judge

Which NT canon?
Presumably the protestant one?
There is of course more than one NT canon. We ,today, in the west being good Roman Cathoilic /protestants :devil3: tend to assume that the Roman catholic/protestant bible must be "god ordained" :rolling: .
Probably because of considerations of earthly power of numbers.
1000 years ago the largest denomination was probably the "nestorian church" which of course had a different NT canon.

Steven Avery

Yes, we discussed above the five books that were not in the earlier Peshitta and were not considered scripture in the Eastern church. There view today probably depends on the particular group, and some may prefer to sidestep the issue of the exact status of the five books.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Johnny Skeptic

Even if the canon was written, put together, and widely accepted by most of the New Testament writers and most Christians 10 years after Jesus died, that still does not answer the fundamental question, which is, WHAT INDICATED TO THE CHOOSERS WHICH OF THE NUMEROUS WRITINGS TO INCLUDE IN THE CANON? Who chose the choosers?

What history are you talking about? If you are talking about the Resurrection, even if Jesus did rise from the dead, there is no logical correlation that can be made between the ability to rise from the dead and goodness. Do you have any non-Biblical evidence that Jesus healed people? do you have any non-Biblical evidence that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, was born of a virgin, and never sinned, and that his shed blood and death actually remitted the sins of mankind? Would you include these guesses as part of as you said "the actual history of the first centuries"?

robto

Let's talk "actual history":

- No writer before about 120 AD (Papias) mentions any of the gospels.

- No writer before about 180 AD (Irenaeus) mentions all four gospels or declares them authoritative.

- No writer before 367 AD (Athanasius) gives the complete list of NT books as they appear in RC/Protestant bibles today.

- Many ancient Bibles contain 3 Corinthians.

- Some of the oldest Bibles and canon lists contain the Shepherd of Hermas, Didache, Barnabas, etc.

So it's simply false to claim As for the question of the OP, Equinox gave a good list of the criteria already. As for "who chose the choosers", well, .... no one. Athanasius gave his opinion, but he didn't have the autority to speak for the whole church. Various later councils came to contradictory conclusions about the canon. The RC didn't make a clear declaration of the canon until the Council of Trent (1563).

Steven Avery

Hi Robto, For now I will go into some of the issues of canon lists.

3 Corinthians did have some eastern reference, and Armenian support as NT scripture. Is this 'many ancient Bibles' ? Are there any Greek or Latin manuscripts at all ? Do even any of the Old Syriac or Aramaic Peshitta or Peshitto in the east have include 3 Corinthians ? If you have any information on actual manuscripts that have 3 Corinthians as scripture, I would like to learn which ones (especially outside the Armenian).

This is at best a major overstatement.

First, could you specifically indicate the canon lists that mention these books ?
I know of known offhand.

From what I see, Clement of Alexandria quotes from two, Didymus the Blind quotes from the three books, and Ireanaeus quotes from the Shepherd (not necessarily by name in these cases). However a quotation is far from being a canon list, or even a citation as New Testament scripture. So far, I don't even see anybody quoting any of them directly as scripture, out of the dozens of early church writers.

Codex Sinaticus (which is a mess in many ways, see Dean John Burgon, despite its being embraced my 'modern scientific textual criticism') did have Barnabas and Hermes. Beyond that I don't see any 'oldest Bibles' at all that have those books. Perhaps you meant 'one old Bible'.

And what are the "etc" books ?

Shalom,
Steven Avery
Queens, NY
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Johnny Skeptic

Message to praxeus: You said:

I replied:

Why didn't you reply to my arguments? Are they too difficult for you to contend with?

Steven Avery

Well, I didn't even realize you were making 'difficult' 'arguments' to 'contend with'. They looked like questions.

To the other John (Broussard), about the councils, I already wrote ..

"And its not really my forte. There are a couple of good books about the Councils that may have some leads, one came out recently that covered about four, however I don't have it bookmarked."

Now to your question, I gather you want me to give some sort of weighted evidence list of what made a writing scripture in the first century ...

a) apostolic authorship
b) account of life of Jesus
c) doctrinal clarity
d) consistency
e) factual and historical and geographical accuracy
etc..

Any such list would be rather limited, and anyway you could simply say they were a post-facto list to match the scriptures.

We do not know the whole dynamic, and likely will not know. For those of us who view the scripture canon as of divine providence, Tanach and NT, there is not much here to argue about, as we surely could never prove to a skeptic that those are the 'only' and 'correct' books.

However, I already showed that the supposed dozens of other books, mentioned on the beginning of this thread, were not highly regarded, and rarely considered as scripture.

I can only address that which is addressable :-)

Shalom,
Steven Avery
Queens, NY
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Johnny Skeptic

Item "a" is not sufficient because the apostles did not claim, and probably did not have any idea whatsoever, that they had written Scripture. Even if they had claimed that they had written Scripture, how did they come by this knowledge. The New Testament indicates that tampering with the texts is possible. You can find the evidence at the end of chapter 22.

Item "b" is not sufficient because there are not any adequate means by which to verify which writings about the life of Jesus deserve status as Scripture and which do not.

Item "c" is not sufficient because a writing might be perfectly clear but still not deserve status as Scripture.

Item "d" is not sufficient because in court trials, sometimes liars consistently lie and get away with it.

Item "e" is not sufficient because the most important claims of facts are completely non-verifiable. It is impossible to verify the claims that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, was born of a virgin, never sinned, and that his shed blood and death actually remitted the sins of mankind. These are the fundamental claims of Christianity, and it is impossible to verify them. Regarding accurate geography, as Farrell Till has aptly said, anyone living or travelling in any geographic region can easily state what is happening where he lives or travels.

Do you have any non-Biblical evidence that Jesus healed people. What we need is first hand or second hand evidence, and preferably from non-Christians.

Steven Avery

And I never claimed that the list would be complete, nor that it would satisfy a skeptic. Somebody asked for some of the factors that came to play, I gave some.

Your critique of how the decisions might have been made "10 years" after Jesus lived is based on your particular mind-set today (prove this, prove that.. which is irrelevant to your original question). If in fact the Bible events occurred as stated, the state of mind in Israel in 40-60 AD would have been far more receptive to receiving an orderly written account, as per eg Luke. They would not have had your layers of historical suspicion, since the events were of recent vintage, local and checkable, and the new Christian movement was spreading throught the land of Israel and beyond.

True, without a measure of faith.

That already places the authors right in Israel, and working with the times and region with which they are familiar. Let's remember that geographic data is intermixed with historic personages and titles and particular spots and all sorts of historical relationships that would be great effort for somebody to do who was not involved in the events of 30-50 AD (and with eyewitnesses as per Luke's statement :-). Much more than just geography alone. In that case they would almost surely make some doozy blunders that would find them out, and/or they would write ultra-cautiously about folks so as to not risk giving a wrong ID.

In fact, this is precisely why the anti-NT folks have gone out on such limbs as the somewhat insipid "no Nazareth" claims (isn't it surprising that someone would use that as an attempted critique basis), because they hope to find some anomaly or anachronism to support their theoies (such as pagans writings the gospels in 100 AD or later as fantasy, not even a docudrama... rather than Jews, mostly or all, writing about their Messiah from the basis of Tanach prophecy, from their local history).

The moment the mythicist concedes that Luke and the other writers wrote excellent history it puts a big crimp on their theories. One problem is that John the Baptist, Herod, Pilate, Caiaphas and many others are known historical figures. So the Gospels become one huge docudrama, an unusual genre, where essentially all the details except Jesus are accurate, which would all be made up. One then also needs to come up with a scenario as to how and why somebody put so much effort and accuracy into a book that for them was fiction, and how it would be accepted if it did not dovetail with local remembrance. Royalties ?

And then you would believe ?

Shalom,
Steven Avery
Queens, NY
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

robto

Codex claromontanus: Barn, Shep, Acts of Paul, Rev. of Peter
Apostolic canons: 1, 2 Clement, Apost. Const.
Athanasius: Didache and Shep as teaching books
Rufinus: Shep, the "Two Ways", and Preaching of Peter as teaching books

The Peshitta go the other direction, and omit 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John.

I was wrong about 3 Corinthians. I was thinking of Laodiceans: over 100 copies of the Latin Vulgate include it according to Metzger.
Barnabas (16.5-6) and Jude quote 1 Enoch as scripture. The Diatessaron was the only gospel for much of Syria for over 200 years (see Hahneman, The Muratorian Fragment, p.98). CLem alex. (Strom. 2.9) writes "It is written in the Gospel of the Hebrews..." using the usual formula for citing scripture. Origen also quotes it, saying "the Lord himself says..." They both cite Didache as scripture. "Against Dice-Players" (c. 300 AD) cites Shepherd as "Divine Scripture". Apoc. of Peter was still being read in churches in the 5th century...

Alexandrinus: 1,2 Clement, Psalms of Solomon

And since there are only 4 relatively complete Bibles from the 4-5th centuries, we have 2 of 4 with non-canonical books. And don't forget those 100 Vulgates.

See above.