Bible differences?

[Rana]

Are the contents of the bible one and the same if you are a catholic or a protestant? What i mean is that is there a bible “catholic version” and another “protestant version”? I just bought a bible and i am a little suspicious…how can i know if it conforms to catholic teachings, are there any signs?

P.S: Nothing concerning this matter is mentioned on the cover, and it is a Thomas Nelson Publication.

God Bless,
Rana.

 

[jimmy]

Rana:

Are the contents of the bible one and the same if you are a catholic or a protestant? What i mean is that is there a bible “catholic version” and another “protestant version”? I just bought a bible and i am a little suspicious…how can i know if it conforms to catholic teachings, are there any signs?

P.S: Nothing concerning this matter is mentioned on the cover, and it is a Thomas Nelson Publication.

God Bless,
Rana.

The Catholic bible has 73 books. The protestants removed 7 of them. They include Tobit, Sirach, Wisdom, Baruch, Judith, I Maccabees, and II Maccabees.

They also removed parts of the book of Daniel and one of the psalms.

 

[jimmy]

If it is a protestant bible you might want to watch out for some of the commentaries because some bible commentaries may be a little anti-Catholic in protestant bibles.

 

[Apologia100]

Rana:

Are the contents of the bible one and the same if you are a catholic or a protestant? What i mean is that is there a bible “catholic version” and another “protestant version”? I just bought a bible and i am a little suspicious…how can i know if it conforms to catholic teachings, are there any signs?

P.S: Nothing concerning this matter is mentioned on the cover, and it is a Thomas Nelson Publication.

God Bless,
Rana.

Bibles that conform to the Catholic Canon usually have “Catholic” or “Catholic Version” printed on the cover, and have the markings “Nihil Obstat” and “Impramatur” on the reverse of the title page. Common Catholic translations are: The New American Bible (NAB), the Revised Standard Version - Catholic Edition (RSV-CE) {this version is also known as the Ignatius Bible}, the New Jerusalem Bible. Common Protestant versions include the King James Version (KJV), the New King James Version (NKJV), New American Standard Bible (NASB), New International Version (NIV), Contemporary English Version (CEV), and Max Lucado’s The Message.

If you have a Protestant version, it will be missing 1 and 2 Maccabees, Sirach, Wisdom, Baruch, Tobit, and Judith, and parts of two others, Daniel and Esther.

 

[Malachi4U]

Some protestant versions of the Bible are better then others. I have one protestant version that changes words totally so that there is a new meaning in the verse! My wife uses the NIV mostly and it is an OK version though made easy to read with a protestant slant.

Examples would be substituting the word ‘deeds’ for ‘works’ when it opposes protestant opinions and using the word ‘works’ instead of ‘deeds’ when it ‘appears’ to go against Catholic Dogma. (Nothing in a good Bible contridicts His body, His Catholic Church)

Another example would be the JW version that rewrites it totally or the Joseph Smith version (Mormon). As for the King James Version what gave a homosexual king the right to edit Gods Scripture to fit his political needs? Should we have a Bill Clinton version or a Pat Robertson version?

Bibles are also written to fit various needs. Some are poetic some litteral and some easy to read. As a result words change to fit the need. Remeber, the LXX (Greek Septuigent) that Jesus used and the NT were written in Greek. All the Bibles we have today are translations from a 2,000 year old dead language. When translated into English the translator must due what he feels best to put words and meanings into our language and grammer. Just the position of a comma can change the meaning of a verse. The origional Greek also had no punctuation or verse or chapter numbers.

There are many good site on the web that give the strength and weakness of each version. To study the Scripture well you will need more then one version - even a Catholic approved version.

If you just want to read for enjoyment then pick an easy to read version like the DRV. If you want more literal then a NAB. A protestant version (abridged version) is OK too if you like to discuss Scripture with them. As a Christian you should have at least one complete version with ALL 73 books of Sacred Scripture and approved by the Catholic Church as she is the Church that wrote (NT only), cannonized, preserved, declared inspired and protects Scripture.

I use an AKJV to talk with protestants and I know it well. I do not study it as it is full of protestant (and King James) slants on words. (Protestants hate it when I ask them why they use an incomplete Bible and then show them the AKJV that has more in it then the KJV they use. Why and when did protestants delete books I ask since the origionals had them?) I often refer to the NIV for a different view to my NAB. I prefere the NAB but it is not poetic or easy to read but does follow the mass readings. Someday I hope to add the RSV-CE (I think thats the one) to my holdings as well as a DRV. Why do I not have them now? Because they are almost all on the internet for free!

Try these links:

Catholic and great Bibles:

newadvent.org/bible/

Protestant and sometimes questionable versions (though still good):

biblegateway.com/

The best Bible is the one you read, Catholic or not.

 

[metal1633]

jimmy:

The Catholic bible has 73 books. The protestants removed 7 of them. They include Tobit, Sirach, Wisdom, Baruch, Judith, I Maccabees, and II Maccabees.

They also removed parts of the book of Daniel and one of the psalms.

They did not remove a Psalm. They removed parts of Daniel and parts of Esther.

 

[Rana]

Thank you all, you really helped and opened my eyes on many things, i never knew such a wide variety of versions of the bible existed. You see in my country, Lebanon, protestants are about 2% only of the Christian population. They were never seen as a threat or anything. I have noticed through this forum that there is this clash between catholics and protestants in the U.S, which we lack.
Anyhow, what triggered my suspicion is that when i went into this bible bookshop i didn’t see any picture of Mary or saints, it was on my way home and after buying the bible that i thought “what if”…

Well, I have checked the books and the bible that i bought do miss some, so apparently it is a protestant version. Plus, it is a New King James…
I am going to stick to my big NAB family bible that my Dad bought a long time ago…It is a big heavy bible, but ever so satisfactory!

Rana.

 

[Malachi4U]

Rana:

…I have noticed through this forum that there is this clash between catholics and protestants in the U.S, which we lack…

Rana,

I don’t think it is so much of a clash as much as it is Catholic theology vs. 38,000+ varying and often contridicting opinions. We are all Christians and all hope for salvation (some I guess save themselves? ). On this forum we often try to point out the difference in theology vs. opinions since it is a Catholic forum.

When I lived in Utah, non-Christian Mormons dominated that US state, Christians were much closer together like you may see there in Lebonon. Of course, some protestants still choose to remain free of the Catholics even in Utah. I was in a Baptist Church that refused to even play basketball against the Catholic teams. Oh well, some of us just fail to see the value of ecuminism and trying to unite us in our comminalities rather then divide us over our differences. God loves us all whether Baptist or Catholic or Mormon.

I would like to see you start a thread and tell (or teach us) about life and Christianity in Lebonon. The mid-East is in our news as you may have heard and your point of view would be interesting to say the least.

Gods peace be with you theophilus (friend of God) Rana,

PS, I define Christian as one who has been baptised in the name of Trinity with water and proper intent. Mormons do not believe in the Trinity and therefore their Baptisms are meaningless and useless as Christians. The dictionary definition of Christian does define Mormons as Christians as would be the JW’s and SDA’s, Baptists and even us poor Catholics. Only God can see into the heart and only He knows who will be ‘saved’ by His grace and judgement so perhaps even Mormons will be in heaven too? (Not just a god of their own planet with 76 virgin wives or so . Uhm,come to think of it Mormonism is starting to sound pretty good!)

PPS, have you found or know where Bibles written in Farsi (sp?) can be found? I wanted to ship some Bibles to Iran but could not find any in that language. You can get killed in Iran if found with a Bible I was told.

 

[uniChristian]

jimmy:

The Catholic bible has 73 books. The protestants removed 7 of them. They include Tobit, Sirach, Wisdom, Baruch, Judith, I Maccabees, and II Maccabees.

They also removed parts of the book of Daniel and one of the psalms.

The Protestans had nothing to do with the canonization of tha Apocrypha. It makes sence to let the Jews descide which books should be in the Old Testament. The Apocrypha was not canonized as Church law untill the 16th century. The Jewish canon does not contain the Apocrypha and Jesus never quoted from the 7 books in your post. According to the Historian of the period Flavius Josephus, The Jewish canon matches the Old Testament in a King James version.

 

[uniChristian]

Malachi4U:

Rana,

I don’t think it is so much of a clash as much as it is Catholic theology vs. 38,000+ varying and often contridicting opinions. We are all Christians and all hope for salvation (some I guess save themselves? ). On this forum we often try to point out the difference in theology vs. opinions since it is a Catholic forum.

When I lived in Utah, non-Christian Mormons dominated that US state, Christians were much closer together like you may see there in Lebonon. Of course, some protestants still choose to remain free of the Catholics even in Utah. I was in a Baptist Church that refused to even play basketball against the Catholic teams. Oh well, some of us just fail to see the value of ecuminism and trying to unite us in our comminalities rather then divide us over our differences. God loves us all whether Baptist or Catholic or Mormon.

I would like to see you start a thread and tell (or teach us) about life and Christianity in Lebonon. The mid-East is in our news as you may have heard and your point of view would be interesting to say the least.

Gods peace be with you theophilus (friend of God) Rana,

PS, I define Christian as one who has been baptised in the name of Trinity with water and proper intent. Mormons do not believe in the Trinity and therefore their Baptisms are meaningless and useless as Christians. The dictionary definition of Christian does define Mormons as Christians as would be the JW’s and SDA’s, Baptists and even us poor Catholics. Only God can see into the heart and only He knows who will be ‘saved’ by His grace and judgement so perhaps even Mormons will be in heaven too? (Not just a god of their own planet with 76 virgin wives or so . Uhm,come to think of it Mormonism is starting to sound pretty good!)

PPS, have you found or know where Bibles written in Farsi (sp?) can be found? I wanted to ship some Bibles to Iran but could not find any in that language. You can get killed in Iran if found with a Bible I was told.

Amen great post!

 

[Apologia100]

uniChristian:

The Protestans had nothing to do with the canonization of tha Apocrypha. It makes sence to let the Jews descide which books should be in the Old Testament. The Apocrypha was not canonized as Church law untill the 16th century. The Jewish canon does not contain the Apocrypha and Jesus never quoted from the 7 books in your post. According to the Historian of the period Flavius Josephus, The Jewish canon matches the Old Testament in a King James version.

And the relevance of any of this is…

at the event of the Pentecost, the Church was no longer bound by any Hebrew tradition, which include establishing the canon of Scripture. BTW, the Council of Jamnia was NOT a binding counsel, so any determinations from that council are non-binding, even on Jews. A Jew is still well within his rights to consider the Septuagint as inspired. Addtionally, Jesus DID quote from the “apocrypha”, and there are a number of old testament books considered inspired by protetants that he didn’t quote from.

 

[AmyS]

uniChristian:

The Protestans had nothing to do with the canonization of tha Apocrypha. It makes sence to let the Jews descide which books should be in the Old Testament. The Apocrypha was not canonized as Church law untill the 16th century. The Jewish canon does not contain the Apocrypha and Jesus never quoted from the 7 books in your post. According to the Historian of the period Flavius Josephus, The Jewish canon matches the Old Testament in a King James version.

Actually, Jesus did use the version Catholics use… The version you use came about after the distruction of the Jewish Temple.

 

[Rana]

Malachi4U:

When I lived in Utah, non-Christian Mormons dominated that US state, Christians were much closer together like you may see there in Lebonon. QUOTE]

You are so right about that. In Lebanon, all christians unite (whether protestants, catholics, or orthodox) to defend their christianity. We are united under our common faith in Jesus Christ.
In a country where Christians are still defending the concept that they do not worship three Gods (Muslims’ concept of the Holy Trinity) but rather one, we do not have time to fight among ourselves, we are too busy defending the core of our common faith…all other matters on Mary, Saints, and the Pope are secondary and inconsequential…we have bigger battles to fight.

I am so eager to tell you more about Christianity in Lebanon. I will follow your advice dear Malachi 4U

God Bless,
Rana.

P.S: Sorry about the quoting, i have still not mastered how you do it

 

[Erich]

uniChristian:

The Protestans had nothing to do with the canonization of tha Apocrypha. It makes sence to let the Jews descide which books should be in the Old Testament. The Apocrypha was not canonized as Church law untill the 16th century. The Jewish canon does not contain the Apocrypha and Jesus never quoted from the 7 books in your post. According to the Historian of the period Flavius Josephus, The Jewish canon matches the Old Testament in a King James version.

I’m guessing that uniChristian really means the Deuterocanonicals, not the Apocrypha. There’s a whole other thread on why the Deuterocanonicals are Scripture. I won’t repeat all of it here, just the highlights:

Envoy, March/April 1997, “5 Myths about 7 Books”

Catholic Answers tract, “The Old Testament Canon”

The Council of Trent only affirmed the same canon of scripture as the Councils of Hippo (383) and Carthange (397), after the Reformers removed the Deuterocanonicals from the OT.

Lots of other good info in that thread!

 

[hlgomez]

The Council of Trent only affirmed the same canon of scripture as the Councils of Hippo (383) and Carthange (397), after the Reformers removed the Deuterocanonicals from the OT.

I would say “reaffirmed”?

UniChristian,

The real objective of your “spiritual mentors” Luther and Calvin to remove parts of the Bible was to strip the Biblical source of some of Catholic doctrines. I can’t imagine why Christians from the 1st century down to 16th century were being “duped” by the Catholic Church all along and the Holy Spirit didn’t intervene in that very long period of time, but finally Luther surfaced in the 16th century to “enlighten” the Christians.

Pio

 

[Malachi4U]

uniChristian:

Amen great post!

Freind of God uniChristian,

Thank you very much. We are ALL Christians who desire to follow God and His will. In my origional post I did show some Catholic bias though . I try to be fair at all times but I know the bias is there and I am glad you overlook it and ‘see’ the heart of what I am saying.

Keep the Faith,

 

[Malachi4U]

uniChristian,

Boy I hate doing this right after you gave me a GR8 complement:banghead: . But I have no joice. I must follow the Holy Spirit wherever He leads me and the truth must be known.

uniChristian:

The Protestans had nothing to do with the canonization of tha Apocrypha.

The Catholic Church canonized all 73 books of Scripture 1,600 years ago. It was the protestants who you might say canonized the Apocrypha and took 7+ books out of Sacred Scripture.

It makes sence to let the Jews descide which books should be in the Old Testament.

The Jews are not Christians and have NO RIGHT at all to decide anything at all in the OT or the NT or any Christian book at all. The Jews have a Tora and we have a Bible. The Jews took out books from their Tora just like protestants took out books from our OT. As I recall Jesus founded the His body, His Church in 33 A.D. The Jews - who are non Christians and were in fact anti-Christian and fighting to put down His Church in the early years of it - deleted Greek books from their Tora to help combat Christianity in 90 A.D. I might note that only one small group in one location made this deletion. That small sect later grew larger. In 90 A.D. under Roman occupation and in hiding and after having their temple burned down in 70 A.D. who knows if this small group of Jews had access to ALL of the Sacred Scripture? Each book was a huge scroll and kept in a seperate jar. Could some of it been hidden elsewhere? Was some of it destroyed in the fire. Did it all make it to the hideout? Jews had no more right to edit Christian Scripture in 90 A.D. then they do today. I don’t see protestants using just the OT and trashing the NT because thats what the Jews use. It seems this is just an excuse or afterthought to try and justify deleting 7+ inspired and Sacred books from Holy Scripture. This dog don’t hunt!

The Apocrypha was not canonized as Church law untill the 16th century.

This is simply not true. The historical revisionists in my former Baptist churches used to claim this too. No matter how often a lie is repeated it still does not make it true. Even protestant scholars will admit this one is false.

The Jewish canon does not contain the Apocrypha

Jews are not Christian so who cares what they write or delete or edit. In 33 A.D. Christians had a Church and that Church and that Church alone had a right to edit, write, canonize, declare inspired “CHRISTIAN” Sacred Scripture.

and Jesus never quoted from the 7 books in your post.

So, where did the quotes from Scripture come from He quoted if not from Scripture?

According to the Historian of the period Flavius Josephus, The Jewish canon matches the Old Testament in a King James version.

Is that the AKJV or the NKJV or the KJV or the KJV the Mormons use or the JW KJV, etc… What period did Flavious write in and where did He write from? If I show you a moon rock and a meteorite, and an earth rock will you know the difference not being an expert? Did Flavious read and write in all the languages of the books he looked at? Does similar mean the same thing as exact?

 

[Malachi4U]

continued,

Anyway, there are other threads that deal with these matters. I learned the truth and now I’m home in Rome. Praise God.

Just a side note. Who cares really what books are in Scripture ? Study how Scripture was written and came into being and it will seriously make you think if Christianity is a true Faith at all:bigyikes: ? Who care if Scripture has 1 book or 100 books? Jesus preached a verbal ‘Gospel’ and so did His apostles. Jesus founded a “CHURCH” and promised to be with His body, His Church until the end of time. Our Faith comes from God and is us, not some book. I do not need a book to be ‘saved’ nor do you or anyone else. All we need to be saved is Faith, Jesus to pass judgement on us positivily and the grace of our Heavenly Father to make us one with Him in heaven. We argue about the Bible sometimes more then it is worth, it is, after all, just a book (though inspired and important). The early Christians had no Bible, Christians in persecution often have no Bible, the illiterate cannot read the Bible, and Jesus never commanded us to write a Bible. Faith is important, the Bible is just a tool to aid that Faith. 75, 73 or 66 books the Bible is still just a tool (yes, there is a 75 book Bible too!)

The best Bible is the one you read!

 

[jimmy]

I just want to say that not all Jews reject the Deuterocanonicals. There are groups of Jews that do accept them.

Second, the Jews celibrate a holiday called Hanukkah. This holiday is celebrated because of something that happened in the book Maccabees, one of the deuterocanonical books.

holidayorigins.com/html/hanukkah.html

 

[Church_Militant]

uniChristian:

The Protestans had nothing to do with the canonization of tha Apocrypha. It makes sence to let the Jews descide which books should be in the Old Testament. The Apocrypha was not canonized as Church law untill the 16th century. The Jewish canon does not contain the Apocrypha and Jesus never quoted from the 7 books in your post. According to the Historian of the period Flavius Josephus, The Jewish canon matches the Old Testament in a King James version.

Uni,
Keep tryin’…
The Jews disagree TO THIS DAY about just what is & is not their canon. Most stop being sure after the Penteteuch… I know, I have a Hassidic buddy.
The Deuterocanonicals were part of the same Alexandrian text used by the Jews in Isael & the whole Med world at the time of Christ. MOST (some 90%) of the NT quotes of the OT are from The Alexandrian text.
Grab a copy of Old Testament Quotations in the New Testament : A Complete Survey by Gleason Archer & G.C. Chirichigno (Moody Press, 1983).