FYI – I AM talking about YOUR Bible too! 🙂

I am not Catholic and this is not a Catholic understanding I bring to the mix – it IS a catholic – small “c” if you like though.

I also think it might help if YOU slow down a bit and try and understand what I am saying. The ONLY thing I was trying to say regarding the Bible, is that the Bible we know today was put together by the Church in a council – that’s ALL – There was no Catholic – capital C church at the time I am speaking of – that particular group of Christians wasn’t known as such until later – for a long time all we had was “the catholic church”.

You seem to be making a much bigger issue of what I am saying than is necessary.

In this conversation, already established, discussion was around conservative and evangelical Christians and their belief in Biblical inerrancy; you brought a Catholic understanding into the mix with only a capital ‘C’ to make your distinction. I’m simply asking that you slow down a bit when responding and consider your own words with the same critical eye you use on others…do the people I’m talking to use this word the same way? will they know what I mean by the ‘capital C’ Church?

Even with the capital C understanding, I think you are leaping to suggest they had no Bible. It may not have been the apocrypha or the New Testament but it was indeed ‘the Word of God’–the scriptures. Was it Timothy who commented that ‘all scriptures are inspired by God and are profitable for reproof’, etc?

It seems that even as your Bible was being formed, the church (or Church?) was using the Old Testament as their Bible.

Yes – you are correct – The Old Testament or Hebrew Bible was around before the Church (when I capitalize Church like this I’m usually referring to the body of Christ – specifically, in this instance, I’m talking about it when it was all basically one and not splintered as we see it today) – The main difference today is that some churches still include the apocryphal texts that early Christians used and some don’t.