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Question about Biblical canon

Venom

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If a book or series of new books/scrolls were discovered today, how reluctant would Protestants, Catholics, etc. be to add this stuff on to the Bible?

As if the knowledge of what period the Bible was finally assembled wasn't troubling enough, what if some new ancient gospel or epistle dated to, say, 60 AD (earlier than the earliest surviving NT manuscripts) was discovered today.

If you mention that the verse about the woman taken into adultery or other was not originally in the Gospels, it creates quite a mess. How do believers justify something like that either way!?
 
Texts abound. If the new text wasn't consistent with the established canon, it would be rejected, obviously.

I mean, there are plenty of writings from that period that aren't part of the Bible. Why do you think that is?

I think in order for it to be added to the canon, its provenance would have to be impeccable, its authorship would have to be incontrovertibly one of the canonical authors, and its content would have to be entirely consistent with the existing canon.

What do you think would happen if a ca. 60 AD scrap of parchment were found, reading "Jesus wuz gay" in aramaic? Do you really think that would be reason enough for biblical scholars to say, "it was written in Bible Times, now we gotta revise the canon"?
 
theprestige said:
What do you think would happen if a ca. 60 AD scrap of parchment were found, reading "Jesus wuz gay" in aramaic? Do you really think that would be reason enough for biblical scholars to say, "it was written in Bible Times, now we gotta revise the canon"?
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Perhaps I was a bit hasty in writing my OP. My point really is, assuming it's reasonably in line with mainstream beliefs would they really feel comfortable adding it on to the existing canon? Who would and who wouldn't.

I mean many Christians think the Bible just popped up fully assembled a few years after Jesus' death. I know some people who feel that the Bible is complete now from Genesis to Revelation......Everything they've ever needed to know.
 
Clovis, this isn't a hypothetical. There already exist tons of different scraps and portions of scriptures, from numerous different sources. Some that claim Jesus was married and had children. Some that claim Jesus sought political leadership. And tons of other stuff.

The "Biblical canon" is unaffected by this. Even when the canon was first established, there were many competing scriptures to choose from, many of which were ultimately scrapped. Conservative Christians believe that the Holy Spirit led them to choose those writings that were "divinely inspired", and to discard the rest.

So discovery of new documents would have no more impact or import than the discovery of the hundreds/thousands of documents that have already been found.
 
Wasn't a biblical Canon used to knock down the walls of Jericho?
 
IIIClovisIII

Perhaps I was a bit hasty in writing my OP. My point really is, assuming it's reasonably in line with mainstream beliefs would they really feel comfortable adding it on to the existing canon? Who would and who wouldn't.
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If you're interested in developing the "what if?" then there are "close" cases you can look at, and see how churchmen have in fact behaved. Thomas, whose only nearly complete example is a Coptic translation, is heavily larded up with bullshy Gnostic additions. There does appear, however, to have been a "core" Thomas that could be as old as any of the canonical Gospels. If that were so, then a clean core Thomas would be a good bet to be the manuscript discovered in your hypothetical come-to-life.

Likely-core Thomas does present a specific doctrinal problem. Saying 113 attributes to Jesus a present-tense kingdom lesson. Parallel teaching is in Luke 17:21-22, but there Jesus addresses the Phraisees and immediately tells the disciples about the usual future kingdom. In Thomas 113, the present-tense kingdom lesson is addressed to the disciples.

There are also interesting cases of different churches' handling of known material. Some African churches and the Syriac church have modestly different canons from the familiar 27. Another window into "canon thinking" is to follow the fate of confidently authentic, possibly as early as John or Revelation, and painfully orthodox material like 1 Clement or the more credible letters of Ignatius of Antioch.

The significance of canonicity varies by church. Obviously, for sola scriptura Protestants being in or out of the canon is night-and-day. For apostolic succession churches (including the Anglican Communion, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, plus some smaller communions), the canon is typically already supplemented for doctrinal purposes by patristic writings and even by ancient liturgical material, so, while being in the canon does impart some status, it just isn't make-or-break.

It's hard to imagine any strong pressure to include any newly authenticated material into the canon. If you think about it, sola scriptura churches are committed to the existing canon, so anything else either conforms with the canon, and so is redundant, or else it's wrong. For the majority that isn't sola scriptura, if something's available for study, then it's available for study. There's already plenty of stuff to read in church, and they don't use all of that as it is.
 
eight bits said:
IIIClovisIII


If you're interested in developing the "what if?" then there are "close" cases you can look at, and see how churchmen have in fact behaved. Thomas, whose only nearly complete example is a Coptic translation, is heavily larded up with bullshy Gnostic additions. There does appear, however, to have been a "core" Thomas that could be as old as any of the canonical Gospels. If that were so, then a clean core Thomas would be a good bet to be the manuscript discovered in your hypothetical come-to-life.

Likely-core Thomas does present a specific doctrinal problem. Saying 113 attributes to Jesus a present-tense kingdom lesson. Parallel teaching is in Luke 17:21-22, but there Jesus addresses the Phraisees and immediately tells the disciples about the usual future kingdom. In Thomas 113, the present-tense kingdom lesson is addressed to the disciples.

There are also interesting cases of different churches' handling of known material. Some African churches and the Syriac church have modestly different canons from the familiar 27. Another window into "canon thinking" is to follow the fate of confidently authentic, possibly as early as John or Revelation, and painfully orthodox material like 1 Clement or the more credible letters of Ignatius of Antioch.

The significance of canonicity varies by church. Obviously, for sola scriptura Protestants being in or out of the canon is night-and-day. For apostolic succession churches (including the Anglican Communion, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, plus some smaller communions), the canon is typically already supplemented for doctrinal purposes by patristic writings and even by ancient liturgical material, so, while being in the canon does impart some status, it just isn't make-or-break.

It's hard to imagine any strong pressure to include any newly authenticated material into the canon. If you think about it, sola scriptura churches are committed to the existing canon, so anything else either conforms with the canon, and so is redundant, or else it's wrong. For the majority that isn't sola scriptura, if something's available for study, then it's available for study. There's already plenty of stuff to read in church, and they don't use all of that as it is.
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There is also the sectarian phenomenon of introducing, and elevating, an extra-canonical text.
 
One of the more bizarre bits of reasoning on what went into the canon, why and particularly haw many gospels there could be in the canon were those reasons given by Irenaeus (from the link, bolding added):

A four gospel canon (the Tetramorph) was asserted by Irenaeus, c. 160, who referred to it directly.[5][35] An insistence upon there being a canon of four gospels, and no others, was a central theme of Irenaeus of Lyons, c. 185. In his central work, Adversus Haereses Irenaeus denounced various early Christian groups that used only one gospel, such as Marcionism which used only Marcion's version of Luke, or the Ebionites which seem to have used an Aramaic version of Matthew, as well as groups that used more than four gospels, such as the Valentinians (A.H. 1.11). Irenaeus declared that the four he espoused were the four "Pillars of the Church": "it is not possible that there can be either more or fewer than four" he stated, presenting as logic the analogy of the four corners of the earth and the four winds (3.11.8). His image, taken from Ezekiel 1, or Revelation 4:6–10, of God's throne borne by four creatures with four faces—"the four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and the four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle"—equivalent to the "four-formed" gospel, is the origin of the conventional symbols of the Evangelists: bull (Mark), man (Luke), eagle (John), lion (Matthew). Irenaeus was ultimately successful in declaring that the four gospels collectively, and exclusively these four, contained the truth. By reading each gospel in light of the others, Irenaeus made of John a lens through which to read Matthew, Mark and Luke.
 
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I don't remember any canon in the bible - in fact I am pretty sure artillery then was limited to catapults and similar.
 
To understand canon and continuity, the overall Biblical saga should be looked at as a set of stories written by many different people which "document" past "events." Although some stories are more reliable than others, they all are looked upon as part of the overall "history." It should also be remembered that all of these stories are simply that—stories. There are numerous errors that inevitably arise between the stories simply because different authors have their own ways of telling the story and may not have the time and resources to perfectly align the details. This site deals with non-canon material by putting red text notification above the non-canon items.

Oh, wait, sorry, that was the Star Wars saga, not Biblical.
 
I think the hypothetical proposition of this thread implies something that is close to impossible. The Gospels in the NT and the other works that didn't make it into the NT are mostly fictional and they provide no reliable insight into an historical Jesus. I think it is unlikely in the extreme that a credible work about an HJ is going to surface. I doubt that one was ever written *, but if it was written it was written by a Jerusalem Jesus sect that we're not sure existed and if it did exist no writings or any other kind of clear cut evidence of their existence has ever been found.

Although, from a hypothetical stand point anything is possible and if a credible work about an HJ surfaced I think it would have almost no effect on Christianity. Christianity is based on writings that are obviously fictional. The writings are even less credible than most secular people imagine that haven't spent time reading about the origins of Christianity and yet Christianity has not tumbled because the foundation for its belief structures have been shown to be contradictory, implausible and just flat out wrong. So we don't need to think that hard about what would happen if some hypothetical credible document was found that contradicted Christian teachings. They've already been found and Christianity continues to roll on.

* It might be argued that there is some credibility in Paul's epistles (I think so anyway). Perhaps so, but there is no corroboration and the provenance is unknown. It is easy to imagine that they are as fictional as the rest of the NT.

ETA: I can't imagine any way that the finding of a credible document about an HJ would make it in to the NT canon. Any credible HJ is vastly different than the NT Jesus so I just can't imagine any Christian group embracing a document that would undermine everything they believe about Jesus.
 
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I think that denominations with a more open approach to the Bible, such as Catholic, ELCA, etc., may adjust current translations based on a new find, as they did with the Dead Sea Scrolls. I doubt there would be a wholesale adoption of a new text by any mainstream denominations.
 
LSSBB said:
I think that denominations with a more open approach to the Bible, such as Catholic, ELCA, etc., may adjust current translations based on a new find, as they did with the Dead Sea Scrolls. I doubt there would be a wholesale adoption of a new text by any mainstream denominations.
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Good point, I didn't think along these lines of finding more precise information about what the original Gospels contained. That could happen, although even that seems unlikely at this point. Of course the Dead Sea Scroll finds were about the old testament but if somebody found a copy of Mark that could be shown to predate current editions of Mark I would imagine that some new versions of the NT would incorporate changes based on the new find. I doubt this would be much of an issue for most denominations.

The scenario I imagined was the finding of actual information about the real HJ probably created by a real Jerusalem Jesus sect that would per force not be in sync with the Gentile oriented, mostly or entirely fictional NT Gospels. It seems very unlikely that something like that would be added to Christian NT to me.
 
There are only a few religions that have any pathways to add to existing cannon. Judaism doesn't. The books are closed. Catholicism can have papal pronouncements but that doesn't seem to happen often. Mormons believe that the president of the Church speaks directly to God. Scientology, to the extent it's a religion, was able to add to its cannon as fast as LRH could type; it's a little harder now.
 
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