73 books of the bible versus 66? Help/explanation?

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anendlesswaltz

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I have a question, a book my mom is reading made me think of it. Catholics have more books in the bible than us protestants do, right? Why is that? I remember briefly reading up on it but not in depth, just enough to get a few impressions. Namely, that those books are the reason catholics beliefs appear a little different in that there’s purgatory and you can pray for the dead and that you can ask for prayers from believers in heaven.

I figure its better to ask you all, cause a lot of the people here are catholics, than to just ask google and hope its accurate.
 
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Well this website is good to search for a researched answer (magnifying glass up at the top, just type your question).

Without going into a long argument: The canon of the bible was decided in 382 AD it had 73 books. History happens. The protestant reformation comes along in1500s, people have ideas, 7 books get removed, Many protestant denominations appear due to this movement, roughly 500 more years and its 2020.
 
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That’s interesting! I’ll have to do that sometime tomorrow when i’m more awake. There’s no controversy over the 73 book canon, either, in the catholic church…? Also, is there anywhere i can read the missing books online, or through an app?
 
No controversy at all. The original bible had 73, the Catholic bible today has those same 73. It will continue to have those same 73 in the future no debates.

look up the approved Catholic bibles, and then research them online. Those 7 will be in there or its not a Catholic bible.

Would recommend the free app called verbum.
 
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Okay. That answer helps clarify things a lot. Thank you so much for the help!
 
Hello anendlesswaltz,

Yes, as posted above, the full list of books of the bible which Catholics use was first promulgated in 383 and made the official standard for all Western Churches in 405. At this time, the Eastern Churches only used the 66 books which Protestant churches use today.

Why do we use one set over the other if they both were being used at the same time?

It comes down to why the Bible was compiled in the first place. The Bible was specifically compiled of the books which were to be used during the Mass. There were other books which the early Church Fathers believed held extremely important teachings, like the Shepherd of Hermas or St. Clement’s Letter to the Corinthians, but these were not allowed to be read during the Mass, thus they were left out.

This comes down to the question: Why the disparity between the East and the West’s canon of Old Testament book? When the Eastern Church say that they used 66 books for the Old Testament, they did not deny the authenticity and authority of the other 7 books, they simply acknowledged that their tradition did not use them in their Mass. This was officially stated in the Quinisex in 605 by the Eastern Churches when they stated that the full official canon of the Western Church (called the canon of the Third Council of Carthage in the documents) was divinely inspired and fully acceptable to use in liturgy. The canon was again officially recognized by the Eastern Church at the Council of Florence (1431-1449).

The reason why Martin Luther removed the seven books was primarily to support his own theology, as those removed books contained theological points which directly contradicted some of his theories. His desire to remove these books came about before he found justification for their removal. His primary justification was that these 66 books were what the Jews considered scriptures after Christ’s death.

He pointed to the Jewish Council of Jamnia (c. 90 AD) as proof that the other books were not inspired. The problem with this is that the Council of Jamnia had no authority to begin with. It was just a handful of rabbis which met and tried to issue decrees in the name of the Temple of Jerusalem, despite that the Temple had already been destroyed and that the Council Rabbis did not follow the proper procedure for convening the Sanhedrin to rule on matters of the Jewish faith. Also, if you took the Council at face value, you would also have to throw out the entirety of the New Testament as it directly condemned all Christian writings.

God Bless,
Ben
 
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Hmm okay. Thank you! So did everyone else pretty much just follow Luther’s lead, then, when other denominations formed, cause it was what they knew? Was Lutheranism the first ‘other’ denomination of Christianity? I didn’t even know there were other books of the bible until a friend of mine back in highschool who was Catholic took my mini bible i’d had with me in my bag, looked in it, and demanded where books i’d never heard of were.
 
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Lutheranism wasn’t the first ‘other’ denomination of Christianity. I would probably put that firmly with John Wycliffe in the early 1300s in England. The reason that Luther’s canon became so popular among the other Protestant denominations was due to the invention of the printing press in 1440. Luther was born only a little over 40 years later. He was the first Protestant denomination which fully utilized print media and the growing literacy among the average people. All of a sudden, Europe was flooded with Luther’s Bibles and the other Protestant reformers of the time used them as a basis because they were a handy tool.

On the note of reading the 7 Catholic books which were left out of the Protestant Old Testament, I would suggest reading the book of Wisdom if you would ready any of them. Historically, it was the first Old Testament book which we have evidence of Christians using it as Scripture. It was so important to the early Christians, it is actually found within the earliest list we have of the New Testament, the Muratorian Fragment (150s AD).
 
You’re totally spot on with the printing press, but I don’t think Luther pointed to the council of Jamnia. I don’t think he even knew of it. He cited the opinions of Jerome. Also, he didn’t ‘throw out’ any books because of some conflict with his theology. He lowered the position of precisely the deuterocanonical books.

Luther’s view of the canon is much different from what today’s evangelicals think. If he thought deuterocanonicals are useless (as many today’s protestants think), he wouldn’t have included one more - the Prayer of Manasseh - in his translation.

The fact is that the canon of Scripture was much more fluid before the Reformation. Before then, the Bible was much more of a collection of scriptures rather than a single monolithic book it is today. So a theologian like Luther could give his own opinions (dividing between undisputed and disputed books) - he had the freedom to do so.

The reason Protestants don’t have Bibles with the deuterocanonical books today is mostly an American/British issue (when the Anglican Church forbade their use in churches in 1644 and then in 1826 when the British and Foreign Bible Society decide not to print them at all.)
 
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anendlesswaltz said:
I have a question, a book my mom is reading made me think of it. Catholics have more books in the bible than us protestants do, right? Why is that?
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Some questions pondered me being raised Catholic: If the Catholic Church of today is the same Church that Jesus built in the early first century, and since Jesus knew what the boundaries of the OT canon were, why did the OT canon need to “develop” over time? Why didn’t the early church preserve the OT canon? Why all the disagreement, even beyond the 4th century church councils, which not only didn’t agree with each other on the exact same books, but even after the Ecumenical Council of Trent that left the canon “open,” by “passing over” some books like 1 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, & others found in Eastern Orthodox Bibles? Shouldn’t the canon have been consistent with a defined number of books with specific boundaries, within the first few centuries of the Church’s history, right up to the present day?
anendlesswaltz said:
that those books are the reason catholics beliefs appear a little different in that there’s purgatory and you can pray for the dead and that you can ask for prayers from believers in heaven.
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There are Protestants, like Luke Wayne from the Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry, who have argued that 2 Maccabees 12 doesn’t teach Purgatory, because the dead would have ended up in Hell, not Purgatory.
 
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Just to add: if you’ve ever looked at the evidence for the council of Jamnia its hard to believe a council every took place…or in Jamnia at all. Plus they only talk about 2 books lol. I personally don’t believe in the council of Jamnia and would advise anyone using it to support an argument to look at the evidence they claim to be so irrefutable.

Interestingly, Jamnia is the same place where the soldiers died in 2 Maccabees which is the single most important evidence and argument for praying for the dead.
 
CRM_Brother said:
At this time, the Eastern Churches only used the 66 books which Protestant churches use today.
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Brother,
I’m a little confused by your post here because most Eastern Churches also recognize the 73, plus additional books like 3 & 4 Maccabees.

What do you mean by this?
 
Yes, currently they do recognize the 73. This, however, only came to wide-spread acceptance after the Council of Florence, in which the Patriarchs of the Eastern Churches joined with the Western bishops and agreed with the canon. Before this time, there were some theological conflicts with the canon of the Third Council of Carthage (Western Canon which Pope Damasus I promulgated at the Council of Rome in 382) within the Eastern Churches.

The conflict began with the Quinisext Council. The Eastern Churches consider it an extension of the Third Council of Constantinople but no western bishops were invited. It was here that the Eastern Churches agreed that the Western Canon was approved and inspired, but also provided two smaller canons which were traditionally used by many Eastern Churches. They also approved something called the Apostolic Canons. While the Pope eventually approved 50 of these separately for use in the West, one of the canons which was not endorsed by the West prohibited calling Christ the ‘Lamb of God’. It was actually this decree which caused the Pope to add the "Agnus Dei’ to the Mass. The removal of ‘Lamb of God’ causes problems for using the Western Canon as it includes the book of Revelation where Christ is called ‘Lamb of God’. To conform with this decree, most Eastern Churches took up the one of the three proposed canons which did not include Revelation (among others) in its canon . Officially, they acknowledged that the Western Canon could be used but they, themselves, did not use that specific canon.
 
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Trent Horn explains this on his YouTube channel The Counsel Of Trent. I think it is his video Rebbuted 5 Reasons the Apocrpha is not Inspired
 
There are a few books out there about how the Catholic Church gave us the bible. The latest one is by Jimmy Akin titled The Bible Is A Catholic Book. Looks to be a good one.
 
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anendlesswaltz said:
So did everyone else pretty much just follow Luther’s lead, then, when other denominations formed, cause it was what they knew?
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Yes. For example Luther removed the Book of Maccabees because of the verses where they pray for the dead and therefore support the existence of Purgatory.
 
anendlesswaltz said:
Namely, that those books are the reason catholics beliefs appear a little different in that there’s purgatory and you can pray for the dead and that you can ask for prayers from believers in heaven.
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Not really - the books are not the “reason“ for the belief but the evidence of the belief. This is the case for all the beliefs.

Peace!!!
 
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