Babbling Speculators, And Their "Advice."

Scholarly sounding eggheads abound who would presume to articulate strange and Unscriptural "understanding of the context" of God's Word.For instance, it is said in some "scholarly" circles that the scecific words of the Bible are not purposefully assigned by God to appear in our current text of Scripture, but that the text is merely a general kind of "guide" to frame our perspectives about the Gospel, being merely the residue of verbal tradition in the Early Church. However, the very words of Scripture dash this speculation.Luke 1:1-3 establishes the opposite of this humanly contrived idea. Luke says, "Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which aremost surely believed amongst us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus."Please note the clear reference to the phrases, "many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration ...it seemed good to me also ... to write..." Here Luke is referring to more people than himself who have "taken in hand," or written as he is doing, to establish the facts. This was not an oral tradition being loosely preserved for mere "guidelines of the Gospel." He mentions the "eyewitnesses," those who gave the first hand testimony of the facts of the appearance of Jesus and the Gospel. The Jewish technique of oral tradition was not in operation here.Matthew 1:1 says, "The book of the generation of Jesus ... " This is not in any sense referring to an "oral tradition," calling itself a "book." Each of the Gospels quotes Isaiah 40:3 regarding John the Baptiser. Revelation 1:19 says, "Write the things which thou hast seen." Chapter 1:2, "Who [John] bare record of the Word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw." None of these authoritative self stipulations come close to speaking of any "general context of the Gospel," but dealt with very carefully given specific information.Hence, for anyone to try to specify that, "The word of the pen carried no more authority than the word of the mouth," is nonsense when exmained with the light of written Scripture.Jesus was an extremist regarding the Written Word of God, using verbatim Scripture to dispose of the temptations of Satan in the Wilderness, for example. Jesus and the Apostles quoted directly from nearly all of the Books of The Torah, and did not just give loose general reference to the "context" of what was written.To dismiss the literal accuracy of Scripture is to make lots of room for high minded and far reaching "visionary" perception of God's Word, thereby making ample opportunity for eggheaded "scholarly" speculation. I think the phrase "higher criticism" is often used for this, where people vote on which parts of Scripture are valid as written. These "scholars" read published journals about each others' opinions and new ideas.Who should be given credibility? The "scholars" who split conceptual hairs within their little universe of contrived interpretations and broad sounding fluff? Or, the self interpreted Word of God within Scripture written by first hand witnesses of Jesus' work? I doubt twenty first century speculators can improve upon anything which was written by Apostles, and than preserved and transmitted by Divine plan.Shelli.