Trusting the Church Fathers

I think we should look at the early Church as being like toddlers . They are still not quite maturing into understanding yet . Its early and they say say good and bad things. The main issue is when we assume ,because they were ' closer ' that this means they must have been more correct and as time goes things get worse . This isn't always the case .

The primitive or apostolic church was even younger than the so called fathers but they were perfect in understanding so we must look upon the church of the fathers as having fallen away and backslidden. all the seeds which developed into Roman Catholicism were sown by so called fathers.

Even in Acts there not perfect in understanding. We shouldn't want to try to get back to the time of Acts either .

There are writings by the Church Fathers that I agree with and writings by the Church Fathers that I don't agree with and not all of their writings agree with each other, which is just like commentaries from scholars today.

There is no actual evidence of this other than conjecture (which is not evidence). What we do have is Matthew in Greek.

You are very mistaken. Several men who wrote histories of the church have stated that it was first written in Hebrew. Besides, each person except Luke had Hebrew as their first language, each person though in Hebrew even if they wrote in Greek.

Matthew wrote to an audience who knew of old testament, and his gospel is best understood when the many references Matthew makes to the old testament are explored.

you wouldn't, I would. The only progress the church has ever made has been by getting back to the bible.

Why not?
The Holy Spirit is fresh upon the scene and many amazing things happened around then.

You are very mistaken.

There is not a single Hebrew manuscript of Matthew. So unless you can show us where it is found, you are the one mistaken. All the Gospel writers (including Luke) were Hebrews. But God directed them to write in Greek by divine inspiration.

I don't think there is one scripture that says look, you dummies, I have written this gospel in Hebrew because I am a Jewish scholar who reads the Hebrew scrolls, but you will be reading it from Greek translations of the Hebrew. God let historians tell you this is what Matthew did, but if you won't listen then you won't listen.

Was Matthew a Hebrew scholar? He was a tax collector; I don't think you needed any fancy degree for that.

I don't think there is one scripture that says look, you dummies, I have written this gospel in Hebrew because I am a Jewish scholar who reads the Hebrew scrolls, but you will be reading it from Greek translations of the Hebrew. God let historians tell you this is what Matthew did, but if you won't listen then you won't listen.

You are very mistaken. Several men who wrote histories of the church have stated that it was first written in Hebrew. Besides, each person except Luke had Hebrew as their first language, each person though in Hebrew even if they wrote in Greek.

Matthew wrote to an audience who knew of old testament, and his gospel is best understood when the many references Matthew makes to the old testament are explored.

If we use the oldest known Greek Bibles [Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus], look at what's missing in their Copies that we have in our current Bibles.

Mark 16 ends at Verse 8 and 1 John 5:6-8 does not state anything about the Father-Son-Holy Spirit:

6 This is he that came through water and blood, Jesus Christ: not in the water only, but in the water and in the blood; and it is the Spirit that testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.

7 For they that testify are three,

8 the Spirit, and the water, and the blood, and the three are one.


So, why couldn't a Hebrew Matthew existed and blotted out like Mark 16 and 1 John 5:6-8 were added to later?

Obviously you have no idea about (1) divine inspiration and (2) why God chose the Greek language for the New Testament. So let's do a quick review.

1. The nation of Israel had the Torah for about 1500 years, and the rest of the OT after that. But the history of the Jews shows that they were generally in rebellion against the prophets, and went into Assyrian and Babylonian captivity.

2. When Jesus of Nazareth, the King-Messiah of Israel came to earth, He was accepted by some, but the nation of Israel rejected Him, had Him crucified through the Romans. "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not".

3. After His resurrection and after Pentecost, the Jews in Palestine did not fully embrace Christ as their Lord and Savior. Even so, Paul went to all the synagogues in the Roman empire to preach the Gospel out of the Old Testament, as well as his personal witness. Once again the Jews scattered outside Judea generally rejected Christ. In fact they attacked Paul.

4. Finally, while Paul was under house arrest in Rome, he tried to bring the Jews over there to Christ but could not win them all. So he said that he would leave the Jews and focus on the Gentiles.

5. Given this history of the rejection of the Gospel by the Jews -- the ones who should have received Christ 100% -- God caused all the evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), as well as the other apostles to write the New Testament books in Greek by divine inspiration.

6. Greek was the lingua franca or common language of the Roman empire (as English is the universal language today), and God's plan was to convert the Roman empire to Christianity. This happened within about 200-400 years. All of Europe and North Africa became Christian. and Christianity also spread throughout the world, even as far as India.

7. Because of this almost all the manuscripts of the New Testament are in Greek. Some are in Old Latin translations, and also in other languages (such as Arabic, Ethiopic, etc). So for Syrian (and other Christians who spoke Aramaic) the GREEK NT was translated into Aramaic in the 2nd century AD. It is called the Peshitta. This is the only genuine translation of Matthew into Aramaic.

Later on 14th century Jewish rabbis (e.g. Shem Tov) translated Matthew into Hebrew and began to claim that these translations went all the way back to Matthew. But that was just baloney.