Dan Wallace reports on the release of a new New Testament. A band off 19 liberal Christian and Jewish scholars got together for a “council” and decided to add 13 new books (two are prayers, and one is a song) to the New Testament.
Given some of those on this council (Karen King, John Dominic Crossan), it’s no surprise that they are Gnostic in character. Both the “council” and the new testament they produced is a farce.
Thinking to Believe 
March 19, 2013 at 3:57 pm
Why a farce? If we don’t acknowledge the RCC as having any true authority, and they picked the canon, whose to say other books aren’t equally inspired and helpful?
And Gnosticism is all throughout Paul’s writing. Why get picky now? It was the ethos of the day. Paul seemed to only care about bodily resurrection but otherwise seemed ok.
Why reject this new Bible? Can the same logic be used to rejecting all of the Biblical canon we have? Is this not a record of God and man?
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March 24, 2013 at 1:47 am
Zach,
It’s a farce for a number of reasons,and the article Jason linked to explains it quite well,but here’s my summary.
1. The thirteen books added by this council are forgeries. They’re attributed to authors who didn’t write them. This is not true of any traditional canon book.
2. The traditional canon is written entirely by apostles or associates of apostles (if there is an exception,it’s Hebrews,the author is unknown). This was seemingly a criteria for selecting the canon,and a good one. They were the very eyewitnesses of the ressurected Christ. They were those who learned directly from Jesus and those who learned from them!
3. The traditional canon doesn’t contradict what the early church had learned from the teachings and traditions of the apostles. This is important because once again,the apostles were those who witnessed Jesus ressurected,and aside from Paul,learned from Jesus Himself.
The early church was very careful in deciding what to regard as scripture and had sound criteria these 13 books couldn’t pass.
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