How we got the Bible
Hey dse try http://www.anabaptists.org/history/howwegot.html
posted by Paul Reid at 10:21 PM
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
About This Blog
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Paul Reid is Senior Pastor of Christian Fellowship Church, Belfast.
The Aim of this Blog is to give people a chance to share their views on life in a non judgmental, non religious forum with a view to integrating faith grace and love into real life situations. We will look at all aspects of life with no no-go areas!
74 Comments:
Paul thank you for the link, and for the read. I actually thought it was quite funny (Smiley Face).
The previous blog said ’the Internet and blogging enable anyone to express their views which are accepted as gospel truth uncritically’. The link you sent me to allowed ‘anyone (William Evans et al) to express their views which are accepted as gospel truth uncritically’ I thought the documents skirted quite a number of issues and were light on the historical development of the canon of scripture. What do you think?
I also thought the documents were written to make points rather than look at the arguments for and against the existing canon of scripture. Wiki is at least contested and negotiates critically on items posted. It is, I think, a good example of critical internet blogging. Unfortunately the link referred to is a good example of uncritical internet blogging ‘enabling anyone to express their views which are accepted as gospel truth uncritically’. Hope I’ve made the point with a smile.
Even the opening line of the link; ‘This is a collection of selected "pieces" from a variety of books which give us somewhat of a glimpse of how the Bible came into its present form of 66 accepted books.’
Clearly the 66 ‘accepted’ books refer to the Protestant Bible, not the Roman Catholic Bible with all those Apocryphal books in it. Up until the reformation ~ 1517AD the Catholic Bible was accepted as the trustworthy word of God. So, from the time of Jesus, for over 1 ½ thousand years the Biblical word of God was different to what it is for Protestants today.
Would you have a difficulty in accepting that the canon of scripture is disputed by many Christians?
As to trustworthy-ness of the Canon of scripture, would it be reasonable to assume that the Catholic arguments for the Catholic Canon of scripture (~1500 years, ~1.2bn people) is at least viable when set alongside the Protestant Canon of scripture (~500 years).
So when we claim to have a document (The Bible) which we can confidently stand over as canonically undisputed, I’m afraid that argument isn’t sound.
The usual argument is to quote – ‘all scripture is inspired . . .’, which is a challenge when we come to define ‘scripture’. Interestingly the Quran also self claims divine inspiration, which as we know we dispute.
However, what do you mean by ‘trustworthy’ when you refer to the Bible?
Finally, the post-modernist debate around scripture rages on this blog
http://julieunplugged.blogspot.com/
It’s quite interesting.
Enjoy
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3:03 PM
I wonder if I read a document on philosophy and life, no a book, no a collection of books written by several people over a number of centuries that never met would I expect them to say the same thing? Would I expect them to have the same answers to life and what is worth living for and what is not? I might be intrigued if I found such a collection of books with a common un-contridictory thread running through them. Lets say then that these books also made predictions, not one or two but dozens, about the future and about a person that would change peoples lives all over the world. If then these came true I would be particularly impressed. But how would I know they had come true? Would one witness be enough? Perhaps not as I am a sceptical person by nature. I would want more then that. I would want several witnesses to say they had seen and experienced the events come true. True eye witnesses present at the time. I would require witnesses greater than any others in history. More so than we have say to prove the existence of such undisputed people as Plato or Socrates. If then this collection of books inspired people to live and die for what it proclaimed, if it had the power to change lives, if it had never been proved wrong, unbelieved perhaps but nevertheless never demonstrated conclusively to be false, what would I think? I would think it was trustworthy, more trustworthy than anything else I had read. Would I then let the presence of other books, mostly supporting my books but not part of them, reduce the level of trust I had in my copies? Would you?
11:17 PM
Thanks for the response AME. Let’s leave aside the Canon of the bible and assume that we have agreed that the Protestant Canon of scripture is the core and look firstly to its consistency towards pointing towards a person who changes peoples’ lives. I understand that’s the first part of your debate. Let’s split this into the 46 Books of the Old Testament primarily sourced from the Tanakh (with some variations), and the others from the New Testament. Interestingly the people who preserved the Old Testament for thousands of years would disagree with you that their books point towards Jesus. Those who have considered the Old Testament the word of God for the longest period would disagree with your conclusion. For Jews, Jesus is not the Messiah?
In terms of changing peoples’ lives – for sure. Just to be topical, the Bible was interpreted in a way that slavery was approved by God. Certainly changed peoples’ lives. I’m just pointing out that according to our different interpretations of scripture we behave in different ways. It’s easy to assume that when we say it changes peoples’ lives, we mean in a good way – which of course it has. There are estimated ~ 27m people who were slaves – not inconsiderable.
In terms of accuracy of description of the Bible, let’s pick one example – a really tough one. The creation in seven (actual seven twenty four hour periods) days? A debate for another blog.
Can we read your next argument in a Muslim context and assume that we’re now talking about the Quran – “If then this collection of books inspired people to live and die for what it proclaimed, if it had the power to change lives, if it had never been proved wrong, unbelieved perhaps but nevertheless never demonstrated conclusively to be false, what would I think?” Perhaps I would think that I should become a Muslim?
Let’s look at the eye-witness requirement. We know that Paul was not an eye-witness, because he tells us he wasn’t. Let’s start at Matthew. Secular scholarship generally agrees that Matthew was written by an anonymous non-eyewitness to Jesus' ministry. The author apparently used the Gospel of Mark as one source and the hypothetical Q document as another, possibly writing in Antioch, c 80-85. However, in balance in 1911 the Roman Catholic Church confirmed that they believed Matthew was written by Matthew the Evangelist. So Matthew may or may not have been written by an eye witness.
As for the Gospel of Mark - quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea:
“This, too, the presbyter used to say. ‘Mark, who had been Peter's interpreter, wrote down carefully, but not in order, all that he remembered of the Lord’s sayings and doings. For he had not heard the Lord or been one of his followers, but later, as I said, one of Peter’s. Peter used to adapt his teachings to the occasion, without making a systematic arrangement of the Lord’s sayings, so that Mark was quite justified in writing down some of the things as he remembered them. For he had one purpose only – to leave out nothing that he had heard, and to make no misstatement about it.”
Irenaeus confirmed this tradition, as did Origen, Tertullian, and others. Clement of Alexandria, writing at the end of the 2nd century, reported an ancient tradition that Mark was urged by those who had heard Peter's speeches in Rome to write what the apostle had said.
So Mark was not an eye-witness, but he wrote what Peter had said.
Early tradition, witnessed by the Muratorian Canon, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origin, and Tertullian, held that the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles were both written by Luke, a companion of Paul. Luke was not an eye-witness.
John however was an eye witness! The author of the fourth Gospel never identifies himself. He is generally assumed to be the "beloved disciple" repeatedly referred to in the work. The author of this Gospel is also sometimes presumed to be the author of 1 John, and rarely also 2 John and 3 John, though the 4th century Council of Rome decreed that the author of 1 John and that of 2 and 3 John should be regarded as distinct individuals, and modern textual criticism often agrees. However, the Gospel of John is generally regarded as an eye-witness account. The books of Peter have also some debate over their authorship – but let’s be kind and assume they were written by Peter.
So – the majority of the New Testament was not written by eye-witnesses to these events.
So, if I had a document written over thousands of years, and the people who wrote that document (and studied it over thousands of years) disagreed with your conclusion. If the other documents were mostly not eye witness accounts, but hearsay (in legal jargon), if the claim was that the book changed lives (like the Quran) – what then shall we say of this book. Would you trust your interpretation of it?
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