The Canon, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and Q documents

[elpidi26]

Would anyone care to comment on the mysterious 66 chosen books of the Canon or any books falling under the Thread category?

[Mililalil XXIV]

While the Writings of the Bible are all wholly the Word of GOD (even the reports of what the godless said and did are accurate Narrative by the TRUTH HIMSELF), these do not constitute the whole Word of GOD, Which is in fact infinite beyond endless Writings.

These Writings consist of samples of the LORD's Teaching, but in no way claim to capture every detail of that Teaching. The writers did not read therein what to write, but wrote from GOD, Scripture being written through Living Witnesses to the AUTHOR of all Truth.

The idea of our limited collection of Writings in the Bible is foreign to the original mindset of GOD's People. This sort of sifting and settling for one selection of all that GOD inspired is the sign of spiritual rigidness. To believe that no Word of GOD contradicts another, and, therefore, that no extrabiblical Oracle will contradict a Biblical one is reasonable. None the less, the Bible belongs to the Tradition that is largely oral.

Every detail of GOD's Teaching is not in Scripture, thus if something was said in extrabiblical literature that the Bible said not, that is not enough criterion to say that the two are at odds.

There are 73 Writings in the Catholic Bible. There are 66 in the protestant version. Moses plus the 72 Elders with him who were given the Teaching of YHWH, make the sum of 73. 66 does remind me of another number.

Some say that the other Books mentioned in the Old Testament, like the Book of Jasher, are not Divinely Inspired, but some of those Books are called Prophecies by the Books accepted as "Canonical". They are just as surely the Word of GOD.

[elpidi26]

Interesting. What are your views on the Council's decision in Nicea under Constantine? Justified? Yes or No?

[Mililalil XXIV]

I will soon answer your question but thought here to first make a comment about the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible:
In the Catholic Encyclopedia is borne out something I have always taken note of:

"In the sixteenth century the great Council of Trent pronounced Jerome's Vulgate the authentic and authoritative Latin text of the Catholic Church, without, however, thereby implying a preference for it above the original text or above versions in other languages."

Thus it was never the Papal view that the Latin Vulgate serves better for private reading, nor for liturgical use, than the vernacular of those involved. Nor was it ever the intention to obscure the original Texts (as first written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek). In the Latin Rite, Latin texts bearing ancient phrasing from a time long ago when they were set down, served to help determine how things were interpretted long ago - thus even Martin Luther made some of his arguments in Latin, since scholars wanted to avoid seeming like they wanted to give only a modern on words detached from all prior understanding.

[Mililalil XXIV]

elpidi26,
in order to not put off your question to the future, I begin my answer to the Nicene question now;
in order to do this matter justice, I shall add to it post by post, until my answer is complete - I have been short on sleeping time for a while.

The First Council of Nicea was called forth not to address the idea of a list of Scriptures, but to deal with what things were causing schisms in the Church. [That the debates going on were a shock to Constantine is evidence that either he had had no prior intimacy with the Christian Community, or that there had been no such thing as the Arian controversy until just prior to the Council, or both of the above.]

Because this Council was an Ecclesiastical Court for the judging of Orthodoxy over contentions, there were preliminary steps taken to the whole event. Asd in any court of law, evidence had to be gathered, selected for acceptance, then set under limits, in order to limit the breadth of counter-arguments to a single line of discussion, according to an orderly scheme, with a certain goal in mind at which Judgement should rest. Every Cleric had his own personal list of Scriptures he trusted with some degree of familiarity. Thus, in order for all present to be able to enter dialogue, there had to be a consensus - only for the procedings at hand - as to the limit of textual evidence to be brought into the discussion: and this was where they agreed only on certain Texts, because all of their personal lists overlapped here and there. With this early established, no one could bring in other binding documents under the same category as those agreed upon in the preliminary stage. This would mean that these could be used no matter who later disagreed, conversely, and, thus, these Scriptures would serve as a gage against abandoning one argument for a different world of argument.

This had nothing whatsoever to do with how anyone personally felt about a number of Writings they could not all agree upon (including the heretics). Some Books that had earlier been contested by some had undergone enough investigation for their veracity to no longer be in doubt by any present now. But others, never earlier doubted, and thus their provinance not re-evaluated for a while, were left out of the procedings on such short notice, since an investigation needs to be thorough to be valuable.

One of the Priests present at the Council was Athanasios, who has often been misrepresented as agreeing with a limited collection of Scriptures, but agreed personally with no such thing. The See he rose to be Bishop over - that of Alexandria - was where Arius first openly blasphemed JESUS, leading up to one of the schisms dealt with at the Council. To his Diocese, Athanasios addressed Festal Epistles, one of which is often cited as an authoritative Canon List.

In the Canons confirmed by the Catholic Council of Bishops at Nicea, there was no limit put on what is and what is not recognized as Divine Writ.

The Syrian Bishops who in their own Dioceses later showed no sign of having adopted the Apocalypse of John, were present at that Council. The Jerusalem Church - also active in that Council - has been shown to have retained the Apocalypse of Peter among the canonical Readings of the Mass for at least another century or more, after the Council. All throughout the centuries following, up until the Council of Trent, various Fathers of the Church quoted numerous "extrabiblical" works as on par with the Biblical.

In my follow-up post, I will further address the very interesting matter of Athanasius.

[elpidi26]

So who would you agree with? Athanasius with his "homoousias," of the the substance of the father or Arius with his "homoiousias," like the substance of the father? Are mainstream Catholics and Protestants correct or the Coptics?