Differences in Old Testaments

[chrisb]

Peace be with you all,

I have recently been researching Scripture and noticed that Protestants have 39 Books contained in the Old Testaments, Catholics have 46 Books contianed in the Old Testament and Orthodox have 50 Books contained in the Old Testament.

Now I understand that the Deuterocanonical Books were translated along with the rest of the Greek Septuagint by the early Church. I also understand that these Deuterocanonical Books were never officially “canonized” until the Council of Trent in 1546AD and that they were originally written in Greek by Hellenized Jews and rejected from the Judaic Canon in the 1st Century and rejected as inspired Scripture by Protestants.

What I would like to know is what is the story on Orthodoxy’s extra Old Testament Books? When did these show up in their Canon and what is the Catholic view of these Extra Old Testament Books?

Peace.

 

[Fidelis]

chrisb:

I also understand that these Deuterocanonical Books were never officially “canonized” until the Council of Trent in 1546AD and that they were originally written in Greek by Hellenized Jews and rejected from the Judaic Canon in the 1st Century and rejected as inspired Scripture by Protestants.

Before you get to your question about the Orthodox canon, you’d better get straight on this part. I’d suggest this Catholic Answers article for a start:

catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0409fea4.asp

 

[prodromos]

The Orthodox Old Testament is simply the Greek Septuagint as it was handed down by the church. It has no extra books. Perhaps the question you should be asking is why the Roman canon has had some of those books removed.

John

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

A small answer from Catholic Answers
catholic.com/thisrock/2003/0309qq.asp

Q: Given that the Orthodox didn’t break away from Rome until 1054, and that the Old Testament canon was already set forth by the fourth-century councils of Hippo and Carthage, why does the Orthodox Old Testament canon include some books that Catholics consider apocryphal?

A: The Catholic Old Testament canon was defined even before the councils of Hippo and Carthage, by the Synod of Rome in 382 under Pope Damasus I. The canon was not infallibly defined until after the Great Schism, in the councils of Florence and Trent.

Most Orthodox (except for a few under the influence of Protestants [sic]) accept the Septuagint tradition of the Old Testament canon, but since the Septuagint tradition was not fixed (i.e., some versions of the Septuagint contained a few books that others didn’t), there was still flux on this point. Since Greek was the language of the East, the Orthodox never migrated from using the Septuagint as their Old Testament, and its fuzzy boundaries were not sufficiently clarified in the East by the time of the breakaway.

Minor comment: it is curious that the answer treats the Catholic Churches of the East prior to the Schism as if they were not connected with the Catholic Church of Rome. Rome had its own Canon. The East had another. If the “Catholic” Canon was defined by Pope Damasus in 382 why was it not accepted by the universal Catholic Church at that time and in succeeding centuries? The fact that it wasn’t reinforces the view that Rome made no claim to universal jursidiction at that time.