Christians and L.D.S.- given the cite provided, how can anyone throw stones??

Great Debates
1

Jesus died in 33 C.E. And, according to this document

Let us say this is entirely accurate, and true. (Not always the same thing). If we presume accuracy and truth, then 127 years after the death of Jesus the four Gospels were already being regarded as canon.

Let’s zip ahead oh, say, one thousand seven hundred years. Now, it’s 1823 C.E. According to L.D.S. official historical website

That was 1823. Lets jump ahead 127 years. That’d make it 1950. Now let’s give ourselves another 56 years of historical perspective. In the time of the 3rd century C.E., the four Gospels were not only seen as canon, but were/ had become the basis of Christianity and accepted as the word of God, as written by four men.

Why is it that in the 21st century, roughly 183 years after Joseph Smith had his revelations, that there is such a bitter dispute? Have Christians absolutely no sense of their own history? Why is it that the idea that slowly taking 100 or 300 years to accept writings as canon and the word of God works for ancient history, but as a more modern event that entire concept is regarded as heresey and worse?

I wasn’t raised a Christian but I would love to hear from scholars within both churces. Why are the four Gospels defendable as canon / word of God, but a similar series of revelations and transcriptions are derided in the extreme by ( some ) Christians?

Who can say which is a true word, total fiction, acceptable historical writings or a synthesis of those concepts?

Cartooniverse

2

Well, by definition, the canon includes those works accepted by the believers as true. Introducing new books after more than a millennium and a half is going to raise the hackles of people who think the canon has already been defined. To the extent that the new books disagree with the old books, adherents of the old books are going to condemn the new books as spurious.

(I am not even going to get into other aspects of the discussion, since the question posed simply asks a “why” regarding acceptanceof a book into the cannon.)

Beyond that, some Christians have shaped their own view of the development of the canon to support their own theology. If they have invested a lot of emotional energy in believing that the gopels were written by God holding the quills of the evangelists while they inscribed His Word, then texts that differ will be seen by that group as even more loathesome.

3

Well, the Gospels, at least, take place in a verifiable historical context. That is, we know that the Jews were in Palestine at the time when they supposedly took place. We can even indenpendently verify the existance of some of the characters! You can’t say the same thing about Smith’s revelations.

There’s also the fact that the LDS books didn’t surface until nearly 2000 years after the events, while, as you stipulate above, the orthodox gospels appear much earlier. It’s not hard proof, but it makes them easier to swallow, IMHO.

4

To note a fairly pertinent analogy, the “new” books that have been accepted by Christians as “new revelation” have not been embraced by Jews who hold to their own, older canon.

5

I was a member of RLDS many years ago and we also held not only the Book of Mormon but the Doctrine and Covenants as scripture. {LDS do also} The Doctrine and Covenants is newer revelations given through the prophet of the church and prayed about and accepted by the church as a whole at world conference.

What occurred to me at the time is that if God gave revelation to men through the Holy Spirit in ancient times that became scripture why wouldn’t we expect God to continue to give revelations to men in the same way. I wondered, is there anything to indicate that it was God’s plan that we have a certain collection of books and that would be the end. The answer is No, nothing indicates certain books would be the the complete and final written revelation of God to man.

Fast forward a couple of decades plus. My beliefs have changed and I’ve learned a lot more about Christian history, revelation and scripture. Turns out there’s nothing to indicate it was God’s plan that any book or writing be considered sacred. That’s man’s idea.

The idea that the Bible is the complete and final collection is simply a tradition held by many Christians and passed down from generation to generation. Although many people have come to accept the Book of Mormon as scripture as well the book is a couple of thousand years behind in momentum for being accepted as sacred writing. I doubt that it will ever gain as wide spread acceptance as the Bible has.

It’s tradition plain and simple.

This thread relates to another thread discussing other ancient manuscripts from early Christianity. Other gospels that won’t be canonized either.

Also related is there is evidence that J Smith created his vision story and the BOM was compiled by him from other sources available to him, not given to him by an Angel. That might effect it’s canonization as well.

6

I don’t see what’s so persuasive about those cites. Sure, you found two guys who, way back then, believed that the New Testament should consist of only those four gospels. These guys are remembered and revered because their viewpoint won out in the end. That doesn’t mean that there weren’t ten times as many people back then who believed that the New Testament should consist of an entirely different set of books.

7

Cartooniverse writes:

> Jesus died in 33 C.E.

More commonly, it’s argued that the year was 30 C.E.

8

Wendell, I sit corrected. Sorry.

Miller, in a way that is my point. Validation through age alone is hard to swallow. That old chestnut- bury a commonplace item and dig it up in 10,000 years and it’s revered as an important artifact. What if there were ten times the number of folks who advocated for a different set of Gospels, or an expanded set beyond that four. Then what? I am aware that advocating a point of view in 160 C.E. was a different proceedure than it is in 2006 in a modern democracy. Still and all, it’s fascinating that there are other gospels, other bibles ( the Gnostic one, amongst others ) that are very much fringe element texts. As you say, ten times as many folks may have wanted another set to become canon- but the people in power at the time promoted an agenda that best served their needs. ( No different than today, of course. )

tomndebb, I agree with what you say. Jews really aren’t in the business of embracing any new testament writings, though. The Torah and Haf-Torah are pretty much it. ( Not counting a gargantuan amount of Talmudic writings ). I was asking, as the OP states, why is it okay to vilify a 160-odd year old testament, when it’s not okay to do so with a testament that was carefully assembled 100-300 years after the death of Jesus? ( In no way am I trying to besmirch people’s faith in EITHER testament, I am questioning why one set of canon is rejected so heavily, and if it is just the passage of time that defines the difference.)

Menocchio, you said they took place in a verifiable historical context. I would debate that. Define verifiable- anyone writing down a history of events has a skew, a point of view. It is not unreasonable to think that written histories of 100-300 C.E. that focus in on that part of history, and that area of the world, were written by people happy to promote the point of view that the four gospels have been accepted as the only true words. Again, no offense intended- but verifiable? We have to look no further than Russian history to see what that means. Or, as they called it when I was in school, Russian Revisionist History- " Trotsky? What Trotsky?? We know of no Trotsky". People write what serves their interests at the moment, and frequently those histories can be called into question later on. Now, I do believe the cite I provided- that there was an agenda being put forth by people between 160 C.E. and 300 C.E. to formalize the writings and in a way, insulate the newly fashion Christian faith from any other writings. There were to be the four Gospels, period. It is not some loathsome concept, it is how things are done. No question.

However, I am questioning the creation of a sense of validity solely by the passage of years, compared to the L.D.S. doctrines and their origination. We can look back 2,000 years and find a variet of religions and faiths. We can look back 1,000 years and see some too. Not just Jews, Christians or Moslems. What about Wots, Celts, all of Asia and it’s religions, Mayans, Incas, Inuit and so on. The patina of history has validated those religions, which is why I wonder how the world’s fastest-growing religion will be percieved 300 years from now.

9

It sounds like his point was more that we know that there were jews in that area of the world at that time. We know from other sources that a number of the people mentioned in the texts did actually exist. Not that the events described took place exactly in the way the bible says, but that it’s plausible from a historical perspective.

The events described in the BOM lack that outside verification.

10

Wait, are we misunderstanding each other, or are you suggesting that there may not have been Jews and Romans in 1st century AD Judea? That the early Christians forged earlier Pagan Roman and Greek accounts of the area, and that they got the Jews to play along? Even among themselves?

I’m not saying that there’s independent proof of the life of Christ (there isn’t really, and there would be if there was a conspiracy to alter history to support the gospels), but we know that the Jews and Romans were real and present in that time and place. We’re even pretty sure about characters such as Herod and Pilate (do we know if any of the apostles are real? I think we do, but I may be mistaken).

In contrast, we cannot prove that the tribes mentioned in LDS holy text ever existed. In fact, most current studies suggest they aren’t. Because we know the general setting of the Canonical gospels to be accurate, it gives the works some authenticity the LDS works lack.

11

Just for accuracy, we’re not the fastest-growing church around. I think the JWs and Pentecostals and SDAs are all ahead of the LDS Church. IIRC, we come in around #5.

Otherwise I have not got much to add to this thread so far!

12

Even the most hardened skeptics and liberal historians generally acknowledge that the Apostles existed. This includes Paul, who is described as an Apostle even though he was not one of the original twelve.

13

Sorry, but that is NOT an official website of the LDS Church. They’re relatively even-handed in their treatment of the subject, but factually inaccurate in several key places:

  1. The brass plates were not among the things Joseph Smith was purportedly shown by the angel.

  2. “They may have worked like a pair of dice?!?” Come on. Joseph Smith’s own writings are vague on the subject, but there’s nothing in them AFAIK to support such conjecture.

~ Ben
Non-bitter ex-Mormon

14

More true than you may know. The Gospel of Judas has recently come to light and it seems Bishop Irenaeus decided that it should not be included among the gospels.

15

I’m not sure I get the point of the OP. The canonization of the Gospels was done by believers in Christianity, as was the canonization of the Book of Mormon. LDS, being better organized, did not have a bunch of conflicting works to sort through (though I’m not an expert in LDS history, so correct me if I’m wrong.) The spread of Christianity to pagans had little to do with the content of the NT.

As for historical accuracy, perhaps Jews at the time you’re speaking of still remembered there were no odd earthquakes in Jerusalem, no census, and no miracles to the best of anyone’s recollection. If religious works got accepted or rejected based on proven historical accuracy, the canon would be a bit sparse.

Who should be doing or accepting what? That’s what I don’t get.

16

I assume this is referring to the Umim and Thumim, and your statement about them as referred to in LDS scripture is, I think correct. But the Urim and Thumim referred to in the canonical Old Testament (are they supposed to be the same? I confess I don’t know) have, it has been conjectured, been used as devices to make decisions by lot. I don’t recall where I read this – Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, perhaps, or Julian Jaynes’ “Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” (neither of which is a scholarly source on the OT, but which quote reputable sources) – I think. The suggestion was that “Urim” and “Thumim” might come from words meaning something like “Light” and “Darkness”, and that the priest asked a Yes-or-No question and reached into the bag containing them, and the color of the stone retrieved would determine their course of action depending upon which stione he drew. This being from the days before the formulation of mathematical ideas of chance (so goes the reasoning), the choice must therefore have been decreed by God.
It’s a plasusible enough theory for the Old Testament U and T. But I agree that nothing I’ve seen in LDS scripture or commentary suggests this interpretation. Some old writings suggest that the Urim and Thumim were like a pair of spectacles, and old Church Art I’ve seen in the Museum across from Temple Square does ndeed depict them that way.

17

I suppose I ought to mention the Catholic/Orthodox view concerning the texts…

We picked them out. Specifically, church elders looked at all of the gospels and texts and prayed and considered each one. Then they chose the ones they felt were correct and truthful. There were specific and concrete theological reasons they denied the accuracy of the others.

18

Oh gosh no. We misunderstood each other. I wasn’t trying to say anything of the kind. My last name is one of the 12 Tribes of Israel- I know full well who was around back then !!

19

Where did you get this information? As I understand it the process took place over a number of years with many of the books being considered scripture for generations before officially canonized.

I am sure some books were rejected not because of a lack of authenticity but because of a disagreement with the theology of the winners of the power struggle.

That’s also why some of the text was changed in the copying process. If wording it differently supports the theology we like then change the words and call it translation.

20

Billy Vern Issachar is that you? Damn son, how you been? (And you still have my Trapper Keeper.)