What does the “Bible alone” mean?

[David1701]

13 hours ago, Deadworm said:

See the link below, for a good summary of the reasons for the OT and NT canons being as they are (66 books).

David: "You are ducking my point: no source prior to the Reformation identifies our 66 books as the biblical canon."

David: "Many godly scholars believe that Paul was paraphrasing Is. 64:4 (in 1 Cor. 2:9), not quoting the so-called "Apocalypse of Elijah". 

That ploy is a desperate attempt to identify the quote from the closest OT parallel.  But no text of Isaiah 66:4 matches the wording of Paul's citation.  Indeed, Origin actually has a copy of the Apocalypse before him and he can identify it as the source of Paul's quotation of Scripture.

At any rate, it is impossible to prove that he quoted the A of E, especially since it is often dated to well after Paul had died!

You can provide no evidence for such a post-Pauline dating.  As usual, you are grasping at straws.

David: "The only two denominations that accept the Book of Enoch as inspired are the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Church; since the body of Christ are the custodians of the canon of Scripture, this is not exactly a ringing endorsement.

As usual, you duck the obvious allusions to both 1 Enoch and the Apocalypse of Moses in Jude, Jesus' own brother.

Okay, Deadworm, to show that you are not employing double standards, where is YOUR proof that the Apocalypse of Elijah was written before Paul died?  If it was written later on, then it could have been quoting Paul!

Where is your proof that the Book of Enoch is inspired (remember that Paul quoted a secular poet, so being quoted by an NT author does not constitute proof that the source quoted is inspired)?

I did not duck your point about the 66 books, but linked to a reputable article, showing the overwhelming evidence that we have the correct books in the canon of 66.

[Deadworm]

5 hours ago, David1701 said:

David: "Okay, Deadworm, to show that you are not employing double standards, where is YOUR proof that the Apocalypse of Elijah was written before Paul died?  If it was written later on, then it could have been quoting Paul!

 Emil Schürer writes: "The prophet Elijah has this in common with Enoch, that like him he was taken up to heaven without dying. Consequently in the legends of the saints he is often associated with Enoch, and like this latter could not fail to be regarded as a peculiarly suitable medium through which to communicate heavenly revelations. A writing bearing his [Elijah's] name is mentioned in the Apostolic Constitutions vi. 16, and in the patristic quotations simply as an Apocryphum. According to the more exact titles given in the lists of the Apocrypha (Ηλια προφητου in Nicephorus, Ηλιου αποκαλυψις in the anonymous list) and in Jerome, this book was a somewhat short apocalyptic work consisting, according to the Stichometry of Nicephorus, of 316 verses. It is often mentioned by Origen and subsequent ecclesiastical writers as being the source of a quotation made by Paul, and which cannot be traced to any part of the Old Testament (1 Cor. ii. 9: καθως γεγραπται: α οφθαλμος ουκ ειδεν και ους ουκ ηκουσεν και επι καρδιαν ανθρωπου ουκ ανεβη κ.τ.λ.)."

A primary way ancient books are dated is by how early they are quoted.  Paul quotes the Apocalypse of Elijah according to multiple early Christian souces with access to this book.  So you bear the burden of proof to show that Paul did not quote it1

David: "Where is your proof that the Book of Enoch is inspired?"

You are putting words in my mouth!  The point is that Jude must have thought it was inspired because he relies on it for details about supernatural events.

David: "I did not duck your point about the 66 books, but linked to a reputable article, showing the overwhelming evidence that we have the correct books in the canon of 66."

Again an evasion!  Give me a single example of a list of our 66 canonical books before the Reformation!

 

[David1701]

17 hours ago, Deadworm said:

David: "Okay, Deadworm, to show that you are not employing double standards, where is YOUR proof that the Apocalypse of Elijah was written before Paul died?  If it was written later on, then it could have been quoting Paul!

 Emil Schürer writes: "The prophet Elijah has this in common with Enoch, that like him he was taken up to heaven without dying. Consequently in the legends of the saints he is often associated with Enoch, and like this latter could not fail to be regarded as a peculiarly suitable medium through which to communicate heavenly revelations. A writing bearing his [Elijah's] name is mentioned in the Apostolic Constitutions vi. 16, and in the patristic quotations simply as an Apocryphum. According to the more exact titles given in the lists of the Apocrypha (Ηλια προφητου in Nicephorus, Ηλιου αποκαλυψις in the anonymous list) and in Jerome, this book was a somewhat short apocalyptic work consisting, according to the Stichometry of Nicephorus, of 316 verses. It is often mentioned by Origen and subsequent ecclesiastical writers as being the source of a quotation made by Paul, and which cannot be traced to any part of the Old Testament (1 Cor. ii. 9: καθως γεγραπται: α οφθαλμος ουκ ειδεν και ους ουκ ηκουσεν και επι καρδιαν ανθρωπου ουκ ανεβη κ.τ.λ.)."

A primary way ancient books are dated is by how early they are quoted.  Paul quotes the Apocalypse of Elijah according to multiple early Christian souces with access to this book.  So you bear the burden of proof to show that Paul did not quote it1

David: "Where is your proof that the Book of Enoch is inspired?"

You are putting words in my mouth!  The point is that Jude must have thought it was inspired because he relies on it for details about supernatural events.

David: "I did not duck your point about the 66 books, but linked to a reputable article, showing the overwhelming evidence that we have the correct books in the canon of 66."

Again an evasion!  Give me a single example of a list of our 66 canonical books before the Reformation!

Your quote mentions Jerome, but does not mention that he rejected the book you claim should be canonical.

Origen was a heretic, whose testimony is worthless.

This is getting worse!  Now you are claiming that Jude could have made a mistake, when he wrote his book (i.e. it was not inspired).

The NT canon was agreed by the 5th C. A.D. (27 books).  The OT canon, being a Jewish book, is in agreement with the Hebrew canon (39 books, in the West; 24 books, in the Hebrew Bible, because they count several books as one that are counted separately in the West).  The Hebrews agreed on the canon before NT times.

The Septuagint contains, apart from the inspired books, several highly dubious books, some of which are self-condemned

Edited August 14, 2020 by David1701

[Deadworm]

2 minutes ago, David1701 said:

David: "Origen was a heretic, whose testimony is worthless."

No modern scholar agrees with you that his testimony is worthless.  He is a leader in the Alexandrian school, the first school to develop Systematic Theology.

Duh, his theological idiosyncracies are irrelevant to the books in his library1  Paul's citation of the Apocalypse of Elijah is corrorated by other church fathers.  At Harvard it was suggested that someone do a dissertation on why Jeome is almost always wrong about ancient Christian literature!  his doctrine of the preexistence of souls is biblical solid and is well grounded in Judaism.

David: "The Hebrews agreed on the canon before NT times."

No. the OT canon was open-ended, as Paul and Jesus' brother Jude demonstrate.  You can't put too much weight on Josephus. So again, where is your pre-Reformation list of 66 canonical books?

David: "The Septuagint contains, apart from the inspired books, several highly dubious books, some of which are self-condemned"

You are actually claiming that these books confess that they need to be condemned?!  You apparently don't realize the role of the Apocrypha in shaping Jesus' teaching.

 

[David1701]

12 minutes ago, Deadworm said:

David: "Origen was a heretic, whose testimony is worthless."

No modern scholar agrees with you that his testimony is worthless.  He is a leader in the Alexandrian school, the first school to develop Systematic Theology.

Duh, his theological idiosyncracies are irrelevant to the books in his library1  Paul's citation of the Apocalypse of Elijah is corrorated by other church fathers.  At Harvard it was suggested that someone do a dissertation on why Jeome is almost always wrong about ancient Christian literature!  his doctrine of the preexistence of souls is biblical solid and is well grounded in Judaism.

David: "The Hebrews agreed on the canon before NT times."

No. the OT canon was open-ended, as Paul and Jesus' brother Jude demonstrate.  You can't put too much weight on Josephus. So again, where is your pre-Reformation list of 66 canonical books?

David: "The Septuagint contains, apart from the inspired books, several highly dubious books, some of which are self-condemned"

You are actually claiming that these books confess that they need to be condemned?!  You apparently don't realize the role of the Apocrypha in shaping Jesus' teaching.

Please learn to use the quote function!  It's annoying continually to have to re-format your post, in order to reply to it properly.

You mean that some ECFs were of the opinion that Paul quoted the A of E; but this presupposes that the A of E was written first and that remains to be established.

 

Quote

David: "The Septuagint contains, apart from the inspired books, several highly dubious books, some of which are self-condemned"

You are actually claiming that these books confess that they need to be condemned?! 

Who am I dealing with here? If you say something that condemns you, you are self-condemned.  If you say that you should be condemned - that would not be described as "self-condemned".

Edited August 14, 2020 by David1701

[David1701]

5 hours ago, Nobody said:

I would like to raise the bar a little higher still. Why do you believe that any/all of the 66 books of your Bible is/are inspired?

They are consistent, over centuries and between many different authors, even in different languages.  They predict events that happened hundreds of years later, with precision.  The Holy Spirit within witnesses to their truth (only a born again Christian would know what I'm talking about).

This is off-the-cuff.

[Justin Adams]

The PERFECT Holy Spirit has always used IMPERFECT people.

[enoob57]

On 8/12/2020 at 1:31 PM, Justin Adams said:

The LXX, or Septuagint was the apostles' bible that they mostly used along with some targums and hebrew texts plus books we are either disallowed or do not have available. That is WHERE the apostles compiled their doctrines from.

But little of the original doctrines survive today due to our plethora of church institutions and seminaries.

There is weight in the letters themselves that the church and the writers realized Scripture was being written and circulated as God's Word ....
https://www.gotquestions.org/NT-authors-inspired.html

[David1701]

57 minutes ago, Nobody said:

You mean they are historically reliable? OK, but that is not the same as inspired.

More than merely historically reliable, although they are that.  They predict events, with great accuracy (e.g. the rise and fall of kingdoms and the cross), hundreds of years before they happened.  This requires them to be inspired.

Quote

If I am not mistaken, there were quite a few more books floating around in the early days. Some of those the early Christians considered as inspired as well but they were rejected by the Early Church Fathers when they decided on the canon of the Bible. And vice versa, for example John's Revelation was at first generally rejected as fake, but was later on declared inspired and included in the Bible. Surely that cannot all be attributed solely to the factors you mentioned? 

There was a certain amount of debate about some books; but the NT canon was more or less settled, by the end of the fourth century A.D..

Quote

Do you know which criteria the Early Church used to decide which books to declare inspired and which ones to reject?

In a sense, this question misses the mark.  Here's a quote, to show what I mean.

"One thing must be emphatically stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognizing their innate worth and generally apostolic authority, direct or indirect. The first ecclesiastical councils to classify the canonical books were both held in North Africa-at Hippo Regius in 393 and at Carthage in 397-but what these councils did was not to impose something new upon the Christian communities but to codify what was already the general practice of these communities (F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1960, p. 27)."

Here is a link to a useful article.

https://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/canon.cfm

[Markesmith]

On 8/12/2020 at 12:56 PM, missmuffet said:

Bible means "book". It is the Holy Word of God.

2 Timothy 3:16

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work

Yes but where does the Bible say what is and what is not the Bible? Only thru apostolic succession do we have a Bible cannon! And the church (the apostles) came before the Bible (New Testament) and wrote the Bible! 
what is the pillar and ground (foundation) of truth!

the church!

1 Timothy 3:15

But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.