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Was the Luke of Colossians the author of Luke/Acts? Probably. As the two volumes do not themselves include the author's name, we can't be sure that the author was named Luke at all. However, Luke is only mentioned 3 times in Paul's letters and there is no indication there that he was a particularly prominent personage. Therefore, any external evidence ...

Peter almost certainly didn't think of canonicity the way we do today. As Ignatius Theophorus points out, the Greek word (as used by New Testament writers) refers to sacred writings. In its most common use among early Christians, the word γραφὰς referred to those writings that could be read in church; however, Clement, bishop of Rome in the late first ...

From my understanding of Strong's and Thayer's, γραφὰς always means, "sacred writings." It does not necessarily imply the entire canon as Christ used the word to refer (presumably) to the Tanach. In addition, it does not even imply which canon is to be trusted (as there were several present at that time). All of that being said, I think it is fairly safe to ...

After thinking about it some more, there is a medium strength argument to be made that Peter here supports any letter submitted by Paul under his ministry, past or future. It is an argument not directly from the text, but from omission. In other words, Peter says that people twist Paul’s writings, in the same way that they do scripture. He does not logically ...

Under a Christological hermeneutic, there are meanings beyond what the author intends to be sure. Stories about Abraham, Isaac, and Israel give us insight into the character of Jesus. Often the human author has no idea of the weight of their words. (See John 11:51.) But the deeper meaning augments and does not contradict the proximate meaning. Good ...

No method can be purely inductive. Even the historical-grammatical method begins with the a priori assumption that the author's intent matters. In addition, anyone who devotes their time to understanding a text makes an implicit assumption that the text has a timeless meaning. The meaning assigned by the reader must be tethered to the author's meaning or ...

The simple answer is to the extent that the person making the deductions care about the original author's intent. Let's use a legal document like a contract as a start. This is less complex as it is a human document, but it still can furnish us with a basic process of understanding an author's intent. First one must start with deduction. We must always ...