Can Catholics accept books the Orthodox accept?

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Hi all. So I recently bought an NRSV w Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical books and it is kind of a Common Bible.
It of course contains all of the books accepted in Catholic Bibles ( and also ones traditionally in the Vulgate appendix such as 1(3) Esdras, 2(4) Esdras, and the Prayer of Manasseh); but it also contains books unique to Eastern Orthodoxy such as 3 Maccabees, Psalm 151, and 4 Maccabees ( which accordingly says 4 Maccabees appears in an appendix to the Greek Bible. ) I have been wondering, what is the view of the Catholic Church on these texts which Orthodox ( who retain valid Apostolic succession) accept as being worthy to be in their Bibles? Could a Catholic hypothetically accept them personally, seeing as the Council of Trent nor any other Council has ever explicitly denied the books accepted by Orthodox? In fact Trent only says These are the books to be held sacred and canonical , however it never says and nothing else. Is it possible then that in the future the Church could also accept these further writings which seem to have also been in the Septuagint however were more popular in the east than in the west? I feel like this could be a real possibility if there ever was a reunification between the Orthodox and Catholics. Where the west may not accept their extra books but wouldn’t force them to abandon them either and then you could slowly see Catholic Bibles print them for eastern Catholics and who knows maybe then they could eventually just become accepted in the universal Church as well. That’s a hypothetical scenario I could see this happening. Just curious what others thought.
Thanks.
 
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I don’t think it would be prudent to go so far as formulating a personal opinion that these books as scriptural. But I don’t see anything wrong with considering them worthy or interesting reads, or as having value and edifying.
 
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Accepted as what? Reunification with which Orthodox?

Peace!!!
 
You ask whether the Catholic canon might hypothetically be expanded at some future date to include all the books that the Orthodox churches accept as canonical. Isn’t this exactly the same question that you were discussing with other posters on the Nephilim thread?

Origin of the Nephillim
 
Sure was.
But that was a ridiculous place to be discussing that.
 
I don’t think that matters. Some of the most interesting conversations on these threads – and at other forums, too – take place long after the thread has drifted away from whatever the original question was.
 
Only 2 people were part of that discussion really.
So, yes you could say so.
Are you a moderator or something?
Delete it if it bothers you so much.
 
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The prayer of Manasseh is in the daily practice of prayer in the EO. It will never go away from Orthodox Bible.
You Catholics have different Bibles, too, all accepted. Why can’t YOU accept the Septuagint also? 🙃
 
As I understand it, today the Orthodox Catholic Church has 80 books, Roman Catholic Church has 73 books and the Protestants, for the most common sects have 66 books in their respective Bibles.

I studied numerous writings on the topic of the real reasons but to no final conclusion.

The “standard” Septuagint contains all the books in question in the various old testaments and interesting to me both the Apostles and most importantly Jesus reference many of the books not found in the Roman Catholic & Protestant versions.

For myself, I read all of them and find them of value.

They were good enough for our Savior which makes them good enough for me. Besides, there is nothing I find that goes against my religion.

Final thought, all those omitted books were originally written by Jews but in Greek not Hebrew.
 
Charskys said:
Final thought, all those omitted books were originally written by Jews but in Greek not Hebrew.
Click to expand...
Some of them were written in Hebrew, such as 1 Maccabees and Tobit. From what I’ve read, my impression is that these books were left out of the Masoretic canon for reasons of theology, not of language, which was the case of the books originally written in Greek.
 
My understanding is that they were all written in Greek and accepted with out issues until 90 AD, when a group of Jewish Leaders in Jerusalem met and tossed out the books originally written in Greek. Their goal was to reassert Hebrew as THE language, dispite virtually no one, even the common Jews in Jerusalem spoke or read Hebrew as most everyone used Greek. Note that the decision of these Jewish Leaders was largely ignored for a few centuries including the use of the books in question in their services and those services were held using Greek.

I have yet to discover what changed that for the Jews and welcome any insight.
 
It isn’t a subject I ever attempted to study – those were just snippets of information that I happened to recall. I just googled for “tobit hebrew qumran” and found this, which looks interesting.

books.google.com.br

Tobit and Judith

Part of the popular textbook series introducing key themes and issues of books of the Apocrypha and Jewish Pseudepigrapha. The two apochryphal books, Tobit and Judith, are Jewish legends presumably created in the 3rd or 2nd century BCE, the first in the Eastern Diaspora, the other in Palestine...
books.google.com.br
 
Does anyone have any information on 3 and 4 Maccabees?
 
Thomasbradley312 said:
Hi all. So I recently bought an NRSV w Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical books and it is kind of a Common Bible.
It of course contains all of the books accepted in Catholic Bibles ( and also ones traditionally in the Vulgate appendix such as 1(3) Esdras, 2(4) Esdras, and the Prayer of Manasseh); but it also contains books unique to Eastern Orthodoxy such as 3 Maccabees, Psalm 151, and 4 Maccabees ( which accordingly says 4 Maccabees appears in an appendix to the Greek Bible. ) I have been wondering, what is the view of the Catholic Church on these texts which Orthodox ( who retain valid Apostolic succession) accept as being worthy to be in their Bibles? Could a Catholic hypothetically accept them personally, seeing as the Council of Trent nor any other Council has ever explicitly denied the books accepted by Orthodox? In fact Trent only says These are the books to be held sacred and canonical , however it never says and nothing else. Is it possible then that in the future the Church could also accept these further writings which seem to have also been in the Septuagint however were more popular in the east than in the west? I feel like this could be a real possibility if there ever was a reunification between the Orthodox and Catholics. Where the west may not accept their extra books but wouldn’t force them to abandon them either and then you could slowly see Catholic Bibles print them for eastern Catholics and who knows maybe then they could eventually just become accepted in the universal Church as well. That’s a hypothetical scenario I could see this happening. Just curious what others thought.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Yes, I think it’s possible.

I don’t think the Catholic Church even has to mention anything about the canon
in the future. If and when the reunification happens, the very act of reunifying will
“canonize” the Orthodox Scriptures.
 
Hey man I saw you had this conversation with someone else on another thread but it kind of was off topic but I agreed with you and thought it would make more sense for it to be it’s own thread!
 
As a practical matter, someone, anyone, could have flagged the post where the diversion occurred as “other” with a request that those posts be separated into a new thread.
 
I agree. Its an interesting topic. For years, I had assumed the canon was closed. But then, I stumbled on an article on the topic and after looking into the matter, I was convinced that it wasn’t.

However, I think we need to keep in mind that this is one of those matters which the Church allows us to speculate about, but which She will ultimately decide.

In Essentials Unity, In Non-Essentials Liberty, In All Things Charity.
 
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