How can we determine which parts of Scripture are true?

[Zelduck]

This is really a question for Christians, but since it doesn't assume the validity of the Bible, I think it belongs here rather than in the Theology, Doctrine, and Dogma section.

There have been multiple canons of Scripture. Books have been accepted and rejected for various reasons throughout Christian history. Books have lied about their authorship. Passages have been added and removed. Books were written in different times and different places by different authors and for different reasons.

So how can I have confidence in any particular verse, chapter, or book, that what I am reading is the inspired work of the Holy Spirit, and not the work of a man, no matter how pious?

What method ought I use to reliably determine what is and is not the Word of God? Has someone already done this for me, and if so, how can I tell if they didn't make a mistake?

[EbalT5]

[Replying to post 295 by Zzyzx]
As it happens, keeping up with the latest scholarly works (even as yet unpublished), I have come across strong support for my early date for the Gospel of John (with its four eyewitnesses). Scholars have been in the habit of viewing the term "aposynagogos" in John as a slip-up that pertains to the time John was written, not an event in Jesus's lifetime. This is based on a word "Birkat ha-minim" that is now known just to apply to removal of a reader from his liturgical duties--in Ephesus and Athens. It does not pertain to expulsion from attendance at a synagogue in Palestine. It's just not relevant. Or so argues Jonathan Bernier. Current consensus accepts that the Gospel of John is late because of the term “aposynagogos� in three places, thought to refer to a decree late in the First Century. The Christian community is thought to have read b back their situation into events in Jesus’s time. This two-level theory was championed by Louis Martyn and accepted by Raymond Brown. When facts on the ground on the ground countered this, John Kloppenborg nevertheless rationalized its continuing role in the consensus that John was late.
However,Berniers's 2012 dissertation has been published as a book: Jonathan Bernier, Aposynag�gos and the Historical Jesus in John: Rethinking the Historicity of the Johannine Expulsion Passages (Brill Biblical Interpretation Series 122; Leiden: Brill, 2013). Fortunately he has summarized it in a paper to be presented at the November 2014 Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting. He writes:

The central argument is that contrary to a virtual scholarly consensus on the matter, (3) John 9:22, 12:42, and 16:2, collectively designated as the aposynag�gos passages by their use of that term, are better understood by the historian as data relevant to the study of events surrounding Jesus’s life and the period shortly thereafter than as data relevant to the study of a putative Johannine community later in the first century. (4)

(3) The classic articulation of this consensus is to be found in J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (3rd ed.; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003 [1968]), 35-68. For a fuller treatment of the history of scholarship cf. Bernier, Aposynag�gos, 1-18. Notable recent dissent from this consensus is to be found in Edward W. Klink III, “Expulsion from the Synagogue? Rethinking a Johannine Anachronism.� Tyndale Bulletin 59/1 (2008): 99-118.

(4) The viability of approaching John’s Gospel as the history of a Johannine community has come under sharp critique since the publication of Richard Bauckham, ed., The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998). For responses, positive and negative, to this critique, cf. Philip F. Esler, “A Response to Richard Bauckham’s Gospels for All Christians,� Scottish Journal of Theology 51 (1998): 235-248; Tobias Hägerland, “John’s Gospel: A Two-Level Drama?� Journal for the Study of the New Testament 25/3 (2003): 309-322; Thomas Kazen, “Sectarian Gospels for Some Christians? Intention and Mirror Reading in the Light of Extra-Canonical Texts,� New Testament Studies 51 (2005): 561-578; Edward W. Klink III, ed., The Audience of the Gospels: The Origin and Functions of the Gospels in Early Christianity (London: T&T Clark, 2010); Edward W. Klink III, The Sheep of the Fold: The Audience and Origin of the Gospel of John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Margaret M. Mitchell, “Patristic Counter-Evidence to the Claim that the ‘Gospels Were Written for All Christians,’� New Testament Studies 51 (2005): 36-79; David C. Sim, “The Gospels for All Christians? A Response to Richard Bauckham,� Journal for the Study of the New Testament 84 (2001): 3-27.

That puts an end to the last supposedly good scholarly reason for dating John late. Of course, even Christian orthodoxy has made a habit of attributing to the Apostle John in his old age. The devout and the skeptics will likely continue their alliance for late dating of John, but that’s not even what external criticism says. The Muratorian Canon tells us that other apostles were still alive when John put out his gospel.
Edited to add:
While we're talking about latest current scholarship, I've noticed that you never replied to my #160 about Steve Mason's study of the term "the gospel" as evidence for my view that Luke was written before canonical Mark. Thus I added evidence that the Synoptics were very early (Luke originating before Paul's influence that shows up in the Gospel of Mark). With this current post I do the same for John. Do you have an aversion for new scholarship that explains why you won't deal with me?

Evidence that John's Gospel was not written by the Apostle John
Many people believe that the Gospel according to John was written by the Apostle John.
There is strong evidence that this is not true.
The Catholic Encyclopedia says that all the Gospels were written anonymously.

But there is internal evidence that pretty much makes it impossible for John to have written the Gospel.

The Gospel according to John shows evidence of being written sometime after 136CE [wouldn't John have been reallllllly old if he wrote the gospel?]
Consider the following passage .....
John 5:1-4 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
5 After these things there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes. 3 In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, [waiting for the moving of the waters; 4 for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.]

Couple of things to notice. Sheep gate was very close to the temple mount, and they brought the lambs for sacrifice to the temple through this gate.
The lambs were washed in this pool.
Now think about what is happening at his pool in John's gospel. Water is stirred...first man into the water gets a cure...everyone else is out of luck. Do these events sound like Jewish practice or does the word PAGAN shout out at you?
The Jewish High Priest would never had allowed this especially so close to the Temple using the pool used to wash lambs.
The 5 Porticoes gives the clue when this incident was invented. The Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE), was crushed by the Roman Emperor Hadrian and finally the Jews were kicked out of Jerusalem. Hadrian was a follower of the Greek God, Asclepius, whose Temples were marked by 5 porticoes. When Hadrian conquered the Jews in 136CE he built his temple to Asclepius by the sheep gate at the pool of Bethesda. The man who was healed story was a fabrication by a man who was writing after 136 CE when the Asclepius Temple was in full swing healing pagans.

If John didn't write the Gospel bearing his name how could we possibly believe that these are the words spoken by Jesus?

[Student]

Something I previously failed to address was the use of the Muratorian Canon in evidence of Andrew being an eye-witness.

The Muratorian Canon is of unknown provenance; we do not know where it was composed or by whom, or in which language it was originally written. It cannot be adequately dated, with scholars suggesting various dates ranging from late 2nd century to the 4th century.

The Canon was discovered in 1740 by L.A. Muratori, librarian in the ‘Bibliotheca Ambrosiana’ in Milan, in a manuscript of the eighth / ninth century CE. It reproduces a text possibly translated from the Greek into barbarous Latin; it is mutilated at the beginning and perhaps also at the end.

Because the beginning of the canon, and perhaps the ending might be missing, we have no way of knowing what the canon, when complete, may, or may not have contained. To claim that only Andrew and John are mentioned in the canon, is therefore, in effect, an argument from silence.

It is never referred to by any church father or mentioned in any other text. Even Eusebius shows no knowledge of it. It would have remained thoroughly unknown had it not been recovered by Muratori.

Consequently it is misleading to rely upon the Muratorian Canon as evidence of early church beliefs regarding possible authorship, or to assign dates by which canonical books were composed.

[Student]

[Replying to post 308 by Korah]I’m sorry Korah, but unless you can come up with something other than what are effectively unsubstantiated assertions, I see little point in continuing down this particular avenue [or should that be cul-de-sac] of debate.

There is however one gem in your last post that I found sufficiently amusing that to let it go without comment would be remiss of me.

John is now largely recognized as quite Aramaic, confirming Lightfoot’s evaluation over a century ago that John is the most Hebraic of the gospels.

Although both Aramaic and Hebrew are Semitic languages they are quite different; similarly, while Spanish and Italian are both Romance languages they are distinct.

Consequently you might just as well have written “John is now largely recognized as quite Italian, confirming Lightfoot’s evaluation over a century ago that John is the most Spanish of the gospels�, it makes just as much [non]sense.

[EbalT5]

John's Gospel Shows Strong Evidence of being Edited.

Let me show you an example.

John 20:30-31
30 Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.

This was the original ending of John's Gospel.
But there is another chapter in John's Gospel....chapter 21.

John 21:25
25 And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they *were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself *would not contain the books that *would be written.

This is the ending that we have now in our Bibles for John's Gospel.

This is strong proof that John's Gospel was edited and this makes it unreliable as Scripture.

[Korah]

[Replying to post 310 by EbalT5]
Strange, but I have read only of recent archaeology supporting EARLY dates for John, particularly regarding the Pool of Bethesda. The latter half of your response is entirely new to me--can you cite documentation? Nor would John 5:3 prove anything about when John was put together, as it could be a later insertion by the final Redactor, as Teeple's stylistic criteria indicates.

[EbalT5]

[Replying to post 310 by EbalT5]
Strange, but I have read only of recent archaeology supporting EARLY dates for John, particularly regarding the Pool of Bethesda. The latter half of your response is entirely new to me--can you cite documentation? Nor would John 5:3 prove anything about when John was put together, as it could be a later insertion by the final Redactor, as Teeple's stylistic criteria indicates.

A couple of years ago there was an article about the pool of Bethesda written by some archeologist who had been working on the site. unfortunately I didn't book mark it and later when I tried to find it by googling there were pages and pages of Christian articles and I couldn't find it. But you can piece it together by googling Asclepius and discovering the 5 portecoe temple design. You can discover that Hadrian built a Temple to Asclepius on the site after the Bar Korba revolt.
It is always possible that this is a later insertion as the 21st chapter is an insertion.
But spurious verses are like roaches., You see one but you know many more are hidden.

[Korah]

[Replying to post 308 by Korah]I’m sorry Korah, but unless you can come up with something other than what are effectively unsubstantiated assertions, I see little point in continuing down this particular avenue [or should that be cul-de-sac] of debate.

Yes, unfortunately we have some psychological, philosophical, or rhetorical conflict that prevents collaboration or even understanding.
I do appreciate your scholarly thoroughness. Yes, the Muratorian Canon is not conclusive in itself, but its gist brings its external criticism closer to my theory than comparable internal criticism by anyone else. I came up with Andrew as an author before I had heard of the Muratorian Canon, so I regarded the latter as somewhat of an independent confirmation of my ideas.
The rest of this post is more from my 1980 article, whether you want to consider it or not. It establishes the parameters of the Signs Source that I see as coming from Andrew:

A tendency has arisen to regard to regard the narratives in John as all of one piece through John 12, or even through the Passion Narrative (except for editorial additions). Fortna’s Gospel of Signs has even gone so far as to include the Resurrection appearance in John 21 within the source. (Fortna, p. 87-98, 237) Only marginal attempts have been made to find sources within the source. Nevertheless, such sub-sources can easily be identified.

The Synoptic materials within John are certainly a sub-source. Older scholarship regarded these passages as direct borrowing from the Synoptics in their final form. This borrowing actually was from sources underlying the Synoptics, because there is too little word-for-word agreement. The Johannine Synoptic passages exemplify perfectly the style of the source found by Fortna and confirmed by Freed. (Freed, p. 567) Therefore, the Synoptic overlap is a source within a source. We will see later that two sources are involved.

Few scholars have suggested any further sources-within-the-source. Several acknowledge the possibility, but they despair of any way of differentiating it. However, Temple has confidently identified numerous small sub-sources. Let us explore Temple’s insights. Temple finds that the prime starting point for a Signs Source is actually a separate sub-source. The only two numbered signs in John are called the Cana-Source by Temple. He stops with identifying John 2:1-11 and 4:46-54 as the Cana-Source. (Temple, p. 37, 43, 90, 120) Why stop there, however? Most scholars continue on to develop a complete Signs Source of seven signs.
Several scholars of the 1970’s have presented research which, put together, leads to firm conclusions. From Temple let us turn to Nicol, then to Freed, then to von Wahlde.

Nicol has carried on the stylistic research of Ruckstuhl, Schweizer, and his opponents, such as Fortna. Nicol studied the relative proportion of Johannine stylistic characteristics in various passages. The specific passages which are stylistically neutral (Synoptic style, we might say) include Temples’s Cana-Source. The additional passages with phenomenally low (1.0 or less) Johannine style include John 1:35-51;4:1-9, 16-19, 27-30, 40, 43-45; 5:1-9; 6:16-25; 9:1-2, 6-7; 11:1-6, 11-17, 33-44;12:1-8, 12-15. (Nicol, p. 25-26) Subtracting the Synoptic section (6:16-25) included herein, the expanded tentative Cana-Source becomes almost a full Signs Source.

Freed’s criticism of Fortna’s Gospel of Signs confirms the above. Freed discovered that the signs Source used rare words not found elsewhere in the Bible. Starting with these hapax legomena found in the Cana-Source, antlein leads into John 4 (though not to just the verses picked by Nicol); John 2:8, 9; 4:7, 11, 15. Likewise, hydria links them: John 2:6, 7; 4:28. John 5 and 9 are linked by kilymbethra: 5:7; 9:7. Other rare words occurring twice are krithinos (6:9, 13), epichriein (:6, 11), and litra (12:3, 19:39). Other rare words occur only once in the Bible in this proposed source at John 2:6; 4:9, 35, 52; 5:2, 13; 9:1, 6, 8; 11:11, 13, 35, 39(2), 44. Twenty-one out of Freed’s 73 rare words occur in a proposed strand (much smaller than Fortna’s source) barely 10% of the entire gospel. (Freed, p. 570-72) Careful study of Freed’s table compared with Nicol’s dictates slight modification of the Signs Source at this point, however: add in of John 4:11, 31, 33, 40, 42, 47b; 11:2 and 12:20-22.

The names Andrew and Philip can be tied to the Signs Source. The names occur repeatedly in John 1:40-48. Nicol definitely identifies this as Source. These names occur again at John 6:5-8. Nicol may consider these verses as Source, also. However, Nicol’s’ hesitation at specifying all of John 6:1-15 as Source is due to later insertions of Johannine material which I admit include the names themselves. My understanding of the Signs Source is that it specified Andrew and Philip, but rarely gave their names. The text as originally written said things like “two of his disciples,� one of the two,� and “this one,� as still found in our text at John 1:35, 37, 40, and 41.

The places where names were inserted later can be recognized by the absence of the Greek article before the names. In contrast, the style of the Signs Source includes using the article before most names.

[Korah]

[Replying to post 310 by EbalT5]
Strange, but I have read only of recent archaeology supporting EARLY dates for John, particularly regarding the Pool of Bethesda. The latter half of your response is entirely new to me--can you cite documentation? Nor would John 5:3 prove anything about when John was put together, as it could be a later insertion by the final Redactor, as Teeple's stylistic criteria indicates.

A couple of years ago there was an article about the pool of Bethesda written by some archeologist who had been working on the site. unfortunately I didn't book mark it and later when I tried to find it by googling there were pages and pages of Christian articles and I couldn't find it. But you can piece it together by googling Asclepius and discovering the 5 portecoe temple design. You can discover that Hadrian built a Temple to Asclepius on the site after the Bar Korba revolt.
It is always possible that this is a later insertion as the 21st chapter is an insertion.
But spurious verses are like roaches., You see one but you know many more are hidden.

I couldn't find anyone claiming that the Pool of Bethesda dates John to after 136 AD. An ascepieion had earlier existed there:
In the mid 1st century AD, Herod Agrippa expanded the city walls, bringing the asclepieion into the city. When Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, he placed a roadway along the dam, and expanded the asclepieion into a large temple to Asclepius and Serapis.[25] In the Byzantine era, the asclepieion was converted to a church. https://pediaview.com/openpedia/Pool_of_Bethesda

[EbalT5]

[Replying to post 310 by EbalT5]
Strange, but I have read only of recent archaeology supporting EARLY dates for John, particularly regarding the Pool of Bethesda. The latter half of your response is entirely new to me--can you cite documentation? Nor would John 5:3 prove anything about when John was put together, as it could be a later insertion by the final Redactor, as Teeple's stylistic criteria indicates.

A couple of years ago there was an article about the pool of Bethesda written by some archeologist who had been working on the site. unfortunately I didn't book mark it and later when I tried to find it by googling there were pages and pages of Christian articles and I couldn't find it. But you can piece it together by googling Asclepius and discovering the 5 portecoe temple design. You can discover that Hadrian built a Temple to Asclepius on the site after the Bar Korba revolt.
It is always possible that this is a later insertion as the 21st chapter is an insertion.
But spurious verses are like roaches., You see one but you know many more are hidden.

I couldn't find anyone claiming that the Pool of Bethesda dates John to after 136 AD. An ascepieion had earlier existed there:
In the mid 1st century AD, Herod Agrippa expanded the city walls, bringing the asclepieion into the city. When Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, he placed a roadway along the dam, and expanded the asclepieion into a large temple to Asclepius and Serapis.[25] In the Byzantine era, the asclepieion was converted to a church. https://pediaview.com/openpedia/Pool_of_Bethesda

I looked again and found this website.
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/bethesda.htm

[jerryxplu]

[Replying to post 1 by Zelduck]

well, I read the bible not as a Christian so I assume it was written by man to begin with. As far as trying to figure out the magical part from other regular part. Most christians I spoke to claimed you have to have faith and let the spirit guide you. Which is pointless as you can say that about any other religious text. Question is, why can't we get a new bible?