 |
| Author | Post |
|---|
crazy66coolie
Member
| Joined: | Mon Nov 5th, 2007 |
| Location: | Hove, United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 36 |
| First Name: | Neil | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Became a Christian in 1991; got baptised by total immersion ... |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Tue Nov 6th, 2007 09:54 pm |
|
Hi guys
More recently, I visited a Catholic website called 'CatholicBridge.com' which was very interesting to read.
One of my evangelical Christian friends, who goes to a Bible college, said that the Word of God comes first BEFORE the Tradition. But when I read something about the Tradition, it got me thinking that in Jesus' times, there were no Bible, where His life and teaching were passed down via oral methods, which is the Tradition. Is that right?
Can I ask if the Tradition should be first, as the Bible was formed later on? Does the Tradition mean that the Word of God had passed down orally by the Apostles the Bible was put together? Am I right? :?
Please can you help me with this one? Thanks, guys.
Love
Neil x
____________________
Jesus is Lord! Catholicism is awesome!
|
|
|
CajunRick
Network Helper
| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Houma, Louisiana USA |
| Posts: | 5458 |
| First Name: | Rick (& Kermie) | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Lifetime Catholic, Latin Rite |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Tue Nov 6th, 2007 10:25 pm |
|
crazy66coolie wrote: Can I ask if the Tradition should be first, as the Bible was formed later on? Does the Tradition mean that the Word of God had passed down orally by the Apostles before the Bible was put together? Am I right? :?
Yep. The New Testament is the codification of some of the oral teachings of the apostles. The letters of Paul were instructions written to various churches to help them deal with problems that had arisen. They were a follow-up to the oral teachings of Paul and the other apostles and disciples. They were not "textbooks" on which to base the faith, but admonitions to correct errors that had crept into their practice of the faith, or encouragements to help them practice and spread the faith.
The apostles believed that Jesus would return in their lifetimes. Practically every Christian knew Jesus. There was no need to write the story of his teachings because they had all heard him speak. As Paul and the others spread the gospel message outside of Jerusalem, it became necessary to have a written record of Jesus' message.
Remember that written records had to be hand-copied, so they were exceedingly rare. For a millennium and a half, each copy of scripture was lovingly hand-copied by monks who dedicated their lives to preserving the Word of God.
If it were not for the Catholic Church, there would be no bible. The Church wrote it, preserved it, loved it, taught it, and passed it on from generation to generation, as she does to this very day.
____________________
Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. - Augustine
Rick Luquette
Luquette Lane
|
|
|
David W. Emery
Network Helper
| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Brownsville, Texas USA |
| Posts: | 2282 |
| First Name: | David | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Catholic |
| Status: |
Online
|
|
Posted: Tue Nov 6th, 2007 10:52 pm |
|
Tradition or the bible — which comes first? you ask.
Historically, the Old Testament was already in existence at the time of Christ. However, there was no official canon, because Judaism was never structured as an authoritative religion. During the post-exilic period and into Christian times, a mostly liturgical authority was vested in the priests, while the scholars provided catechesis. When the temple was destroyed in 70 AD, the priesthood was effectively disbanded and the scholars took over the function, such as it was, of authority. It was at this point (about 100 AD) that the Palestinian canon of the Hebrew scriptures came into being. The Greek version of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint, came into existence a century or so before the time of Christ. The Greek-speaking Jews of the diaspora held to a more inclusive canon than the Palestinian canon, which accepted only works originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic.
Meanwhile, the Christian canon — what we call the New Testament — first had to be written. This took basically the entire first century AD. But while there was (as with the Jews in their own sphere) a common consensus that described more or less what that body of scriptures should contain, the actual forming of a canon under authoritative auspices did not take place until the late 4th century with the Synod of Rome in 387, followed by the Councils of Hippo and Carthage in 393 and 397 respectively. So the bible as we know it did not exist definitively before that time. And centuries passed until the Council of Trent formally declared the ancient canon as dogma.
Now what were the bases of the selection of books for the New Testament? Apostolic origin (in the broad sense of being written or directly inspired by one or another of the first century apostles; thus we can include the letters of Paul because, while he was not one of the original twelve, he was still considered an apostle; and the book of Acts could be included because Luke, the author, was directly inspired at different periods by the apostles Peter and Paul) was one criterion; adherence to the orthodox faith (basically, this is Tradition, with a capital T) was another; and a third was that the work was used in the liturgy of the various particular churches around the world (what today we would call dioceses, each headed by a bishop; this would be the authority of the Magisterium, or teaching authority of the Church, which is the interpreter of Scripture and Tradition). All this is related in the writings of the early Christians known as the Fathers of the Church.
Now how does the Church put all these elements together dogmatically today? I have listed the constituent parts of the Church’s authority above. One part, obviously, is Scripture. The other two are Tradition and Magisterium. These three parts or “sources” are considered equal, much as the three Persons of the Trinity are equal though distinct. In other words, they should not be thought of as separate entities but only as constituents of the whole, which is the authority of the Church.
So in this sense, the Catholic Church does not say that one or another constituent of its authority precedes the others, but that the three together constitute that authority. Therefore it is wrong to say, for instance, that Catholics consider Tradition to be a higher authority than Scripture. It is basically a three-legged stool, upon which sits the authority which binds everything together and preserves our doctrine intact.
Thus, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we read the following statements:
80 “Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together, and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine well-spring, come together in some fashion to form one thing, and move towards the same goal.” Each of them makes present and fruitful in the Church the mystery of Christ, who promised to remain with his own “always, to the close of the age.”
82 As a result the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, “does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.”
95 “It is clear therefore that, in the supremely wise arrangement of God, sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the others. Working together, each in its own way, under the action of the one Holy Spirit, they all contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.”
David
|
|
|
hpj0828
Member
| Joined: | Sun Apr 1st, 2007 |
| Location: | USA |
| Posts: | 144 |
| First Name: | Henry | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Messianic Jewish believer, Hebrew Catholic |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Wed Nov 7th, 2007 11:43 am |
|
As a Jewish believer in Jesus, I recite in Hebrew passages of the Tanakh (Old Testament) in the traditional manner passed down through the long millenia from the ancient Jewish past.
Most Christians do not realize that there is no such thing as the Old Testament apart from an oral tradition of cantillation (chanting) of the text. Scripture does not even exist without an accompanying oral tradition.
Why is this?
1. Hebrew is a language which contains only consonants. There are no letters in the language which stand for vowel sounds.
Imagine the following English sentence:
The doctor helped me with his cr. Where cr is some English word consisting of the consonants c and r and some unspecified vowels.
So, what does this sentence mean?
A. The doctor helped me with his car. So, he gave me a ride!
B. The doctor helped me with his care. So, he tended me in the hospice and comforted me, but unfortunately, I will die there.
C. The doctor helped me with his cure. So, I'm better now and likely to live to a ripe old age!
How different are these meanings! There are many places where the Hebrew text of the Tanakh is obscure without the vowel sounds that accompany the consonants. Very different interpretations are reached based upon different vowels in a disputed word. The authoritative reading of the text comes only from the oral tradition that preserved the vowels by singing them!
2. The original Hebrew text contained no spaces between words, nor punctuation of any kind, such as a period to show the end of a sentence.
If you cannot even tell where one word ends and another begins in a text, how can the text have any meaning? If you cannot tell whether a word is at the end of one sentence, or at the beginning of another, then how do you know the meaning of the sentences? If you cannot group certain words within the sentence into a unit of thought (denoted by the comma punctuation mark), then you cannot understand the sentence.
Cantillation preserves the separation between words and the punctuation of sentences, all by the rests of varying lengths within the singing.
Separation between words in the written text only dates back to the first century or so BC, 1000 years after the writing of the Torah (First 5 books of the Bible). It was only about 1000AD that the Jewish scribes called the Masoretes, afraid that the vowels and punctuation inherent in the cantillation would be lost, wrote symbols above and below the Hebrew consonants in the text to render this information explicit in the text.
So, for millenia after the Torah was written, the meaning of the Scripture was preserved both in the written text and in the accompanying oral tradition, without which the written text would have no meaning at all! When the Masoretes finally wrote down the oral tradition into the text, they were establishing the official interpretation of the text which cantillation imposed upon it.
Sola Scriptura does not exist!
Shalom!
Henry
____________________
HPJ
|
|
|
CajunRick
Network Helper
| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Houma, Louisiana USA |
| Posts: | 5458 |
| First Name: | Rick (& Kermie) | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Lifetime Catholic, Latin Rite |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Wed Nov 7th, 2007 12:23 pm |
|
hpj0828 wrote: Imagine the following English sentence:
The doctor helped me with his cr. Where cr is some English word consisting of the consonants c and r and some unspecified vowels.
So wouldn't it actually be:
thdctrhlpdmwthhscr?
Imagine trying to translate that three thousand years from now!
____________________
Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. - Augustine
Rick Luquette
Luquette Lane
|
|
|
Current time is 12:54 pm | |
|
|
|
|
|
