From:  (Nigel B. Mitchell)
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian
Subject: Graeme's 6 points - was The Apocrypha
Date: Sat, 08 Aug 1998 03:20:20 GMT

I think I have already dealt with these six points, but in
ongoing discussion Graeme seems to regard them as fundamental, so
perhaps it is worth revisiting them in more detail.

On Fri, 07 Aug 1998 16:35:04 GMT, g, (Graeme)
wrote:

>1) The Bible is the inspired Word of God, period. 

I agree. 

You have declined to provide any evidence that "inspired by the
word of God, period" implies perfection or infallibility.

You also have a different list of canonical books to anyone else
- namely the OT without the Apocrypha, and the NT without the
long ending to Mark and without John 8:1-11. My Bible includes
all of these texts, as do the Bibles of most Christians.

>2) The writers of the Bible received their inspiration from God the
>Holy Spirit, not from the fictitious writings of man.

The writers of the Bible wrote about what they saw, experienced
and understood of God. They were fallible human beings, and
continued to be such when they wrote the books and letters which
now make up the scriptures.

The process by which the Church, over a period of some 4
centuries, decided which books to include, and which to exclude
from the canon, was also guided by inspiration from the Holy
Spirit, but nevertheless undertaken by fallible human beings.

>3) How did a fictitious writing see the invisible angelic conflict in
>order to be able to report it? (I refer to its alleged inclusion in
>the Assumption of Moses).

The author of the Assumption of Moses is generally considered to
have been involved in devotional speculation. According to most
Bible authors I have been able to find, it is likely that the
author of the letter of Jude, and his readers, were familiar with
the story, so it was an appropriate example.

>4) Why would Jude conclude that a fictitious writing was revelation
>from God? If the Bible is correct [1st class condition: and it is!]
>then the Holy Spirit inspired the writing of Jude, it was not copied
>out of fiction.

The Bible contains many fictitious stories used for the example
or the information they convey - the story of the lovers in the
Song of Songs, the book of Job, the parables of Jesus, etc.
Jude 9 is far from unique in this respect.

>5) If Jude included it in his epistle on the say so of a fictitious
>writing it is not a part of the Word of God. 

No-one regards the Assumption of Moses as canonical. All
Christians, AFAIK, regard the book of Jude as canonical. The
ficticious parables of Jesus do not disqualify the canonicity of
the Gospels, and Jude's use of the Assumption of Moses does not
disqualify the book of Jude.

>6) The only fragment of the Assumption of Moses that has survived
>makes no reference to the angelic conflict. All you have to go on
>apparently is the comment of one man.

If you look at my posting on Jude 9, you will see that the
consensus of modern Biblical scholars seems to be that enough 3rd
and 4th century references to the Assumption of Moses and Jude's
use thereof have survived for us to be fairly confident that
either Jude directly quoted from the Assumption of Moses, or Jude
and the author of the Assumption of Moses both drew on the same
traditional material for their account of the dispute between
Michael and Satan over the body of Moses.

I have answered your six points, Graeme. Is there any chance you
will come up with some material showing logical support and
evidence for your claims about scripture?

Cheers

N+

Nigel B. Mitchell