From: rescorla@rtnmr.chem.yale.edu (Eric Rescorla)
Subject: Re: Jesus is a Prophet, not Son of God
Organization: Rescorla for himself.
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 02:00:51 GMT

In article <1992Nov20.213414.28415@athena.cs.uga.edu> hudson@athena.cs.uga.edu (Paul Hudson Jr) writes:
>In article <1992Nov20.191455.13885@cs.yale.edu> rescorla@rtnmr.chem.yale.edu (Eric Rescorla) writes:
>>>find that many anti-christ scholars of new Testament literature would 
>>What is an "anti-Christ scholar????"
>A scholar who is against Christ would be an anti-christ scholar.  Some 
>scholars are not believers, and come up with theories that go against
>Christian beliefs.
Not all scholars who come up with theories that go against your beliefs
are non-Christians, sir.

>>Most people agree about Paul. I have not hears such agreement about 1 Peter.
>Peter didn't write as much, and there is less information about him, while
>Paul is a more contraversial figure.  It is natural that information about
>Paul would be more commonly known to non-scholars like us.
I've taken a fair number of classes which discussed this sort of
issue, Mr. Hudson. Never did I see any professor say that they believed
the Petrine letters to be authentic.
Mr. Cramer, you have an opinion on this?

>>> This document has undergone great scrutiny
>>>as other documents have, and if, for example, if you look at lists in
>>>Eusebius, you will see that it was not even among the debatable books
>>>because of the surity people had of its authorship.
>>I'm really not interested in Eusebius's opinion. He's a church historian
>>and therefore not a real reliable source for this sort of thing.
>Well, if you are going to discount any source you don't like we'll run
>out of evidence.  Most people in the first few centuries who were 
>concerned enough to write about the NT cannon were Christians.  Some
>other books were debated because the authroship was questionable (II Peter
>was in one of the lists.)  I Peter was an accepted book.  
Irrelevant. Eusebius was not using modern critical methods. He also
seems to have believed much about the tradition. The fact that
he believed 1 Peter to be authentic does not constitute strong
evidence for that view. Try quoting Bultmann.

>If you are going to look at the cannon historically, it is a good idea to
>look at church historians.  Bishops, like Eusebius, had good reason
>to evaluate which books were authentic, and authorship was one of the most
>important issues.
It always seemed to me that doctrine was one of the most important
issue.

>Eusebius quotes many bishops and historians from the centuries before him,
>and so his book is not just his opinion.  
Right, it's a reflection of the tradition.

>What other historical sources would you consider to be reliable?
I'd probably trust Origen or Clement more for starters. I'd trust
form critical evidence even more. That's generally the basis on
which the Pastoral Epistles are declared questionable. What did
Eusebius have to say about them?
-Ekr



-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Rescorla, DoD#431 (Nighthawk S)              rescorla@rtnmr.chem.yale.edu
Former chemist now CM400 mechanic                 ekr@eitech.com(preferred)
                "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
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