re deuterocanicals eps sirach thanks for the responses so far i hope that i have sparked some thought which is more my intent than to restart one of the reformations i m just going to tug on two threads in message id may athos rutgers edu db n andrew cmu edu d andrew byler writes and i must point out that the jews only drew up their canon in ad years after the founding of the christian religion upon the cross why should we adhere to a canon that was drawn up by the faithless in reaction to the chrsitian use of the greek septuagint which includes the deutero canon i was simply observing that as a non jew i am not in that community which might be bound by such a decision i don t know much about the council of jamnia but i have heard that it is not well attested historically faithless has nothing to do with it and i prefer not to speculate about motives as early as ad st justin had already accused the jews of mutilating the canon of scripture by their removal of certain books i wish the dialogue with trypho were a real transcript of a real dialogue but i think it a fictional effect on justin s part putting that to one side justin s point may be evidential one would want to know which books protestants apparently prefer to think that god s revelation was limited by a decree of the jews perhaps the reformers were traveling in all the light ms evidence they had let s stick to the issues again i prefer not to speculate about motives one would need quotes from luther calvin etc to evidence this preference in message id may athos rutgers edu wagner grace math uh edu david wagner that is not quite accurate otherwise we would have the book of enoch in the canon as dave noted one can say that the apocrypha are not quoted by christ is this the principle any bc text not quoted by christ cannot be counted as scripture think well about this job ruth i wrote these is a logically invalid a priori besides we are talking about ot texts which in many parts are superceded by the nt in the xtian view would not this same principle exclude ecclesiastes this principle cannot be consistently applied dave w answers i have to reject your argument here the spirit speaks with one voice and he does not contradict himself meaning what do you affirm the principle that the d c s can be excluded since they contain false doctrine or do you deny it if affirmed as is implied in your statement how does one determine that doctrine x is false do you affirm every teaching in ecclesiastes the ultimate test of canonicity is whether the words are inspired by the spirit i e god breathed it is a test which is more guided by faith than by reason or logic if so it may be a test that cannot be applied the orthodox faithfully believe that psalm is canonical how can my faith say not all i hear here is the a priori i mentioned before the deutero canonical books were added much later in the church s history this is contrary to fact they do not have the same spiritual quality as the rest of scripture can this be elevated to a principle how is spiritual quality measured i ll take the spiritual quality of most of sirach over joshua or chronicles any day i do not believe the church that added these books was guided by the spirit in so doing what can i say you believe what you believe i m asking for a consistency check i don t see that the books were added in any construction this formulation begs the question no one can validly ask me to have faith that these books are noncanonical dave davis ddavis ma bull com these are my opinions activities alone qotd christianity is not a doctrine not i mean a theory about what has happened and will happen to the human soul but a description of something that actually takes place in a human life for consciousness of sin is a real event and so are despair and salvation through faith those who speak of such things bunyan for instance are simply describing what has happened to them whatever anyone may want to say about it ludwig wittgenstein
