What is the one true Church?
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Illuminator
Well-Known Member
In order for Protestants to exercise the principles of sola Scriptura they first have to accept the antecedent premise of what books constitute Scripture — in particular, the New Testament books. This is not as simple as it may seem at first, accustomed as we are to accepting without question the New Testament as we have it today.
Although indeed there was, roughly speaking, a broad consensus in the early Church as to what books were scriptural, there still existed enough divergence of opinion to reasonably cast doubt on the Protestant concepts of the Bible’s self-authenticating nature, and the self-interpreting maxim of perspicuity.
The following overview of the history of acceptance of biblical books (and also non-biblical ones as Scripture) will help the reader to avoid over-generalizing or over-simplifying the complicated historical process by which we obtained our present Bible.
A Visual Diagram of the History of the New Testament Canon
(not a accepted by Grailhunter even though the sources for the diagram are all Protestant, he escapes facts with word games)
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Grailhunter
Well-Known Member
You put a lot of work in that....sorry.
I do not mind debating.....LOL....I love debating....until I have to repeat myself.
Like I have said, I do not have any stress in my ministry.
I do not care if you believe me....I give you the truth and from there it is between you and God.
But still on the topic of sola scriptura, it is a flawed way to approach the deeper understandings of Christianity. Christianity learned so much after the close of the biblical era.
Besides it is misnomer, the Protesants do not hold to sola scriptura, there are things they believe that are important to them and are correct, but they are not in the scriptures and there are things in the scriptures that they nor anyone else follow. I should say very few follow.
Now here is another truth for you. When you are battling with false beliefs, besides the non-biblical words and phrases that they con Christianity with. Then they play social aspect of it....Well everybody else believes it! Well that only means the deception has been highly effective......Its doctrine! You are not a Christian if you do not believe in doctrine! LOL And that is exactly how I react....I laugh.
The insistence of believing in doctrine is paramount to both the Catholic Church and the Protestant denominations.
In motion the term doctrine means...This is what we want you to believe.....knowing what I know I laugh at it.
The term doctrine is so imporant that just about every Bible uses that term.....but it is nowhere in the scriptures. You will read it in the Bible.....but you will not find it in any biblical text. The Greek word used means teachings....referring to the teaching of Christ or the Apostles....not the interpretaion and redefining of those in history.
After the biblical era doctrine usually refers to the non-biblical teaching of man....somebody.....and some of it is honest speculation or interpretation that someone wanted to set in stone.....so they come up with catchy terms and phrases and lock it into "doctrine" as to persuade people to believe it. Someone wanted people to believe in the perpetual virginity of Miriam....so they come up with the non-biblical term Virgin Mary....she was not a virgin after she conceived or delivered Yeshua and Mary is not her name.. Someone driving the whole sex and women are dirty, nasty, and sinful thing came up with the doctrine of Original Sin....Contagous sin through sex...Don't touch a woman, you will make sin...you will make a sinful baby! If it dies it goes to hell! Horse manure! The Trinity, the one God formula ...LOL....definitely a religious political doctrine designed to shutdown all the things they could not agree on. I have about a hundred scriptures that prove the one God formula wrong. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Docrtrines are man formulated beliefs that is why the words or phrases are not actually in the scriptures.....I guess God did not do a good enough job? Well He did do a good enough job and He did not use those words and phrases....because those words and phrases twist and confuse the words and meanings in the scriptures.
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The word "doctrine" is the English equivalent of the Greek didache or didaskalia. While this word literally means instruction or teaching, and for all intents and purposes it means the AUTHORITATIVE teaching of Christ and the apostles. Therefore it is perfectly valid. Is there a body of Christian doctrines? Absolutely.
Grailhunter
Well-Known Member
I know the Greek.
The word doctrine is not the English equivalent of the Greek didache or didaskalia. These words mean teachings so it they were honest they would not use the word doctrine, instead they would say these are the teaching of so and so. The word doctine trys to tack a belief to the scriptures.
The term doctrine does not mean the authoritve teaching of Christ and the Apostles. It mean the interpretations of people that want to be authoritive and want you to believe what they believe. And there is a body of man-made beliefs, the question is, are you going to fall for it.
This is simply a nonsensical response, since all genuine Christians understand that Bible doctrines are not "man-made beliefs". That is just your spin on this.
Grailhunter
Well-Known Member
This is simply a nonsensical response??? Ok, here it comes!
That is the problem, simple but you cannot understand it.
The English word canon comes from the Greek κανών kanōn, meaning "rule" or "measuring stick". The use of the word "canon" to refer to a set of religious scriptures was first used by David Ruhnken, in the 18th century. This word and meaning is not in the scriptures.
Unlike this definition the words in the scriptures means teaching(s). Which are pointed to Christ.
But then for example, the doctrine of Original Sin it pointed to Augustine's interpretation of scriptures and those that have attempted to set it as a standard ....those attempting this are not Christ or the Apostles or scriptures....they are someone's opionion that they want to impose on others. The Bible is already set as the standard....we do not need to take the option of a crazy man over the scriptures....and Augustine was certifiably....nuts and a documented hater of women.
The meaning and ramifications of the doctrine of Orignial Sin are rather involved and not reflected in the scriptures.
Beware! Those dirty nastty women have sin coming out of them! Don't get married and have sex with those nasty women, you will create sin all over the place! And if the babies die they will go to hell! Woe is me! It is all a level of ignorance I have to endure but I commend myself for the patience it requres for dealing with dirt level stupid.
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"My preference is the Holy Ghost churches, not because their theology is any more accurate then anyone else’s, but it is the spirit of the church and the interaction with the Holy Spirit as well as the sincere worship of God." Grailhunter #2615
Thank you. I agree the above is what you said,verbatim .
Thank you. I agree the above is what you said,verbatim .
Augustin56
Well-Known Member
You're right! I misread your quote! I've deleted it now!
But I have another question. When did these supposed "Holy Ghost" churches start? And by whom? I see no mention of them in the Early Church or from the Early Church Fathers. Just asking...
Grailhunter
Well-Known Member
The new kids on the block. Every church out there wants to place their start with Christ and the Apostles and Pentacost is theme or style for the holiness churches. But the only church that can point to its age with distinction in Christ is the Coptic Orthodox Church.....40 AD.
Glad Tidings or Pentacostal churches are about a hundread years old and have ties to John Wesley's Methodist society and was part of the Great Awakenings movement which had its starts in the American Colonies around 1729.
The word "canon" may not be in Scripture, but the meaning certainly is. Christ Himself confirmed the canon of the Old Testament (the Tanakh). Here is what He said: And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in [1] the Law of Moses, and in [2] the Prophets, and in [3] the Psalms, concerning me. (Luke 24:44)
Jesus said that every book in the OT spoke of Him and the prophecies which would be fulfilled through Him. Now that is the canon of the Hebrew Tanakh. So what we have is this:
TORAH = the Law of Moses = 5 books
NEVIIM = the Prophets = 8 books
KETUVIM = the Psalms (or Writings) = 11 books
TOTAL = 24 books = 39 books in the Protest Old Testament.
Christ EXCLUDED the Hebrew Apocrypha altogether. So to speak of a bibllical canon is totally legitimate and the canon of the NT was shown in the 2nd century Muratori Canon.
Grailhunter
Well-Known Member
First off I was speaking of the New Testament. LOL
Secondly the old Testament was not in books....they did not even know what a book was.
The Hebrew scriptures existed in scrolls.
There is no discussion in the Old or New Testament about chosing texts to gather.
And by the time of the Christ there were missing scrolls and they list them.
I am thinking it must be a major talent that I take for granted to keep history in order.
The meaning of the word canon is not in the scriptures because it is a modern term, and they were not choosing favored texts for standardization. The New Testament is not discussing choosing favored texts, because it is being written. And the New Testament is not going to discuss choosing favored Old Testament texts because that was already set in stone long before the New Testament.
At that time what we call the New Testament scriptures were in the process of being written and were letters to congregations and epistles.....Nowhere are you going to find Paul saying, Here I write scripture and send it to you. He is sending letters to different congregations in different regions. Centuries later they decide to make copies of these and centuries later decided to gather them up and then they came to be called scriptures.
By the time of the Ecumenical Councils the favored texts were chosen but no one is calling them a canon. When Emperor Constitine ordered 50 bound Bibles to be produced (the first bound Bibles) the favored New Testament texts were hand written and illistrated in bound books....But only the New Testament and none of it was called a canon.
Modern words have meanings, imagery, and concepts that are modern and do not fit in the past. The meaning, the imagery, and concepts are not in their heads. If you said it to them they would not know what you were talking about.
Something as simple as a road. You ask someone in the 1st century to describe a road and then ask your neigbhor to describe a road. What they discribe will be very different. You talk to a 1st century person about street lights and stop lights and the center line in the road, freeways and State Troopers....he is not going to know what you are talking about. And there are terms that go along with all this, so if you tell a 1st century person to be careful with the stop lights because the State Troopers are watching on the overpasses.....he is just going to look at you like you have three heads and think you are wierd.
You have to keep it all straight when you are discussing the progression of Christianity through history.
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Augustin56
Well-Known Member
I believe that history shows that the Coptics were and still are a part of the Catholic Church. There is a group of Coptics that splintered off and went with the Orthodox, more or less. The Catholic Church is the original and oldest.
Grailhunter
Well-Known Member
Well they won't shoot each other, put they have a checkered past and they have not excommunicated each other in modern times.
Both sides have a list of differences but recognize each other's Popes.
The current Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church is Pope Tawadros II, who was selected as the 118th pope on November 18, 2012.
Last I checked the Catholic Church is number 3 on the list of oldest churches.
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Illuminator
Well-Known Member
Matthew 23:35 that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.
It is always sad when prots make such gratuitous references without any foundation. Zechariah was not the last prophet nor the last martyr. It is alleged that his is the last murder in the Tanach the current Jewish collection of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Since Zechariah's murder is documented in 2Chronicles which comes last in the listing of the Ketubim (The Writings) the last of the three parts the Hebrew Bible (Law, Prophets, Writings).
But in fact, there is no evidence that the current ordering of the Tanach was used at the time of Christ. There are several different orderings for the books of the Tanach from that period. It is not until the end of the 2nd Century AD that Chronicles is placed last and there are several medieval Jewish Bibles where it is not the last book.
It is more likely that Jesus used Abel and Zechariah as examples of innocent victims killed out of religious jealousy. They are excellent OT types of Jesus himself in that regard. They are the only two murders in which the spilled blood was said to cry out to Heaven for vengeance. That is probably why Jesus mentioned them.
Jesus makes no mention of the Bible in this verse per se. There is no reason to think Jesus was referring to the Biblical Canon here.
The terms, "the Law and the Prophets" are used several times in the NT, but AT NO TIME WAS A LIST EVER GIVEN. And the term "The Writings" (Ketubim) is NEVER used.
Hence, there is no reason to think that the TaNaCH (Torah, Nevi'im, Ketubim) even existed at that time in any form that we would recognize.
According to experts such a Dr. James Vanderkam, the Writings were not completed until well in to the 2nd Century. It is this section of the Bible (NOT in the Law and the Prophets) that Sirach and 2Maccabees would be included. At 70 AD, the listing of the Psalms had not been standardized above Psalm 89. They had still not determined whether the long or short form of Hebrew Jeremiah would be in the Jewish Canon.
Do you also claim that Jesus and the Apostles are referring to Psalms (90 and up) ?
That were not standardized by the Jews for 37 years after the Resurrection?
So all of your quotations are beside the point. They prove nothing.
What are the books included in the "law, the prophets, and the Psalms"? Origen tells us (cf. Eusebius, History 6:25), that the Jews, in his day, considered the Epistle of Jeremiah to be canonical as part of the one book of Jeremiah. Do you?
How do you know what exactly make up the "law, the prophets, and the Psalms"? Jude says "Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied" and then quotes from the Book of Enoch. Why don't you regard this as part of the "prophets"?
Illuminator
Well-Known Member
Muratorian Canon (c.190)
Excludes Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter
Includes The Apocalypse of Peter, Wisdom of Solomon
The Muratori Canon was rejected by the Church for the above reasons.
What is the Hebrew Apocrypha?
The Jewish apocrypha (Hebrew: הספרים החיצונים, romanized: HaSefarim haChitzonim, lit. 'the outer books') are books written in large part by Jews, especially during the Second Temple period, not accepted as sacred manuscripts when the Hebrew Bible was canonized. Some of these books are considered sacred by most Christians, and are included in their versions of the Old Testament. The Jewish apocrypha is distinctive from the New Testament apocrypha and biblical apocrypha as it is the only one of these collections which works within a Jewish theological framework.[1]
source
The Protestants attempt to defend their rejection of the deuterocanonicals on the ground that the early Jews rejected them. However, the Jewish councils that rejected them (e.g., School of Javneh (also called “Jamnia” in 90 – 100 A.D.) were the same councils that rejected the entire New Testatment canon. Thus, Protestants who reject the Catholic Bible are following a Jewish council that rejected Christ and the Revelation of the New Testament.
DEUTEROCANONICAL BOOKS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT - Scripture Catholic
Scripture Matt. 2:16 – Herod’s decree of slaying innocent children was prophesied in Wis. 11:7 – slaying the holy innocents. Matt. 6:19-20 – Jesus’ statement about laying up for yourselves treasure in heaven follows Sirach 29:11 – lay up your treasure. Matt.. 7:12 – Jesus’ golden rule “do unto...
www.scripturecatholic.com
They prove what needed to be proved. The plain statements of Christ trump your specious opposition to the canon of Scripture. When Christ speaks of "the Law and the Prophets" He simply divides the Hebrew Tanakh into two division -- the first 5 books and the remaining 19 books. Indeed all the OT writers are deemed to be prophets (men who wrote by divine inspiration). But the Lord gave us the proper three divisions, and any description of the Tanakh as Torah, Neviim, and Ketubim. And this is confirmed in the Jewish Encyclopedia. The Lord called the Ketuvim "the Psalms" since that is the first book in this group (also called Hagiographa or Holy Writings).
"The Jewish canon comprises twenty-four books, the five of the Pentateuch, eight books of the Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Minor Prophets), and eleven Hagiographa (Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, and Chronicles). Samuel and Kings form but a single book each, as is seen in Aquila's Greek translation."
All the apocryphal books have been excluded. And the Protestant bibles simply split several of the Hebrew writings (Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and the Minor Prophets) to add up to 39 books. But they also change the order.
Illuminator
Well-Known Member
You don't get it. Jews rejected the the Gospel message and the New Testament and have no business telling Christians what books belong in the Bible. Not only that, there is no evidence a 66 book canon was used in any church anywhere on the planet before the 14th century.
The group of Jews which met at Javneh became the dominant group for later Jewish history, and today most Jews accept the canon of Javneh. However, some Jews, such as those from Ethiopia, follow a different canon which is identical to the Catholic Old Testament and includes the seven deuterocanonical books (cf. Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 6, p. 1147).
Needless to say, the Church disregarded the results of Javneh.
First, a Jewish council after the time of Christ is not binding on the followers of Christ.
Second, Javneh rejected precisely those documents which are foundational for the Christian Church — the Gospels and the other documents of the New Testament.
Third, by rejecting the deuterocanonicals, Javneh rejected books which had been used by Jesus and the apostles and which were in the edition of the Bible that the apostles used in everyday life — the Septuagint.
The Christian acceptance of the deuterocanonical books was logical because the deuterocanonicals were also included in the Septuagint, the Greek edition of the Old Testament which the apostles used to evangelize the world. Two thirds of the Old Testament quotations in the New are from the Septuagint. Yet the apostles nowhere told their converts to avoid seven books of it. Like the Jews all over the world who used the Septuagint, the early Christians accepted the books they found in it. They knew that the apostles would not mislead them and endanger their souls by putting false scriptures in their hands — especially without warning them against them.
But the apostles did not merely place the deuterocanonicals in the hands of their converts as part of the Septuagint. They regularly referred to the deuterocanonicals in their writings. For example, Hebrews 11 encourages us to emulate the heroes of the Old Testament and in the Old Testament “Women received their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they might rise again to a better life” (Heb. 11:35).
There are a couple of examples of women receiving back their dead by resurrection in the Protestant Old Testament. You can find Elijah raising the son of the widow of Zarepheth in 1 Kings 17, and you can find his successor Elisha raising the son of the Shunammite woman in 2 Kings 4,
but one thing you can never find — anywhere in the Protestant Old Testament, from front to back, from Genesis to Malachi — is someone being tortured and refusing to accept release for the sake of a better resurrection. If you want to find that, you have to look in the Catholic Old Testament — in the deuterocanonical books Martin Luther (opinion of ONE person) cut out of his Bible.
This is but one example... of the New Testaments’ references to the deuterocanonicals. The early Christians were thus fully justified in recognizing these books as Scripture, for the apostles not only set them in their hands as part of the Bible they used to evangelize the world, but also referred to them in the New Testament itself, citing the things they record as examples to be emulated...
...The early acceptance of the deuterocanonicals was carried down through Church history. The Protestant patristics scholar J. N. D. Kelly writes:
“It should be observed that the Old Testament thus admitted as authoritative in the Church was somewhat bulkier and more comprehensive than the [Protestant Old Testament] . . . It always included, though with varying degrees of recognition, the so-called Apocrypha or deutero-canonical books. The reason for this is that the Old Testament which passed in the first instance into the hands of Christians was . . . the Greek translation known as the Septuagint. . . . most of the Scriptural quotations found in the New Testament are based upon it rather than the Hebrew.. . . In the first two centuries . . . the Church seems to have accept all, or most of, these additional books as inspired and to have treated them without question as Scripture. Quotations from Wisdom, for example, occur in 1 Clement and Barnabas. . . Polycarp cites Tobit, and the Didache [cites] Ecclesiasticus. Irenaeus refers to Wisdom, the History of Susannah, Bel and the Dragon [i.e., the deuterocanonical portions of Daniel], and Baruch. The use made of the Apocrypha by Tertullian, Hippolytus, Cyprian and Clement of Alexandria is too frequent for detailed references to be necessary” (Early Christian Doctrines, 53-54).
The recognition of the deuterocanonicals as part of the Bible that was given by individual Fathers was also given by the Fathers as a whole, when they met in Church councils. The results of councils are especially useful because they do not represent the views of only one person, but what was accepted by the Church leaders of whole regions.
Illuminator
Well-Known Member
The canon of Scripture, Old and New Testament, was finally settled at the Council of Rome in 382, under the authority of Pope Damasus I. It was soon reaffirmed on numerous occasions. The same canon was affirmed at the Council of Hippo in 393 and at the Council of Carthage in 397. In 405 Pope Innocent I reaffirmed the canon in a letter to Bishop Exuperius of Toulouse. Another council at Carthage, this one in the year 419, reaffirmed the canon of its predecessors and asked Pope Boniface to “confirm this canon, for these are the things which we have received from our fathers to be read in church.” All of these canons were identical to the modern Catholic Bible, and all of them included the deuterocanonicals.
This exact same canon was implicitly affirmed at the seventh ecumenical council, II Nicaea (787), which approved the results of the 419 Council of Carthage, and explicitly reaffirmed at the ecumenical councils of Florence (1442), Trent (1546), Vatican I (1870), and Vatican II (1965).
The Reformation Attack on the Bible
The deuterocanonicals teach Catholic doctrine, and for this reason they were taken out of the Old Testament by Martin Luther and placed in an appendix without page numbers. Luther also took out four New Testament books — Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation — and put them in an appendix without page numbers as well. These were later put back into the New Testament by other Protestants, but the seven books of the Old Testament were left out. Following Luther they had been left in an appendix to the Old Testament, and eventually the appendix itself was dropped (in 1827 by the British and Foreign Bible Society), which is why these books are not found at all in most contemporary Protestant Bibles, though they were appendicized in classic Protestant translations such as the King James Version.
The reason they were dropped is that they teach Catholic doctrines that the Protestant Reformers chose to reject. Earlier we cited an example where the book of Hebrews holds up to us an Old Testament example from 2 Maccabees 7, an incident not to be found anywhere in the Protestant Bible, but easily discoverable in the Catholic Bible. Why would Martin Luther cut out this book when it is so clearly held up as an example to us by the New Testament? Simple: A few chapters later it endorses the practice of praying for the dead so that they may be freed from the consequences of their sins (2 Macc. 12:41-45); in other words, the Catholic doctrine of purgatory. Since Luther (influenced by bipolar psychosis) chose to reject the historic Christian teaching of purgatory (which dates from before the time of Christ, as 2 Maccabees shows), he had to remove that book from the Bible and appendicize it. (Notice that he also removed Hebrews, the book which cites 2 Maccabees, to an appendix as well.)
To justify this rejection of books that had been in the Bible since before the days of the apostles (for the Septuagint was written before the apostles), the early Protestants cited as their chief reason the fact that the Jews of their day did not honor these books, going back to the council of Javneh in A.D. 90. But the Reformers were aware of only European Jews; they were unaware of African Jews, such as the Ethiopian Jews who accept the deuterocanonicals as part of their Bible. They glossed over the references to the deuterocanonicals in the New Testament, as well as its use of the Septuagint. They ignored the fact that there were multiple canons of the Jewish Scriptures circulating in first century, appealing to a post-Christian Jewish council which has no authority over Christians as evidence that “The Jews don’t except these books.” In short, they went to enormous lengths to rationalize their rejection of these books of the Bible.
Rewriting Church History
In later years they even began to propagate the myth that the Catholic Church “added” these seven books to the Bible at the Council of Trent!
source
This exact same canon was implicitly affirmed at the seventh ecumenical council, II Nicaea (787), which approved the results of the 419 Council of Carthage, and explicitly reaffirmed at the ecumenical councils of Florence (1442), Trent (1546), Vatican I (1870), and Vatican II (1965).
The Reformation Attack on the Bible
The deuterocanonicals teach Catholic doctrine, and for this reason they were taken out of the Old Testament by Martin Luther and placed in an appendix without page numbers. Luther also took out four New Testament books — Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation — and put them in an appendix without page numbers as well. These were later put back into the New Testament by other Protestants, but the seven books of the Old Testament were left out. Following Luther they had been left in an appendix to the Old Testament, and eventually the appendix itself was dropped (in 1827 by the British and Foreign Bible Society), which is why these books are not found at all in most contemporary Protestant Bibles, though they were appendicized in classic Protestant translations such as the King James Version.
The reason they were dropped is that they teach Catholic doctrines that the Protestant Reformers chose to reject. Earlier we cited an example where the book of Hebrews holds up to us an Old Testament example from 2 Maccabees 7, an incident not to be found anywhere in the Protestant Bible, but easily discoverable in the Catholic Bible. Why would Martin Luther cut out this book when it is so clearly held up as an example to us by the New Testament? Simple: A few chapters later it endorses the practice of praying for the dead so that they may be freed from the consequences of their sins (2 Macc. 12:41-45); in other words, the Catholic doctrine of purgatory. Since Luther (influenced by bipolar psychosis) chose to reject the historic Christian teaching of purgatory (which dates from before the time of Christ, as 2 Maccabees shows), he had to remove that book from the Bible and appendicize it. (Notice that he also removed Hebrews, the book which cites 2 Maccabees, to an appendix as well.)
To justify this rejection of books that had been in the Bible since before the days of the apostles (for the Septuagint was written before the apostles), the early Protestants cited as their chief reason the fact that the Jews of their day did not honor these books, going back to the council of Javneh in A.D. 90. But the Reformers were aware of only European Jews; they were unaware of African Jews, such as the Ethiopian Jews who accept the deuterocanonicals as part of their Bible. They glossed over the references to the deuterocanonicals in the New Testament, as well as its use of the Septuagint. They ignored the fact that there were multiple canons of the Jewish Scriptures circulating in first century, appealing to a post-Christian Jewish council which has no authority over Christians as evidence that “The Jews don’t except these books.” In short, they went to enormous lengths to rationalize their rejection of these books of the Bible.
Rewriting Church History
In later years they even began to propagate the myth that the Catholic Church “added” these seven books to the Bible at the Council of Trent!
source
Jim B
Well-Known Member
Jesus was a Jew as were all the apostles (including Paul), all the first members of the church -- the gentiles came in later -- and all the authors of the Bible (with the sole exception of Luke). The early Jews were thus fully justified in recognizing these Bible "books" as Scripture, for the Jewish apostles not only set them in their hands as part of the Bible they used to evangelize the world, but also referred to them in the New Testament itself, citing the things they record as examples to be emulated..."
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