4 ms·

Americans have a weird fixation on translating the Bible. No religion apart from Protestants attempt to interpret holy texts without supporting ancient comment

Americans have a weird fixation on translating the Bible. No religion apart from Protestants attempt to interpret holy texts without supporting ancient commentsry. Jews have the Talmud and other commentaries, Muslims have hadiths, Orthodox and Catholic Christians have centuries of commentaries by saints, similarly Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and others all have many supporting texts, not just a single canonical one. Yet Protestant Americans are looking for a "perfect" translation so that they can magically understand a text that was never meant to be a single text nevermind interpreted on its own. It's also strange that Protestants trust the Orthodox/Catholic church to decide what is scripture but throw away commentary by saints, including those who lived through the councils that decided what is considered scripture.

shakna 4y ago
Protestants are absolutely trained to make use of commentaries. Its one of the bare fundamentals of exegesis, which is taught in first year in basically every Bible college. Its nonsensical to say that they ignore the masses of study on these documents.
- Mikeb85 4y ago
  Protestant commentaries are way too modern and they throw out basically anything they deem "too Catholic". They also threw out books of the Bible that everyone used for the better part of 1500 years.
  - shakna 4y ago
    The most common commentaries used across all the Protestant churches would probably be the Tyndale commentaries. You will also find the Tyndale's on many a Catholic priest's book shelf. This sounds less like a complaint on professionalism, and more like a personal beef. Not one reflected by the wider church - you'll find many leaders both in and outside the Catholic church, who communicate regularly, and coordinate their efforts together.
    - Mikeb85 4y ago
      Tyndale eh? Like I said... There's a massive corpus of commentary written from ~400-100 AD, nevermind 1500...
- bandie91 4y ago
  yes they trained to use, however i never heared a preacher appealed to a commentary source, only to the bible itself. strange. they usually answer any question with 1 bible verse, no more.
cafard 4y ago
There are some strains in at least American Protestantism that do so, I suppose. On the other hand, Eerdmans, based in Michigan, publishes https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/7978/eerdmans-commentary-on-the-bible.aspx https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/7978/eerdmans-commentary-o... .
- Mikeb85 4y ago
  When I say commentary I mean ancient commentary, or you could call it supplemental texts, ancient homilies, whatever. I mean writings closer to the actual time of Jesus. People like Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine of Hippo, Gregory Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea, John Chrysostom, Irenaeus of Lyon, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, even Origin or Tertullian, and so on... Protestants basically ignore that there's a TON of writings from the early church. Even slightly later writings like John Climacus are still much, much closer to the time of Jesus and the early church than the reformation is, nevermind modern times.
  - jkepler 4y ago
    Do you have evidence of this claim? One Protestant ministry I find helpful equips protestants to understand the Christian gospel and contemporary paganism by drawing on the rich heritage of Irenaeus's apologetic defense against the pagans of his day. That particular ministries entire idea was seeing the connection between global paganism and gnostic belief in the first centuries of the church, realizing that Irenaeus had already done the heavy theological lifting, and the current need was to learn from him (and other church fathers) and recontextualize their insights for the church today. For many protestants I've known, the church fathers and the ecumenical councils are seen as helpful, but never carrying the same authority as the Scriptures. The authority of councils and creeds is derived from the Bible, not the inverse.
    - Mikeb85 4y ago
      > Do you have evidence of this claim? I mean, there's like 1000 Protestant sects and they're all seperate so good luck, but the vast majority don't recognize writings of saints... Here's a nice article explaining what the early church fathers got wrong from an evangelical perspective: https://bible.org/article/theology-adrift-early-church-fathers-and-their-views-eschatology https://bible.org/article/theology-adrift-early-church-fathe... Just go to any Evangelical or American Protestant heavy website and see how they treat writings that aren't scripture...
dragonwriter 4y ago
> It's also strange that Protestants trust the Orthodox/Catholic church to decide what is scripture They... don't: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Bible https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Bible
- Mikeb85 4y ago
  And who decided what the "New Testament" is? Hint, not the Protestants...
  - bitbang 4y ago
    There was no such thing as Protestant when the canon was formalized, and the reformation had nothing to do with canon.
    - TheFreim 4y ago
      > the reformation had nothing to do with canon Canonical issues were debated during the "reformation", including canonicity of certain New Testament works (there are famous Luther quotes that often get brought out).
      - bandie91 4y ago
        he must meant that they have not changed the NT canon at the end.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    The fact that the analysis that Protestants did failed to disagree with the Catholics on that point doesn’t mean thet let the Catholics decide the Scripture; had they done so, their decision would not have varied from that of thd Catholics on any point, but it did, because thet decided for themselves.

shakna 4y ago

Protestants are absolutely trained to make use of commentaries. Its one of the bare fundamentals of exegesis, which is taught in first year in basically every Bible college. Its nonsensical to say that they ignore the masses of study on these documents.

Mikeb85 4y ago
Protestant commentaries are way too modern and they throw out basically anything they deem "too Catholic". They also threw out books of the Bible that everyone used for the better part of 1500 years.
- shakna 4y ago
  The most common commentaries used across all the Protestant churches would probably be the Tyndale commentaries. You will also find the Tyndale's on many a Catholic priest's book shelf. This sounds less like a complaint on professionalism, and more like a personal beef. Not one reflected by the wider church - you'll find many leaders both in and outside the Catholic church, who communicate regularly, and coordinate their efforts together.
  - Mikeb85 4y ago
    Tyndale eh? Like I said... There's a massive corpus of commentary written from ~400-100 AD, nevermind 1500...
bandie91 4y ago
yes they trained to use, however i never heared a preacher appealed to a commentary source, only to the bible itself. strange. they usually answer any question with 1 bible verse, no more.

cafard 4y ago

There are some strains in at least American Protestantism that do so, I suppose. On the other hand, Eerdmans, based in Michigan, publishes https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/7978/eerdmans-commentary-on-the-bible.aspx https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/7978/eerdmans-commentary-o... .

Mikeb85 4y ago
When I say commentary I mean ancient commentary, or you could call it supplemental texts, ancient homilies, whatever. I mean writings closer to the actual time of Jesus. People like Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine of Hippo, Gregory Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea, John Chrysostom, Irenaeus of Lyon, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, even Origin or Tertullian, and so on... Protestants basically ignore that there's a TON of writings from the early church. Even slightly later writings like John Climacus are still much, much closer to the time of Jesus and the early church than the reformation is, nevermind modern times.
- jkepler 4y ago
  Do you have evidence of this claim? One Protestant ministry I find helpful equips protestants to understand the Christian gospel and contemporary paganism by drawing on the rich heritage of Irenaeus's apologetic defense against the pagans of his day. That particular ministries entire idea was seeing the connection between global paganism and gnostic belief in the first centuries of the church, realizing that Irenaeus had already done the heavy theological lifting, and the current need was to learn from him (and other church fathers) and recontextualize their insights for the church today. For many protestants I've known, the church fathers and the ecumenical councils are seen as helpful, but never carrying the same authority as the Scriptures. The authority of councils and creeds is derived from the Bible, not the inverse.
  - Mikeb85 4y ago
    > Do you have evidence of this claim? I mean, there's like 1000 Protestant sects and they're all seperate so good luck, but the vast majority don't recognize writings of saints... Here's a nice article explaining what the early church fathers got wrong from an evangelical perspective: https://bible.org/article/theology-adrift-early-church-fathers-and-their-views-eschatology https://bible.org/article/theology-adrift-early-church-fathe... Just go to any Evangelical or American Protestant heavy website and see how they treat writings that aren't scripture...

dragonwriter 4y ago

> It's also strange that Protestants trust the Orthodox/Catholic church to decide what is scripture They... don't: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Bible https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Bible

Mikeb85 4y ago
And who decided what the "New Testament" is? Hint, not the Protestants...
- bitbang 4y ago
  There was no such thing as Protestant when the canon was formalized, and the reformation had nothing to do with canon.
  - TheFreim 4y ago
    > the reformation had nothing to do with canon Canonical issues were debated during the "reformation", including canonicity of certain New Testament works (there are famous Luther quotes that often get brought out).
    - bandie91 4y ago
      he must meant that they have not changed the NT canon at the end.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  The fact that the analysis that Protestants did failed to disagree with the Catholics on that point doesn’t mean thet let the Catholics decide the Scripture; had they done so, their decision would not have varied from that of thd Catholics on any point, but it did, because thet decided for themselves.