Pickman’s Model wrote:
It was called the “Spaulding Manuscript”, and even anti-Mormons have to admit that the BoM bears virtually no resemblance to it whatsoever.
I hope the following link works.
“And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18, KJV.)
This is an interesting verse, in that the Catholic Church has always seen it as the establishment of the papacy. “Thou art Peter; and upon this rock (Peter) I will build my church.”
Protestants, however, reject that idea, and point out that the first instance of “rock” in this verse is petros (the name of the disciple), which is also a masculine noun meaning “a small rock”; while the second instance of “rock” is petra, a feminine noun meaning “a large rock”. This, they conclude, means that in the first instance, Jesus was calling Peter “the small rock”, while he was calling himself “the big rock”-----and it was upon himself that he would build his church, not the “small rock”, or Peter.
Authors of questionable merit such as Loraine Boettner have also pointed out that using literal forms in translating this verse would bring out something like, “Thou art Peter, and upon this Patricia I will build my church”----a silly statement to say the least, but they insist that the change of gender indicates a change in subject. (They point out the humor there would be in Jesus calling Peter by a feminine name, but seem to ignore the equally humorous aspect of Jesus calling himself by a feminine term.) The whole point, they say, is to indicate that the church will not be built on Peter, but on Christ himself; there was never meant to be a papacy or a pope.
The problem with all this is the fact that Jesus did not speak to his disciples in Greek; he spoke in Aramaic, and in Aramaic, “rock” is translated from “kepha”. “Kepha” has no gender endings as “peter”/'petra" does in Greek. In Aramaic, the verse reads, “Thou art rock, and upon this rock I will build my church.” Put into Greek, however, Matthew could use a feminine noun for the second instance, but not the first, because as aforementioned, this would render “Peter” into “Patricia”. Some of the wordplay is lost, but Matthew was working within the limitations of Greek. In English, there are also no gender endings, so both instances are rendered “rock”.
What this does is to shoot down the particular argument that Jesus is speaking about himself in this particular verse. Whether one believes in the idea of the papacy or not, this verse certainly can’t be used to attack it.
And I have no idea why I went off on this tangent, or what you’re supposed to do with this information, but I guess you know it now… 
BTW. The feminine form of Peter is not Patricia (that’s the form of Patrick), but rather Petra or Pierrette.
Speaking of rocks, the French word “pierre” means stone in plain French. Needless to say, it’s also the French form of “Peter”.
And no jokes, please, about rock-hard Peters.
However, the BoM does quote the KJV wholesale, including where the KJV is dependent on a medieval ms error. Ain’t no way it’s an independent pre-Columbian text.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
Here’s another amazing scriptural “coincidence”: the New Testament also quotes the Old Testament, many times. Guess it can’t be true if it quotes from other scriptures, huh? And God couldn’t foresee how the Bible would be translated in the future and make His words conform to that translation either, eh? After all, it’s not like he’s omniscient or anything…
An alternative theory is that Joseph Smith knew the KJV Bible verses and made his translation conform to them.
Although very entertaining to read, I think the majority of recent posts have lost the original question. How one could add a “book” to the bible.
In short, a person need only employ himself or herself at a bible publishing company or printer. A co-conspirator would be useful acting as editor. Insert said “book” in the first press run and its done.
The most important part of the question here might be best served by Cecil himself. That being, how COULD the bible ever had been written with any accuracy at all? If versions of it were floating around throughout the span of many decades for perusal and editing by people ripe with agendas. Many of these people writing to the bible only what they recalled from memory or that which was handed down by sources long dead.
[Hold all flaming – if I’m so deserving, I’ll get mine in do time!]
And yes, I know I didn’t capitalize ‘bible’. The bible is capitalized on enough.
The NT was written in Europe and the Middle East. The authors had access to the OT. No big deal.
The BoM is supposed to have been written by a lost pre-Columbian civilization descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel (good, light-skinned “Indians” who were killed by bad, dark-skinned “Indians”), and contains stories about Jesus appearing in the New World after leaving Israel. In it, He gives the “Sermon on the Mount”, verbatim. Now, frankly, to anyone with an ounce of sense, that alone is enough to identify the thing as a forgery; Jesus certainly never gave the “Sermon on the Mount” word for word, because, taken as a cold sermon, it sucks; it’s all point, point, point, point, point, with no build-up or summary, and next to no illustration; it would put any congregation to sleep, and would rate an “F” in any homiletics class. (This doesn’t mean that He never said these things; just that He didn’t say them all strung together like that and call it a sermon.) But let’s pretend He did. And let’s pretend that He repeated it word-for-word on at least one other occasion, which is also ridiculous. The fact remains, that the BoM, which is supposed to be a miraculously perfect translation of a miraculously preserved text, not only gives the exact words of the KJV (if Joseph Smith had miraculous help when doing the translation, how come it came out in English 200 years out of date?), but includes, “For thine is the kingdom…,” at the end of the Lord’s Prayer, and that passage wasn’t in the original text; it slipped in by accident in the middle ages because the monks making copies were used to hearing it there during services.
And the only explanation I’ve ever heard is, “Well, Jesus knew that that mistake was going to happen in the King James Version, so he deliberately included it when he gave the Sermon on the Mount over again in America.”
Yeah, right.
Many Mormons are fine people, and maybe their religion helped make them that way. But that religion is based on a blatant forgery, all the same. (The BoM is also a nasty little piece of anti-Catholic bigotry, just as [surprise, sirprise!] was very fashionable in upstate New York at the time.)
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
I think that Catholics believe that the group that decided which books belonged in the bible was divinely inspired, meaning that the bible contains the books that God wanted in it, no more, no less.
However, I have to wonder what would happen if a significant archaological find was discovered, which had strong biblical ties AND contained some new books. Say, we found the Ark of the Covenant, and there were some scrolls in it which dated back to the time of Moses. Would it become part of the bible?
I suppose given enough justification the Church could re-convene a convention of Cardinals or whatever and decide to amend the good book, but there are a lot of religions that don’t recognize the legitimacy of the papacy. My guess is that, just like the Mormons there would be a whole bunch of splinter sects, and a raft of new bibles which would contain the new books or parts of them.
If a verifiable document from the first century was found that conformed to the basic beliefs that we now view as Christianity, I would think that it could be eligible to be included as “new” Scripture at some point.
This would preclude anything as silly as the premise to The Word by Irving Wallace, but could be considered if we found an actual document that seems to be the Q (or Quelle) that appears to have been used by Matthew and Luke to provide “quotations” from Jesus. There would have to be some recognizable connection to the early Christian community, and I cannot remember any “writing” that is mentioned by the Fathers that we think may have been lost. As it is, the references to the works we accept are mentioned piecemeal by the earliest Christian writers. I seem to remember a letter by Paul (not the letter to the Laodiceans) that people have speculated was lost, but I don’t remember anything about it.
I doubt that anything like this could actually happen. One issue that the OP seems to be unaware of is that Scripture must, itself, conform to the religious beliefs of what we consider Scripture. Finding an ancient document (such as we found in abundance at Qumran) simply indicates that some literate person of that era had and recorded the beliefs recorded on the document.
If a document like Wallace’s The Word was discovered, it would certainly create a sensation. But even if it proved to be written at the appropriate time, there are no references to any lost works that support the Christian faith. To the extent that it differed from current Scripture, it would be considered illuminating (or fraudulent), but not corrective.
There is no way to add anything to the Old Testament. We already feud over whether it is permissible to accept Maccabbees and some of the Wisdom writings that the earliest Christians chose as Scripture but which Judaism excluded from their canon. Finding a book with no provenance, now, would be a marvelous archaelogical discovery, but it would not cause anyone to want to open up the whole issue of the canon.
The two or three discoveries that I could see causing a real stir would be: an original document of either the J or E traditions from the Torah, discovered in the Sinai, certifiably aged to 1300 BCE or older; a couple of large stone tablets with the Decalogue, certifiably dated to the same period; some gold scrolls that were undeniably well over 200 years old, discovered in upstate New York.
Even discovering the original J orE would not make them Scripture. They would represent the earlier thoughts of one author regarding Jewish mythology, not the actual faith of the Jewish people that has been encapsulated in the current Torah.
Tom~
John W Kennedy wrote:
If you’re referring to the “great and abominable church of the devil” mentioned in the BoM, LDS authorities have emphasized that this was NOT the Catholic church.
And on the other matters, I can just say that I don’t have all the answers. Faith will always be required to gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon (or the Bible, for that matter). Moroni 10:4.
When the Christian Church (pre-Reformation) was setting the canon of books they used certain criteria:
With regard to the Old Testament: Whatever has already become the established canon of Hebrew Scriptures (plus the handful of disputed deuterocanonical books).
With regard to the New Testament: The had a more stringent set of criteria:
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It had to have been of apostolic origin. IOW, it was (supposedly) written by an apostle or a disciple of the apostle who is writing down what the apostle had said. Some apocryphal books claimed to have been written by an apostle, but the Church Fathers smelled a fake.
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It had to reflect the faith that had been handed down to them from the apostles and be consistent with the faith they practiced. For this reason, some Church Father were unsure whether to accept the gospel of John, since it was so… different (and smelled a bit of the heresy of gnosticism).
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It had to be accepted by all the local Christian churches (dioceses). Just because the community at Alexandria accepted the Gospel of Thomas, doesn’t mean everyone else did and would consider it sacred scripture.
So, getting to the OP, how can you get a book in the bible?
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Claim one of the Apostles talked to you, or that Jesus himself talked to you (which would make you an Apostle, like Paul). Or, forge a lost gospel or letter and ‘find’ it.
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What you write down has to jibe with the rest of the Gospels and the New Testament. Writing, “Thou shalt have orgies,” will not get you in the door.
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What you write has to be nearly unanimously approved by all the Bishops of the world and the Pope. It’ll probably have to have three accompanying bona fide miracles and be studied for about 20 years before any official pronouncement.
Peace.
Speaking of canonical Scriptures, I always find it kind of amusing (and sad) that Fundamentalists insist on sola scriptura, which usually means the King James Bible, no more, no less. And not a single one of them seems to realize that the list of New Testament Scriptures they’re depending on was decided by a number of Roman Catholic church councils (Council of Hippo, 393 AD; 3rd Council of Carthage, 397 AD; 4th Council of Carthage, 418 AD; Council of Florence, 1441; Council of Trent, 1546). They also don’t seem to get the idea that the Bible didn’t descend from heaven in whole, completed form, on a silver platter. Explain to them that many of Paul’s letters weren’t even written until the 40’s and 50’s, AD----and so what was the church operating on before that? Revelation wasn’t written until the 90’s; so what was the church operating on for that 90 years, without a “complete” Bible? The Church didn’t even decide what was going in and what was staying out for nearly four hundred years (Council of Hippo----393 AD), so what was the church operating on for that 400 years, without a definitive list of canonical Scriptures? The answer? Oh, traditions passed down from the Apostles, of course. Ah. Well, that takes care of sola scriptura. Bailiff, next case. Seems the Catholics, with their insistance on Sacred Tradition, were right all along…hmmmmm.
Smugness aside (and I do apologize—I don’t mean to be disagreeable; but it just boggles my mind sometimes, the lack of knowledge most Christians have about Christian history and Scriptural evolution), I think if any new manuscripts were to suddenly surface somewhere, I don’t think they’d be added to the existing Bible. Probably, they’d be examined to death by teams of scholars in the Vatican and elsewhere, and then, if anything, they’d probably be treated like any other early non-scriptural text, like the Didache or the Apostolic Constitutions; or the epistles of Ignatius, Polycarp, and Barnabas, or the Dead Sea Scrolls.
So the act of turning beer to urine isn’t miraculous enough?
The only way to rid yourself of temptation is to yield to it–Oscar Wilde