Thanks for the compliments. People here sure are nice.

Clyde

The canon of the Tanakh for Jews (and thus the OT canon for Protestants) was establish finally at the Council of Jamnia, which met in the decades after the destruction of the 2nd Temple in aD 70. That destruction marked the shift in Judaism from a cultic religion to a scriptural one. It is relevant to our discussion of the early Fathers because it is contemporary with them.

The rabbis at the Council decided the canon following three rules:

1. A book of the canon had to come from prophecy, at least prophecy as the Rabbi’s understood it.

2. A book had to be written before 167 BC, the year Antiochus IV Epiphanes desecrated the Temple, and thus when, for Jews, prophecy stopped. (Thus the appearance of the Baptist, dressed as Elijah, was considered remarkable.)

3. A book had to be written in Hebrew, and available to the Rabbis in a Hebrew text. Thus the entire LXX was rejected by the Rabbis as authoritative, and those books in the LXX that had no Hebrew equivalent became the so-call “Apocrypha”. (Those books of the “Apocrypha” that are in the Catholic Bible are called “Deuterocanonical”.) It should be added that some of these books that the rabbi’s tossed out have now been found in Hebrew. With the decision of the Council, Hebrew became the language for Jews even in the Diaspora.

NONE of these three principles are Christian principles for the canon. Why the reformers chose the Jamina canon, or questions about the Reformation in general, Dr. Fleming has asked us to avoid.

The council also issued the notorious Birkat ha-Minim, a curse upon Christians and other perceived heretics, that was included in the synagogue service. With this curse, it became impossible for Jewish Christians to be both Jewish and Christian. Thus there was a final break between the two religions. And thus the early church Fathers no longer needed to appeal to Jews, unlike Paul in Romans chaps 9-11, written c. a.D. 53-55 . Luke makes a veiled reference to the Birkat (“you will be expelled from the synagogues”) suggesting his composition is contemporary with the Birkat. The final redaction of John’s gospel might reflect the post aD 70 Jewish-Christian break. Given Ignatius’ location, the Birkat would likely be known to him. I wonder if the effects of the Birkat among Christians is reflected in the Letter to the Magnesians 8,1; 10,3; 11; and to the Philadelphians, 8,2.

By the way, the Birkat remained part of the synagogue service until the Medieval period, when Christians forced Jews to eliminate it. Then with Innocent III’s Constitution Licet perfidia Judaeorum, D772-773, the “Magna Charta of toleration for Jews”, Jewish Christian relations improved. May they continue to do so.

I thank PcH and Dr. Wolf. I’ve learned something from them.

It is certainly true that Augustine criticized Jerome for daring to go outside of the LXX for the Old Testament. Later, in City of God, however, after Jerome's work had been circulated, Augustine's views are more nuanced, as evidenced in Book XVIII, Chapter 43 and following. "Our times, however, have enjoyed the advantage of the presbyter Jerome, a man most learned, and skilled in all three languages, who translated these same Scriptures into the Latin speech, not from the Greek, but from the Hebrew."

Now clearly, Augustine still prefers the Septuagint, but now he finds that BOTH traditions have authority:

"[I]f anything is in the Hebrew copies and is not in the version of the Seventy, the Spirit of God did not choose to say it through them, but only through the prophets. But whatever is in the Septuagint and not in the Hebrew copies, the same Spirit chose rather to say through the latter, thus showing that both were prophets. For in that manner He spoke as He chose, some things through Isaiah, some through Jeremiah, some through several prophets, or else the same thing through this prophet and through that. Further, whatever is found in both editions, that one and the same Spirit willed to say through both . . ."

I'm tryin' . . .

The elimination of these texts during the Reformation would seem to be an error arising from the Judaizing tendencies of some, though by no means all the Reformers.

It would seem so, at least to some Roman Catholics who have preconceived ideologies ("Judaizing tendencies") about the theological clarifications of "the Reformation." We can say that these were the "tendencies of some, though by no means all the Reformers," but I'm not sure what that means practically, in this context. After all, Luther held that the books called Apocrypha by Jerome are "not regarded equal to Holy Scripture and yet useful and good to read." In this context, that would damn Luther as one of those with "Judaizing tendencies," so I'm not sure who would be left on the "by no means all" list. (More on this in a minute.)

We aren't really talking about anyone's hatred or rejection of the LXX text of the undisputed books of the Old Testament Canon. After all, the Vulgate that was itself canonized at Trent comprised Jerome's translation from Hebrew (save for the Psalms and the Apocrypha). What we seem to be criticizing is the exclusion from the canon of those books called Apocrypha, which is seen as a natural result of preferring Hebrew to every word of whatever LXX tradition was in hand at the time of the Reformation.

It is said that to give any lesser regard to the books called Apocrypha is somehow to disrespect the authority of the apostles who cited them (a handful of times). This argument does not hold water. St. Jude (14-16) quotes not the Apocrypha but what both Rome and Protestants recognize as pseudepigrapha. (See Enoch 1:9.) In fact, St. Jude's citation is virtually word for word, whereas the other few "citations" of the Apocrypha seem more like allusions. In no case in which the Apocrypha is referenced does the NT writer lend the authority of "it is written."

Some suggest that Protestants feel compelled to reject the Apocrypha because they fear the text of 2 Maccabees, which supposedly supports Purgatory. Second Maccabees tells of Judas and his men burying the pagans they had slaughtered, under whose robes were found idols. This does not jibe with any Roman understanding of purgatory. Nor do I think that any Roman Catholic would have such Judaizing tendencies as to endorse everything the Judas "The Hammer" did, simply because it is recorded.

It is said that the books called Apocrypha should not be excluded because they point the way to Christ. Probably not Bel and the Dragon. But certainly, this is true of Sirach/Wisdom/Ecclesiasticus. Most of the allusions or citations of "the Apocrypha" in the NT are from Wisdom, which is also treasured by the Fathers. Lutherans love Wisdom—it is oft cited by our Confessors and by our theologians, including the great Gerhard. So great do we love Sirach that even one of our most popularly recognized (see Garrison Keillor) Lutheran hymns, "Now Thank We All Our God," is based on Sirach 50:22-24! The Lutheran Confessions do not, in fact, say anything about the canonicity of the "Apocrypha."

How can we love something that we do not regard as on the same level as the "undisputed" Old Testament? We could ask Jerome, Origen, and Eusebius.

Or (hat tip to Fr. Weedon) we could ask St. Gregory of Nazianzus, who wrote (On God and Man) concerning books outside of the "Protestant/Jewish canon": "If there is anything else besides these, it is not among the genuine."

Or Athanasius, who wrote of the canon he lists in Festal Letter 39: "These are fountains of salvation, that they who thirst may be satisfied with the living words they contain. In these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. Let no man add to these, neither let him take ought from these." What books did he list? Those of the "Jewish" canon.

Athanasius goes on: "[T]here are other books besides these not indeed included in the Canon, but appointed by the Fathers to be read by those who newly join us, and who wish for instruction in the word of godliness. The Wisdom of Solomon, and the Wisdom of Sirach, and Esther, and Judith, and Tobit, and that which is called the Teaching of the Apostles, and the Shepherd. But the former, my brethren, are included in the Canon, the latter being [merely] read . . . "

That is, in a nutshell, what Luther said about them, and that is why he included them in his German translation of the Bible. The KJV had them as well. In fact, all "Protestant" Bibles had them until the 1820's. Thus, they were not "eliminated by the Reformation," but simply regarded in the same way that many others of good repute regarded them.

From its origins, the Catholic Church had adopted Holy Writ as the Inspired Word of God. It began by accepting the traditional Hebrew Books because Our Lord had appealed to their authority and had sanctioned it, because they led up to His Incarnation and Messianic Mission, because the first witnesses to His Miracles, His Resurrection and His own claim to the Godhead were steeped in, and appealed to, those Books; but above all because She, the Church, who knew herself to be the divinely appointed judge of Truth, recognized the sanctity of this scriptural inheritance and confirmed it.

The decision of the Church to stand by the Jewish Scriptures was not maintained without difficulty. The documents were alien to that glorious civilization of the Mediterranean which the Church penetrated and transformed. Their diction was, in its ears, uncouth and irrational. The deeds they recounted (with approval) sounded barbaric and often absurd: taken as moral examples, some were found repulsive, others puerile: and the whole was of another and (to Greek and Roman) lesser and more degraded world. We have remaining echoes of the reaction against them including the fury of those heretics who ascribed them to the Devil; and even after they had been flooding Christian study for nearly four hundred years you may find such an ardent follower of them as St. Augustine confessing that they had disgusted his cultivated taste and that their alien style had presented for him an abject contrast to the noble tradition of classical letters.

But the Church firmly maintained their supernatural value and revered them as Divine Oracles bearing testimony to Her Founder. She did not indeed accept them of themselves. Of themselves they would not have concerned her. As law they were superseded. But they introduced and pointed to the Divine Event whence She sprang, and as such were sanctified.

The Church added to the Canon further books which were of greater moment, for these were not adumbrations and forerunners but records of the essential doctrines whereon She was founded. The precepts of Our Lord Himself as collected by His companions and their immediate associates, the chief events of His Mission, His Passion, His Rising from the Dead, the inward meaning of all this as He revealed it to the Apostolic group whom He had chosen (and in particular to St. John) these formed the Gospels of the Church: Her new and good tidings for men. These stood unique and on a different plane from aught else in the collection. To them were added the letters and exhortations written by the first propagators of the Faith and their successors, as also apocalyptic and symbolic treatises.

The process of deciding what among the books read in the Churches should be admitted as inspired was long. There was a sifting of the older Hebrew books, which left some of them outside the Canon; of the newer Christian books, which excluded some of these also (as the Epistles of Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas). By the fourth and fifth centuries the thing was fixed. Its original Greek version in the East, its Latin translation in the West, had reached final form and Europe was henceforward in possession of the Holy Bible preserved and imposed by the Authority of the Catholic Church.

The living voice of the Church must obviously be the organ of doctrine, and tradition its main support. But the Church also persistently maintained the parallel authority of Scripture. Doctrine was confirmed by quotation from it and a ceaseless appeal was made throughout the centuries to the written text of the Canon. Though no Bible had existed, the Church would have sufficed to give her own witness to truth: but to the Bible, Her book, She perpetually referred. Thus the Primacy of Peter was amply founded in an unbroken acceptance of the doctrine: but She emphasized the Petrine texts and has engraved them on Her central shrine at Rome. The dogma of the Eucharist is Hers to affirm and define: but She also sends Her adherents, as well as Her opponents, to excerpts from the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper."

Now understanding this let us can we please go back to the text of the Early fathers and the Christian Tradition in the broadest sense of that "Thing."

And I look forward to Dr. Fleming's remarks on Ignatius' Letter to the Romans, at the beginning, stating Rome holds the presidency "in the place of the countryof the Romans", en topo chorion Romaion. Does it mean a presidency that is held only in the country of the Romans and no place else? Or does it mean Rome holds the presidency everywhere and just happens to be located in the country of the Romans?

I thank PcH for his contributions, however we might disagree on the matter of the LXX as translation.

If it is true that Qumran used a variety of differing texts for the Tanakh, then it would seem possible also for the translators for the LXX. The LXX itself has many versions and variations, as the Goettingen critical text shows. It too has to be pieced together by text critical scholars, whose work is often "best guess".

And it most probable that the first Christians, Our Lord and the Twelve, used the Targum for the Tanakh, not the LXX.

As for the NT texts being 97% identical, here one throws up one's hands. Even a cursory glance at the Aland proves otherwise. We have in fact two versions of Luke. Romans has all kinds of textual problems. II Corinthians might be more than one letter. The first chapter of the Gospel of John is a text-critical nightmare, and various denominations and sects have used various Mss for their theological struggles.

More importantly,for cultic/liturgical religions (Temple Israel, early Christianity, Catholic Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, etc), Scripture serves the cultus, not vice versa. The Bible's home is the Mass and the Divine Office. It is Islam, Protestantism, and post A.D. 70 Rabbinical Judaism where the text and its study assumes the supreme, if not sole, position. So I really don't worry about Scripture, and leave it to text-critical scholars to put together the best text.

"Dr. Robert Dick Wilson has pointed out that there are about 284,000,000 letters in the manuscripts considered by Kennicott and that among these manuscripts there are about 900,000 variants, approximately 750,000 of which are the quite trivial variation of w and y. 4 There is, Dr. Wilson remarks, only about one variant for 316 letters and apart from the insignificant w and y variation only about one variant for 1580 letters. The variants for the most part are supported by only one or by only a few of the manuscripts. Dr. Wilson has elsewhere said that there are hardly any variant readings in these manuscripts with the support of more than one out of the 200 to 400 manuscripts in which each book is found, except in the full and defective writing of the vowels, a matter which has no bearing on either the pronunciation or the meaning of the text.

His last point is not, perhaps, unchallengeable if we look backwards into the prehistory of the text, since we cannot know if in every instance the scribes who inserted the vowel signs were correct. The relationship with the Septuagint text remains a matter of controversy, and while many or most scholars think the LXX text has errors which derive from the lack of vowels in their Hebrew texts, others have drawn different conclusions. But, the larger issue and far more important is the inclusion in the LXX of texts that seem to point the way to Christ. The elimination of these texts during the Reformation would seem to be an error arising from the Judaizing tendencies of some, though by no means all the Reformers. This is question for Aaron Wolf.