Responding to a Septuagint=canon argument
INTRODUCTION
Among the many differences between Protestants and Catholics is the fact that Catholics have more books contained within their Old Testament. The Catholic canon is taken from what was known as the Septuagint, which was the Greek Old Testament used by the apostles and early Christians. Its name comes from the legend that it was translated by 70 scholars; therefore, you will often see it called the LXX.
Below is a 3-sided discussion regarding the canon of the Bible. It involves a letter written by Catholic apologist Steve Ray to a Protestant, entitled "Who Has the Correct Bible: Catholics or Protestants?" Click here to view the entire piece, which is quite lengthy. Rob selected paragraphs with which he disagreed and created an essay entitled "Responding to a Septuagint=canon argument." Click here to view it.
So, first will be Steve Ray's original statements in blue, followed by Rob's response in italics, followed by my response in bold.
[Steve Ray] I have a lot of books on the Scriptures, canon, New Testament Introductions, etc. and none of them afford the scholarly work I have found in Catholic material. Now, let’s look at this some more. Even if the Jamnian rabbis had closed the canon, and did have the authority to make such a canonical determination (to close the Old Testament canon), who says they had the authority from God to make such a binding determination? Why should Christians accept their determination?
[Rob] SR just said 'if they did have the authority' then he says 'who says they have the authority'???? Clearly if they had the authority to close the Jewish canon then that authority could only come from God. Now I don't know if they had that authority or not, but that is not the point I'm making. My point is that Steve just contradicted himself.
[Clay] I emailed to Steve Ray the article written by Rob about his statements - this is what Steve had to say about this: "I did not contradict myself. Read the blue paragraph and see there is clearly no contradiction. I do not make two opposing statements -- they are both following the "if": If the Jamnian rabbis ... did have the authority ... who says they had the authority from God ..." All of this is one question, there is no statement -- nothing to contradict."
[Steve Ray] In 100 AD were they still God’s mouthpiece, still his prophetic people? God had already debunked the Jews as His "prophetic voice" thirty years earlier when Jerusalem was destroyed and razed by fire. God judged them and rejected their old wineskins. You, Jerry, as a Dispensationalist should relate to this. The old wine and wineskin (Judaism) was now replaced by new wine (the Gospel) and new wineskins (the Church). Why accept the defrocked, unauthoritative rabbis’ determination, instead of the Church’s?
[Rob] Quite simple: Paul argues that the Word of God had been given in to the safekeeping of the Jews. They were the custodians of the sacred scriptures. Consider a Jew just before the birth of Christ. Were any OT books written between the last Deuterocanonical (assuming the deuteros are scriptural) and the time of Christ? No. Irrespective of the 'defrocking' of Jews in AD 70 clearly the Jews in 7 BC were STILL the custodians of the scriptures. Jesus, during His ministry, held them accountable to the scriptures but how could He do so if the scriptures could not be known? While I agree that Jamnia did not decide anything, I think Ray's argument to be somewhat disingenuous too, just as he charges Geisler. Ray would object that there was no Jewish canon in 7 BC. But if the Jews could not know what the Scriptures were, then Jesus could not have held them accountable to the Scriptures.
[Clay] Before I responded to this statement, I asked Rob by private email what passages he was talking about. He wrote, "I was thinking of Romans 3:2 and ii Pe.1:20-21 primarily in that God's first recorded revelations (that we know of) were entrusted to the Jews through the Prophets. For example, the Torah.".
Romans 3:1-2 "What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way! Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God." (NKJV)
2 Peter1:20-21 "knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation,1for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." (NKJV)
That the Jews were entrusted with the oracles (Greek logia = tales or stories) "that we know of" it quite true. However, this does not equate to being delivered a closed canon of the Old Testament, and a similar difficulty exists for 2 Peter 1:20-21, because the "scripture" is not identified postively. In fact, Paul also says that while the Jews were indeed God's chosen people, they were not particularly reliable sources of knowledge for Christians to follow: Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God." (Rom 10:1-3 NKJV)
"For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in." (Rom 11:25 NKJV)
This knowledge is given to Jews who believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah (Rom 1:16), not a group of anti-Christian Jews at a non-binding council in Jamnia who were " ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness." (Rom 10:2)
Also, Steve Ray provides an example of how trustworthy this Hebrew canon is. Did you know that the rabbis of Jamnia also provided a new translation in Greek to replace their previous translation-the Septuagint? Why? Because the Gentile Christians had appropriated the Septuagint as their own (along with the "apocrypha" which it contained), and were using it for apologetic and evangelistic purposes-they were converting the Jews using the Septuagint. For example they were using it to prove the virginal birth of Jesus. In the Hebrew Bible, Isaiah 7:14 is rendered, "A young woman shall conceive and bear a son", whereas the Greek Septuagint, quoted by Matthew (Mt 1:23), renders it, "A virgin shall be with child and bear a son." That’s enough to drive the poor Jews crazy! So, the rabbis that "determined" (keep this word in mind for later in this letter) chose your Protestant canon, also authorized a new Greek translation to correct this "unfortunate situation". Aquila, the Jewish translator of the new version, denied the Virgin Birth and changed the Greek word from "virgin" to "young woman". By the way, did Geisler bring this information out in his book, to provide all the information so as to be objective and honest?
[Steve Ray] One of the key issues, if not the key issue regarding the canon in the first- century Jewish mind, was not necessarily inspiration, but controlling the Christian evangelization of the Jews and Gentiles. It was a Jew vs. Christian thing, and you as a Protestant with a truncated canon chosen by these Jews fall on the side of the anti-Christian, disenfranchised Jew in this matter.
[Rob] No. We fall on the side of the fact that the scriptures WERE known since Jesus held the Jews accountable to them.
[Clay] However, Rob does not know WHICH scriptures Jesus held the Jews accountable to, since they are not specified. Protestant scholar F. F. Bruce writes: "‘Greek Judaism’, it has been said, ‘with the Septuagint had ploughed the furrows for the gospel seed in the Western world; but it was the Christian preachers who sowed the seed. So thoroughly, indeed, did Christians appropriate the Septuagint as their version of the scriptures that the Jews became increasingly disenchanted with it. The time came when one rabbi compared ‘the accursed day on which the seventy elders wrote the Law in Greek for the king’ to the day on which Israel made the golden calf. New Greek versions of the Old Testament were produced for Jewish use" (The Canon of Scripture [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988], 50.
[Steve Ray] Why accept these Jamnian Jews as "God’s mouthpiece" in determining the final Old Testament canon; and pray tell Jerry, why do you accept their word for anything at this late date, especially when they specifically mention the Gospels in order to reject them. They had been "de-throned" as the keepers of the oracles. In your opposition to the Catholic Church, Jerry, you accept their "determination" because it supports you in your anti-Catholicism. I, on the other hand, have accepted the determination and canon of the new covenant people of God, those who are the new priesthood (1 Pet 2:9), the new wineskin. Geisler comments that, "The Jewish scholars at Jamnia (c. 90 AD) did not accept the Apocrypha. . . . Since the New Testament explicitly states that Israel was entrusted with the oracles of God and was the recipient of the covenants and the Law, the Jews should be considered the custodians of the limits for their own canon." (Endnote 13) Their canon, as the Septuagint displays, did contain the "apocrypha", and only thirty years after God damned them to wander for another 1900 years of exile-for disobeying Him and rejecting his Messiah-did they come to this unconfirmed decision about their canon.
[Rob] Ray's argument also fails here. follow carefully through this critique:
1) Trent determined the Catholic canon and rejected some books which were in the Septuagint.
2) Therefore, according to the Catholic, the OT canon (which is a set of scriptures) can be known.
4) This set of scriptures were what God would have held pre-church Jews accountable to (assuming Trent is right)
5) Jesus held pre-church Jews accountable to the scriptures
6) He could not have done this if the scriptures could not be known at that time
7) Since He did do this, then the scriptures (and also what were non-inspired books) WERE known at that time
8) Therefore a true canon existed in the time of Christ
[Clay] This is not what Ray is arguing. In another essay entitled "Did the Catholic Church Decide, or are the New Testament Documents Self-Authenticating?" Steve writes:For that matter, why didn't Jesus close the Old Testament canon when he had the opportunity, to avoid all the confusion in later years? If the Book was the final word, let's establish its boundaries and announce its intent. Why did he leave it up to his Church? Did he trust his Church to make such a binding decision, not only of what the canon would be, but also that there would be a canon. A reading of the New Testament, and the writings of the early Church, demonstrates that Jesus never promised us an authoritative book, neither did the apostles, nor did they seem to apprehend or comprehend a canon, nor mention it. They did both promise an authoritative Church though. Click here to view the entire piece, which is quite lengthy.
[Rob] Also does canon=septuagint? No. This is an equivocation on Ray's part.
[Clay] Steve has never argued that the canon = septuagint. He is only saying that the Catholic Old Testament includes books of the Septuagint (LXX) and that the Septuagint (LXX) was rejected by the Jews, simply because it was used by the early Christians. He is also asking why Protestants would want to use a canon "determined" by Jews who rejected Christ as the Messiah, especially when the early followers of Christ used the LXX in the first place? The argument that the Jews were custodians of the Law as given by God is simply irrelevant, because they stopped being the chosen when the Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. and the Jews were scattered. Otherwise, we'd all still be Jewish!
[Steve Ray] In the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Endnote 17) we do not find this false dichotomy, in fact, it sees both sides of the coin. It states, "It was by the apostolic Tradition that the Church discerned which writings are to be included in the list of the sacred books. This complete list is called the canon of Scripture. It includes 46 books for the Old Testament (45 if we count Jeremiah and Lamentations as one) and 27 for the New" (no. 120, emphasis mine). Discerned is comparable to Geisler’s word "discovered" whereas complete list is comparable to his "determined", since a determination has been made which books were canonical. Not as nefarious as Geisler makes it sound. In fact, Geisler rejects the canon of the Jewish Septuagint, the canon of Jesus, the Apostles, and the early Church, and the canon of over 1.3 billion Christians today (Catholic and Orthodox).
[Rob] Ray continues to make a fundamental mistake which flaws his whole argument. A 'canon' is a list of books written by a particular author. A book not written by that author is not in that author's canon. So, if Ray argues here that the Septuagint is the canon that Jesus accepted, then he has to admit that Jesus was mistaken since Trent later rejected certain Sept. books. So who didn't know what was canonical? Jesus, or Trent? Ray elsewhere admits that the all the Sept. books are not canonical but much of this article is based on the supposition that Septuagint=canon.
[Clay] According to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Canon = [Middle English, from Late Latin, from Latin, standard] a : an authoritative list of books accepted as Holy Scripture b : the authentic works of a writer c : a sanctioned or accepted group or body of related works (the canon of great literature). The key issue is how this list was "accepted". A "canon" is indeed a list of books written by a particular author, and any book not written by that author is not in that author's canon. Ray is fully aware of what "canon" means. The fundamental flaw here is that believing that sine Jesus held the Jews "accountable to the Scriptures", that this fact somehow translates into a determination of an OT canon. All Jesus was doing was referring the Jews, during His teachings, to various places in the Scriptures. Furthermore, Ray does not say that Geisler rejects "the canon of the Jewish Septuagint WHICH EQUALS the canon of Jesus, the Apostles, and the early Church, and the canon of over 1.3 billion Christians today (Catholic and Orthodox).". No, he is saying that Geisler not only rejects the Greek Septuagint AND the canon of the Catholic Church. At absolutely no point in the Bible is the precise list of books of either Old or New Testament provided. This simply had to come from an extrabiblical source, and Ray tends to side with the Christians rather than the anti-Christians when it comes to knowing the Old Testament canon.
[Steve Ray] He, and you, are doing exactly what he condemns the Catholic Church of doing: he is making a determination of the canon, and he is very dogmatic about it. Read his book Introduction to the Bible and see if I am not correct. This is either hypocrisy pure and simple, or your basic ideological blindness.
[Rob] False dilemma and ad hominen - there are other options available.
[Clay] Actually, early on in his essay, Steve Ray writes this about Geisler: "He is an intelligent man with a wide-ranging erudition"; however, alleged logical fallacies aside, the point remains - Geisler, Jerry, Rob, or any other Protestant is making their own personal determination of the canon, which is what the Catholic Church did. What guarantee is there that the books in the Bible are indeed the inspired word of God?
[Steve Ray] The Church existed before the canon. The New Testament writings were produced by the Church, yet the Church was subject to them. A parallel situation is the birth of Jesus, whereby the Blessed Virgin gave Him birth, yet she was subject to Him. Mary gave birth to Jesus, the Living Word, just as the Church gave birth to the written word, yet each is subject to her offspring. Remember also, if you have read any of the early writings including Eusebius that I sent you, that the early Church wouldn’t have used or been familiar with Geisler’s terminology. They would have said, "The Church is the Mother of the Canon, because the Church is the Child of the Apostolic Tradition." Protestants have strayed far from the early Church which they claim to love and follow.
[Rob] In what sense does the church 'produce' the canon? The canon belongs to God. All the books in it were inspired by Him and recorded by human authors. The church as a body had no role in 'producing' the canon. All it did was acknowledge those books which God had inspired and which are canonical because of that fact.
[Clay] Does this mean Rob admits that the church had the authority to "acknowledge those books which God had inspired and which are canonical because of that fact."? :-)
Anyway, Steve already answered this above. "In the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Endnote 17) we do not find this false dichotomy, in fact, it sees both sides of the coin. It states, "It was by the apostolic Tradition that the Church discerned which writings are to be included in the list of the sacred books. This complete list is called the canon of Scripture. It includes 46 books for the Old Testament (45 if we count Jeremiah and Lamentations as one) and 27 for the New" (no. 120, emphasis mine). Discerned is comparable to Geisler’s word "discovered" whereas complete list is comparable to his "determined", since a determination has been made which books were canonical. "
[Steve Ray] I met a wonderful and spiritual man in Egypt who loves the Lord dearly and has written commentaries on most of the New Testament books, but he denies inspiration to Revelation of John. He said he just ignored it because he didn’t feel it belonged in the canon (he was not a Catholic). What basis other than Catholic Tradition does one have to tell him he is wrong? [the basis that it was written by an apostle of the Lord] What criterion would you use Jerry, other than appealing to history and tradition?
[Rob] Of course one has to appeal to history, but appealing to history OR appealing to an 'infallible' council are two different things. The church did not appeal to either history OR tradition at Trent. If they had, such influential scholars as Jerome would have thrown more weight in their ruling. Rather they appealed to their Sacred Tradition.
[Clay] Was the Jamnian council "infallible? Absolutely not - it wasn't even an authoritative council binding on all Jews. I'm not sure how Rob can say that "the church did not appeal to either history OR tradition at Trent" when Trent endorsed the same books endorsed by the Council of Rome (AD 382), Hippo (AD 393), and Carthage (AD 397 and 419). In addition, the Council of Nicea II (AD 797) approved everything said by Carthage (AD 419).
The "influential scholar " Augustine endorsed the "apocryphal" books in his masterpiece City of God, listing them clearly as part of the OT canon. Other "influential scholars" like Cyprian and Hippolytus quoted Tobit and Maccabees as Scripture without distinction.
Jerome sometimes referred to those books in question as "ecclesiastical" and he called Wisdom "Scripture" as well as Sirach "holy Scripture" ("The Cambridge History of the Bible", Volume 2, p93). Besides, as he explained in Against Rufinus, he were merely relating the views of others, not making a judgment on the matter of the "apocryphal" books:
"What sin have I committed if I follow the judgment of the churches? But he who brings charges against me for relating [in my preface to the book of Daniel] the objections that the Hebrews are wont to raise against the story of Susannah [Dan. 13], the Song of the Three Children [Dan. 3:29-68, RSV-CE], and the story of Bel and the Dragon [Dan. 14], which are not found in the Hebrew volume, proves that he is just a foolish sycophant. I was not relating my own personal views, but rather the remarks that they are wont to make against us. If I did not reply to their views in my preface, in the interest of brevity, lest it seem that I was composing not a preface, but a book, I believe I added promptly the remark, for I said, ‘This is not the time to discuss such matters’" (Against Rufinius 11:33)
Making an appeal to Jerome is a dangerous proposition for the Protestant believer, because it is clear that Jerome accepted the authority of the Church when it came to "discovering" the canon of the Old Testament! :-)
[Steve Ray] Even then you’d have problems because Revelation was challenged as canonical up until the fourth century, and then brought into question again by Martin Luther in the sixteenth century. Protestants today accept the Bible based on Tradition (or Geisler’s "determination") whether they realize it or not.
[Rob] Yes, but historical tradition is not necessarily the same thing as 'sacred tradition' as defined by the RCC. One realises the circularity of the RCC's position when one studes the relationship between church - scripture - tradition.
[Clay] No, Steve gives an example of a circular argument, from Geisler's own book (General Introduction to the Bible Chicago, IL: Moody Press; 1971, pp 52-21):
All "Scripture" is inspired (II Tim. 3:16).
The New Testament is also "Scripture" (I Tim. 5:18; 2 Peter 3:16).
Therefore, the New Testament is inspired
[Steve Ray] If all final truth is to be found in the Bible, where do we find which writings belong in the canon? If the canon is a matter of revelation-binding revelation-where do we find it in the Bible, since that is the only source of binding revelation a Protestant accepts?
[Rob] By criteria similar or equal to that proposed by Geisler and Nix in their book. I find it somewhat absurd that Ray would go to so much trouble to dicredit Geisler but he never ONCE interacts with the criteria offered by them. Is that a straw man fallacy? It seems also that much of Ray's argument is ad hominem. He extends great lengths trying to smear Geisler's integrity. But again, I object that he never once interacts with the argument from Geisler's criteria.
[Clay] In another article, Steve approaches Geisler's approach in a very interesting way - he shows that Geisler's rules of self-authentication of the New Testament don't even meet U.S. Federal Rules according to U.S. Code Title 18 Crimes and Criminal Procedure, Federal Rules no. 902. In the article Robs interacts with, Steve provides a link to Sundberg's lengthy treatise "The Old Testament of the New Testament Church" (click here). Object all you wish, Steve's question still stands - If all final truth is to be found in the Bible, where is it found in the Bible which books belong in it in the first place? This is the crucial question for Protestants to answer. Otherwise, Protestants are left with a "fallible collection of infallible books" (R.C. Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1992, p. 22.)
for their Bible, which is unacceptable.
[Steve Ray] The Hebrew Canon: Among Jews, the oldest canon appears to have been the one defining the Torah (the first five books of modern Bibles), which was not only the central document of Jewish faith but also the fundamental law of the Jewish nation. These five books reached final form and were set apart not earlier than the mid-sixth and not later than the fourth century b.c. It is the one canon upon which all Jewish groups, and also Samaritans and Christians, have usually agreed. Alongside the Torah, most Jews of the first century a.d. appear also to have accepted a second canon of somewhat less authority, called the ‘Prophets.’ This included historical books (Joshua through 2 Kings, but not Ruth), as well as the more strictly prophetic books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Prophets (Hosea through Malachi in the Protestant order). The remaining titles of the Hebrew Bible-the total list corresponding to the canon of the rotestant ot-are known as the ‘Writings’ (Ruth, Esther through Song of Solomon). The canon of Prophets may be almost as old as that of Torah, but neither it nor the Writings was accepted by Samaritans or, perhaps, by Sadducees. The canon of Writings probably reached final form only after the first Jewish war against Rome (a.d. 66-70), under the leadership of the rabbinic courts at Jabneh (Jamnia). In the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were hidden away during that war, a wide variety of writings are found, with no obvious canonical distinctions among them.
[Rob] All of this debate completely fails to interact with a vital point. Irrespective of what various Jewish groups believed (analagous to current Christian groups who accept various 'canons') Jesus held ALL the Jews accountable to the scriptures which he alternately referred to as 'the law', 'the law and the prophets' and the 'the law, the prophets and the psalms(writings)'.
[Clay] Let's explore this line of argument for a minute. If Jesus held ALL Jews "accountable to the Scriptures", why does it seem that the Jews couldn't quite seem to figure it out? When God defines something, there is no ambiguity, yet look at all the confusion - some Jews accepted only the first 5 Books of the OT, others included the Prophets, still others added to that the Writings, the Ethiopian Jews followed the Christian OT canon, etc. Even at Jamnia there is no evidence that the Jews "closed" the OT canon (see below). IF Jesus confirmed a distinct canon, the Jews sure didn't seem to get the message, and this is the crucial point that Steve was making above.
[Rob] In other words, Jesus recognised and confirmed a distinct canon. If He had not done so, He could not have held anyone accountable to it. The question then, is what belonged in this canon?
[Clay] IF Jesus "recognised and confirmed a distinct canon", what, indeed, belongs in it?
For Jesus would ONLY hold men accountable to the word of God and NEVER to the fallible writings of men. Therefore Jesus confirmed a Jewish canon. What canon did Jesus know and grow up with? Every year He went up to the Temple for the required feasts.etc He was very much a Palestinian Jew. He knew the scriptures. He quoted extensively from them. The Septuagint was merely a translation of the Holy Scriptures. even by the admission of Trent it contained books which were not scripture. So clearly Jesus did not affirm the Septuagint en bloc. Rather, He confirmed a set of books called the law, the prophets and the psalms. The psalms, at that time, was a synonym for 'the writings' which is all the books not included in the law and the prophets, but which are still scriptural. Josephus, just a few decades later, gives us a complete list of those books which were held in the Temple. Now remember that up until Jesus the Jews WERE the custodians of the sacred scriptures. Even catholics cannot argue that. So Ray's position in this article is that the Septuagint is the scriptures that Jesus read and held men accountable to. But the Catholic OT was confirmed by Trent and did not include all the Septuagint books. Since Ray believes both Trent and Christ were infallible he is left with a self-stultifying position. Or to accept that Septuagint does not equal canon also refutes this whole article. But to accept that means Jesus knew and did not accept all of the Sept. as canonical. Therefore Jesus knew what was in the canon and what wasn't. If He didn't know then clearly He was mistaken to hold men accountable to books which may or may not have been canonical. But since Jesus didn't make mistakes and since He certainly did affirm a canon which the Jews were accountable to, it remains then that the early 1st. century Jew COULD know what was scriptural and what wasn't.
[Clay] Jesus affirmed an Old Testament canon? Really? Which books belong in it? There is a false dichtomy here: Holding the Jews "accountable to Scripture" is NOT the same as "affirming a canon". In fact, this is what Paul J. Harper's Bible Dictionary says:
We are unable to reconstruct with confidence precisely which lists of books were considered authoritative by Jesus and his earliest followers. By the second century, it was not uncommon to find church fathers using books found in the LXX but not in the Jamnian canon. Yet a few writers (e.g., Origen, Jerome) distinguished between the books of the Hebrew Bible and the remainder in the lxx tradition; indeed, the latter group they labeled ‘Apocrypha’ (‘hidden’ or ‘outside’ books), a group they considered edifying but not authoritative. On the whole, however, Eastern and Roman Catholic tradition generally considered the OT‘apocryphal’ books to be canonical. It was not until the Protestant Reformation that these books were clearly denied canonical status (in Protestant circles). The Roman church, however, continues to affirm their place in the canon of Scripture. (Achtemeier, Paul J. Harper’s Bible dictionary / general editor, Paul J. Achtemeier; associate editors, Roger S. Boraas ... et al. with the Society of Biblical Literature.-1st ed.-San Francisco : Harper & Row, c1985.)
This is what Protestant historian J.N.D. Kelly says: "For the great majority, however, the deutero-canonical writings ranked as Scripture in the fullest sense. Augustine, for example, whose influence in the West was decisive, made no distinction between them and the rest of the Old Testament . . . The same inclusive attitude to the Apocrypha was authoritatively displayed at the synods of Hippo and Carthage in 393 and 397 respectively, and also in the famous letter which Pope Innocent I dispatched to Exuperius, bishop of Toulouse, in 405" (Early Christian Doctrines, 55-56).
[Rob] Hence, early Gentile Christians would also have accepted the same canon that Jewish Christians knew. Paul encouraged Timothy to "continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." II Tim.3:14-15
[Clay] Again, the problem for this position is that the books themselves are NOT identified. The Jews had not closed their canon at Jamnia anyway, so how can Rob claim that the Jamnia canon is correct? Also, Paul is only telling Timothy that the Scriptures are USEFUL (Greek ophelimos). This simply is not the same as defining some sort of pre-NT canon.
[Rob] Was Paul deluded? Didn't he know that (according to the RCC) the canon wasn't known at that time? How could he encourage Timothy that the Scriptures which he had known from infancy could make him wise for salvation, if Timothy couldn't actually know what was Scripture and what wasn't?
[Clay] This is only a problem if one chooses to believe that 2 Tim 3:14-15 proves that Paul was affirming an OT canon. Paul was doing nothing of the sort - he was telling Timothy that they were USEFUL.
[Rob] But by the Catholic argument the canon was not settled until Trent in 1546. The RCC might argue that the early Christians had the Apostolic Tradition. But clearly, by the varying lists of scriptural books recorded by the Patristic writers, that Apostolic Tradition was not widely known, hence much of the so-called single visible church was far from unified.
[Clay] Even Rob knows that patristic writers are not infallible, so this argument fails. Trent did nothing about endorse the same decisions made by the Council of Rome (A.D. 382), the Council of Hippo (A.D. 393), and the Council of Carthage (A.D. 397, 419). These councils, by the way, are the same ones to whom Protestants appeal when accepting the New Testament canon.
[Rob] I submit that the issue of a closed canon is not important.
[Clay] Of course it is important. Rob is arguing that Protestants accept the canon of the Jews, who had "received the oracles of God". Yet, if this canon itself was not closed, Rob has no idea what his OT canon is at all! As Steve Ray points out, Jamnia was not meeting to decide which books to include, but rather which books to remove, including the Gospels and most of the NT letters. According to the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (ed. by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingston [New York, NY: Oxford Univ. Press]):
"After the fall of Jerusalem (70 a.d.), an assembly of religious teachers was established at Jamnia; this body was regarded as to some extent replacing the Sanhedrin, though it did not posses the same representative character or national authority. It appears that one of the subjects discussed among the rabbis was the status of certain Biblical books (e.g. Eccles. and Song of Solomon) whose canonicity was still open to question in the 1st century a.d. The suggestion that a particular synod of Jamnia, held c. 100 a.d., finally settling the limits of the Old Testament canon, was made by H. E. Ryle; though it has had a wide currency, there is NO EVIDENCE to substantiate it" (pg. 726, emphasis mine).
David Ewert also writes: "At this council vigorous debates took place on the question of the canonicity of certain books. It would be overstating the case if we said that this council fixed the limits of the Hebrew canon." (From Ancient Tablets to Modern Translations [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1983], 71).
[Rob] What is important is knowing what books are canonical and what books aren't.
[Clay] Indeed, this is the question that Rob must answer. There was no agreement among Jews from the very beginning regarding what was canonical - the Sadduccees and the Pharisees did not agree on a canon, and to this very day, Ethiopian Jews use a different canon than the one Protestants claim to endorse [Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol 6, p 1147].
[Rob] They are two distinct issues. The early Christians did not have a closed canon.
[Clay] And neither did the pre- OR post- Christ Jews......
[Rob] In fact the church grew very well without even having all the Scriptures which God would eventually provide. But out of all the books available to them they MUST have known which were canonical and which weren't. If they could not know that then Jesus, Paul, the Bereans (Ac.17:11), Peter (IIPe.3:16), Apollos (Ac.18:24), the Corinthian church (ICo.15:3-4) and the Roman church (Ro.1:2,15:4) were all mistaken.
[Clay] This is interesting. There is no scriptural indication that Paul, the Bereans, Peter, Apollos, the Corinthian church and the Roman church saw the need for defining which books were "canonical". Even if they "must have known", they did not specify, so they must have passed their knowledge down to their successors (1 Cor 11:2, 2 Thess 2:15, 2 Tim 2:2). Who were their successors? The Church that formalized the doctrine of the Trinity, battled heresies throughout the centuries, and yes, "discovered" the canon of BOTH the Old AND the New Testaments..
This is an interesting statement from someone who believes that the Bible is the sole rule of faith. If "the church grew very well without even having all the Scripture", at what point did this become true, and where does it say THAT in the Bible? :-) It doesn't because Jesus neither wrote anything nor did He instruct the Apostles to write anything. The Bible is not the "pillar and foundation of truth" - the church is (1 Tim 3:15). Once again, none of the scriptural passages Rob listed actually specify WHICH books were canonical.
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© Copyright Clay Randall, 2002