Jesus In A Cheeto? Religious Sightings

CBS4 ^

[bdeaner]

No such thing as a Protestant definition of the church...It's the scripture definition...God's definition...Plain speech in 6th grade language...

If the Protestant definition of the "church" is in Scripture, then produce the Scripture that supports your contention. It does not say impossible to understand.

I never made that argument, did I? You are putting words in my mouth. Scripture is not impossible to understand if you have teachers with the authority to teach it accurately. That's my point.

If the Protestants cared so much about Scripture, you would be reading the same Scriptures as Christ and His Apostles. But you do not -- you reject a large proportion of the Scriptures that Christ and his followers. I'm of course referring to the so-called "Apocrypha+ -- the deuterocanonical scriptures. How do you manage to square that with your claims that it is the Catholics and not the Protestants who distort Scripture?!?!?

As I am sure you know, the deuterocanonical Scriptures are the seven books (or portions) of the Bible included in the Catholic Old Testament but not in the Protestant version. New Testament books are not affected. (The New Testament has a separate canonical issue involving the Gnostic books. Evangelicals are in agreement with Catholics on the New Testament canon, but liberal Protestants often use them).

The Septuagint translation of the OT was the accepted Greek Bible of the Jews in Palestine and elsewhere for well over a hundred years before Jesus' birth. Both Jews and Christians accepted it as their Bible for over half a century after the Ascension as well. Its canon (list of accepted books) is not in doubt. The Septuagint included the seven books of the Apocrypha on equal standing with the rest of the inspired OT. There is no doubt that Jesus and his contemporaries all used the Septuagint.

The New Testament writers allude to these apocryphal books over two dozen times. Their use of these books as a source is indistinguishable from their use of much of the OT (see Bruce Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocypha). Some of the parallels are much clearer in Greek than in English. But even in English, James 1:19, "Be quick to listen, slow to speak," sounds very much like Sirach 5:11, "Be swift in listening, but slow in answering." The similarities between Paul's epistles and Wisdom are so striking that Ronald Knox even suggested that Paul might have written Wisdom!

The early Church Fathers followed the apostles' lead in this matter, peppering their writings with references from the apocryphal books, generally using the Septuagint translation. The Septuagint, with its inclusion of the apocyrphal books, was undeniably the Bible of the early Church.

Beginning with Peter's sermon at Pentecost, the Christians and the unbelieving Jews locked in battle over whether Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. The Christians made extensive use of OT messianic prophecies. Many of these prophecies were in the seven books that Protestants now refer to as apocryphal.

The Jewish leaders revised their canon about A.D. 90 to exclude those books not written in Hebrew (2 Maccabees, Wisdom, and Daniel 13-14) and those books for which the Hebrew original was not extant (Judith, Baruch, Sirach, and 1 Maccabees), perhaps in order to solve much of their apologetical problem with the Christians. By excluding those books, they eliminated many messianic prophecies. This revision came to be called the Palestine Canon. But it was a JEWISH canon, developed after many of the apostles were dead and most of the NT had already been written. The Christians did not confirm this decision, taken independently of the Jews. In fact, Christians continued to use these seven books as before.

Think about that for a minute, would you? It is a fact that Jesus, his apostles, the NT writers, and the early Church all used a Bible that included the Apocrypha. The Palestine Canon, which excluded these books, had not been "invented" yet. Unlike Protestant propaganda and mythology which spreads lies that the Catholic Church added these seven books after the Reformation in order to bolster their theology, the truth is quite the contrary. The councils of the Church had included the Apocyrpha in the list of the canon long before the Reformation. The reformers took these books out of the canon accepted by the early Church. They accomplished this by borrowing a canon developed by non-Christian Jews more than a generation after Jesus' death and Resurrection!

Now ask yourself: Why would anyone do this? For love of Scripture? I don't think so. It seems that the reformers did not care for the teachings found in these books any more than did the non-Christian Jews of A.D. 90. The Jews had found the messianic prophecies objectionable. The reformers disliked the passages regarding salvation, prayers for the dead, and purgatory. They used the Palestine Canon as a precedent to delete these seven books, in spite of the fact that the Palestine Canon was not Christian!

So it is a supreme irony that Protestants such as yourself accuse the Church of distorting the Scriptures. The historical evidence demonstrates unequivocably that it is the Protestant Reformers who distorted Scripture to suit their own interests rather follow than the Truth of God's Word.

It's unfortunate that you have to then take the next sad step of rejecting logic and reason, based on the evidence, because you must -- otherwise, you would be lead to the Truth that is preserved as the Deposit of Faith in the 2000 year tradition that is the Catholic Church. Someday you may see the light. I hope and pray that you do. But you won't until you come to understand that reason completely conforms to the Truth of the Scripture. Reason and Truth cannot contradict one another. The Logos and the Word are one. God does not contradict Himself. Truth is Truth.

God bless.

[git]

Thanks for the excellent thread. I especially appreciate the references to scripture in support of your arguments. bdeaner, thanks for the bibliography.

bookmarked!

[bdeaner]

Glad you find it worthwhile! Thanks.