by Haruo » Wed Sep 13, 2017 10:29 pm
My first question might be, what Bible? I am convinced that the Bible itself never refers to the Bible itself, if by "the Bible" we mean one of the particular canons that 21st-century Christian groups accept as their Scriptural canon. For most of us Baptists, that means the 66-book canon, 39 running Genesis to Malachi and then 27 running Matthew to Revelation. For Catholics and various Orthodox churches a number of other books are viewed as canonical or deuterocanonical (which is still a variety of canonical). Nowhere in the Bible we have, when the text refers to "the Scriptures" or "the word of God" or anything along those lines, do I believe that the human authors had our present-day canons in view. When Paul writes that "All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching" I see no reason to think a particular canon is referred to. Indeed, I can easily see how the Qu'ran, the Vedas, or the writings of Baha'ullah could be part of that "all scripture". Heck, even, nay, certainly, The Big Book. To some degree, since all writings are produced (or were until recently) by living human beings, and since the life that animates us as living beings is itself the breath of God, it could be that "all scripture" should be taken literally, as "all writing".
Growing up in a Baptist (albeit a very liberal Baptist) household, one of the Bibles we had at home and made frequent reference to was the American Translation (i.e. "Goodspeed"), which had the Apocrypha in it. And for that matter the huge KJV on the Communion Table at Fremont Baptist also has the Apocrypha in it. So from grade school age on I was aware of the discrepancies among canons, though I didn't run into Psalm 151 or Jubilees or Enoch till much later. I remember my dad, a Baptist minister, teaching me that the Bible was not a book, but a library, and that various librarians had included slightly different collections of books in their libraries. And then, when I finally met God (in the form of a group of drunks, and very shortly thereafter in the guise of two nearly-full bottles of Almadén Mountain Chablis), the spiritual community I was engaged with at the time was the AurorA Fellowship, where the scriptures, such as they were, consisted of the Big Book, the 12x12, and maybe the Little Red Book or the ODAAT, depending on what meeting I was at.
That's a start. The library is about to close, so I'd better sign off now. More later, probably tomorrow.
Haruo = Leland Bryant Ross
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