by kwintestal 13 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
"All scripture is inspired by God"
When this was written, was it referring to the OT only, or did it refer to the NT as well which hadn't yet been compiled? Did Paul know that the letters he was writing would form the NT bible cannon? What indication is there that the NT is inspired by God as well, and not just a bunch of letters writen and compiled by a bunch of guys?
Kwin
Kwin,
According to many if not most scholars this was written, not by Paul, but by someone using his name well into the 2nd century AD.
"All scripture" is an embracing expression. Ask yourself, from which Scripture did the author get that "Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses" (v. 8)? This is not in the OT as we know it. So the attitude is to receive as "inspired from God" any scripture which appears to be "beneficial" to the Christian faith as the author understands it.
Of course the author could not know what the NT canon would be, nor whether his own writings would be included in it.
According to many if not most scholars this was written, not by Paul, but by someone using his name well into the 2nd century AD.
Can I ask which scholars?
Thank you Narkissos
not that i have read the link completely but, ancient writtings styles could identify the writer easier than modern wirters, imo.
Now with computers programs you could analyse ancient writtings and....and make some conclusions.
But before the reader jump into conclusions it would be good to "analyse" if the user of the computer program had any bias, just in case. Adn if more than one scholar from differente backgrounds agree. What is known about those scholars?
Narkissos wrote:
So the attitude is to receive as "inspired from God" any scripture which appears to be "beneficial" to the Christian faith as the author understands it.
You undoubtedly know this subject far better than I, but I seem to recall reading that there were quotation formulae that indicated some notion of canonicity (albeit certainly not a catholically defined canon); e.g. 'scripture says' or 'it is written'. So I would have presumed that Pseudo-Paul's conception of 'all scripture' was narrower than "any scripture which appears to be 'beneficial' to the Christian faith". Neither was he referring to any specific list of texts; but he was probably speaking of the general collection of writings which had been consecrated through time and tradition as 'scripture'.
Does that seem reasonable to you?
One,
Adn if more than one scholar from differente backgrounds agree. What is known about those scholars?
From the link I gave you can get to several different introductions to the Pastorals (1-2 Timothy / Titus). Afaik only fundamentalist Protestant (Evangelical) or traditionalist Catholic scholars would still attribute them to Paul. Most mainstream Catholic scholars have given up this traditional option since the 1970's (in France Ceslas Spicq was one of its last advocates in the 60's).
Euphemism,
The expression "all scripture" (pasa graphè) in 2 Timothy is remarkably open and undetermined. To refer to a definite body of literature one could expect at least the use of the article, pasa hè graphè, which would mean "all the scripture" or "all Scripture" (which scripture being defined by the capital in English).
The 2nd-century Christian Church was quite busy in defining a NT canon by choosing between Christian works. The reference in 2 Peter 3:15f to a collection of the Pauline letters "which the ignorant and unstable (i.e. Marcionite?) twist" is a very good example of that preoccupation. Defining the OT (or, more exactly, the Hebrew Bible) canon was rather the worry and business of the Jewish pharisaic-rabbinical community. Both were separated, and non-canonical Jewish works were seen as a threat to Judaism, not Christianity. As the diverse contents of Christian LXX codices shows, the Christian OT canon was still widely open in the 4th and 5th centuries and it was not dogmatically fixed before the 16th-century Reformation (which adopted the Jewish rabbinical canon) and the subsequent Catholic Council of Trent (which adopted a wider canon including the deuterocanonical books).
In the NT, the formal authoritative quotations ("Scripture says" or "it is written") do include a number of texts which do not belong to either (such as 1 Enoch quoted verbatim by Jude, or perhaps the Book of Eldad and Modad quoted by James 4:5 -- see Leolaia's recent thread on this one).
What's interesting about that is that there are a LOT of other books or scriptures that existed in Jesus day that the jews used along with the "accepted" modern day bible scripture that were considered holy and inspired. Indeed, Jesus himself quoted from the book of Enoch (of which you can look up and read) and his brother Jude quoted a huge portion of the book in his little book near Revelation.
Now, the society does not like to comment on the Book of Enoch or Jude's comment very much for good reason. The book blatently contradicts many of the current JW teaching as well as that of other "christian" orgs and also contains no small amount of inaccurate scientific information. The old reasoning of the society is that Jude was not quoting from the Book of Enoch but that the Book of Enoch was a later creation after the disciples had written their work. However, there's a mountain of modern evidence proving that the book of enoch was written at least 300 years before Jesus and in the Gospels Jesus makes several statements that seem like direct quotes from it. Go figure it was used prominently by the Essenes as well and Jesus seems to have at the least to have studied with the Essenes if he actually wasn't a renegade Essene himself.
