Doug Mason,
Greetings. Just want to say that I like your approach to these questions. And glad you are doing it. It seems of late, that not as many topics have been posted as when I first started submitting posts to this forum a couple of years ago. On behalf of myself and any others who miss them - Thanks!
By coincidence I had been reading Gibbon's Decline and Fall lately. So when you mentioned Athanasius ( bishop of Alexandria), it caught my eye as well. Athanasius figures prominently in his account ( chapters later 20s, maybe early 30s) as well as his collisions with or support from the various emperors east and west. Since the hard copies of this book that I possess are both abridged - and one does not have the extensive footnotes Gibbon provided, I recommend to anyone interested the on-line versions of his entire work, such as the Liberty Library version.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1681&Itemid=27
Based on some particular research interests I have, I did a quick scan of "Why Does WTS Accept" looking for coverage of those topics. But I hope to read over it at greater length to provide some more general feedback or questions. That area that has been of much concern or interest to me is how apocalyptic views have morphed in the hands of Christian interpreters of scriptures - and I have argued ( or presented a case for) that based on a process that is anchored to the book of Daniel.
I have found that as early as Jerome, it was recognized by some in the Christian community that Daniel was not necessarily a prophet or a prophet book. Jerome in his Vulgate translation to Latin of the text of Daniel reports what is shown in any present day Jewish TaNaKh whether written in Hebrew or a vernacular such as English: a partition into Law, Prophets and Writings ( as the acronym implies) and Daniel is a component of the Writings. Even the definition of the canon in Against Apion, subsequent to the Jewish council of Jamnia in 90 AD, is born out by prophets working between the time of Moses and the reign of Artexerxes, king of Persia. Daniel Chapter 9:1, seems to exclude himself in his first person account. His repeated references to "Darius the Mede" are only borne out by Greek historians who refer to the Persians invading Greece as Medes. Thucydides claims that Athenians at Marathon defeated the king of the Medes. His name was Darius. Herodotus speaks of Xerxes, king of the Medes directly...
This apocalyptic hyperbolic tangent continues with the structure built on top of Daniel with interpretations of Revelations. Eusebius records many objections to Revelations as a canonical work and Luther in his introduction to the German translation in 1522 adds his own. Taken from on-line source,
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1681&Itemid=27
it is provided below.
In either case, critiques of Daniel or Revelations abound in Christian studies. This includes the early figures of the Church who pieced together the structures and systems of thought that we have today. I find some of their arguments and presentation of evidence, reasonable and compelling, obviously. And I know that one reason many groups do not place much value in prophecy or the nature of the return is that somewhere in their hierarchies the leadership admitted that this was building on sand and that there were more pressing concerns for the Christian community.
But then there are Biblical study groups who have a vested interest in these sets of answers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Preface to the Revelation of St. John (1522) [ Martin Luther writes:]
About this book of the Revelation of John, I leave everyone free to hold his own opinions. I would not have anyone bound to my opinion or judgment. I say what I feel. I miss more than one thing in this book, and it makes me consider it to be neither apostolic nor prophetic.
First and foremost, the apostles do not deal with visions, but prophesy in clear and plain words, as do Peter and Paul, and Christ in the gospel. For it befits the apostolic office to speak clearly of Christ and his deeds, without images and visions. Moreover there is no prophet in the Old Testament, to say nothing of the New, who deals so exclusively with visions and images. For myself, I think it approximates the Fourth Book of Esdras; 8 I can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it.
Moreover he seems to me to be going much too far when he commends his own book so highly -- indeed, more than any of the other sacred books do, though they are much more important -- and threatens that if anyone takes away anything from it, God will take away from him, etc. Again, they are supposed to be blessed who keep what is written in this book; and yet no one knows what that is, to say nothing of keeping it. This is just the same as if we did not have the book at all. And there are many far better books available for us to keep.
Many of the fathers also rejected this book a long time ago; 9 although St. Jerome, to be sure, refers to it in exalted terms and says that it is above all praise and that there are as many mysteries in it as words. Still, Jerome cannot prove this at all, and his praise at numerous places is too generous.
Finally, let everyone think of it as his own spirit leads him. My spirit cannot accommodate itself to this book. For me this is reason enough not to think highly of it: Christ is neither taught nor known in it. But to teach Christ, this is the thing which an apostle is bound above all else to do; as Christ says in Acts 1, "You shall be my witnesses." Therefore I stick to the books which present Christ to me clearly and purely.
