Revelation canonicity

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dwilkins
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Revelation canonicity

Post by dwilkins » Thu Apr 03, 2014 5:26 pm

I was wondering if anyone has ever researched the canonicity of Revelation. From what I can tell it barely made it in.

Doug

dwilkins
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Re: Revelation canonicity

Post by dwilkins » Fri Apr 04, 2014 2:11 am

I was a bit restricted in my computer access when I started this. I thought I'd add some of the simple searches I did along with some of the more interesting stuff from a couple of articles. Enjoy.

Acceptance of Revelation:

During the 1st century CE, Judaism was composed of about 24 separate religious groups. Some of these were the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, various groups within the Christian movement, followers of John the Baptist, etc. One which had a strong political agenda was the Zealot party. The Zealots taught that a military-political Messiah would soon appear, as prophesized in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). He would conquer the world, and rule for a thousand years from Jerusalem.

This concept of millennialism was promoted during the second century CE, by Montanus, a recent convert to Christianity. He prophesized that the New Jerusalem would shortly descend out of the clouds and land in a town called Phrygia. He set a date for the event, thus becoming one of the first Christians to predict when the end of the world would occur. His teachings were rejected by the rest of the Church. At the Synod of Iconium in 230 CE all baptisms performed by the Montanus sect were declared invalid. The Council of Constantinople in 380 CE went further, and declared millennialism to be a heresy.

Because millennialists had traditionally used Revelation as the main source of their teachings, "the Church was slow to accept Revelation as scripture." 1 Origen, an early Christian theologian, used the term antilegomena to describe those books -- including Hebrews, James 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John and Revelation -- whose inclusion in the official canon of the Bible was actively disputed. In the fourth century CE, when the canon of the Bible was assembled from among the approximately 50 gospels and hundreds of epistles then in use by the Christian movement, Revelation was only reluctantly included. "To this day, Orthodox churches do not use Revelation for scripture readings during worship." 1
Martin Luther downgraded the significance of Revelation. It portrays God as inflicting horrendous punishments on humanity -- a concept that is today sometimes called "Ambush Theology." Luther concluded that he could not readily harmonize the God described in Revelation with the God to whom Jesus prayed to as Abba. When Luther translated the Bible into the German language, he downgraded Revelation by relegating it to an appendix.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_ntb5d.htm




"The sad fact is, the Roman Catholic Church had never precisely drawn the boundaries of the biblical canon. It was not necessary to do so under the Roman system, in which the authority of the Scriptures was not much higher than that of tradition, popes, and councils. It was not until the Protestant Reformers began to insist upon the supreme authority of Scripture alone that a decision on the 'disputed books' became necessary."

[This explains an interesting element of the importance of canonicity. It hasn't been until the last 500 years that it has mattered very much. We Protestants bank everything on it, but in reality Christianity had never done so before the Reformation.]

Preface to the Revelation of St. John (1522) 7 [Luther]

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.

9. The canonicity of Revelation was disputed by Marcion, Caius of Rome, Dionysius of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem and the Synod of Laodicea in A.D. 360, though it was accepted by most as Eusebius reports. In the annotations of his edition Erasmus had noted in connection with chapter 4 that the Greeks regarded the book as apocryphal.

http://www.bible-researcher.com/antilegomena.html


http://www.orthodox.net/faq/canon.htm

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Paidion
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Re: Revelation canonicity

Post by Paidion » Fri Apr 04, 2014 5:43 pm

Doug, you may wish to examine this Bible research by Michael Marlowe. I consider it well researched.

http://www.bible-researcher.com/
Doug wrote:"The sad fact is, the Roman Catholic Church had never precisely drawn the boundaries of the biblical canon. It was not necessary to do so under the Roman system, in which the authority of the Scriptures was not much higher than that of tradition, popes, and councils. It was not until the Protestant Reformers began to insist upon the supreme authority of Scripture alone that a decision on the 'disputed books' became necessary."

[This explains an interesting element of the importance of canonicity. It hasn't been until the last 500 years that it has mattered very much. We Protestants bank everything on it, but in reality Christianity had never done so before the Reformation.]
If "We Protestants bank everything" on the canon of Scripture, then by what authority do "we Protestants" select the correct inpired books to include in the Canon? Indeed, I don't think we even know who selected them. Athanasius (born 296 A.D.) selected the precise New Testament books which are in the Protestant Bibles, and also the precise list of the Old Testament books except that he included Baruch. Was Athansius inspired to make this particular selection which, with the exception of Baruch, is identical to the books that Protestants accept? If so, then there must be inspiration outside of the Bible. If he wasn't inspired, then how do Protestants know they have the correct list of writings which make up "God's word"?

I am not a Protestant. In no way do I protest against the Roman Catholic Church. I am not a Roman Catholic either. Nor am I Eastern Orthodox (though I believe more of their theology is correct than that of the Roman Catholic Church). And, of course, there's no such animal as "Protestant theology". Protestantism is a mish-mash of religious beliefs and theories.

I affirm that I am a catholic (Note the lower-case "c"). The word simply means "universal". There is only one universal Church of Jesus Christ, and all of His true disciples are part of it. But I usually refer to myself as a disciple.

I regard the Bible as largely a history book. It gives the history of Israel, the history of the life of Christ, and the book of Acts gives the history of the first-century church. The fact that the four books which give the history of the life of Christ are not consistent, supports my view that they are historical. If the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were in perfect agreement, one would suspect they were contrived accounts. So much of the New Testament is historical, including the history of how Moses and other Old Testament writers interpreted God's role in their lives. Some books of the Old Testament were prophetical. Some of them include historical references as well. Others, as the Psalms consist largely of praise to Yahweh. The New Testament includes the letters of Paul and Peter and other writers, as well as the prophetic and symbolic book of Revelation in which someone named "John" describes the vision which he saw, and in part interprets these visions.

There is one writing which I would have included in the New Testament, so that more people would be aware of it—Clement's letter to the Corinthians, written shortly after the death of Paul and Peter. The sectarian spirit of the Corinthians against which Paul had warned, had gone from bad to worse. Now their partialities were not for some particular apostle such as Peter or Paul, but some wanted to bring down the overseers whom God has established through the apostles, and become overseers themselves. Clement warned them by referring to what happened to other rebels, such as those who rebelled against Moses.

Personally, I don't think we should "bank everything" on which writings to read in our churches. Rather we should bank "everything" on the way Christ taught us to live, particularly in what is known as "The Sermon on the Mount" in Matthew 5,6, and 7, and also "The Sermon on the Plain" in Luke. It is our obligation to our Lord Jesus to obey Him. He said, "If you love me, keep my commandments." He also said at the end of the Matthew passage:

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” (Matthew 7:24-27)
Paidion

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dwilkins
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Re: Revelation canonicity

Post by dwilkins » Fri Apr 04, 2014 6:04 pm

You might be surprised that I agree with most of your comments about Roman Catholicism, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and official Protestantism. But, to keep the conversation focused a bit, do you think Revelation should be in the canon of scripture?

Doug

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Paidion
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Re: Revelation canonicity

Post by Paidion » Sat Apr 05, 2014 9:33 am

It really makes no difference to me whether or not Revelation is included in people's definition of "The Canon of Scripture". As I see it, the Canon was an invention of the third century church in order to exclude gnostic writings which were forgeries, claiming to be apostolic writings. Personally, I don't put to much stock in Revelation. But that's I, and I wouldn't think of discouraging anyone else who thinks it's important because it's in "the Canon".

As I mentioned in my previous post, I do wish Clement's letter to the Corinthians were included in "the Canon", because it's such an important early Christian writing, probably written in the first century by the companion of the apostle Paul. If it were included, it would have MANY MORE readers, than it presently has.
Paidion

Man judges a person by his past deeds, and administers penalties for his wrongdoing. God judges a person by his present character, and disciplines him that he may become righteous.

Avatar shows me at 75 years old. I am now 83.

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