Dwarves in the stable

Recently I had an exchange with three Catholics on Facebook. They're right out of the stable of the Dwarves (from The Last Battle). I'll change the names to protect the guilty. 

This passage jumped out at me today: (John 5:2-4) "Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had."

To our modern ears, this almost sounds like fantasy or superstition that God would send an angel to do this, but it would mean healing waters like in Lourdes have a precedent. (It would even suggest that the saints in heaven would be involved in similar seemingly trivial pursuits.) The existence of such things as healing sites in Catholicism gives me comfort, while the absence and distrust of such in Protestantism is disheartening.

Hays 

It sounds like fantasy or superstition because you're quoting a scribal interpolation.

Dopey

On what basis do you make that claim Steve Hays?

Hays 

For instance:

* [5:3] The Caesarean and Western recensions, followed by the Vulgate, add “waiting for the movement of the water.” Apparently an intermittent spring in the pool bubbled up occasionally (see Jn 5:7). This turbulence was believed to cure.

* [5:4] Toward the end of the second century in the West and among the fourth-century Greek Fathers, an additional verse was known: “For [from time to time] an angel of the Lord used to come down into the pool; and the water was stirred up, so the first one to get in [after the stirring of the water] was healed of whatever disease afflicted him.” The angel was a popular explanation of the turbulence and the healing powers attributed to it. This verse is missing from all early Greek manuscripts and the earliest versions, including the original Vulgate. Its vocabulary is markedly non-Johannine.

http://www.usccb.org/bible/john/5

Dopey

I'll give the Covenanters one thing: they rightly recognize the problem created by exposing the canon and parts within it to higher criticism: it places the whole thing into doubt and implies that parts or entire books could be jettisoned based upon some future discovery or the logic of man.

Grumpy

Perhaps the solution is for everyone to ask Calvinists what the burning in their bosom indicates about any and all passages and then go with that.

Hays 

Always funny to see conservative Catholics who distrust the Magisterium. The USCCB must be a schismatic organization. Thankfully, we have lay Catholics to protect the faithful from their nefarious religious superiors. Apparently, textual criticism is incompatible with Catholicism? Once again, the Magisterium is asleep at the switch.

Dopey

The USCCB isn't part of the magisterium. I'm not completely shocked you aren't aware of this. For what makes up the catholic bible: read Trent.

Grumpy

The notes notes contained in The NAB have always received extensive criticism. Also, those notes generally do not command obedience of faith. Lastly, I said no such thing about textual criticism.

Hays 

So the Roman episcopate is leading the faithful astray by commending the NAB to Catholics. Good thing we have lay Catholic gatekeepers of orthodoxy to protect the faithful from all those renegade bishops.

Because bishops aren't part of the magisterium:

As Christ's vicar, each bishop has the pastoral care of the particular Church entrusted to him, but at the same time he bears collegially with all his brothers in the episcopacy the solicitude for all the Churches Though each bishop is the lawful pastor only of the portion of the flock entrusted to his care, as a legitimate successor of the apostles he is, by divine institution and precept, responsible with the other bishops for the apostolic mission of the Church.

http://www.usccb.org/about/leadership/index.cfm

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is an assembly of the hierarchy of the United States and the US Virgin Islands.

http://www.usccb.org/about/bishops-and-dioceses/index.cfm

Dopey

The USCCB carries with it absolutely no magisterial authority. It is pastoral in nature and that is clear from the code of canon law. But hey let's argue over it forever and ever!

Hays 

So the teaching of Catholic bishops carries absolutely no magisterial authority. Do you also share the view of sedevacantists that as a pastoral council, Vatican II has absolutely no magisterial authority?

Dopey

Is it contrary to catholic doctrine that individual bishops or groups of bishops are unable to lead Catholics astray? I'm not entirely sure why your comments would be germane to anything having to do with anything.

Hays

So Dopey must fall back on his private opinion to differentiate orthodox episcopal teaching from heretical episcopal teaching. Dopey is the final interpretive authority (as Bryan Cross is wont to say).

Grumpy 

Where does the USCCB indicate that the passage you reject is not authentic scripture?

Hays 

So you're saying scribal interpolations are authentic scripture?

Sneezy

I didn't realize this verse was so controversial. Really, does it pose a threat to anyone's theology?

Hays 

It's true that pious fiction poses no threat to Catholicism. Catholicism feeds on pious fiction, if that's what you mean.

Grumpy, I appreciate your dependence on evangelical Bible scholarship. That said, funny that you quote Bruce on an unrelated pericope and ignore what he says on the actual passage at issue, where he states we can't credit the Evangelist with the angelic business; rather, a scribe added that based on folk beliefs–as well as his referencing Fee's article on the inauthenticity of 5:3b-4. Here's the article that Bruce referenced: 

https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/eq/inauthenticity_fee.pdf

In addition, you commit a category confusion. Even if we make the overly-generous, indemonstrable assumption that the angelic business reflects authentic oral tradition, that's insufficient to make a scribal interpolation Scripture. Do you think Christian scribes were divinely inspired? Likewise, doesn't Trent assume traditional authorship as a presupposition for canonizing the Gospels?

Grumpy

Not at all, whoever made the interpolation, if it indeed is an interpolation, may be an apostolicly directed interpolation. You're simply assuming what Bruce denies we can and should do and what the USCCB is silent about.

Hays 

You illustrate how Catholics resort to fact-free conjecture to shore up their position. You're welcome to build your faith on a foundation of pious fiction and legendary embellishment. That's Catholicism.

Look, you're the one, not me, to make Bruce your Alamo. But he punts to Fee, which you continue to dodge. Here's another detailed analysis: 

http://www.tyndalehouse.com/TynBul/Library/TynBull_2003_54_2_02_Bryan_John5PowerInPool.pdf?fref=gc

I'm not the one who's falling back on empty rhetoric. I've directed you to two detailed, scholarly discussions of the interpolation: both of which are available online. Just follow the links. You're the one who's laboring to bluff your way through this discussion.

The relevant question is what the evidence points to. Fee provides detail that Bruce does not and cannot. The factual question is whether there's any good reason to believe an angel stirred the water, thereby conferring curative properties on the water. The question is whether this interpolation squares with reality.

BTW, it would be counterproductive for the narrator to ascribe supernatural curative powers to the pool when the account makes Jesus the healer. That's one more reason to conclude the verse is spurious.

You're now saying Bruce defaults to an article that contradicts his own position. Gee, how plausible is that?

Maybe there's an off-chance that the Gospel of Judas preserves some historical tidbits about Jesus and the apostles. By your criterion, Catholics don't need an positive evidence that something's the case. Rather, begin with sheer possibilities, then the onus is to disprove it. So the Gospel of Judas can still be regarded as authentic scripture. And while you're at it, for all you know, Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus. Who needs actual evidence when you can postulate convenient hypotheticals, then say the burden of proof is on the denier?

Dopey

What is the official position of the USCCB on whether or not the verses in question are scripture?

Hays 

Dopey hasn't figured out the problem. On the one hand is the traditional position staked out by Trent. On the other hand, Catholicism has evolved since the time of Trent so that some key presuppositions of the Tridentine position on the canon have been tunneled under by higher criticism and lower criticism. So modern Catholicism is in the awkward situation of Neurath's ship. It must pay lip-service to certain traditional conclusions even though it no longer grants the foundation on which those conclusions rest.

Grumpy, you're repeating the same non sequitur. I already corrected you on that. Even if (ex hypothesi), the scribal interpolation codifies a reliable oral tradition that was floating around until the scribe added that to Jn 5, what makes you think that rises to the level of "scripture"? 

And you continue to operate with a subversively irrational notion regarding the burden of proof.

Grumpy

Perhaps you haven't noticed but you're shifting the argument.

Hays

I haven't shifted the argument at all. Here's my original comment:

"It sounds like fantasy or superstition because you're quoting a scribal interpolation."

I then quoted a footnote to the edition of Scripture hosted at the USCCB website which tactfully implies that the verse is a scribal interpolation, based on folk beliefs.

Your starting-point subverts rationality. Instead of beginning with reality, and evidence for reality, you act as if this is just a question of logical harmonization, where, if you can show that X is logically compatible with Y, even though there's no evidence that your postulate is true, and indeed, evidence that your postulate is probably based on folkloric associations with pagan healing sites, then that's all you need to do. You betray an appetite for self-deception. But it's your life. If you wish to fritter away your life in a quest for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, that's your prerogative.

Once again, Grumpy, your assumption seems to be that if the anecdote about the angel possibly reflects an accurate memory or a local legend, and a scribe added it to the text, that makes his addition "authentic divine revelation". There are several missing steps from your starting-point to your conclusion. Care to fill in the gaps? 

For instance, Tacitus has some accurate information about the Christian faith. That doesn't make his statement "authentic divine revelation."

You keep asserting that the the USCCB passage is compatible with the scribal interpolation as "authentic divine scripture". It's up to you to turn your assertion into an actual argument. You've resorted to the illogical procedure of (selectively) quoting something from Bruce's popular commentary, which you combine with the USCCB passage, as if you can use what Bruce (partially) says to interpret what the bishops had in mind. That's a non sequitur. There's no connection between whatever Bruce means and what the bishops mean.

Grumpy

Does the USCCB identify the scribes? If not, then it is possible that they were scribes directed by the apostles to do so.

Hays

i) This is a good example of apologists who dream up "possibilities" out of thin air to salvage their position. Your position isn't based on evidence, but wishful thinking. This leads to your subversive burden of proof, where the onus is on someone to disprove a claim for which there's no evidence. That's a completely irrational methodology. 

ii) Your fact-free conjecture ("scribes directed by apostles") fails to explain "its absence from the earliest and best witnesses…the presence of asterisks or obeli to mark the words as spurious in more than twenty Greek witnesses" Bruce, Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (UBS, 2nd ed., 1994), 179.

iii) Finally, according to Vatican I and Vatican II, inspiration is a necessary condition for something to be Scripture. You have yet to explain how a scribe interpolation satisfies that prerequisite.

There is no burden of proof to disprove concocted "possibilities" for which there's no evidence. It's possible that the last three papal elections were rigged. It's possible that someone put the squeeze on the cardinals in the papal conclave. By your yardstick, the onus is on you to prove me wrong.

I notice that you ducked the issue of how an uninspired scribal interpolation counts as "authentic scripture" if Vatican I and Vatican II make inspiration a necessary condition of scripture. Dodging the issue doesn't make it go away.

What you've done is a splice something from Bruce onto the USCCB statement, as if the USCCB agrees with (your interpretation of) Bruce. That's another one of your non sequiturs.

Now we have the diversionary tactic of quoting Calvin on Jn 5:3b-4, as if he had the advantages of modern NT textual critics. A backdoor admission that Catholic commenters don't have a serious argument.

Dopey

I'm sorry but the notes at the bottom of the NABRE don't comprise a statement by the USCCB.

Hays

Dopey thinks entire national wings of the Catholic hierarchy can go rogue. 

Dopey

Also, all Grumpy is done is show how such an interpolation can be part of sacred scripture and it's transmission be inspired. I'm not sure what rule would mitigate against a scribal interpolation being inspired"

Hays

What about complete lack of evidence?

Dopey

Especially the weight given the vulgate via Trent.

Hays

You're welcome to go down with the sinking ship of Trent on the Vulgate. 

But even on your own grounds, the original Vulgate didn't contain Jn 5:3b-4.

Sneezy

I saw this argument on one site: "The sick man speaks of the water being stirred, but without verses 3b-4, there wouldn't be any indication about what the water being stirred up even refers to in the first place."

Hays

You might try consulting Catholic scholarship for a change: "The bubbling of water (v7), caused perhaps by an intermittent spring," Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John (Doubleday 1977), 1:207.

BTW, this commentary carries both the Nihil Obstat and the Imprimatur.

Dopey

Completely unnessarily rude, yet again.

Hays 

Not at all unnecessary. It's me, the Protestant, who keeps up with Catholic Bible scholarship. I'm the one who must quote that to you. Shame on you!

Sneezy

Modern bible scholarship is a bunch of apostates doing the bare minimum to not get in trouble. They don't believe in inspiration in the first place. Thankfully, they aren't magisterium. It's a mark of desperation to put too much emphasis on them.

Dopey

1. Raymond Brown can hardly be considered the vanguurd of Catholic Biblical scholarship.

2. The sole opinion of Raymond Brown is not the end all / be all of Catholic exegesis.

3. The Nihil Obstat doesn't mean anything other than a single Bishop approves of it.

Hays 

Actually, you're suggesting that the USCCB is misleading the flock by directing the flock to an approved study Bible that undermines the faith. An entire national wing of the Catholic hierarchy can't be trusted to teach sound doctrine. The faithful must be ever vigilant not to be led astray by their religious superiors. Thankfully, Catholic layman like Dopey and Gerry Matatics are the true gatekeepers of orthodoxy.

What we see on this comment thread is a classic divide between mainstream Catholic scholarship and laymen who are functionally sedevacantists. Catholic laymen who distrust the hierarchy. A very self-defeating way to defend Catholicism. In Catholicism, it's every man for himself. You must be constantly on the alert against wolfish bishops in sheepish vestments.

Grumpy

You're the one who's made a positive claim.

Hays

That's the move that village atheists constantly make. They act as if only one side has a burden of proof: the side making "a positive claim".

But that's fallacious. Denials are truth-claims no less than affirmations.

It's been instructive to see Catholics who are fanatically committed to make-believe. I understand that. That's what makes you Catholic. Thanks for the confirmation.