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Friday, April 13, 2007

Byzantine Jew-Haters R Us

ORTHODOX SAID:

“So what if we restrict our survey to only the literate christians?”

So what? This restriction means that an Orthodox (or Catholic) polemicist must radically scale back his original objection. His initial objection to Protestant theology or the Protestant rule of faith was that no pre-Reformation Christian ever read the Bible that way.

Of course, even on its own grounds, this is a tautology: no pre-Protestant Christian is a Protestant. Likewise, no pre-Darwinian biologist is a Darwinian; no ante-Nicene Father is an ante-Nicene Father.

But the force of the original objection lay in opposing a tiny Protestant minority to the vast majority of Orthodox (or Catholic) believers.

If, however, we offer the obvious and necessary qualification that to be a Bible-believer, you must either read the Bible or hear it in some intelligible translation, then that instantly changes the terms of the comparison.

We’re now comparing Protestant believers with another miniscule subset of historical Christendom: literate pre-Reformation Christians.

So the original objection, which was predicated on a huge numerical disproportion, suddenly loses its huge disproportionality. Instead, we’re merely comparing one subset of Christendom (Protestants) with another subset of Christendom (Orthodox literates).

“How come none of them were Protestants?”

Well, for one thing, it’s not as if they had a choice in the matter. Orthodoxy was the state religion. Dissent was persecuted. The emperor or monarch determined the faith of his royal subjects.

“Supposedly I guess, if only all those poor illiterate Christians could read they would have come to completely different conclusions to those who could read? Amazing.”

Is Orthodox trying to be obtuse? I have no opinion one way or the other. And I don’t have to have any opinion. The point is that we cannot poll the dead. We cannot retroactively ask what people would have believed had they been exposed to something they never knew.

This is not an argument for Evangelicalism. Rather, it undercuts an argument for Orthodoxy. Pity that Orthodox is unable to distinguish one form of argument from another—especially when I’m answering him on his own terms.

I never made consensus the rule of faith: he did. So the argument doesn’t cut both ways. It only undercuts his appeal.

“And what if we restrict our survey to only those who without any doubt were reading the scripture in the vernacular, how come none of them were Protestants?”

Another issues aside, that’s not an exegetical argument. That’s not a reason for believing that anything is true or false.

The question at issue is not the merely descriptive question of what people believe, but the normative question of why they believe. What reasons do they give? Are these good reasons for bad reasons?

Orthodox’s appeal is viciously regressive or circular. Why does Jimmy believe what he does? Because he believes what Jerry believed. Why did Jerry believe that? Because he believed what Johnny believed, and so on infinitum.

Even if you had a consensus to invoke, appeal to consensus only pushes the question back a step.

“And how come God set up a rule of faith (allegedly) that was bound to fail until everyone could become literate?”

This is a trick question because it begs the question of how a rule of faith is supposed to function.

“Apparently Christianity is a religion purely for the literate elites, the rest of you can just wallow in ignorance, never knowing where to find the truth?”

A straw man argument. Orthodox is trying to change the subject. The original argument was an appeal to historic Christian consensus on the meaning of Scripture.

All I’ve done is to make the common sense observation that the only men who are even potentially qualified to comment on the meaning of Scripture were men who actually knew the Bible.

Isn’t that crushingly self-evident? Why do I even need to point that out? Because Catholic and Orthodox critics of Evangelicalism have a remarkable capacity for ignoring the obvious.

Now, it’s quite possible for someone who is either illiterate or without a private copy of the Bible to acquire some intermediate knowledge of the Bible. He could learn about the Bible through good expository preaching. Or he could learn about the Bible through the public reading of the Scriptures in the vernacular.

That wouldn’t be as good as being able to study your own copies of the Scriptures, or reading the Bible in the original Greek and Hebrew. But it’s not equivalent to sheer ignorance.

At the same time, the fact that some Christians at some times and places heard the Bible read aloud in the vernacular doesn’t tell us anything about what it meant to them.

“Oh yes, and not just a literate elite, but a wealthy elite, since apparently you need a ‘private copy’ in order to do sufficient study to discover the truth, at a cost astronomical in the first 1500 or more years of the church.”

As usual, Orthodox is retailing his false dichotomies. There are degrees of knowledge.

But to say that what F. F. Bruce believed is false because it doesn’t match up with what a Russian Orthodox serf living in 1300 believed is absurd.

To discredit Evangelical theology by numerically opposing what modern Protestants believe with whatever illiterate Orthodox peasants believed is a silly comparison on the face of it.

“Oh yes, and nowdays everyone is literate with their own private copy, and yet there is no signs of protestants, even the most well read and educated, of coming to any kind of agreement. Actually the areas of disagreement just increase year by year with new theories coming day by day.”

This is how he defines a successful rule of faith: everyone agrees. Two problems:

i) Is that how the Bible defines its own function? To the contrary, the word of God was meant to be divisive. For example, this is a running theme in the Gospel of John. The preaching of Jesus has a polarizing effect on the Jews. Some Jews side with Jesus, while other Jews turn away (e.g. Jn 3:19-21; 6:60-71).

ii) Another, related function of Scripture is to harden certain listeners (e.g. Jer 7:16; 11:14; 18:11-12; Ezk 2:3-7; Isa 6:9-10; 63:17).

The Bible is not designed to make everyone agree. To the contrary, it was, in some measure, intended to have the opposite effect—a winnowing effect.

Orthodox has his manmade theory of what a rule of faith is supposed to accomplish—a theory which runs counter to the self-witness of Scripture.

iii) Even on his own grounds, the Orthodox rule of faith “fails.” Consider, for example, the schism involving the Old Believers, who repudiated the liturgical reforms of Patriarch Nikon.

“And then the complaint turns to the Russian church of a few hundred years ago??? What of the Russian church now, they are both literate and have access to the bible in vernacular, and yet the protestant churches there are floundering, a great many are leaving and returning to Orthodoxy.”

i) Once again, Orthodox is straining to change the subject. He needs another refresher course in the original argument. The argument went as follows: Evangelicalism is false because it offers a reading of Scripture which runs counter to how pre-Reformation Christians always understood the Bible.

Now, to make this comparison stick, it requires historically continuous access to intelligible editions of the Bible. The appeal to credal unity is predicated on historical continuity.

If, however, there are large gaps in time and place when the faithful did not have access to vernacular editions of Scripture, then historical discontinuity negates the appeal to historical continuity. A diachronic argument is only as good as the spatiotemporal links in the chain. Once you introduce a lot of missing links, the chain ceases to be a chain.

ii) In addition, Orthodox scholarship has been affected by Protestant scholarship. For example:

“A consensus exists among scholars that the 6C BC, and more especially the time and place of the Babylonian Exile, was the matrix from which the Hebrew Pentateuch and most of the prophetic books emerged in their final written form,” Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox Church, M. Prokurat et al. (Scarecrow Press 1996), 293.

Gee, where do you suppose that came from? 19C German higher criticism. So mainstream Orthodox scholarship has been influenced by liberal Lutheran scholarship.

“And then the claim is that bibles may not be accurate according to the Hebrew, and if the LXX isn't good enough it is a problem. What verse says that the Masoretic Hebrew is the canonical one?”

Once again, is he trying to be dense? Two issues:

i) The LXX is a translation. A translation of a Hebrew exemplar. A translation is only a good translation if it accurately renders the sense of the original exemplar.

ii) The fact that Protestants and Orthodox disagree is irrelevant unless they share a common referent.

Remember, the original argument was that if all the Christians in the past were reading the same Bible we are, yet they didn’t construe it the way we do, then that supposedly invalidates our (Protestant) interpretation of the Scriptures.

But what is the basis of comparison? Are we even reading the same Bible? If a church father is reading the LXX, while an Evangelical scholar is reading the MT, then they don’t share the same point of reference. So it’s not a case of divergent interpretations of the same text.

“We are told there is a big problem because of Lucianic versus Origen's version of the LXX.”

Yes, because the Orthodoxy traditionally appeal to the LXX as their canonical edition of the OT. But there were three different editions of the LXX in play in major centers of Orthodoxy. So which edition of the LXX is the canonical edition?

“What of differences between Masoretic and pre-Masoretic text types?”

Several problems:

i) Protestant Bible scholarship isn’t limited to the MT. A number of other witnesses feed into critical editions of the Hebrew canon (e.g. DDS, SP, Targumim, Peshitta, Vulgate, LXX, Saadia). But they are not coequal in their historical value.

ii) Orthodox constantly acts as though, if he has raised some problems for Protestantism, then Orthodoxy automatically wins by default. But:

a) Even if, for the sake of argument, Evangelicalism were a problematic position, it doesn’t follow that, by process of elimination, Orthodoxy is the only remaining logical alternative.

b) And it also doesn’t follow that Orthodoxy can deflect objections to its own position by simply drawing attention to alleged objections to Evangelicalism.

If Orthodoxy is a problematic position in its own right, then it’s no answer to its own problems to shift the issue to problems in the opposing position. The Orthodox apologist has his own burden of proof to discharge.

iii) As to differences between the Masoretic and pre-Masoretic text types, that’s why we have textual criticism.

“What of the clear and blatent errors in the Masoretic that do not exist in the LXX?”

What about giving us some examples?

“Which is canonical then?”

i) A false dichotomy. For a critical edition of the Hebrew text will involve an eclectic approach in sifting the various witnesses to the Hebrew text.

ii) Orthodox is also ducking the necessity of Septuagintal lower criticism to produce a critical edition of the LXX.

According to him, what is the canonical edition of the LXX in Orthodox tradition? What is the official text?

And what is the official canon? Is it the Greek Orthodox canon, which includes 4 Maccabees? Or is it the Russian Orthodox canon, which includes 4 Esdras?

“Why do we need protestant scholars to come in and tell us that the LXX is no good and we all can become protestants if only our bibles were more accurate?”

Several more problems:

i) This isn’t merely a question of Protestant scholarship. It’s also a question of Jewish scholarship. Of course, Orthodox is a certified Jew-hater.

Incidentally, how many people happen to know that Eastern Orthodoxy is an officially anti-Semitic denomination?

“Quinisext is held by Eastern Orthodox to have ecumenical status and authority…Canon 11 deposes clergy and excommunicates laity who eat matzot sent by Jews, receive medicine from Jews or consort with Jews in the baths,” K. Parry et al. eds. The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity (Blackwell 2004), 396.

So Orthodox’s Neonazi conspiracy theories are entirely in keeping with his adopted tradition. He’s plays the good German from first to last.

ii) This is also a question of contemporary Eastern Orthodox scholarship:

“Today, the relationships between the various Hebrew and Greek textual traditions have to be taken very seriously. This was illustrated in the 19C by Patriarch Philaret of Moscow who oversaw the Russian Bible (q.v.) translation, now published and used in the Russian Church. Similarly, one of the greatest resources in illuminating the relationship between the Hebrew and Greek textual traditions has been given us within this century by the discoveries at Qumran…In many ways, certainly because of the discovery and availability of new information, we are currently in a position to do work with Scripture that was impossible even half a century ago,” Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox Church, 294-95.

Poor little Orthodox isn’t even conversant with the state of Eastern Orthodox Bible scholarship. Apparently the popular pabulum which is spoon-fed to the waiting beaks of chirpy little hatchlings like Orthodox doesn’t include any indigestible nuggets of in-house scholarship which the tender-bellied hatchlings would choke on.

“Then we are told that no two LXX copies contain the same canon. I assume he is referring to the very oldest existing copies. But what of Origen's and other ECF comments that say that the Jews were including books like the Epistle of Jeremiah in their 22 book canon? I guess no two accounts of what the Jewish canon is were identical either. So we all throw our hands up in the air, and we have no religion left, right?”

i)“He [Athanasius] includes, however, Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremias as part of Jeremias, though neither is in the Hebrew canon,” The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity, 82.

So, according to this standard reference work on Orthodoxy, which carries a forward by Bishop Timothy Ware, the Hebrew canon did not contain that apocryphal epistle.

ii) There is also an obvious difference between Jewish accounts of the Jewish canon, and patristic accounts of the Jewish canon. Patristic imputations do not prove that the Jews themselves had more than one canon. Orthodox is confusing primary and secondary sources for the Jewish canon.

21 comments:

  1. For those who aren't aware of it, we've had many discussions with Orthodox in the past. He frequently makes assertions for which he doesn't even attempt to offer evidence, he repeats arguments without addressing the responses that were offered in previous discussions, and he often leaves discussions when they aren't going his way. His posts contain many unsupported assertions, misrepresentations of his opponents, and double standards. See the archives of this blog, especially for this past March, for many examples. Here are some representative threads:

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/interpreting-church-fathers.html

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/in-another-thread-orthodox-wrote.html

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/eastern-orthodox-drinking-from-muddy.html

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/eastern-orthodoxy-without-appeal-to.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Steve has made a significant point that I want to expand upon. Were men like Papias, Irenaeus, and Augustine Protestants? No, not by any common definition of the term, and they weren't Eastern Orthodox either. Or Roman Catholic. Depending on how the terms are defined in a given context, disagreeing with modern Protestants on a single issue could be sufficient to keep a historical figure from being considered Protestant in his beliefs. But what if that historical figure held Protestant beliefs on some other issues? Does the fact that we wouldn't consider him Protestant in a particular context mean that his agreements with Protestant belief are insignificant or that his disagreements with Eastern Orthodoxy, for example, are insignificant? For instance, in previous discussions with Orthodox, I've documented cases in which church fathers agreed with Protestant beliefs and disagreed with Eastern Orthodoxy. If a church father agreed with me on issue X, but I wouldn't call that father "Protestant" as that term is commonly defined, then the fact that he isn't Protestant doesn't eliminate the significance of his agreeing with me on issue X. If he interpreted scripture the way I do on that issue, then he's an example of a pre-Reformation source who interpreted scripture as I do, regardless of whether we call him "Protestant".

    Regarding the alleged need for some sort of unbroken succession of doctrine and claims about apostolic succession, see our previous discussions with Orthodox at:

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/pre-reformation-disunity.html

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/unity-apostolic-succession-and.html

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  3. "Ignorant of Scripture, ignorant of Christ." -Jerome

    "*Never deem it an unnecessary thing that he should be a diligent hearer of the divine Scriptures.* For there the first thing he hears will be this, 'Honor thy father and thy mother'; so that this makes for thee. **Never say, this is the business of monks. Am I making a monk of him? No. There is no need he should become a monk. Why be so afraid of a thing so replete with so much advantage? Make him a Christian. For it is of all things necessary for laymen to be aquainted with the lessons derived from this source; but especially for children.**" -Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians, Homily 21

    “Do you see how it is possible to find in Scripture a remedy appropriate to every trouble afflicting the human race and go off healed, to dispel every depression that life causes and not be brought low by any circumstance befalling us? ***For this reason I beseech you to make your way here frequently, and attend carefully to the reading of the Holy Scriptures, not only while you are present here but also at home by taking the sacred books in your hand and receiving the benefit of their contents with assiduity***…*I beseech you; instead, let us show all zeal in attending to the reading of the holy Scriptures in our home as well...*” –Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 18-45, Homily 29.4-5

    “Let us then, beloved, give heed to the Scriptures…*Wherefore I exhort you both to obtain Bibles*, and to retain together with the Bibles the sentiments they set forth, and to write them in your minds.” –Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel According to St. John, Homily 53

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  4. >So what? This restriction means that an
    >Orthodox (or Catholic) polemicist must radically
    >scale back his original objection. His initial
    >objection to Protestant theology or the
    >Protestant rule of faith was that no pre-
    >Reformation Christian ever read the Bible that
    >way.

    And still the premise is not true, since the scriptures were read every day in church all that time. Oh I forgot, they all would have been protestants if only the LXX was more accurate, or whatever the lame excuse of the day is.

    >Well, for one thing, it’s not as if they had a
    >choice in the matter. Orthodoxy was the state
    >religion

    Then supposedly neither did they have a choice in deciding their 27 book NT canon. Which means the entire canon is now up for grabs again.

    >Even if you had a consensus to invoke, appeal to
    >consensus only pushes the question back a step.

    Really. And yet you have no hope - no hope whatsoever, of proving that your particular 66 books is the correct set other than by pointing in some way to a consensus.

    >That wouldn’t be as good as being able to study
    >your own copies of the Scriptures, or reading the
    >Bible in the original Greek and Hebrew. But it’s
    >not equivalent to sheer ignorance.

    So everybody is doomed to a tiny step above "sheer ignorance" unless you are highly literate and educated, you have a private copy in Greek and Hebrew, and you understand the original languages. That's just great. Of course, save for a few people you could count on the fingers of one hand, nobody in the history of the first thousand years of the church ever fit that criteria. God really set us up to lose on this one.

    >To discredit Evangelical theology by numerically
    >opposing what modern Protestants believe with
    >whatever illiterate Orthodox peasants believed is
    >a silly comparison on the face of it.

    Who ever made a numerical argument? I don't recall any. The issue is that the Orthodox Church is the one the apostles set up, and we do not change.

    >This is how he defines a successful rule of faith:
    >everyone agrees. Two problems:

    What sort of a rule is worth anything unless it is agreed on? How well would the bible work as a rule of faith in your church if one man considered the book of Mormon as canonical, and the next man included the Koran? You're talking foolishness here.

    >i) Is that how the Bible defines its own function?
    >To the contrary, the word of God was meant to
    >be divisive. For example, this is a running theme
    >in the Gospel of John. The preaching of Jesus has
    >a polarizing effect on the Jews. Some Jews side
    >with Jesus, while other Jews turn away

    Right, and I want to be on the side of the body of Christ in the Church he set up, not someone divisive who set up their own church. The issue isn't that some want to be divided, the issue is that protestantism as a religion, cannot ever agree on anything, and you've got no hope of ever knowing for sure how to resolve these problems.

    >ii) Another, related function of Scripture is to
    >harden certain listeners

    Certainly, and those people tend to end up outside the Church.

    >The Bible is not designed to make everyone
    >agree. To the contrary, it was, in some measure,
    >intended to have the opposite effect—a
    >winnowing effect.

    The issue is not whether the bible is designed to make everyone agree. The issue is that God's will is that HIS CHURCH should agree. If you want to read the bible, be hardened, and leave the church that option is available. But Jesus will is that he people shall be One just as he and the Father are one.

    >Orthodox has his manmade theory of what a rule
    >of faith is supposed to accomplish—a theory
    >which runs counter to the self-witness of
    >Scripture.

    So according to you, the sign of a good rule of faith is that everyone disagrees as much as possible? I guess if you can draw a circle so small that only you can stand in it, you will have a really excellent rule of faith.

    However, when the Church found that they couldn't decide something from the scriptures in Acts 15, they didn't cheer at the disagreement, they came together in council and made a ruling. It says "The apostles and elders came together to look into this matter". It doesn't say "They went off and studied the scriptures privately and formed separate denominations, praise God".

    >If, however, there are large gaps in time and
    >place when the faithful did not have access to
    >vernacular editions of Scripture, then historical
    >discontinuity negates the appeal to historical
    >continuity. A diachronic argument is only as
    >good as the spatiotemporal links in the chain.
    >Once you introduce a lot of missing links, the
    >chain ceases to be a chain.

    You assume that chain consists of people who fit your criteria - i.e. Exegetical scholars who have private copies of the bible and read them in the original languages.

    However the real chain is that of the Church which passes on the teachings.

    I don't know what group Steve is thinking of who didn't have a bible in a sufficiently vernacular translation, but I can guarantee that they believed and passed on the same teachings as their predecessors who were reading it in the vernacular. Contrast this to protestant scholars, wonderfully educated, passing on perfectly bound copies of the scriptures, yet from one generation to the next they are teaching different things. What is more important? To pass on accurate copies of the scriptures, but not know what it means, or to pass on the teachings accurately, never changing anything because of the latest scholarly fad?

    >ii) In addition, Orthodox scholarship has been
    >affected by Protestant scholarship. For example:
    >
    >“A consensus exists among scholars that the 6C
    >BC, and more especially the time and place of
    >the Babylonian Exile, was the matrix from which
    >the Hebrew Pentateuch and most of the
    >prophetic books emerged in their final written
    >form,” Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox
    >Church, M. Prokurat et al. eds. (Scarecrow Press
    >1996), 293.
    >
    >Gee, where do you suppose that came from? 19C
    >German higher criticism. So mainstream
    >Orthodox scholarship has been influenced by
    >liberal Lutheran scholarship.

    All I can say is ** HUH ** ???

    Is this because I referred to non-Masoretic forms of the text? The fact is, and it is nothing to do with German higher criticism, that the LXX that the Church used from the beginning was based on a different kind of text than that which was preserved by the Masoretic Jews. Either ignorance abounds here, or else lacking substantial argument, he hopes that some kind of link with German higher criticism will poisen the well.

    >i) The LXX is a translation. A translation of a
    >Hebrew exemplar. A translation is only a good
    >translation if it accurately renders the sense of
    >the original exemplar.

    The Gospels are in large part a translation. Jesus wasn't generally walking around talking Greek. And yet we are willing to accept that translation because the apostles had some link to it. Similarly, the apostles approved of the LXX translation by their use of it. What's the canonical version of Jesus' sayings? The now lost Aramaic? Similarly, the vorlage of the LXX is now lost. But it is the LXX form of the text, not the Masoretic, that the Church used.

    >Yes, because the Orthodoxy traditionally appeal
    >to the LXX as their canonical edition of the OT.
    >But there were three different editions of the LXX
    >in play in major centers of Orthodoxy. So which
    >edition of the LXX is the canonical edition?

    Why is it so important to you that there be a canonical edition? You are the one who is proposing that we can't really understand the scriptures unless we have them in their original, unadulterated form. The trouble is, we don't have the originals. But I would never dream of claiming that the Church can't have the truth unless their scriptures measure up to some arbitrary protestant standard of accuracy. This is elite scholarship gone off the rails again.

    >a) Even if, for the sake of argument,
    >Evangelicalism were a problematic position, it
    >doesn’t follow that, by process of elimination,
    >Orthodoxy is the only remaining logical
    >alternative.

    It comes close. Unless you can point me very specifically to exactly where I can find the authentic people of God, you have no basis whatsoever for telling anyone what the rule of faith should be, whether it be scripture or whatever. In short, you have no basis for a canon, so you have no basis for anything.

    >b) And it also doesn’t follow that Orthodoxy can
    >deflect objections to its own position by simply
    >drawing attention to alleged objections to
    >Evangelicalism.

    The trouble is you are working with a flawed understanding of Orthodoxy, as if some unbroken chain of exegetes represents the true church.

    >iii) As to differences between the Masoretic and
    >pre-Masoretic text types, that’s why we have
    >textual criticism.

    Except that the pre-Masoretic text is no longer extant, except in fragmentary form, and in translation.

    >>“What of the clear and blatent errors in the
    >>Masoretic that do not exist in the LXX?”
    >
    >What about giving us some examples?

    Such as 2 Samuel 8:4.

    >i) A false dichotomy. For a critical edition of the
    >Hebrew text will involve an eclectic approach in
    >sifting the various witnesses to the Hebrew text.

    Which will have limited success when it no longer exists.

    >ii) Orthodox is also ducking the necessity of
    >Septuagintal lower criticism to produce a critical
    >edition of the LXX.

    I don't have to duck it, because I am not the one claiming a perfect original language bible is required to exegete a rule of faith.

    >And what is the official canon? Is it the Greek
    >Orthodox canon, which includes 4 Maccabees?
    >Or is it the Russian Orthodox canon, which
    >includes 4 Esdras?

    Again, it doesn't matter a great deal because scripture is only a part of the Tradition. Protestants have to obsess over the canon, because that's all they have and it is their only starting point. Actually, both canons are a part of the Tradition of the Christian church, but unlike Protestants, we would not be coming up with any innovative doctrines because one book or another might be in or out. Possibly the Church will at some point decide what to do with the discrepency, but the important thing is the doctrines and teachings.

    >i) This isn’t merely a question of Protestant
    >scholarship. It’s also a question of Jewish
    >scholarship. Of course, Orthodox is a certified
    >Jew-hater.

    I find your accusation disgusting and offensive. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Are you actually in submission to any elders in your church, or are you just a loan gun?

    >“Quinisext is held by Eastern Orthodox to have
    >ecumenical status and authority…Canon 11
    >deposes clergy and excommunicates laity who
    >eat matzot sent by Jews, receive medicine from
    >Jews or consort with Jews in the baths,” K. Parry
    >et al. eds. The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern
    >Christianity (Blackwell 2004), 396

    Amazing that before accusing someone of being a Nazi you are too lazy to actually read the Quinisext canons yourself, but have to rely on some bible dictionary.

    >So Orthodox’s Neonazi conspiracy theories are
    >entirely in keeping with his adopted tradition.
    >He’s plays the good German from first to last.

    Time to invoke Godwin's law:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

    Very clearly, you have lost this debate.

    >Poor little Orthodox isn’t even conversant with
    >the state of Eastern Orthodox Bible scholarship.

    Irrelevant. The bible scholars can do what they like and good luck to them. But we won't be changing the faith because of the latest theories, and we don't need the finest textual critical speculation before we have a rule of faith.

    >So, according to this standard reference work on
    >Orthodoxy, which carries a forward by Bishop
    >Timothy Ware, the Hebrew canon did not contain
    >that apocryphal epistle.

    Yes, the canon of the post-Christian Hebrew people did not contain it. Your responses have got so weak now that they can be ignored, merely throwing out random barbs and ignoring that facts presented.

    >ii) There is also an obvious difference between
    >Jewish accounts of the Jewish canon, and
    >patristic accounts of the Jewish canon. Patristic
    >imputations do not prove that the Jews
    >themselves had more than one canon.

    If Origen, who knew more about the Jews than anybody in the Church couldn't get it right (by Protestant reckoning) about what the Jewish canon was, then what hope do you have 1800 years later? Oh, but your 2000 years after the fact scholarship is all knowing and all wonderful. Yeah right.

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  5. >If a church father agreed with me on issue X, but I
    >wouldn't call that father "Protestant" as that term is
    >commonly defined, then the fact that he isn't
    >Protestant doesn't eliminate the significance of his
    >agreeing with me on issue X.

    Not really, because what the Church fathers had in common was a belief in the authority of the Church to resolve these issues. So the fact that they may have sometimes (a lot less than Protestants would like to think) disagree with the consensus, doesn't mean that they wouldn't have submitted their previous opinion to the mind of the Church, had they known about later decisions.

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  6. Doesn't Jesus constantly appeal to Scripture for support and rebuke? How literate were 1st-century Jews?

    Here's a link to the anti-Semitic council: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.xiv.iii.xii.html

    Not to self-promote, but I'm attempting an Old Testament textual criticism series for a primarily Jewish audience: http://goyforjesus.blogspot.com/search/label/textual%20criticism

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  7. I would also like to say that if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and He has given you Scripture...

    Shouldn't you be motivated to learn to read and teach others to read so you can read Scripture? Wouldn't loving the Lord produce those results?

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  8. >Doesn't Jesus constantly appeal to Scripture for
    >support and rebuke?

    He often appeals to scripture. Other times he and the New Testament appeals to the oral tradition. For example, Mt 2:23 "that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene.’" Of course this prophesy occurs nowhere in the OT, it is an oral tradition.

    Another example is 1 Cor 10:4 about the water that God provided for Israel: "All drank the same supernatural drink. For they drank from the supernatural Rock which followed them, and the Rock was Christ" (1 Cor. 10:4).

    The Old Testament says nothing about any movement of the rock that Moses struck to provide water for the Israelites (Ex. 17:1-7, Num. 20:2-13), but in rabbinic Tradition the rock actually followed them on their journey through the wilderness.

    In other words, the apostles were followers of the oral tradition. Why aren't you?

    >I would also like to say that if you love the Lord
    >your God with all your heart and mind and He
    >has given you Scripture...
    >
    >Shouldn't you be motivated to learn to read and
    >teach others to read so you can read Scripture?
    >Wouldn't loving the Lord produce those results?

    Sure. What would your point be?

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  9. If readers will consult the links I provided earlier in this thread, they’ll find that we’ve answered Orthodox’s assertions about Acts 15, identifying the church, etc. repeatedly. We’ve refuted his arguments at length, with a large amount of documentation from the church fathers and other relevant sources, and he’s repeatedly ignored what he’s been given and has left discussions without even attempting a response.

    Notice that Orthodox frequently uses arguments against Protestants that would invalidate his own belief system if he would apply those arguments consistently, which he doesn’t. These things are often pointed out to him, but he repeatedly ignores them. He makes assertions about the authority and history of Eastern Orthodoxy without providing anything close to sufficient argumentation to support those assertions. He relies on his own personal judgments, controversial judgments that other people and other Eastern Orthodox disagree with, to arrive at his conclusions about what the church is, what it teaches, etc. Yet, he keeps criticizing Protestants for relying on their personal judgments on controversial issues.

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  10. Orthodox said:

    “Not really, because what the Church fathers had in common was a belief in the authority of the Church to resolve these issues. So the fact that they may have sometimes (a lot less than Protestants would like to think) disagree with the consensus, doesn't mean that they wouldn't have submitted their previous opinion to the mind of the Church, had they known about later decisions.”

    More assertions without argument. As I’ve documented in previous discussions with Orthodox (with citations of Hippolytus, Cyprian, etc.), different patristic sources defined the church in different ways. And many patristic sources didn’t comment on the subject. How they viewed the authority and roles of the church varied from one source to another. And the fact that a source believed in “the authority of the church to resolve issues” doesn’t prove that they defined the church as Orthodox defines it.

    Notice, also, that Orthodox is yet again contradicting himself. Earlier, he argued that the Christians of the first millennium were all part of the same denomination, and he argued that even minor disagreements, such as we see between two different conservative Baptist denominations, are unacceptable. When I gave him examples of disagreements among the Christians of the first millennium, disagreements that were as significant as what he was criticizing among Protestants, he largely ignored those examples or dismissed them as “political” or irrelevant in some other way. But now he acknowledges disagreements with “the consensus” among the church fathers, but he dismisses those disagreements as “a lot less than Protestants would like to think”. Apparently, they’re a lot more than Orthodox used to think, judging from the changes in his argumentation.

    Regarding “consensus”, readers can consult the pages I linked to near the beginning of this thread. I gave examples of widespread disagreement with Eastern Orthodoxy among the patristic Christians on issues like prayers to the deceased and the veneration of images. Even if only a minority had disagreed with Eastern Orthodoxy on a given issue, why did they disagree? If these beliefs were apostolic traditions always held and taught by the church, why would anybody need to wait for what Orthodox calls “later decisions” of the church? And given that the issues many of the patristic Christians were silent on or disagreed about included issues of the identity and authority of the church, how can Orthodox claim to know that these patristic sources would submit to later decisions made by an Eastern Orthodox hierarchy?

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  11. Orthodox gratuitously asserts:

    “Other times he and the New Testament appeals to the oral tradition. For example, Mt 2:23 ‘that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene.’’ Of course this prophesy occurs nowhere in the OT, it is an oral tradition.”

    And where’s your evidence? Matthew uses the plural (“prophets”). How do you know that he wasn’t referring to a general theme of multiple Biblical authors rather than “an oral tradition”? You’re claiming to know something you can’t possibly know. And you’re making a historical assertion, which is the same sort of fallible appeal to probability that you keep criticizing Protestants for relying upon. You use that same sort of fallible (and, in your case, erroneous) appeal to historical probability when arguing for the authority claims and teachings of Eastern Orthodoxy.

    You write:

    “In other words, the apostles were followers of the oral tradition. Why aren't you?”

    We do accept oral traditions that can be traced back to a source such as the apostles. That’s not true of Eastern Orthodox traditions like praying to the deceased.

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  12. First, establishing a Mosaic oral tradition doesn't establish an apostolic oral tradition we can trace.

    Secondly, I would have to think on how Paul was using oral tradition. It may be like how Jude uses Enoch. The underlying source may not be inspired or authoritative but Paul's use of it is. In other words, he is using something known to illustrate a point.

    During Hezekiah's reign they had forgotten and then rediscovered the Torah in the Temple, no? If they had forgotten about the written Torah, I would think the oral Torah would have been obliterated at that point.

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  13. Here's a good critique of Oral Torah not being authoritative:
    http://www.uhcg.org/HoI/Oral-Torah.html

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  14. As I was skimming through Orthodox's comments, I found this:

    "The Gospels are in large part a translation. Jesus wasn't generally walking around talking Greek. And yet we are willing to accept that translation because the apostles had some link to it. Similarly, the apostles approved of the LXX translation by their use of it. What's the canonical version of Jesus' sayings? The now lost Aramaic?"

    First of all, the apostles themselves were inspired by the Holy Spirit, and so, their translation of Jesus' Aramaic words into Greek would be infallible and inerrant. The translators of the Septuagint were not "God-breathed" (2 Timothy 3:16).

    Second, just because the apostles quoted from the Septuagint doesn't mean that they believed it (the translation itself) to be in inerrant. They were merely using a tranlation that proselytes could understand. The early church's (post-apostolic) belief that the Septuagint was inerrant probably came from the "70 translators going into their seperate caves and coming out with the same translation" myth.

    Orthodox writes:

    “Other times he and the New Testament appeals to the oral tradition. For example, Mt 2:23 ‘that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene.’’ Of course this prophesy occurs nowhere in the OT, it is an oral tradition.”

    It is worthy to note that St. Jerome as well as other Old and New Testament scholars trace 'Nazarene' back to the prophecy of the "branch" found in Isaiah and Jeremiah. Also, back in the Intertestamental period, there was more than just a literal interpretation of prophecy (such as Midrashic). This has been confirmed by the writing of the Intertestamental rabbis.

    Something here should be noted: the very ground (i.e. his authority structure: the traditions of the interpretation of Scripture as found in the early fathers) upon which Orthodox bases his excuse not to believe in the straightforward meaning of Scripture has been shown to be much closer to Protestant belief than to his own. To quote Louis Bouyer:

    “The Fathers of the Church, St. Augustine above all, themselves practiced that devotion derived from Scripture, whose ideal the Protestants steadily upheld; they hardly knew any other. No doubt they were much more careful than many Protestants not to isolate the Word of God in its settled form of Scripture from its living form in the Church, particularly in the liturgy. But, this reserve apart…they were no less enthusiastic, or insistent, or formal, in recommending this use of Scripture and in actually promoting it. Particularly from St. John Chrysostom, one might assemble exhortations and injunctions couched in the most forcible terms; they have often been recalled by those Protestants, from the sixteenth century onwards, the best grounded in Christian antiquity. It would be impossible to find, even among Protestants, statements more sweeping than those in which St. Jerome abounds: Ignoratio scripturarum, ignoratio Christi is doubtless the most lapidary, but not necessarily the most explicit. What is more, in this case just as when the authority of Scripture is viewed as the foundation of theology, the constant practice of the Church, in the Middle Ages as well as in the patristic times, is a more eloquent witness than all the doctors…For them, it was not simply one source among others, but the source par excellence, in a sense the only one.”
    -Louis Bouyer, The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1964), pp.132-133. Translated by A.V. Littledale. First published by Les Editions du Cerf, Paris, 1954.

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  15. >Something here should be noted: the very ground
    >(i.e. his authority structure: the traditions of the
    >interpretation of Scripture as found in the early
    >fathers) upon which Orthodox bases his excuse not
    >to believe in the straightforward meaning of
    >Scripture

    A lot of mischaracterizations in these responses, but I couldn't let this one pass. I have never said that I don't believe in the straightforward meaning of scripture, thus I hardly need to offer any excuses. And if you're holding up the Fathers as examples of those who followed a straight forward meaning, I say great, because Orthodoxy is based on the interpretation of the Fathers.

    Which of us believes in a straight forward understanding of scripture? Which of us believes "this is my body, this is my blood" straightforwardly? Who is the one who has to try and weasel around "hold to the traditions, whether written or word of mouth"? Who is the one who has to get around "I will draw all men unto myself"? Who is the one who has to downplay "I pray that they may be one as we are one"?

    Who is the one who has to get around the authority of the Church council in Acts 15? (Which BTW, was headed by James the brother of the Lord, who was apparently not an apostle)

    For anyone who care to take an objective look they can see who has to continually abandon the straight forward meaning of the text.

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  16. And which side claims we need a perfect Greek and Hebrew scripture interpreting it in the original language before we can understand it enough to make the leap to become protestants? LOL How straightforward can your interpretations be when you have to resort to this level of gnosticism?

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  17. orthodox said...
    >Doesn't Jesus constantly appeal to Scripture for
    >support and rebuke?

    He often appeals to scripture. Other times he and the New Testament appeals to the oral tradition. For example, Mt 2:23 "that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene.’" Of course this prophesy occurs nowhere in the OT, it is an oral tradition.

    Another example is 1 Cor 10:4 about the water that God provided for Israel: "All drank the same supernatural drink. For they drank from the supernatural Rock which followed them, and the Rock was Christ" (1 Cor. 10:4).

    The Old Testament says nothing about any movement of the rock that Moses struck to provide water for the Israelites (Ex. 17:1-7, Num. 20:2-13), but in rabbinic Tradition the rock actually followed them on their journey through the wilderness.

    In other words, the apostles were followers of the oral tradition. Why aren't you?

    ******************************

    Recourse to oral tradition is unnecessarily to explain either of these passages. Read Nolland on Mt 2:23 (esp. p130); read Garland (455ff.) and Thiselton (esp. p728) on 1 Cor 10:4.

    As usual, Orthodox merely exhibits his self-reinforcing ignorance.

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  18. Just out of curiosity could give a summary of Thiselton on the the 1 Cor. passage. Thanks.

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  19. geoffrobinson said...
    Just out of curiosity could give a summary of Thiselton on the the 1 Cor. passage. Thanks.

    ***********************

    "In the use of rabbinic traditions reflected in Targum, Midrash, and most certainly Talmud, issues of dating remain obscure and complex...Some degree of speculation cannot be avoided about whether Paul uses material even in pretextual form to address Corinth...Certain differences between the rabbinic nd Philonic traditions in relation to 1 Cor 10:4 have recently been explored by Kreitzer; is approach underlines the need for caution in drawing too readily or uncritically on widespread assumptions about Paul's sources and his use of them," A. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Eerdmans 2000), 728.

    For his part, Garland presents an interpretation which sticks to the actual text, with no recourse to conjectural rabbinic sources.

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  20. geoffrobinson said:

    "Doesn't Jesus constantly appeal to Scripture for support and rebuke? How literate were 1st-century Jews?"

    Hi Geoffrey. The standard monograph is:

    http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Writing-Time-Jesus-Millard/dp/0567083489/ref=sr_1_1/002-8010765-2019265?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176595189&sr=1-1

    He has also written a number of articles on OT literacy. See his entry on "Writing, Writing Materials and Literacy in the Ancient Near East" in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Historical Books. Both the body of the article and the bibliography are well-worth consulting, as is the entry on "Hebrew Inscriptions."

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  21. The same reference work also has a fine entry under "Oral Tradition and Written Tradition."

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