A Historical Introduction to the Study of the Books of the New Testament; Being an Expansion of Lectures Delivered in the Divinity School of the University of Dublin (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTORY. Part I. PRINCIPLES OF THE INVESTIGATION. THE subject appointed for our Lectures this Term is The .. Bible; but that opens up a field so wide, that to treat adequately of all that it is desirable should be known about it would give us employment, not for one Term, but for several years. Last year you attended Lectures on Natural Religion and on Christian Evidences. I assume that you then went through the proofs that there is a God; that there is no impossibility in His revealing His will to His creatures, using miracle or prophecy as credentials to authenticate His message; and that you went through the proofs of our Lord's divine mission, establishing the conclusion that He was the bearer to the world of a revelation from God. Then, in logical order, follows the question, How is that revelation to be known to us ? what are the books that record it in other words: What is the Canon of Scripture ? In this investigation the determination of the New Testament Canon comes before that of the Old. We must first determine what the books are which contain authentic records of the teaching of our Lord and His Apostles; because we can then use their testimony to the older books, which they reverenced as divinely inspired. Next after the question of the Canon comes that of Biblical Criticism. Supposing it to be established that certain books were written, containing an authoritative record of Divine revelations, we have still to inquire whether those books have come down safely to us? how we are to remove all the errors which may have accumulated during the process of transcription in many centuries, and so restore the texts to their original purity. Perhaps here might follow questions concerning the Translation of these texts, for without translation books w...