Which Canon is Right? With Michael Kruger

[SavedByGrace3]

There are three facts that will liberate you in your faith.
1. Not everything in the texts of our Bible is scripture. Stuff has been added and altered.
2. Not all scripture is included in our Bible. There is a lot that is not included that should be.
3. Faith comes by revelation and revelation comes by words spoken by the spirit of Christ.

These facts are not for everyone. Some will not be able to accept it. If you cannot, then that is ok! Hold fast to what keeps you in the faith. The Spirit will guide you into all truth. Trust Him! You will get there!

 

[GreekOrthodox]

I am, of course, aware of these things. I read and value the Septuagint myself, but there is a huge difference between what the Alexandrian Septuagint says and what spurious additions to it say.

Sorry, most of the time around here, it is rare that Protestants even know what the LXX is, so that's a knee-jerk reaction on my part!
Thanks!

 

[Gregory Thompson]

Princeton Guy, do you have a good recommendation for an English translation of the LXX? The reason I am asking is that there are verses at the end of Job that Job will be resurrected. This is read on Great Friday in the Orthodox church. The Greek has these additional verses but not the English translation.

That's interesting, the only resurrection reference I remember in Job was an allusion to Jesus. It would be an interesting prophecy because he is mentioned in the Ezekiel chapter that says even if these holy men were here, only they would survive, but everyone else would die. I always wondered why Job was included.

Then again, what do Noah, Daniel, and Job have in common? Perhaps Daniel is the odd one out.

 

[GreekOrthodox]

That's interesting, the only resurrection reference I remember in Job was an allusion to Jesus. It would be an interesting prophecy because he is mentioned in the Ezekiel chapter that says even if these holy men were here, only they would survive, but everyone else would die. I always wondered why Job was included.

Then again, what do Noah, Daniel, and Job have in common? Perhaps Daniel is the odd one out.

Since it shows up only in the LXX version of Job, it may be a late addition to the book itself.

 

[Gregory Thompson]

Since it shows up only in the LXX version of Job, it may be a late addition to the book itself.

I recall hearing once, that the LXX was controversial when it first came out, because the way it was translated was contrary to some of the contemporary interpretations. So perhaps the LXX version of Job noticed something in the original that it translated from.

 

[pescador]

Sorry, most of the time around here, it is rare that Protestants even know what the LXX is, so that's a knee-jerk reaction on my part!
Thanks!

Have you actually polled most Protestants? If not, what is the basis for your statement?

 

[The Liturgist]

And dont forget about the Eastern Orthodox canon and then of course the largest canon, the Ethiopian canon.

Indeed. As I just posted in another thread, I tend to go for the Ethiopian canon, mainly because of St. Jude and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Also, the issue has never been a problem between the Ethiopian and Coptic Orthodox churches, which is remarkable, since when you think about it, the Ethiopian Church was until the 20th century not autocephalous, but merely autonomous, under the omophorion of the Coptic Pope of Alexandria, just like how the Finnish Orthodox Church is an autonomous church under the Omophorion of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, yet the Ethiopian church has a different liturgical rite and a different Old Testament canon. This never caused any friction between the Oriental Orthodox churches, whereas there was at one time, for some reason, a schism between the Armenians and the Syriac Orthodox.

It has also not been an impediment to the extremely close ecumenical relationship between the Syriac Orthodox and Antiochian Orthodox churches, and the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria and the Coptic Orthodox Church.

 

[The Liturgist]

Have you actually polled most Protestants? If not, what is the basis for your statement?

In my experience, most Christians, Protestant or Catholic, outside of the Byzantine Rite churches, and even some Byzantine Rite Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians, are not aware of the Septuagint or that there is a substantial difference, or if they are, think it is merely a matter of whether or not certain “extra books” are included. The numerous textual and versification differences between the Masoretic and Septuagint, and other Old Testament texts such as the Vulgate and the Peshitta, are not well known or well understood.

 

[BBAS 64]

Hmm. And yet the church did include the apocrypha...

Good Day,

That would be a rather current development by the Roman church for their members... Indeed

Seeing I am not a member of that denomination it would both historically and logically irrelevant.


Our analysis has shown that the vast weight of historical evidence falls on the side of excluding the Apocrypha from the category of canonical Scripture. It is interesting to note that the only two Fathers of the early Church who are considered to be true biblical scholars, Jerome and Origen (and who both spent time in the area of Palestine and were therefore familiar with the Hebrew canon), rejected the Apocrypha. And the near unanimous opinion of the Church followed this view. And coupled with this historical evidence is the fact that these writings have serious internal difficulties in that they are characterized by heresies, inconsistencies and historical inaccuracies which invalidate their being given the status of Scripture. New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. I (Washington D.C.: Catholic University, 1967), p. 390.



In Him,

Bill

 

[fhansen]

Seeing I am not a member of that denomination it would both historically and logically irrelevant.

I don't know why it would be irrelevant either historically or logically, especially when it preceded novel Reformed ideas by the chruch in both the east and west.

Our analysis has shown that the vast weight of historical evidence falls on the side of excluding the Apocrypha from the category of canonical Scripture.

"Our"? Is that supposed to carry some kind of weight?

It is interesting to note that the only two Fathers of the early Church who are considered to be true biblical scholars, Jerome and Origen (and who both spent time in the area of Palestine and were therefore familiar with the Hebrew canon), rejected the Apocrypha. And the near unanimous opinion of the Church followed this view.

The unanimous decision of the Church was that they should be included. And that's the only thing that counts.

And coupled with this historical evidence is the fact that these writings have serious internal difficulties in that they are characterized by heresies, inconsistencies and historical inaccuracies which invalidate their being given the status of Scripture.

Heretical according to who? According to some Sola Scriptura adherents who can't even agree on the meaning of Scripture to begin with? And if apparent "inconsistencies and historical inaccuracies" is the criteria, a lot more of Scripture would be excluded.

 

[BBAS 64]

I don't know why it would be irrelevant either historically or logically, especially when it preceded novel Reformed ideas by the chruch in both the east and west.

"Our"? Is that supposed to carry some kind of weight?
The unanimous decision of the Church was that they should be included. And that's the only thing that counts.
Heretical according to who? According to some Sola Scriptura adherents who can't even agree on the meaning of Scripture to begin with? And if apparent "inconsistencies and historical inaccuracies" is the crtieria, a lot more of Scripture would be excluded.

Good Day,

Historically the view of the Church would be contrary to the view that you and your denomination supose.

Jerome's preface to the books of Solomon

As the Church reads the books of Judith and Tobit and Maccabees but does not receive them among the canonical Scriptures, so also it reads Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus for the edification of the people, not for the authoritative confirmation of doctrine."

Jerome

IN Him,

Bill

 

[fhansen]

Good Day,

Historically the view of the Church would be contrary to the view that you and your denomination supose.

Jerome's preface to the books of Solomon

As the Church reads the books of Judith and Tobit and Maccabees but does not receive them among the canonical Scriptures, so also it reads Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus for the edification of the people, not for the authoritative confirmation of doctrine."

Jerome

IN Him,

Bill

I'm not sure if you understand the role of the church in the case of doctrine/dogma, on matters of faith and morals. It doesn't matter what any commentator or theologian says, Catholic or otherwise, whether Augustine, Jerome, or Aquinas et al. The teaching of the church, what she settles on despite any other opinions, is the bottom line. Otherwise doctrine becomes a free for all.

 

[pescador]

I'm not sure if you understand the role of the church in the case of doctrine/dogma, on matters of faith and morals. It doesn't matter what any commentator or theologian says, Catholic or otherwise, whether Augustine, Jerome, or Aquinas et al. The teaching of the church, what she settles on despite any other opinions, is the bottom line. Otherwise doctrine becomes a free for all.

"It doesn't matter what any commentator or theologian says, Catholic or otherwise, whether Augustine, Jerome, or Aquinas et al. The teaching of the church, what she settles on despite any other opinions, is the bottom line. Otherwise doctrine becomes a free for all."

To me this seems self-contradictory. "It doesn't matter what any commentator or theologian says" and "the teaching of the church ... is the bottom line". If the teachings of commentators and theologians is discarded, who determines doctrine?

 

[fhansen]

"It doesn't matter what any commentator or theologian says, Catholic or otherwise, whether Augustine, Jerome, or Aquinas et al. The teaching of the church, what she settles on despite any other opinions, is the bottom line. Otherwise doctrine becomes a free for all."

To me this seems self-contradictory. "It doesn't matter what any commentator or theologian says" and "the teaching of the church ... is the bottom line". If the teachings of commentators and theologians is discarded, who determines doctrine?

They're not discarded; they're considered and may or not be accepted by the church, by the magisterium which is the teaching authority. Similar to how we as individuals decide what we'll accept/believe and what we won't. Otherwise every opinion of every theologian would have to be considered as valid.

 

[The Liturgist]

A number of their books were only found in Ge'ez, the classical Ethiopian language, similar to Latin and Classical Greek today.

I have always wondered about the Ethiopian canon.

The most interesting books included in it which are not found elsewhere are 1 Enoch and Jubilees, however, 1 Enoch does survive in fragments among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and also in Latin and Koine Greek fragments, thus attesting to its authenticity; also St. Jude appears to quote from it in his epistle. I believe Jubilees is likewise attested to a similiar extent, except not quoted as far as I know in the New Testament. There are a few other different books, and the Broader Canon appends the Didascalia, a book of church order similiar to the Didache, to the end of their Bible, theoretically in the New Testament, but the prevailing canon is the Narrow Canon, which only has extra books in the Old Testament and otherwise follows the 27 book Athanasian Canon for the New Testament.

Here is a link to Wikipedia’s article on the Ethiopian canon, which is quite thorough (and which one can readily validate through other sources, like the Blackwell Guide to Eastern Christianity): Orthodox Tewahedo biblical canon - Wikipedia

Now concerning the language, Ge’ez is the liturgical language of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Tewahedo Orthodox Churches; they are one of two Oriental Orthodox churches that only uses a liturgical language, the other being the Armenian Apostolic Church, which exclusively uses Classical Armenian. The Coptic Orthodox Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (also known as the Indian Orthodox Church, despite the fact the Syriac Orthodox Church is also in India and about the same size) and the Malankara Independent Syrian Church (which uses Oriental Orthodox liturgy but is in full communion with the Mar Thoma Syrian Church, which is a member of the Anglican Communion) all make use of Coptic and Syriac as liturgical languages, but since most Syriac Orthodox do not natively speak Syriac, and Coptic is extinct outside of the liturgical context, although both the Syriac Orthodox Church and especially the Coptic Orthodox Church are doing a really good job teaching their youth these languages as second languages, the church services are conducted in a mix of Coptic or Syriac with vernacular languages.

Arabic is ubiquitous in the Coptic and Syriac churches, due to geography, and likewise Malayalam, the Syriac-influenced language spoken in the Malabar Coast / Malankara State region of India, which interestingly enough unlike Hindu is not an Indo-Iranian language (like English, French or Greek), nor is it a Semitic language like Hebrew, Syriac Aramaic, Arabic, Ge’ez, or Amharic (the prevailing vernacular language among the Ethiopians, not to be confused with Aramaic; its basically a descendant of Ge’ez just as Modern English is descended from Middle English and Old English). Coptic by the way is an Afro-Asiatic language.

In the diaspora, the language of the country of migration tends to be heavily used in these churches, and indeed the Syriac and Coptic churches in the US and Europe want to phase out Arabic so that their people there will basically worship in the local vernacular, mainly English, German, Swedish and Dutch, and in the traditional liturgical language (although in the case of the Syriac Orthodox Church, there are still a small number of native Aramaic speakers using dialects similar to Classical Syriac like Turoyo; there are also native Aramaic speakers in the Antiochian Orthodox Church, in a town in Syria that was occupied by Al Qaeda in 2014, which held the nuns at the local convent hostage for a few months and ransacked the churches, although amazingly they were not anywhere near as messed up as ISIS, which was genocidal. Also, speaking of churches persecuted by ISIS, in addition to all the churches I have mentioned in the Middle East and Africa, there is also the Assyrian Church of the East, which worships in Classical Syriac like the Syriac Orthodox, but with a different accent, and where 70% of the laity still speak Aramaic, specifically Assyrian Eastern Neo Aramaic, making them the largest population of Aramaic speakers in the world.

 

[pescador]

They're not discarded; they're considered and may or not be accepted by the church, by the magisterium which is the teaching authority. Similar to how we as individuals decide what we'll accept/believe and what we won't. Otherwise every opinion of every theologian would have to be considered as valid.

If you consider the Catholic magisterium as the teaching authority, fine. I believe that the Holy Spirit is the teaching authority. John 16:13a, "But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth."

Sola scriptura.

 

[The Liturgist]

Princeton Guy, do you have a good recommendation for an English translation of the LXX? The reason I am asking is that there are verses at the end of Job that Job will be resurrected. This is read on Great Friday in the Orthodox church. The Greek has these additional verses but not the English translation.

The four English translations of the LXX I am aware of are the 18th century Lancelot Brenton translation, the translation paired with the NKJV New Testament in the Orthodox Study Bible, the New English Translation of the Septuagint, and the The Holy Orthodox Bible by Peter A. Papoutsis and The Old Testament According to the Seventy by Michael Asser, which are both based in the specific text used in the Church of Greece, which might be different from the Ecumenical Patriarchate text, I am not sure, and the Lexham English Septuagint which is now in its second edition.

I would suggest, if none of these have the verses in question, that you consider translating and appending these verses to the translation of Job in the Lancelot Brenton Septuagint, which, dating from the 18th century, features elegant traditional ecclesiastical English based on formal equivalence translation, and is in the public domain.

 

[fhansen]

If you consider the Catholic magisterium as the teaching authority, fine. I believe that the Holy Spirit is the teaching authority. John 16:13a, "But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth."

Sola scriptura.

Yes and that's what the Catholic Church believes as well. She claims it for herself and you claim it for yourself, even as you may well disagree with others who claim it for themselves.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Our analysis has shown that the vast weight of historical evidence falls on the side of excluding the Apocrypha from the category of canonical Scripture. It is interesting to note that the only two Fathers of the early Church who are considered to be true biblical scholars, Jerome and Origen (and who both spent time in the area of Palestine and were therefore familiar with the Hebrew canon), rejected the Apocrypha. And the near unanimous opinion of the Church followed this view. And coupled with this historical evidence is the fact that these writings have serious internal difficulties in that they are characterized by heresies, inconsistencies and historical inaccuracies which invalidate their being given the status of Scripture. New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. I (Washington D.C.: Catholic University, 1967), p. 390.

Does the New Catholic Encyclopedia actually say this? Seems you have listed the New Catholic Encyclopedia as the source for this paragraph. But it seems beyond odd that it would be the case.

 

[The Liturgist]

How do we know which books belong in the Bible, and which ones don't? Was the process of canonization a later development, or an authentic outgrowth from the first century? Is the Protestant canon or the Roman Catholic canon the right one? Dr. Michael Kruger addresses these questions and more. Dr. Michael J. Kruger serves as the President and Samuel C. Patterson Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the Charlotte campus of Reformed Theological Seminary. He earned his Ph.D. under one of the world’s leading text-critical scholars, Larry W. Hurtado, at the University of Edinburgh.

Great video!

Just to be clear, are you strictly asking about the Old Testament canon or would you like some information on the development of the New Testament canon?

If the latter is the case, the short answer is that the prevailing 27 book New Testament canon was first introduced in the Church of Alexandria in the late 360s under the papacy* of St. Athanasius; this was the first canon that included some books that were at the time controversial, such as the Apocalypse (Revelation), the Pastoral Epistles of St. Paul, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistles of Saints James and Jude, and the second and third epistles of St. John, while excluding other controversial items or relegating them to catechetical use, forbidding them from being read in church, such as the Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache, and the Epistle of Clement, which were and are recognized as Patristic but not Apostolic texts, as well as controversial works that were likely spurious such as 1 Barnabas and the alleged Epistle of St. Paul to the Laodiceans, which is extremely brief and trivial (St. Jerome actually translated that epistle as part of the Vulgate for the sake of completeness even though he doubted its authenticity.

This New Testament canon was subsequently adopted by the Church of Rome, and then by Constantinople and Antioch, and thus slowly became the norm throughout Christendom. It remained unchallenged until Martin Luther ad what one might call severe objections to James, and also reservations about Jude, Hebrews and Revelation, but was unable to convince his colleagues that they should be removed outright, and for this reason put them at the end of the Luther Bible, thus they became known as the Antilegomenna.

St. Athanasius by the way is one of the most important figures of the fourth century Church, in that he was the principle defender of Christianity against the Arian heresy.

*The Patriarch or Archbishop of Alexandria since the 3rd century has been referred to as the Papem, or Pope, and this use of the title predates the use of the title by the Bishop of Rome, who was not styled as Pope until the 6th century. There are currently two Popes of Alexandria, due to the Chalcedonian schism, His Beatitude Theodore II, the Greek Orthodox Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa, and His Holiness Tawadros II, the Coptic Orthodox Pope of Alexandria (amusingly, Tawadros II translates to Theodore II, so both reigning popes of Alexandria have the same title). Unlike the Roman church, which introduced a doctrine of Papal supremacy towards the end of the first millennium and broke communion with the Eastern Orthodox churches starting in 1054 when they refused to accept Papal supremacy, there has never been such a doctrine in Alexandria, rather, the Pope of Alexandria is merely first among equals in the both the Greek Orthodox and the Coptic Orthodox Churches of Alexandria (and formerly the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches, which were granted autocephaly, which is to say, complete independence with their own Patriarch, in the 20th century), and the president of the Holy Synod (the seniormost bishops, or all the bishops, depending on the church, which makes key decisions by consensus). Indeed, once a Coptic Pope dared to begin the celebration of a liturgy in another diocese that is part of the Church of Alexandria before the local bishop arrived, which is a violation of ancient canon law, the local bishop when he arrived removed the Pope’s mitre and crushed it by stomping on it with his foot, and the Coptic Pope accepted the rebuke. That would of course not happen in the Roman Catholic Church.