canon question

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Ok, this is the first of many question I’ll probably ask on my way to becoming Catholic. I went to a Bible College (Christian Church/Church of Christ) and studied the bible in many classes. I was raised Lutheran and am still a Lutheran to this day. My boyfriend is Catholic and we decided to do some Bible reading in the park (very spiritually uplifting, I highly recommend it). He brought his Bible. I knew that the Catholic Bible had different books in it than mine. I actually thought that it had books in the middle of the old and new testaments called the Apocrapha. But all I found in his bible were different books scattered among the old testament. Can anyone give me an explanation of the difference? Does anyone have experience in converting and having this same concern? I am thinking, “which books were there first?”.

Thanks!
Katie
 
Hi Katie!

I’m so glad you are exploring the truth of the Catholic Church! So many of us, while outside the Church (I myself am a convert) just believe what we’ve been told about her, without ever questioning whether it is true or not.

You may find it interesting to know that all those “extra” books in your boyfriend’s Bible, were there in all Bibles up until the 1500s! Then some people decided they didn’t like those particular books, and took them out! So they stood for all those centuries, but then were thrown out without so much as a fare-thee-well. They make for very interesting reading. You might want to consider them.

Good luck on your explorations!

Brenda M.
 
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Kater30:
. I actually thought that it had books in the middle of the old and new testaments called the Apocrapha. But all I found in his bible were different books scattered among the old testament.
Thanks!
Katie
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Katie,

As Brenda mentioned above, those books were in the Bible prior to Luther’s Bible in 1522.

Luther removed those books and put them in a special section called “the Apocrypha”. The Catholic Bibles have them in their original locations.

The differences come from which of 2 different versions of the Old Testament are being used.

The Catholic and Orthodox Bibles are based off of a Greek Translation done in about 200 BC called the Septuagint.

The Luther Bibles are based off of what is called the Masoretic Text, which was defined about 70 AD by Jewish Rabbi’s.

There is a lot of evidence that the Apostles preached out of the Septuagint, not the lest of which is Paul’s quotations of the Old Testament are directly from the Septuagint.

This is also shown when we look at the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke.

Luke quotes directly from the Septuagint version of Isa 7:14. And this is of critical importance to Christianity. Isa 7:14 in the Masoretic text uses the Hebrew word almah, which means ‘young woman’, the Septuagint uses the Greek word parthnos, which means ‘virgin’.

The Masoretic text makes no requirement for the Nativity of our Lord to be a Virgin Birth, but Luke had it as a critical aspect of our Faith.

Even to this day, Jews to not look for the Messiah to come from a virgin birth.

here is a good site that shows the Apostles use of the Septuagint vs. what the Hebrew version of the Bible says.

home.earthlink.net/~rgjones3/Septuagint/spexecsum.htm
 
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Kater30:
Ok, this is the first of many question I’ll probably ask on my way to becoming Catholic. I went to a Bible College (Christian Church/Church of Christ) and studied the bible in many classes. I was raised Lutheran and am still a Lutheran to this day. My boyfriend is Catholic and we decided to do some Bible reading in the park (very spiritually uplifting, I highly recommend it). He brought his Bible. I knew that the Catholic Bible had different books in it than mine. I actually thought that it had books in the middle of the old and new testaments called the Apocrapha. But all I found in his bible were different books scattered among the old testament. Can anyone give me an explanation of the difference? Does anyone have experience in converting and having this same concern? I am thinking, “which books were there first?”.

Thanks!
Katie
Click to expand...
Hello Katie, the OT canon has been very contravercial between Catholics and protestants. If you look back in history you will see that they have been there since the bible was composed. In the late fourth century and the early fifth century they had some councils where they decided what the scriptural canon of the church was. They did this because there were people that were using diferent books than others as scripture. Anyway, at the councils of Rome, Carthage, and Hippo they decided the canon. This canon included the dueterocanonicals(which protestants call the apocrypha).

In the the 17th century after Martin Luther left the church, the KJV bible took the dueterocanonicals and moved them to the back of the OT. After several years they removed them. However, Martin Luther did use them in his teaching. He thought they were canonical.

Protestants say that we did not put the dueterocanonicals in the bible until the council of Trent. This is wrong. All they did at Trent was to reafirm what was already canon. They also did this at the council of Florence in the early 1400s. They were only reafirming what was decided in the councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage around 400 AD.

The dueterocanonical books are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees, Baruch, and Sirach(Ecclesiasticus). If you look up the councils Baruch was part of Jeremiah and Wisdom was one of the books of Solomon.

I hope your conversion goes well.
 
Hey, Kater! This is one of the great all-time questions. I believe on the home page of Catholic Answers there is a menu on the left with an article on this. If we try to answer you here, we’ll probably just waste a lot of cyber-memory and confuse you all the more. Another great discussion is on the NewAdvent web site in the Catholic Encyclopedia. I think it is listed under “Scripture – canon” but don’t hold me to it. Grope around in their index.

One of the reasons the Jewish council of Jamnia (ca. 95 a.d.) chose to eliminate the Deuterocanonical books from the Palestinian Canon was because this upstart sect that claimed their rabbi had risen from the dead accepted those books without question. How the canon of Scripture was determined is one of the fascinating history stories of the Church. Did you know that the first edition of the King James Bible included the Deuterocanonical books?
 
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