[Estel the Descender]

Not only is it problematic, it's incorrect. God can't be said to have taken pen in hand and then Moses and Paul collating and editing and choosing among a variety of versions to pick the most publishable. Some might say, perhaps, that God picked up Moses as his pen and wrote the Pentateuch with Moses/pen in hand. This is too mechanistic. It's not the way things go according to the Laws that govern life as we know it. Inspiration is an entirely different thing, however.

I was told by my brother that using Christopher as an example was problematic. Let me ammend: Moses and St. Paul are to God what Bilbo and Frodo Baggins are to JRR Tolkien. In the Appendices and the Guide to Middle Earth, Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, and a host of annotators and editors both in Gondor and in the Shire are the 'authors' of the Red Book of Westmarch, the supposed originals for The Silmarillion, The Hobbitand of course the LotR. We know, of course, that in 'our' world the real author is Prof Tolkien himself, but in the world of Middle Earth the 'authors' are Biblo et al.

The same is said by Bible scholars about the Bible: in God's 'reality', He is the real author of the complete book known as the Bible. But in 'our reality' St. Paul wrote his various letters and Moses wrote the basis for the Torah. And then

It was a small body of Greek/Roman church leaders who voted us our canon of Holy Writ. They did not consult the Irish, Persian, Indian, or any other group of Christians outside the Roman Empire. Who is to say they made all the right choices? Why not include the Gospels of Peter and Thomas? Why include the second letter of Peter? That which constitutes Holy Writ is held to be canon only by accident of history. Which brings us to another question: Did God's hand bring about these accidents of history? That opens a new can of worms and theological wrangle. There is very little about which we can be dead-on certain. Our dearly held beliefs are not certain. Honest evaluation of them shows that they are held by faith. I doubt Tolkien would have been at all comfortable with your comparison of him to God. I see the point you're trying to make by it, but I find it more problematic than helpful.

Modern research into 1st-4th century uncials and miniscules have shown that the New Testament Canon as we know it today was already in use even as early as the Apostolic era or 1st century CE. What the Councils merely did was to 'recognise' what already was. (Besides, the delegates were not merely Greco-Roman: many were African, Gaulish, people from Antioch, people from all the actual Christian world, small as it was). Furthermore, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls shows that the Old Testament Canon was also fixed by the post-exilic Era: the so-called Apocrypha/Deuterocanonicals were not accepted by the Jews as Scripture (just part of the Mishna). Christians never quoted from the Apochrypha (with the apparent exception of St. Jude, who quoted from the book of Enoch, but this book is not part of the 'official' Apochrypha; still, who is to say that Jude did not get that particular info about Enoch direct from the source). And in the Dead Sea Scrolls dating from before the 1st century CE, both variants of the OT are preserved: the Masoretic and the Hebrew originals of the Septuagint.

[img]smilies/eek.gif[/img] Whoa!!! I'm getting too technical here! Okay. . .

Some might say, perhaps, that God picked up Moses as his pen and wrote the Pentateuch with Moses/pen in hand. This is too mechanistic.

Believe it or not, this is the traditional (dare I say Catholic?) definition of the doctrine of Inspiration, although not worded so, so-- well, not worded like the one above. Most Christians believe that God put the words and ideas into these human authors and then the latter did their best to transmit them into written form (by the aid of Grace, of course). Many Mainline Protestants accept this definition. It's very much like a reporter trying his best to present what a person said in an interview into something readable.

It's not the way things go according to the Laws that govern life as we know it

Yes! Divine Inspiration is not natural, it is supernatural.

But why compare God to Tolkien? My comparison is not meant to be taken as saying that 'Tolkien is Iluvatar'. My comparison only deals with authorship. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] Nothing else.