Layman

Actually, what someone -- me -- attacked was not the "simple truth" that this passage is not in our present Old Testament, but the erroneous attempt to castigate Jesus as a heritic based on a conveniently naive rendering of a particular passage in Revelation. I was also pointing out that although I pointed out how erroneous Cygnus' understastanding of that scripture was over two years ago, it remains standing as a pillar of exactly how not to argue against the accuracy of the Bible.

http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2...estion-of.html

Mathetes

I don't get this. What's the deal here? I thought it was pretty much common knowledge that the Bible, in its current form, quotes and references books that have been lost, in a number of places. The most obvious one:
The Old Testament has a lot of cases. Where are these books?:

Where is the book of Jashar/Jasher (here the book is quoted)?:

Where are the Annals of Solomon?:

Or am I missing anything?

Toto

But then Layman declines to quote Sirach.

This commentary states:

Sir.15
[1] The man who fears the Lord will do this,
and he who holds to the law will obtain wisdom.
[2] She will come to meet him like a mother,
and like the wife of his youth she will welcome him.
[3] She will feed him with the bread of understanding,
and give him the water of wisdom to drink.

. . .

Sir.24
[19] "Come to me, you who desire me,
and eat your fill of my produce.
[20] For the remembrance of me is sweeter than honey,
and my inheritance sweeter than the honeycomb.
[21] Those who eat me will hunger for more,
and those who drink me will thirst for more.
[22] Whoever obeys me will not be put to shame,
and those who work with my help will not sin."

[23] All this is the book of the covenant of the Most High God,
the law which Moses commanded us
as an inheritance for the congregations of Jacob.
[25] It fills men with wisdom, like the Pishon,
and like the Tigris at the time of the first fruits.
[26] It makes them full of understanding, like the Euphrates,
and like the Jordan at harvest time.
[27] It makes instruction shine forth like light,
like the Gihon at the time of vintage.
[28] Just as the first man did not know her perfectly,
the last one has not fathomed her;
[29] for her thought is more abundant than the sea,
and her counsel deeper than the great abyss.

[30] I went forth like a canal from a river
and like a water channel into a garden.
[31] I said, "I will water my orchard
and drench my garden plot";
and lo, my canal became a river,
and my river became a sea.
[32] I will again make instruction shine forth like the dawn,
and I will make it shine afar;
[33] I will again pour out teaching like prophecy,
and leave it to all future generations.
[34] Observe that I have not labored for myself alone,
but for all who seek instruction.

I don't see anything here about "streams of living water flowing within him" as a result of "belief" in Jesus. It asserts that the fear of God and following the law will produce Wisdom.

This proves that Jesus was a heretic (which he might have been, after all) only if one assumes an inerrantist interpretation of the Bible. But getting past that, what does it mean? Why would the author of John have put these words into the mouth of Jesus if there was no part of the Hebrew Scriptures that supported it, and Jewish scholars would recognize this? I think this must be another example of the Christian use of the Hebrew Scriptures, their reading a special meaning into them, based on their communion with the Holy Spirit.

I think it just shows that early Christians (and their Jewish contemporaries) were not literal minded inerrantists in regard to Scripture.

Layman

Probably because it was irrelevant to Layman's main point -- which has to do with the innane interpretation proffered for a passage from Revelation. One that is the core of the "Bible Error" I was responding to and which no one has yet to defend.

I would be surprised if you did, Toto, since Sirach is a Jewish writing and not a Christian one. Do you really think I meant that Sirach talks about Jesus Christ of Nazareth being a source of living water?

John presents Jesus as the Wisdom of God and Sirach is here likening the wisdom of God to rivers (the Tigris, the Jordan, and Gihon) that bring wisdom, understanding, and life.

I actually think you almost make a point here. I don't think it has anything to do with inerrancy. But you are right that typology played an obvious role in early Christian understanding of the Old Testament.

Perhaps scriptures like Is. 12:3 ("Therefore with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation"), 43:20 ("Beacuse I give waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert to give drhink to My people My Chosen."), 44:3 and ("For I will pour water on him who is thirsty and floods on the dry ground; I will pour my spirit on your descendents") stand behind the Wisdom traditions in Sirach and John.

Toto

I'm not an expert on this, but I think it is different to find references in the early Hebrew Scriptures to missing writings, versus finding references in the much later NT to missing writings. I think that we have copies of what the Christians of the time considered Scripture - the Septuagint in particular - and Christians made an effort to preserve what they considered to be foundational to their beliefs.

judge

Well to a 21st cent fundamentalist this may not seem similar, as it is not "word for word".

But time and time again in the gospels we see portions of the HB referred to in ways that do not make sense from a "fundamentalist" perspective.

Anyone at that time would of course be familiar with the reference in Zechariah to 'living water".
Jesus indicates to them that earthly jerusalem is not the real Jerusalem, that the temple built with stones is not the real temple of God. The real temple comprises people.
This theme is repeated time and time again in the NT

Mathetes

I understand this is not your position, but I fail to see why it makes any difference.

For someone holding the inerrantist position, both are equally damning.

For someone holding the errantist position, both are equally irrelevant.

And you always have the puzzling "Nazarene" reference sticking out in Matthew, that remains unexplained.

Hum... Am I de-railing this?

Toto

I don't think you are derailing it.

If you are an inerrantist, all this is a real problem, and you probably have your fingers in your ears at this point.

But if you are an errantist and trying to figure out what the writers meant, you would wonder why the author of John sticks in a reference to non-existant scripture, that his readers probably knew was non-existant.

Or did they not know or not care what the Hebrew Scriptures actually said?

Or did they have a special way of reading scripture that makes this make sense?

Or did later Christians fail to preserve that scripture?

Knurd

Is there more than one? Tell me! Tell me!

The only one I know about is Jude verse 14, which is a quote from the Book of Enoch. I have never met a conservative christian who knows about the Book of Enoch, and the long passages in it that give all the details of a flat-earth cosmology. In fact, now that I know of it, I am amazed that I spent so much of my life trying to live by a book (bible) that I knew little about.

Oh, and BTW. I was always told by my Pastors that the books that were quoted in the NT, were selected to be in the cannon of scripture as the OT. In that case, Enoch should be included. If Enoch had been included in the Bible, fundamentalists would be trying to insert into high school science classes flat-earth ideas as an alternative to "spherical-earth theories." :rolling:

Mathetes

Or they actively destroyed it, as with other heretic writings.

I also suspect that they did not have the concept of "Scripture" as the God-sanctioned inalterable text that fundamentalists trumpet these days.

If you look at John 7:38 without the blinders of 20 centuries of Christianity, the text only says καθὼς εἶπεν ἡ γÏ?αφή, "as the writing said". It is likely that it meant the Jewish traditional books, but we have no way to be sure. Any writing, letter, memo, can be considered γÏ?αφή, inspired or not.