Catholics, Jews and the Deutercanon

[Toten]

Most Catholic apologists who defend the Deutercanonical Books do so by asserting that sertaub sects of Jews accepted them as canonical books. What jewish sources are there that suuport this claim?

 

[awalt]

Do a search of “deuterocanonicals” on catholic.com and you will find several good articles on this. In short, the OT canon adopted by the Church was the Septuagint, the Greek version of the OT which was the version read by the majority of Jews at the time of Christ, as there was actually a very small population using the Hebrew version in Palestine by that time.

 

[mkarzon]

Also, Jews never came out with an “official canon” until near the end of the 1st century AD.

They could have used the Hebrew, Greek (septuagint), or if you were a Sadducee, you’d have only used the first 5 books of the OT.

 

[Guardian]

Most Catholic apologists who defend the Deutercanonical Books do so by asserting that sertaub sects of Jews accepted them as canonical books. What jewish sources are there that suuport this claim?

The group of Jews which met at Javneh became the dominant group for later Jewish history, and today most Jews accept the canon of Javneh. However, some Jews, such as those from Ethiopia, follow a different canon which is identical to the Catholic Old Testament and includes the seven deuterocanonical books (cf. Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 6, p. 1147).

 

[Mannyfit75]

The Jews at the Council of Jamnia in 90 A.D officially rejected the Deutorcanon because it was widely used by Christians.

 

[Tomster]

From the critical standpoint the correctness of the Church’s choice in adopting the broader Alexandrian rather tha the narrower Palestian canon, may be vindicated from the following considerations, which tend largely to show that the Alexandrian was before the time of Christ also the canon of the Palestinian Jews.

1. The Sacred Books which the Alexandrian translators and editors included in their Scripture collection compiled for the Jewish colony in Egypt must have been acceptable to it. Because between Jerusalem and Alexandria there was continual communication, and Jerusalem, being the motherland, couls and would certainly have censured any unwarranted religious innovations in Alexandria. But Palestine did not reject the Alexandrian canon till about the year 100 AFTER Christ, at the earliest.
2. From the Letter of Aristeas (Josephus, Antiquities, XII, ii, 11, 13) and the Letter of the Palestinian Jews (II Machabees 2:14-15), one may deduce that the pre-Christian Palestinian Synagogue itself furnished Alexandria with most of the material for the Septuagint version. Again, an isolated Jewish sect of upper Egypt (Abyssinia), the Falashas, dating from before the Christian era, uses an Ethiopic Old Testament which also contains all the “deuterocanonical” Books.
3. The Septuagint version is used almost exclusively in the writings of the New Testament, showing that during Christ’s time or shortly after it was in full repute in Palestine. Moreover, almost one hundred passages in the New Testament have been shown to be quotations from or illusions to “deuterocanonical” texts.
4. In the Talmud Ecclesiasticus is mentioned as Scripture with the Law and the Prophets, about the 4th century. Baruch was read in the synagogues as late as the 3rd century.

By accepting the Greek versions of the Old Testament rather than the Hebrew text as it was edited about a century after Christ, the Church provided rather a superior text and better readings of the Old Law, because the Septuagint version was based in its translations upon much more ancient manuscripts than were available for the present standard Hebrew Bible. Moreover, in a few places this later Hebrew text seems to have been deliberately tampered with, in order to discredit Christianity (i.e., Psalm 109:3; 21:17).

 

[Tomster]

The present Hebrew (so-called Palestinian) canon seems to date from not earlier than the famous Jewish synagogue of Jabneh or Jamnia, where the leaders of the then defunt Synagogue (after the fall of Jerusalem) assembled and, among other matters, decreed that Ecclesiastes and Canticles belonged to the Hagiographa. By that time the Pharisaic party was in full control of Jewish national and religious life. Hence, according to their exaggerated principle of non-communication with the “goyim,” the Gentiles, they seem to have ruthlessly cast out of their canon of Scared Writ all such Books or editions which had originally been written in a foreign tongue or upon foreign soil, or which did not seem to conform strictly to the Law of Moses as interpreted by themselves. Therefore the present Old Testament series of the Jews and Protestants might in fact be called the Pharisaic canon.

Thus was the first false canon established by those who refused to follow Christ and His Church. And this clearly post-Christian and erroneous norm was subsequently, when the 16th century “Reformers” similarly broke away from Christ’s Church, adopted as the Canon of Protestant Bible versions, - despite the fact that Christ Himself had long ago warned His disciples to “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees,” i.e., of their specific doctrines (Matthew 16:6, 12).

 

[MrS]

I hold in my formerly pagan-out-of-the-Catholic-Church-for-25-years hands

a copy of the newly released

"Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger - The Untold Story Of The Lost Books Of The Protestant Bible"

Arguments about 73 or 66 usually are either ended in confusion in trying to present all the evidence, because no one (until now) has really accumulated all that evidence.

Certainly a work like this would not come from a protestant camp, lest they find themselves in error.

Gary Michuta, the author, presents over 300 pages which any serious student can check and double check. There are many footnotes, many references, many proofs that once again the Catholic position is the correct one… and it is a fairly easy read.

handsonapologetics.com/ is the website of the author, and you can link on to Grotto Press to order… a $20 reference book every “66” proponent should now consider.

Thanks Gary… but where were you 500 years ago when Luther was playing his game?

seriously, if one can afford to pick this up… it is not only a great and long overdue reference on the deutrocanonicals, but you would be supporting a darn good ministry too.