Christianity and how the bible was put together

Thank you for clarifying this. PLease also clarify what you mean by 'following the NT'.

On what basis do you suggest that?

Are you saying that all 27 books were written to all 1st century congregations?

Not at all - see my last question

...to the addressees of 2 Peter, perhaps. But to all the Christian congregations...?

Where? How?

Just one?

No evidence they didn't. The 'default Scripture setting' for the OT in the Greek speaking world was the LXX which included the DCs, so you will have to adduce evidence that the Greek -speaking and -writing NT writers disapproved of its use; to use your own words, "It just isn't there."

 

This is a question that is easily answered by knowing how the Jews referred to their Scriptures. The Law and the Prophets was the whole OT. It is sometimes called the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings, or the Tanach by Jews (the word being made up of the initial letters of the three parts: Torah, Nebe'im, and kethubim). There was not "poetry" in their understanding. Poetry is a genre, not a classification of the books.

The historical books are the prophets, though some historical books (such as 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah) are technically part of the Kethubim, or the writings. This arrangements is seen in the Hebrew text arrangement where the order of the books shows their classification of them. But much of hte hsitorical books are part of the prophets, known as the former prophets vs. the latter prophets (what we typically think of as prophets).

All that to say that if you take the time to understand how the Jews viewed their Bible, you haven't made an argument that makes sense.

The verse I was referring to in 2 Peter was v. 17 where the writings of Paul are said to be part of the Scriptures. So the first century church did have the NT.

 

Couldn't have imagined it would have been unclear. My bad.

Churches that "do church" as the NT prescribes.

On the basis that the NT was completed about AD 95, which means that the church in the first century would have had access to all the books because they were already written.

Of course not. But they were circular and were passed around.

I didn't say all, but something can be well known without everyone knowing about it. When you look at who Peter was writing to, you see that it is Christians all over Asia Minor, which is a wide swath, and if Peter was writing from Rome as some suggest, it would have included them as well (though I am not convinced he was writing from Rome).

In my response to that post.

Why didn't they cite it as being part of Scripture? They didn't.

I think there is some historical blindness and theological blindness going on here. You are not seeing some things because of your traditions, and I find that a dangerous way to do theology, whether the tradition is Baptist, Anglican, Orthodox, or anything else. The fact remains that there is no evidence that the early church believed the DC were canonical, and there is evidence that they did not. I see no reason to depart from that for the sake of tradition.

 

Your post begs far more questions than it answers:-

What do you mean by 'do church' as per the NT? Which part of the NT? Do you, for example, 'do church' as per Acts 2:42-44ff ie: are all the members of your congregation Jewish and own everything communally?

What evidence do you have that the NT was circulated? How? By whom? Where? How did all the congregations have access to all the books by the end of the 1st century? There was no internet back then!

 

One has also to bear in mind the fact that the Jews at Jamnia rejected the LXX because, amongst other things it was used by the Christians as Scripture and the Jews wished to distance themselves from these minim (sectaries) as much as possible.

 

I would disagree with that, and so would many others (including noted Church historian JND Kelly.) There are several quotes in the earliest church fathers such as Clement of Rome and Polycarp (not to mention Irenaeus and Tertullian) which quote the DC books in the same manner they quote the protocanonical Scriptures. (I'll give specific examples when I get home tonight.) Also, we have the same early councils (like Hippo and Carthage) which basically 'fixed' the 27 book NT canon also include the DCs among the OT canon. In addition, we have early copies of the OT which include the DCs, not at the end as in some sort of appendix, but mixed in with the protocanonicals according to genre/classification. It wasn't until toward the end of the second century that some hesitation crept in among some of the Eastern fathers (noted with Melito of Sardis for example), as the church began to respond to the polemics of Palestinian Jews who didn't include the DCs (nor the NT writings for that matter).

 

I wont' address all of this because it is getting a little silly. But I will address this.

Again, it is hard to imagine all the ways that people can mangle simple ideas. The NT prescribes and gives patterns for certain things in the NT church. That is what I mean. The NT church was never solely Jewish. It was very quickly becoming more cosmopolitan. And the church never owned everything communally. I think that is a pretty bad misreading of the passage. But we must recognize a distinction between what is normative (or descriptive) and what is prescriptive. There are many ways that churches can do the described things. But a NT does all the prescribed things.

Do you really not read your Bible? Colossians is clear that the books were circulated (Col 4:16 if I recall correctly). The book of the Revelation was a circular, traveling from church to church according to Rev 2-3. Peter wrote to churches all over Asia Minor so we know that was circulated. Again, it seems like this is so obvious.

I don't know of anyone who says that they did. Do you?

 

Our accepted Bibles today include many things that are not accepted as Scripture.

As I poitned out the obvious, it also quotes from other sources that you are not claiming the title of Scripture for, so that disproves your argument. (It doesn't necessarily disprove your conclusion, but it renders your argument invalid.)

As well as quoting from other sources as well.

That is nowhere nearly unanimously accepted. Study the issue and you will find there is a great deal of debate about what was being cited, whether the LXX or personal translations of the Hebrew texts.

So again, to point out the obvious, there are serious flaws in your understanding and in your argumentation. I encourage you to do some more study on this.

 

In what way? I would say it's quite important

Er...it's quite a complex idea, actually. There's no one 'template' for 'doing church' in the NT. That's because the NT was never intended to be a 'how to do church' manual.

Which NT congregation are you talking about? Early Acts Jerusalem? Colossae? Early Pauline Corinth with its charismatic free-for-all? Early Ephesus with its five-fold leadership of apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers and evangelists? Or the later Ephesian church of the Pastorals with its much more hierarchical and proto-Catholic/Orthodox structure of bishops and presbyters?

Er...I think you'll find it was excsluively Jewish at the start - right up until the conversion of Cornelius.

Really? I think you must be reading a different Bible to mine.

And on what basis do you judge between the two?

Of course I do; what a silly question!

Yes, one letter to the nearby congregation at Laodicea (one congregation.

Again, one book to the congregations of the Asian littoral.

Yes, but none of this proves your point: it's a massive leap from these examples of two or three books doing the rounds of a few Asian congregations to claim that the NT was generally circulated and available to the whole Church by tne end of the first century!!

You seem to be claiming that the NT was available to the whole Church by the end of the first century, which means you are saying that they did. However, the evidence as demonstrated above is to the contrary

 

In that some of the things that are being said are completely devoid of historical and biblical basis. It seems that some have no idea of the biblical doctrine of Scripture.

Well, no. It's not that complex.

You would have a nearly impossible task to show this supposed division. We could look at each of these individually and see that there is no substantive difference in the organization of the church after it got started.

Um, no. In Acts 9 you have the Samaritans. In Acts 6, you have Hellenists. In Acts 2 you have Peter preaching to the multitudes from all nations. And all of these happen before Cornelius. What we should say is that the church was primarily Jewish, but not exclusively.

This is one reason I ask if you read your Bible ... somewhat tongue in cheek, but not entirely. There are some very simple things that you should know and appear not to.

So if they owned everything communally, how did Annanias and Sapphira sell their property and give it to the church? How did they meet in people's houses? It makes no sense to say that they owned everything communally. It is in direct contradiction to the Scriptures.

A number of ways as any introductory hermeneutics text willd discuss. Context is a key one and looking for underlying foundations is a key one.

It's really not all that silly given some of the things you are saying here, Matt. I don't mean to be offensive to you, but there are some key things that it seems you are totally unaware of.

It would be a far stretch from what i said to say that I claimed that the NT was generally circulated and available to the whole Church by the end of the first century. I have not said that.

No, I don't seem to be saying that. I am saying nothing of the kind.

 

I'll give you the Samaritans but the Hellenists and the multitude at Pentecost were Jewish. Ananias and Sapphira's story demonstrates they were expected to hold property in common; you can still refer to 'each other's houses' and hold property communally as this can merely refer to the person who lived in the house

There's a massive difference between Early Pauline and Later Pauline Christianity

 

They were "Hellenistic" which mean Grecian. They may have been of Jewish descent or they may have been proselytes, or both. But the fact is that while the early church was predmoniantly Jewish, it was not exclusively Jewish.

No it doesn't. They sold the property, likely to get the fame for doing so. They didn't even give all the money, and are not condemned for doing so. They were killed for lying about giving all the money.

Not massive. As the church developed certain structures in the church developed along with it. You have also the factor of apostolic leadership. But the NT is pretty clear on how the church is to be organized.

 

'Jewish' does not exclusively mean 'Palestinian.' Oh, and in case you were still wondering where you said that the NT churches had all 27 books by the end of the first century, it was here:

 

No kidding. No one said that it did. Again, you are missing the point in a big way.

I am not sure what you are responding to. Your previous statement was that I said the NT was available to "the whole Church." But when you try to prove I said that, you cite something completely different where I said that the "churches ... had all of it by the end of the first century." I didn't say any one church at it all. I didn't say that all churches had it all. I said what I said.

It reminds me of one of the key problems in communication, both in this type as well as in Scripture. Sometimes people do not speak clearly, and as I have often said, it is impossible to anticipate all the ways in which someone might misread something. But equally problemmatic is that some people simply do not read carefully and think about what is said, and as a result read their own biases into it. That is what you have done.

 

I am confused. So now you are saying that the philosphers and poets quoted in the NT are in fact Scripture? When I asked you earlier I thought you said that they weren't. Now you are saying that you aren't excluded any writings.

And I think that question has been sufficiently answered by looking at the Scriptures themselves which refer to the OT as the Law and the Prophets, not the Law and the Prophets and the DC. The fact that you don't accept an answer doesn't mean that it is not correct, nor that it wasn't given. There is no reason biblically to think that the DC was considered part of the HOly Scripture. There are in fact a number of good reasons why they should not be.

But when someone "just doesn't know," how else do we answer? I have taken a fair amount of time pointing out both factual and argumentative errors in your position. But there are sources far more qualified and well-written that are widely available that will give further insight into what I have said here. I understand not everyone has gone to seminary, and so I have great patience with questions. I am not sure that it is profitable to keep asking the smae questions over and over again after they have been answered and discussed. The kind of resources and citations that perhaps you are looking for are not suitable for this board, and my time schedule doesn't allow me to do that anyway.