Why does the book of Revelation say that you can anoint your eyes with medicine to cure blindness?

[atpollard]

You clearly haven’t read Polycarp or Ignatius

Actually, I have doubts that they were actually “First Christians” (the group YOU were looking for). Someone that was a boy that knew an apostle when he was an old man and eventually wrote something when the boy was an old man and the last Apostle was long dead … is not exactly the “first generation” of the church. That would be like asking ME about the Great War as an original, first hand source because my Grandfather lived through it.

 

[atpollard]

Read his 2nd letter to Jerome

Why, is it a real page turner?

 

[atpollard]

Where is this quote coming from? It’s not in the intro to the book of Kings.

Translation of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Songs of Solomon according to the Hebrew (c. AD 398)

 

[Andrew]

Why, is it a real page turner?

Sure. Also Rufinus, after listing the canon, goes on listing the "Ecclesiastical" books that are as equally divine as canon but are not used to witness to the Jews for doctrine but are inspired examples of doctrine for converts to Christianity according to church tradition, the books he listed are later called the "deuterocanonical" .. he also lists "Apocrypha" books that are not to be brought in or read in the churches, these books are the apocalyptic books that are falsely attributed to Biblical authors.

But his personal letters to Jerome in reaction to Jerome's edit of the traditional canon is an epic "mic drop".. his passion for defending the tradition of the church is duly noted in that letter.

 

[Andrew]

@atpollard

Rufinus to Jerome.

34. But let us grant that the Apostle Peter was unable to do what our friend has lately done. Was Paul illiterate? We ask; He who was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, touching the law a Pharisee, brought up at the feet of Gamaliel? Could not he, when he was at Rome, have supplied any deficiencies of Peter? Is it conceivable that they, who prescribed to their disciples that they should give attention to reading, did not give them correct and true reading? These men who bid us not attend to Jewish fables and genealogies, which minister questioning rather than edification; and who, again, bid us beware of, and specially watch, those of the circumcision; is it conceivable that they could not foresee through the Spirit that a time would come, after nearly four hundred years, when the church would find out that the Apostles had not delivered to them the truth of the old Testament, and would send an embassy to those whom the apostles spoke of as the circumcision, begging and beseeching them to dole out to them some small portion of the truth which was in their possession: and that the Church would through this embassy confess that she had been for all those four hundred years in error; that she had indeed been called by the Apostles from among the Gentiles to be the bride of Christ, but that they had not decked her with a necklace of genuine jewels; that she had fondly thought that they were precious stones, but now had found out that those were not true gems which the Apostles had put upon her, so that she felt ashamed to go forth in public decked in false instead of true jewels, and that she therefore begged that they would send her Barabbas, even him whom she had once rejected to be married to Christ, so that in conjunction with one man chosen from among her own people, he might restore to her the true ornaments with which the Apostles had failed to furnish her.

35. What wonder is there then that he should tear me to pieces, being as I am of no account; or that he should wound Ambrose, or find fault with Hilary, Lactantius and Didymus? I must not greatly grieve over any injury of my own in the fact that he has attempted to do my work of translating over again, when he is only treating me with the same contempt with which he has treated the Seventy translators. But this emendation of the Seventy, what are we to think of it? Is it not evident, how greatly the grounds for the heathens' unbelief have been increased by this proceeding? For they take notice of what is going on amongst us. They know that our law has been amended, or at least changed; and do you suppose they do not say among themselves, These people are wandering at random, they have no fixed truth among them, for you see how they make amendments and corrections in their laws whenever they please, and indeed it is evident that there must have been previous error where amendment has supervened, and that things which undergo change at the hand of man cannot possibly be divine. This has been the present which you have made us with your excess of wisdom, that we are all judged even by the heathen as lacking in wisdom. I reject the wisdom which Peter and Paul did not teach. I will have nothing to do with a truth which the Apostles have not approved. These are your own words: The ears of simple men among the Latins ought not after four hundred years to be molested by the sound of new doctrines. Now you are yourself saying: Every one has been under a mistake who thought that Susanna had afforded an example of chastity to both the married and the unmarried. It is not true. And every one who thought that the boy Daniel was filled with the Holy Spirit and convicted the adulterous old men, was under a mistake. That also was not true. And every congregation throughout the universe, whether of those who are in the body or of those who have departed to be with the Lord, even though they were holy martyrs or confessors, all who have sung the Hymn of the three children have been in error, and have sung what is false. Now therefore after four hundred years the truth of the law comes forth for us, it has been bought with money from the Synagogue. When the world has grown old and all things are hastening to their end, let us change the inscriptions upon the tombs of the ancients, so that it may be known by those who had read the story otherwise, that it was not a gourd but an ivy plant under whose shade Jonah rested; and that, when our legislator pleases, it will no longer be the shade of ivy but of some other plant.

 

[NathanH83]

Translation of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Songs of Solomon according to the Hebrew (c. AD 398)

Ok, thanks for that.

Well, it sounds to me then that Jerome is contradicting himself. Because in His introduction to the writings of Solomon, he says that the Church does not accept Judith, Tobit, and Maccabees as canonical scripture. But then in his introduction to Judith he says that the Nicean Council found Judith to be sacred scripture, for he says:

“But because this book is found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the number of the Sacred Scriptures,”

Jerome sounds like a very confused individual.

 

[NathanH83]

Actually, I have doubts that they were actually “First Christians” (the group YOU were looking for). Someone that was a boy that knew an apostle when he was an old man and eventually wrote something when the boy was an old man and the last Apostle was long dead … is not exactly the “first generation” of the church. That would be like asking ME about the Great War as an original, first hand source because my Grandfather lived through it.

Polycarp and Ignatius were both discipled by John. That’s the same John who wrote the gospel of John. So yea, they are definitely part of the first generation of Christians, known as Apostolic Fathers (meaning they knew the Apostles, unlike Jerome who lived hundreds of years later).

If you really want to get technical, then I guess we could say they’re the 2nd generation of Christians. Whatever. Point is, they knew the disciples.

Here is where Polycarp quotes Tobit. It’s in chapter 10 of his letter to the Phillipians:


THE EPISTLE OF POLYCARP TO THE PHILIPPIANS

CHAPTER 10

EXHORTATION TO THE PRACTICE OF VIRTUE.
“Stand fast, therefore, in these things, and follow the example of the Lord, being firm and unchangeable in the faith, loving the brotherhood, and being attached to one another, joined together in the truth, exhibiting the meekness of the Lord in your intercourse with one another, and despising no one. When you can do good, defer it not, because alms delivers from death. Be all of you subject one to another, having your conduct blameless among the Gentiles, that ye may both receive praise for your good works, and the Lord may not be blasphemed through you. But woe to him by whom the name of the Lord is blasphemed! Teach, therefore, sobriety to all, and manifest it also in your own conduct.”



Here is Ignatius quoting Tobit. This is in chapter 5 of his letter to Hero (a deacon of Antioch)


THE EPISTLE OF IGNATIUS TO HERO A DEACON OF ANTIOCH

CHAPTER 5

VARIOUS RELATIVE DUTIES
”Flee from haughtiness, for the Lord resisteth the proud. Abhor falsehood, for says [the Scripture], Thou shalt destroy all them that speak lies. Guard against envy, for its author is the devil, and his successor Cain, who envied his brother, and out of envy committed murder. Exhort my sisters to love God, and be content with their own husbands only. In like manner, exhort my brethren also to be content with their own wives. Watch over the virgins, as the precious treasures of Christ. Be long-suffering, that thou mayest be great in wisdom. Do not neglect the poor, in so far as thou art prosperous. For by alms and fidelity sins are purged away.”

Notice how Polycarp says “alms delivers from death” and Ignatius says, “by alms and fidelity sins are purged away”

And what do we find in Tobit 12:9?

“For alms doth deliver from death, and shall purge away all sin. Those that exercise alms and righteousness shall be filled with life:”
-Tobit 12:9 (KJV)

This is pretty substantial evidence that causes me to suspect that Polycarp and Ignatius accepted the book of Tobit as holy scripture, and that their mentor John did as well.

 

[NathanH83]

1. Provide the quote in context so we can see for ourselves that they viewed it as scripture. The quote I presented from Jerome made his opinion of Tobit clear … interesting to read, but clearly NOT canon.
2. I DO expect very strong evidence to support adding books to the Holy Bible as God Breathed and equal in weight to Genesis or the Gospel of John or Romans for deciding theology and dogma. “Somebody that knew somebody important said something about Tobit” is NOT good enough for me.

You’re absolutely right that Jerome had an opinion. But one man’s opinion is not a church council.

The church councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage declared that Tobit is divine, canonical scripture.

Granted, those are just local, regional councils. But the question is, “Were they RIGHT?”

Jerome didn’t have a whole lot of church councils agreeing with him.

 

[atpollard]

Ok, yea, here it is.

Clearly Jerome is saying that it’s the Hebrews who reject Tobit as scripture, not the Bishops of the church. And that’s the point. There’s already undeniable evidence that the Jews removed things from their Hebrew Scriptures, which the Greek Septuagint preserves. That I already know. The Jews probably removed Tobit as well.

Here’s Jerome’s intro:

Jerome, Prologue to Tobit (2006)

[Translated by Kevin P. Edgecomb]

BEGINNING OF THE PROLOGUE TO TOBIAS

Jerome to the Bishops in the Lord Cromatius and Heliodorus, health!

I do not cease to wonder at the constancy of your demanding. For you demand that I bring a book written in Chaldean words into Latin writing, indeed the book of Tobias, which the Hebrews exclude from the catalogue of Divine Scriptures, being mindful of those things which they have titled Hagiographa. I have done enough for your desire, yet not by my study. For the studies of the Hebrews rebuke us and find fault with us, to translate this for the ears of Latins contrary to their canon. But it is better to be judging the opinion of the Pharisees to displease and to be subject to the commands of bishops. I have persisted as I have been able, and because the language of the Chaldeans is close to Hebrew speech, finding a speaker very skilled in both languages, I took to the work of one day, and whatever he expressed to me in Hebrew words, this, with a summoned scribe, I have set forth in Latin words. I will be paid the price of this work by your prayers, when, by your grace, I will have learned what you request to have been completed by me was worthy.

END OF THE PROLOGUE

Jerome, Prologue to Tobit (2006)

I read this several times … what a giant NOTHINGBURGER!

Jerome doesn’t say Tobit is scripture.
Jerome doesn’t say the Bishops thought Tobit was scripture.

So what does Jerome say?

1. He didn’t want to translate it because Jerome was an expert at translating Hebrew into Latin and Tobit was not written in Hebrew.
2. The Pharisees did not consider Tobit to be scripture and refused to help translate it to Latin.
3. Jerome found someone that read Tobit to him, translating it to Hebrew … and Jerome wrote down what the Chaldean-Hebrew speaker said in Latin (ie. Jerome did not directly translate Tobit).
4. The Pharisees were pissed, but Jerome thought it better to have the Pharisees mad at him than the Bishops mad at him … so he translated Tobit like they nagged him to do.

NOTHING about “scripture” or “canon” except the Jews rejected it and it was not written in Hebrew.
Somehow you think THAT proves (or even indicates) that Tobit is the inspired word of God like one of the minor prophets? Really? How?

Reread the introduction to Kings. Jerome is clear about what is and what is not canon. Tobit is not canon, it is apocrypha.

 

[atpollard]

Ok, thanks for that.

Well, it sounds to me then that Jerome is contradicting himself. Because in His introduction to the writings of Solomon, he says that the Church does not accept Judith, Tobit, and Maccabees as canonical scripture. But then in his introduction to Judith he says that the Nicean Council found Judith to be sacred scripture, for he says:

“But because this book is found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the number of the Sacred Scriptures,”

Jerome sounds like a very confused individual.

Oh well, now we need to discard the KJV and all modern translations that draw from the Vulgate.
You really are not making things better for someone in the 20th century that just wants to read the Word of God to learn more about this Jesus. I sure hope that fish gut eye salve magic elixir works, because we are paying a dear price for it.

 

[atpollard]

@atpollard

Rufinus to Jerome.

34. But let us grant that the Apostle Peter was unable to do what our friend has lately done. Was Paul illiterate? We ask; He who was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, touching the law a Pharisee, brought up at the feet of Gamaliel? Could not he, when he was at Rome, have supplied any deficiencies of Peter? Is it conceivable that they, who prescribed to their disciples that they should give attention to reading, did not give them correct and true reading? These men who bid us not attend to Jewish fables and genealogies, which minister questioning rather than edification; and who, again, bid us beware of, and specially watch, those of the circumcision; is it conceivable that they could not foresee through the Spirit that a time would come, after nearly four hundred years, when the church would find out that the Apostles had not delivered to them the truth of the old Testament, and would send an embassy to those whom the apostles spoke of as the circumcision, begging and beseeching them to dole out to them some small portion of the truth which was in their possession: and that the Church would through this embassy confess that she had been for all those four hundred years in error; that she had indeed been called by the Apostles from among the Gentiles to be the bride of Christ, but that they had not decked her with a necklace of genuine jewels; that she had fondly thought that they were precious stones, but now had found out that those were not true gems which the Apostles had put upon her, so that she felt ashamed to go forth in public decked in false instead of true jewels, and that she therefore begged that they would send her Barabbas, even him whom she had once rejected to be married to Christ, so that in conjunction with one man chosen from among her own people, he might restore to her the true ornaments with which the Apostles had failed to furnish her.

35. What wonder is there then that he should tear me to pieces, being as I am of no account; or that he should wound Ambrose, or find fault with Hilary, Lactantius and Didymus? I must not greatly grieve over any injury of my own in the fact that he has attempted to do my work of translating over again, when he is only treating me with the same contempt with which he has treated the Seventy translators. But this emendation of the Seventy, what are we to think of it? Is it not evident, how greatly the grounds for the heathens' unbelief have been increased by this proceeding? For they take notice of what is going on amongst us. They know that our law has been amended, or at least changed; and do you suppose they do not say among themselves, These people are wandering at random, they have no fixed truth among them, for you see how they make amendments and corrections in their laws whenever they please, and indeed it is evident that there must have been previous error where amendment has supervened, and that things which undergo change at the hand of man cannot possibly be divine. This has been the present which you have made us with your excess of wisdom, that we are all judged even by the heathen as lacking in wisdom. I reject the wisdom which Peter and Paul did not teach. I will have nothing to do with a truth which the Apostles have not approved. These are your own words: The ears of simple men among the Latins ought not after four hundred years to be molested by the sound of new doctrines. Now you are yourself saying: Every one has been under a mistake who thought that Susanna had afforded an example of chastity to both the married and the unmarried. It is not true. And every one who thought that the boy Daniel was filled with the Holy Spirit and convicted the adulterous old men, was under a mistake. That also was not true. And every congregation throughout the universe, whether of those who are in the body or of those who have departed to be with the Lord, even though they were holy martyrs or confessors, all who have sung the Hymn of the three children have been in error, and have sung what is false. Now therefore after four hundred years the truth of the law comes forth for us, it has been bought with money from the Synagogue. When the world has grown old and all things are hastening to their end, let us change the inscriptions upon the tombs of the ancients, so that it may be known by those who had read the story otherwise, that it was not a gourd but an ivy plant under whose shade Jonah rested; and that, when our legislator pleases, it will no longer be the shade of ivy but of some other plant.

Give me a hint, does the word Tobit even appear in this wall of text?
I am about to turn 60 and wasting hours reading old letters that have nothing to do with the discussion that I was dragged into by egregious false claims is not something that I care to do.

The question is “Is Tobit canonical scripture?” and “Was it ever?”
I already disproved the rumor that Tobit was canon in every bible prior to 1500.
It was NOT canon according to the Vulgate (from 400 to 1500+).

 

[Andrew]

Oh well, now we need to discard the KJV and all modern translations that draw from the Vulgate.
You really are not making things better for someone in the 20th century that just wants to read the Word of God to learn more about this Jesus. I sure hope that fish gut eye salve magic elixir works, because we are paying a dear price for it.

Or you could just receive the books just as the first Christians did

 

[Andrew]

Give me a hint, does the word Tobit even appear in this wall of text?
I am about to turn 60 and wasting hours reading old letters that have nothing to do with the discussion that I was dragged into by egregious false claims is not something that I care to do.

The question is “Is Tobit canonical scripture?” and “Was it ever?”
I already disproved the rumor that Tobit was canon in every bible prior to 1500.
It was NOT canon according to the Vulgate (from 400 to 1500+).

You brought up Rufinus claiming he rejected the books omitted by Jerome

 

[atpollard]

When you can do good, defer it not, because alms delivers from death.

Proves that he found Tobit useful (if it is a quote from Tobit, I never read Tobit since I prefer the NT) which is what Jerome says of all the apocryphal books and why they were included alongside the actual Holy Scripture (canon) in the Bible. Nothing in the quote remotely suggests “canonical scripture”, does it?

As an aside, is the statement even true? Biblically speaking?
Will giving money to the poor “deliver you from death”? (I thought faith in Jesus did that.)
Is the reverse true? Will God kill you for NOT giving money to the poor? (Sounds like a bad tele-evangelist.)

I have some concerns for the Apostolic Fathers.
I think they NEEDED all of the books of the NT gathered together so they could read them better.

 

[atpollard]

Or you could just receive the books just as the first Christians did

You have yet to demonstrate that the “First Christians” received Tobit as scripture.
Since some of the ECF rejected Revelation, should we?

EDIT: (What dead individuals believed is not a sound yardstick for such important decisions. ECF quotes prove the scrolls existed and the ECF had read it at the date when it was quoted. Nothing more.)

 

[atpollard]

You brought up Rufinus claiming he rejected the books omitted by Jerome

1. In response to an earlier claim that Rufus accepted Tobit and disagreed with Jerome.
2. The book in question is Tobit. (I have enough trouble with one book I don’t care about without jumping about the apocrypha checking facts and rumors.)

 

[atpollard]

The church councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage declared that Tobit is divine, canonical scripture.

Please quote them if you are going to make the claim.

otherwise … “The church councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage declared that Tobit is not divine, canonical scripture and should not be read in any church.” (Claims are easy to make.)

 

[atpollard]

Jerome didn’t have a whole lot of church councils agreeing with him.

Which Church Council from 400 to 1500 changed the Vulgate Bible to correct Jerome’s introductions to agree with Church Doctrine on the matter?

NONE … the Church kept his introductions in the Official Bible of every church in the Western Empire for over 1000 years … the Bibles that trained every scholar and monk in the Roman Catholic Church.

 

[atpollard]

And what do we find in Tobit 12:9?

“For alms doth deliver from death, and shall purge away all sin. Those that exercise alms and righteousness shall be filled with life:”
-Tobit 12:9 (KJV)

Tobit teaches salvation by works … a heretical teaching contradicted by the Apostles.
I have no doubt why Tobit is not canon. Either Tobit or the Pauline Letters need to be removed.

[Romans 11:6 CSB] Now if by grace, then it is not by works; otherwise grace ceases to be grace.

 

[Andrew]

1. In response to an earlier claim that Rufus accepted Tobit and disagreed with Jerome.
2. The book in question is Tobit. (I have enough trouble with one book I don’t care about without jumping about the apocrypha checking facts and rumors.)

"But it should also be known that there are other books which are called not "canonical" but "ecclesiastical" by the ancients: that is, the Wisdom attributed to Solomon, and another Wisdom attributed to the son of Sirach, which the Latins called by the title Ecclesiasticus, designating not the author of the book but its character. To the same class belong the book of Tobit and the book of Judith, and the books of Maccabees.They were willing to have all these read in the churches but not brought forward for the confirmation of doctrine. The other writings they named "apocrypha," which they would not have read in the churches. These are what the fathers have handed down to us, which, as I said, I have thought it opportune to set forth in this place, for the instruction of those who are being taught the first elements of the Church and of the Faith, that they may know from what fountains of the Word of God they should draw for drinking" - Rufinus