Great article by Steve Ray:
catholicconvert.com/
The quick answer:
The Catholic Church officially determined and set the canon of of the New Testament approximately 400 years after Christianity began. The canon was declared by the body of Catholic bishops at the Council of Carthage (397 A.D.) and confirmed by Pope Boniface (419 A.D.).
Hi Randy Carson,
This is also a good link:
The Emergence of the New Testament Canon
There was an interesting Bible translation development in the 20th Century. The RSV and NRSV are used in the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, The Catholic Bible Association had to
obtain permission from the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States to use the RSV and NRSV.
Code:
**Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition**
“Scripture quotations contained herein are adapted from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971, and the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States, and are used by permission. All rights reserved.”
So, 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 as
The Ignatius Bible (there may be other titles at this point.)
This is a quote from the
Introduction to the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version, found in the
The Catholic Comparative New Testament:
Code:
“This edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible has been prepared for the use of Catholics by a committee of the Catholic Biblical Association of Great Britain.
It is published with ecclesiastical approval and by agreement with the Standard Bible Committee and the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States. . . .
A small committee of members of the Catholic Bible Association was formed and permission obtained to examine this translation and suggest any changes that might be required to make it acceptable to Catholics. The Standard Bible Committee of the U.S.A. was then approached and they gave warm welcome to the proposal."
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. While commentaries reflect Catholic theology, the translation remains essentially unchanged.
Even though the RSV and NRSV are considered ecumenical translations, the Catholic Bible Association found the need to explain their use of translations, used primarily by non-Catholics—as reflected in this quote from the Introduction to the
Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version, found in the
The Catholic Comparative New Testament:
"For four hundred years, following upon the great upheaval of the Reformation, Catholics and Protestants have gone their separate ways and suspected each other’s translations of the Bible of having been in some way manipulated in the interests of doctrinal presuppositions.
It must be admitted that these suspicions were not always without foundation. At the present time, however, the sciences of textual criticism and philology, not to mention others, have made such great advances that the Bible text used by translators is substantially the same for all–Protestants and Catholics alike."
The Catholic Bible Association chose to
adopt the RSV and NRSV, rather than using a translation purely from Catholic sources. I found this to be quite surprising, given all the resources of the Catholic Church. However, it does show how things have changed in a positive way.
Peace and Blessings,
Anna
I sometimes get a tad abrasive.