Confused, did the early christians accept the non-canonized books?

The word liberal has more than one meaning depending on how it is used.
You were using it as an adjective, correctly, as in--your outlook is more liberal than mine--very conservative.
When used as a noun--A liberal is what I defined above: one who denies the fundamentals of the faith and tries to discredit the Bible and everything that is supernatural.
It was a play on words--no offence meant.
DHK

 

I'm after the authorities which state that Jesus and the Apostles didn't accept the DCs. Please stop dodging the question.

 

Good for me

I haven't noticed a source say that any of them were written within the apostles' lifetimes, but I'll go so far as to say that books written between 150 and 50 B.C. would not have been accepted by any Jews who rejected books written after 400 B.C. (which may include some you consider canonical). The final Jewish canon was not settled until as late as A.D. 200. The Alexandrian canon was essentially identical to the Christian canon of the first millennium and a half. The Samaritan canon consisted of the Pentateuch and Joshua. The Ethiopian canon included the Book of Jubilees and Sirach. The Sadducees' canon consisted of the Pentateuch. The Essenes' canon differed from others somewhat. The Pharisees, the ultimate surviving Jewish sect after the unsuccessful revolts against Rome, decided on a canon identical to that of modern Protestants. The Jews were not a monolith. There were several competing canons for Jews before the destruction of the temple; the one that survived was that of the Pharisees. Some parts of the Pharisees' canon were not written in Hebrew, but Aramaic. And, no, not all of the deutercanonical books were written in Greek; some were translated into Greek--Tobit in Aramaic and Sirach in Hebrew were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, for example.

 

Sorry, I won't read the link posted. I don't consider the opinion of Mormons to be in any way valid.

 

If you only read information from people with whom you agree, and only listen to people with whom you agree, you will probably not learn very much.

Further, you will risk mischaracterization. Too many Christians accuse other Christians of `believing this because they want this' when the real reason is something entirely different. I believe that the Lord will hold us accountable for judging others falsely when accurate information was easily available but we did not care enough to bother to research or ask.

As for the link, after the first paragraph, there was nothing distinctively pro-Mormon that I noticed.

 

I don't have that problem, thanks.

Yet there is also nothing to recommend the link as having any reliability at all.

I could put up a webpage claiming that aliens had landed in Nashville and established TBM and Liberty University. This would have as much reliability as an account of golden tablets and magic spectacles. Once someone makes such a claim, their further assertions are suspect.

 

And that's another strong support for that canon. Jesus said that the Pharisees sat in Moses' seat. They carried the official authority, as recognized by Jesus, (even though the Sadducees gained power sometimes). So even though they rejected Jesus, and thus spiritually they were evil, they still had the right knowlege on the matters of knowledge of the Law, so this whole Jamnia council argument that keeps getting thrown up doesn't prove that everything else they belived was automatically wrong.

 

What spiritually evil people knew about the Law doesn't sway me very strongly. The Sadducees were the temple party. The Pharisees were the synagogue party, and their rabbis often sat in the chair in the synagogue called Moses' seat. They had authority over much of OT Jewry, to be sure. But I find decisive the determination of God's people, having the Holy Spirit; the decision of the Church of God, the pillar and foundation of the truth, which was promised by the Lord Jesus Christ to be guided into all truth by the Holy Spirit, to recognize the deuterocanonical books, is sufficient for me.

 

To call all the prophets of the OT, the authors of each and every book of the OT, and all the unnamed prophets of the OT as well as the many Godly indiviiduals of the Jewish nation, (i.e. God's Chosen People) to call them evil people and infer that they knew nothing about the law is as about as anti-Semitic as you can get. These were God's chosen people, and you dismiss them as wicked. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, and realize that such anti-semitism is not tolerated on this board.

The fact of the matter is that Catholics did not choose our Bible for us. That is a myth. The Jewish nation had a canon and knew what that canon was 400 years before Christ. In Acts 17:11 the people of Berea took that canon and searched it to see whether the things that Paul was saying were true. The Ethiopian eunuch was reading from the book of Isaiah from that canon. They had a completed canon of Scripture by 400 B.C. No other book was permitted into the canon beyond that date. Why are you calling these people evil? Why the anti-semitism?
DHK

 

While agreeing that antiSemitism is evil and unconscionable, I note, DHK, that the examples you cited were individuals and groups who would have been using the Greek translation of the Old Terstament... The LXX.

Just a thought.

 

Well, it was Jesus who said they sat in Moses' seat depite their evil. They may have shortly been replaced as the Mosaic dispensation ended, but the Church did not sit in Moses' seat under that Old Covenant. The Church produced and compiled NT books for the New Covenant, but the OT canon was already established by God's OT authority, corrupt is it may have become by then.

 

The LXX was not doubt in use at that time for the Hellenized Greeks. That was the purpose for its translation--to make study easier. It would be akin to us using the NASB (or any other MV) rather than the KJV. In the Synagogue the Sacred Text would always be read out of the Hebrew (just as in most Baptist churches the KJV is still read). It is a poor illustration, I know. The difference is that the masoretic text of the Hebrew was a copy of the actual inspired transcript written in the language of the people who wrote it. It was far more accurate that a Greek translation. It was the original. All the nation of Israel had to know Hebrew. It was taught in their synagogues. They were even fluent in it. But for the Hellenized Greeks, it was no longer their mother tongue, and Greek was easier for them to understand, therefore Greek was more preferable. A French-Canadian would rather read from a French Bible though he is fluent in English. The same concept.

However,
The original LXX never contained the apocrypha. Date wise it was impossible for it was written well before the apocrypha was ever written--more than 150 years the earliest books were written, and more than 250 years the latter books were written. Therefore how could it have included the apocrypha. The apocrypha was included well after most of the NT books were written. Sometime in the latter part of the first century the apocrypha was inserted into one of the editions of the LXX.

As time went on there were many early translations: not just the LXX. Early translations included the Syriac, the Peshitta, the Itala. But like the LXX they were all translations. Every translation is inferior to the source (Hebrew and Greek) from which it is translated from.
DHK

 

Cite your source. And not the Mormons this time.

 

Here is some information to help you along:

DHK

 

This may have been true for the KJV, but it was not exactly true across the board.

The British and Foreign Bible Society (founded in 1804) included the LXX in it's editions printed for Lutherans, Greek Orthodox, and English (Anglican's); but did not include the LXX in editions going to Scotland.

This dual standard, however, had always been a point of contention for the Society and, as you point out (beginning in 1826 per the ref.), the Society no longer published the LXX in any of it's versions.

It is, nevertheless, interesting to note that the LXX did survive in much of the Protestant world until the early 1800's.

Reference: The Cambridge History of the Bible, Volume 3.

CA

 

http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Apocrypha



The majority of the church fathers rejected them.
DHK

 

'LXX' is not an abbreviation for the deuterocanonical books. 'LXX' is the abbreviation for the Greek OT used by Christ, the apostles, and the early Church. They are not synonymous.

 

You are, of course, correct. My short hand was a little too short. Thanks for catching that.

 

No problem!

 

Wrong!

There is no proof that Jesus used LXX.
The quotations of OT used in NT are similar to LXX, but they contain different words all the time.



1) Matthew 1:23 quoted from Isaiah 7:14

Greek NT/ KJV

Ιδου, ηπαρθενοςενγαστριεξεικαιτεξεταιθιον, καικαλεσουσιτοονομααυτουΕμμανουηλ

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel

LXX

His name shall be called

Masoretic Text ( Isaiah 7:14)
You (feminine You) shall call his name


All 3 are different, because they translated the meaning instead of word to word.

2) Luke 4:19 quoted from Isaiah 61:1

Greek NT
Κηρυξαι (Preach)

LXX

Καλεσαι(call )

Masoretic Text

קרא

KRA ( Proclaim)

Greek NT is nearer to Masoretic Text than to LXX

3) Acts 8:32-33 quoted from Isaiah 53:7-8

Greek NT
Καιωςαμνοςεναντιοντουκειραντοςαυτοναφωνοςουτωςουκανοιγειτοστομα….. αυτου

LXX

Καιωςαμνοςεμπρσθεντουκειραντος
αυτοναφωνοςουτωςουκανοιγειτοστομα (

Masoretic Text

He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearer

LXX used the synonym, but different word.

4) Hebrews 10:5 quoted from Psalm 40:6


Greek NT

Ευδοκησας
(delight in, pleasure)

LXX

Εζητησας

(seek, pursue)

Masoretic Text

Chaphatsta

(pleased to do, delight in)

Masoretic Text is nearer to Greek NT than LXX is


The Dead Sea Scrolls and other documents suggest us that there might have been a certain Hebrew underlying texts before LXX, and NT may have quoted such Hebrew Vorlage Text, not the Greek LXX

The claim that NT quoted LXX is a non-sense created by the people who try to advocate the Apocrypha, prayer to the dead. It is a Hoax.