The new teachings of Jesus

Can you give your source for this? This seems EXTREMELY unlikely.The passage is questioned as not originally part of John's Gospel, but unmentioned until AD 1000? Seems unbelievable.edit: It is unbelievable. I Googled John 7:53. From http://www.tektonics.org/af/adulterypericope.html:"It is not in the earliest manuscripts (with one exception); in those manuscripts where we do find it, it is not found in one place. Some have it at the end of John. Some put it after our John 7:36; one puts it after 7:44. Some have it in Luke, after Luke 21:38."FORGERY IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN has a list of comments in various Bible translations about the passage. It's not in the "oldest and best" manuscripts, but it is in some ancient ones.Edited by truthlover, : Added Google search info

Or, maybe the KJV just poorly translated the Hebrew.
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Just as sticky in the KJV

Irenaeus was taught by Polycarp, who tradition says was appointed to his office by John. He makes no claim that his canon was taught by the apostles, and no pre-Nicene canon matches Nicea exactly.I'm pretty sure, by the way, that Nicea issued no canon. Later 4th century councils did "decree" a canon. This isn't true. Those "experts" would be embarrassed if they heard you say that. They'd look the other way and pretend they didn't know you. (Sorry, just being honest.)

Well, you were looking for evidence of losses. Since you're so fond of Irenaeus (as I am), you should enjoy this quote: The only unfortunate thing here is that this Scripture is from the Shepherd of Hermas, from Book II in the first commandment. I don't think that this book, Scripture to many early Christians, is included in your 27 book Canon.This is from Not Found - Webflow HTML website template:

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We know, for instance, that Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon in Gaul (France), in works produced about 185 C.E., regarded the twenty books that later appeared in Eusebius' "acknowledged" category as canonical books. In addition, he recognized Revelation and the Shepherd of Hermas, for a total of twenty-two. Early in the next century, Origen of Alexandria endorsed twenty-two writings as canonical. Origen's list was nearly identical with those accepted by Irenaeus and listed as "acknowledged" by Eusebius.

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I have Irenaeus' Against Heresies on both my computer and my bookshelf, but I was unable to figure out how to do a search that would find his "list."That same web site tells you what is commonly known to historians, which is that Athanasius in AD 367, 42 years after the Council of Nicea, is the first person to produce a list that exactly matches our 27-book NT.

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The first list of "canonical" books that names the same twenty-seven writings found in our New Testament appears in the Easter letter of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, in 367 C.E. He names them in a different order, to be sure. Even so, the first list that agrees with ours was a long time in coming.

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It would help that if you're going to announce things as proven, you'd get some facts right.The Council of Trent, btw, ran from 1545-1563, which would be the 16th century, not the 14th. There's 4 statements you make here. Every one is accurate (those things did not happen, just as you say they didn't). Unfortunately, you meant them all sarcastically.Edited by truthlover, : Fixed coding

seven.Orthodox people I've met can't seem to tell me what's in their Bible, and I know they tend to include 3 & 4 Maccabbees, which the Roman Catholics don't, as well as 2 Esdras (or 2 Ezra, which is a pretty cool book), so maybe the Orthodox have a dozen extra.

Or maybe God didn't want it turned into the idol that many have made it to be. It always amazes me how many people will defend its verbal and scientific inerrancy, but who don't read it and who don't have a clue what it's talking about."As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God" (Rom 8:14). "You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have life. But these are they which testify of me, and you refuse to come to me so that you might have life" (Jn 5:39).I believe God wants people to put their trust in him, not in the Scriptures. Yes, the Scriptures are a guide, but the reason that the focus of the New Testament is that God would give his Spirit to everyone (cf. Acts 2:17) is because the idea is that everyone could enter into fellowship with God. "Behold, the days come, says the Lord, that I will make a new covenant...not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers...and they shall no longer teach their neighbor, 'Know the Lord,' because they shall all know him, from the least of them to the greatest of them" (Jer 31:31,32,34).Nowadays, Christians are taught not to trust their knowledge of God. If you tell them you are trying to live by the Spirit of God, they will tell you that's dangerous. You should try to live by the Bible. From my experience in mainline Christianity that covered 13 years, I can tell you that those who try to live by the Bible generally fail and spend much of their time arguing over their thousands of conflicting interpretations of the Bible. From my experience at Rose Creek Village over the last 11 years, I can tell you that when a people tries together to follow God, they end up living by the Bible.So, in conclusion, I think God meant for the Bible not to be a magic book, and he had no intentions ever of giving it supernatural inerrancy. I believe he did help preserve it, and he made it so at least some writings would be preserved extant for our benefit, but it's not his will at all for it to be at the head. He wants to be at the head.

The Word doesn't mean the Bible to me, but I assume you are talking about the Bible here.The other court of appeal that the Scriptures give is the church, which is the pillar and support of the truth. No. You have to listen to God and others around you. Unless you are exhorted/encouraged daily, the Scriptures say, you are in danger of being deceived by sin and hardened. One rarely faces such a decision. Is Mark 16:8-20 from the original? Is 1 Jn 5:7 part of the original? We don't know, and I can't see that it matters much, if at all. How would your life or anyone else's be different if we stripped Mark 16:8-20 from the Bible?Where did the seven chapter difference between the LXX and Masoretic texts of Jeremiah come from? We don't know, and the Dead Sea Scrolls agree with the LXX text. I'm sure you don't know which 7 chapters are different, and I'm also sure that no one's life or Christianity would change if we suddenly inserted the LXX text of Jeremiah into our Bibles (which is what all the early Christians would have read, by the way).

No, that's not the problem at all. Almost everyone in that movement checks the Scriptures to verify what these men say, and those men use the Scriptures to do their teaching.

Right, by fruit, which is the real judge of teaching, not comparing it to your almost certainly faulty interpretation of Scripture.Same with churches. You are quite welcome to write us off as just one of 20,000 protestant denominations. You're satisfied (somehow) with the results protestants get. I'm not. In the US, homeless people get better love and fellowship among their drug and drink addicted street friends than Christians get at church. I, with others, chose a different path, not based on Scripture interpreting and trying to follow Scripture, but on actually following his Spirit, together. As a result, we live as family and are able to help others experience the love and family that the Gospel is supposed to produce. It's deliriously satisfying.

This thread is not about Rose Creek Village. I hope the thread at least somewhat applies to the topic of the lack of preservation of Scripture, because that's what I got on this thread about, and that's what I've been talking about this whole time.Maybe you can take your offenses about whatever all this stuff is you've dreamed up to a new thread if you think it's important enough.

Despite drbill's interpretation of 2 Tim 3:16, I'd say it's pretty easy to see what first the Jews and then the Christians called Scripture. There are some books that are questionable, i.e. not universally agreed on, but otherwise the whole subject seems pretty obvious to me.Isaiah, Jeremiah, the Torah, etc. were all obviously considered Scripture by the early Christians. (Since the thread topic is "The new teachings of Jesus," I'm assuming we're talking about what Christians call Scripture.)By sometime in the 2nd century it became universal to call all apostolic writings as well as those writings written by companions of apostles as Scripture (thus Mark was Peter's Gospel and Luke was Paul's).Jude obviously considered First Enoch Scripture, and it seems to me that it's referred to a lot in the 2nd century, too. It's odd that it seems to have disappeared somewhere along the line as a part of Scripture, except in the Ethiopian church.James, 2&3 John, Jude, 2 Peter, Hebrews, and Revelation all seemed to have been questioned, but the Shepherd of Hermas wasn't written until the 2nd century and several authorities, most notable Clement of Alexandria, thought it was Scripture.The problem is, I don't see any indication that any Christians anywhere in the first few centuries wanted to add anything to Scripture that wasn't apostolic. Supposedly, Clement of Alexandria thought the Shepherd was written by the Hermas who Paul mentions in Philippians 4, thus providing apostolic authority to it. I don't know how anyone could know that, but apostolic authority definitely seemed to be the main criterion for the early church's assessment of Scripture.That said, the Bible is an attempt to gather all the writings considered Scripture by the church. Since there's so many churches, those Bibles vary, but not by that much, in my opinion.On a personal level, our church, Rose Creek Village, has felt free to suggest that some of Amy Carmichael's writings ought to be in Scripture as well as a couple other modern people.Since you asked "what would you say 'Scripture' is," that's my answer.I like the writings in the Bible. I just don't like the cover that limits it to those books, and I don't like what people have done with it, turning it into a magic book.I'm sort of interested in this issue, so I may push myself to the computer at points this weekend, but it's a big weekend. I'm taking 22 kids to a 5K race tomorrow morning, and my wife will be gone all weekend at a "passage" for three young ladies. (We have a celebration/ceremony time whenever we acknowledge one of our youth as becoming an adult with adult responsibilities. Those are awesome.) I have six children, and the youngest is still just 4 (cutest little girl in the whole world, I'm sure of it), so I'll have my hands full and I may not be able to get back to this till Monday, though I'll try.

doctrbill,I looked at that link you gave in message 98. Here's a couple quotes I had real problems with:

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the source of the original teachings of the Ebionites, Gnostics, Manicheans, Sabians, Mandeans, Nestorians and Elkasites has been described as the Nazarene philosophy.

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As far as I can tell from what I know of early church history, which is a lot but no one can be exhaustive, this is ridiculous. The gnostics, Manicheans, Sabians, and Nestorians did not hold to any Ebionite doctrine. None of them were law keepers. Nestorius wasn't born until AD 386, and he was a Christian with a doctrine about the divinity of Christ that most of us would never understand the difference between the catholics and him. The Manicheans were a form of gnosticism (speaking very generally), and gnosticism was a Greek religion having nothing to do with keeping the law. In fact, a central theme of most gnostic religions is that Yahweh of Israel was an ignorant, lesser god who shouldn't have created the earth.It is true that the Ebionites claimed their descent from James and that they were law keepers who believed Jesus was human. We know very little about these folks, all of it secondhand. The author's comment that "The inescapable conclusion of the scrupulous student" is that Paul abandoned the religion of Christ is simply nonsense based on any Ebionite history. If you want to argue that Paul disagreed with what's in the Gospels, like some do here, that's one thing, but to take an almost non-existent Ebionite history and talk about "inescapable conclusions" is utter nonsense. Tacking on gnostic and Manichean history to that shows an complete ignorance of history, and adding the Nestorians from three centuries later is simply inexcusable.

Well, they believe Paul's story that he was approved by Peter and James. They state as history that Paul and Peter were together leading the church of Rome for years, Peter longer than Paul.What's certain is that Paul's churches, John's churches, and Peter's churches had absolutely no problems being in fellowship with one another. That makes the church fathers version of history seem pretty likely, and the "apostles on one side, Paul on the other" version pretty unlikely.That there were issues with James is obvious even from the Biblical and church father version of history. That this was a heretic vs. orthodox sort of issue doesn't jive too well with what follows as history.My suspicion is that there was ongoing tension between James and Paul especially, but also between James and those allowing the freedom to the Gentiles that was allowed in the church (freedom from the Law of Moses, I mean). James, however, being an extraordinarily meek, gentle, and righteous man, chose to maintain a unity with those of the twelve that stayed in or near Jerusalem, which meant a tenuous unity with Paul, too.When James, an extremely cool head, was stoned to death, I think that was the motivation for those less motivated to unity to split off. Thus the formation of the Ebionites.Since I am a believer that Jesus Christ still transforms lives and still plans to build a kingdom that will transform the world, I take results as meaning a lot. The Ebionites died out. Those who held to Paul's teachings, which do NOT include the ridiculous no works doctrine of Martin Luther, continued in incredible love and power for several centuries till they merged with the government.Paul's message still has power, even though Martin Luther's, which gets blamed on Paul, is so ineffective. Someone will have to show me that the Ebionites message has the power to create the things Christ spoke of before I'm convinced it's Christ's message.

Pre-Nicene. The comments about unity between Paul's churches and those of the other apostles would be based on Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, & Irenaeus, so AD 110 to 185.