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| Encountering page 290 |
ELWELL, WALTER AND YARBROUGH, ROBERT W., Third Edition (2013) Encountering The New Testament, Grand Rapids, Baker Academic.
History Matters In Religious Studies
Graphics such as these are useful and important.
Evidences from the Church Fathers are less important, by far, than Scriptural evidences from the divinely revealed New Testament and Hebrew Bible, texts.
However:
If historical connections could not be academically made between the era of the Church Fathers and the religious history/Scripture of the earlier New Testament era, it would make, in my case, a reasonable Christian, Reformed, faith and philosophy (theology), much less reasonable, and more intellectually difficult.
As anyone that knows me well will acknowledge..I am not a fideist. I certainly have faith, but insist it be reasonable.
As examples:
If the Church Fathers did not quote, or at least acknowledge books from the New Testament era, it could be queried:
Were the New Testament texts actually written in the New Testament era? Because the next era did not acknowledge the previous.
Were the New Testament text dates 'fudged' by the Christian Church and Roman Catholic Church?
Did Jesus Christ, the disciples, Apostles and scribes within the New Testament actually exist at all, or were they fabricated by the Christian Church and Roman Catholic Church?
However:
The Church Fathers documented, in the post New Testament era, scholarly connections to the New Testament texts.
Along with the thousands of New Testament manuscripts these serve as solid documented evidences for historical Christian faith and philosophy.
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| Encountering page 272 |
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| Vancouver |
Papyri Cataloged 127
Uncial Mss. Cataloged 318
Minuscule Mss. Cataloged 2, 880
Lectionaries Cataloged 2, 436
Total 5, 761
(Numbers in all categories inch up periodically with new discoveries) German numbers from 1994 and 2011 are accessed.
History matters in religious studies.
