Cactus Game Design Message Boards
Open Forum => Off-Topic => Topic started by: xCaLeBx on April 15, 2009, 09:31:38 PM
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why isn't the book of Josephus included in the Christian Bible? I'm completely ignorant on this so I'd like som insight
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First off Josephus was a person not a book :p and Second he was a Jewish historian not a Christian.
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Josephus (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08522a.htm)
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Oh my gosh, I am so naming my first son Flavius!
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well whats the book the bible doesn't include? I forget the Name :-X
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well whats the book the bible doesn't include? I forget the Name :-X
There's alot of them the protestant Bible doesn't include, it all depends on your denomination.
The Catholic and Orthodox churches each have their respective books, and the eastern/African churches have other books as well.
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Thanks guys!!!!!!! i needed a topic for a Chrush History report and he will work perfictly!!!!
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but theres one specifically (I'm non denominational) and I can't remember though I thought it started with J
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Maybe you are thinking of the Epistle of Jude? or Gospel of James? or Book of Jubilee?
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+ 1 to Sean
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It's not included because it's not a book. Josephus wrote several historical works, mostly regarding Jewish history and culture. Nothing on the level of Scripture.
The name that might be escaping your memory is the Apocrypha, which is actually a collection of books that appear in e.g. the Catholic Bible but not in most Protestant compilations.
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maybe it is whatever its name I was listening to a talk show and they we're saying christians had a incomplete Bible and cut out anything they didn't agree with so I got curious.
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It's pretty common these days to oversimplify a disagreement for the purposes of making it sound stupid, and its believers dishonest. Just know what you believe, and more importantly, why you believe it, so you can stand up against this nonsense and get discourse back on track. We're better than this.
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so I got curious.
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I was responding to their claim on air, not to anything you said personally.
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Maybe you are referring to the infamous Gospel of Judas... :o
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maybe it is whatever its name I was listening to a talk show and they we're saying christians had a incomplete Bible and cut out anything they didn't agree with so I got curious.
The books that we find in Scripture grew up with the church. It's dishonest to claim that books were "taken out of the Bible" (though this is a common, uneducated claim made by Bible critics). Consider 2 Peter 3:15-16. At the time Peter wrote this epistle (probably about 67-68 A.D.), Paul's epistles were already considered inspired. So the short answer as to why a book is included in canon is because it was written by a prophet (O.T.) or an Apostle (N.T.), though there are a couple of exceptions to this rule, and there are definitely other criteria used. But again, the canon of Scripture simply grew up with the church. Nothing was taken out, the councils just met to affirm that what they had should remain canonized (and to further scrutinize a couple of books -- James and Revelation almost didn't make it in, if memory serves).