[quote:18b3bria]2. The Master, The Apostle Paul, nor any other writer of the New Testament ever quoted from these books. They frequently quoted from the books that were in the Hebrew canon of scripture.
[/quote:18b3bria]

Buzz, sorry, thankyou for playing, but that’s incorrect and we have some lovely parting gifts for you…

While Jesus never explicitly quotes from the Apocryphal texts (that I know of) he’s all over the Septuagint (the version containing the Apocrypha), especially in the Gospel of Luke. When the Gospels were written in light of the Old Testament, It was the Septuagint that they drew from. So if he’s quoting the Septuagint, then the Septuagint is what should be used.

Other points:

[quote:18b3bria]4. The book had to be written within the geographical boundaries of Palestine [/quote:18b3bria]

Pardon me, but wasn’t Genesis writted during the babylonian Captivity? I could be wrong on this one, but I thought I remembered hearing that.

[quote:18b3bria]Four criteria were used for determining the books of the New Testament.
1. Was the book written by an apostle or someone associated with an apostle? Was the book’s content of spiritual nature?
2. Was the book widely received by the churches?
3. Was there evidence in the book of divine inspiration? [/quote:18b3bria]

Two, no, three problems with this:

A. By the above, the Didache (the Teachings of the Twelve) should have been included. Would have saved us all kinds of trouble – passages like “If someone asks for money to preach to you the Gospel, he is from the devil.” Whoo! Anyways. Tell me why the Didache, or the Gospel according to Peter, ain’t included by that rationale.

B. Using two different sets of criteria for the OT and the NT is dangerous, and can lead to things like marcionism (am I getting that right? Marcion was the guy who thought the OT God was a different God than the NT God, right) where one sees the OT as a ‘lower class’ of scripture than the NT.

C. He’s disagreeing with The Most Holy Catholic and Apostolic church of Rome, and is therefore, obviously, in grevious error. Let us beg the intercession of the Blessed Virgin that he be pulled safe from the tempest of heresy in which he will otherwise surely drown. Amen. Deo Gratias.

(Okay, maybe I’m a little overboard on point C. But who doesn’t enjoy a good ecclesial smackdown every now and again? Apologetics means never having to say you’re sorry.)

Dave ” title=”Smile” />