Why are letters from John and Paul included in the Bible?

by Lore 22 Replies latest jw friends

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  Band on the Run

  I am no longer a Paul antagonist. He seems more misunderstood than Jesus. I don't believe early Christians viewed Paul as definitive. I believe he was important to the churches he founded. His letters were instructive. It is clear that other missionaries who had lived with Jesus followed and disagreed with Paul's version of the gospel. Before the Gnostic gospels were discovered, scholars knew that such a group existed. Paul is always asserting his apostolic credentials. If you are the recognized, ultimate apostle, why bother? He doth protest too much.

  I wish people did not view the Bible as magic, descended physically from God. People who read complicated novels and have PhDs fear the Bible. We are so used to letting "experts" speak. The experts rarely know much more than an actual reading of the text would reveal.

  I always try to study a Bible issue with no aids. Questions jumps at me. People are afraid to question.

  Few people are Bible literate. I would say the Witnesses are among the most ignorant. They don't read the Bible.
• 

  tec

  I wish people did not view the Bible as magic, descended physically from God

  Agreed! Because if/when that view is challenged... then all of a sudden the bible no longer has ANY merit, at least to some people. All of its writings are considered forfeit. But that isn't true, either. This world is full of writings that are not infallible, but that carry great merit. None of our history books (or the witness accounts during great or terrible times in history/culture) are infallible. But we still consider them to carry merit. We still consider many of them trustworthy (just taken perhaps with a grain of salt, as to mistakes or bias - though some consider them 'gospel').

  Peace,

  Tammy
• 

  scotoma

  The letters are just old "bound volumes". JW's don't give a damn about "Studies in the Scriptures" anymore. Why should people care what the early Christian writings. Jesus never wrote anything.
• 

  Band on the Run

  A lot of people believe Jesus may have been illiterate. I don't know enough about carpentry back then to have any opinion. It was an oral tradition. Anthropologists say that preliterate societies can transmit accurate info through many generations. We no longer have the skill. I once roomed with an illiterate prostitute in a hospital. She could remember such vivid details without any list. Jesus sayings are the same or similar in the gospels we have now and the Gnostics. The interpretation is very different but the sayings are very familiar. We don't know. --a statement that the WTBTS does not comprehend.
• 

  elder-schmelder

  "Jesus never wrote anything."

  That says it all to me.
• 

  PSacramento

  Paul's letters were just that, Paul's letters, as were Johns and Peters and James's.

  Of course they have vital information as to how those people ( and those writing on their behalf) and the people they were writing to, viewed Christ and what was expected of His followers and that makes them very important and yes, there are SOME parts of what was written in Paul's letters that CAN be viewed as "inspired" ( the parts in which Paul mentions what he heard from Christ).

  Jesus was NOT illterate and there is no evidence of that, He certaibly could read and write Aramaic and Hebrew, it is not clear that he read and wrote koine greek, but he probably spoke it to.

  That Jesus didn't write anything down means that He had other more important things to do, just mionr things of course ;)

  The bible has its place and its place is to NOT have more authority than the living Word of God, Jesus Christ.
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  truthseeker1969

  They included John and Paul as George and Ringo were too slow in finishing!
• 

  wobble

  I think that we who have come from a religion that says its teachings are based on the Bible, and teaches that it is the word of god and inerrant, are approaching this from the wrong end of the telescope.

  Long before there was a (Christian) Bible, before any sort of canon of Christian writings, there was a vibrant, powerful, living faith, a faith that was spreading throughout the Roman Empire, not just because of the efforts of Paul of Tarsus, but spreading before his conversion, and beyond his sphere of influence after his ministry started.

  That faith did not spring from, nor depend upon, any "New Testament" writings.

  Just as we would have a workable and accepted Theory of Evolution without the fossil record, we would have a christian faith without the N.T

  Without the N.T it might not have survived until the 21st century, but I rather think it would have.

  The religion came first, the writings later, as with Islam.
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  PSacramento

  Wobble has pretty muched summed it up.

  Well said sir, well said indeed.
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  tec

  I second that. Well said, Wobble.

  Peace,

  Tammy