We had a brief discussion in Hebrew class this morning that touched tangentially on some of the issues raised here. A lot of the workload of teaching scripture at the School of Theology falls on two professors, the teacher of Literature and History of the Old Testament and the teacher of Literature and History of the New Testament. There is a running gag in the school about how much the teacher of L&HOT despises Paul. He is the same professor who teaches the Hebrew class.
We had a little time to kill this morning, while waiting for some of the students to show up, so one of my classmates asked the professor what he has against Paul. The prof said that in Galatians Paul presents a very dim view of the law, and uses what seems to be an inappropriate analogy between law/grace and Haggai, Ishmael/Sarah, Isaac. Our prof pointed out that Paul's view of the law presented in Galatians can very easily be understood as a contradiction of the view presented in Romans. He attributed this contradiction to the fact that Paul was so pi$$ed (and that's good Pauline language) at the Judaizers when he was writing Galatians, that his anger bled over into the things he wrote about the law itself. When he finished explaining, and was beginning to transition back to teaching Hebrew, he remarked "How do you teach THAT to these kids [who come from evangelical protestant backgrounds, who have been taught plenary verbal inspiration]?"
The Church of God Reformation Movement has no association with the Assemblies of God. CHoGRM came out of the Wesleyan Holiness Movement of the late-1800s, and never got involved with the Fundamentalist Conferences of the early-1900s. CHoGRM regards creeds as man-made and divisive. The movement is no longer as anti-denominational as it was in the beginning, and has taken on aspects of a Wesleyan interdenominational denomination. The SOT takes a high view of scripture, as per the scale I set up earlier on this thread, even though it does not as an institution believe in plenary verbal inspiration. It is a big issue in the whole University now, how to express our respect for the Bible to new students without having to gloss over the Bible's obvious shortcomings that the youngsters' Sunday schools never addressed.
So, yes, I am partially motivated to explore these things from the viewpoint of ex-wayfers, but I am also motivated in part to find a way to express these things that is accessible to people from other evangelical protestant backgrounds as well.
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If we want to consider what a word means, we need to go back to it's original literal meaning, and from there, we can examine the poetic knowledge that can be derived from it by use of simile and metaphor. the first word we will look at is breath (ruach in the Hebrew, pneuma in the Greek) which can as properly be translated as "wind" or "spirit." Wind is "air in motion." Breath is air that is specifically moving into and out of a... what?... in Greek or English we would say "body"... in Hebrew we would say nephesh or "living being" or "soul."
In antiquity, they didn't have a lot of monitors to tell whether a person was dead or merely unconscious. They didn't even know what the pulse meant. The only way to distinguish between life (the ability to move) and death (the utter lack of ability to move) was whether or not breath (or wind or spirit) was moving in and out of the person. Spirit was so closely associated with life and its absence with death, that the word took on the figurative meaning of "life-force," or "that whose motion imparts the ability to move." All the other figurative meanings of "spirit" or "breath" are derived from this one.
That so called prof that you mention above Steve, sounds like the equivalent today of one of the scribes and pharisees of the 1st century church. Jesus used to devour dishonest people like this all the time in the first century in debates. These were the only people Jesus actually opposed after they first opposed Jesus Christ. And with my knowledge and very good biblical study software if a person like this was dishonest and bias biblically he would get devoured by me also today. As long as I had time from my busy as a bee worker schedule I might consider that recreation.
The motion of breath is not random. It is an oscillatory or reciprocating flow of air into and out of the lungs. The literal movement of breath goes much deeper than just the lungs though. Molecular oxygen is carried by the blood from the lungs to the cells, and the O2 returns from the cells to the lungs in the form of CO2. The life (nephesh) of the flesh is in the blood. Within the cell, sugar and oxygen are burnt in a highly regulated manner, which produces a flow of electrons through the intermediary of ATP (adenosine triphosphate). The flow of electrons powers the flow of all other movement and processes in the cell, in each and every cell.
It is the movement, the regulated flow of chemicals and energy, that constitutes life. A corpse and a living being are made up of exactly the same chemicals in exactly the same relationships. The difference between a corpse and a living being is the ability to move, which is the sum total of all the micro-flows at the cellular level. A being dies when the micro-flows stop. When I passed out a few months ago, I did so because the oscillatory flow of air into and out of my lungs was interrupted. This in turn interfered with a sufficient number of micro-flows in a sufficient number of cells that my body was not able to maintain consciousness. If I had been by myself, all movement would have been interrupted, and I would have died. As it was, I received medical attention in enough time to save my life. All the flows were restored.
Life is the ability to move. The movement of life consists of the interaction of highly regulated flows. The ancients understood all these flows as wind or breath or spirit.
In Genesis 2:7, when the figurative Lord God figuratively breathed the figurative breath of life into the nostrils of the figurative man, the authors and editors were saying that the life-force that imparted movement by its own movement to the whole of the universe, also imparted movement by its own movement, life by its own life, to human beings.
That's a heck of a lot better than the Enuma Elish, the creation story told contemporaneously in the town where the authors and editors of Genesis 2:7 were working, that Marduk created human beings by mixing dust with the blood of a rebel god slain for that purpose, so that human beings could be forced to do the work that the gods didn't want to do.
There is a thing we've been taught to do at Anderson University (all the way from freshman introductory Bible courses to grad school exegetical papers) called the hermeneutic or the exegetical circle.
When we are considering a passage of scripture, we start with the question, What exactly was actually written? If we are mistaken about what was written, how can we be confident of the meaning we that derive from it?
The second question is, What did this mean to the person who originally wrote it?
Next we ask, What would this mean to the people it was originally addressed to?
And finally, What lessons can we draw from this today?
When the Protestants of the 1500s cried "scriptura sola", there were some unintended consequences. One such is the impression that all scripture has but one writer, and that just isn't true. The meanings behind all scripture may well have been inspired by the same God, but the people who did the actual writing and editing were all unique individuals in unique life situations, and the ways they expressed the ideas being given to them by the Holy Spirit were peculiar to those conditions.
Protestant theology, especially evangelical protestant theology, tends to homogenize the writings, to make them all the same, when there is very, VERY much to be learned from studying the differences. A big case in point would be the gospels. There are four of them for reasons, and attempts to harmonize them destroy the depth perception of Jesus that we get from "quad-ocular" vision. Harmonizing the gospels does nothing but make Jesus just too flat.
How this stuff comes into the discussion on this thread is this: Paul wrote things about the law to the Romans that are different from the things he wrote about the law to the Galatians. Are these differences "contradictions," in a sense that would negate their "god-breathed-ness"? or are they differences in Paul's own expression, brought on by frustration at the seeming mindlessness of the Galatians, Paul's own "babes" in the Word?
Our professor of L&HOT and Hebrew has the highest regard for Paul. He is not a scribe or Pharisee seeking to trip Paul up. He actually has a compassion for Paul that most of us miss, because Paul ALSO was a deep scholar of the Tanakh.
Another way this idea comes up is in the question of whether or not the writer of Acts could have known Paul personally. The theology that is attributed to Paul in Acts seems to differ from the theology Paul expressed in his own letters, and there are serious difficulties to squaring the chronology in Acts to the chronology in the letters. These differences do not prove that Luke could not have been one of Paul's companions at various times. Luke had his own theological agenda that he was promoting to his audience which was different from the theological aganda Paul was promoting to the readers of his letters.
Luke was also willing to emphasize certain parts of Paul's journeys and de-emphasize others, in order to fit the events into Luke's narrative of how the gospel moved from Jerusalem to Rome. None of these things argue against Luke having a personal acquaintance with Paul.
When the original writers wrote their sections in what we see in today's bible. I wonder how many times they needed to edit their writings for truth, clarity and grammar? And as an example, I just edited this short writing. I had to look up the word spelled grammar to see if it was spelled grammer or grammar. The spelling as grammar won the debate. We all need to do this and I now see this as also including the original biblical writers. Otherwise, we would have the equivalent of puppets on strings. And yes, God's help of inspiration does help a great deal. However, a period of learning is still required for all people. And this is why Paul wrote most of what we see in the New Testament. He did the most study and learning in preparation to his writings.
Writing was an interesting proposition in antiquity, Mark, very different from what we think of as writing today. Reading and writing were both done orally, almost always, and only rarely was either a solitary activity. People who could read silently were so extraordinary that others would visit them just to watch them do it. Reading and writing were both done at parties. The hostesses of the society would invite important people over to their homes for the evening, and part of the entertainment might well be a popular writer reading from his work. There was no TV, you know. "Books" were not "published" the way they are today. Actual copies would be very few and far between. The writers' works became known though the readings at parties. The same thing happened clear up through the 18th century CE.
When a writer worked on a piece, he would invite a few friends over whose knowledgeability and taste the author trusted (there were women writers, too, I'm just stuck with English pronouns). The writer would try things out on his friends and gauge their reactions. Notes were probably taken by an amanuensis using a stylus on a tablet covered in wax. The styluses are frequently found in the archaeology of Roman administrative centers. One end is pointed for scribing and the other end is flat for making corrections by smoothing the wax. After the author was set on what he wanted to say, the amanuensis would make a "clean copy" in some other medium to be sent.
Official, respectable works were written on scrolls. Scrolls had gravitas. Codices, books like we have them today, a bunch of pages sewn together on one side, were considered to be inferior to scrolls, sort of like the way we regard 3-ring binders. The letters of Paul were collected in codex form, probably because that's how he sent them out in the first place. It seems that all the early Christian writings followed the codex fashion set by Paul, and as Christianity spread through the empire, so codices gradually replaced scrolls.
The written copy, however, was not considered to be the real message. The real message would be the performance given by the courier. There were no microphones or loudspeakers in antiquity. The Greek and Roman cultures had developed sets of broad gestures that could be used to make the meanings plain all the way out to the edges of the crowd where hearing was difficult. The performance of a letter was as much a stylized dance or mime as it was "reading" the words. Before a writer sent a letter, he would coach and rehearse the courier on the gestural component of the message. One of the reasons Paul seems so vague to us in some passages is probably because we have no idea what visual cues he gave to the courier to make those passages clear in the original auditory/visual performance.
A congregation would save the copy that had been sent to them. A "reader" would watch over all the congregations scriptures and read from them at the congregation's parties (the things that turned into "church services") from time to time. Sometimes copies of a codex might be made (a VERY EXPENSIVE process) to share with another congregation, or copies might be made because the original copy was wearing out.
Take Paul's letter to the Romans as an example. Paul probably got together with Timotheus, Lucius, Jason, Sosipater, Tertius and Phebe (Romans 16:1, 21-23) over the course of several evenings at the house of Gaius. Paul presented ideas to the group, and they helped him hammer out exactly what he wanted to say, and how he wanted it said. After those meetings were over, Tertius took the wax tablets with his notes on them and wrote out the letter using ink on a codex. After Paul approved the clean copy, he met with Phebe and coached her on how he wanted her to present the message to the congregation at Rome. Phebe took the letter there and performed it in front of the whole assembly. Phebe left the copy when she went home, and a member of the congregation who could read (a VERY small percentage) took charge of it. Most of the material at the gatherings would be verbal transmission of the oral tradition, but as written material in the forms of gospels and other letters proliferated, "reading" of the material to the mostly illiterate members of the congregation gradually overtook oral tradition.
The circumstances under which Paul wrote Galatians were VERY different. His "babes in the Word" were being subverted by those hypocrites from Antioch! If they want circumcision, then let 'em tear their own nuts off! That's what Paul actually meant in Galatians 5:12! He could very well be a hothead at times, even if he has been translated to sound otherwise!
Thank you for the history lesson Steve. Perhaps you should be one of the teachers at the christian university that you have been attending. And certainly hand written text, written after hearing from another person increases the chances of textual errors. However, I am confident that through reading, study and godly inspired logic and reason that we can see the possible errors. And this does not discredit the scriptures as a whole. A lot of translation work has gone into this. From your above post even more than I was previously thinking. And ancient times compared to today, using today's software to record thoughts and ideas would at least correct spelling errors and likely more.
Take Paul's letter to the Romans as an example. Paul probably got together with Timotheus, Lucius, Jason, Sosipater, Tertius and Phebe (Romans 16:1, 21-23) over the course of several evenings at the house of Gaius. Paul presented ideas to the group, and they helped him hammer out exactly what he wanted to say, and how he wanted it said. After those meetings were over, Tertius took the wax tablets with his notes on them and wrote out the letter using ink on a codex. After Paul approved the clean copy, he met with Phebe and coached her on how he wanted her to present the message to the congregation at Rome..
That is a metaphoric statement of poetic knowledge.
The truth of the statement cannot be "scientifically" tested...
Because it's a METAPHOR!
But it is TRUE!
You can have a general idea as to the sense of the statement, but you have no idea exactly what the phrase means or how true it is unless you were a member of the crew of the USS POGY in the early- to mid-'70s.
It was a thing we said on the boat! All of us said it from time to time. We all knew what it meant, and it couldn't be exactly expressed in any other way. But we all knew it was true. And it was counter-sensual. There was nothing "sweet" about conditions on the submarine!
If you don't want me to argue authorship on this thread, you really need to stop counterarguing authorship on this thread.
I don't understand why you have a hang-up about the authorship of Luke-Acts. There are parts of the NT whose authorship is very much open to question, especially Paul's pastoral epistles, and serious ecclesiological issues are influenced by who the author of those letters might have been. The name of the author of Hebrews seems to have been deliberately suppressed by the early church, possibly because she was a woman (see Priscilla's Letter: Finding the Author of the Epistle Hebrews by Ruth Hoppin 2009). The gospel of John is definitely not the product of a single author, John, though it may have been written by a group that grew up around the testimony of John. As far as I know, there has never been any controversy over the authorship of Luke-Acts. Tradition has held from the earliest days that the author of Luke-Acts was a man named Luke who had some kind of connection with Paul. We cannot be certain whether that man was the Luke of Colossians 4:14, but what difference would that make? No one has ever put forward a claim that it was anyone other than a man named Luke who had a connection with Paul. No one.
Robert Jewett, in his A Chronology of Paul's Life (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979), makes a strong case that Luke WAS a member of Paul's entourage during the "we" sections of Acts, even though Jewett favors the chronological material from Paul's letters over the chronology of Acts. And Jewett states his reasons for doing so. If Luke was indeed a member of Paul's party during the many days the party was at Caesarea (Acts 21:10), Nazareth was only about forty miles away, a four day walk round trip. It would have been relatively easy for Luke to interview Mary, if she was there. If Mary was elsewhere, possibly in Jerusalem, it would have been even easier.
While Luke does NOT say he was an eyewitness to the events recorded in his gospel, he does say that he relied on traditions handed down by eyewitnesses. There is nothing in the language of Luke 1:1&2 that precludes Luke from having received some of those traditions from the eyewitnesses themselves.
Do I think Luke-Acts was "God-breathed"? That depends on how we define "God-breathed." If we accept the fundamentalist/evangelical protestant definition as "being without error or contradiction, the inclusion of which even a single one would destroy the trustworthiness of the whole", then NO! Luke-Acts contains many, many errors and contradictions.
If we accept that "God-breathed" means "most useful for making sense out of what is happening", or "most useful for equipping people to do good works", then YES, I DO believe Luke-Acts is God-breathed.
I don't understand how you are using the phrases "arguing authorship" and "counterarguing authorship". It would seem that you are the person counter arguing Lukan authorship...
Misrepresenting the motives and sincerity of scholars who recognize he did not write Acts does not magically make Luke the author.
Simply put, an independent researcher who relied heavily on eyewitness testimony would not have needed to plagiarize Mark as shamelessly as "Luke" did. He would not have botched the Nativity story if he were really a careful historian (because he would have known full well that Herod was long dead by the time of the Quirinian census. And that the census did not require anyone to travel FROM their homes based on ancestry).
Mary would have known that. Had Luke interviewed Mary, he would not have gotten that fact so pathetically wrong.
And no, that's not a metaphor. It's a blunder. And it's not a blunder that would have been made by someone who really interviewed eyewitnesses.
It's abundantly clear that you've reached your conclusion based on faith rather than evidence.
No one in history ever suggested anyone other than Paul wrote the epistles to Timothy and Titus. Yet he probably didn't.
No one in history ever suggested someone other than Matthew wrote Matthew. Yet he clearly didn't. (Why would an eyewitness plagiarize a non-witness to the events he had witnessed?)
For centuries, MANY centuries, it was assumed Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible.
What does THAT prove? Nothing. At. All.
The fact that history offers no alternatives in no way whatsoever demands we accept the traditional authorship when the evidence weighs so heavily against it.
I wonder if Raf will ever want to remove blinders on this subject? No, I think pertaining to the bible he likes blinders and wants to promote them. There are people that have studied the bible along with needed reference texts more than Raf and other people. The mentioning of Paul in the first verses of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus should be obvious as to the original authors of these. However, as Steve Lortz has mentioned in previous posts here, Paul did have help and assistance in the writing of these letters that include mention of Paul. I wonder if Raf will now pretend that the entire content of these letters have all been plagiarized by Paul, who history shows us was a very knowledgeable man? Raf, does anyone ever plagiarize what you have originally written?
1 Timothy chapter 1
1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope,
2 To Timothy, a true son in the faith:
Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.
New King James Version
2 Timothy chapter 1
1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus,
2 To Timothy, a beloved son:
Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
New King James Version
Titus chapter 1
1 Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect and the acknowledgment of the truth which accords with godliness,
2 in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began,
New King James Version
And thanks for the good historical and good sense biblical posts here Steve. I am nominating you as a teacher. And a study of what god breathed is and your explanation is a good biblical subject. The very important main part of any written work from the bible should be the truthfulness, reason and logic and whether or not it is seen in these writings?
Would disputed authorship necessarily preclude something from being "God-breathed"?(if there is such a thing)
Keep in mind that much of what was included in the canon of scripture was largely based on who wrote it (or who they thought wrote it) so there was definitely a motive for signing someone else's name to an epistle or gospel. There was also no self-evident test to determine what was canonical and what was not (of course content was considered, but if it was self-evident, there'd be no debate!); there were two centuries of debate among churchmen and even in the time of Luther there was disagreement over what should be included.
If one believes something to be God-breathed, does it matter who wrote it? But the whole things seems circular: How do we know scripture is God-breathed? It says so in scripture; How do we know that's correct? Well, it's in scripture, so it must be God-breathed :evilshades:/>
This particular digression begins with the claim that the writer of Luke interviewed eyewitnesses. The writer of Luke never claims to have interviewed eyewitnesses. We've seen emphatic assertions that he could have interviewed Mary, therefore he must have. But the evidence argues strongly against it.
"But the whole things seems circular: How do we know scripture is God-breathed? It says so in scripture; How do we know that's correct? Well, it's in scripture, so it must be God-breathed."
I like to say it has a "self-professed integrity".
There are parts of the NT whose authorship is very much open to question, especially Paul's pastoral epistles, and serious ecclesiological issues are influenced by who the author of those letters might have been.
This is crucial to what we're discussing.
Serious issues are raised by the authorship of the pastoral epistles (I Timothy, II Timothy, Titus). One thing most modern scholars agree on: whoever wrote these letters, it wasn't Paul.
What does that tell us? For one thing, it tells us that people were writing things while claiming to have authority they did not have. They wanted their words to count, not just get lost in the sea of ridiculous letters and gospels that were being circulated at the time. How do you do that? Well, you pretend to be Paul!
What? Who would do that? No one for centuries implied that the author of the epistles to Timothy and Titus was anyone but Paul. No alternatives were ever presented. Not one. [This is being stated ironically: The fact that no one presented an alternative does not validate Paul as the author].
In fact, there are good reasons to doubt Paul wrote I and II Timothy. For one thing, the letters assume a church hierarchy that was not in place at the time Paul lived and wrote. That's why Corinthians is written to the Corinthians, as opposed to the bishop at Corinth.
We have a serious problem if Paul didn't write II Timothy, though. Because then we have no idea who wrote it. We only know one thing about this person: He's a liar. He's pretending to be Paul writing to Timothy, knowing full well he is not.
And this is the only book of the Bible that says scripture is "God-breathed."
What are the implications of that?
We take the very concept of "God-breathed" scripture from a forgery.
Without it, you have some concepts that come close, but nothing that outright says scripture has this quality.
P.S. The same motive -- artifically bolstering credibility -- that led a forger to claim he was really Paul, knowing he wasn't, could easily lead someone who wasn't traveling WITH Paul to claim that he was. How would we know? Easy: Compare what that person says happened to what Paul says happened. If they don't agree, you have very valid reasons to doubt the pretender. The writer of Luke, whoever he was, pretends to be a companion of Paul, but disagrees with Paul about Paul's own biography. Now, what was his source for Paul's life, if not Paul himself?
Paul is pretty clear about what happened after Jesus knocked him off his horse:
Galatians 1:15 But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased 16 to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult any human being. 17 I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus. 18 Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. 19 I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. 20 I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie.
Go ahead. Now read Acts 9. I'll wait.
Back already? Note how quickly Paul's "I did not go to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was" gets translated by his faithful and accurate companion Luke to "I went to Jerusalem and met with the apostles there."
They can't both be right.
Paul DID have a companion named Luke. Whether he was a physician or a Gentile is in question: that comes from another FORGED letter, Colossians. Maybe Luke was a Gentile physician and maybe he wasn't. Not really much way of knowing, but I wouldn't bank on it from a letter written by someone claiming to be someone he isn't.
Nonetheless, if Acts were written by someone who knew Paul, then we have a big problem. Because that person would have known the letter to Galatians. Thus, when he writes that Paul went to Jerusalem and met with the apostles, plural, he knows full well that he is calling Paul a liar.
If "Luke" is right, Paul IS a liar. If "Luke" is wrong, then "Luke" is a liar. Or at least unreliable.
One thing he's not, by even the most lenient standard, is God-breathed.
This is not metaphor. This is not symbolism. This is one Bible writer flat-out calling the other a liar.
The writer of Luke pretends to be a companion of Paul for a few select passages, but a real companion of Paul would not call Paul a liar about what happened after his conversion. Just like someone who really interviewed Mary would not have botched the Nativity story. Just like someone who interviewed eyewitnesses would not, ahem, borrow so heavily from someone who did not.
Writing in the year 150 or so, Justin Martyr quoted the gospels numerous times. He never called them by name. Just "The Memoirs of the Apostles."
Luke was not an apostle.
Justin Martyr did not know who wrote the gospels. Nor did he appear to care very much.
It wasn't until 20 years later that Iraneus (spell check, please) is the first person we know of to give the gospels their current names. And why? To argue against heresies. THAT is a motive to reinforce the legitimacy of the gospels by attaching them to real people.
Why Matthew and Mark? Because Papias hinted that gospels written by Matthew and Mark should exist, though the descriptions he gives don't match the gospels we have.
Why Luke and John? Because the writer of Luke pretended to be a companion of Paul, and Luke was the best match. Why John? Because John was mistakenly believed to be the Beloved Disciple AND the author of the gospel. Careful reading should have shown that the Beloved Disciple is explicitly NOT the author of John, but oh well.
No other names have been attached to the gospels, but that absolutely positively does not prove they were written by the people they are attributed to. The evidence is SQUARELY against those attributions.
So if Matthew didn't write Matthew, Mark didn't write Mark, Luke didn't write Luke and John didn't write John, does that mean it's not God-breathed?
To me, that question is secondary. How can ANYTHING be "God-breathed" if the concept of "God-breathed" itself comes from a fraud (a writer pretending to be Paul who knew full well he was not)?
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waysider
I buried Paul. Sincerely, The Walrus
Steve Lortz
There is a thing we've been taught to do at Anderson University (all the way from freshman introductory Bible courses to grad school exegetical papers) called the hermeneutic or the exegetical circle.
Steve Lortz
I don't understand why you have a hang-up about the authorship of Luke-Acts. There are parts of the NT whose authorship is very much open to question, especially Paul's pastoral epistles, and serious
Steve Lortz
We had a brief discussion in Hebrew class this morning that touched tangentially on some of the issues raised here. A lot of the workload of teaching scripture at the School of Theology falls on two professors, the teacher of Literature and History of the Old Testament and the teacher of Literature and History of the New Testament. There is a running gag in the school about how much the teacher of L&HOT despises Paul. He is the same professor who teaches the Hebrew class.
We had a little time to kill this morning, while waiting for some of the students to show up, so one of my classmates asked the professor what he has against Paul. The prof said that in Galatians Paul presents a very dim view of the law, and uses what seems to be an inappropriate analogy between law/grace and Haggai, Ishmael/Sarah, Isaac. Our prof pointed out that Paul's view of the law presented in Galatians can very easily be understood as a contradiction of the view presented in Romans. He attributed this contradiction to the fact that Paul was so pi$$ed (and that's good Pauline language) at the Judaizers when he was writing Galatians, that his anger bled over into the things he wrote about the law itself. When he finished explaining, and was beginning to transition back to teaching Hebrew, he remarked "How do you teach THAT to these kids [who come from evangelical protestant backgrounds, who have been taught plenary verbal inspiration]?"
The Church of God Reformation Movement has no association with the Assemblies of God. CHoGRM came out of the Wesleyan Holiness Movement of the late-1800s, and never got involved with the Fundamentalist Conferences of the early-1900s. CHoGRM regards creeds as man-made and divisive. The movement is no longer as anti-denominational as it was in the beginning, and has taken on aspects of a Wesleyan interdenominational denomination. The SOT takes a high view of scripture, as per the scale I set up earlier on this thread, even though it does not as an institution believe in plenary verbal inspiration. It is a big issue in the whole University now, how to express our respect for the Bible to new students without having to gloss over the Bible's obvious shortcomings that the youngsters' Sunday schools never addressed.
So, yes, I am partially motivated to explore these things from the viewpoint of ex-wayfers, but I am also motivated in part to find a way to express these things that is accessible to people from other evangelical protestant backgrounds as well.
-----
If we want to consider what a word means, we need to go back to it's original literal meaning, and from there, we can examine the poetic knowledge that can be derived from it by use of simile and metaphor. the first word we will look at is breath (ruach in the Hebrew, pneuma in the Greek) which can as properly be translated as "wind" or "spirit." Wind is "air in motion." Breath is air that is specifically moving into and out of a... what?... in Greek or English we would say "body"... in Hebrew we would say nephesh or "living being" or "soul."
In antiquity, they didn't have a lot of monitors to tell whether a person was dead or merely unconscious. They didn't even know what the pulse meant. The only way to distinguish between life (the ability to move) and death (the utter lack of ability to move) was whether or not breath (or wind or spirit) was moving in and out of the person. Spirit was so closely associated with life and its absence with death, that the word took on the figurative meaning of "life-force," or "that whose motion imparts the ability to move." All the other figurative meanings of "spirit" or "breath" are derived from this one.
I've got to go keep an appointment. More later...
Love,
Steve
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Mark Sanguinetti
That so called prof that you mention above Steve, sounds like the equivalent today of one of the scribes and pharisees of the 1st century church. Jesus used to devour dishonest people like this all the time in the first century in debates. These were the only people Jesus actually opposed after they first opposed Jesus Christ. And with my knowledge and very good biblical study software if a person like this was dishonest and bias biblically he would get devoured by me also today. As long as I had time from my busy as a bee worker schedule I might consider that recreation.
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Steve Lortz
The motion of breath is not random. It is an oscillatory or reciprocating flow of air into and out of the lungs. The literal movement of breath goes much deeper than just the lungs though. Molecular oxygen is carried by the blood from the lungs to the cells, and the O2 returns from the cells to the lungs in the form of CO2. The life (nephesh) of the flesh is in the blood. Within the cell, sugar and oxygen are burnt in a highly regulated manner, which produces a flow of electrons through the intermediary of ATP (adenosine triphosphate). The flow of electrons powers the flow of all other movement and processes in the cell, in each and every cell.
It is the movement, the regulated flow of chemicals and energy, that constitutes life. A corpse and a living being are made up of exactly the same chemicals in exactly the same relationships. The difference between a corpse and a living being is the ability to move, which is the sum total of all the micro-flows at the cellular level. A being dies when the micro-flows stop. When I passed out a few months ago, I did so because the oscillatory flow of air into and out of my lungs was interrupted. This in turn interfered with a sufficient number of micro-flows in a sufficient number of cells that my body was not able to maintain consciousness. If I had been by myself, all movement would have been interrupted, and I would have died. As it was, I received medical attention in enough time to save my life. All the flows were restored.
Life is the ability to move. The movement of life consists of the interaction of highly regulated flows. The ancients understood all these flows as wind or breath or spirit.
In Genesis 2:7, when the figurative Lord God figuratively breathed the figurative breath of life into the nostrils of the figurative man, the authors and editors were saying that the life-force that imparted movement by its own movement to the whole of the universe, also imparted movement by its own movement, life by its own life, to human beings.
That's a heck of a lot better than the Enuma Elish, the creation story told contemporaneously in the town where the authors and editors of Genesis 2:7 were working, that Marduk created human beings by mixing dust with the blood of a rebel god slain for that purpose, so that human beings could be forced to do the work that the gods didn't want to do.
All for now...
Love,
Steve
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Steve Lortz
I left out one important factor in my description of life as flow... none of the flows are random or pointless. They ALL have purpose!
Love,
Steve
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Steve Lortz
There is a thing we've been taught to do at Anderson University (all the way from freshman introductory Bible courses to grad school exegetical papers) called the hermeneutic or the exegetical circle.
When we are considering a passage of scripture, we start with the question, What exactly was actually written? If we are mistaken about what was written, how can we be confident of the meaning we that derive from it?
The second question is, What did this mean to the person who originally wrote it?
Next we ask, What would this mean to the people it was originally addressed to?
And finally, What lessons can we draw from this today?
When the Protestants of the 1500s cried "scriptura sola", there were some unintended consequences. One such is the impression that all scripture has but one writer, and that just isn't true. The meanings behind all scripture may well have been inspired by the same God, but the people who did the actual writing and editing were all unique individuals in unique life situations, and the ways they expressed the ideas being given to them by the Holy Spirit were peculiar to those conditions.
Protestant theology, especially evangelical protestant theology, tends to homogenize the writings, to make them all the same, when there is very, VERY much to be learned from studying the differences. A big case in point would be the gospels. There are four of them for reasons, and attempts to harmonize them destroy the depth perception of Jesus that we get from "quad-ocular" vision. Harmonizing the gospels does nothing but make Jesus just too flat.
How this stuff comes into the discussion on this thread is this: Paul wrote things about the law to the Romans that are different from the things he wrote about the law to the Galatians. Are these differences "contradictions," in a sense that would negate their "god-breathed-ness"? or are they differences in Paul's own expression, brought on by frustration at the seeming mindlessness of the Galatians, Paul's own "babes" in the Word?
Our professor of L&HOT and Hebrew has the highest regard for Paul. He is not a scribe or Pharisee seeking to trip Paul up. He actually has a compassion for Paul that most of us miss, because Paul ALSO was a deep scholar of the Tanakh.
Another way this idea comes up is in the question of whether or not the writer of Acts could have known Paul personally. The theology that is attributed to Paul in Acts seems to differ from the theology Paul expressed in his own letters, and there are serious difficulties to squaring the chronology in Acts to the chronology in the letters. These differences do not prove that Luke could not have been one of Paul's companions at various times. Luke had his own theological agenda that he was promoting to his audience which was different from the theological aganda Paul was promoting to the readers of his letters.
Luke was also willing to emphasize certain parts of Paul's journeys and de-emphasize others, in order to fit the events into Luke's narrative of how the gospel moved from Jerusalem to Rome. None of these things argue against Luke having a personal acquaintance with Paul.
All for now... more later...
Love,
Steve
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Raf
If you don't want me to argue authorship on this thread, you really need to stop counterarguing authorship on this thread.
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Mark Sanguinetti
When the original writers wrote their sections in what we see in today's bible. I wonder how many times they needed to edit their writings for truth, clarity and grammar? And as an example, I just edited this short writing. I had to look up the word spelled grammar to see if it was spelled grammer or grammar. The spelling as grammar won the debate.
We all need to do this and I now see this as also including the original biblical writers. Otherwise, we would have the equivalent of puppets on strings. And yes, God's help of inspiration does help a great deal. However, a period of learning is still required for all people. And this is why Paul wrote most of what we see in the New Testament. He did the most study and learning in preparation to his writings.
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Steve Lortz
Writing was an interesting proposition in antiquity, Mark, very different from what we think of as writing today. Reading and writing were both done orally, almost always, and only rarely was either a solitary activity. People who could read silently were so extraordinary that others would visit them just to watch them do it. Reading and writing were both done at parties. The hostesses of the society would invite important people over to their homes for the evening, and part of the entertainment might well be a popular writer reading from his work. There was no TV, you know. "Books" were not "published" the way they are today. Actual copies would be very few and far between. The writers' works became known though the readings at parties. The same thing happened clear up through the 18th century CE.
When a writer worked on a piece, he would invite a few friends over whose knowledgeability and taste the author trusted (there were women writers, too, I'm just stuck with English pronouns). The writer would try things out on his friends and gauge their reactions. Notes were probably taken by an amanuensis using a stylus on a tablet covered in wax. The styluses are frequently found in the archaeology of Roman administrative centers. One end is pointed for scribing and the other end is flat for making corrections by smoothing the wax. After the author was set on what he wanted to say, the amanuensis would make a "clean copy" in some other medium to be sent.
Official, respectable works were written on scrolls. Scrolls had gravitas. Codices, books like we have them today, a bunch of pages sewn together on one side, were considered to be inferior to scrolls, sort of like the way we regard 3-ring binders. The letters of Paul were collected in codex form, probably because that's how he sent them out in the first place. It seems that all the early Christian writings followed the codex fashion set by Paul, and as Christianity spread through the empire, so codices gradually replaced scrolls.
The written copy, however, was not considered to be the real message. The real message would be the performance given by the courier. There were no microphones or loudspeakers in antiquity. The Greek and Roman cultures had developed sets of broad gestures that could be used to make the meanings plain all the way out to the edges of the crowd where hearing was difficult. The performance of a letter was as much a stylized dance or mime as it was "reading" the words. Before a writer sent a letter, he would coach and rehearse the courier on the gestural component of the message. One of the reasons Paul seems so vague to us in some passages is probably because we have no idea what visual cues he gave to the courier to make those passages clear in the original auditory/visual performance.
A congregation would save the copy that had been sent to them. A "reader" would watch over all the congregations scriptures and read from them at the congregation's parties (the things that turned into "church services") from time to time. Sometimes copies of a codex might be made (a VERY EXPENSIVE process) to share with another congregation, or copies might be made because the original copy was wearing out.
Take Paul's letter to the Romans as an example. Paul probably got together with Timotheus, Lucius, Jason, Sosipater, Tertius and Phebe (Romans 16:1, 21-23) over the course of several evenings at the house of Gaius. Paul presented ideas to the group, and they helped him hammer out exactly what he wanted to say, and how he wanted it said. After those meetings were over, Tertius took the wax tablets with his notes on them and wrote out the letter using ink on a codex. After Paul approved the clean copy, he met with Phebe and coached her on how he wanted her to present the message to the congregation at Rome. Phebe took the letter there and performed it in front of the whole assembly. Phebe left the copy when she went home, and a member of the congregation who could read (a VERY small percentage) took charge of it. Most of the material at the gatherings would be verbal transmission of the oral tradition, but as written material in the forms of gospels and other letters proliferated, "reading" of the material to the mostly illiterate members of the congregation gradually overtook oral tradition.
The circumstances under which Paul wrote Galatians were VERY different. His "babes in the Word" were being subverted by those hypocrites from Antioch! If they want circumcision, then let 'em tear their own nuts off! That's what Paul actually meant in Galatians 5:12! He could very well be a hothead at times, even if he has been translated to sound otherwise!
All for now!
Love,
Steve
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Mark Sanguinetti
Thank you for the history lesson Steve. Perhaps you should be one of the teachers at the christian university that you have been attending. And certainly hand written text, written after hearing from another person increases the chances of textual errors. However, I am confident that through reading, study and godly inspired logic and reason that we can see the possible errors. And this does not discredit the scriptures as a whole. A lot of translation work has gone into this. From your above post even more than I was previously thinking. And ancient times compared to today, using today's software to record thoughts and ideas would at least correct spelling errors and likely more.
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waysider
And THIS is what we've been calling God Breathed?
:blink:
It sounds more like a writers' meeting for SNL.
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WordWolf
Obviously, working without modern conveniences- and from a perspective and style
very different from our own- can be interpreted as grossly inferior.
I think that says as much about us interpreting that as it does about what
we're interpreting.
If you're expecting something that's geared specifically for you from decades ago,
you'll be disappointed. Books written about a century to 1 1/2 centuries ago,
if scholarly, were written with an intended audience of PhDs and candidates.
That's why they occasionally lapsed into quotes from Latin and the writers never
bothered to translate that into English. They expected that the only people who
would read their books, in fact, the only people with access to their books,
were the Doctorates and the like. I've seen complaints about that sort of thing
with DIFFERENT books all written in that time-frame. The authors are too
high-faluting, the language is too stilted and sesquipedalian, the Latin is
inserted and never explained- and all because he wanted to talk over the heads of
his audience! No, he expected that the dozens of possible readers would all be
able to keep up.
That was pretty much standard for that type of book, written in English to US
or UK audiences, and all less than 2 centuries ago. A read through writings from
around the time of the US revolution might result in frustrations with the writers-
frustrations common to your read of the other writings of that time and place.
Shakespeare is usually read with annotations for the differences in the language,
and the differences in the mindset and expectations, (and occasionally, for the
stage-directions you can't see performed when reading a book that was meant to be
acted out.)
That increases as time increases, distance increases, and mindset differs more.
For that matter, we all know our culture is the "correct" one when encountering
other cultures by visiting others or having them travel to where we are, so we
should just consider the others to be silly and incorrect when and where they
differ from us.
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Steve Lortz
A brief excursus...
"Life is sweet..."
That is a metaphoric statement of poetic knowledge.
The truth of the statement cannot be "scientifically" tested...
Because it's a METAPHOR!
But it is TRUE!
You can have a general idea as to the sense of the statement, but you have no idea exactly what the phrase means or how true it is unless you were a member of the crew of the USS POGY in the early- to mid-'70s.
It was a thing we said on the boat! All of us said it from time to time. We all knew what it meant, and it couldn't be exactly expressed in any other way. But we all knew it was true. And it was counter-sensual. There was nothing "sweet" about conditions on the submarine!
And the Bible is just like that!
All for now...
Love,
Steve
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Steve Lortz
I don't understand why you have a hang-up about the authorship of Luke-Acts. There are parts of the NT whose authorship is very much open to question, especially Paul's pastoral epistles, and serious ecclesiological issues are influenced by who the author of those letters might have been. The name of the author of Hebrews seems to have been deliberately suppressed by the early church, possibly because she was a woman (see Priscilla's Letter: Finding the Author of the Epistle Hebrews by Ruth Hoppin 2009). The gospel of John is definitely not the product of a single author, John, though it may have been written by a group that grew up around the testimony of John. As far as I know, there has never been any controversy over the authorship of Luke-Acts. Tradition has held from the earliest days that the author of Luke-Acts was a man named Luke who had some kind of connection with Paul. We cannot be certain whether that man was the Luke of Colossians 4:14, but what difference would that make? No one has ever put forward a claim that it was anyone other than a man named Luke who had a connection with Paul. No one.
Robert Jewett, in his A Chronology of Paul's Life (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979), makes a strong case that Luke WAS a member of Paul's entourage during the "we" sections of Acts, even though Jewett favors the chronological material from Paul's letters over the chronology of Acts. And Jewett states his reasons for doing so. If Luke was indeed a member of Paul's party during the many days the party was at Caesarea (Acts 21:10), Nazareth was only about forty miles away, a four day walk round trip. It would have been relatively easy for Luke to interview Mary, if she was there. If Mary was elsewhere, possibly in Jerusalem, it would have been even easier.
While Luke does NOT say he was an eyewitness to the events recorded in his gospel, he does say that he relied on traditions handed down by eyewitnesses. There is nothing in the language of Luke 1:1&2 that precludes Luke from having received some of those traditions from the eyewitnesses themselves.
Do I think Luke-Acts was "God-breathed"? That depends on how we define "God-breathed." If we accept the fundamentalist/evangelical protestant definition as "being without error or contradiction, the inclusion of which even a single one would destroy the trustworthiness of the whole", then NO! Luke-Acts contains many, many errors and contradictions.
If we accept that "God-breathed" means "most useful for making sense out of what is happening", or "most useful for equipping people to do good works", then YES, I DO believe Luke-Acts is God-breathed.
I don't understand how you are using the phrases "arguing authorship" and "counterarguing authorship". It would seem that you are the person counter arguing Lukan authorship...
Peace, friend! :-)
Love,
Steve
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Raf
Insisting Luke wrote Acts doesn't make it so.
Misrepresenting the motives and sincerity of scholars who recognize he did not write Acts does not magically make Luke the author.
Simply put, an independent researcher who relied heavily on eyewitness testimony would not have needed to plagiarize Mark as shamelessly as "Luke" did. He would not have botched the Nativity story if he were really a careful historian (because he would have known full well that Herod was long dead by the time of the Quirinian census. And that the census did not require anyone to travel FROM their homes based on ancestry).
Mary would have known that. Had Luke interviewed Mary, he would not have gotten that fact so pathetically wrong.
And no, that's not a metaphor. It's a blunder. And it's not a blunder that would have been made by someone who really interviewed eyewitnesses.
It's abundantly clear that you've reached your conclusion based on faith rather than evidence.
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Oakspear
Thought that you could slip sesquipedalian by us, huh WordWof?
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waysider
I wonder if there's a short synonym for sesquipedalian.
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Raf
No one in history ever suggested anyone other than Paul wrote the epistles to Timothy and Titus. Yet he probably didn't.
No one in history ever suggested someone other than Matthew wrote Matthew. Yet he clearly didn't. (Why would an eyewitness plagiarize a non-witness to the events he had witnessed?)
For centuries, MANY centuries, it was assumed Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible.
What does THAT prove? Nothing. At. All.
The fact that history offers no alternatives in no way whatsoever demands we accept the traditional authorship when the evidence weighs so heavily against it.
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Mark Sanguinetti
I wonder if Raf will ever want to remove blinders on this subject? No, I think pertaining to the bible he likes blinders and wants to promote them. There are people that have studied the bible along with needed reference texts more than Raf and other people. The mentioning of Paul in the first verses of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus should be obvious as to the original authors of these. However, as Steve Lortz has mentioned in previous posts here, Paul did have help and assistance in the writing of these letters that include mention of Paul. I wonder if Raf will now pretend that the entire content of these letters have all been plagiarized by Paul, who history shows us was a very knowledgeable man? Raf, does anyone ever plagiarize what you have originally written?
1 Timothy chapter 1
1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope,
2 To Timothy, a true son in the faith:
Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.
New King James Version
2 Timothy chapter 1
1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus,
2 To Timothy, a beloved son:
Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
New King James Version
Titus chapter 1
1 Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect and the acknowledgment of the truth which accords with godliness,
2 in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began,
New King James Version
And thanks for the good historical and good sense biblical posts here Steve. I am nominating you as a teacher. And a study of what god breathed is and your explanation is a good biblical subject.
The very important main part of any written work from the bible should be the truthfulness, reason and logic and whether or not it is seen in these writings?
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Raf
Well! That settles it then, doesn't it!
I wonder why scholars don't just read the first couple of verses of each letter. They'd save a lot of time.
Talk about blinders!
P.S. I have not been plagiarized, but I supervised someone who was.
Mark, a non-eyewitness, was plagiarized by Matthew, who was an eyewitness, and by Luke, who interviewed multiple eyewitnesses.
If you believe that, and think I'M the one blinded by bias, there's really nothing to argue.
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Oakspear
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Oakspear
Would disputed authorship necessarily preclude something from being "God-breathed"?(if there is such a thing)
Keep in mind that much of what was included in the canon of scripture was largely based on who wrote it (or who they thought wrote it) so there was definitely a motive for signing someone else's name to an epistle or gospel. There was also no self-evident test to determine what was canonical and what was not (of course content was considered, but if it was self-evident, there'd be no debate!); there were two centuries of debate among churchmen and even in the time of Luther there was disagreement over what should be included.
If one believes something to be God-breathed, does it matter who wrote it? But the whole things seems circular: How do we know scripture is God-breathed? It says so in scripture; How do we know that's correct? Well, it's in scripture, so it must be God-breathed :evilshades:/>
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Raf
Easy to forget how things start.
This particular digression begins with the claim that the writer of Luke interviewed eyewitnesses. The writer of Luke never claims to have interviewed eyewitnesses. We've seen emphatic assertions that he could have interviewed Mary, therefore he must have. But the evidence argues strongly against it.
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waysider
"But the whole things seems circular: How do we know scripture is God-breathed? It says so in scripture; How do we know that's correct? Well, it's in scripture, so it must be God-breathed."
I like to say it has a "self-professed integrity".
It sounds so much more academic. :B)
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Raf
From Steve:
This is crucial to what we're discussing.
Serious issues are raised by the authorship of the pastoral epistles (I Timothy, II Timothy, Titus). One thing most modern scholars agree on: whoever wrote these letters, it wasn't Paul.
What does that tell us? For one thing, it tells us that people were writing things while claiming to have authority they did not have. They wanted their words to count, not just get lost in the sea of ridiculous letters and gospels that were being circulated at the time. How do you do that? Well, you pretend to be Paul!
What? Who would do that? No one for centuries implied that the author of the epistles to Timothy and Titus was anyone but Paul. No alternatives were ever presented. Not one. [This is being stated ironically: The fact that no one presented an alternative does not validate Paul as the author].
In fact, there are good reasons to doubt Paul wrote I and II Timothy. For one thing, the letters assume a church hierarchy that was not in place at the time Paul lived and wrote. That's why Corinthians is written to the Corinthians, as opposed to the bishop at Corinth.
We have a serious problem if Paul didn't write II Timothy, though. Because then we have no idea who wrote it. We only know one thing about this person: He's a liar. He's pretending to be Paul writing to Timothy, knowing full well he is not.
And this is the only book of the Bible that says scripture is "God-breathed."
What are the implications of that?
We take the very concept of "God-breathed" scripture from a forgery.
Without it, you have some concepts that come close, but nothing that outright says scripture has this quality.
P.S. The same motive -- artifically bolstering credibility -- that led a forger to claim he was really Paul, knowing he wasn't, could easily lead someone who wasn't traveling WITH Paul to claim that he was. How would we know? Easy: Compare what that person says happened to what Paul says happened. If they don't agree, you have very valid reasons to doubt the pretender. The writer of Luke, whoever he was, pretends to be a companion of Paul, but disagrees with Paul about Paul's own biography. Now, what was his source for Paul's life, if not Paul himself?
Paul is pretty clear about what happened after Jesus knocked him off his horse:
Go ahead. Now read Acts 9. I'll wait.
Back already? Note how quickly Paul's "I did not go to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was" gets translated by his faithful and accurate companion Luke to "I went to Jerusalem and met with the apostles there."
They can't both be right.
Paul DID have a companion named Luke. Whether he was a physician or a Gentile is in question: that comes from another FORGED letter, Colossians. Maybe Luke was a Gentile physician and maybe he wasn't. Not really much way of knowing, but I wouldn't bank on it from a letter written by someone claiming to be someone he isn't.
Nonetheless, if Acts were written by someone who knew Paul, then we have a big problem. Because that person would have known the letter to Galatians. Thus, when he writes that Paul went to Jerusalem and met with the apostles, plural, he knows full well that he is calling Paul a liar.
If "Luke" is right, Paul IS a liar. If "Luke" is wrong, then "Luke" is a liar. Or at least unreliable.
One thing he's not, by even the most lenient standard, is God-breathed.
This is not metaphor. This is not symbolism. This is one Bible writer flat-out calling the other a liar.
The writer of Luke pretends to be a companion of Paul for a few select passages, but a real companion of Paul would not call Paul a liar about what happened after his conversion. Just like someone who really interviewed Mary would not have botched the Nativity story. Just like someone who interviewed eyewitnesses would not, ahem, borrow so heavily from someone who did not.
Writing in the year 150 or so, Justin Martyr quoted the gospels numerous times. He never called them by name. Just "The Memoirs of the Apostles."
Luke was not an apostle.
Justin Martyr did not know who wrote the gospels. Nor did he appear to care very much.
It wasn't until 20 years later that Iraneus (spell check, please) is the first person we know of to give the gospels their current names. And why? To argue against heresies. THAT is a motive to reinforce the legitimacy of the gospels by attaching them to real people.
Why Matthew and Mark? Because Papias hinted that gospels written by Matthew and Mark should exist, though the descriptions he gives don't match the gospels we have.
Why Luke and John? Because the writer of Luke pretended to be a companion of Paul, and Luke was the best match. Why John? Because John was mistakenly believed to be the Beloved Disciple AND the author of the gospel. Careful reading should have shown that the Beloved Disciple is explicitly NOT the author of John, but oh well.
No other names have been attached to the gospels, but that absolutely positively does not prove they were written by the people they are attributed to. The evidence is SQUARELY against those attributions.
So if Matthew didn't write Matthew, Mark didn't write Mark, Luke didn't write Luke and John didn't write John, does that mean it's not God-breathed?
To me, that question is secondary. How can ANYTHING be "God-breathed" if the concept of "God-breathed" itself comes from a fraud (a writer pretending to be Paul who knew full well he was not)?
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