Lost letters of Paul?

[Tambora]

In Paul's 1st letter to the Corinthians in our bible he states:

1 Corinthians 5​

(9) I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators:​

Indicating that Paul had written to them before in another letter.

Another possible missing letter could be:

Colossians 4​

(16) And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea.​

It would seem a fair conclusion that any letter Paul wrote to a congregation would be of value.
Thus it is odd they are not in our bible.
Were they lost or possibly destroyed before they could be copied?
If another letter from Paul were discovered, as we had several writings found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, should it be added to the canon?

 

[JudgeRightly]

If another letter from Paul were discovered, as we had several writings found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, should it be added to the canon?

No.

God is perfectly capable of preserving His word.

 

[Idolater]

In Paul's 1st letter to the Corinthians in our bible he states:

1 Corinthians 5​

(9) I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators:​

Indicating that Paul had written to them before in another letter.

Meaning, he really did. What were its contents? Highly intriguing.

Another possible missing letter could be:

Colossians 4​

(16) And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea.​

It would seem a fair conclusion that any letter Paul wrote to a congregation would be of value.

Given Philemon is weighted as being the same authority as all the Gospels and the Torah and Prophets and Revelation, I would say so.

Thus it is odd they are not in our bible.

Never heard it put quite that way; but fair.

Were they lost or possibly destroyed before they could be copied?
If another letter from Paul were discovered, as we had several writings found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, should it be added to the canon?

I would suppose not, since the canon of Scripture is thought to be the work of the Holy Spirit, and so it was His deliberate will that Paul's lost epistle(s) (plus any other Apostolic writings which might also be lost) were lost, and not part of the canon in the first place.

But as a Catholic, the authority of anything Apostolic is of equal weight already, and this includes oral traditions which originated in the mouths of the Apostles, so if there are lost epistles which are found at some point, it wouldn't disturb Catholicism's theology in the slightest sense, but it would be really interesting to see how the lost-and-found epistle(s) might align with our current understanding of things. Catholicism is already composed of a mixture of literal Scripture plus oral Apostolic tradition----everything Apostolic no matter how it was transmitted.

 

[Tambora]

I would suppose not, since the canon of Scripture is thought to be the work of the Holy Spirit,

I realize you are Catholic so we are going to be at an impasse here, but statements like that make me ask questions.

If it were so important for us to finally have a canon that was supernaturally preserved by YHWH for the canon committee to make a decision on in the Middle Ages (that's a looooooong time after Christ) then why weren't the originals preserved?
We have no originals of any part of our Bible.
Copies can have scribal errors.
Copies can never prove they are exact copies of the original.
The originals could shed a lot of light on what belongs and what (or if) anything was added or omitted or changed by later scribes that made copies.
So why weren't the originals preserved instead of inferior copies (many of which don't match each other)?
And which translation or version today is supposed to be the one true one that the Holy Spirit preserved?
etc.

 

[JudgeRightly]

I realize you are Catholic so we are going to be at an impasse here, but statements like that make me ask questions.

If it were so important for us to finally have a canon that was supernaturally preserved by YHWH for the canon committee to make a decision on in the Middle Ages (that's a looooooong time after Christ) then why weren't the originals preserved?
We have no originals of any part of our Bible.
Copies can have scribal errors.
Copies can never prove they are exact copies of the original.
The originals could shed a lot of light on what belongs and what (or if) anything was added or omitted or changed by later scribes that made copies.
So why weren't the originals preserved instead of inferior copies (many of which don't match each other)?
And which translation or version today is supposed to be the one true one that the Holy Spirit preserved?
etc.

The answer is that that which was decided upon as "canon" by the church as "The Bible" was not scripture because some group of peole decided it would be so.

Rather, Scripture ("The Bible") was Scripture the moment it was written, and not afterwards.

Only the original manuscripts were "the inspired word of God." What we have today are copies.

When we hold up a Bible and say "This is the word of God," we say it with the understanding that even though it's a copy of the truth, it's still the truth.

Regarding truth... I'm not sure how best to put this into words, but I'll link an RSR show (hopefully its the one I'm thinking of, or at least, talks about it), and hopefully, should you listen to it, you can understand the point I am trying to make:

Quantum Mechanics' Wave-Particle Duality is a Triality | KGOV.com

kgov.com

Just as electrons are all identical, copies of each other, so too the Bible we have today is a "copy" of the original. Degraded, sure, but still a copy.

 

[Idolater]

... God is perfectly capable of preserving His word.

Just want to say here that Catholicism also believes this 100%

...

I realize you are Catholic so we are going to be at an impasse here

My sister in Christ, I find your lack of faith disturbing lol

, but statements like that make me ask questions.

If it were so important for us to finally have a canon that was supernaturally preserved by YHWH for the canon committee to make a decision on in the Middle Ages (that's a looooooong time after Christ) then why weren't the originals preserved?

idk exactly what you're talking about, but you prompt a couple things here in my mind.

One is that what we call the canon today (and I'm talking about the Catholic canon, which is the same as the non-Catholic canon except for seven books) was basically the Apostolically authorized (not authored) Septuagint because the Septuagint was the earliest Gentile Church's "Bible" or Scripture (this is before the New Testament was even written). The Septuagint plus, the New Testament books which were also authorized by the Apostles as Scripture (cf. 2nd Peter 3:15 where Peter groups Paul's letters together with "the other Scriptures"). iow the Apostles themselves were the first "canon committee." And subsequent canon committees imo should be implementing what is already Apostolic, and not making new decisions, but shoring up original Apostolic decisions. And this is what Catholicism values.

Another is that parchment and papyrus aren't trivial to physically preserve for centuries on end. idk how long it took scientists to figure out that simple exposure to air and sunlight would quite literally decimate and destroy these media. The media we do have from the first century is also however pretty consistent with what scholars today consider our best texts, which should instill us with all confidence that we're reading what the earliest Church was reading.

We have no originals of any part of our Bible.
Copies can have scribal errors.
Copies can never prove they are exact copies of the original.
The originals could shed a lot of light on what belongs and what (or if) anything was added or omitted or changed by later scribes that made copies.

This is primarily what I meant in saying that it would be really interesting to compare any lost-and-found epistle(s) with what we currently understand. I expanded it to include our Apostolic oral tradition as well as our written Scriptures.

So why weren't the originals preserved instead of inferior copies (many of which don't match each other)?

I think the oldest texts and the most authoritative texts almost entirely agree with each other. The biggest differences I'm aware of are between ancient Septuagint texts and ancient Hebrew Old Testament texts, sometimes there are significant variations between what the ancient Greek translators thought and what the Hebrew actually said----these discrepancies I think are far more numerous than differences among separate Hebrew text traditions. And I don't know that there are significant differences between different NT text traditions at all really, do you know that this is a big issue? I'd be curious to see it.

And which translation or version today is supposed to be the one true one that the Holy Spirit preserved?
etc.

Yeah. I think there are non-Trinitarian versions and those are definitely not on the whole reliable translations, but even those version still contain so many accurately rendered into English words of the Holy Spirit (Who is the Author of Scripture) that you can't just consider them garbage.

We could be like the Muslims and only hold the one version of the Koran and only in ancient Arabic as authoritative. But the Church has never been like that, as I said, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament was the first Church's first Bible.

 

[Hoping]

In Paul's 1st letter to the Corinthians in our bible he states:

1 Corinthians 5​

(9) I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators:​

Indicating that Paul had written to them before in another letter.

Another possible missing letter could be:

Colossians 4​

(16) And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea.​

It would seem a fair conclusion that any letter Paul wrote to a congregation would be of value.
Thus it is odd they are not in our bible.
Were they lost or possibly destroyed before they could be copied?
If another letter from Paul were discovered, as we had several writings found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, should it be added to the canon?

Don't you think that what we see as "missing" may just be duplicated in other letters?
God isn't going to leave us adrift.

 

[Tambora]

Don't you think that what we see as "missing" may just be duplicated in other letters?
God isn't going to leave us adrift.

I think there are other ways to know things besides it being written in scripture.
Paul seems to think so when he writes:

Romans 10 ESV​

(18) But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have, for “Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.”​

Obviously all of scripture had not yet been written when Paul wrote this, and yet he says that the whole earth has heard.
I reckon it could be referring to Paul quoting this from Psalms 19 which speaks of the heavenly cosmos (signs in the constellations).

Psalms 19 ESV
(1) To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
(2) Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.
(3) There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.
(4) Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun,

 

[Hoping]

I think there are other ways to know things besides it being written in scripture.
Paul seems to think so when he writes:

Romans 10 ESV​

(18) But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have, for “Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.”​

Obviously all of scripture had not yet been written when Paul wrote this, and yet he says that the whole earth has heard.
I reckon it could be referring to Paul quoting this from Psalms 19 which speaks of the heavenly cosmos (signs in the constellations).

Psalms 19 ESV
(1) To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
(2) Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.
(3) There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.
(4) Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun,

Sure, there are other ways to learn of the things of God.
You are right about learning things before scripture was available.
There was the gift of the Holy Ghost for one thing.
And there was the gift of prophesy.
Both of these gifts are still available to the truly repentant.
But keep studying scripture too.