Thank-you
You're missing the point of the passage!
I don't think so. The point is to warn believers to be ready at any time, day or night, for Christ's return--which is why both day and night activities are named.
It is not to tell us the shape of the earth.
You're jumping from assumption to assumption. Do you read the links I post? Read #7 on this link:
I note that none of the links provided actual references to the alleged rejections. Further, the first points out that despite the alleged rejection of the Apocrypha by Jerome, he was overruled by the church-at-large. This indicates that whatever Jerome's opinion, the church at the time did accept the Apocrypha.
Now, as to whether the Apocrypha
should be in the bible, I have no opinion. Maybe they shouldn't be. I don't know. All I know is that they are in non-Protestant bibles,. History tells us that Luther, followed by other Reformers, argued that the Apocrypha should be removed from the Old Testament. (They did not argue they should be removed from the bible. They did argue that no binding doctrine should be based solely on the Apocrypha--this was to eliminate support for the doctrine of purgatory for which the only scriptural support is in Maccabees.) We have no corresponding earlier movement to include the Apocrypha as scripture, and that only makes sense if they were already considered part of scripture.
You don't understand: Christ is talking about the totality of the righteous blood shed from the foundation of the world that would fall upon that generation. He mentions the first book (Genesis) and the last book (2 Chronicles) in the Hebrew canon. This would encompass the entirety of what the Jews know as the Old Testament. If the Apocrypha are a part of Scripture, why didn't Christ mention them as well?
For someone to whom the LXX is scripture, the "entirety" of the OT would include them without further mention.
No, but Acts breaks off with Paul in prison at Rome. If Luke knew more about Paul's history he almost certainly would have written it down (and that's a more than reasonable claim to make). The only possibility is that Luke didn't know any more of Paul's history: he finished his narrative while Paul was still imprisoned at Rome. That places the writing of Acts around 62 AD.
Again, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Mark's gospel was certainly not written before 60CE, yet the earliest known manuscripts end at Mark 16:8 a most unsatisfactory place to end the narrative. Two later endings have been found, and the longer is the one used in most bibles. But they are not written by Mark.
Why does his original end where it does? Was he interrupted? Did he plan to say more? We have no way of telling.
Even if we set Luke earlier than the 80's, it is clearly after Mark, after the destruction of the temple in 70CE. So he would have known of the last years of Paul's life anyway, and still chosen not to include them.
You are again using very liberal dating standards. Why don't you believe the books of Scripture were written by who they said they were written by?
It is not a matter of belief. I believe the books of scripture are inspired writings whoever wrote them. So it is a matter of investigation. I am not qualified to make those investigations myself, so I rely on those who are. I don't assume they are correct or incorrect. Just qualified to have an educated opinion.
And I refuse to confuse belief with knowledge. If there is reason to doubt that a letter was written by the ostensible author, then, whatever we may choose to believe, we do not know who the actual author is. What I know is that reputable people who have studied these texts thoroughly do doubt the authorship.
Now this is a good example of an educated opinion. It is an opinion and though he does not cite it in this article, I expect he could cite the allusions he refers to. He himself mentions that 2 Peter may have been following the Fathers rather than them quoting the letter. So he is being fair and undogmatic. Now we non-experts can wait and observe how influential his opinion is and whether scholarly study of 2 Peter is changed by this perspective.
But remember that when or by whom 2 Peter was written is not the important point. The important point is that it came to be recognized as scripture.
I'm aware of this. Why do you believe them? Just because they're scholars?
As I said, it is not a matter of belief.
Well, it's pretty important that we find out who's right or wrong, because this has huge implications for theology. If you're correct then we have someone going around and pretending to be an Apostle. My question, again, would be: why don't you believe the NT was penned by who it says it was penned by?
No, it is not a matter of anyone pretending to be an Apostle. It is a matter of a text being ascribed to an Apostle by later generations of church leaders. And possibly they erred in their ascription.
It's easy to tell the letters of John were written by the same individual:
Yes, but is the John who wrote these letters the same person as the one who wrote the Gospel of John and are either of them (if there are two) the same as the one who wrote Revelation?
That is the scholars' question.
Also, it's obvious that 1 John and the gospel of John belong together, as 1 John clearly interprets the figurative statements about "light" and "darkness" found in the gospel of John. So we can link all of the Johannine material together.
True, but we would expect this if the letter-writer is a student of the gospel-writer as well as if they were the same person.
At this point there's really no reason to disbelieve that Matthew (whose name as always been on the gospel) wrote Matthew. At least, you haven't provided any good reason, and neither has anyone else.
I am not suggesting disbelief. I am just saying that all we have knowledge of are the traditional ascriptions of the canonical gospels to these persons as authors. We don't know that the ascriptions are correct, but neither do we know they are incorrect. So, to all intents and purposes, the gospels are composed by anonymous authors, but for convenience we call them by the traditional ascriptions: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
I actually don't accept Wikipedia as a source. It can be edited by anyone.
Yes, and editing can be contested by anyone as well. Have you ever checked the editing pages and seen some of the controversies about what should appear in public?
Even on the public pages, you will often find a note that saying "citation needed" or that some statements are not supported. There is a clear preference for material that is properly researched and supported.
Are you aware that Wikipedia compares well with Encyclopedia Britannica on the reliability of its information?
I see. So what's he saying, exactly?
He is saying that the least important statement about him in the scriptures stands until it is fulfilled. His reference to the least stroke in writing a letter of the alphabet is an analogy, not a reference to faithful copying.
Right, and that's proof that the MT is the authentic version.
Not for the reason you think. It is not necessarily the original version. Just because it copies from some archaic texts without change doesn't mean it always chose the most archaic wording. In some cases where available manuscripts had two different wordings, it may not have been clear which was older, and a choice had to be made as to which would be used.
The MT is the authentic version because it is the standardized, authorized version. Just as the KJV became the authentic English-language translation of the bible, (vis-à-vis the Geneva or Reims-Douai versions) because it was the one authorized by the King (as head of the Church of England) to be read in churches.