WT says 'Church Fathers were leading teachers'

by youdontknowhim 31 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Earnest

  There is an article The Church fathers - Advocates of Bible Truth? in the Watchtower of April 15, 2001 which concludes that "the Church Fathers allowed 'misleading inspired utterances and teachings of demons' to take root in the Christian congregation.​". That is hardly an endorsement.

  I would also note that there was some confusion as to who or what Christ was until teachings were defined in various councils. Naturally those whose writings supported the (now) orthodox teaching were copied and promulgated as authority. Those whose writings did not support the new orthodoxy were simply not preserved. So in consequence we have very little record of the many who did not support in some way the teachings which later became orthodox. Thus the only authority we should rely on is scripture itself.
  
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  Phizzy

  TTWSYF asked about doubt on how much contact between the church fathers and the Apostles there could have been : I can't locate at present the Quote I was thinking of, but will return if I do and Post it, but meanwhile.

  This one bit I found, and copied, I can't remember from where or who wrote it ! :

  " The length and detail of this passage make it virtually irresistible for critics to bypass the layers of embedded discourse and treat this comment about the Gospels of Mark and Mathew as if they were a self-contained block of a tradition. It is not. The elder’s comment about Mark was presumably uttered not out of the blue but within some larger discourse context. This context is lost to us. Indeed, what the elder said is not by any means intact, but extracted, edited, and embedded by Papias into a different context of his own creation. Furthermore, Papias’s presentation of these remarks also does not come down to us intact, but only as preserved by Eusebius—and Eusebius’s agenda is different from Papias’s. Eusebius too extracted, edited, and embedded this statement into a context of his own making. We have to be cautious in interpreting it. As one scholar put it, “Papias says only what Eusebius wants him to say.” As a result, the most famous statement in antiquity about the origins of Mark and Matthew is a joint production of three different people, living at three different times, with three different purposes: the elder, Papias, and Eusebius. All of them have contributed to this passage in their different ways, and all of them had different purposes for discussing their writings. If we are to make sense of this, we will have do what scholars of fragmentary works have long known. We must deal with the fundamental issue of context."

  This is another : Richard Bauckham (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses):

  Many scholars have been unable to believe that Aristion and John the Elder had been personal disciples of Jesus, usually either because these scholars have understood Papias to be speaking of a time after the death of “the elders” and so presumably beyond the lifetime of Jesus’ contemporaries, or because they have not sufficiently distinguished the time about which Papias is writing from the time at which he is writing. Once we recognize that, at the time to which he refers, most of the disciples of Jesus had died but two were still alive and were among the prominent Christian teachers in Asia, we can see that the time about which he writes must be late in the first century. There is nothing in the least improbable about this."
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  vienne

  Joseph Priestly wrote an extensive history of non-Trinitarian belief in the post-Apostolic age. In fact many of the early writers were not Trinitarian. The OP is as guilty as the Watchtower in quoting selectively. I recommend reviewing Priestley's work, if you can find it.

  Calling someone a "leading teacher" means nothing more that that they were well-known. It is not an endorsement of their teaching.
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  Earnest

  Talking of Joseph Priestley, I can strongly recommend this video on A Lost Bible Translation Rediscovered.
  
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  Phizzy

  Thanks Earnest, that Video was fascinating, and with high Production values, but being only 14 minutes or so long, was not as detailed or precise in some ways as I would have liked, but that's just me I guess.

  As usual it was made for the ordinary J.W, and perhaps one who has an above average interest (for a J.W) in this kind of thing.

  It is of note to me that they left the quote from a Scholar that said Priestley's group had gone back to "the original manuscripts" without comment.

  Not surprising, they want J.W's to take from this affirmation that perhaps the NWT is justified in its renderings by the work of Priestley & Co.

  No actual original MSS for any of the Bible exist of course, and I am guessing Priestley's Group only had access to, for the N.T, the ones available at the start of the 18th Century, I doubt they had access to Codex Alexandrinus, so would have been reliant on the MSS mentioned above.

  Sadly I doubt Robert Garnham's writings will be published any time soon, it would be fascinating to read, maybe a PDF or similar may appear at some time.

  The very well made and informative Video has traces of J.W Mind Control in it that will be taken by the average J.W as confirmation, whereas the Theology of Priestley and Garnham et al was what Russell and Rutherford espoused, most of whose writings the J.W org. now rejects.

  Thanks again for your Post.
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  blondie

  Good points. I looked up the other beliefs of church fathers and found that many of those did not agree with the WTS bellief. The WTS cherrypicks their quotes.
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  Phizzy

  " The WTS cherrypicks their quotes. " YES ! but the average J.W does not realise this, and hence is fooled, cherry-picking, or "quote mining" is blatant lying.

  I first became sort of semi-conscious that this was going on when I was an active believing J.W but one thing that was something that worried me and started my "waking up" process was a quote in the old Trinity Brochure, gawd, how many years ago was that ? The quote interested me, so I looked up the full quote, and amazing ! to innocent gullible me at the time, the quote in full said the OPPOSITE of what the edited short quote in the Brochure appeared to say ! A Red Flag for me, there were many more subsequently.

  The cherry-picking of what the Church fathers said is another case , of course much of what they said is the opposite of what J.W org. teaches, but also the fact that the "Fathers" disagree heavily among themselves makes them useless as a group, as Authorities of Christian Doctrine and Thought.
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  Earnest

  Phizzy : It is of note to me that they left the quote from a Scholar that said Priestley's group had gone back to "the original manuscripts" without comment.

  I think the account was quite balanced. While Dr Malcolm Dick (Senior Lecturer in Local History, University of Birmingham) did say (@ 01:44) "he [Priestley] could compare the King James' version of the Bible with original texts in original languages", that was balanced a few seconds later by the late Dr James Aitken (Professor of Hebrew and Early Jewish Studies, University of Cambridge) who elaborated (@ 01:53) that "there were multiple manuscripts, both of the Hebrew text and of the Greek text, which were now available and showed that sometimes the text that the Authorised Version was based on was not the only reading available".

  Priestley's Group certainly had access to Codex Alexandrinus (fifth century), as well as Codex Bezae (fifth/sixth century) and Codex Claromontanus (sixth century). How do we know? Because William Whiston, who was also a unitarian based in Cambridge, published his Primitive New Testament in 1745 based on these three manuscripts. Codex Beza for Gospels and Acts; Codex Alexandrinus for the letters of James, Peter, John, Jude and Revelation; Codex Claromontanus for the epistles of Paul and Hebrews.
  

  If you are interested in Robert Garnham's writings, the only publicly available one I could find was Examination of Mr Harrison's Sermon in a Letter to an Athanasian Christian, 1789, but that isn't about his translation. Maybe more interesting would be the letters between Joseph Priestley and Theophilus Lindsey which can be found here (1769 - 1789) and here (1790 - 1794).
  
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  Phizzy

  Thank you once again Earnest ! I shall have a look at all you have mentioned as soon as I can.

  It fascinates me how these guys were so dedicated and motivated to try as best as they could to correct former errors in translation.

  It was an exciting time, the C of E was deciding whether to be a "Broad Church" or not, of course the Establishment wanted all Divines and other ones being ordained to sign up to the 39 Articles , an attempt to stifle the thoughts of Priestley and Co. Others in the Cambridge Group wanted free thinking to be permitted, and progress to be made in Doctrine.

  Much as we see the struggles that went on among the Church Fathers !
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  slimboyfat

  Thanks for the link to the new video Earnest - very interesting! I wonder if the lost translation will now be published. And it’s interesting that Watchtower is still producing material on more obscure scholarly topics such as this.