The devil's in the details.
As ever, the details are largely unexplainable within a YEC context (not that this particular discussion is directly related to YECism). It's important that they be discussed.
O.K. I'll play, but I hope some fruit will be born out.
That said, from what I have read, the Tanakh =/= the Old Testament. That is to say, the Tanakh =/= the traditional Old Testament of the Catholic and Orthodox churches (which included six extra deuterocanonical books). The Protestant Old Testament you are familiar with and equate with the Tanakh was not assembled until the 16th century (for obvious reasons).
O.K. I did as you suggested and looked up the Old Testament in
Wikipedia and the definition they give is pretty much the one I've been using, here's an excerpt:
The term
Old Testament refers to all versions and translations of the
Hebrew Bible and is the first major part of the Bible used by
Christians. It is usually divided by Judaism into the categories of: law Torah, prophecy Neviim, and writings Kthuvim (history, poetry, wisdom books), as denoted by the acronym
Tanakh.
The Protestant Old Testament is for the most part identical with the Jewish
Tanakh. The differences between the Tanakh and the Protestant Old Testament are minor, dealing only with the arrangement and number of the books. For example, while the Tanakh considers 1 Kings and 2 Kings to be one book, the Protestant Old Testament considers them to be two books. Similarly Ezra and Nehemiah are considered to be one book by the Tanakh.
From this I can glean that the Hebrew Bible and the Protestant Old Testament are for all practical purposes the same. The question or doubt comes into play when one looks at the Catholic Old Testament which includes the Apocrypha. I've read where guys like Origin and Jerome denied or rejected the canonicity of it, but other fathers of the Catholic faith obviously didn't.
I know I'm probably too simplistic in my thinking and am not anywhere near as deep as you'd like me to be. Call me a simple man and I won't be offended, as a matter of fact I would take that as a compliment. Given that then, when Paul says 'all Scripture' I'm inclined to believe he means everything the reader knows to be Scripture. If not, then God made a big mistake and we all know He doesn't make those. The Bible I own, with 66 books in it, is all I know to be Scripture. It is all every theologian and pastor I've ever listened to or read has claimed it to be. Now I understand you may have questions about the authenticity of that and as the learned scholar you appear to be that's understandable. As the ignorant and/or naive person I apparently am, you would find it understandable that I don't have questions about that.
The question I'm asking is: could Paul not also have considered these other texts as "Scripture"? Or for that matter, does "Scripture" = "Bible"? If not, why not?
I don't know the answer to that question. Paul never says and unless someone were to provide some conclusive proof otherwise, I'm led to believe he never did. The book in my hand certainly doesn't address that issue. Your answer I'm sure is quite different.
My feeling is this is exactly why this discussion is going nowhere. You seem uninterested in examining the inconsistencies with you assumptions, and as such, we are not able to move past them. It is exceedingly difficult to reason with unmoving faith!
I'm truly not seeing any inconsistencies. I believe, by faith, that the 66 books we've had for well over a thousand years are the real deal and that they haven't been in any way appreciably added to or subtracted from. If the inconsistency stems from the fact that I can't seem to allow my present Bible to be considered incomplete, diluted, poisoned, or errant, then yes I'm uninterested in examining the 'evidence.' Call me jaded or whatever you like but when presented with such 'evidence' its purpose is always to minimize, water down, or trivialize God's Word. Yes, I'm very sensitive to that and don't easily entertain discussions that promote that. If someone were to provide some truly convincing evidence instead of conjecture and speculation that the pure Scripture, as originally written, isn't inerrant and complete then I'm listening, but that has yet to be presented. So, yes it is an unmoving faith, as true faith should be.
I don't consider myself to be "well-versed" on the topic at all. But from the little reading that I have done, it seems that the deuterocanon was indeed present in the early Christian Bible. Wiki is always a good place to start. Can anyone else more knowledgable on the subject please confirm?
Well you gave me the impression that you were.
Again... If Paul and his readers had no concept of an assembled "New Testament", then why should we assume they understood "all Scripture" as including the NT? The NT was meaningless to them at the time. "All Scripture" had to mean something else entirely to those early Christians. The question is what?
How about, because we've considered the New Testament to be Scripture for a long, long time and that this question has been repeatedly addressed for that entire time and yet the same answer remains.
See the question isn't really what did all Scripture mean to the early Christians, but more importantly what does it mean to us. If you're going to base your decision on what it meant to them, then I think it's safe to say by all appearances you don't believe the New Testament to be Scripture. This would be similar to Jews who lived during Jesus' time not believing Jeremiah or Daniel to be a valid book of the Hebrew Bible and not being valid for study because it was written after Joshua 1:8. Jeremiah or Daniel were not a part of the Scriptures then and therefore are questionable as Scripture.
The question I am stressing isn't whether the early churches believed Scripture to include the NT. It is whether they considered apocrypha/deuterocanon as "Scripture".
Maybe not, but that's the door you've opened up.
Which again brings up the question as to how Paul et al. understood those words "all Scripture" if they did not yet have a concept of the NT, or indeed, "The Bible".
That same question could be applied to Joshua, but I don't know anyone who does. Do you?
The Dead Sea Scrolls have indeed shown parts of our Old Testament Bibles to be accurate.
This gives the false impression that that are many parts that were inaccurate. Not having done a recent study on this, but wouldn't it be far more accurate to say that the vast majority of our Old Testament has been found to be accurate?
It certainly does not align with the KJV, however. A combination of text criticism and new archaeological finds have found that throughout the years, various editors have added their own bits to the Bible that had to be subsequently deleted. See for yourself. Look up John 5:4, Acts 8:37, 1 John 5:7, or Mark 16:9-20. The verses were once there; now they are not. The Bible has changed (and will likely continue to do so).
Yes, this is true, but again the impression one gets is that today's Bible is quite a bit different than that of which say Luther studied. That just isn't true.
Having said all that, we contine to cycle back to the same questions, so I don't know how fruitful this continued discussion will be. Regardless, I've learned something. Thanks for your patience.
I too have learned something, tires are a lot harder to put on than I ever imagined.
This has most certainly been enlightening.