It's ridiculous to repeal the consensus of the whole church through most of its history because two men--Origin, who was anathematized, and Rufinus, who was neither a theologian nor a bishop but was influenced by Origin, held some contrary views in their day.
Albion, Andrew...
I think what Andrew our brother is proving is that there seems to have been quite a lot of FLUIDITY on this topic... different opinions, even among esteemed Christian leaders.
And what makes it all very difficult is that we KNOW very little about the Early Church (33-311 AD) and what was held universally. Perhaps the most incorrect and misleading thing posted in all these threads about the "Deutercanonical" and "apocrypha" books is our brothers STRESS (twice now) of what "ALL" Christians held. We don't even have a guess on how many Christians there were during this period! And NOTHING about what they all believed... In part because very little of what they wrote about the Christian faith survived. We have a couple of dozen (note that's FAR from "ALL") who were esteemed and whose writings were quoted... but several of those came to be seen as heretics. My (admittedly very limited) study of the ECF taught me that this was a chaotic time, with much diversity. We DO see some things very early (say in the Didache) such as infant baptism, real presence in the Eucharist but a lot of controversy. This seems to be a characteristic of the Early Church. Much of what we know about early Christian thinking is DEBATES among themselves, someone writing to refute what another is saying.
On THIS topic, that's true for the NT. My class stressed that very early, it SEEMS (by the lack of
KNOWN debate) is that 20 books were accepted (well, AS FAR AS WE CAN KNOW FROM WHAT VERY LITTLE WE HAVE) : The 4 Gospels, Acts, Paul's 13 letters, 1 Peter, 1 John. Now, were some or all of these debated? Maybe.... we have no EVIDENCE of that. BUT there were others that WERE debated, where we have evidence of rejection (not by "unbelieving Jews" as Nathan insists) by esteemed Christian leaders: Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2-3 John, James, Jude, Revelation of John, Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache and the Gospel of Hebrews (and perhaps a few others).
EVENTUALLY (from what little evidence exists)
7 of these 11 + ceased to be disputed (we have no clue why!!!!!) and the others simply were mentioned less and less (less and less is said of them). But it took three hundred years! And even after that, the Eastern Churches often didn't include Revelation in the Lectionary and these seven became known as "Antilegomena" (spoken against) and were considered LESS canonical than the 20. WHY these 27? No one knows...for one very simple reason: no one said. At least in any document that survived. A consensus of sorts..... but it took 400 years and we have no clue how or why this consensus formed (but I'll bet Nathan is wrong about unbelieving Jews). Note: there was NEVER any official ecumenical decision on this.... no Ecumenical Church Council, nothing official, nothing formal, nothing authoritative. A pretty solid consensus around 20.... a lesser one around another 7.... and this resulted in a "two-layer" canon - 20 higher ("homologomenia" - agreed upon), 7 lesser. This distinction was lost after the Reformation, for the past 500 years, Christianity has come to accept all 27 equally, a fairly new view.
It's even more true for the OT. For one very, very simple reason: We have NOTHING outside the OT itself, no "Early Jewish Fathers", no writings about debates on this topic (or any other), NOTHING until shortly become the time of Christ (a few very esteemed rabbis arose but again, not until close to the time of Christ, and they didn't breach the topic of Scripture). WE JUST DON"T KNOW. There are names of other books mentioned in the OT but were THEY ever considered Scripture? We don't know. Surely, the two tablets written by God were seen so.... but the rest is clouded in history. It is often thought that the "Books of Moses" were widely if not universally accepted (the Sadducees and Pharisees both insisted on this acceptance) but the Prophets/Histories and the Wisdom Literature is just unknown. Were they READ? Well.... the LXX certainly suggests they were widely used by then.... and we find them in the Dead Sea Scrolls (both quite late) but what was there status? Were they considered inerrant? Fully/equally canonical with the Ten Commandments or Books of Moses? We have no evidence, no voices - until nearly the time of Jesus. And what about things like Psalm 151 or 152 or 153? What about the books the Syrian and Coptic Orthodox have had in their OT for longer than the RCC canon has existed, far more than Trent's 7? What about those the Greek Orthodox Church has that the RCC does not? SOME of them were found in the LXX (I don't think any in the Dead Sea Scrolls but I'm not sure about that) but we actually find little use of these among JEWS.... and the Council of Jamnia in 90 AD doesn't mention any of these, perhaps suggesting that they were not accepted as fully canonical (at least at that point but more likely, never were). For JEWS, the status of these books seems to have been not great.... and they fell from use. A member of our community has supplied some significant material about this here:
O.T. Canon Lists IMO, Nathan's point that Christ-hating Jews ripped them out because they so clearly spoke of Jesus is just... well.... beyond absurd. First of all, they RARELY do and secondly, why not rip out Isaiah and the Psalms - BY FAR the most quoted OT books by early Christians. No..... it ssems these books not mentioned at Jamnia were probably never fully accepted.... no Jew disputed Jamnia, no promenant Jew arose to defend Psalm 151 or any other. But what about Christians? Well..... it seems SOME had SOME embrace..... which ones? No two denominations agree on that.... and How so? There's lots of debate on that, too. I think there is sound reason to hold to
Luther's view (and that of the Anglican Church) that what has been held as DEUTEROcanonical (lesser, secondary, under) are just that.... both Luther and the Anglican Church held these are historic, they are helpful and inspirational, Luther INCLUDED 8 in his translation, the Anglican Church INCLUDED even more than that - both MORE than the modern Catholic Church. DEUTEROcanonical books included in the Lectionary of Lutherans and Anglicans, folks encouraged to read them. Used as sermon texts, Luther lectured on them. But NOT to be used in a full canonical manner.... as the Rule for dogma... they can be used to support CANONICAL books but not on their own. OF course, Luther and Anglicanism also agrees that we can use the 3 Ecumenical Creeds and the 7 Ecumenical Councils this way, too.
There is a
Catholic MYTH that that singular, individual (and exclusive) denomination knew (directly from the Apostles) what Books are and are not Scripture.... they gave it the list.... and eventually (perhaps in the 16th Century) that denomination finally told the rest of the world. This is pure myth. MUCH of the debate on all this was from men that church calls "Early Church Fathers" and there was no univeral statement on that until the Council of Florence in the 15th Century (and that not authoritative - thus the need to do so at Trent in the 16th Century). And if this was known from ancient times by all Christians (because the Apostles said so) then why does the RCC agree with NONE on this topic? Every other church on the planet disagrees with it on this.
There is a
Evangelical MYTH (specially in the USA) that essentially, God sent out this mass email in 33 AD to all Christians, telling them exactly what Books are and are not Scripture and that all these are equally canonical. So all Christians had the exact same set of books, embraced in exactly the same way (no debate, no controversy). UNTIL the Council of Trent when the Catholic Church added 7 books in order to support its wrong teachngs according to Sola Scriptura. This too is pure myth. Now,
Nathan's Myth is a truly strange variation on this: that this email included a bunch of books beyond Calvin's 66 (he just will not tell us WHICH books)... so 100% of Christians had the same set of books, embraced equally, no debate, no controversy, all identical Bibles embraced and used identically (he just won't tell us what books all these contained) until the 16th Century when some unidentified person gathered up all the pew Bibles in Western Europe and ripped out these books (he won't identify) - and no one seemed to notice until he did (evidently recently). This is just PURE MYTH. Reality isn't always as neat or nice as we'd like.
My half cent.
- Josiah
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