by Doug Mason 14 Replies latest watchtower bible
Many people over many centuries have been involved in deciding which documents were Scripture. There has never been unanimous agreement, including today. Only the Church of Rome took a vote on the Canon. Protestants rely on Tradition.
The lists of books that today are considered to be Scripture vary between Protestant, Roman Catholic and the various iterations of the Orthodox communities.
http://www.jwstudies.com/The_people_who_decided_the_Scriptures.pdf
Which is why any arguments over the "correct" interpretation of scripture is a mute point. If we can't even determine what "true" scripture is then it is pointless.
I went up to some JW's on cart work recently who were advertising "what does the Bible really teach" and asked "which Bible?"
After some discussion on how the Biblical canon came into being my next question was, "if you believe the Catholic church is wrong about hell, wrong about the Trinity, wrong about Mary, wrong about infant baptism etc etc etc then why on earth do you think they're right about which books should be in the Bible!!!!
I pointed out to them that they are the ones who decided on the canon you now accept... and of course they were completely dumbfounded and looking to get out of there ASAP.
Those who decided canon obviously looked for convenient teachings. In most of the apocryphal books, we can see teaching of immortality of soul which poses problem for the teaching of Jesus’ ransom sacrifice. Hence they had to weed out all books which speak of immortality of soul directly or indirectly. Thus they replaced truth with some human philosophy. Immortality of soul was a scientific truth for Wernher von Braun (the father of rocket technology and space science in the United States) who is famous for this quote: “I believe in an immortal soul. Science has proved that nothing disintegrates into nothingness. Life and soul, therefore, cannot disintegrate into nothingness, and so are immortal. Everything science has taught me and continues to teach me-strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. Nothing disappears without a trace.” This is true in the case of nobel Laureate Max Planck [Father of Quantum Theory which revolutionized physicsand opened the way for Albert Einstein's theory of relativity] who wrote: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”(The Observer, 25 January 1931)
This understanding is the basis for ‘loving one’s neighbor as himself’ which can make this earth a heaven, as Carl Gustav Jung, beautifully put it: “Know all the theories, master all the techniques, but as you touch a human soul be just another human soul.”
Thus those who determined canon brought a list in disservice to what Jesus said in John 8:31: Truth will set you free.” What really happened was: "The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear." (Herbert Agar)
In his book The Text of the New Testament, Dr. Vincent Taylor writes that "The manuscripts of the New Testament preserve traces of two kinds of dogmatic alterations: those which involve the elimination or alteration of what was regarded as doctrinally unacceptable or inconvenient, and those which introduce into the Scriptures proof for a favorite theological tenet or practice". (http://BibleCorruption.com ).
Hi doubtful,
I posed the same situation to a JW at a cart on Monday.
He trotted out 2 Timothy 3:16 and I asked him, "When was 2 Timothy written and when was any Canon first recognised?"
I pointed out that 2 Timothy was written centuries before any Bible, to which he responded that it was talking about "Scriptures". So I asked him: "Who determined what was Scripture?"
He responded with: "That's a good question".
It is pure circular reasoning to say that whatever the Bible says is true because the writers said it was true.
Doug
You got him Doug.
In his book The Text of the New Testament, Dr. Vincent Taylor writes that "The manuscripts of the New Testament preserve traces of two kinds of dogmatic alterations: those which involve the elimination or alteration of what was regarded as doctrinally unacceptable or inconvenient, and those which introduce into the Scriptures proof for a favorite theological tenet or practice". (http://BibleCorruption.com ).
Very apposite Irenaeus.
Funny how we used to just accept that the bible was inspired and true just because it said it was. What a bunch of dumb sh*ts we were!
just saying!
When I look back on it , imperfect human beings are the one`s that determine what is inspired and true scripture and the Almighty God Jehovah has no say in it ,he is mute.
How crazy is that ?
And what is more crazy is that the Jehovah`s Witnesses / WTB&TS accept the books that the Catholic Church deemed as inspired Scriptures. ? And aligned themselves up with the Protestant religions who also accepted the Catholic books with a few exceptions ?
And in all of that Jehovah God never uttered a word.
Deciding the "canon" and what did not make the cut was a big part of my self-education that helped free me from believing that any "inspiration" was involved in the writing of those books.
Another great factor was really discovering that no significant group of people on earth ever lived according to all the rules in the Bible. The Jews were given the rules and told that people "DID" follow those rules in the past, but that's just a fairy tale.
I realized this when I was about 20, after I researched it and discovered that we really just used one of the many accepted canons (JWs actually use the Protestant list of cannon, not the Catholic list) and brought it up to my parents it didn’t seem to bother them nearly as much as it did me. Looking at all the “apocryphal” writings really went a long way towards helping me question the book as a whole. In fact, just last night I was looking into the origins of the Torah, (Hebrew Scriptures) most scholar’s believe that those writings weren’t really put together until after the Jews returned from Babylon and that many of the books were slowly added to by many writers over a period of time instead of each book being written in whole by a single author as many JWs believe. Worship of the deity Yahweh wasn’t even very widespread in Israel before that and evidence suggests they actually worshipped the head of the Canaanite pantheon, a god known as El, whose name can even be seen in the name of IsraEl. There is even a version of Deuteronomy that says Yahweh is on of the children of El and was granted Israel as his own nation, it took centuries of Yahweh absorbing the traits of other deities like El and Baal before the Israelites denied the existence of any other gods. (Sorry went off on a bit of a tangent there)
