To be fair to the Catholic position, couldn't it be described as more like:

Jesus is a real historic figure

The gospels are, at least, reasonable historic accounts

Jesus performed miracles

Miracles are a sign from God that the person performing them is a prophet

As a prophet, Jesus would speak the truth

Jesus founded a single visible church, appointed Apostles to govern it, and named Peter as their head

The Apostles, and their successors, canonised certain writings as inspired, and rejected others...

Put this way, it's not [as] circular -- although it still has the problem that it leaves RCs arguing "Of course Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born! The Bible says so!" at some times, but "Don't quote Galatians or Romans against us, boyo, our church wrote that Bible" at others. When RCs argue (or imply) that the bishops could have, and might have, rejected an epistle by (say) St Paul himself if it went against their proto-Catholic body of doctrines, they open the way for Da Vinci Code-style conspiracy theories; Dan Brown is the bastard child of Trent, returning home to embarrass his parents.

By contrast, the Prot view seems to be more that "the early church saved every piece of writing that was authored, or at least authorised, by the original Apostles, and sought to derive doctrines from these, against which to test everything taught by the Apostles' successors". Thus for Prots, it is the pedigree more than the content of the Apocrypha that puts them outside the canon. If St Paul had written Maccabees, then we would have to factor prayers for the dead into Evangelical theology.

The Ev position also avoids the rabbit going into the hat somewhere between "You have your KJV today because the early church's bishops preserved those books as canonical" vs "everything taught today by the direct institutional successors of the early church's bishops is equally canonical." You might call a Shakespeare scholar to verify whether a newly-found parchment is really by Shakespeare; you don't invite him to try his own hand at a sequel to Hamlet, or accept as infallibly binding his opinion as to whether the Macbeths did or did not have children. It is no coincidence to me that Walter Hooper -- who went from being custodian of CS Lewis' papers, to passing off his own compositions as "newly-found Lewis writings", until Kathryn Lindskoog exposed it -- ended up becoming a Catholic priest, if he didn't "get" the distinction between "certifying" and "adding to".
Tom R | 03.22.06 - 7:13 pm | #

I would suggest,if you wish to research the bible,and make your own opinions, go to a bookstore and buy the Layman's Parallel Bible which has four versions--the KJ, the RS, the Modern Language, and the Living Bible.
Then when you really delve into the Bible you will see it's a maze, a mass, a veritable labyrinth of contradictions, inconsistencies, inaccuracies, poor math, bad science, erroneous geography, false prophecies, immoral comments, and a multitude of other problems too numerous to mention. It may be somebody's word but it certainly isn't the product of a perfect, divine being. The Bible has more holes in it than a backdoor screen. In a society dominated by the Book's influence I think all of us should do what Adam and Eve did when they were expelled from the Garden of Eden. They went out and raised Cain.
JONBOY | 03.23.06 - 2:02 pm | #