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Originally Posted by Preacherman  That is why the translations we have are performed by teams and not individuals. |
Unfortunately, that doesn't always help. Teams of people can be just as inept, incompetent, hyperindoctrinated, etc. The New World Translation, for example, was done by a "team" ... but only one of them had any competency in Biblical languages, and the whole bunch of them (including the lone competent) were drenched in Jehovah's Witness gobbledygook.
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Originally Posted by Preacherman Certainly there are things they disagree on and at times the exact intent isn't preserved. So it isn't always accurate concerning the Greek or Hebrew, but what I'm trying to get at is the general public thinks that the translations don't go back to the greek and Hebrew they think things keep getting changed and altered and translated back and forth. and now we can really have no idea what was there originally, when in fact we have a very good idea. |
Correct ... we DO know this ... but only IF someone takes care to figure it out. Unfortunately most people who study the Bible at this level are already "believers" and have already made up their minds about a great many things; what they find tends (rather conveniently!) to match up with whatever those preconceptions are. Few are able to study the period and the languages and read the texts in truly detached, impartial, objective manner.
Learning a language, the history of the people who wrote it, and using all of that information together to discern exactly what they intended to write, takes an ENORMOUS amount of work. Few people are willing to expend the time and energy necessary to do so ... especially those who've already decided in advance that the have "the Truth."
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Originally Posted by Preacherman The coptic, syriac etc Canons you mentioned still aren't affected by what the catholic church decreed at Trent... |
True, however, they demonstrate that there is
no single canon! People talk about "THE" Bible canon as if there is only one. There isn't! In fact, there
never has been only "one" Bible canon!
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Originally Posted by Preacherman I think the point still should accepted that these councils reinforced the "consensus of the early church" rather than a departure from it, even if the debate was brought up again. Even Luther questioned the validity of James, but not event the Lutheran church has departed from the (overwhelming, though not unanimous) mind of the church long before even the earliest councils |
It is true that, as time went on, "momentum" factored in. That is, people tended to lean on what already existed. But it is not true that there was no controversy. At the Lateran councils of the Middle Ages, for example, most of which dealt with how to react to various heresies (and ultimately resulted in creation of the Inquisitions and the launch of the Albigensian Crusade), some of the discussions dealt with how authoritative some of the texts (both canon and from the Church Fathers) were. The dignitaries by no means considered the existing, informally-determined canon as "absolutely authoritative."
As for Luther (and his smarter friend Philip Melanchthon, who in reality is probably the primary author of Luther's theology and reforms) ... he
definitely parted company with prior canon tradition! For instance, he jettisoned the deuterocanonicals, which the scholastics had already established were suspect but which the Church had not dispensed with. He felt no compulsion to retain them even though centuries of tradition considered them important, if not sacred.