Very true for you (and everybody else in the modern period). As I pointed out in the original quote it was common for this period. They apparently had a different idea on what makes something legitimate.
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Yes. It does. [not in contrast to his âjusticeâ actually as you have in the quote above - but in contrast to âwrathâ. If weâre going to change the contest to âjusticeâ and âmercyâ, then thatâs different and I would argue that those two can be ultimately seen as the same thing.]
John tells us specifically that âGod is Love.â There is no corresponding verse (I donât think) that tell us âGod is wrath.â Paul writes an entire ode to âLoveâ in his letter to the Corinthians ⌠âwrathâ isnât included among the top three contenders: faith, hope, and love. In fact wrath doesnât even manage net one mention at all in the entire chapter! Pretty odd for something that is supposed to be âco-equalâ in importance with love. Wrath does get its share of mentions in scriptures, of course. Unlike love, it isnât held up as a good thing. But we are warned against it ⌠that anger does not lead to righteousness. (James 1:20). I canât think of any corresponding warnings against love. We are always called towards love, and we are also told to be perfect, as our Father in Heaven is perfect. If wrath can be said to be the basis of Godâs identity in equal symmetry with love, then there should be as many exhortations in the bible for us to become more wrathful. There arenât. But there are lots of exhortations for us to become more loving.
Good question. In my opinion, James 2:13 speaks to the question:
mercy triumphs over judgment.
Also, I John 4:
God is love.
It is of course a mystery to our frail human understanding how God can be both love and holiness. But to contend that Godâs holiness is primary and His love is secondary does not seem to comport with the Scriptures I just quoted.
I am empathetic with your stance, as I once held it firmly. But now I am re-evaluating.
You do not seem to be grasping the cultural differences in play, Daniel. You are asking us to apply the 2021 standards of plagiarism and authorship to documents from a long ago time and place. I will not reiterate what others have stated in this thread; instead I will simply encourage you to re-read some of the earlier posts in this thread on the pseudepigrapha.
Best,
Chris
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Justice is not incompatible with love, of course, and it is Godâs wrath we are saved from and into his love. And there is the well known verse,
But then someone might respondâŚ
Sure, the Bible says âGod is loveâ⌠but that is metaphorical, and must be understood and interpreted through the âhermeneutic of jealousy,â i.e., interpreted through the more numerous foundational and explicit scriptures that repeatedly affirm Godâs anger and jealousy⌠for instance, that so clearly affirm that "the LORD your God in your midst is a jealous Godâlest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth., or âThe LORD is a jealous and avenging God; the LORD is avenging and wrathful; the LORD takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.â These demonstrate the true and foundational character of God - the lens through which all the metaphorical descriptions of his being loving must be interpreted.
See how this works? As soon as we start using the Thomas Jefferson method of biblical interpretation, essentially negating the obvious and pervasive message of some Scriptures âin light ofâ others⌠i donât see any way that this doesnât open the floodgates in other directions as well, and it works just as easily to reinterpret or negate those scriptures that emphasize Godâs mercy in light of the âtruerâ portrait of Godâs jealousy and anger. This is essentially what I perceive Fred Phelps and others of similar approach to be doing.
Especially when the Scriptures we are jettisoning or otherwise reinterpreting beyond all recognition so conveniently lead us to a portrait of God which just happens to fit so well with our personal preferences.
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Fair enough. And thanks for that gentle reminder that this is what the OP is about after all âŚ
Yes, they might. And if they did they would be wrong. I donât think there is the infinite elasticity in biblical criticism that is imputed to it by way of caricature from its detractors. There are many points - important points - that can be and are debated. But among them are not things like âup is down, down is up ⌠there is no truth ⌠Jesus did not exist.â Yes, we can find people who defend such extreme nonsense, but I suspect that none of these things could find much foothold among mainstream - even secular mainstream biblical scholarship. While Iâm not any scholar of biblical studies, Iâll wager that the most controversial things they do is fail to register any interest in such spiritual or pastoral questions, opting instead to dispute authorship, datings of various books, and other scholarly minutia that PhDs are made of.
Among those of us Christ-centered believers who wish to faithfully read, understand, and become doers as a result; there is no question of which testiment sheds light on the other. We understand the old in light of the new (and understand all of both in the light of Christ), not vice versa. The old may help give us insights (context) so as to better understand the new testament world, but when Christians want to know what God is like, there is no equality between all these things. We start with Christ. In his light the pages of the new testament yield their testimonial treasures to us. And in all those lights we properly then can situate and assess and understand older testimonies from Moses and the prophets. It may be instructive that Peter was keen to âbuild sheltersâ for Jesus, Elijah, and Moses - all looming really large and important to his vision at the moment. But as it all faded, there was only one of those three that received the booming affirmation from above, and only one remaining to be seen when Peter comes back to his senses.
We who want to glean some insight from this can argue all day whether that transfiguration was literal or metaphorical; and in any case, what lesson are we to glean from it. Some might say itâs another affirmation from on high that Jesus is the one. Others might say itâs an affirmation that Moses and Elijah were and remain pretty important guys too. Still others might want to make much of which disciples were allowed to be with Jesus to witness this. But one thing nobody can credibly get from this story would be this: that Elijah and Moses were more important than Jesus and that Peter & Co. should give their words higher priority than Jesus. Biblical criticism simply cannot do that - it cannot be the universally dissolving acid of any/all scripturally sourced conviction that your caricature wants it to be.
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You are absolutely right about that. And there is no escaping it - I must plead guilty. How can one not have a preference for hope over despair? For love over hatred? For mercy over judgment? For life over death? If Christ and his followers are wrong about all these things and God is not the God of hope and life, then our best thought then would probably be to desperately hope there is no God at all. Better nothingness than an eternally wrathful monster.
But that is no proof that the latter is not the case. And it is a demonstration that I bring that very motivated bias to the text I read. I can only say that life taken as a whole doesnât strike me as the creation of an wrathful monster. I really like Emersonâs way of putting it as he addressed the Harvard school of divinity in 1838. Hardly could be considered much of a friend for trinitarian Christians, but that doesnât make his criticism of the fledgling American church of his time any less true - and perhaps still true now.
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Daniel, what motivated the alleged forgerers to forge the NT? Are you clear on that?
This question is for everyone interested. See, I donât know what was in it for these guys. Lots a money? Fame? The thrill of getting away with something? I donât get it.
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If there is one thing scriptures seem to excel in ⌠it is in giving those of us who feel we have strong - even iron-clad arguments; second thoughts about our neatly wrapped up conclusions.
Having just read Job 34 this morning, I was struck by how much of it resonated with my own interactions here. A possible reason for yet more smugness on my part, until I remember that what I read was none other than the words of the young Elihu, the fourth and final one in Jobâs lineup of comforting friends. Not that one should think that we can just turn everything said by Jobâs friends on its head and think that we thereby must arrive at truth. Itâs never that simple.
But it does remind me that even if one has all the facts and scriptures on their side (a concession Daniel does not grant here Iâm sure!) ⌠such âcorrectnessâ, even if it were indeed that, remains insufficient to show that the sayer is right before God as he says it.
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If this were true then the proper response is to expunge the Pastorals from the canon as a mistake or dispense with Christianity if you see it as a deal breaker. Ignoring or poorly explaining away the obvious mountain of evidence against Pauline authorship of the Pastorals is certainly not the rational thing to do.
Let me also say that if the Pastorals are second century forgeries I tend to agree with you somewhat. They do not belong in the canon by my estimation. Forgeries were rejected in the ancient world as well and the church constantly rejected spurious works. If later Christians thought Paul did not write these they wouldnât have made the canon. Isnât that how Hebrews snuck in? The opposite process.
At any rate, there are alternatives. If the Pastorals were finalized close after Paulâs death in a Pauline community by an authoritative follower that changes things. If some of Paulâs own genuine writings are continued and edited by said author and adapted to a new time, and the original community they were utilized in may have actually understood what was happening since they know Paul died, then there is no deception anywhere. The author instead, inspired by God, stood in the tradition of Paul, editing and finalizing a sort of capstone for the Pauline corpus. Where is your charge of deception in that scenario? Many critical scholars are perfectly find with the Pastorals bridging the Gap between Paul and the 2nd century (written ca. 80). That later generations did not know Paul is not responsible for the final product and redaction does not imply any original deception.
Marshall writes, âAgain, it is permissible for the work of an author who has died to be posthumously edited and published for future generations, although in the modern world it would be normal foe some indication of this fact to be made. . . . It is not too great a step to a situation in which somebody close to a dead person continued to write as (they thought that) he would have done. An incomplete work could be completed by someone else . . âŚâ pg 84 Pastoral Epistles
If Genuine Pauline material is being adapted, this means the PE author did not necessarily sit there and think up a bunch of fictitious facts about Paul. It is true some of the material in the Pastorals does look like genuine Pauline material that is being fused with post-Pauline expansion and interpretation. This is different than being a middle of the second century forgery in Paulâs name. Of course, we may still have the chronological difficulties.
It seems you were advocating âwrestling with scriptureâ and you hopefully have do so on the case of rape, mass murder, genocide, ethnic cleansing, slavery, misogyny, God appearing petty and primitive and so on throughout the Old Testament.
Oddly enough, I feel a sort of reductio ad absurdum type arguments may be needed here. Taking a play out of the conservative rule-book. If God is sovereign and we have to accept these moral atrocities and wrestle with them, who are we to question God on pseudonymous authorship? The pot who understands things imperfectly canât judge the potter? If God chose, in his great divine wisdom and sovereignty, to inspire a pseudonymous work, what business is it of yours to question God?
Of course, you will claim to be questioning pseudonymous authorship not God, just as every non-conservative professes not to be questioning God but a particular model of inspiration. Yet my point remains. We do have to wrestle with scripture often. And I ask you again, in what conceivable universe is it easier to wrestle with God murdering a million babies than it is in someone being inspired to piggy back off Paulâs fame? If I had to choose, Iâll throw the Pastorals right out of the Canon and not lose a second of sleep over it before I ever entertain all that immorality and evil in the OT actually goes back to God. God told his followers to rape women vs someone wrote a letter in Paulâs name? Please help me understand. Is the latter harder for you to accept than the former? I hope it is the opposite. I mean if you can command rape, commissioning someone to write a letter deceptively in someone elseâs name pales in comparison. This should be far lower on the list of our canonical concerns!
I would also ask if the Gospel authors are also falsely deceiving us when they sometimes put words into Jesusâ mouth that he probably did not say ("Jesus said, ââŚâ ? Or when they take his words and apply them to a new situation and context and stretch the original meanings? I mean many of the sayings in Gospel of John are reframed. Was the author trying to deceive or just presenting the correct Christological interpretation of Jesus in a community facing bitter opposition?
When Matthew and Luke copy Mark and Q as if it was their own work, without citing their source, are they being deceptive as well? Luke carefully researched things? Yeah, okay. He largely plagiarized two works adding his own spin to them and some Lucan special materialâŚ
Maybe instead of lying and deceit and forgery, the author just thought he was inspired by God and relaying His message to the Pauline communities and honoring Paulâs legacy at the same time. He wasnât trying to trick anyone but simply continue the legacy of his mentor. Maybe he was. Or maybe he wasnât and we should expunge the Pastorals. In the NT this pseudox seems to be the highest and most problematic here.
Vinnie
My thoughts exactly and I would add to this. The sole purpose of Jesus wasnât merely to placate our fears about death and existential angst over our mortality, or to merely convince us we are saved and get us to heaven. Pie in the sky comes later. Much later. Jesus was about establishing the Kingdom of God on earth in a new dispensation. And I would hope that in general, after 2,000 years of the influence of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, in which Christianity dominated large portions of the world for long periods of the time, our modern conceptions of morality, love, hate, evil, goodness, mercy, justice, freedom, equality, fairness, etc., would have progressed somewhat in the right direction. If they didnât, the Church has largely been a failure as has one of the central purposes of the Incarnation.
Vinnie
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Or perhaps there is another option. Who are we to say he wasnât inspired by God? This discussion has raised the question in my mind as to how do we determine if what we have is the actual inspired writings. I donât think this can be based simply on what are the oldest writings we have. What I am beginning to think is I will accept what is in the canon. Hopefully those decisions are correct. The people that made them are much closer to the origins than we are.
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Agreed. I know I accept the canon based on faith and church teaching. It doesnât mean I need to think the process was inerrant anymore than the Bible inerrant. Might as well use Sparks and say we have an adequate canon, trustworthy, reliable and infallible for Godâs intended purposes. I also subscribe to a larger Biblical canon (Catholic) so Iâm not convinced the exact number of books is a deal breaker (Luther wanted to ditch James!). I also generally look for a canon within the canon and the bigger picture.
I donât think the churchâs method was infallible or even super critical in choosing the books. They got the Gospels wrong, the Pastorals and probably several other NT works that if they had known were not written by apostles they would have excluded. In one sense we might surmise that God had to canonize the books he wanted in spite of the Church. Maybe he thought the best way for this was pseudonymous composition.
But we can all easily assume, granted the truth of the incarnation, that God would have wanted to leave us a reliable salvific record. Itâs not hard to imagine him pushing to and fro and shaping the canon as he saw fit. I donât think God exhaustively overrode human will though this process or in the authors who composed scripture. I believe in softer inspiration. He is willing to work with what he has and while the end result may not be perfect, it will be adequate and serve Godâs purposes.
I understand itâs hard to say God wrote a dishonest forgery. I can relate. But who are we to say God couldnât inspire someone to stand in Paulâs tradition and combat false teachers?
If itâs inspired itâs of God regardless of the human side of its composition. I also donât necessarily believe only the âautographsâ were inspired either. The process could have been continual. No one has the autographs or can be certain of what they look like in some places and in many we know there has been significant editing before the manuscript record. I would say the extant form of canonical scripture in the third and fourth century, with all its diversity, is what was inspired. Iâd love to say we have an inerrant Bible, extremely solid historical proof Jesus rose from the dead, inescapable evidence the Bible looks exactly like the autographs (assuming this term even makes sense!) and that the church chose the correct canon perfectly. I do t think we have any of that looking at the process critically. All I have is faith that scripture serves Godâs purposes and that is enough. We also have the holt spirit and the transforming and risen Jesus. I believe we made out in the deal.
Since no one is talking to me anymore, Iâll try to show why there was no motive to forge the NT. The best reason they offered that I found goes something like this: the disputes were so severe among the brethren that different cats decided to fake their identities to try to straighten out their confusion with some authority, so the feigned the styles of the big shots. Hold on a minute, boys. Didnât you tell us they were illiterate dopes? MAKE UP MY MIND!
My, my, my. A couple thoughts. Who cares? Did they convey truth? Were their words/thoughts God-breathed, God inspired? Did God do anything right as He compiled the body of data we call the NT? BTW, what does the NT say? If you had to summarize it? How about>>> GOD VISITED EARTH AS A MAN. He had teeth and a beard, a stomach, eyes and ears and âboots,â which is how how my daughter pronounced âfeetâ as a toddler. Yep, he was a dude, a guy, a tiny helpless baby and a grown man, a teenager and a chunk of unrecognizable rubble, red meat and sinew and shiny cartilage, bruised in agony, sweat and dirt and gushing blood and a visage marred more than anyoneâs. And we still donât get it.
This world was never meant for one as beautiful as this guy, isnât that so, Vincent?
We still do him wrong. Even now we donât know Who You Was. Didnât know youâd come to save us Lord. To take our sins away. But you done showed us Lord, even when use died. But, thatâs how things is down here. Forgive us Lord. We didnât know it was you.
I killed him with my little band of tough guys. I killed Him as a pathetic coward washing my hands alright. Thatâll do it. I killed him cause He was gettin too uppidy. I put him there, sure as shooting.
Love and blood flow mingled down.
Mom and dad were having cocktails. A dog followed me home and slipped passed me on my way upstairs to say hello. Just a kid. Our dog and this intruder snapped their teeth into one another right in front of dad where our dog was. Dad instinctively reached in to separate them and was bitten and collapsed.
Out cold. A 200 lb roll of bologna on the floor. I picked him up in my arms balling uncontrollably. Lifted him up and took him outside as mom ran to the garage and pulled the car around. He was like a Raggedy Ann Doll. I put him in the front seat. My face streaming with tears buried in his shoulder. Iâll never forget the smell of his body- bourbon and cigarette smoke. Mom raced to the closest hospital. I balled like a baby, uncontrollably. He was motionless. Silent (my dad was never silent) I thought he was gone. He never passed out before.
He came around in the hospital. I guess the sudden shock of the commotion and dog bite stunned his system.
My life has consisted pretty much of dodging feelings of love and grief and loss and fear of death and losing loved ones.
But, I canât get away from that stuff when I think about Him hanging there alone and dying. And we make him a âpropitiationâ an âatonementâ a âsacrificeâ, âblood shed for our sinsâ
He was helpless. My friend, my dad, Jesus, hanging there half naked never done nothing to no one and we killed him dead and I donât want him to suffer. I hate to think about him suffering
There is an inverse relationship between how long posts are and how many people read all the way through them. It isnât just you. Itâs any of us who are wordy!
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Sorry but there were plenty of reasons to âforgeâ writings. Just look at the history of the development of the canon. What you have to show, and FYI you canât, is that none of the writings that made it into the NT canon is a forgery in the modern sense of the word.
For the rest of your post, sorry but it was TLDR.
Would you humor me and tell me a couple of the reasons. Iâve looked and found nothing that made any sense to me. 
Read 2 paragraphsâPLEASE! 
If you scroll up to my post #83 you will find 9.
Arguing from personal incredulity doesnât work for me.
From what should a person argue?
Motive? It isnât clear.
if you noticed my observations, the pastorals clearly do not fall into that category. Fish
Aune believes that the first of these options is the more likely, but not without several qualifications. As a legitimating device intended to accord to the writing in question the esteem and prestige given to the earlier well known figure.
Werenât they illiterate? Apparently, not only were they skilled at reading, comprehension and writing, they could write as though they were famous authors so well they could fool their readers and those who read the contents to the illiterate. What caused the explosion in reading and writing between 30 A.D. when no one was literate and 70 A.D. when they were all literary scholars?
it arose at a time when the biblical canon was already closed and well known names were used to secure acceptance,
If the canon was closed, they wouldnât try to add to it, would they? It was finished.
(2) it was used to protect the identity of the writer who might be in danger if his or her true identity were known
If they held to Christ as their Lord, they were in danger. The records we have show that Christians embraced persecution for the love of their Lord. By forging documents, wouldnât they necessarily increase their chances of getting caught?
Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summerâs day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy, linen land
Now, I understand what you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps theyâll listen now
Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflect in Jesusâ eyes of china blue
Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artistâs loving hand
Now, I understand, what you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps theyâll listen now
For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left inside
On that starry, starry night
They took your life as people often do
But I could have told you, Jesus
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you
Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and canât forget
Like the strangers that youâve met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
The silver thorn of bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow
Now, I think I know what you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen, theyâre not listening still
Perhaps they never will don mclean
To my LORD and my GOD