Believe the Bible - bend the Bible - deny the Bible... pick one

[BobRyan]

Luke, who never knew Jesus, was a Jewish doctor

Luke was a gentile doctor. Less Urantia - more Bible please.

We observe 550,000,000 years of evolving, mutating life.

No... we don't.

In fact this is the very flaw in Othaniel Marsh's horse-fraud horse-series still on display in the Smithsonian. It depicts a sequence "that never happened in nature" as if we had "observed those millions of years of horse evolution" and yet it is now lamented by evolutionists world wide as a sequence "that never happened in nature".

How does one 'observe an evolving horse sequence' in nature -- that "NEVER happened in nature"??/

Simple! -- "Story telling".

Less conjecture by evolutionist shamans and more scientific fact please.

 

[BobRyan]

What is more - we have 50,000 generations of bacteria proving that after that much "evolution" they REMAIN - bacteria.

This is not "evolutionist story-telling observations of the now-fraud horse series in the Smithsonian" but actual real-life observations in nature.

50,000 generations of humans would cover more than 2,000,000 years! And stories say that humans evolved --came into being-- supposedly in less than 1 TENTH of that time!! Yet bacteria DO NOT when it comes to REAL OBSERVATIONS in nature - turn into single-celled eukaryotes over TEN TIMES that number of generations!! Rather "observations in nature" SHOW that they REMAIN "bacteria".

As I said before the - best text book you have for the religion of evolutionism - is Urantia-- not the Bible -- even you have to admit that this point is irrefutable.

 

[Commander Xenophon]

Just not in real life -

Forgive me, but I would like to ask you very respectfully to help us improve the tone and Christian brotherly love of discourse in General Theology by refraining from using polemical and incendiary catchphrases like "just not in real life." It degrades the wuality of discussion and causes many very well educated members with potentially important and meaningful controvutions from posting. Can we agree to try to work together to make General Theology a friendlier, more welcoming place, more conducive to respectful debate, perhaps followimg in the footsteps of the very successful Traditional Theology forum? That forum, together the Christian Apologetics Center, is one of the crown jewells of the Theology forums, because of the extremely courteousy way the members treat each other.

Lets work together to make General Theology a friendlier place: less polemics, less perjoratives and more warmth, patience and fraternal love.

Remember what St. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:2 - "...if I have a faith that can move mountains, but I do not have love, I am nothing."

Many who reject Josephus for whatever reason will still admit that "Judaism officially excluded the deuterocanonicals and the additional Greek texts listed here from their Scripture in the Council of Jamnia (c. 70–90 AD)"

But Josephus argues that the Hebrew Bible was closed for 400 years - which means "no Baruch" -- even for Josephus - and no Baruch in the OT canon - no not even for the Catholic's own Jerome.

So when we talk about "all the scriptures," in Luke 24:27 - we are not talking about any Catholics -- we are talking about the Hebrew Canon which is all Christ had -

No one thinks that Catholics wrote the OT. No one thinks that Jews were waiting for Catholics to come along many centuries later and tell them what the OT - Hebrew Bible is.

This is beyond dispute. The church established in Matthew 16 was not the Catholic church and was not telling Jews "you have the wrong Bible" as we see clearly when we read the NT text.

Regardless of which one of those interpretations you subscribe to, the New Testament makes it crystal clear that that Church has said that the Jews have the wrong scripture, the wrong Bible etc.

Matt 22 - Christ said to the Jews that Lev 19:18 and Deut 6:5 are foundational "to ALL the LAW and the PROPHETS" - not "you have the WRONG law and prophets".

This is irrefutable.

First of all, tying in to my earlier post, I'd like to ask you to voluntarily consider not using typographic emphasis to score your points; bold, red, underscored and italcs fonts have a visually dramatic effect, but they are unsubstantial, and actually make your posts harder to read. I suggest, on the basis of my postgraduate education, and the stylistic conventions used for writing academic papers, that if you feel the need to stress a particular word, you follow the well established litersry convention of placing it in italics. This stresses the point without coming across too strong, and would go along way towards helping us have a more loving dialogue. I will seek to demonstrate in my response to your article:

Now, vis a vis your main point, it is actually refutable, owing to certain simple facts:

• Josephus enumerated a 22 book canon which lacked Ruth and Lamentations; some scholars have suggested he considered these a part of Kings or Judges, but ultimately, his canon is at structural variance with the twenty two book Masoretic canon.
• Josephus was a Pharisee; did our Lord not say "Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees" and establish His church and promising the gates of Hades would not prevail against it in Matthew 16:18, commanding it to baptize the all the nations in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Did not St. Paul in his Epistles refer to us being grafted in to one body, centered around the fellowship of the Lord's Supper, into which we are grafted in through baptism, a royal priesthood and the New Israel?
• Although this is technically an ad hominem, I will male it, simply because I have already shown how the canon of Josephus is divergent from the Masoretic; sometimes it is valid to consider the source; the Pharisees and Sadducees did conspire to put the incarnate God to death; they were a "generation of vipers" whose belief in Jewish nationalism and a warrior-messiah not only led to the crucifixion of our Lord and the martyrdom of St. Stephen the Protomartyr, St. James the Great, and St. James the Just, among other early Christians persecuted by the likes of Saul before his moraculous encounter with our Lord and regeneration as rhe Apostle Paul. Therefore, the writings of Josephus and other Pharisees, and their Rabinnical successors, have no authority on Christians; on the contrary, they are toxic, the product of what amounted to a destructive cult of religious fanatics whose false piety, hupocrisy and zealous nigotry ultimately led to the destruction of the Second Temple and the end of the Jewish religion as described in the Bible in Israel (what remains are the Rabinnical successors to the Pharisees, the Karaites who threw of the Rabinnical yoke in favor of Sola Scriptura, and endure horrible persecution in Israel from the Chief Rabbi, who are the false successors to Second Temple Judaism just as the Samaritans are the false successors to the proto-Jewish Hebrew religion of the Temple that emerged under King Solomon, which disintegrated during the Babylonian Captivity, and geographically isolated Jewish sects like the Beta Israel of Ethiopia and the Bene Israel of India).
• The Dead Sea Scrolls, on the other hand, seem to refute Josephus, and suggest that the idea of a twenty two book New Testament canon was a Pharisaical idea, stemming from the twenty two letters of the Imperial Aramaic alphabet the Jews had adopted to replace the old paleo-Hebrew script (a variant form of which survives among the Samaritans). The Dead Sea Scrolls, which may have been Essene, or may have predated the near-schismatic sectarian divisions of Judaism that were so evident in the ministry of our Lord, but which were initially unknown after Sts. Nehemiah the Prophet and Ezra the Priest restored Judaism. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain 1 Enoch, Tobit and Sirach, and are missing Esther and Nehemiah, among other texts.
• The oldest atteststion of a Hebrew canon, to my knowledge, is found in the book of Sirach, which includes most of the Old Testament, but lacking a few important texts, such as Sirach. This dates to around two centuries before the birth of our Lord.
• The Hellenic Jewish philosopher Philo quotes extensively from the Wisdom of Solomon in addition to other works.
• The Pharisees vigorously debated the canonicity of Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, and even Esther, into the second century AD. There was much polemical exchange; it would seem the Pharisees were committed to the idea that 22 books, written in Hebrew and Aramaic, should be held as canonical, and everything else rejected as apocryphal (with one Pharisee bombastically and with customary hubris and presumption warning that those who read the "Apocrypha" would have no part in the world to come, despite the Pharisees not yet having agreed on what was apocryphal).
• 2 Esdras among other sources mentions the idea, very popular among Jews of the centuries immediately before and after the Earthly ministry of our Lord God Jesus Christ, that there were twenty four books in the canon. Many Jews accepted 1 Enoch, or Sirach, or Judith, or 1 Maccabees, all of which existed in Hebrew.
• This in turn takes us to the ever pious St. Jerome. No one forced him to translate the Apocrypha. St. Jerome himself took the scholarly view that he should translate into Latin and preserve as much material aspossible, even material widely, if not universally, regarded as spurious, like the probably pseudepigraphical Epistle of St. Paul to the Laodiceans (probably a pios forgery, given its brevity, awkwardness, and the fact that it merely restates that which the Apostle had written elsewhere), and 4 Esdras, "Lest they perish entirely." St. Jerome, a devout Nicene Christian and staunch opponent of the Arians, to the extent that he, along with St. Epiphanius of Salamis, was a leading member of a faction that ultimately succeeded in having Origen posthumously anathematized for expressing a belief in the transmigration of souls and articulting conceots St. Jerome believed to be responsible for Arianism, in his preface to Judith, explocitly declares the work to be Scripture, because the 318 Holy Fathers at Nicea said so.
• St. Jerome also explicitly stated that he regarded the so called "additions to Daniel," the stories of Susanna, of Bel and the Drafon, and the Song of the Three Children (Benedicite in the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran liturgical tradition, and Odes VII and VIII in the Eastern Orthodox Matins), as canonical, and that an article he wrote addressing the Jewish objections to them had been slanderously used in an effort to discredit him, most likely by Origenists or Arians.
• There is some credible scholarship to suggest that St. Jerome changed his mind and repented of his dismissal of some of the apocrypha later in life; in some of his later correspondance, he referred to Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon, and Baruch, as sacred scripture.
• Finally, setting aside St. Jerome, whose piety and faithfulness to the Nicene Church in opposition to the Arians, and whose severe asceticism and hermetic life is I believe something you as an Adventist might find quite foreign indeed, let us consider the Beta Israel. The Ethiopian Jews, whose oral history describes them as the descendants of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (the exchange of royal gifts being interpreted as referring to a reproductive sexual act), and who were, owing to their isolation (removed from the bitter feuds between the Sadducees, Pharisees, Hellenic Jews, and Essenes that resulted ultimately in the destruction of the old religion of Judaism and the rise of rabinnical Judaism, which, privately, with its strong emphasis on extra-Binlical sacred texts like the Mishnah and Talmud, I think of as being related to the old Jewish faith in the same way Mormonism is related to Christianity), practiced in Ethiopia and still practice in Israel probabaly the closest surviving relative of the ancient religion of the Hebrews, complete with animal sacrifices, a strict adherence to the purity code and liturgical forms specified in Leveticus and elsewhere, like their Orthodox Christiam counterparts, regard most of the so-called Jewish apocrypha, such as 1 Enoch and the Book of Jubilees, to be entirely canonical. Indeed, many of these texts are best preserved in the ancient Ge'ez manuscripts of the Beta Israeal amd the Orthodox Christians of Ethiopia (Ge'ez is a Semitic language, related to Hebrew and Aramaic, which, together with modern vernacular derivatives like Amharic, is the only indigenous written language in sub-Saharan Africa).
• Finally, there is the fact that most scholars agree St. Jude quotes Enoch. Does he say "It is written?" No. But our Lord Himself on some occasions referred to Old Testament scripture using the same phraseology, e.g. "Have you not heard [...]?" So that proves nothing. I will say I perspnally regard 1 Enoch as being of limited value; its account of the origin of demons seems contrary to the doctrine of the Church, but it is not entirely devoid of spiritual worth.

So based on these compelling facts, especially concerning the lack of any evidence of a unified Jewish canon before the third century AD, at the earliest, the fact that Judaism as it existed after the destruction of Jerusalem was a radically different religion, dominated by the very Pharisees our Lord expended so much effort calling to repentence for their gross hypocrisy and moral bakruptcy, and the fact that Josephus did not in fact present the Masoretic canon, nor did St. Jerome argue for it, himself endorsing throughout his career Judith and the "additions to Daniel (or "subtractions from Daniel" as I privately prefer to think of them), and lastly, the use of nearly all of the Old Testament apocrypha, liturgically and in other respects, by the Beta Israel, who in their religious praxis most closely resemble both the ancient Hebrew religion of King Solomon and its revival as Second Temple Judaism by saints Ezra and Nehemiah, suggest to me that your argument is indeed quite untenable.

I propose that rather than listening to the Pharisees, who our Lord condemns, and who were complicit in his murder, rhe murder of His apostle St. James, amd lf the protomartyr St. Stephen, and of his brother St. James the Just, among others, and whose Rabinnical successors on several pccasions slamdered our Lord, by very offensively suggesting that St. Mary had slept with a Roman soldier, Panthera, and had in effect fabricated the story of the virgin birth, and who accused our Lord of icthyolatry (literally, setting up a "fish-worship") in the Talmud, we should instead listen to the Church, established and ordained by God, and promised His eternal protection as the New Israel, a sacred assembly of all believers, who together form a Royal Priesthood.

Let us say that the Church, however you define it, is the arbiter of canonicity. I do not care id you define the Church as the invisible union of all Christians, the local church according to Baptist and Congregationalist polity, the Roman Catholic Faithful in communion with the bishop of Rome, the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, or the collection churches that have apostolic succession (the Orthodox, Catholics, Assyrians, Anglicans, Old Catholics, Scandinavian Lutherans, and possibly the Moravians, Waldensians and Methodists, or perhaps an even larger list that could include Calvinists and baptists if you believe presbyters and bishops to be the same and that apostolic succession can flow through presbyters), I simply propose that, however you define "the Church," it has the right to determine the canonicth and correct interpretation of the Old Testament, whereas pharisaical Jews like Josephus who rejected the Incarnate Word of God as their Messiah and instead participated in many cases in his unjist crucifixion, and their Rabinnical successors, have no such right.

We would frankly do just as well granting the authority to rule on the canonicity of the Old Testament to the Dalai Lama, or His Majesty the Aga Khan, or the President of the Mormons, as to the Pharisees and their successors. Now, Rabinnical Jews can offer us interesting insight on some of the obscure Hebraic context of these scriptures owing to their knowledge of Hebrew (and this is one reason why Imsupport Hebrew Christianity and desire to convert ad many Jews to Orthodox Christisnity as possible, so we have a faithful and pious contingent of Hebrew-speaking Christians who understsnd modern Jewish culture), and for this reason I also highly recommend The Jewish Annotated New Testament, which makes for fascinating reading.

But no practitioner of Pharisaical or Rabinnical Judaism has any authority over the Church; the last legitimate Priests of the Second Temple perished before the condemnation of our Lord; I strongly believe St. Symeon, whose last wish was fulfilled when he beheld the infant Jesus ("Oh Lord, Let thy servant depart now in peace,") was the last righteous and honourable priest of the Temple and the last legitimate successor of saints Aaron, Zadok and Ezra.

The Judaism of our Lord is an extinct religion; Christianity has replaced it, and those surviving fragments of Judaism that rejected our Lord are to be pitied, loved and prayed for, treated in accordance with the Golden Rjle, but not accorded any authority over the dogma and praxis of the Christian religion, especially not in anything as important as the Old Teatament canon.

 

[Colter]

Luke was a gentile doctor. Less Urantia - more Bible please.



No... we don't.

In fact this is the very flaw in Othaniel Marsh's horse-fraud horse-series still on display in the Smithsonian. It depicts a sequence "that never happened in nature" as if we had "observed those millions of years of horse evolution" and yet it is now lamented by evolutionists world wide as a sequence "that never happened in nature".

How does one 'observe an evolving horse sequence' in nature -- that "NEVER happened in nature"??/

Simple! -- "Story telling".

Less conjecture by evolutionist shamans and more scientific fact please.

Your obsession with horses is your own issue to work out. Evolutionary mutations were sudden, I don't know what line the horse came from.

 

[Colter]

What is more - we have 50,000 generations of bacteria proving that after that much "evolution" they REMAIN - bacteria.

This is not "evolutionist story-telling observations of the now-fraud horse series in the Smithsonian" but actual real-life observations in nature.

50,000 generations of humans would cover more than 2,000,000 years! And stories say that humans evolved --came into being-- supposedly in less than 1 TENTH of that time!! Yet bacteria DO NOT when it comes to REAL OBSERVATIONS in nature - turn into single-celled eukaryotes over TEN TIMES that number of generations!! Rather "observations in nature" SHOW that they REMAIN "bacteria".

As I said before the - best text book you have for the religion of evolutionism - is Urantia-- not the Bible -- even you have to admit that this point is irrefutable.

Answered already, new kinds mutated off the lines that still exist.

 

[BobRyan]

Luke, who never knew Jesus, was a Jewish doctor

Luke was a gentile doctor. Less Urantia - more Bible please.

We observe 550,000,000 years of evolving, mutating life.

No... we don't.

In fact this is the very flaw in Othaniel Marsh's horse-fraud horse-series still on display in the Smithsonian. It depicts a sequence "that never happened in nature" as if we had "observed those millions of years of horse evolution" and yet it is now lamented by evolutionists world wide as a sequence "that never happened in nature".

How does one 'observe an evolving horse sequence' in nature -- that "NEVER happened in nature"??/

Simple! -- "Story telling".

Less conjecture by evolutionist shamans and more scientific fact please.

Your obsession with horses is your own issue to work out. Evolutionary mutations were sudden, I don't know what line the horse came from.

You have glossed over the difference between "observe in nature" vs 'story telling' -- again.

The 550,000,000 years are not "observed" by anyone who lives less than 100 years instead of 550,000,000.

But the 50,000 generations of bacteria in those 12 cultures since 1988 ARE "observed in nature" and refute the wild speculations in the junk science religion of evolutionism.


What is more -- 50,000 generations of humanity would simulate observation over 2 million years of time - and the wild stories of junk-science evolutionism claim that all of human evolution happened in less than 200K years-- one TENTH that time!

The point remains. Glossing over the details is not the compelling solution that you seem to have at first imagined to yourself.

 

[BobRyan]

Answered already, new kinds mutated off the lines that still exist.

all of which "remain bacteria" over that 50,000 generation period of "observations in nature" in "real life". Refuting the wild claims of evolutionism which claimed that over a TENTH of that number of generations - humankind evolved.

The point remains.

 

[BobRyan]

As has been noted by @sculleywr, the Masoretic canon, which most Protestants now use, omits Baruch, whereas Josephus included it.

Just not in real history - as per the real historic documents that we have in reality -- where we find Josephus condemning the inclusion of Baruch and the other Jewish apocryphal texts while admitting to the coercion that was force upon him to act against what reason and Bible scholarship of the literate would demand in that case -

Many who reject Josephus for whatever reason will still admit that "Judaism officially excluded the deuterocanonicals and the additional Greek texts listed here from their Scripture in the Council of Jamnia (c. 70–90 AD)"

But Josephus argues that the Hebrew Bible was closed for 400 years - which means "no Baruch" -- even for Josephus - and no Baruch in the OT canon - no not even for the Catholic's own Jerome.

So when we talk about "all the scriptures," in Luke 24:27 - we are not talking about any Catholics -- we are talking about the Hebrew Canon which is all Christ had -

No one thinks that Catholics wrote the OT. No one thinks that Jews were waiting for Catholics to come along many centuries later and tell them what the OT - Hebrew Bible is.

This is beyond dispute. The church established in Matthew 16 was not the Catholic church and was not telling Jews "you have the wrong Bible" as we see clearly when we read the NT text.

Regardless of which one of those interpretations you subscribe to, the New Testament makes it crystal clear that that Church has said that the Jews have the wrong scripture, the wrong Bible etc.

Matt 22 - Christ said to the Jews that Lev 19:18 and Deut 6:5 are foundational "to ALL the LAW and the PROPHETS" - not "you have the WRONG law and prophets".

This is irrefutable.

Fact-check: St. Jerome did not "reject" the Apocrypha. He expressed a personal opinion

This is NOT a case of two great scholars - both literate in the original language having some "difference in opinion" on some subtle detail. RATHER it is a case of an illiterate bishop trying to coerce a scholar who actually knew what he was reading -- to corrupt the Latin Vulgate... and winning.

Jerome knew the original languages from which he was translating - the RCC rulers at the time where woefully incompetent when it came to the text - and Jerome told them - in writing - in the prologues that the Jewish Apocrypha was NOT in the Canon of scripture.

That some illiterate archbishop had "authority" to force Jerome against his own best judgment - saying more about coercion than it does about the Jewish Apocrypha being canonical.

For you to make such a statement indicates that you simply haven't read the actual correspondance between Jerome and his Roman archbishop (whose successors, starting in the sixth century, were called Papem, or Pope; in the fourth century only the archbishop of Alexandria was called Papem); St. Jerome loved his bishop,

Whether or not he respected the illiterate bishop that coerced him against his own knowledge of the actual languages and the texts - is irrelevant. The point is that he was quick to tell us that the apocrypha does not belong in the canon. He was not illiterate when it came to the original languages - but Catholic leadership was greatly illiterate when it came to Hebrew and Greek at the time of Jerome.

", the Vulgate manuscripts included prologues[11] that clearly identified certain books of the Vulgate Old Testament as apocryphal or non-canonical. In the prologue to the books of Samuel and Kings, which is often called the Prologus Galeatus, Jerome described those books not translated from the Hebrew as apocrypha; he specifically mentions that Wisdom, the book of Jesus son of Sirach, Judith, Tobias, and the Shepherd "are not in the canon". In the prologue to Esdras he mentions 3 and 4 Esdras as being apocrypha. In his prologue to the books of Solomon, he mentioned "the book of Jesus son of Sirach and another pseudepigraphos, which is titled the Wisdom of Solomon". He says of them and Judith, Tobias, and the Books of the Maccabees, that the Church "has not received them among the canonical scriptures".

He mentions the book of Baruch in his prologue to the Jeremias and does not explicitly refer to it as apocryphal, but he does mention that "it is neither read nor held among the Hebrews"

Thus Jerome did not consider himself as writing Canon -but translating -- and stated that some of what was being translated was "Canon" and others were NOT.

When commenting on the Apocryphal books, it (The Glossa ordinaria (pl. glossae ordinariae),) prefixes an introduction to them saying: 'Here begins the book of Tobit which is not in the canon; here begins the book of Judith which is not in the canon' and so forth for Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, and Maccabees etc. These prologues to the Old Testament and Apocryphal books repeated the words of Jerome.

As for Jerome's complaint against those who insisted on the corruption of the Vulgate

"1Jerome to the Bishops in the Lord Cromatius and Heliodorus, health!

I do not cease to wonder at the constancy of your demanding. For you demand that I bring a book written in the 3Chaldean language into Latin writing, indeed the book of Tobias, which the Hebrews exclude from the catalogue of Divine Scriptures, being mindful of those things which they have titled Hagiographa. I have done enough for your desire, yet not by my study. 6For the studies of the Hebrews rebuke us and find fault with us, to translate this for the ears of Latins contrary to their canon. "

The deuterocanon was ultimately retained for two reasons: the Apostles used it (St. Jude even appears to quote 1 Enoch, which is more than most churches are prepared to accept), the early Church used it, and on several occasions, it contains clear and unambiguous Christological prophecy.

No NT author refers to the Apocryphal text as "It is written" or "The Spirit says" or "according to scripture" -

WE Do have Paul quoting Cretan poets in Titus 1.
We DO have Paul quoting pagan authors in Acts 17 -

Acts 17
22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; 26 and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, 27 that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’

But in quoting them he never said "as scripture says" -- "as the Holy Spirit says" -- "and it is written"

Forgive me, but I would like to ask you very respectfully to help us improve the tone and Christian brotherly love of discourse in General Theology by refraining from using polemical and incendiary catchphrases like "just not in real life."

You are forgiven. the 'in real life" statement is a reference "to real statements of Jerome" on the subject. Documented history - that does not gloss over or avoid the detail under discussion.

In real life - the real events of history - real documented statements - must be taken into consideration. I suspect you also would agree with this.

First of all, tying in to my earlier post, I'd like to ask you to voluntarily consider not using typographic emphasis to score your points; bold, red, underscored and italcs fonts have a visually dramatic effect

Much emphasis on style over substance, form over function is a dead give away. If some other font would make my posts more readable - please let me know. But unlike post-grad academic exercises - this is an "open marketplace forum" - where readers are inclined to "skim" rather than study large posts - so I use a style that would cause the point to be apparent EVEN to "skimmers".

So what is so difficult for one person to read as you suggest - is super easy for the "skimmers" who likely would only glance at the post for about 4 seconds.

What is more - red letter edition Bible have been popular -- long before I started posting with red-letter sections. So also Bibles with bold font section titles/headers.

(Different contexts require different styles of text presentation so this has nothing at all to do with how I am "feeling" but rather the most efficient way to reach the largest group of readers and skimmers. )

Now, vis a vis your main point, it is actually refutable, owing to certain simple facts:

• Josephus enumerated a 22 book canon which lacked Ruth and Lamentations; some scholars have suggested he considered these a part of Kings or Judges, but ultimately, his canon is at structural variance with the twenty two book Masoretic canon.

You have quoted "you" well in that case. This is irrefutable. Thank you for your speculation in that regard.

In keeping with that standard -- Here is my guess

Josephus of Jerusalem, the first-century AD historian acknowledged 22 books; the Apocalypse of Ezra (about AD 100) acknowledge 24.

If Josephus included Ruth with Judges and Lamentations with Jeremiah the two agree.
The 24 books of the Hebrew canon are equivalent to the 39 books of the Greek canon (since Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah and the twelve minor prophets counted as only one book each in the Hebrew list.)

When commenting on the Apocryphal books, it (The Glossa ordinaria (pl. glossae ordinariae),) prefixes an introduction to them saying: 'Here begins the book of Tobit which is not in the canon; here begins the book of Judith which is not in the canon' and so forth for Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, and Maccabees etc. These prologues to the Old Testament and Apocryphal books repeated the words of Jerome.

The Glossa ordinaria was the standard kJV-like equivalent even in the RCC for many centuries.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[Colter]

all of which "remain bacteria" over that 50,000 generation period of "observations in nature" in "real life". Refuting the wild claims of evolutionism which claimed that over a TENTH of that number of generations - humankind evolved.

The point remains.

It's not wild to people without a YEC agenda. We have the remains of life that branched off from primitive forms and then the remains of other life that branched off.

Humans come from the Lemur.

 

[Colter]

Luke was a gentile doctor. Less Urantia - more Bible please.



No... we don't.

In fact this is the very flaw in Othaniel Marsh's horse-fraud horse-series still on display in the Smithsonian. It depicts a sequence "that never happened in nature" as if we had "observed those millions of years of horse evolution" and yet it is now lamented by evolutionists world wide as a sequence "that never happened in nature".

How does one 'observe an evolving horse sequence' in nature -- that "NEVER happened in nature"??/

Simple! -- "Story telling".

Less conjecture by evolutionist shamans and more scientific fact please.



You have glossed over the difference between "observe in nature" vs 'story telling' -- again.

The 550,000,000 years are not "observed" by anyone who lives less than 100 years instead of 550,000,000.

But the 50,000 generations of bacteria in those 12 cultures since 1988 ARE "observed in nature" and refute the wild speculations in the junk science religion of evolutionism.


What is more -- 50,000 generations of humanity would simulate observation over 2 million years of time - and the wild stories of junk-science evolutionism claim that all of human evolution happened in less than 200K years-- one TENTH that time!

The point remains. Glossing over the details is not the compelling solution that you seem to have at first imagined to yourself.

We have reasonably reliable dating methods using radioactive decay rates. One YEC believers junk science is the normal mans treasure.

Junk science is the claim that Jews had Chinese children.

 

[BobRyan]

Let us say that the Church, however you define it, is the arbiter of canonicity. ... I simply propose that, however you define "the Church," it has the right to determine the canonicth and correct interpretation of the Old Testament

Fine -- the nation-church started by God at Sinai is the one that was in existence at the time of Christ when in Luke 24;27 Christ was teaching "from ALL the scriptures" according to the text.

The nation-church started by God at Sinai -- owns the "oracles of God" according to Paul in Romans 3:1-5.

Josephus claims that that church canonized the Bible 400 years before Christ.

Jerome also refers to what they did as the "CANON" of scripture - for the OT.

And I define the NT church as the church described in the NT - which is certainly not a church that prays to the dead, or teaches purgatory, or prays to Mary, or invents indulgences, or kills Christians that oppose it, or claims to have priests at the head of each local congregation.

Currently the church "invisible" includes the saved saints of all churches including the RCC. But they do not have authority over the Jewish text - and even the Jews know that, so also did Jerome who translated the Vulgate and so also did the Catholic church's own Glossae Ordinaria affirm the point.

We would frankly do just as well granting the authority to rule on the canonicity of the Old Testament to the Dalai Lama, or His Majesty the Aga Khan, or the President of the Mormons, as to the Catholics who had no authority in creating the text or setting it as fixed canon 400 years before Christ. Certainly Christ did not appeal to some future generation of Catholics in Luke 24;27 when He taught 'from ALL the scriptures'.

To claim that no practitioner of Pharisaical or Rabinnical Judaism has any authority over their own Jewish text - the Hebrew Bible - the OT is pure nonsense. Hopefully you can I can agree on this point.

 

[BobRyan]

We have reasonably reliable dating methods using radioactive decay rates. One YEC believers junk science is the normal mans treasure.

When it comes to blind-faith evolutionism it is true that such junk science is the evolutionist's treasure and is the heart of origins found in Urantia - but not in the Bible.

There are stories and fictions such as "Junk science is the claim that Jews had Chinese children" that reveal that someone has not read the Bible -- that makes no such claims while supposedly attacking the Bible as if it did.

 

[BobRyan]

Answered already, new kinds mutated off the lines that still exist.

all of which "remain bacteria" over that 50,000 generation period of "observations in nature" in "real life". Refuting the wild claims of evolutionism which claimed that over a TENTH of that number of generations - humankind evolved.

The point remains.

It's not wild to people without a YEC agenda. We have the remains of life that branched off from primitive forms and then the remains of other life that branched off.

Humans come from the Lemur.

"Humans come from the Lemur." and the Lemur comes from the amoeba -- sufficiently talented amoeba that evolved into the sufficiently talented Lemur that evolved into Einstein -- over a sufficiently talented period of time filled with improbable just so stories.

yes -- yes -- we know of that religion.

you can find affirmation of it in Urantia - but not the Bible.

===================

The imaginary 550,000,000 years are not "observed" by anyone who lives less than 100 years instead of 550,000,000.

But the 50,000 generations of bacteria in those 12 cultures since 1988 ARE "observed in nature" and refute the wild speculations in the junk science religion of evolutionism.


What is more -- real life "observations in nature" of 50,000 generations of bacteria would reasonably simulate the maximum limit for human generations and would cover in simulation observation over 2 million years of time. hint the wild stories of junk-science evolutionism claim that all of human evolution happened in less than 200K years-- one TENTH that time! So TEN TIMES more time in simulation - in experiment - than is needed to test the human evolution problem.

The point remains. Glossing over the details is not the compelling solution that you seem to have at first imagined -- and hardly the sort of 'substance' one would use as excuse for tossing the Bible under a bus and believing Urantia - instead.

 

[BobRyan]

==========
This thread is not about the dead-end argument over the Hebrew Bible - an argument that goes nowhere because the Hebrew Bible text is not authored by Catholics and no Jew was waiting for Catholics to tell them what it is - and it is the same today as it was in Christ's day -- the same text content as what we find in the Protestant Bible.

The dead-end argument over the NT text also goes nowhere since both Catholics and Protestants have the same text.

That only leaves the dead-end argument over the Jewish Apocrypha which the Jews do not include in their Canon - and which even the Catholic Jerome rejected when translating the text to create the Vulgate Bible.

How many ways are there to circle back to a dead-end??

You cannot turn every thread about the bible - to a dead-end debate over the Jewish Apocrypha - which both the Jews and the RCC's own Jerome REJECTED as part of the Hebrew Bible.

 

[sculleywr]

==========
This thread is not about the dead-end argument over the Hebrew Bible - an argument that goes nowhere because the Hebrew Bible text is not authored by Catholics and no Jew was waiting for Catholics to tell them what it is - and it is the same today as it was in Christ's day -- the same text content as what we find in the Protestant Bible.

The dead-end argument over the NT text also goes nowhere since both Catholics and Protestants have the same text.

That only leaves the dead-end argument over the Jewish Apocrypha which the Jews do not include in their Canon - and which even the Catholic Jerome rejected when translating the text to create the Vulgate Bible.

How many ways are there to circle back to a dead-end??

You cannot turn every thread about the bible - to a dead-end debate over the Jewish Apocrypha - which both the Jews and the RCC's own Jerome REJECTED as part of the Hebrew Bible.

This topic is about whether you believe or bend the Bible, and yes, the topic of the canon came up because the canon is outside of the authority of Scripture. It is not defined by Scripture, but by Tradition.

You claim to use Josephus's Canon, but that is an outright LIE, because you do not have Baruch, which is part of Josephus's Canon.

So let's not play this "Jews made the canon before Christ." That's a hilarious work of fiction, not reality.

 

[Colter]

all of which "remain bacteria" over that 50,000 generation period of "observations in nature" in "real life". Refuting the wild claims of evolutionism which claimed that over a TENTH of that number of generations - humankind evolved.

The point remains.



"Humans come from the Lemur." and the Lemur comes from the amoeba -- sufficiently talented amoeba that evolved into the sufficiently talented Lemur that evolved into Einstein -- over a sufficiently talented period of time filled with improbable just so stories.

yes -- yes -- we know of that religion.

you can find affirmation of it in Urantia - but not the Bible.

===================

The imaginary 550,000,000 years are not "observed" by anyone who lives less than 100 years instead of 550,000,000.

But the 50,000 generations of bacteria in those 12 cultures since 1988 ARE "observed in nature" and refute the wild speculations in the junk science religion of evolutionism.


What is more -- real life "observations in nature" of 50,000 generations of bacteria would reasonably simulate the maximum limit for human generations and would cover in simulation observation over 2 million years of time. hint the wild stories of junk-science evolutionism claim that all of human evolution happened in less than 200K years-- one TENTH that time! So TEN TIMES more time in simulation - in experiment - than is needed to test the human evolution problem.

The point remains. Glossing over the details is not the compelling solution that you seem to have at first imagined -- and hardly the sort of 'substance' one would use as excuse for tossing the Bible under a bus and believing Urantia - instead.

Oh there's no question that the Bible doesn't teach old earth evolution. Other than forgetting to take out the reference to Cain finding a wife in Nod and his fear of people out in the world away from his tribe, the redactors of Moses original writing claim God made everything in one week like 6,000 years ago. Then he killed everyone but Noah and his kids. People who belive the flood story by default belive all cultures came from Niahs surviving children.

Of coarse none of that is true, but it is what the Bible says.

 

[BobRyan]

Answered already, new kinds mutated off the lines that still exist.

all of which "remain bacteria" over that 50,000 generation period of "observations in nature" in "real life". Refuting the wild claims of evolutionism which claimed that over a TENTH of that number of generations - humankind evolved.

The point remains.

It's not wild to people without a YEC agenda. We have the remains of life that branched off from primitive forms and then the remains of other life that branched off.

Humans come from the Lemur.

"Humans come from the Lemur." and the Lemur comes from the amoeba -- sufficiently talented amoeba that evolved into the sufficiently talented Lemur that evolved into Einstein -- over a sufficiently talented period of time filled with improbable just so stories.

yes -- yes -- we know of that religion.

you can find affirmation of it in Urantia - but not the Bible.

Oh there's no question that the Bible doesn't teach old earth evolution.

Now see - just because we differ on some points does not mean we differ on every detail.

Other than forgetting to take out the reference to Cain finding a wife in Nod and his fear of people out in the world away from his tribe, the redactors of Moses original writing claim God made everything in one week like 6,000 years ago.

Pure fiction because you have no version that is older - so the wild fiction that the only version you do have is redacted - is just more 'stories' - more 'you quoting you' not the actual text.

Then he killed everyone but Noah and his kids. People who belive the flood story by default belive all cultures came from Niahs surviving children.

True but they do not believe that Niah (Noah??) was a Jew. Rather from Noah we have all nations of earth - including Jews.

Of coarse much of what you say is not in the Bible , but it is what you say anyway.

now on to blind-faith evolutionism getting debunked by "observations in nature"

===================

The imaginary 550,000,000 years are not "observed" by anyone who lives less than 100 years instead of 550,000,000.

But the 50,000 generations of bacteria in those 12 cultures since 1988 ARE "observed in nature" and refute the wild speculations in the junk science religion of evolutionism.


What is more -- real life "observations in nature" of 50,000 generations of bacteria would reasonably simulate the maximum limit for human generations and would cover in simulation observation over 2 million years of time. hint the wild stories of junk-science evolutionism claim that all of human evolution happened in less than 200K years-- one TENTH that time! So TEN TIMES more time in simulation - in experiment - than is needed to test the human evolution problem.

The point remains. Glossing over the details is not the compelling solution that you seem to have at first imagined -- and hardly the sort of 'substance' one would use as excuse for tossing the Bible under a bus and believing Urantia - instead.

 

[tickingclocker]

Forgive me, but I would like to ask you very respectfully to help us improve the tone and Christian brotherly love of discourse in General Theology....

It's been said that people who must shout to get their point across have already lost their own argument.

 

[Colter]

all of which "remain bacteria" over that 50,000 generation period of "observations in nature" in "real life". Refuting the wild claims of evolutionism which claimed that over a TENTH of that number of generations - humankind evolved.

The point remains.



"Humans come from the Lemur." and the Lemur comes from the amoeba -- sufficiently talented amoeba that evolved into the sufficiently talented Lemur that evolved into Einstein -- over a sufficiently talented period of time filled with improbable just so stories.

yes -- yes -- we know of that religion.

you can find affirmation of it in Urantia - but not the Bible.




Now see - just because we differ on some points does not mean we differ on every detail.




Pure fiction because you have no version that is older - so the wild fiction that the only version you do have is redacted - is just more 'stories' - more 'you quoting you' not the actual text.



True but they do not believe that Niah (Noah??) was a Jew. Rather from Noah we have all nations of earth - including Jews.

Of coarse much of what you say is not in the Bible , but it is what you say anyway.

now on to blind-faith evolutionism getting debunked by "observations in nature"

===================

The imaginary 550,000,000 years are not "observed" by anyone who lives less than 100 years instead of 550,000,000.

But the 50,000 generations of bacteria in those 12 cultures since 1988 ARE "observed in nature" and refute the wild speculations in the junk science religion of evolutionism.


What is more -- real life "observations in nature" of 50,000 generations of bacteria would reasonably simulate the maximum limit for human generations and would cover in simulation observation over 2 million years of time. hint the wild stories of junk-science evolutionism claim that all of human evolution happened in less than 200K years-- one TENTH that time! So TEN TIMES more time in simulation - in experiment - than is needed to test the human evolution problem.

The point remains. Glossing over the details is not the compelling solution that you seem to have at first imagined -- and hardly the sort of 'substance' one would use as excuse for tossing the Bible under a bus and believing Urantia - instead.

We weren't there 550,000,000 years ago but we do have the fossils preserved.

Who was there to quote God in Gen 1 before man was invented? Perhaps the same YEC creationist who had light and days created before the Sun?

 

[BobRyan]

We weren't there 550,000,000 years ago but we do have the fossils preserved.

We have fossils - but then comes the "guesswork" trying to figure out - what came from what and what assumptions to use for dating what we find.

As compared to NO GUESSWORK - observing 50,000 generations of bacteria. No guesswork about the timeline, no guesswork about what comes from what... no guesswork observing the conclusion that at the end of 50,000 generations - 'bacteria are still bacteria"

makes us very hesitant to then 'toss the bible out the window' in favor of junk-science blind-faith -- guesswork.

Oh there's no question that the Bible doesn't teach old earth evolution.

Indeed that is true.