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Coptic Versions (Southern/Sahadic and Northern/Boharic)
George William Horner (1849-1930) is a bright light in the field of Coptic textual criticism. His two most notable contributions are: The Coptic version of the New Testament in the northern dialect, otherwise called Memphitic and Bohairic (apparently published by Horner from 1898-1905); and The Coptic version of the New Testament in the Southern dialect…
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Significance of Source Critical / Textual Critical Comments on 2 Maccabees 12:43-45
Introduction This post is to provide some written responses to a few interesting issues that have arisen in the wake of a recent Purgatory debate (and preparation for that debate). As the post has evolved a bit since its initial posting, I’m going to try to clean it up and make it more user-friendly, as…
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James Arminius on the Canon of Scripture
Those who know me, know I don’t endorse anything on the grounds that Arminius said it. However, since Arminius has recently been accused of holding to the wrong canon of Scripture or somehow being at odds with Sola Scriptura, I offer the following quotations from Arminius’ works, specifically Volume 2, his private disputations (link to…
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Michuta on Augustine on the Canon – Some Mistakes Corrected
One of the faults of Gary Michuta’s “Why are Catholic Bibles Bigger,” is its apparent uncritical reliance on a number of secondary sources, especially Breen’s “General and Critical Introduction,” (here is one problem that came from that) and Gigot’s “General Introduction.” In the section on Augustine, Michuta seems to draw mostly from Charles J. Costello’s…
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Responses to Miscellaneous Canon Questions and Objections
1) What is the canon? Is it an “authoritative list of books”? It’s better to think of the canon as the list of authoritative books. An official canon may itself be in some sense authoritative, but in that case it is an authoritative list of authoritative books. Even before any “authority” pronounces what the list…
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Old Testament Canon: Patristic Use of Isaiah 3:9-10 or Wisdom 2:12?
William Albrecht has a video titled “Patristics and Scripture:Wisdom 2:12” (link). It’s an attempt to argue for the canonicity of the book, The Wisdom of Solomon. In that video Albrecht says: The book of Wisdom, a canonical book of Scripture, was a book that was employed quite often by the early church. Wisdom is a…
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Scriptural and Patristic Testimony to the Holy Spirit's Illumination and Scripture's Self-Authenticating Character
In the comment box of a previous post, Pastor David King provided the following Scriptural and patristic testimony to the Holy Spirit’s inward illumination of believers and Scripture’s self-authenticating character, to which I’ve made some minor edits: The canon of Scripture is an artifact of revelation rather than an object of revelation. By “artifact” I…
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False Dichotomy Between Infallible Church and "Subjective, Individualistic" Conclusions
Over at the GreenBaggins blog, in a comment box, Roman Catholic Bryan Cross wrote: If we deny that the Church has such a gift [a gift (or charism) of infallibility in matters of faith and morals], then we are left with a subjective, individualistic, “changes hearts” criterion of canonicity, and such a subjective criterion is,…