Jousting with HuffPost's 'Bible scholar'

Mark -
I hope you can clarify and I’m interested in what you do (with links of course lol)
However, I’m pretty much checking off the net for the next several days, so I won’t be able to contribute much more. Have a good weekend.

stop embarrassing yourself with such statements. The canon was set in the late 4th century and all the books approved were considered authoritative for doctrine. where do you get these wild ideas of yours??? saying Trent established the canon is like saying Nicea established the divinity of Jesus. Church Councils define doctrine when opposition to the doctrine arises. since no one disputed the 73 book canon until the 16th century.

again, i ask you, who ( if anyone ) has the authority on earth to proclaim infallibly the number of books in the canon? anyone? or are we left to guess? did the Holy Spirit wait until the 16th century to lead men to the proper canon?
why can’t you answer this all important question?

“the canon was established early on”

what canon, where, when, by whom???

“these things were understood”

yes, they were understood quite clearly from the Apostles up until the 16th century when false teachers arose.

“based on man- not bible”

care to name what you are talking about?

another thought for you, i hope you know the Eastern Orthodox do not accept Trent as binding. if you are correct, that what you call the “apocrypha” did not become canonical until Trent, how did the “apocrypha” get into the canon of the Orthodox? the Great Schism of the Catholic Church occurred in 1054.

if the 73 were accepted by all christians as inspired,
for 1500 years,
and one of the verses condemns adding OR REMOVING anything,
they why would anyone tolerate Luther removing huge sections of ancient scripture he disagreed with?

Jesus promised to continue to guide his Church from Heaven.

if Jesus wanted them removed, why did he allow his church to be mislead for 1500 years, until Luther came to fix it?

and frankly, how can any Christian accept guidance or teaching from a man who’s OWN words by his OWN hand show such vicious hated of Jews???

http://articles.exchristian.net/2002/04/martin-luther-quotes.php
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/luther.htm

DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON:

AD 51-125:
The New Testament books are written, but during this same period other early Christian writings are produced—for example, the Didache (c. AD 70), 1 Clement (c. 96), the Epistle of Barnabas (c. 100), and the 7 letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch (c. 107).

AD 140:
Marcion, a businessman in Rome, taught that there were two Gods:
Yahweh, the cruel God of the Old Testament, and Abba, the kind father of the New Testament. Marcion eliminated the Old Testament as scriptures and, since he was anti-Semitic, kept from the New Testament only 10 letters of Paul and 2/3 of Luke’s gospel (he deleted references to Jesus’s Jewishness). Marcion’s “New Testament”, the first to be compiled, forced the mainstream Church to decide on a core canon: the four Gospels and Letters of Paul.

AD 200:
The periphery of the canon is not yet determined. According to one list, compiled at Rome c. AD 200 (the Muratorian Canon), the NT consists of the 4 gospels; Acts; 13 letters of Paul (Hebrews is not included); 3 of the 7 General Epistles (1-2 John and Jude); and also the Apocalypse of Peter.

AD 367:
The earliest extant list of the books of the NT, in exactly the number and order in which we presently have them, is written by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, in his Festal letter # 39 of 367 A.D..

AD 382:
Pope Damasus I, in a letter, listed the New Testament books in their present number and order.

AD 393:
The Council of Hippo affirmed the Canon written by Bishop Athanasius.

AD 397:
The Council of Carthage reaffirmed the Canons of the Old and New Testaments.

AD 1442:
At the Council of Florence, the entire Church recognized the 27 books, though does not declare them unalterable. This council confirmed the Roman Catholic Canon of the Bible which Pope Damasus I had published a thousand years earlier.

AD 1536:
In his translation of the Bible from Greek into German, Luther removed 4 N.T. books (Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation) and placed them in an appendix saying they were less than canonical.

AD 1546:
At the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church reaffirmed once and for all the full list of 27 books as traditionally accepted.

from http://home.inreach.com/bstanley/canon.htm

*note* Jerome as well as several others such as Augustine also weighed in on their preferences for the Canon of Scripture. The Magisterium is not made up of a single individual and Jerome was not in a position of leading authority within the Church - he was ordained a priest but never advanced further.

Marcion’s Canon

Marcion of Sinope was the first Christian leader in recorded history (though later considered heretical), to propose and delineate a uniquely Christian canon[13] (about 140 AD) which included 10 epistles from St. Paul as well as a version of the Gospel of Luke which today is known as the Gospel of Marcion. In so doing, he established a particular way of looking at religious texts that persists in Christian thought today. After Marcion, Christians began to divide texts into those that aligned well with the “measuring stick” (”canon” is the Greek translation of this phrase) of accepted theological thought and those that promoted heresy.[citation needed] This played a major role in finalizing the structure of the collection of works called the Bible. It has been proposed that the initial impetus for the proto-orthodox Christian project of canonization flowed from opposition to the canonization of Marcion.

Earliest Christian communities

Though the Early Church used the Old Testament according to the canon of the Septuagint (LXX),[14] perhaps as found in the Bryennios List or Melito’s canon, the apostles did not otherwise leave a defined set of new scriptures; instead the New Testament developed over time.

A folio from P46, an early 3rd century collection of Pauline epistles.
The writings attributed to the apostles circulated amongst the earliest Christian communities. The Pauline epistles were circulating in collected forms by the end of the 1st century AD. Justin Martyr, in the early 2nd century, mentions the “memoirs of the apostles,” which Christians called “gospels” and which were regarded as on par with the Old Testament.[15]

An early figure in the codification of the Biblical canon was Origen of Alexandria. He was a scholar well educated in the realm of both theology and pagan philosophy but was posthumously condemned at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553. Origen decided to make his canon include all of the books in the current Catholic canon except for four books: James, 2nd Peter, and 2nd and 3rd epistles of John.[16] He also included the Shepherd of Hermas which was later rejected. The religious scholar Bruce Metzger described Origen’s efforts, saying “The process of canonization represented by Origen proceeded by way of selection, moving from many candidates for inclusion to fewer.”[17] This was one of the first major attempts at the compilation of certain books and letters as authoritative and inspired teaching for the Early Church at the time although it is unclear whether Origen intended for his list to be authoritative itself.

Needless to say there were various theologians of the 2nd and 3rd centuries that wrote a great deal of works and used the letters of the apostles as foundation and justification for their own personal beliefs. However, there was still the problem of the Roman Empire, and while the persecutions of the Roman Empire were many and extreme, the persecution still occurred and influenced the initial canonization of the New Testament. This period in church history writings is known as the “Edificatory Period” and was followed by the “Apologetic”, “Polemical” and “Scientific” Periods. Some of the Christian writers of this edificatory Period are: Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Polycarp, Tertullian, Cyprian, Justin Martyr, Clement of Rome, Clement of Alexandria.[citation needed] This stagnation of official writings led to a sudden explosion of discussions after Constantine I legalized Christianity in the early 4th century[citation needed], perhaps associated with the Fifty Bibles of Constantine.

Apostolic Fathers

A four gospel canon (the Tetramorph) was asserted by Irenaeus, “It is not possible that the gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four quarters of the earth in which we live, and four universal winds, while the church is scattered throughout all the world, and the ‘pillar and ground’ of the church is the gospel and the spirit of life, it is fitting that she should have four pillars breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh….Therefore the gospels are in accord with these things…For the living creatures are quadriform and the gospel is quadriform…These things being so, all who destroy the form of the gospel are vain, unlearned, and also audacious; those (I mean) who represent the aspects of the gospel as being either more in number than as aforesaid, or, on the other hand, fewer’” [18] By the early 200s, Origen of Alexandria may have been using the same 27 books found in modern New Testament editions, though there were still disputes over the canonicity of Hebrews, James, II Peter, II and III John, and Revelation (see also Antilegomena).[19] Likewise by 200 the Muratorian fragment shows that there existed a set of Christian writings somewhat similar to what is now the New Testament, which included four gospels and argued against objections to them.[20] Thus, while there was a good measure of debate in the Early Church over the New Testament canon, the major writings were accepted by almost all Christians by the middle of the 3rd century.[21]

Alexandrian Fathers

In his Easter letter of 367, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, gave a list of exactly the same books that would become the New Testament canon,[22] and he used the phrase “being canonized” (kanonizomena) in regards to them.[23] Athanasius also included the Book of Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah in his Bible. He also eliminated the book of Esther from his Bible.

Latin Fathers

The first council that accepted the present Catholic canon (the Canon of Trent) may have been the Synod of Hippo Regius in North Africa (AD 393); the acts of this council, however, are lost. A brief summary of the acts was read at and accepted by the Councils of Carthage in 397 and 419.[24] These councils were under the authority of St. Augustine, who regarded the canon as already closed.[25] Pope Damasus I’s Council of Rome in 382, if the Decretum Gelasianum is correctly associated with it, issued a biblical canon identical to that mentioned above,[22] or if not the list is at least a 6th century compilation.[26] Likewise, Damasus’ commissioning of the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible, c. 383, was instrumental in the fixation of the canon in the West.[27] In 405, Pope Innocent I sent a list of the sacred books to a Gallic bishop, Exsuperius of Toulouse. When these bishops and councils spoke on the matter, however, they were not defining something new, but instead “were ratifying what had already become the mind of the Church.”[28] Thus, from the 4th century, there existed unanimity in the West concerning the New Testament canon (as it is today),[29] and by the 5th century the East, with a few exceptions, had come to accept the Book of Revelation and thus had come into harmony on the matter of the New Testament canon.[30]

from (I hate to admit it): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon

The Orthodox, who participated in the early Councils and accepted their Canons, did not see need to formally ratify anything again until the mid 1600s.

By the way, Kolo got back to me. It seems that they hold the Deuterocanonicals about on a par with the Apocalypse of John. Scripture, but not quite on the par with some other parts of the Bible.

Remember that we Catholics regard the Gospels as the pinnacle of God’s revelation to man. We see the NT through the prism of the Gospels and the Old Testament through the New. We would never put the words of the Chronicler on par with the words of Jesus, for instance.

thanks for the good information. I was always taught that all Scripture was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and therefore is equally valid and authoritative.

Think about this: how do we receive the OT and the Epistles / Apocalypse in the Mass? Sitting. Often from a lay lector. They are introduced as a reading from Xxxxx.

How do we receive the Gospels? If a deacon reads, he is blessed by the priest before reading. If a bishop is present and a priest reads, the priest is blessed by the bishop before reading.

All stand in reverence. Ordained lector: The Lord be with you. Congregation: And also with you. Ordained Lector: A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Xxxxx. All present cross themselves on our forehead (I will always think of Christ), on our mouth (I will always speak of Christ), and on our heart (I will always have Christ in my heart and soul). The ordained lector reads the Gospel passages and we remain in reverent attention and he closes with: The word of the Lord. Congregation: Thanks be to God.

The Church does not consider the words of, say, Ezra to be as important as the words of Christ.