| roger.pearse@googlemail.com 2008-01-30, 6:56 pm |
| On Jan 30, 2:10=A0am, Clark F Morris <cfmpub...@ns.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> I was just reviewing a posting on the topic by Chuck Stevens the other
> day where he discussed the differences between the various branches of
> the Christian Church and I believe it contradicts your position. =A0He
> cited the Syriac Church's canon and their preference for a Hebrew
> basis. =A0
This is actually a separate discussion to the general subject of "was
the NT invented in the 4th century", and I don't want to confuse that,
to which the answer is an unequivocal "no, don't be silly".
But I think there is confusion here. The extent of it was not
*agreed* (one could argue that it isn't agreed even today, given that
the RCC have the OT apocrypha and no-one else does); but it was not a
subject of controversy. By this I mean that the arguments of the 4th
century are about Arianism, not about the canon, and that party lines
form around the former, not the latter. No-one seems to be able to
make any definitive decision, and it seems as if quietly people end up
with a canon that includes everything that anyone has any real grounds
to suppose apostolic. The truth is that no-one actually knows how it
all came into being (as far as I can tell). People mutter about
councils, but all the councils that discuss canon have no ecumenical
authority, and merely issue a list of genuine books (indicating only
that they were being pestered with fakes, of the kind that St.
Augustine somewhere remniscences about finding in the bookstalls on
the quays of Carthage, rather than any decision process).
The canon of the Syriac world is a version of that prevalent in the
Gr east, with the same uncertainties about the Catholic epistles
and Revelation. The special issues of whether the Peshitta should
stay closer to a Jewish targum or the Gr, with consequent
retranslations (e.g. by Philoxenus) are, of course, part of the
history of the development of the Syriac NT, but not really the point
here.
Sorry, long answer to a brief point, but I don't want to write an
essay on the development of the canon, but merely to rebut common
canards.
All the best,
Roger Pearse
|