***Catholics use the version of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint, which is an ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament which was used by the Jewish people until approximately the 2nd Century. There was a second translation, the Masoretic texts, during the 2nd Century that left some of the books out of the Old Testament, because they could not find original copies of those books, only the Greek translations.
The reason varies. In my experience it is a spin. The truth is that Protestants without any authority took and translated the Catholic Bible and disseminated it. The DC were part of that Bible.
Wandile,
The Catholic Bible Association adopted the Revised Standard Version, used primarily by non-Catholics and edited it for Catholic use. The RSV became the Revised Standard Version- Catholic Edition. It has been reissued under the title, The Ignatius Bible (there may be other titles at this point).
There were very few changes made to produce the RSV-Catholic Edition. Most changes involve what is placed in the main body of text and what is placed in the footnotes in the case of variants among early manuscripts. Also, some of the commentaries are different and reflect Catholic theology.
With all the resources of the Catholic Church; I’m surprised by this adoption of the RSV and NRSV, rather than a translation purely from Catholic sources.
I stand corrected
See my post #6. Fast forward to present day: the Catholic Church adopted the RSV and NRSV—translations formerly used primarily by non-Catholics. Why doesn’t the Catholic Church use English translations of Catholic Bibles (such as St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate) in the CCC? What does the Catholic adoption of the RSV and NRSV say about the issue of authority?
Thank you for the interesting information, Anna.
Actually, I was responding to CopticChristian’s statement, “Protestants without any authority took and translated the Catholic Bible.”
If Protestants have no authority to translate manuscripts, why would the Catholic Church adopt a translation in which Protestants were involved?
My apologies, I didn’t catch the connection.
ChrisB103,My apologies, I didn’t catch the connection.
I’m personally not aware that one needs authority to translate the Bible, and that seems to be backed up by the Church “adopting” the RSV and NRSV. Perhaps CopticChristian was referring to the authority of actually changing the canon, and he misspoke about needing authority to translate the Bible
What you are speaking of is what we call the Apocrypha in the Anglican church. We do have the Apocrypha in the NRSV Bible in which our lectionary is read from on Sunday mornings. However, we do not view these readings as fully inspired Scriptures and therefore we do not establish any church teaching from them.
What you are saying is that you base your belief on a tradtion of man that is 500 years old that have no DC that you choose to call Apocrypha. Apocrypha just means hidden. They were removed because of the cost of printing…
Omar Gatskill,
CopticChristian,What you are saying is that you base your belief on a tradtion of man that is 500 years old that have no DC that you choose to call Apocrypha. Apocrypha just means hidden. They were removed because of the cost of printing…
Originally it was effectively against the law to print the Bible in America, because the Crown held the copyright on the King James Version (it still does in England) but did not license any printers in their American colonies. The American Revolution made the United States an independent country. Since there were no international copyright treaties at the time, it was possible to print an English Bible in the United States. Shortly after the Revolution, the First Great Awakening created a big demand for Bibles.
For the first time, it was both profitable and legal to print English-language Bibles in America.
American printers discovered that they could leave out the Apocrypha and sell the Bible for the same price, and no one would care because it wasn’t used much. So they left out the Apocrypha to increase their profits. Some of the homegrown religious groups naïvely assumed that whatever was not in their Bible was not in the canon. Later, when Catholics became a significant segment of the population, a non-Catholic would say, “That’s not in my Bible” to a Catholic, completely unaware that it was the printer who left it out. A Lutheran pastor told me that one of his parishioners was insistent that the Lutheran Church did not recognize the Apocrypha as Scripture. The parishioner was astonished when he saw the church by-law that says it is. The parishioner had assumed that his copy of the Bible was complete when it wasn’t.
Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians use the Apocrypha and it is part of the Bible for them. Many independent churches and low-church denominations are only aware that it is not in their printing of the Bible, and think it is a Catholic addition when it is really a printer’s subtraction.
In other words, printers removed the Apocrypha from the Bible, not any church.
So you don’t use the Apocrypha because of the cost of printing and then comment on its absence in the Anglican ecclesial body and compare that belief and practice to the Septuagint that does have the Deuterocanonicals for quite a lot longer and in fact were included as part of a translation to bring the word of God to a Greek speaking world. As you recall Alexander the great conquered most of the known world in the 4th century and spared Jerusalem.
The translation into Greek is recorded by Josephus and the Talmud. God wanted to be known by the world and so the OT was translated into Greek. Why did God move the people to translate this version is the question to ask. It has been around lots longer than 500 years.
P.S. The NRSV was not around at the time of Christ.
James,
Anna,CopticChristian,
If you could add some links to this post, it might help some forum members who are unaware of the history of the Deuterocanonical Books. I’ve read much of what you have posted, but I can’t recall which books contain this information. Things start running together after awhile. So many books and so little time.
Not sure about the reason for your comment about the NRSV not being around at the time of Christ. The autographs would have been written in Hebrew and Aramaic (Old Testament); and Greek (New Testament), The writers of the New Testament would have used a Greek translation of the Old Testament. Of course, none of the autographs are known to still be in existence today.
So, you are right, the NRSV was not around at the time of Christ. None of the English translation were.
Great discussion,
Anna