Posted on 09/22/2014 8:25:59 AM PDT by Laissez-faire capitalist
Peter wrote something like that, not Paul.
"Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" (2 Pet. 1:20-21 AV)(here, I'm provisionally striking out the words added by the English translators, but leaving for your benefit).
Did you get that this is about the holy men speaking prophecy, not writing it? Although it may imply that their prophecies were written down as, or after, they spoke it, in the grip of the Holy Ghost.
IOW, the Inspirer (the Holy Spirit) inspired the writers.
I think this idea will not, and should not, pass a closer examination. The Holy Spirit gave the Scripture, God's Words, that were to be written, Furthermore, it was written only by men personally chosen by the Holy Ghost, who were given the clear idea of what to write in their style and tongue, without initiating any material of their own, that which He chose to communicate to mankind, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else. (IMHO they were not stenographers, but they were precisely guided journalists, as it were.)
What Paul did write about this was, the Holy Ghost telling how He works:
πασα γραφη θεοπνευστος και ωφελιμος προς διδασκαλιαν προς ελεγχον προς επανορθωσιν προς παιδειαν την εν δικαιοσυνη (2 Tim 3:16 TR)
"All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: . . ." (2 Tim. 3:16 AV)
The theopneustos (= God-breathed) part is is quite clear. The emphasis is that ALL Scripture is God-breathed. NONE of it is of fallible human initiative. It is ALL God's perception and inscripturation.
******Personal excerpts from Here's How! The Bible Can ake Sense To You Today!" by Dr. Fred Wittman*******
Inspiration is the act of God controlling (by means of His Holy Spirit) the initial record of God's Word, without error, so that it was perfect.
Although reference is often made to writers "being inspired" to write certain works, yet Scriptural inspiration refers to the product, the Scriptures; and not to the writers. The product of the writers of the Books of the Bible was "God-breathed," therefore, the whole Canon of Scripture is a perfect original (2 Pet. 3:15-16).
The most satisfactory defining description of inspiration is the plenary verbal model:
The work of God through the Holy Spirit so directing the writers in their choice of subject matter and in their choice of words so that all of their writing, equally in the entire Bible written accurately, contain exactly what God desired and all that God desired for them to contain. God so guided in the writing of the Books of the Bible that the very words used in the original languages are His words in the styles of the writers, so that the product (not the writers) is a God-breathed perfect, infallible, original record without error.
******** end of excerpted and slightly edited discussion ****
For further study:
"The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture" by Rene Pache, Moody Press, Chicago, IL
"Thy Word Is Truth" by Edward J. Young, Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., Grand Rapids, MI
It is very clear that although well done by St. Jerome, the Vulgate is a translation by which a man, not guided by the Holy Spirit, tried his very honest scholarly best to fit into Latin of the day what was in the Greek of the first century of this Era, but his work nevertheless cannot be thought of as being "inspired," as being "God-breathed."
Whether or not this is a good or bad method, I think that the traditional Jew holds the Talmudic traditions more authorative than a private interpretation of the text of Tanach.
Am I correct in this?
The Talmud is not the only record of Jewish tradition. As a guide to practice, it would be quite confusing. It is a mostly a record of arguments and counter-arguments, using acronyms, allusions, abbreviations, and presupposing thorough familiarity with all of Scripture and other texts, and many times is not obvious about which views are correct or even acceptable.
Private interpretations are akin to homilies or sermons, perhaps interesting and instructive, but not determinate. From someone who is not a master of the sacred texts and traditions, private interpretations are almost always just childish delusions.
Ah, thanks.
And (I know this is a little off topic, not trying to hijack this thread) is it not interesting that, as I understand, the Rebbe Jesus was slaughtered on account of His stupefying those religionists who considered themselves to be masters of their texts and traditions, and shaming them? Were they right?
Therefore, it is not wise to take the position that NT characters quoted from the Septuagint.
If you wish, I will rummage through my notes until I get the references.
Regarding Tobit and Judith, as welll as other books of the Apocrypha, you might want to look up the word Deuterocanonical, if you don't already know what that means, and see if Judith and Tobit are in that classification. Just because Jerome copied them doesn't make them inspired writings. After all, the earliest King James Bibles all had the Apocrypha bound with it. That approach was discarded awhile ago for the AV. But my NEB had them, and I read them, but didn't find them very interesting or useful.
Yes, and don’t forget that I also shill for people to be ready to take candy out of the mouths of babes, and take away apple pie and Mothers Day from America, too! LOL.
God inspired various prophets throughout the OT to be His instruments, and as such were moved upon by the Holy Spirit to write those OT books that became part of the fixed canon of scripture of the OT.
As is said in Hebrews 1:1-2 “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son...”
Concerning the OT, God gave the canon of the OT to the Jewish people of OT times, and as such, they were the discoverers of those books that were canonical in respect to OT books.
As well, various textual critics and OT professors describe Jerome's work as both a translation and a Version - and I have used both words in reference to these.
The Masoretic Text, excuse me, was a transmission of a tradition and should just be referred to simply as a text.
The Vulgate is a translation, but yet it is also referred to as a Version as is the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch.
You really should start asking more questions. There is nothing wrong with this, and this thread sadly has been foisted into a circuitous route because certain questions are being purposefully avoided and deflecting to other issues.
Jerome was either divinely inspired or he wasn't. He either had the same inspiration as those who were moved upon by the Holy Spirit to write the various books of the OT and NT, or he didn't. While Original texts and Original Manuscripts were divinely inspired because the Holy Spirit was the Inspirer of those who were inspired and wrote the OT and NT scriptures, the same cannot be said of the compiling of Codex's or their compilers (S (Sinaiticus), B (Vaticanus) and A (Alexandrinus) or translated Versions (the Vulgate or the Septuagint).
Did Roman Catholics rely upon an ongoing Tradition, too?
How then are they any better or worse?
Excuse me for accidentally (due to haste) referring to the Masoretic Text as a translation, when I clearly also referred to it as a Text. Excuse me as well for referring to Codex Vaticanus as V, when I have known for quite some time that it is Codex B.
I guess Roman Catholics will have to toss me in with Jerome, who (i.e. post #43), who somehow lacked Inspiration when excluding Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch and I and II Maccabees from the the Deuterocanon/Apocrypha, and reluctantly included only Tobit and Judith.
He was apparently only 2/7 inspired then (when one refers to these 7?) :) But since he included 2 of these 7 reluctantly, I guess then he was actually 0 for 7. This should be cause for alarm among Catholics if they believe what they believe and believe that he was one whit inspired.
That, of course, is true, and I’m glad you picked up on this thought, which was in my mind when I wrote the question. The unintended consequence of Caiaphas’ elegant, concise, inspired prophecy was correct, but the motive behind it was not.
The Apostle Paul wrote 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking...”
Do you not know that the same God who Omnisciently knew that the Lamb - Jesus - was slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8), also knows all things and knew every page, every sentence, every word that He would give to man through the Inspirer of scripture (the Holy Spirit)?
Did God just breath the words upon parchment, etcetera, minus an Inspirer and minus men who were inspired by the Inspirer (the Holy Spirit)? Certainly not.
But your post again deflects away from what is central as have others here engaged in this deflection - something that I ultimately have been steering everything towards: was Jerome the same as those who wrote the Original Manuscripts? No. A man (Jerome) engaging in translating into Latin is not the same as Paul writing Romans, 1 Corinthians, etc, and a translation (the Septuagint) cannot and can never equal the Original Texts.
Yes, I am aware of what the word “Deuterocanonical” means. This is the preferred word among Catholics, whereas Protestants often use the word “Apocrypha” when referring to those works that Catholics included within their canon (although others works that Catholics did not include are also labeled as “the Apocrypha”).
An interesting side-note: III and IV Maccabees found their way into one of the four principal Codex’s whereas IV Maccabees is found in two (Codex S and A). Neither are considered to be canonical among Catholics, and yet would they claim that these Codex’s could possibly have any inspiration? Compilations aren’t inspired, either.
If you will look at post #43, at what a then-Jesuit professor at Jesuit seminary, Toronto had to say, Jerome reluctantly brought Judith and Tobit into the Vulgate, and I don’t think that the Hebrew teachers in then-Palestine were egging him on to include this. Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems that others were undoubtedly influencing him.
In the end, I agree with you...just because Jerome copied them does not make them inspired.
BTW, the Apocrypha/Deuterocanon were initially placed all together at the back of the KJV before their eventual removal. Perhaps this was significant...
Yes, I did read this through, and that's why I mentioned Tobit and Judith. I should have been quicker to acknowledge post #43. It was quite interesting.
"Inspiration" is a big, big topic, for which word the 1915 edition of the International Standard Bible Encylopedia (ISBE) devotes about 160 column inches (over 13 feet) to its definition and use. I believe it is important to know that no human authorship could produce a progressively revealed, integrated, infallible, self-explanatory, comprehensive completed document that describes everything we need to know about the Testimony of God regarding The Messiah, and His Kingdom of Righteousness and Peace.
I believe your initial thrust was to examne the reliability of the Scriptures from which St. Jerome translated the Vulgate, what the relationship is between the languages of the Old Testament, and whether Jesus and His followers used the Hebrew or the Greek in the establishment over humans through His churches. To that end, I would like to direct your attention to the analyses that I have mentioned previously in this thread>
The thesis is that there was NO Septuagint such as you assumed, in the time of Jesus. But a Greek OT was produced after His ministry and subsequent to the writing of the substance of the NT, yet before Jerome's time. (click here)
********* Excerpt 1 **********
There was no pre-Christian, official and authoritative so called Greek Septuagint. What passes for the LXX today is nothing more than the Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus manuscripts, all of which were written some 250 to 300 years AFTER the New Testament was already complete.
If there had been an authoritative pre-Christian LXX in wide use and circulation, there would not have been any need for people like Jerome, Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotian, Lucian and Hesychius to make their own translations years later. There are several so called Septuagints out there and none of them agree with the others. There are only a few remaining scraps that could possibly be dated as B.C. writings, and even those sites that mention them tell us that they do not agree with other Septuagint copies. In all likelihood they are nothing more than the confused remnants of an independent individual's own attempt at a translation, just as several others did at a later date.
There are several scholars like Jerome, John Gill and John Owen who affirm that already completed N.T. quotations were deliberately placed back into the Septuagint versions to make more of them line up. And finally, for examples of how God often "quotes" Himself, see the later part of the study.
The Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles did NOT quote from a Pre-Christian LXX. This from Wikipedia article on the so called Greek Septuagint -
"The Septuagint (/ˈsɛptuədʒɪnt/), or simply "LXX", is the Koine Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, erroniously assumed to be translated in stages between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC in Alexandria. The Septuagint was most probably translated by Origen in about 300 AD. There is at least one nearly complete text of the LXX, Codex Alexandrinus. Nearly complete texts of the Septuagint are also found in the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus.
********* Excerpt 2 *********
SUPPORT FROM AN UNEXPECTED SOURCE - ST. JEROME In Adam Clarke's commentary on Psalm 14 he notes: "Yet IT HAS BEEN CONTENDED, PARTICULARLY BY ST. JEROME, THAT PAUL DID NOT QUOTE THEM (the verses in Romans 3:10-18) from this Psalm; but...he collected from different parts several passages that bore upon the subject, and united them here....AND THAT SUCCEEDING COPYISTS, FINDING THEM IN ROMANS INSERTED THEM INTO THE SEPTUAGINT, from which it was presumed they had been lost. It does not appear that they made a part of this Psalm in Origen's Hexapla. In the portions that still exist of this Psalm there is not a word of these additional verses referred to in that collection, neither here nor in the parallel Psalm 53."
Now keep in mind, that in working on the Latin Vulgate in 380 A.D., Jerome began to consult the Hebrew texts. Here is testimony from a learned scholar way back in 380 A.D. who held to the idea that the LXX borrowed whole verses from the already completed N.T. text, and transplanted them back into their LXX version.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia ******
************** Excerpt 1 **************
Official Revision of Hebrew Text circa 100 AD:
But it was not until the beginning of the 2nd century AD that the divergence between the Greek and the Palestinian Hebrew text reached an acute stage. One cause of this was the revision of the Hebrew text which took place about this time. No actual record of this revision exists, but it is beyond doubt that it originated in the rabbinical school, of which Rabbi Akiba was the chief representative, and which had its center at Jamnia in the years following the destruction of Jerusalem. The Jewish doctors, their temple in ruins, concentrated their attention on the settlement of the text of the Scriptures which remained to them. This school of eminent critics, precursors of the Massoretes, besides settling outstanding questions concerning the Canon, laid down strict rules for Biblical interpretation, and in all probability established an official text.
************** Excerpt 2 **************
Recensions Known to Jerome:
Such assistance is partly furnished by two other recensions made in the century after Origen. Jerome (Praef. in Paralipp.; compare Adv. Ruf., ii.27) states that in the 4th century three recensions circulated in different parts of the Christian world: "Alexandria and Egypt in their Septuagint acclaim Hesychius as their authority, the region from Constantinople to Antioch approves the copies of Lucian the martyr, the intermediate Palestinian provinces read the manuscripts which were promulgated by Eusebius and Pamphilus on the basis of Origen's labors, and the whole world is divided between these three varieties of text."
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