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Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2005 5:52 pm
The idea that the Holy Bible as currently compiled is complete and final within itself is not Scripturally or Historically supported in the slightest, quite the contrary actually.
***Is the Holy Bible complete?***
(The following information is posted from various online sources compiled together):
[Begin Quotes]
Here is a list of the 'lost books' mentioned *within* the Holy Bible:
The book of the covenant, through which Moses instructed Israel (Exodus 24:7).
The book of the wars of the Lord (Numbers 21:14).
The book of Jasher (Joshua 10:13; 2 Samuel 1:1 cool .
The book of the manner of the kingdom (1 Samuel 10:25).
Possible books containing three thousand proverbs, a thousand and five songs, a treatise on natural history by Solomon (1 Kings 4:32,33).
The acts or annals of Solomon (1 Kings 11:41).
The book of Nathan the prophet (1 Chronicles 29:29).
The book of Gad the Seer (1 Chronicles 29:29).
The book of Nathan the prophet (1 Chronicles 29:29; 2 Chronicles 9:29).
The prophecy of Ahijah, the Shilonite (2 Chronicles 9:29).
The visions of Iddo the Seer (2 Chronicles 9:29).
The book of Shemaiah the prophet (2 Chronicles 12:15).
The story of the prophet Iddo (2 Chronicles 13:22).
The book of Jehu (2 Chronicles 20:34).
The Acts of Uzziah, by Isaiah, the son of Amoz (2 Chronicles 26:22)
Sayings of the Seers (2 Chronicles 33:19)
The New Testament also refers to the Book of Enoch in Jude 14; a missing epistle of Paul to the Ephesians (Eph. 3:3); a missing Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 5:9); and a missing Epistle to the Colossians, written from Laodicea (Col. 4:16). These writings were important enough to quote or refer to in subsequent writings preserved now as scripture. In addition, Matthew 2:23 cites a now fulfilled prophecy from "the prophets" that Christ would be a Nazarene (someone from Nazareth), but this prophecy is not found anywhere in any existing Old Testament canon. Matthew was citing scripture which is missing now. Another example of missing scripture is the text containing the words of Christ that Paul quotes in Acts 20:35: "remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive." This saying of Christ appears in none of the Gospels. Here Paul was writing to foreign converts who were not around to hear Christ preach, so how were they to "remember" those words? Paul obviously must have been citing it from a sacred writing that they had. We no longer have that writing. Something is missing.
As one of many passages implying incompleteness, consider John 21:25, which states:
"And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen."
John understood that there could have been many other books written to describe all the words and deeds of Christ. What he and others offered was limited to a minute fraction of what could have been written. It is a purely human assumption that all of the truly important material has been recorded and preserved, and an even more ridiculous assumption that we have no need for anything more.
Saint Luke wrote that there were *many* others writing related accounts, saying "Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us . . . it seemeth good to me also . . . to write to you an orderly account." (Luke 1:1,3).
Without question, the Bible alone shows that there are sacred writings that early Christians and Jews respected as scripture but which we no longer have. I could also add to that the many books such as the Shepherd of Hermas and The Book of Enoch which were respected by many early Christians as scripture but which are no longer included in modern canons.
The one direct quote of 1 Enoch in the New Testament is by Jude, a brother of Jesus Christ. The quote in (Jude 14-15) & (1 Enoch 1:9) is as follows:
"And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, 'Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches, which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.'" (Jude 1:14-15, quoting 1 Enoch 1:9)
While that is the only referenced quotation in the Bible, there are many indirect references which involve striking similarities. The scholar and translator R.H. Charles declared, "The influence of 1 Enoch on the New Testament has been greater than that of all the other apocryphal and pseudepigraphical books taken together." Another expert noted that "Its influence is apparent in no less than 128 places in the New Testament."
Those arguing for an inerrant Bible will say that whatever books we now have must be the ones God intended for us to have, and thus there can be no missing books worthy of being scripture or else He would have put the in the text. This is not a Biblical doctrine, to be sure (chapter and verse, anyone?). And it again raises the issue of which Bible God has chosen to personally compile (not to mention translate). Would that be the Bible that Timothy had as a child (some form of the Septuagint), or the Vulgate, or the Protestant Bible? And would that be with or without the disputed Johannine Comma (1 John 5:7, cool ? Perhaps would that include the Book of Enoch that Jude and other early Christians saw as scripture? Perhaps it would include the Pastor of Hermas, viewed as scripture by other early Christians? Or did God not decide to offer a complete Bible until about 393 A.D.+, when the subset of writings now found in modern Bibles was canonized for the first time?
***Early Christian Canons***
The Codex Sinaiticus, which is the oldest New Testament collection available, a fourth century manuscript found in a monastery on Mount Sinai, contains two writings which are excluded in the modern New Testament, the Shepherd of Hermas and Barnabas. And yet even in the other books of that Codex, there appears to be a tendency to omit passages, leading to some shorter versions of Bible verses than we have in the King James text (J. M. Ross, "Some Unnoticed Points in the Text of the New Testament," Novum Testamentum Vol. 25, 1983, pp. 59-60).
In A.D. 200, a Christian in Rome wrote a list of books considered to be canonical. This list is now known as the Muratorian Canon, named after the man who discovered it in Milan. The list does not include Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, or 2 Peter, and includes only two of the letters of John. The canonical works did include the Apocalypse of Peter and the Wisdom of Solomon.
The earliest Christians had no New Testament canon. As the Protestant scholar David F. Payne explains:
"Their Bible, and that of the Jews to this day, consisted of the Old Testament; this was the Canon of Holy Writ accepted by Jesus Himself, and referred to simply as 'the scriptures' throughout the New Testament writings. It was not until A.D. 393 that a church council first listed the 27 New Testament books now universally recognized. There was thus a period of about 350 years during which the New Testament Canon was in process of being formed." (David F. Payne, "The Text and Canon of the New Testament," in The International Bible Commentary, ed. by F.F. Bruce, Zondervan Publ. House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986, p. 1005.)
Excellent information on the origins of the Bible was summarized by Father A. James Bernstein in "Which Came First: The Church or the New Testament," The Christian Activist, Vol. 9, Fall/Winter 1996, p. 1,4-7. Father Bernstein discusses his discoveries as he explored Biblical origins, many of which surprised him and challenged his old views about scripture. For example, he explains how the canon we accept today differs in some ways from the writings used by early Christians:
"[T]he early Christians used a Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. This translation . . . contained an expanded canon which included a number of the so-called "deuterocanonical" (or "apocryphal") books. Although there was some initial debate over these books, they were eventually received by Christians into the Old Testament canon.
In reaction to the rise of Christianity, the Jews narrowed their canons and eventually excluded the deuterocanonical books - although they still regarded them as sacred. The modern Jewish canon was not rigidly fixed until the third century A.D. Interestingly, it is this later version of the Jewish canon of the Old Testament, rather than the canon of early Christianity, that is followed by most modern Protestants today.
When the Apostles lived and wrote, there was no New Testament and no finalized Old Testament. . . .
[T]he first complete listing of New Testament books as we have them today did not appear until over 300 years after the death and resurrection of Christ. (The first complete listing was given by St. Athanasius in his Paschal Letter in A.D. 367.) . . . Most [early Christian] churches only had parts of what was to become the New Testament. . . .
During the first four centuries A.D. there was substantial disagreement over which books should be included in the canon of Scripture. The first person on record who tried to establish a New Testament canon was the second-century heretic, Marcion. He wanted the Church to reject its Jewish heritage, and therefore he dispensed with the Old Testament entirely. Marcion's canon included only one gospel, which he himself edited, and ten of Paul's epistles. Sad but true, the first attempted New Testament was heretical."
While Marcion was excluding many books he did not like, many early Christians accepted other New Testament books that most modern churches no longer have or no longer accept. For example, there were many competing "gospels" besides Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Before the Gospel of John had been written, Saint Luke wrote that there were *many* others writing related accounts, saying "Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us . . . it seemeth good to me also . . . to write to you an orderly account." (Luke 1:1,3). There would later be controversy over which of the Gospels to use, including controversy concerning the Gospel of John. The Roman Church resisted John, while the church in Asia Minor embraced John. The Syrian Church did not accept all four Gospels of the modern Bible until the fifth century, and "also ignored for a time the Epistles of John, 2 Peter, and the Book of Revelation" [Bernstein, p. 5]. As Stephen Robinson notes (pp. 52-53),
One of the most important of the Greek new Testament manuscripts, known as D or Codex Claramontanus, contains a canon list for both the Old and New Testaments. The manuscript itself is a product of the sixth century, but most scholars believe the canon list originated in the Alexandrian church in the fourth century. This canon omits Philippians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and Hebrews, but includes the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Acts of Paul (not our Acts), and, like the Muratorian Canon, the Apocalypse of Peter. . . . Before the fifth century the Syrian Christian canon included 3 Corinthians and Tatian's Diatessaron. . . .
The Abyssinian Orthodox church has in its canon the twenty-seven books of the modern New Testament, but adds the Synodos of Qalementos (both attributed to Clement of Rome), the Book of the Covenant (which includes a post-resurrection discourse of the Savior), and the Ethiopic Didascalia. To the Old Testament the Abyssinian canon adds the book of Enoch (cited as prophetic by the canonical book of Jude) and the Ascension of Isaiah.
Eusebius, known as the Father of Church History, was a fourth century bishop of Caesarea who disputed the books of James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 John and 3 John [Bernstein, p. 5]. He absolutely rejected the book of Revelation. Origen in the third century questioned the authenticity of 2 Peter and 2 John.
Interestingly, when Luther and other Protestants rejected the Septuagint text and its Latin translation in the Vulgate, thus rejecting the Apocrypha, and instead used a smaller collection of Old Testament books from the Masoretic Hebrew text, they diverged from centuries of Christian tradition. As a result, the Roman Catholic Bible now has about twelve books more than the Protestant Bible, meaning that about 200 pages of text have been "subtracted" - one could say - from the Protestant Bible relative to the "traditional" Catholic Bible.
***Missing Scriptural Citations***
The scriptures that the Christians had at the beginning of the second century were different from those that they had at the end of the second century. By the end of the second century, the scriptures of the Christians were very close to those we have at present. Tertullian, writing at the end of the second century, cites every book in the New Testament except Philemon. Irenaeus, also writing at the end of the second century, cites every book in the current New Testament except the tiny books of Philemon, 3 John and Jude. Of course, lrenaeus also cites a few apocryphal books as authoritative.
Christian writers at the beginning of the second century have a different set of scriptures than the Christian writers at the end of the second century. Clement of Rome is generally seen as the earliest of the Christian authors after the New Testament. Clement quotes from many books of the Old Testament (Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, 1 Samuel, I Chronicles, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Malachi), and the New Testament books Matthew, Mark, Luke, Romans, 1 Corinthians, Hebrews, and 1 Peter. But Clement also quotes from the apocryphal books of the Wisdom of Solomon and Judith. Furthermore, Clement quotes from other scriptural passages, passages that are not known from any writings. We will list these in roughly the order they might have been found in our current Bibles if they contained them. For example, Clement quotes Moses as saying: "I am smoke from a vessel," a quotation that is not found in any known biblical or apocryphal work. Clement further cites a passage from Psalms 28:5 "Thou shalt raise me up and I shall acknowledge thee." This reading of the Psalm, however, is not attested in any extant manuscript. Clement also quotes from a passage attributed to Ezekiel but not in our text:
Repent, O house of Israel, from your sins from the earth to heaven, and though they be red like scarlet and black as ashes, and you turn to me with your whole soul and say: I Father, hearken to us as to the holy people.
Clement quotes the following passage as scripture, although its source is currently unknown:
Wretched are the double-minded, who doubt in their soul, who say: This we have heard against our fathers and behold, we have grown old and none of them have happened even to us. O fools, compare yourselves to a tree-take the vine-first it sheds the leaf, then the bud comes, then the leaf, then the blossom, and after that the sour grape, then comes forth the ripened grape.
Finally, Clement cites as scripture "Cleave to the saints, for those who cleave to them shall be sanctified," though this is not found in any body of scripture:
The homily known as 2 Clement also contains variations in quotations of the scriptures. Consider the following passage, which comes from a gospel but is not found in any of the gospels known to us:
Ye shall be as sheep in the midst of wolves. And Peter answering, said to him: What if: the wolves should scatter the sheep? Jesus saith to Peter: The sheep shall not fear the wolves after they kill them; ye also shall not fear those who shall kill you and cannot do anything against you, but ye shall fear him who hath power after your death to cast soul and body into the hell of fire.
The sentiments are generally found in gospels but not as they are here. 2 Clement attributes the following saying to Jesus also:
"If ye are gathered to me in my bosom and do not my commandments, I shall cast you out and shall say to you: Depart from me, workers of iniquity; I know not whence ye are."
Of course, this passage resembles the Sermon on the Mount, but if the passage is from Matthew, it is a different form of Matthew than what we now have.
The epistle of Barnabas purports to be written by Barnabas, normally presumed to be Paul's missionary companion, to his sons and daughters in the Gospel. Most scholars date the epistle to the early second century rather than the first century. The epistle of Barnabas: largely a pastiche of scriptural quotations; he simply strings one scripture after another. Among these quotations is the following attributed to the prophets but not found in the scriptures: "and they shall eat from the goat offered by fasting on behalf of the sinners. . . . And the priests only shall eat the innards, unwashed with vinegar" The epistle also includes the following as part of the law of Moses as part of the scapegoat rite: "And all you shall spit and pierce it, and encircle its head with scarlet wool, and let it be driven into the wilderness" Leviticus, however, does not contain this rite. The epistle of Barnabas also includes the following as part of the words of the prophets, but which we do not find in our scriptures: "The parable of the Lord, who shall understand it except the wise and learned who also loves his lord?" The following, the epistle attributes to the prophets but it is absent from our scriptures: "And when shall these things come to pass? Saith the Lord: When the tree shall bend and arise, and when blood shall flow from the wood" The epistle also included the following attributed to the Lord but not found in the scriptures: "Behold, I make the last as the first."
In all of these instances, Christian authors quote from scriptures that are not in the canon, but even quotations that they make from scriptures that we presently have, the quotations do not match the manuscripts. The standard explanation is that these passages found in writers of the beginning of the second century but not elsewhere "are sometimes loosely and inaccurately cited from memory . . . .Indeed they are so unlike anything to be found in the known books of the Bible that despairing critics are reduced to supposing that Clement has taken them from some lost apocryphal source." But this theory assumes that the text of the Bible was essentially the same for the early second century Christians as it is for us today and that no major corruption of the text has occurred. This assumption, however, is not supported by the evidence of the second century Christian writers.
Justin Martyr, a philosopher who lived in the middle of the second century, leveled the following accusation against the Jews: "from the ninety-fifth (ninety-sixth) Psalm they have taken away this short saying of the words of David: 'From the wood.' For when the passage said, 'Tell ye among the nations, the Lord hath reigned from the wood,' they have left, 'Tell ye among the nations, the Lord hath reigned.'", Justin's antagonist, Trypho downplayed the accusation by saying "Whether [or not] the rulers of the people have erased any portion of the Scriptures, as you affirm, God knows; but it seems incredible."
Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150-215) describes the corruption of the gospel of Mark by Carpocrates:
Now then, Mark during Peter's stay in Rome wrote down the acts of the Lord, nevertheless not telling all, nor even hinting at the sacred ones (tas mystikas), but selecting those which he thought most useful for the growth of the investigators' faith. When Peter was martyred, Mark came to Alexandria; polishing both his own and Peter's notes, from which by transferring into his first book those things appropriate for those progressing in the testimony (gn_sis), he compiled a more spiritual gospel for the use of those being perfected (t_n teleioumen_n). In no way, however, did he betray those things not discussed, nor did he write down the initiatory teaching (hierophantik_n didaskalian)of the Lord. But adding to the previously written acts yet others, he still added certain sayings thereto, the explanation of which would be capable of initiating (mystag_g_sein) their hearers into the holy of holies (adytan) of the truth veiled seven times. Wherefore he prepared it thus-neither corruptly nor unprecautiously-so I deem it. And when he died he left his compilation at the church which is in Alexandria, where it is kept very safe and secure to this day, being read only to those who are initiated into the great mysteries (taus myaumenous ta megala myst_ria).
***Did Jesus Christ & The Apostles have Secret Teachings?***
(The following information is posted from various online sources)
[Begin Quotes]
The New Testament contains indications that the ancient church possessed extra-scriptural teachings that were not made available to the public but were reserved for worthy followers of Christ.
Acts 1:3 in the New Testament states that after His Resurrection, Jesus Christ taught His Apostles in secret for 40 days teaching them the mysteries of the Kingdom of God.
The last verses in the Gospel of John indicates that there were many other things that Jesus Christ said and did, that could not be fully contained even if written down in all the books in the world, that which should be written.
"I have fed you with milk," Paul told the Corinthian saints, "and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet are ye now able" (1 Corinthians 3:2). If Paul ever gave this doctrinal "meat" to the Corinthians, it is not recorded in any extant version of the New Testament. Why not? Moreover, since Paul's first letter to the saints at Corinth discusses everything from the order and glories of the resurrection to the various kinds of spiritual gifts found in the church, what could have been the "meat" that Paul withheld?
The Corinthians were "babes" in Christ; they were still unable to handle the "meat" of the gospel (1 Corinthians 3:1-2). However, Paul told them that "mature" saints were taught a "secret and hidden wisdom" (1 Corinthians 2:6-7). This secret wisdom undoubtedly constituted part of the "meat" that the apostle withheld from the Corinthians.
When Paul was blessed to visit Paradise, he heard "things that must not be divulged" (2 Corinthians 12:4, AB). The Greek here is arreta remata, "unutterable words." The adjective "unutterable" was often used "of things disclosed in Mystery rites which the initiates were charged to keep secret" (Victor Paul Furnish, II Corinthians, The Anchor Bible, Grden City, New York: Dubleday & Company, Inc., 1984, p. 527).
1 Corinthians 2:6-8 We speak wisdom among the mature (teleioi), but not the wisdom of this age or of the archons of this age, who are passing away. But we speak of the hidden wisdom of God in a mystery, which God ordained before the aeons for our glory. None of the archons of this age knew this; had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
1 Corinthians 2:1 When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
1 Corinthians 3:1 Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual (pneumatic) but as worldly (sarkic) --mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.
1 Corinthians 4:1 So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God.
Paul is an initiate, a pneumatic, a spiritual, ''I worship in my spirit (pneumati) .. I long .. to share with you a certain spiritual (pneumatic) charisma to establish you'' (Romans 1:9,11).
Church father Ignatius (50AD-117AD) told the Trallians that he possessed sacred information that they were not yet ready to receive:
Can I not write heavenly things to you? But I fear that I may do harm to "you who are infants." You must pardon me, lest you be choked by what you cannot swallow. For though I am in bonds and can know heavenly things such as the angelic locations and the archontic conjunctions, visible and invisible, for all that I am not already a disciple. [St. Ignatius of Antioch] (Born in Syria, around the year 50; died at Rome between 98 and 117, Christian tradition holds that he was a disciple of Saint John the Apostle)
These "heavenly things" or "heavenly mysteries" were obviously not recorded in the scriptures, and Ignatius did not think the Trallians were ready to receive them.
Concerning these secret teachings, Clement of Alexandria (150-215 A.D.)stated:
"James the Righteous, John and Peter were entrusted by the Lord after his resurrection with the higher knowledge. They imparted it to the other apostles, to the seventy..." (Outlines Book VI)
Origen (183-253 A.D.) had this to say about the secret teachings of Jesus:
"[Jesus] conversed with His disciples in private, and especially in their sacred retreats, concerning the Gospel of God; but the words which He uttered have not been preserved, because it appeared to the evangelists that they could not be adequately conveyed to the multitude in writing or in speech... and they saw... what things were to be committed to writing, and how this was to be done, and what was by no means to be written to the multitude, and what was to be expressed in words, and what was not to be so conveyed". (Contra Celsus, Chap. VI. 1 cool
***The Book Of Revelation & Adding Or Taking Away***
"For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." (Revelation 22:18-19)
A careful reading of the words makes it clear that the warning against adding to or taking away does not refer to the whole Bible or even to the New Testament, but to use John's words, only to the words of "the book of this prophecy." That is, the prophecy contained in the book of Revelation. This is substantiated by the fact that some of the books of the New Testament had not yet been written when John wrote the book of Revelation, and even those that had been written and were in existence at that time had not yet been gathered into one compilation.
The collection of writings consisting of the sixty-six books we know as the Bible were brought together and compiled into one volume long after John wrote the prophetic book that has been placed at the end of the collection. It is clear, therefore, that the terrible judgments pronounced upon those who add to the book could not possibly apply to the whole of the Bible or even to the New Testament, but only to the book of Revelation.
Secondly, the warning uses the words "the prophecy of this book" and also "the words of the book of this prophecy." The word book in both instances is singular and could only refer to the book of prophecy written by John which is titled, in the King James Version, "The Revelation of St. John the Divine" and is often referred to as the Apocalypse--a Greek word which means revealed. Of necessity the word book would have been in the singular because when written it was not associated with any other book or books, and it was after many years and many ecclesiastical debates that it was added to the collection that became known as the new canon of scripture or the New Testament.
It is also interesting to note that John himself added to scripture after writing the book of Revelation, which is generally conceded to have been written while he was on the Isle of Patmos. It was long after John left Patmos that he wrote his first epistle. This fact standing alone would be sufficient to defeat the claim that revelation was closed and that man was enjoined from adding to scripture. This adds cumulative evidence that John had reference to the book of Revelation only.
At the time, there was no Bible as we know it. The new Christians had the Septuagint (which included the Apocrypha) and scattered writings of some of the apostles, but there had not yet been any known attempt to establish a New Testament canon or to bring the Gospels and epistles into a single volume. John, who was in exile on the Isle of Patmos, is obviously referring to the newly written text before him when he speaks of "this book," the Book of Revelation. He refers to the unique contents of his book: its prophecies, its descriptions of plagues, its discussion of the holy city, and urges that no one change what he has written. Even though the Book of Revelation has been placed last in our Bible, it was not necessarily the last book written, but may have preceded other writings of John himself by a couple of years. In fact, many Christian canons over the centuries did not include the Book of Revelation at all, and even Martin Luther questioned its status. The first church council that listed most of the canonical books in our present Old and New Testaments, the Council of Laodicea that met in A.D. 363, still did not include the Apocalypse of Saint John [Bernstein, p.5]. The common idea that this was the last book added to an existing canon of New Testament scripture by John is erroneous, as is the idea that John meant that there could never be any more scripture.
As one of many passages implying incompleteness, consider John 21:25, which states:
"And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen."
John understood that there could have been many other books written to describe all the words and deeds of Christ. What he and others offered was limited to a minute fraction of what could have been written. It is a purely human assumption that all of the truly important material has been recorded and preserved, and an even more ridiculous assumption that we have no need for anything more.
[End Quotes]
2 Timothy 3:16 simply states that "All Scripture is Inspired by God", it does not name which Scriptures or Collection of Writings it considers as Inspired, however, it would obviously include the Old Testament. The Old Testament was not yet Canonized at the time that statement was written, and the Apostles and The early Christians used a Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. This translation contained an expanded canon which included a number of the so-called "deuterocanonical" (or "apocryphal") books. Jude directly quotes from the Book of Enoch (1 Enoch 1:9) as actually coming from Enoch himself and as a prophetic writing, and he also referances The Assumption of Moses and The Testiment of the Twelve Patriarchs. Jesus Christ referances 1 Enoch quite a bit, and no less than 128 places in the New Testament alone alude to it. The New Testament was also in the process of being written when that statement in 2 Timothy 3:16 was made, and who is to say whether or not that statement also includes various other Early Jewish/Early Christian Apocrypha/Pseudographia Writings/Scriptures that many Early Jews and Early Christians considered as Sacred are Inspired as well? What Holy Book was ever waiting to be Canonized to be Holy? Despite that, there were literally dozens of conflicting Early Christian Canons during the first Four Hundred Years of Christianity, among many different Early Branches of Christianity, prior to the final "official" Canon.
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Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2005 7:06 pm
That's our fault, not God. I do wonder why so many books were taken out. Not enough ink in the printer?
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Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2005 11:31 am
Mercution That's our fault, not God. I do wonder why so many books were taken out. Not enough ink in the printer? lol, but i think it might actually have to do with content that isnt in line with the church's, or maybe society's, current ideals.
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Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2005 8:17 pm
Mercution I do wonder why so many books were taken out. They weren't liked by those who decide to write that version of the bible.
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Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2005 3:24 pm
To the last two answers, perfectly possible. For a long time the Catholic church in Europe was very corrupt. Before Jesus, the Jews were corrupt, and nowadays, almost all of the church is corrupt. A note to Christians(including myself) that is something that needs to be changed!
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Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2005 6:00 pm
Mercution To the last two answers, perfectly possible. For a long time the Catholic church in Europe was very corrupt. Before Jesus, the Jews were corrupt, and nowadays, almost all of the church is corrupt. A note to Christians(including myself) that is something that needs to be changed! good luck on that.
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Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 4:47 pm
Thanks for the luck, German turtle, it's definietly needed.
Ignorance annoys me... stare
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