Duvduv

The truth is I was wondering about the view of those who believe that the writings attributed to the 2nd century are "kosher," in which case they would have to explain under what authority would some individual writers of some emerging sect claim a "canon" when a canon is only relevant to a mature church.

Well, the canon could only be under some central authority that wasn't the papacy since there was no central heirarchical papacy in the 4th century, and certainly not before. Only under authority of the BYZANTINE REGIME through their official sanction could there be a "canon" at that time......

mountainman

The fact remains that Constantine published a Bible far and wide on the basis that the basilica based pulpit business was picking up.

Duvduv

Imagine some little writer away in Lyons or in Libya announcing that the texts were the "canon" of the "Church." What Church? On what authority?
On the authority of the Emperor of Byzantium, that's who.
The Apologists were hired sponsored propagandists for the Empire's new religion but had to give the feeling that all their ideas were not simply put together in recent times, but stretched back a couple of hundred years.
On the other hand, look how well Joseph Smith and Brigham Young's successors did without any state sponsorship. A pretty good job.....no emperor, king or president, not even a caliphate......
Had the Mormons been sponsored by an official state apparatus they might have conquered all of Christendom, at least in North America......at least the way the Anglicans did after Henry VIII.

mountainman

A more appropriate term for these so-called "Apologists" is actually the term "Heresiologists" because they were invariably writing against what they perceived as heretics. Every single 4th century "apologist" was also an "heresiologist".

Duvduv

Yes, and these biased heresiologists are the pillars for the interpretation of historical events and chronologies in the first four centuries.
I still do not see how the "canon" could have been claimed by one or the other heresiologist in the second century on his own for all of Christendom. It makes absolutely no sense. And yet so many scholars ignore issues of context in all of these writings, their authors, the historical backdrop, etc. Incredible.

Duvduv

According to the texts of the heresiologists, the canon "just was." It was there always, and required no one to canonize the texts considered equivalent to the Hebrew Scriptures in terms of holiness. No central authority, no specific council or synod. Just take "Irenaeus's" word for it, or whomever else's word. It always was.

Duvduv

Wouldn't it have been helpful had the author(s) of the epistles referenced the other epistles back and forth, i.e. whereby the author of Galatians would quote what he had written in Corinthians or the author of Philippians would cite what "he" had written in Thessalonians, etc.?? After all, it stands to reason that the image of the single author who was ostensibly not writing a set of letters wanted to say similar things to his communities, and yet doesn't.

This fact of this context lends credence to the idea that the entirety or majority of the epistles were produced as a single SET of didactic sermons, never actually written to the indicated recipients, and not actually recieved by the named addressees to whom they were allegedly written.