A question on Re: The early church and authentic writings
Helen Willis hhiwater@BRIGHT.NET
Sat, 10 Oct 1998 11:46:02 -0700 (00908063162, 361FAB6A.7E1D@bright.net)
If during the first five hundred years there was a censoring process which
lead to the acceptance of the canonical Christian Bible/s and a general
Christian myth, even though these two do not agree on all points, wouldn't
there have also be a preferring of "church fathers" that toe the party line
which would have lead to a failure to copy and the subsequent loss of early
"Christian" writers that did not report the later accepted party line? It
amazing that so much still exist that disagrees with the church teachings as
of let's say 1200. I mean everyone agrees that by this point you had two
monolithic churches that practice severe punishment of anyone that even
suggested that the party line was not the one and only truth. I don't
understand how anyone can make a point that much of what was saved agrees
with the later church since it was the later church that decided what would
be saved.
In a similar way, I'm sure that there was a preference for saving the
writings of "early church fathers" who identified as scriptural quotes from
the canon over those that quoted and identified as scriptural material from
non canonical sources. I suspect that much of what we have that identifies
non canonical writings as scripture only exist because the church censors for
over 1000 years didn't realize that this stuff identified as scripture was in
fact non canonical material. I would think that any, even one small quote of
non canonical writings being identified as scriptural in early church
writings causes major problems for inerrantists Christians. The claim that
there is not much of this would seem to be just a quibble. There seem to
be actually quite a lot of such material. There should be none.
Helen
hhiwater@bright.net