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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (24852)	9/8/1998 10:32:00 PM
From: JF Quinnelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

You could indeed say that Christianity piggy-backs on a sort of Judaism from the 1st century. But not on the later Judaism of the Babylonian Talmud. According to Jacob Neusner, Judaism re-invented itself between 200-600 AD, and the Judaism of the Babylonian Talmud is what we see practiced today. The difference between Christianity and Gnosticism is that Christianity could only derive itself from a basis in Judaism, whereas Gnosticism can and did attach itself to all sorts of host religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Must all Christians, by definition, derive all their scripture from the Bible as we know it today? There are groups that use extra-biblical writings; churches with a "low" view of scripture, who regard it as simply the work of men, who have no problem with sources outside of the Bible. Groups like the Mormons have writings that are extra-biblical. There are groups who seem to claim a direct-connection to the Almighty; in history they were known as "Montanists", today they are like the "Toronto Blessing" bunch. The early church vetted their own writings to determine which ones to add to the Bible they already had, the Old Testament. They quoted from writings that finally weren't included in the canon of scripture, I think "the Shepherd of Hermas" was one. A book on the biblical canon will usually describe why these other works were rejected, and how the canon itself was chosen. A church that holds to a "high" view of scripture, that considers scripture to be an inspired revelation from God to man, would derive their doctrine from the Bible as we have it today. Reformation Protestants appealed to sola scriptura, 'scripture alone', against what they saw as the Catholic practice of subordinating scripture to tradition. I don't know how accurate that accusation is, as I find Catholic theologians seem to appeal to scripture themselves when they defend Catholic practice.