Gutenberg Bible

[CaptCrunch73]

I have a coworker who is Lutheran. I say Luther removed 7 books from the Bible, he says Catholics added 7 books to the Bible. You get the picture…

I’m thinking of pointing him to the The Gutenberg Bible. My understanding is that this Bible was printed in the 1450s, before Luther and the Reformation, and it contains the Deuterocanonical Books (per the link above). My point being if there’s a Bible from before Luther’s time and if the Deuterocanonical Books were contained in that Bible then Luther removed them.

Anybody else have any other thoughts on how to prove this?

 

[I_Thirst]

Your friend has a distorted view of history. Luther even considered removing the Epistle of James, which he called the Epistle of Straw. He had some problems with “faith without works is dead.”

Melito, bishop of Sardis, an ancient city of Asia Minor (see Rev 3), c. 170 AD produced the first known Christian attempt at an Old Testament canon. His list maintains the Septuagint order of books but contains only the Old Testament protocanonicals minus the Book of Esther. 

The Council of Laodicea, c. 360, produced a list of books similar to today's canon. This was one of the Church's earliest decisions on a canon. 

Pope Damasus, 366-384, in his Decree, listed the books of today's canon. 

The Council of Rome, 382, was the forum which prompted Pope Damasus' Decree. 

Bishop Exuperius of Toulouse wrote to Pope Innocent I in 405 requesting a list of canonical books. Pope Innocent listed the present canon. 

The Council of Hippo, a local north Africa council of bishops created the list of the Old and New Testament books in 393 which is the same as the Roman Catholic list today. 

The Council of Carthage, a local north Africa council of bishops created the same list of canonical books in 397. This is the council which many Protestant and Evangelical Christians take as the authority for the New Testament canon of books. The Old Testament canon from the same council is identical to Roman Catholic canon today. Another Council of Carthage in 419 offered the same list of canonical books. 

Since the Roman Catholic Church does not define truths unless errors abound on the matter, Roman Catholic Christians look to the Council of Florence, an ecumenical council in 1441 for the first definitive list of canonical books. 

The final infallible definition of canonical books for Roman Catholic Christians came from the Council of Trent in 1556 in the face of the errors of the Reformers who rejected seven Old Testament books from the canon of scripture to that time.

link

I’m sure others will chime in with some good books on this too.

 

[Road2Damascus]

This is definitely an apologetics issue and I find many sources with a simple, “Catholic Apologetics more books longer Bible” search.

But key here is that we use the Septuagint, the Jewish Canon in Greek. There was also the Old Jewish Canon written in Hebrew. Catholics use the Septuagint, Greek based. The Septuagint has for example the books of Maccabees among others vs. the Old Jewish Canon.

The Apostles and New Testament largely quote the Septuagint and in fact, we know the NT is all in Greek or close to it.

 

[DianaCC]

That’s kind of like asking the information desk at a major chain bookstore if they have anything by William Shakespeare.

Here’s a suggestion. Look up the following items and follow you academic instincts:

• Manuscripts of the Septuagint
• Manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate
• Codex Sinaiticus
• Codex Vaticanus
• Codex Alexandrinus

 

[ProVobis]

The Apostles and New Testament largely quote the Septuagint and in fact, we know the NT is all in Greek or close to it.

The oldest manuscripts we have are in Greek but the originals could have been written or dictated in other languages, including Aramaic. Papyrus and parchment don’t hold very well over centuries. The Latin Rite uses the Latin Vulgate, where St. Jerome consolidated the older (poor quality) Latin, the Greek Vulgate, Hebrew and other languages.

Recently they found the Dead Sea Scrolls as a good source of the Old Testament and now are available online.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls

 

[CaptCrunch73]

Lots of good stuff here, thanks everyone. I need to do some Googling…

 

[Erich]

I’m thinking of pointing him to the The Gutenberg Bible. My understanding is that this Bible was printed in the 1450s, before Luther and the Reformation, and it contains the Deuterocanonical Books (per the link above). My point being if there’s a Bible from before Luther’s time and if the Deuterocanonical Books were contained in that Bible then Luther removed them.

Reminds me of the one about a collector of rare books who ran into an acquaintance who told him he had just thrown away an old bible that he found in a dusty, old box. He happened to mention that Guten-somebody-or-other had printed it.

“Not Gutenberg?” gasped the collector.

“Yes, that was it!”

“You idiot! You’ve thrown away one of the first books ever printed. A copy recently sold at auction for half a million dollars!”

“Oh, I don’t think this book would have been worth anything close to that much,” replied the man. “It was scribbled all over in the margins by some guy named Martin Luther.”