisfactory response. I don’t want to pick on you personally, but this particular argument is false and destructive, and Catholics need to stop using it. Substitute the second century for the fourth century and we’re fine.
and start answering some of the questions I have posed.
As far as I can see, I’ve answered all your questions, even the irrelevant ones. You, on the other hand, have ignored the evidence of Irenaeus and the Muratorian Canon. You are giving a vastly exaggerated importance to the local councils of the late fourth century, as if the Church had not given its “imprimatur” to the New Testament books before that, which is just wrong. And when you try to argue with Protestants based on flatly inaccurate historical claims and highly dubious definitions, you are getting in the way of the holy truth you are trying to defend. I know you mean well, but you are causing scandal in the Biblical sense of the term, and you need to stop.
Who gave the New Testament that imprimatur in the 4th Century … Protestants or the Catholic Church?
Local councils of the Catholic Church, although the “imprimatur” had been given by what would now be called the “ordinary magisterium” long before, through the common consent of the churches, with the possible exception of a few controversial books.
Why is this relevant?
Don’t take me to be defending Protestantism. I’m defending Catholicism. The argument against conservative Protestantism from the Biblical canon is, in my opinion, irrefutable, when rightly put. But you are putting it wrongly, and thus giving Protestants an excuse to persist in error. That’s what this argument is about.
Edwin
That would be why I rested my argument not on the probable dates of composition, but on the dates when we have evidence of early Christians speaking of particular books as canonical.