| In addition to programming, I'm a huge church history buff. So here's a contrarian view in a slightly different direction from many in this thread: -------- Protestantism is dead, it just doesn't know it yet. Protestants have a Bible that differs from Catholics/Orthodox - it excludes the Deuterocanonical books (like Maccabees). The central tenant of Protestantism is Sola Scripture - that the Bible is to be the determining factor on whether a doctrine is biblical or not. John Calvin (one of the founders of Protestantism) says in his Antidote to Trent that Catholics added the Deuterocanonical books to the Bible as these books prove doctrines like Purgatory and exorcisms. Or to put in the inverse, that IF the Deuterocanonical books were in the Bible, doctrines like Purgatory and exorcisms would be biblical - but the Deuterocanonical books are NOT part of the Bible. The problem Protestantism is facing is that their justification for their canon (excluding these Deuterocanonical books) has fallen apart with the findings published concerned the Dead Sea Scrolls in the last 20 or so years (especially by DSS researcher Emanuel Tov). Protestantism's justification for excluding the Deuterocanonical books tends to boil down to one of two arguments - pointing back to Jerome or pointing back to a Jewish canon prior to the time of Jesus. Jerome's arguments for excluding the books boiled down to two things, since disproven:
1) That Jesus and the Apostles quoted exclusively from the Proto-Masoretic text (which excluded the Deuterocanonical books) against the Septuagint (which included the Deuterocanonical books) whenever the two texts differed, and thus Jesus affirmed the Proto-Masoretic as original. However it's now universally accepted that Jerome was wrong and Jesus and the NT authors vastly preferred (and quoted from) the Septuagint [e.g. Matthew 21:16 and Psalm 8:2], with only a handful of the 300+ NT citations of the OT preferring the Masoretic.
2) When comparing the Hebrew text in Jerome's day (AD ~400) to the Septuagint text, Jerome noted many discrepancies. Noting that the original text of the OT was Hebrew, Jerome asserted that the discrepancies must have been from errors in translation of the Septuagint - that the Septuagint was a poor translation of the Hebrew text of his day. The Dead Sea Scrolls prove the existence of multiple ancient Hebrew text traditions, including a Proto-Septuagint Hebrew text, showing that the Septuagint was a good translation of this Proto-Septuagint Hebrew text, not a poor translation of the Proto-Masoretic text. And the Jewish canon argument has no standing on anything. There is a lack of evidence of when the Jews finalized their canon - specifically their "writings" section. All existent evidence among rabbinic writings indicates it did not finalize until after the Christian era (when the Christians had already settled on the Septuagint's canon). Many Protestant scholars (see Sundberg) and Dead Sea Scroll researchers (see Tov) have written much on this, as the DSS provide further evidence of the lack of an established Hebrew canon at the time of Jesus. Protestants are in for a reckoning. They insist on their scriptures having ultimate authority, but which scriptures? Their justifications for excluding the Deuterocanonical books have fallen apart, and there really aren't any substantial arguments remaining. Eventually they will have to deal with this - their doctrine of Sola Scriptura, and their innate push to seek for truth, demands it. |
No, it's not. There were from very early on many different Protestant traditions, and sola scriptura isn't even part of all of them, much less the primary and universal foundation of Protestantism (Anglicans and Methodists, for instance, are Protestants, but have only ever held prima scriptura, not sola scriptura.)
> Protestants have a Bible that differs from Catholics/Orthodox - it excludes the Deuterocanonical books
Many mainline Protestants include the Deuterocanonical books in their Bibles, and in their lectionary, but give them lesser theological roles.
Anyhow, some Protestants hold to strict literalism as fundamental despite direct contradictions in the Bible. I think you misunderestimate the ability of people to maintain a religious tradition in the face of even flat logical contradictions in fundamental doctrine, much less a lack of clear justification for doctrine.