Amen and again Amen.....and it's not a question..it's 'knowing ' why they were written and given
Posted on 07/21/2014 10:28:13 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
.....”If half the Church gets together and decides to declare a canon, it can only be valid for ‘their churches’, and can’t be expected to be accepted by the rest of the Church”.....
That statement should give food for thought.
Nope....the Roman Catholic Church recognizes 73 books. Christians recognize 66.
You did get one part right...about being weak on the historic Christian canon.
I never get tired of hearing that.
You might want to consider the first 1500 years. Did the Holy Spirit abandon the Christian people for 1500 years, just to pop in again in the 16th century and reveal: "You got the canon wrong"?
The Holy Spirit has not abandoned anyone...however, the RCC has abandoned the Holy Spirit....so yes..the RCC has been in error for 1500 years.
And as for those who had split from "Catholic," who exactly gave them the authority to subtract books from the Canon? Some king?
And just who gave the RCC the "authority" to add books to the Bible?? Some council??
And if that's something the British throne and her licensed liturgists in the Anglican Church had the competence to do, do they still have it? Could Queen Elizabeth II and Abp Justin Welby split off a couple more books if they felt divinely called to do so?
Or, instead of 1500 years, switch your focus to 2,000 years. The big majority of Catholics still have the full canon --- 73 books. Had to fix that for you...Christians have 66 books.
There has been a Christian church in continuous existence for 1900 years in Mosul, Iraq. They speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus. They have the same canon as the rest of us Catholics. I think it's a good bet that they're clinging to their whole Bible as they high-tail it outta there --- as we speak. If the ISIS couldn't make them give it up, I very much doubt the Anglicans would be very persuasive.
Try Luke 11:51. Jesus said,"from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah...."
With this statement Jesus was saying the Old Testament is from Genesis to 2 Chronicles. In the Hebrew Bible Genesis is the first book and 2 Chronicles is the last.
No books of the apocrypha are in the Hebrew Bible as they were not accepted by the Hebrews. Even the early church fathers rejected the apocrypha(just for you catholics).
If the Bible only contains 66 books, this means that no one had the correct Bible for the first 1,500 years of Church History and the same men used by the Holy Spirit to compile the 27 book NT, somehow got the OT canon wrong. if that is possible, who is to say that they didn’t get the NT wrong as well. see how dangerous this thinking is?
Actually the early church did have the right books for about the first 400 years or so...these being 27 NT and 39 OT (depending on how you count them).
Jerome did include the apocrypha in his Vulgate. However, he included a prologue before each one noting each one as apocryphal or non-canon. Jerome did not want to include these in his translation, but was forced to.
The apocrypha were never accorded the same status as the other books of the Bible. It was only at the council of Trent that the RCC declared the catholic version of the bible with the apocrypha to be dogma.
So to your point...from about 400 AD to the council of Trent it is quite possible people held the wrong books of the Bible.
By 400 AD, and you could make an argument for an earlier time period, the early church had already agreed upon the 27 books of the NT we have today.
It is possible for error to exist for a long period of time. Consider the words of Satan to Adam and Eve in the Garden. Consider the words of Satan to Jesus in the desert.
Satan's number one way of attacking Christianity has been to attack and distort the Word of God. This is why it is so important to interpret the texts of the Bible in their proper context and not to read into them something that isn't there.
Sadly, the RCC has practiced a lot of the latter.
“What? What Pope?”
Well, it was 3 popes actually, since the entire process took a few decades. Paul III, Julius III, and Pius IV.
“Got together with what churches?”
The ones who opposed the Reformation, most representatives were from Italy and Spain. Those who supported the Reformation were invited to attend, but refused the right to vote.
“And “voted” the rest out? When? Who voted and what was the vote?”
In 1563, at the conclusion of the Council of Trent. 255 attendees (of those who were allowed to vote of course) declared the Protestants heretics.
“So Jerome acknowledged the principle by which the canon would be settled —the judgment of the Church,what was actually used liturgically in the churches, rather than his own judgment or the judgment of Jews who had rejected Christ.”
Yet, there is a big difference between the “judgement of the churches” and “judgement of the Church”. The churches used various arrangements of books, as there was no agreed upon Old Testament canon at that point. So, when he translated the Vulgate, he included all the books that were commonly in use by various churches, with his disclaimer that some of these books were not to be taken as authoritative for spiritual doctrine. He did not have, or declare, a “judgement of the Church” - say, an official proclamation from an ecumenical council - that told him those books were canonical for the whole Church.
Just because Jerome included them in the Vulgate tells us nothing of their canonicity, even though the Pope authorized that translation. For example, there were other works included in the Vulgate that nobody today, or in Jerome’s day believed to be inspired, such as the Epistle to the Laodicians. Jerome said of that work, “it is rejected by everyone” - so much for “judgement of the churches”!
“It’s a little equivocal to speak of “the” “Hebrew Canon” (as if there were just one Hebrew Canon) when the Greek LXX, which was translated from the Hebrew -— as was confirmed by the Dead Sea Scrolls -— was translated from an OLDER Hebrew text than the Masoretic.
St Justin Martyr (AD 100 – 165) supports the Septuagint and claims that the Jews altered their Scriptures to eliminate obvious prophecies of Christ: for instance, the still-debated question of “a virgin shall bear a son” vs. “a young woman shall bear a son” in Isaiah.”
Well, if you don’t like the phrase “Hebrew Canon”, let’s just say “Hebrew Scriptures”. Whether the Jews have altered the text they currently use from the ancient form or not, at least they have a genuine provenance for their documents from ancient Hebrew manuscripts, unlike the Apocrypha.
That’s not a small point either. We know that the last prophets wrote around the 5th century BC, and that Hebrew was still the only language being used in sacred documents at that time. Even after Aramaic, then Greek became the common languages of everyday life, Hebrew was retained as the only sacred language for liturgy. If these documents were composed originally in Greek, then that puts them at a very late date, probably centuries after the last prophets of Israel.
No matter: It conveys the message from God.
Whatever Moses wrote in those books, he did by the same Holy Spirit inspiration as all the other prophets of the Lord. There is no way Moses could have known all the things that Genesis, for example, relates except by the leading of the Holy Spirit. He wasn't there at the start of creation or in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve walked with God. Moses lived nearly a thousand years AFTER Abraham walked the earth. Just as the Holy Spirit moved the writers of the New Testament books to write about things they could not have known about personally (i.e., what Jesus prayed in the garden the night He was betrayed), so that same process went on for the writers of the books in the Old Testament. It is because the Holy Spirit was working in these prophets, we can have assurance of the things we are told in Scripture and trust in things God has made known to us through His sacred word.
You have company.
Or having to kill witches, or having multiple wives, or slaves, or not eating bacon, or killing your child for denying god, etc., etc.
The point being, that even the most ardent, "the Bible is the word of god" posters here, pick and choose what parts they accept. Thank god.
Moses wrote scrolls shortly before his death. That was some 40 years after the experience at Sinai.
Obviously there was communication from God without a book.
sadly, church history does not seem to be your strong point.
you say the church for the first 400 years had a 66 book bible. really? please provide one canon of scripture during this time period that lists 66 books. i’ll save you time, one doesn’t exist.
the OT used by St Paul contained these books, and they have always been used by the Catholic Church.
some ancient churches broke away from the Catholic Church in the 3rd and 4th centuries, such as the Coptics and Oriental Orthodox. here is a history homework assignment for you, do they have a 66 book canon?
I do agree that Satan attacks Christianity by attacking the Word of God, but also the authority of the Church. Sadly, in the 16th century, by claiming the Bible was wrong and the Church was wrong, he did great damage to Christianity.
funny, Jesus spoke of His Church, singular. I didn’t realize there could be more than one Church, certainly the Scriptures only speak of one Church.
Amen and again Amen.....and it's not a question..it's 'knowing ' why they were written and given
Me thinks you need to do some reading. I’m not going to do something you are capable of doing yourself. It’s pretty easy research I’ve already done. You may find the NT was in place before 200 AD. I’ll let you do the rest.
You are right. And, because we know that ALL Scripture is God-breathed, we can discern that those extra-canonical books (Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical) that some claim to belong along side the rest of the universally recognized writings are NOT Scripture. Of course, some want to make a big issue over these books and imply that “they” have the whole Bible unlike those of us who are missing out and, somehow, this proves their claim to be the one, true church
“some claim to belong....” LOL, WHO IS THIS SOME? well, only all of Christendom for the first 1,500 years of Church History. funny how no one could “discern” that these books weren’t Scripture, yet we are assured that its obvious they aren’t. SERIOUSLY?? Think of the arrogance contained in that statement. The whole Universal Church, led to all truth by the Holy Spirit, could not see these books were not Scripture. Think what that says about God, He is unable to keep His Word pure. So if the early Church could not correctly understand the OT canon, we can have no assurance they got the 27 book NT canon correct, can we?
of course the Bible wasn’t the only object of the 16th century inventions, the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, the Eucharist, sacred tradition , unity of the Church and a whole host of other doctrines all came under assault.
how far this is from the prayer of Jesus in John 17.
how far this is from Paul’s command to the Corinthians to be of one mind and all agree in doctrine.
Perform a word study.
There are reasons why these particular words are used and not others.
There also are reasons why our Lord Christ Jesus is also identified with other names.
lol, nice deflection.
there were no 66 book bibles before the 16th century. PERIOD.
END OF DISCUSSION.
If someone wants to believe that NO ONE had an accurate Bible before the 16th century, well, there is not much anyone can really do for such a person other than pray for them.
I suspect such a person also believes many other things that no one believed before the 16th century, but that’s a whole other story, isn’t it?
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