# Do you think it is possible The Lord did not preserve portions of scripture



## earl40 (Jul 14, 2013)

that were not inspired? Of course they would not be His Word if He did not inspire it. So to ask this another way.....Could some of the writers of scripture write some things in the letters of our cannon that were not inspired and thus The Lord did not preserve those parts?


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## py3ak (Jul 14, 2013)

If it's canonical, it's inspired. That leaves two possible questions:

Was everything that was inspired also preserved?

Did inspired writers write anything uninspired?

To the first, I know some have answered yes, but it is apparent that not every _instance_ of inspired discourse was preserved, though I suspect what we have reflects the entire _content_ of the inspired utterances.

To the second, I think the answer is also yes, as I have not found any reason to think that Solomon's book on botany was inspired.


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## bookslover (Jul 14, 2013)

Also, we know that Paul wrote at least two other letters to the Corinthians that were not preserved - and thus, presumably, not inspired.


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## Fogetaboutit (Jul 15, 2013)

earl40 said:


> Do you think it is possible The Lord did not preserve portions of scripture
> 
> that were not inspired? Of course they would not be His Word if He did not inspire it. So to ask this another way.....Could some of the writers of scripture write some things in the letters of our cannon that were not inspired and thus The Lord did not preserve those parts?



If your question is: is it possible for certain portion of the accepted canon to be uninspired, (ie: is it possible that "Mark 16:9-20" was in the original manuscript but it wasn't inspired therefore we are justified to remove it from the canon.) absolutely not. You certainly would not want this type of can of warm opened and would be a violation of 2 Tim 3:16. This would give a license to pick and chose what you want to be included in scripture as long and you can have some "scholar" coming up with a reason to reject portions of scriptures. This would nullify the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.


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## earl40 (Jul 15, 2013)

Fogetaboutit said:


> earl40 said:
> 
> 
> > Do you think it is possible The Lord did not preserve portions of scripture
> ...



Indeed my question was because of the ending of Mark. Though I would have a hard time defending the ending if challenged to defend against some of the arguements. I say "some" becaue the theological content is sound.


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## earl40 (Jul 15, 2013)

bookslover said:


> Also, we know that Paul wrote at least two other letters to the Corinthians that were not preserved - and thus, presumably, not inspired.



Though no doubt there is the possibility they were misplased till The Lord wishes to reveal them again.


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## Fogetaboutit (Jul 15, 2013)

earl40 said:


> Indeed my question was because of the ending of Mark. Though I would have a hard time defending the ending if challenged to defend against some of the arguements. I say "some" becaue the theological content is sound.



You might want the check the following work by John Burgon

The Last Twelve Verses of Mark: Dean John William Burgon: 9781888328004: Amazon.com: Books


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## Fogetaboutit (Jul 15, 2013)

earl40 said:


> bookslover said:
> 
> 
> > Also, we know that Paul wrote at least two other letters to the Corinthians that were not preserved - and thus, presumably, not inspired.
> ...




You might want to check the following thread

http://www.puritanboard.com/f63/hypothetical-new-manuscript-question-72036/


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## earl40 (Jul 15, 2013)

Fogetaboutit said:


> earl40 said:
> 
> 
> > bookslover said:
> ...


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## CharlieJ (Jul 15, 2013)

Preserved to whom? I say this because we modern Westerners tend to think having a complete, accurate Bible is the norm, whereas it's perhaps the exception in church history. Many individual Christians in history have not had access to Bibles or all of the Bible. Even some priests and monks only had certain manuscripts, the accuracy of which varied. Some language groups had Christian communities long before they had a Bible, or an accurate Bible, in their own language. So, we have to be careful about how much baggage we're importing into the idea of preservation.

As far as I know, we do not have a complete Hebrew text for 1 Samuel. That is, a few parts are lost and have been supplied by reference to early translations and by conjecture.


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## Fogetaboutit (Jul 15, 2013)

earl40 said:


> Good thread. Just wondering if any of the early church fathers quoted the ending of Mark that "reads" different than what we have today?



It's been a while but I know Burgon does address early church fathers quotations in the book mentioned above, I don't remember if there's any "variations" but the authenticity of those verses is certainly well defended.


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## Fogetaboutit (Jul 15, 2013)

CharlieJ said:


> Preserved to whom? I say this because we modern Westerners tend to think having a complete, accurate Bible is the norm, whereas it's perhaps the exception in church history. Many individual Christians in history have not had access to Bibles or all of the Bible. Even some priests and monks only had certain manuscripts, the accuracy of which varied. Some language groups had Christian communities long before they had a Bible, or an accurate Bible, in their own language. So, we have to be careful about how much baggage we're importing into the idea of preservation.
> 
> As far as I know, we do not have a complete Hebrew text for 1 Samuel. That is, a few parts are lost and have been supplied by reference to early translations and by conjecture.



The fact that some Christians in the past (or even today) did not have access to the entire canon of scriptures does not affect the doctrine of preservation. The fact is that what we have as the canon of scriptures today is the same canon as early Christians had in the early centuries. And we have a multitude of manuscripts from which we can confidently confirm it's content. There were periods in the OT when the whole of the OT scriptures were not in common use by most Israelites, does this invalidate it's preservation? Jesus certainly didn't believe so.


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## CharlieJ (Jul 15, 2013)

I agree. My intention was to distinguish between a proper doctrine of preservation and some idea that I personally must have access to every word of the autographs. The latter has often been the case.


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