New Testament Canon

[Nathan_Jr]

In the Absent Christ thread, Mike said he believed the New Testament cannon was assembled by Mark, Luke, John and Paul. He and Walter C. collaborated on this idea in the mid-70s. It sounds like Mike is relying on some passages in II Timothy to support his hypothesis.

This thread is established (once) to explore this proposition and to mitigate potential derailment of the Absent Christ thread.

Thanks, Mike, for indulging my curiosity. Please continue our discussion here.

[Nathan_Jr]

 

[Nathan_Jr]

 

[Nathan_Jr]

 

[T-Bone]

Cool thread Nathan_Jr !

I'll check back later - busy on some other things now

~ ~ ~ ~

leaving some links for talking points:

Wikipedia: dating the Bible

Wikipedia: Biblical canon

The Gospel Coalition - the biblical canon

Got Questions Org: How and when was the canon of the Bible put together?

Got Questions Org: what is the canon of Scripture?

Edited October 10, 2022 by T-Bone
adding talking points

[Nathan_Jr]

6 minutes ago, T-Bone said:

Cool thread Nathan_Jr !

I check back later - busy on some other things now

leaving some links for talking points:

Wikipedia: dating the Bible

Wikipedia: Biblical canon

The Gospel Coalition - the biblical canon

Thanks, T-Bone.

[Nathan_Jr]

12 minutes ago, Mike said:

I had written prior to that:
The best I understand it the NT canon was assembled by Paul, Mark, Luke, and John. God gave them revelation for it.  Their canon was not recognized for a long time, but God kept giving revelations to whomever He could to preserve and pass on that canon.  *He had his hand on the process all along.I only saw one statement bold fonted by you there.  Was it in conflict with the statements above it?

*/*/*/*/*

My statement "He had his hand on the process all along." was referring to God, not Paul, if that helps.

I see God's gentle had guiding the process for centuries with small revelations to those who had inherited the copies Timothy had.

Oops !!!  I forgot to include Timothy in that list: Paul, Mark, Luke, John, and Timothy.  There could have been others like Matthew, but the scriptures I found pointed directly to these.

*/*/*/*

Yes, I knew Paul died then, but he coordinated it up until his death, and then Timothy, Mark, and Luke had the ball to run with, according to 2 Timothy.

I disagree with your statement:
"Matthew and Luke are sourced from the information in Matthew."
Did you mean to write? :
"Mark and Luke are sourced from the information in Matthew."

According to my careful prosthesis,  Mark and Luke were given revelation to steal the copyrighted material from Matthew, and then pick and choose what God wanted to be put in their Gospels.

Now any student of the Firesign Theatre KNOWS that I am joking in that one sentence. But on the serious side, I believe Mark and Luke put in writing whatever God told them to write, and if some of it was from Matthew, that was God's revelation to them. Much like today, and that is not a joke.  Luke says he got it from above.  We were taught to stand in awe that none of Paul's Secret Gospel appears in the 4 Gospels, even though they knew Paul well, because that writing was given to Paul.

*/*/*/*

The revelation it took to get these 1st Century massive written messages in order was an INTERVENTION by God IMO.  

In the centuries following Paul and John finishing the NT canon, THAT is where I see God's gentle had guiding the process for centuries with small revelations to those who had inherited the copies Timothy and John and the others had assembled.  This took about 3 or 4 hundred years to finish.  Then God had to wait a long time to get Martin Luther to see Romans 10:9 and the like, and then drop everything for it, in spite of facing stiff persecution.

God probably got some revelations to various translators over the centuries, but finally found a tough daredevil in VPW to "put it all together" with massive revelation as to where to search, what to filter out, what to bring in, and what few things he needed to hear directly from God. This process lasted 42.5 years, and it was not all done by VPW.  God inspired lots of people to work with him. Plus, God inspired lots of people to come to HQ and teach.

So I see, after the 1st Century, God's gentle hand giving revelations to many people for good handling of the surviving scriptures. God's only direct Intervention that I see was the 1942 promise to fix things, bigtime. We see God fixing damaged scriptures in Jer. 36, and elsewhere.

 

 

So, you believe in a Matthaean priority?

[OldSkool]

Alright - quick question. Are we limiting the thread to NT only? Or do we want to include OT as well? Are we covering books that were left out such as the Apocryphia, book of Jasher, etc? Or sticking to the NT? I find it hard to discuss this topic without getting into the underlying Greek texts as well. 

Im including a quote from wikipedia (I get that wiki isn't the most reliable source due to the fact that anyone can edit but it serves it's purpose here to define our terms) Or do we just wanna go at it from the things Mike is working on and referenced in the Absent Christ thread?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon

Quote

A biblical canon is a set of texts (also called "books") which a particular Jewish or Christian religious community regards as part of the Bible.

The English word canon comes from the Greek κανών kanōn, meaning "rule" or "measuring stick". The use of the word "canon" to refer to a set of religious scriptures was first used by David Ruhnken, in the 18th century.^[1]

Various biblical canons have developed through debate and agreement on the part of the religious authorities of their respective faiths and denominations. Some books, such as the Jewish–Christian gospels, have been excluded from various canons altogether, but many disputed books are considered to be biblical apocrypha or deuterocanonical by many, while some denominations may consider them fully canonical. Differences exist between the Hebrew Bible and Christian biblical canons, although the majority of manuscripts are shared in common.

Different religious groups include different books in their biblical canons, in varying orders, and sometimes divide or combine books. The Jewish Tanakh (sometimes called the Hebrew Bible) contains 24 books divided into three parts: the five books of the Torah ("teaching"); the eight books of the Nevi'im ("prophets"); and the eleven books of Ketuvim ("writings"). It is composed mainly in Biblical Hebrew. The Septuagint (in Koine Greek), which closely resembles the Hebrew Bible but includes additional texts, is used as the Christian Greek Old Testament, at least in some liturgical contexts. The first part of Christian Bibles is the Old Testament, which contains, at minimum, the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible but divided into 39 (Protestant) or 46 (Catholic) books and ordered differently. The second part is the New Testament, containing 27 books: the four canonical gospels, Acts of the Apostles, 21 Epistles or letters and the Book of Revelation. The Catholic Church and Eastern Christian churches hold that certain deuterocanonical books and passages are part of the Old Testament canon. The Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian Christian churches may have differences in their lists of accepted books.

 

Edited October 10, 2022 by OldSkool

[Nathan_Jr]

5 minutes ago, OldSkool said:

Alright - quick question. Are we limiting the thread to NT only? Or do we want to include OT as well? Are we covering books that were left out such as the Apocryphia, book of Jasher, etc? Or sticking to the NT? I find it hard to discuss this topic without getting into the underlying Greek texts as well. 

Im including a quote from wikipedia (I get that wiki isn't the most reliable source due to the fact that anyone can edit but it serves it's purpose here to define our terms) Or do we just wanna go at it from the things Mike is working on and referenced in the Absent Christ thread?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon

 

Fair questions, OS. I'm open to including the Old Testament as part of this discussion. And, yes, a discussion on the canon that excludes the apocrypha is no discussion at all.

I'd really like to get this started with addressing Mike's (and Walter's?) hypothesis that Mark, Luke, John and Paul assembled the cannon, or the proto-canon, and that evidence can be found in the pseudepigrapha of II Timothy and II Peter.

FYI, some Wikipedia articles can be very, very good - encyclopedic, even.

[OldSkool]

4 minutes ago, Nathan_Jr said:

Fair questions, OS. I'm open to including the Old Testament as part of this discussion. And, yes, a discussion on the canon that excludes the apocrypha is no discussion at all.

I'd really like to get this started with addressing Mike's (and Walter's?) hypothesis that Mark, Luke, John and Paul assembled the cannon, or the proto-canon, and that evidence can be found in the pseudepigrapha of II Timothy and II Peter.

FYI, some Wikipedia articles can be very, very good - encyclopedic, even.

Coolness. Well heading back to the first century, it's fair to say unless one was very wealthy then their Old Testamen access came from the Synagogues or perhaps even the temple in Jerusalem. So it's probably moot to get into OT in context of the first century. More in a few.

[Nathan_Jr]

7 minutes ago, OldSkool said:

Coolness. Well heading back to the first century, it's fair to say unless one was very wealthy then their Old Testamen access came from the Synagogues or perhaps even the temple in Jerusalem. So it's probably moot to get into OT in context of the first century. More in a few.

The context is the first several centuries. The assembly of the NT cannon didn't happen in the first century, nor did the assembly of  OT cannon. The topic by definition is not limited to the first century. Mike's evidence for the assemblage of the NT are scriptures written after the first century - II Timothy and II Peter.

Edited October 10, 2022 by Nathan_Jr
Snow

[OldSkool]

6 minutes ago, Nathan_Jr said:

The context is the first several centuries. The assembly of the NT cannon didn't happen in the first century, nor did the assembly of  OT cannon. The topic by definition is not limited to the first century. Mike's evidence for the assemblage of the NT are scriptures written after the first century - II Timothy and II Peter.

Yessir! The NT canon didn't come about until around 360 years after Jesus Christ, so that's about the fourth century.

[Nathan_Jr]

9 minutes ago, waysider said:

Here are the 2 statements you made that seem to conflict:

*God did not intervene to help make the KJV happen.

 *He had his hand on the process all along.

No. I meant to say that Matthew is sourced from Mark and Luke, Mark being the first written, along with another source which has since been lost.

Those two statements do, indeed, appear conflicted. Mike, care to address?

I knew what you meant concerning the Marcan priority, Waysider. It seems Mike subscribes to a Matthaean priority.

And thanks for bringing up the other lost source. Most scholars agree it's a collection of Jesus' sayings  - the Germans called it Q. The sayings shared by Matthew, Luke and Thomas point to Q.

[waysider]

2 minutes ago, Nathan_Jr said:

It seems Mike subscribes to a Matthaean priority

AKA The Griesbach Hypothesis.

[Nathan_Jr]

11 minutes ago, waysider said:

AKA The Griesbach Hypothesis.

The irony of the pronunciation: Griesbach sounds like Greasespot.

[Mike]

5 hours ago, Nathan_Jr said:

In the Absent Christ thread, Mike said he believed the New Testament cannon was assembled by Mark, Luke, John and Paul. He and Walter C. collaborated on this idea in the mid-70s. It sounds like Mike is relying on some passages in II Timothy to support his hypothesis.

This thread is established (once) to explore this proposition and to mitigate potential derailment of the Absent Christ thread.

Thanks, Mike, for indulging my curiosity. Please continue our discussion here.

 

First things first.
I had made a mistake in that post of mine you quoted.  I left out Timothy.  Please add him into that list with a "late edit" note at the end to make sure others see it first, and don't start reading this thread with and error dangling like that.  I also made some additional comments in that vein if you could gather them and add.  If you can't find them, I will. Let me know, because I am trying to "finish" on the absent Christ thread.

I did not understand what you asked me to do for this thread in the absent Christ thread, to paste something here. It made no sense when I clicked on what you left me. Below, on THIS thread is similar material that was initially confusing to me.  I am on my lunch break now, and must get back to work soon.

Maybe you can edit out, or down, some of the confusing stuff below for people coming in here with no notion of the discussion we had already on the absent Christ thread.

 

[Mike]

2 hours ago, OldSkool said:

Alright - quick question. Are we limiting the thread to NT only? Or do we want to include OT as well? Are we covering books that were left out such as the Apocryphia, book of Jasher, etc? Or sticking to the NT? I find it hard to discuss this topic without getting into the underlying Greek texts as well. 

 

My own work on the OT canon was very skimpy because I learned early that IF the OT scriptures were in the same disarray that the NT suffered, then John the Baptist would have had to correct the problems so that Jesus would have something solid.  But God had everything arraigned for the Nativity and including prophets and several people prophesying. I am confident that young Jesus had a perfect set of scriptures to learn from.

The OT had an impressive technology to protect it that resembles computer file transfer techniques of today and the way nuclear weapons are manufactured, called the Massorah, or the Fence.

The NT had no Massorah, and before the ink was dry, most of Paul's leaders had lost it, and there were persecutions happening by then by Nero.  Paul was shamed, being in prison, and Timothy was unrecognized by the reprobate church that it had become by the death of Paul. No one knows what happened to Timothy, as he is not in any historical records, just a skimpy line in RC tradition that he became the Bishop of Ephesus, with no verification.  

The OT had no such problems.  The people had been "bred" for this, to produce the Messiah and that seems to include preserving the scriptures for young Jesus to grow up with, and a cousin with a healthy dose of the spirit, and relatives who could get spirit upon enough to prophesy.

[oldiesman]

Was there ever a lengthy discussion on the canon of scripture?    I'd like to review that if someone can link it.  Thx.

[Mike]

6 hours ago, Nathan_Jr said:

 

In this post of OldSkool's I never understood fully what the other sentence was in the conflict. If he answered my question on it, I did not see it yet.

LATE EDIT:  It got straightened out.

Edited October 10, 2022 by Mike

[Mike]

3 hours ago, Nathan_Jr said:

So, you believe in a Matthaean priority?

No.  I was just trying to untangle a tiny typo from OldSkool there.

...AND crack a joke.

Edited October 10, 2022 by Mike

[Mike]

3 hours ago, waysider said:

AKA The Griesbach Hypothesis.

No, that was a misunderstanding.  I handled it somewhere.

[Nathan_Jr]

1 hour ago, Mike said:

No, that was a misunderstanding.  I handled it somewhere.

Real simple. We can handle it here and get it cleared. Do you believe Matthew was written first and was the source for Mark and Luke? That's Matthaean priority.

[Mike]

6 minutes ago, Nathan_Jr said:

Real simple. We can handle it here and get it cleared. Do you believe Matthew was written first and was the source for Mark and Luke? That's Matthaean priority.

I don't know anything about that. I had to look up what Matthaean meant.
It was never important to me exactly which came first.

[Nathan_Jr]

2 hours ago, oldiesman said:

Was there ever a lengthy discussion on the canon of scripture?    I'd like to review that if someone can link it.  Thx.

I don't know. I haven't searched for it. It probably could use an update like all old posts on four crucified.

Victor is on record deflecting and avoiding questions about the canon. See transcripts of Corps teachings, Advanced classes, and SNT/SNS.

Either he didn't understand the canon and was afraid of addressing it, or he DID understand it and was afraid of addressing it. Whatever his insecurity, he didn't know how (H-O-W) to handle it, so he ignored it hoping it would go away.

Since we have nothing on record from vic, Mike's perspective is probably close to whatever Vic's was. And Mike and Walter collaborated. So, for the record, this seems important. And fun. I'm hoping to learn from everyone.

[Nathan_Jr]

4 minutes ago, Mike said:

I don't know anything about that. I had to look up what Matthaean meant.
It was never important to me exactly which came first.

Ok. But I noticed you didn't include Matthew as one taking part in the early assembly of the canon. I think you only mentioned Mark, Luke, John and Paul. Is there a reason for omitting Matthew? Or was that just an oversight?