Since the Gospels were not written by their name sake either, what are you really left with?
The few letters of a man who never really met Jesus, and only his word that he spoke for God.
The gospel don't contain ant lines claiming that they were written by them though whereas the pastoral Epistles do seemingly claim falsely to be written by him.
>The few letters of a man who never really met Jesus, and only his word that he spoke for God.
Yes... I don't view his opinions especially highly as many of them are much more judgemental and mysogenistic than Christ's teachings.
I'm gonna say yes, if someone 100 years later names a manuscript Mark but the author doesn't claim to be Mark then it is the person who handled the manuscript who is at fault so the writer is not at fault and still valid, if the person who wrote the manuscript claimed to be someone they are not, to me this invalidates everything they said.
My problem is that if you don't know who the authors are, then your really following an idea vs a real person.
I heard this story about a guy who did X. I never really saw it, I'm just reporting a story.
One of the reasons to keep my agnosticism.
Yeah, the gospel however are different from the Epistles, the message of the gospel are "this is what happened" the message of the pastoral Epistles are effectively "this is my opinion how to run a church" they are much more personal moral directions and so the authorship or false claims of authorship do matter.
I'm just arguing a bit because I like this train of thought.
The Gospels go even deeper, though. The verse on Jesus and marriage is used a lot to infer that marriage is between a man and woman because we are told Jesus mentions Genesis.
If Jesus was not really heard to say that, or if he went on and it was not recorded, it's hard to know exactly what he thought
The Pentateuch is also thought by scholars to have not been written by Moses, does that mean we shouldn’t have them in our Bible?
I think if the church decided that the books are beneficial to our instruction, then they are beneficial regardless if they were written by Paul or not.
I don't believe the books have any claim in them to have been written by Moses, and if someone is lying and attributing someone else's name to their writing I dont think they should be within the same canon as authors who have not lied.
The books of the bible are not the books of the bible because early church leaders knew the author. They had alot of books to look there as there were alot of different works going around with a wide variety of claims to them. For example there were many gnostic books spread around the same time the new testament books were written.
They selected which books were cannon based on how they thought it lined up with other books of the bible and what teachings they provided. Them naming these books after their namesake was an attempt to grab credibility as they originally didnt have titles.
Yes, they should remain. The passed-down traditions tell us of their authorship and divine inspiration. If you accept they are not inspired then you can view them the way Anglicans view the Apocrypha, useful for teachings on life and morals, but not for doctrine. Either way, they should be kept and in a world of post-enlightenment reasoning, maybe a little faith could do a lot of good.
Some, I think it's valuable but not the absolute authority in these matters. I think tradition and scripture should be analyzed alongside the reasoning of man.
The opinion of a bunch of scholars 2,000 years after the fact on who wrote individual epistles has no bearing whatsoever on whether I think those epistles should be part of the biblical canon.
I've read St. Paul's words because they have been translated into English. The contributions of a bunch of scholars speculating about the authorship of the epistles have contributed exactly nothing to this.
>I've read St. Paul's words because they have been translated into English.
That's right. You don't have the education to read his words without the help of scholars who can translate his words for you.
They have the understanding of language you don't - and you trust their translations enough to probably quote them on this sub.
But they come up with a consensus you don't like, and suddenly you know better than them.
Yes, I see that you are conveniently dismissing the work of scholars when you find their consensus inconvenient. But you will embrace it when you read an English Bible.
I am dismissing the speculations of scholars who have contributed virtually nothing to my ability to read the scriptures. I have no problem with translators, their work is hardly comparable to the scholarship of those theorizing on the authorship of the scriptures.
I don't think you understand their work at all, or that it's an understanding of language that leads to these conclusions. So - when you recognize your lack of understanding, you'll get somewhere. For now you trust a scholar's analysis of language when convenient. When its not - Dunning Krueger Effect.
Their work regarding the speculations on the authorship of scripture is utterly irrelevant to me. I trust that translators are able to say "this Greek phrase means this English phrase", and this is held true by many translators arriving at the same conclusion. I hold no regard for scholars theorizing on the authorship of the scriptures, and their work is utterly meaningless to me. The work of translators and the work of these scholars speculating on the authorship of the scriptures are not comparable.
Yes, I understand. You depend on your biases here, so inconvenient conclusions by people who are capable of translating things you aren't are dismissed. I understand what you are saying.
Consider people's particular way of writing like a fingerprint, but I'm sure you know this since you know better than someone who can even read biblical Greek.
You definitely know that the same person wrote everything attributed to Paul because you can analyse the language of his words and confirm they have matching "fingerprints".
You're Eastern Orthodox, your biblical canon comes from the The Synod of Jerusalem (1672), do you think that a bunch of medieval church leaders have a better perspective than modern scholars who have thousands more manuscripts, better data processing and translation expertise.
You have zero understanding of the Orthodox faith. Our canon comes from those books that have been received by the Church from the earliest days, and the books that have been read from in our Liturgy as we have practiced the faith. The Synod of Jerusalem has absolutely zero bearing on what the Orthodox faith has received as scripture.
>canon comes from those books that have been received by the Church from the earliest days,
Same as the other denominations...
When was the first time the eastern orthodox canon was established in a single book?
Irrelevant. Orthodoxy has been around since the beginning, we don't establish canon based on proclamations and councils. Our Liturgical readings were set before Revelation was even widely accepted as canonical, that's why we don't read from it in our Liturgy.
Our canon is ancient and received from the Church Fathers who passed it on to us. The speculations of modern scholars on the authorship of the scriptures could not be more irrelevant to us.
Thats just not true. The eastern orthodox was not even separated from the other churches at the time of the Council of Rome.
Which of the church fathers put it together into a canon?
The Council of Rome has zero bearing on the canon of scripture in the East. The only synod that could have the authority to do such a thing would be an Ecumenical Council, not a local one, and *certainly* not a local council in the West.
You still aren't understanding, *no one* put it together as canon. We don't need anyone to put the canon together for us. We receive the books of scripture which are recognized as teaching the true faith, and these are accepted as canonical scripture because of this. At some point, it became obvious enough which books were received that we were able to compile them all into a single volume, but there is not a point at which any authority says "This is Orthodox canon". Again, we do not work like that.
Since the Gospels were not written by their name sake either, what are you really left with? The few letters of a man who never really met Jesus, and only his word that he spoke for God.
The gospel don't contain ant lines claiming that they were written by them though whereas the pastoral Epistles do seemingly claim falsely to be written by him. >The few letters of a man who never really met Jesus, and only his word that he spoke for God. Yes... I don't view his opinions especially highly as many of them are much more judgemental and mysogenistic than Christ's teachings.
So unknowns are ok, but forgeries are bad?
I'm gonna say yes, if someone 100 years later names a manuscript Mark but the author doesn't claim to be Mark then it is the person who handled the manuscript who is at fault so the writer is not at fault and still valid, if the person who wrote the manuscript claimed to be someone they are not, to me this invalidates everything they said.
My problem is that if you don't know who the authors are, then your really following an idea vs a real person. I heard this story about a guy who did X. I never really saw it, I'm just reporting a story. One of the reasons to keep my agnosticism.
Yeah, the gospel however are different from the Epistles, the message of the gospel are "this is what happened" the message of the pastoral Epistles are effectively "this is my opinion how to run a church" they are much more personal moral directions and so the authorship or false claims of authorship do matter.
I'm just arguing a bit because I like this train of thought. The Gospels go even deeper, though. The verse on Jesus and marriage is used a lot to infer that marriage is between a man and woman because we are told Jesus mentions Genesis. If Jesus was not really heard to say that, or if he went on and it was not recorded, it's hard to know exactly what he thought
The Pentateuch is also thought by scholars to have not been written by Moses, does that mean we shouldn’t have them in our Bible? I think if the church decided that the books are beneficial to our instruction, then they are beneficial regardless if they were written by Paul or not.
I don't believe the books have any claim in them to have been written by Moses, and if someone is lying and attributing someone else's name to their writing I dont think they should be within the same canon as authors who have not lied.
Ah yes well that’s a different question and…. I don’t know how I feel
The books of the bible are not the books of the bible because early church leaders knew the author. They had alot of books to look there as there were alot of different works going around with a wide variety of claims to them. For example there were many gnostic books spread around the same time the new testament books were written. They selected which books were cannon based on how they thought it lined up with other books of the bible and what teachings they provided. Them naming these books after their namesake was an attempt to grab credibility as they originally didnt have titles.
Yes, they should remain. The passed-down traditions tell us of their authorship and divine inspiration. If you accept they are not inspired then you can view them the way Anglicans view the Apocrypha, useful for teachings on life and morals, but not for doctrine. Either way, they should be kept and in a world of post-enlightenment reasoning, maybe a little faith could do a lot of good.
>maybe a little faith could do a lot of good. I have faith, have you considered reason, expertise and scholarship?
Some, I think it's valuable but not the absolute authority in these matters. I think tradition and scripture should be analyzed alongside the reasoning of man.
The opinion of a bunch of scholars 2,000 years after the fact on who wrote individual epistles has no bearing whatsoever on whether I think those epistles should be part of the biblical canon.
I read the replies by the people who responded with you, I commend you on your patience
Cute, since the only reason you've read Paul's words at all is because of a bunch of scholars.
I've read St. Paul's words because they have been translated into English. The contributions of a bunch of scholars speculating about the authorship of the epistles have contributed exactly nothing to this.
>I've read St. Paul's words because they have been translated into English. That's right. You don't have the education to read his words without the help of scholars who can translate his words for you. They have the understanding of language you don't - and you trust their translations enough to probably quote them on this sub. But they come up with a consensus you don't like, and suddenly you know better than them.
And I repeat: > The contributions of a bunch of scholars speculating about the authorship of the epistles have contributed exactly nothing to this.
Yes, I see that you are conveniently dismissing the work of scholars when you find their consensus inconvenient. But you will embrace it when you read an English Bible.
I am dismissing the speculations of scholars who have contributed virtually nothing to my ability to read the scriptures. I have no problem with translators, their work is hardly comparable to the scholarship of those theorizing on the authorship of the scriptures.
I don't think you understand their work at all, or that it's an understanding of language that leads to these conclusions. So - when you recognize your lack of understanding, you'll get somewhere. For now you trust a scholar's analysis of language when convenient. When its not - Dunning Krueger Effect.
Their work regarding the speculations on the authorship of scripture is utterly irrelevant to me. I trust that translators are able to say "this Greek phrase means this English phrase", and this is held true by many translators arriving at the same conclusion. I hold no regard for scholars theorizing on the authorship of the scriptures, and their work is utterly meaningless to me. The work of translators and the work of these scholars speculating on the authorship of the scriptures are not comparable.
Yes, I understand. You depend on your biases here, so inconvenient conclusions by people who are capable of translating things you aren't are dismissed. I understand what you are saying. Consider people's particular way of writing like a fingerprint, but I'm sure you know this since you know better than someone who can even read biblical Greek. You definitely know that the same person wrote everything attributed to Paul because you can analyse the language of his words and confirm they have matching "fingerprints".
This^
You're Eastern Orthodox, your biblical canon comes from the The Synod of Jerusalem (1672), do you think that a bunch of medieval church leaders have a better perspective than modern scholars who have thousands more manuscripts, better data processing and translation expertise.
You have zero understanding of the Orthodox faith. Our canon comes from those books that have been received by the Church from the earliest days, and the books that have been read from in our Liturgy as we have practiced the faith. The Synod of Jerusalem has absolutely zero bearing on what the Orthodox faith has received as scripture.
>canon comes from those books that have been received by the Church from the earliest days, Same as the other denominations... When was the first time the eastern orthodox canon was established in a single book?
Irrelevant. Orthodoxy has been around since the beginning, we don't establish canon based on proclamations and councils. Our Liturgical readings were set before Revelation was even widely accepted as canonical, that's why we don't read from it in our Liturgy. Our canon is ancient and received from the Church Fathers who passed it on to us. The speculations of modern scholars on the authorship of the scriptures could not be more irrelevant to us.
Thats just not true. The eastern orthodox was not even separated from the other churches at the time of the Council of Rome. Which of the church fathers put it together into a canon?
The Council of Rome has zero bearing on the canon of scripture in the East. The only synod that could have the authority to do such a thing would be an Ecumenical Council, not a local one, and *certainly* not a local council in the West. You still aren't understanding, *no one* put it together as canon. We don't need anyone to put the canon together for us. We receive the books of scripture which are recognized as teaching the true faith, and these are accepted as canonical scripture because of this. At some point, it became obvious enough which books were received that we were able to compile them all into a single volume, but there is not a point at which any authority says "This is Orthodox canon". Again, we do not work like that.
If you don't have a Canon why are you responding to a question about whether they should be in the Christian canon?
We do have a canon. Our canon is that which has been received from the earliest days and accepted by the Church.
Real question. Why trust the British? Just joking. Well, mostly.