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From: mls@panix.com (Michael Siemon)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Deuterocanonicals, esp. Sirach
Message-ID: <May.20.05.01.38.1993.22816@athos.rutgers.edu>
Date: 20 May 93 09:01:39 GMT
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In article <May.14.02.11.26.1993.25198@athos.rutgers.edu> db7n+@andrew.cmu.edu (D. Andrew Byler) writes:
>Michael Siemon writes:

>Protestants love to play up Jerome for all he is worth. 

Yes, but no more than he is worth. :-).  Seriously: Jerome is merely
(and grandly) another Christian witness, to be taken for what he can
tell us.  He is one in the community of saints.  You seem to wish for
a greater polarization and dichotomy between Catholic and Protestant
thought than seems to me, from a historical perspective, to be valid.
To be sure, Rome rejects (some significant aspects of) Protestant
thought just as vehemently as Protestants reject (some significant
aspects of) Roman thought.  Other than some peoplw who apparently try
to embody the greatest extreme of this rejection, on either side, there
is not quite so vast a gulf fixed as casual observers seem to assume.

Ecumenical consultations between Rome and the Lutherans, as well as 
those between Rome and the Anglican communion (to which I belong) show
very nearly complete convergence on understanding the basic theological
issues -- the sticking points tend to be ecclesiology and church polity.
Thus, for example, as you go on to say:

>                                                        They should
>remeber that after the Decree of Pope St. Damsus I,

Many of us do not regard a papal decretal as having any necessary (as
opposed to political) significance.  Sometimes it will, sometimes it
won't.  You misread me if you think that my communion, at least, "throws
out" the deuterocanonical books.  Nor do I think you should overstress
the sense in which the more Reformed may do so.

>Again, why must the Church of Jesus Christ adopt the canon of the
>unbelieving Jews, drawn up in Jamnia in 90 AD, in countering the
>Christian use of the Septuagint.                 ^^^^^

I seriously suggest you rethink what you are saying here.  It verges on,
and could be taken as, anti-Semitic in the worst sense.  The "unbelieving"
Jews were, according to what I understand as a Christian, the chosen
people of God, and the recipients of His pre-Incarnational revelation.
I think they have some say in the matter.  The Javneh meeting should not
be over-interpreted.  A recent magisterial study titled _Mikra_ (I don't
have more citation information on hand, sorry) produced primarily from
the background of Christian (rather than specifically Jewish) scholarship
suggests strongly that the Javneh meeting mostly resolved a lingering
question, where in practice the canon had long been fixed on the basis
of the scrolls that were kept in the Temple, and thereby "made the hands
unclean" when used.  The list of "sacred books" that may be drawn up from
Josephus and other pre-Yavneh sources correspond (plus or minus one book,
if I rememeber the chapter correctly) to the current Jewish canon of Tanakh.

All of this is not to "throw out" the deuterocanonicals (what, by the way,
is YOUR position about the books the Greeks accept and Rome does not? :-))
-- just to observe that the issue is complex and simply binary judgment
does not do it justice.
>
>Andy Byler


-- 
Michael L. Siemon		I say "You are gods, sons of the
mls@panix.com			Most High, all of you; nevertheless
    - or -			you shall die like men, and fall
mls@ulysses.att..com		like any prince."   Psalm 82:6-7
