The Inspiration of Scripture

bekkilyn said:

Try the fourth and fifth centuries AD.

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Nonsense

mark kennedy said:

Nonsense

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• A.D. 367 - Athanasius of Alexandria identifies the complete New Testament canon (27 books) for the first time.
• A.D. 382-384 - Saint Jerome translates the New Testament from original Greek into Latin. This translation becomes part of the Latin Vulgate manuscript.
• A.D. 397 - Third Synod of Carthage approves the New Testament canon (27 books).
• A.D. 390-405 - Saint Jerome translates the Hebrew Bible into Latin and completes the Latin Vulgate manuscript. It includes the 39 Old Testament books, 27 New Testament books, and 14 Apocrypha books.

Trace the Complete History of the Bible

bekkilyn said:

• A.D. 367 - Athanasius of Alexandria identifies the complete New Testament canon (27 books) for the first time.
• A.D. 382-384 - Saint Jerome translates the New Testament from original Greek into Latin. This translation becomes part of the Latin Vulgate manuscript.
• A.D. 397 - Third Synod of Carthage approves the New Testament canon (27 books).
• A.D. 390-405 - Saint Jerome translates the Hebrew Bible into Latin and completes the Latin Vulgate manuscript. It includes the 39 Old Testament books, 27 New Testament books, and 14 Apocrypha books.

Trace the Complete History of the Bible

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You nailed them on the head. I hesitated to see if the canon was defined before or after the split of the RCC.

There's alot to unpack here, so I'll take it in smaller bits.

mark kennedy said:

I've seen arguments for the early date of the Revelation, that I found compelling. One of the things that make this most appealing, is between 60 and 70 AD they started losing Apostles. You don't have to be a Biblical scholar to realize that the authority of the Scriptures is based on a direct Apostolic witness or one of their close associates.

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Agree. no argument. I'm open to some flexibility on the dates, I would see James as the first and it was likley the late 50s and John's epistles would have been last, likely post AD 70 - but I'm no expert and it's not an argument that I can make confidently one way or the other. I tend to stick with the traditional dating as presented by the Church.

While I find elements of that difficult to defend, even in my own mind, it makes no sense to me that it was compiled some 200 years later.

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Here's where the agreement or not, could be a matter of semantics. "Compiled", to me, suggests put together as a single volume. I don't think that was the case. If you mean completed, as in, everything was written, then again it's not something I would quibble.

That goes against everything we know about church tradition and I've never liked the fact that secular sources like to ignore tradition with regards to authorship and date and assert moving the timeline without substantive reason.

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Again, I defer to the traditional church dating by default.

Let me ask you this just for the sake of conversation. Let's say a 1st century Orthodox congregation gets a letter from Paul, Ephesians, Colosians...it doesn't really matter. What do you think their response would be? Obviously they are going to want to read it to the church regularly, but don't you think they would take careful steps to preserve it.

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Absolutely, yes. I would agree. otoh, this does not mean that Ephesus had the same set that was in Alexandria, or the same as Rome.
I agree wholeheartedly that the Church knew its own Tradition*/documents. However, it could have been the 3rd or 4th century before those documents were compiled (using that word) as a unit. Even there, the Orthodox Church has, and still, compiles this differently from other congregations. We have the Gospel Book, which contains Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as a single volume. This Book resides in the Alter of the Church, it is this book that is processed and venerated. The epistles are kept in a separate volume. Most of the time it is outside the alter, with the Reader/Cantor, they are read independently of one another. A typical service will have an epistle reading and a separate Gospel reading.

Not trying to get out of the dating scheme I mentioned, just don't want to chase that one through the weeds until a few basics are established.

Grace and peace,
Mark

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I don't want to run the rabbits of document dating either. In Orthodoxy, the dates are not important to doctrine afaik. Even Orthodox eschatology is fine with an early OR late dating of the Apocalypse, it doesn't matter.

*Tradition in the Orthodox Church INCLUDES the Old and New Testament scriptures. They are the center piece and most authoritative element within the Church's Tradition. They are not separate, nor at odds with one another.

FireDragon76 said:

It's alot more interesting than the Lord's Supper thread, where it just became a rehash of Marburg 1529 with people becoming more and more entrenched. In comparison, discussing the Scriptures is alot less prone to becoming nothing but a flaming dumpster. Perhaps beacuse it reveals less about people religious inclinations (which are often deeply personal) and more about their philosophical assumptions.

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I wonder if "the Bible" has become for many Christians the same as "the Temple" was for Israelites/Jews back in the day when many believed it was *the* place where God resided? And yes, though scripture does say that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, many don't seem to really believe in their inner being that that's the case.

bekkilyn said:

I wonder if "the Bible" has become for many Christians the same as "the Temple" was for Israelites/Jews back in the day when many believed it was *the* place where God resided? And yes, though scripture does say that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, many don't seem to really believe in their inner being that that's the case.

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Yes, I think that's the case, especially among non-Wesleyans or non-Pentecostal/Charismatic Christians.

As a Lutheran, I see myself as closer to that community, but I can appreciate what you are saying, at least. The Bible is very important for us, but as Pastor says, it's something that isn't read as individualistically or in isolation. Which is why I think we avoided the Fundamentalist/Modernist controversy for so long, because that controversy was so dominated by opinions and personalities. It really was not until the late 1960's it was an issue, and then it was really a proxy for cultural and political conservatives who wanted to launch a coup in Lutheran churches (so what you thought of Noah's Ark became a kind of symbol for what you thought about Vietnam, hippies and rock and roll).

bekkilyn said:

I wonder if "the Bible" has become for many Christians the same as "the Temple" was for Israelites/Jews back in the day when many believed it was *the* place where God resided?

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I know that some folks do seem to venerate the bible as if it was a god.

Ken Rank said:

Thus, the point stands.... nobody was quoting Galatians, or Corinthians, or any other NT "letter" prior to 100AD

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There’s a reason for that. They were actually reading the originals.

James Murphy said:

That's not Sola Scriptura: That's Solo Scriptura.

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I only use history if it only happens to align with the Bible. For history was written by men and they are not documents inspired by God. What I notice is that men today seem to almost deify certain men of the past. They even name themselves after these followers instead of saying they are simply followers of Jesus Christ. For 1 Corinthians 3 condemns the idea that we can say we are of a particular religious fellow brother.


So a person should not call themselves after a particular person. It is unbiblical.
This is why church traditions are a problem because they usually end up pointing to men and glorifying them instead of glorifying and following God's Word as one's true authority.

A Realist said:

I know that some folks do seem to venerate the bible as if it was a god.

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Though I still don't agree with them, I do have a better understand of where they are coming from after this thread though. I didn't realize that there were a number of Christians that believed that the ONLY way God can speak to us (and perhaps even exist for us) is in the Bible. It doesn't even make sense to me, but there it is.

bekkilyn said:

I didn't realize that there were a number of Christians that believed that the ONLY way God can speak to us (and perhaps even exist for us) is in the Bible.

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Must've not been a whole heck of a lot of Christians before the printing press.

redleghunter said:

There’s a reason for that. They were actually reading the originals.

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This is circular. The whole point is there were not copies made of the individual letters sent to specific towns with specific issues. Copies weren't made until later.... thus in the first century, the NT "letters" were UNKNOWN TO by most Christians UNLESS they lived in one of those towns that got a letter. Thus and again... when the NT references the word of God in written form, it is referencing the OT whether you like that or not.

Mountainmike said:

It seems you need to study paradosis and Christian history, also the history of the canon.

What you say is a creative invention that bares little resemblance to actual history. But then you could not be a non denom and still be compatible with the early church that Jesus founded because of the reliance of paradosis on apostolic succession, and their authority, as any number of church father writings prove. Who is your succession bishop?

I can only suggest you study such as ignatius and iraneus, see how church teaching was actually passed. Your concept of tradition is hopelessly flawed. Also the power to bind and loose, the authority by which heresies and canons were rejected, and the authority by which the creed and true canon was selected from many other competing writings,

You also have disregard for the power of our Lord , in believing he allowed his church to go off the rails when he said his church would be one, and the gates would not prevail. So you either think him not omnipotent or a breaker of promises.so I urge you to study those whose doctrine has changed little in 2000 yerars, complete with apostolic succession, appointed bishops , only they have power to perform or delegate valid sacraments, just as it was in the first generations, e.g. see ignatius to smyrneans, disciple of john, who clearly knew what John 6 meant - he wrote it!

All those who say apostasy are obliged to choose a date. Many pick Constantine, trouble is as study shows doctrine did not change one end of his reign to the other as Contemporary writings prove. E.g. Anasthasius. The apostasy that never was is an interesting book. Read it.


But I come back to where I started: the phrase " what the bible says" is meaningless without tradition and authority to give correct interpretation, without which all you have is words. So the title of the thread is a non sequitur.

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If a person was clever, and an expert, they could create a fake historical document of the past and insert it into history and make it seem like it was a lost document of history that colors and favors their own personal religious agenda. But can such a document prove to be on par with Scripture in being divine? Surely not. That's the point you will never understand. For you, history, and church tradition is the interpretative lens of understanding Scripture and it's all you have ever known. You are forced into a wrong mold of interpretation of the Scriptures based on what man made documents say. If that floats your boat, then go right ahead and do that. But please know it is not the truth. It is merely something you want to be true (When it is not true). There are no popes, cardinals, prayers to Mary, bowing down to statues, calling men father (When Jesus forbids that), and the forbidding of marriage and eating neats (When the bible condemns this), etc. mentioned in the Bible. So if they are not mentioned in the Bible, they were added later by somebody else and not the apostles.

For men have taken one word in the Bible "traditions" and made an entire religion out of it. Sorry, that does not work for me. A person can take any word out of context and make up stuff based off that one word wrongfully in the Bible. That would not make it true. If we want to be faithful to the text of the Bible, we have to look to the context and not to some outside tradition, historical document, etc.

redleghunter said:

There are examples. We call it the mainstream media.

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I am glad I never looked to the news too much growing up. I am only notified by my phone of certain news events via my Iphone now, and by tailored news (without my suggesting it) via Google Chrome on my phone. But I prefer to look at ChristianHeadlines.com (When it comes to news). I still prefer the Bible as my ultimate guidance in life. News merely informs me to some degree (and mostly only helpful in regards to dangerous weather alerts), but the Bible transforms my life the more I read and study it. The Bible is God's eternal words that will always remain precious to me.

Tree of Life said:

It would be silly and superstitious to think that God lived in a particular book. It would be inappropriate to carry that book around on a palanquin and to bow down before that book. It would be silly to burn incense to that book or think that it would be sinful to open up and peek into the book (like the arc of the covenant). This would be an inappropriate form of Bible worship - worshipping the physical object of Scripture just like Catholics worship the eucharistic bread and wine.

But since the content of Scripture is the very words of God, it is appropriate to hear the Bible just as we would hear God. The words of the Bible are the very words of God and we should attend to them as such. God does not speak so clearly and authoritatively in any other place - not through our private thoughts, through other books or movies, or even through creation. To say that the words of Scripture are anything less than the words of God is to dishonor God who has inspired Scripture and continues to speak through Scripture.

I wonder what you have in mind when you think that people who believe this have an inappropriately high view of Scripture. Could you give an example of "bibliolatry" that actually describes what people like me do?

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They didn't bow down to the Temple or to the Ark (at the times before the Tabernacle/Temple and before it was lost) but God's presence within the Temple. They worshiped the presence residing within the Temple but many didn't truly believe that he also resided outside of the Temple. That's the similarity.

Then when the Temple was destroyed, many felt like God had abandoned them because they had grown so dependent on it and had made it the focus of their entire culture, so I have to wonder what might happen to many today if all the Bibles were to completely vanish tomorrow. Would they undergo the same experience as the Israelites/Jews? I can't help but think that answer would be, "yes".

Tree of Life said:

The Scriptures are the only way that we may infallibly hear from God. Can God inspire us in other ways? Can he put desires in our hearts or thoughts in our minds? Sure. But can we ever be sure that our own thoughts or desires are God's authoritative words to us? Certainly not. Where can we be absolutely sure that we are hearing from God? In the Bible alone.

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I'm sure that's what you've been taught, but it doesn't make sense unless one also believes God exists only in the Bible and is incapable of speaking anywhere else and the Spirit is squelched and silenced within a person. Also, there are many who "hear" God in the Bible and yet have absolutely no agreement with one another. Doesn't sound very infallible at all.