Bible canon conundrums

by joey jojo 20 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  JoenB75

  Well we have a good mix of books. James clearly have a mission in telling us that we should do good. Ephesians says good works is prepared for us to walk in. Revelation has been largely misunderstood dealing entirely with things soon to happen in the 1st century.. testament Indeed 🥰🥰
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  joey jojo

  Drearyweather, the research I did names all 4 of the men I mentioned as bishops, in various cities. Are you saying that being a catholic bishop today is a far cry from those guys in status, power and privilege? If so, I'm sure you're right, but they are still given the title of bishops today, and at the very least, were not merely commentators as the wt would have us believe.
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  Drearyweather

  Joey Jojo, I get what you are saying.

  The problem is, whenever we hear or read the word bishop, we connect it with the Roman Catholic Church.

  The word bishop is an English word that was not used in the first century. At that time, the language was Greek, and hence these men would have been referred to as the epískopos, which is translated as 'overseer'. These men were epískopos of different cities (bishops according to the RC church, and overseers as per the JW's, depends on what you translate it)

  These men belonged to the early church of the first century, and some were even contemporaries of the apostles of Jesus Christ. They did not have any denomination, and hence every Christian group can lay their claim on them, and can freely quote from their writings.

  It is incorrect to say that the WT simply refers to them as historians or commentators. In many of their publications, the WT refers to them as the 'Apostolic Fathers', which they actually were.
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  joey jojo

  Eusebius lived during the 4th century, after Christianity was legalised and the church was in full swing. I understand your point about the earliest overseers, or bishops, the generation that 'overlapped' (tm) with the apostles of Jesus.

  However, the argument could be made that further contemporaries of those men and the ones that came after led to the formation of the catholic church, which then was responsible for, among other things, canonising scripture.

  If the wt has referred to these men as apostolic fathers in the past, why not do the same in this article?
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  Drearyweather

  Apart from Eusebius, all the other three died 100-150 years before the formation of Roman Catholic Church. I'm doubtful any of their contemporaries were catholic bishops. I stand corrected if concrete data is present to prove otherwise.

  However, my point was just to point out that Papias, Irenaeus, and Polycarp were not Catholics and hence we can't say that the JW writer has used deception in their article regarding these men.

  Regarding using the term 'Apostolic Fathers', even if the writer has not used it in this specific article, the writer has referred to them as 'early writers', 'Historians', and 'Second-century Christians', which they actually were. So I am not sure if we can say that their roles have been tampered with.

  I am happy for you to disagree with me.
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  Phizzy

  "by the usage of Christian congregations throughout the ancient world.'

  I commented earlier on this phrase from the WT Article, but they are not consistent on this, apart from the books/Writings they reject totally, which were used by many in the early Churches, they reject the passage about the Woman caught in Adultery, they claim because it "is not in the earliest manuscripts", but there is evidence this passage was long used in the early Church.

  Later bishops did not like it because it took away their Control, how very like JW's own G.B ! and because it was too lenient on the woman, had it been a man in the story it would have been different no doubt.
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  joey jojo

  DW,

  If you are saying that the catholic church retrospectively slapped the title of bishop onto very early overseers in an attempt to tie them to the catholic church, maybe you're right. I don't know.

  The earliest mention of the word catholic that I could find was 110 ad, so that's actually quite early and there would have been people alive that may have been contemporaries of some of the disciples. The muratorian fragment also mentions the word catholic.

  What would become the catholic church was responsible for compiling letters of the apostles and letters of correspondence between early congregations, preserving and copying them. The church claims an unbroken line of successors of the apostles. So I guess the sticking point for you is, at what stage did Christians become catholics?

  The article I linked was another example of the disingenuous writing style of the wt. They tell part of the story so that reader is never presented with the full picture.
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  Phizzy

  An interesting point you raise joyey jojo, the use of the word "katholikos" as being very early. It shows that there was as early as that a group of Churches who considered themselves to be "the whole Church" and thus were dismissive of Christian groups outside of theirs as not Orthodox.

  This thinking must have arisen because of the size of their group, compared to the others, who were probably dwindling in number by then, so they claimed the evident blessing of God upon their Pauline Christianity. At that time of course there was for sure no fixed "Canon" so they must have judged the other groups on difference of Doctrine and interpretation.

  The same thinking pervaded the JW's in my youth : " Look how fast we are growing ! We must have Jehovah's blessing !", that thinking is still there to a degree, of course it is not only a fallacy to think that way, but the figures rather go against it too, much larger Christian Groups are also growing faster. Thanks for your thought on this.
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  Drearyweather

  Joey, Thanks for bringing the point about the word 'Catholic'. I agree with you that the word has been used even before the Roman Catholic Church came into existence. I agree with you on that one.

  The word Catholic comes from the Greek word, katholikos which means 'whole'. Ignatius used this word in 107 AD. In fact, the form of the word katholikos also appears in the Bible in Acts 9:31: "ekklesia kath holos".

  Luke and Ignatius used the word katholikos or a form of it to indicate all the churches across the world or what we call as the universal church, or the congregations of the first century, based on what you translate it.

  At that time, this name had nothing to do with the Roman Catholic Church, even though it was later used for its formation. In fact, many Christian groups have taken names or form of names from the Scriptures for their denominations and have tied them back to their origins.

  Regarding the canon, I don't believe that Roman Catholic Church compiled the canon of the NT. These books were already considered as canonical and used by the early Christian Church of the first and second centuries before heretical people like Marcion came up with their lists.

  FF Bruce, writes in his essay, The Canon of the New Testament:

  "One thing must be emphatically stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognizing their innate worth and general apostolic authority, direct or indirect. The first ecclesiastical councils to classify the canonical books were both held in North Africa — at Hippo Regius in 393 and at Carthage in 397 — but what these councils did was not to impose something new upon the Christian communities but to codify what was already the general practice of those communities."
  
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  EverApostate

  If there is really a god, he should communicate to humans in a constant manner.

  Or at least engrave his holy writings on a mountain, where people can’t tamper with it

  And a god who wrote a book, wasn’t able to preserve his name in that. Absurdity at its finest.