Sublime

Along with the majority of scholars, we much prefer an eclectic original text rather than the Textus Receptus used by the KJV and the NKJV.

The feat of Irenaeus, labouring in the wake of their deaths, was to give substance and solidity to these convictions. Already, within his own lifetime, his achievements and those of Christians who thought like him were becoming apparent even to hostile observers. They led an organisation that, in its scale and scope, was not merely one among a crow

The problem is that we have all read the gospels, if we haven’t been careful, simply as God’s answer to the plight of the human race in general. The implied backstory hasn’t been the story of Abraham, of Moses, of David, of the prophets; it’s been the story of Adam and Eve, of “Everyman,” sinning and dying and needing to be redeemed.

So the Hebrew Bible became part of the Christian canon, albeit renamed and reinterpreted as the Old Testament.

This Pauline emphasis on union with Christ had been a dominant motif in Calvin’s exposition of the gospel and the Christian life.

“Scripture,” for Christians, is the text of the Bible when read in faith and by the leading of the holy spirit in the community of the body of Christ.

Contrast these descriptors with the overwhelmingly dominant way the New Testament describes believers.

Insofar as Christians knew of Judaism, they knew only of its existence in pre-Christian times. From then on, so they argued, God had transferred His love, covenant and choice from Judaism to Christianity.