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03/21/2004 Entry: "A Biblical Puzzle of no great importance"
When a canonical book quotes a non-canonical book, as Jude quotes the apocryphal "The Assumption of Moses" (see Jude 8-10), does the authority of the canon rub off on the entire book that's quoted, or just the bit that's picked out?
Not something I'm going to lose sleep over - it just made me pause to scratch my head.
Replies: 3 comments
Why should it? Paul quotes Pindar (um, I think. But I could be wrong) in Acts 17. Does that mean that yon pagan Greek poet is part of canon?
Posted by Wood @ 03/22/2004 09:51 AM GMT
I'd say mostly no, but then I think it depends on what you understand by "the authority of the canon".
Does the bible have autority in the sense that God inspired writers to use particular specific words (hence we should have hour long sermons on the orignial greek meanings of one word of one passage of one book) or is it more of a general authority (i.e. Paul was a wise bloke who knew what he was on about so we should listen to him)?
If it's the first kind then the authority would not rub off because clearly only the words that were used were inspired - not the whole book. If it's the latter, then I'd say the quoted works gets a bit of kudos, it'd be a bit like a well respected blogger plugging someone else's blog by quoting them.
Posted by Dan @ 03/22/2004 01:27 PM GMT
A related issue is the argument for innerancy that starts with the words of Jesus and then extending that authority to all of the OT because Jesus quoted bits of it.
That seems a particularly naive argument for innerrancy, however, since we would then have to accept Assumption of Moses, Enoch, etc as inspired...which the people who use that argument do NOT do...
Posted by Jonathan @ 03/22/2004 01:47 PM GMT
