Re: Any comments? (Deconstructing WBC)


"Chuck Stevens" <charles.stevens@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"LX-i" <lxi0007@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Were not most epistles written to one church or person, but distributed
around to many? The Laodiceans had a specific problem which was given a
specific solution. It would be rather presumptuous of us to assume that
if we encountered a similar problem, the solution would be different. :)

It would be equally presumptuous of us to assume or declare that somebody
else had the same problem, and/or that it was our responsibility to point
it out to them and to describe to them exactly what the solution to the
problem we perceived in them ought to be. For me to apply a solution
like this to myself for a problem that I perceived myself as having -- or
even that reading the passage led me to believe that I was having -- is
one thing. To apply either the diagnosis or the solution to anybody else
is quite another.

Reminds me of a group of Christians who accosted a group of gay men as
they were leaving a meeting of a twelve-step program that dealt with
sexual issues, telling them what sinners they were and how they needed to
change their ways by becoming heterosexual or celibate, right now, and
generally haranguing them with the Usual Scriptural Citations. Well, for
some of these guys, finding out their sexual partners' first name before
having sex with them was a goal that *they* thought was achievable and
worthwhile pursuing. Is it appropriate for a Christian to declare
publically that that is a goal such folks should *not* pursue?

I am fully capable of beating myself all the way to suicide if I spend
all my time concentrating on how every single misstep on my part is
driving yet another thorn into the head of the poor bleeding Jesus,
represents yet another hammer-blow on the nail piercing His wrist, or is
analogous to yet another taunt from the onlookers at the crucifixion, as
I was brought up to believe. I regard that tendency now as a *failing*
on my part, however well-meaning the folks were who taught me to do
that, and I just don't go there anymore.

Well, the folks who taught you to do that missed it a bit, too.

No kidding.

Jesus would have gone through everything He did even if only one of us
needed it. This is the "freedom" that Paul (yes, I've read further) was
talking about "in Christ". What's been done to Jesus is done - no
sinning or lack of sinning on anyone's part will change the severity of
what has already taken place.

According to you. According to them, the torture continues. I *don't
agree*, but I can't declare them *wrong*.

I don't know who decided the contents of the Bible, and have obviously
done less studying on it than you have.

Well, I can't say that, but I can say that I've done enough research to
write a paper on the subject, which paper has been accepted as appropriate
for the education of the ministry of our church. So I do know a fair
amount about it.

But, if you successfully pick away at one piece of it, its claim of
infallibility then is gone.

"*Its* claim of infallibility?" Part of my issue is that I *do not
believe* that such a claim is made *for the Bible as you or I know it*, in
so many words, *in the Bible*.

The author of 2 Peter makes the claim for the collected letters of Paul,
*as that author understood the composition of that collection to be at the
time*. Revelation makes dire threats about altering *Revelation*. But
the Syriac Orthodox seem to reject *both* Revelation *and* 2 Peter as
Scripture (see below) (although some 6th-7th century translations from
Greek into Aramaic are included in modern copies of the Peshitta).

Once that's gone, on what do you base your belief?

I accept the premise that God *guided* the authors of various books, and
that by and large the books that have been incorporated into what we know
as the Bible today were written under such guidance. I do not believe,
given the way the Bible was *assembled* over a period of centuries, that
it is perfect and complete in any of the forms in which we have it today.
In fact, I would say for me to assume that this book is Divinely Perfect
is, pure and simple, *idolatry*. Bottom line, it's a *graven image*. I
use it as a tool. I will *not* worship it.

As to the history itself, a good starting point is the Wikipedia article
on "Biblical Canon" (a better one is the article in The New Jerome
Biblical Commentary on Canonicity, if you can get hold of a copy). The
Wikipedia article will illustrate several important points:

The Syriac Orthodox Church alluded to be above apparently has historically
rejected 2 John, 3 John, 2 Peter, Jude and Revelation as scripture, and
some in that organization hold that the Peshitta New Testament, in
Aramaic, is the original and the Greek texts are translations. Few
scholars agree with that position, but the Lamsa translation of the
Peshitta has a fair following *outside* the Syriac Orthodox community (and
some of the arguments for the differences from the traditional Greek are
plausible! The one that springs to mind is "It is easier to pass a rope
through the eye of a needle ... " based on the fact that the trigrammaton
GML is both *rope* and *camel* in Aramaic, and written Aramaic doesn't
record the vowel differences!).

The Armenian Orthodox include 3 Corinthians as canonic New Testament
material. Most, *but not all*, Christian groups accept the familiar
27-book New Testament canon.

As to the Old Testament, the Greek Orthodox canon includes Psalm 151, 1
Esdras, 3 and 4 Maccabees, the Psalms of Solomon, the Odes of Solomon, and
the Letter of Jeremiah alongside the Roman Catholic canon of 46 books (and
additions in other books), and also considers the Septuagint to be the
divinely inspired version of the Old Testament.

The Ethiopic Orthodox is somewhat similar in its "narrow" canon; it uses a
different underlying text for the first three books of the Maccabees;
omits 4 Maccabees, 2 Esdras, Psalms of Solomon, Odes of Solomon, and the
Letter of Jeremiah from that canon; and adds Enoch (the Ethiopic, not the
Syriac version) and Jubilees.

And as I indicated before, Martin Luther himself argued for the removal of
Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation from the canon.

I have yet to have someone show me a discrepancy, where the Bible
contradicts itself, that wasn't manufactured and taken out of context.
Scientists have even found a missing day - coincidentally, around the
time the "sun stood still" during an Old Testament battle. Research on
Mount Ararat, where remains of Noah's Ark have been found, has done
nothing but prove the Biblical record.

I think "found" and "prove" might be a little strong.

Obviously, the Bible was written by men, and compiled by men. Believing
that these men allowed God to inspire them and guide their choices
doesn't mean that it's all the work of man, and full of flaws. God has
preserved what He wants preserved,

Where, in which languages, in which texts or manuscripts, and containing
which books? The Syriac Orthodox community has, as far as I can tell,
*always* rejected several New Testament books, *including* Revelation.

Has the entire Syriac Orthodox community run afoul of God's will on the
basis of Revelation 22:19 by rejecting Revelation as canonic?

Is the entire Armenian Orthodox community condemned to suffer all the
plagues described in Revelation for having accepted 3 Corinthians and
thereby added to what God thinks the Bible ought to be? Or can we
rejoice that God's Just Punishment for this abomination has been
demonstrated in the Armenian Genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire
about a century ago, just like, according to one devout Christian group,
the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are God's just
punishment on the United States and we should rejoice in their family's
pain and suffering?

"The Da Vinci Code" and "Misquoting Jesus" are serving to distract a
large number of people, and make them question not only the pieces they
challenge, but the Scriptures as a whole.

Well, I've always thought "The Da Vinci Code" was pretty much a ripoff of
"Holy Blood, Holy Grail", which I read quite a few years ago, but what do
I know. I have not read "Misquoting Jesus". My challenge has always been
"But what do the Scriptures *really say*?"

And as to the "Scriptures as a whole", that's my point. There have
*always* been differences of opinion as to what is the body of work that
constitutes "the Scriptures", as well as which underlying text (or
translation) represents the divinely-inspired (or even, the
"God-breathed") version of each book. You may accept one set (e.g, the
MT for the Old Testament and the TR for the New, as they underlie the KJV
tradition), others might argue for more modern OT translations that
include influence from the DSS and for Oldest Text translations based on
the latest Nestle-Aland or even Shortest Text translations like the
Jerusalem Bible, and still others accept the Peshitta.

"The Bible", *as you know it*, is not now and has never been as concretely
and inalterably defined as you seem to believe, and nowhere is that
clearer than the division as to what constitutes the Old Testament between
the Roman Catholic tradition and the Protestant tradition. I don't count
myself a Roman Catholic today, but as far as the contents of Scripture
goes, between the Catholics and the Protestants, guess who moved?

And if Luther felt free to reject books of the Old Testament that had been
accepted as Scripture for a millennium (namely, the Apocrypha, starting
with 2 Maccabees because of its implicit support for expiation for the
sins of others through intercessory prayers for the dead in 12:42),
indeed, what value is Scripture and how immutable should we view it?

My opinion, based on my research, is that the contents of the Old
Testament had pretty well solidified to the *46-book* Roman Catholic
canon, and that of the New was *generally* regarded as being the 27-book
Canon that we know, *in the West*, by about the early 5th century. In the
East, the situation was far less clear. The removal of the Apocrypha
from Protestant Bibles is a *recent* phenomenon (becoming general only in
the early 19th century).

I've read the Epistles of Barnabas and Clement, and I think they're Good
Stuff -- for me, there's more Good Stuff than in, say, Philemon. I think
that the material that the Gospel of Thomas from the Nag Hammadi Library
shares with the synoptic Gospels is arguably of an older form than is
found in the latter, that it reflects more accurately the Sayings Gospel
form of the "Q text" that has for some time been postulated as underlying
those three, that some of the material that *isn't* represented in the
synoptics is probably Good Stuff, and some of that extra material is
Garbage. The problem is in determining which is Good Stuff and which is
Garbage on the basis of content, and that's pretty much impossible, so I
don't make theological or behavioral decisions based on the Gospel of
Thomas.

I actively *disagree* with the author of Titus on the subject of the
Universal Truth about Everyone from Crete (see 1:12ff); I have to say
expressing this attitude, or acting on the generalizations expressed
there, would not strike me as Christian behavior today. Yet the Word of
God says it, so it must be True.

Did Jesus include "... for thine is the Kingdom ..." when he told the
Apostles how to pray, or was this a medieval scribal insertion that
started out as a pious footnote?

Did John actually make trinitarian doctrine explicit in 1 John 5:6-5:7 ("
... in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: And these three
are one. And ...", or was this a later addition (the Johannine Comma)
that first appeared in a late-first-millennium Spanish manuscript of the
Vulgate and that was back-translated into Greek in the sixteenth century
for the Textus Receptus?

Personally, I lean toward the idea that these were later *insertions* to
the original text. I do not hold that God saw fit to ensure that they
were *inserted* into later manuscripts to lead to the Divine Perfection
that the Textus Receptus represents.

Either way, the effect is the same. If it's Scripture, it's inspired of
God. If you have something claiming to be Scripture but not inspired of
God, it's false. In both cases, the profitability only applies to
inspired Scripture.

The import of the capitalized word "Scripture" as we understand it today
may or may not be deduced from the Greek. Revelation claims *for itself*
that its modification is a Bad Idea. 2 Peter makes supportive claims for
some collection of Paul's letters as that collection existed at the time.
I know of no other claim in any other New Testament book that
self-identifies as Scripture. The determination as to which book is
Scripture and which book is Not Scripture, and even the determination of
which verse or word within a verse is Scripture and which is Not
Scripture, is a *human* decision.

And did Paul really mean "God-breathed", that every single letter of
every single word of the passages being referred to was dictated
directly by God? He seems to have invented the word "theopneustos", so
it's tough to figure out exactly what he meant by it (particularly since
he wasn't exactly fluent in Greek, based on evidence in the
indisputably-Pauline epistles).

Creating a word - heh! :) I guess that's been going on for millenia...

And as to "graphe" (="writing"), I think the big question is what's he
referring to? If Paul himself wrote 2 Timothy, it has to have been
written before his execution under Nero, whose reign ended in 67AD.
From what I read, the earliest plausible dates for the Gospels are:
Matthew, after 70AD and probably about 85AD; Mark, around 70AD;
Luke/Acts, about 75AD, and John, 90-100AD. If Paul wrote 2 Timothy, it
has to have been before his martyrdom. He thus would have had to
foresee the acceptance of four, only four, and exactly four Gospels as
deserving of being considered "scripture" *that had not yet even been
written*! He would also be placing himself in the position of saying
"Hey! Everything *I've* written deserves to be treated as
DIVINELY-INSPIRED SCRIPTURE!!!! FOREVER!!!" were his intent to include
what we now know as the New Testament as part of this reference.

I don't think that these are supportable suppositions.

How about the supposition that 2 Timothy 3:16 is God-breathed Scripture?
God said to write it, and "Paul" wrote it. It didn't matter what was
accepted into the canon at the time.

There are a bunch of *assumptions* in that paragraph that I've already
addressed. The question of direct Pauline authorship (which I seriously
doubt) isn't relevant to the point as to what the author understood
"theopneustos" to mean, or whether it was a postpositive adjective or a
predicate adjective intended to follow an elided verb, or the body of
writings that was being referred to as "graphe". I think the premise
"well, he *might* have meant the Old Testament when he wrote it, but what
*God* really wanted the Apostle Paul (who died no later than 67AD) to
convey, was that "graphe" *really* included a number of books that weren't
going to be written for another forty years because, well, everybody knows
that they ended up as scripture, so that's what God really must have
meant. Right?

I don't think so.

Which set of Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts -- and I mean specific
editions -- reflects the One True God-Breathed set of information that
should be regarded as Scripture, leaving the authors and supporters of all
*additions* to be subjected to all the plagues, and the authors and
supporters of all *subtractions* to lose their share in the tree of life
and the holy city, as described in Revelation?

I've already gone on record as believing the *earlier* the textual
witness, the more likely it is that it represents the *original* text as
the (human) author wrote it. Your premise seems to be that the *earlier*
the textual witness, the more likely it is to diverge from God's Real
Intent, as reflected in ... what? The Textus Receptus, which contains
back-translations from Latin because *no* Greek text could be found
supporting the reading that the guy collecting these texts wanted
reflected? I've asked this before. It *does* make a difference. The
Johannine Comma is one *glaring* case. There are others. The Secret
Gospel of Mark may be a case of an *elision* from the original text that
may have some interesting theological implications. The long-term
disagreement among Christian groups as to what the list of Old
Testament -- and even New Testament -- books *actually is* does make a
difference (e.g., 2 Maccabees and the issue of purgatory).

(In fact, "at the time", I imagine the church was a bit less organized
than it was a few centuries later.)

And? The Church in question is what we know today as the Roman Catholic
Church, yet I'm pretty sure you don't accept the canon they seem pretty
much to have agreed upon by 500AD or so, and which they insisted upon at
the Council of Trent in response to Luther's *rejection* of the Apocrypha
and several New Testament books that you *do* accept?

God knew how it would be put together, and that's what He wanted
written.

How do you prove either of these premises? And explain to me how, if I
accept the premise that the Bible, despite having been written down by
man, is Divinely Perfect Just As It Is, I cannot *possibly* be worshipping
a graven image, even if it be an image (graven by man) of God's Word?

How do *you* know that *He* wanted the Johannine Comma included and the
Secret Gospel of Mark excluded? How do *you* know the Syriacs and Luther
*cannot* have had it right because they reject the very books that make
the claim for New Testament Scripture (2 Peter and Revelation)?

Is that supportable?

Not unless I want to do what looks to me like worshipping an idol.

With all these questions, what do you believe? Are these deep-rooted
questions, or are they "hey, I'm kinda curious about this - doesn't
change my view of it, I just wonder" type of questions?

They are fundamental to my understanding of what the Bible *is*, and what
it *says*. The etymology of the word "worship" is basically "to ship or
deliver worth or respect". I do not wish to *worship* the work of man,
which also means I'm unwilling to attach more divine attributes to it than
I believe are appropriate.

Do I believe the Bible as a whole is "useful for teaching ..."? Yes, and
that includes 2 Timothy in its entirety.

Do I believe God told Paul to write what was written in 2 Timothy, given
that Paul's (and for that matter Jesus') understanding of what the word
"graphe" referred to was different from what God *really* meant, that in
addition to what Paul understood the Old Testament to contain at the time
it would also include all of Paul's own letters and several books that
hadn't even been written yet? Uhhh ... no ... And if you're a "sola
scriptura" kind of guy, on what *scriptural* basis can you make such an
assertion?

I'm just trying to figure out how one could believe the Bible without
believing it to be the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God.
Without that solid foundation, how can anything else be built?

I believe the composition of the Bible was *guided* by God. Did His will
get followed 100% of the time in that process? No, I don't think so. I
think there were many plain and precious parts left out, and I think there
were many additions; *I do not import absolute divine perfection to it*.
Do I think God might have had a hand in the development of other books,
both then and today? Yes, I do. The Bible is the ultimate *guide*. It
is *not* God Himself.

(These questions aren't meant to imply that you don't - I'm just having
trouble understanding...)

The individual books of the Bible were composed by men, their contents
have been corrupted by accidental and deliberate changes over nearly two
millennia, and the composition of the collection of a whole is not the
subject of universal agreement in Christendom. That means for me to pick
one as being the *perfect* representation of God's word, I must reject all
other such representations as Satanic. I don't think I have the knowledge
to state which original text is the "real" Word of God as God Intended It
to Be. I know for me to take such a stance exhibits a whole lot of pride
on my part that might be warranted, and if I treat any such collection as
divinely Perfect, I believe I would be committing idolatry.

I respect the Bible and its contents, pretty much however it's composed.
My own research has led me to a greater *respect* for the Earlier Text
position than for the Textus Receptus position, which I find as an example
of what my father used to refer to as "magical thinking".

What I will not do is *worship* the Bible, something it appears to me you
are suggesting I should do.

And I still don't have an answer to the question "which Bible is The
Bible?", although I think it's clear I probably would *not* agree with
your answer no matter what it was, since my Earliest Text position is
subject to the discovery of Earlier Texts (in Greek or otherwise) than are
presently accounted for, and is thus subject to change!

-Chuck Stevens
Chuck, I found this fascinating. Thanks for posting it. It gives insight
into why you personally would care about commas and capitals, and I can see
your point.

However, as I observed earlier, I don't believe we can ever get closer to
understanding this than to accept the general gist of what is reported to
have been said, (just as we do with modern newspapers, and we all know how
often what is there is mis-reported, mis-emphasised, or edited to spin the
meaning.)

Maybe someday technology will enable us to get to the point in the universe
where the light waves from those events are now, and we can see it for
ourselves. (We'd still have to recreate the sound waves by manipulating the
air molecules in our viewing environment, but a technology that could
transcend Relativity to bring us the pictures would probably have no trouble
with the sound :-)). Until then, I contend it is impossible to know the
intention of the speaker, and the stress and emphasis that was made at the
time.

A general consensus of reports can simply give us an insight. We should not
get too wound up about the details of the reports...

And I found your idea of placing to much emphasis on the Bible until it
becomes like idolatry a very interesting one.

Pete.


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