How do Protestants know which Canon to use?

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This question was asked on another thread called “Canon of Scripture, Catholic Style” and has yet to be answered. It is a very good question and deserves the attention of its own thread. Anyone?
 
No one knows why they use the Canon that they do? Surely, someone must know.

When no one answers after a couple of days, I’ll just bump this thread to conclude the obvious - that Protestants use the Canon they do because they received the Canon from the Catholic Church, Luther axed a few books from the Old Testament and then handed on his “reformed” Bible for future Protestant generations.

"We concede—as we must—that so much of what they [the Catholic Church] say is true: that the papacy has God’s word and the office of the apostles, and that we have received holy scriptures, baptism, the sacrament, and the pulpit from them. What would we know of these if it were not for them?" - Martin Luther

I’ll hand this thread back now to the crickets chirping.
 
Is the question rhetorical?

Directed toward protestant or catholic replies or both?

Peace and God Bless
Nicene
 
Martin Luther wanted to disregard James and Revelation from Canon.
Interesting how he can arbitrarily make that decision.
 
Iambic Pen asked this question in another thread but did not get any answers.

I wanted to open the question up to all Protestants as it deserves it’s own thread because it ended up getting buried without any responses.

But of course, anyone is invited to comment.
 
The OT of the King James was a re-write from greek sources. But the Catholic Douay-Rheims was published a few years before the King James was finished, so the translators of the KJV simply re-worded the Catholic NT, which is one of the principle reasons why the NT of the Catholic and Protestant bibles are identical in the number of books there and the order of their appearence.

The Protestants, however, follow the OT according to the ruling of the council of Jamnia around 90 AD. This was a Jewish council of pharisees which certainly had no interest in works that might support Christian theology. Also, since they had at that time an understandable hatred of just about anything Greco/Roman, they rejected as best they could the Septuagint which was the Greek rendering of the OT.

Thal59
 
Does anyone know when chapters and verses were added to the texts?
 
Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 13th Century, first divided the Bible text into chapters. Santes Pagninus divided the Old Testament chapters into verses in 1528, and Robert Etienne, a printer in Paris, did the same for the New Testament in 1551.
 
Aaron I.:
Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 13th Century, first divided the Bible text into chapters. Santes Pagninus divided the Old Testament chapters into verses in 1528, and Robert Etienne, a printer in Paris, did the same for the New Testament in 1551.
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Thanks. Very interesting. 👍
 
I think it would be impossible for Protestants to know which Canon to use…Unless they…😃
 
Isn’t it interesting that Protestants stake their salvation on “Sola Scriptura”, yet they have no explanation for why they use the “Scriptura” they do?

I mean what if the Catholic Church isn’t just “wrong” on almost everything else? What if the Church was wrong about the New Testament? :eek: 😃
 
I too find this a very interesting question. Often the answer given will be that the entire early Church simply recognized what books were scripture by the power of the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately this answer does not explain why numerous early councils felt the need to enumerate the canon. After all, if the Holy Spirit was giving everybody the right dope, why would councils need to repeat what everybody knew anyway?
 
If you are really interrested you need only read

The Canon of Scripture (Hardcover)
by Frederick Fyvie Bruce
 
Daniel Marsh:
If you are really interrested you need only read

The Canon of Scripture (Hardcover)
by Frederick Fyvie Bruce
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What if I’m only mildly interested? Care to give us the cliff notes?

Also, Henry Graham’s “Where We Got the Bible - Our Debt to the Catholic Church” is a good quick read.

Notworthy
 
The Protestants, however, follow the OT according to the ruling of the council of Jamnia around 90 AD. This was a Jewish council of pharisees which certainly had no interest in works that might support Christian theology. Also, since they had at that time an understandable hatred of just about anything Greco/Roman, they rejected as best they could the Septuagint which was the Greek rendering of the OT.
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Interestingly, the Council of Jamnia had set specific criteria in order to determine which books would be considered holy scripture and which ones would not. One of the criteria was that they had to have the books written in Hebrew not just in Greek. The Greek Septuagint had the seven books, we now know as deuterocanonicals, but alas, the Jews no longer had those books in ancient Hebrew. So, they removed those books from their OT. Martin Luther and company came along and used the excuse that the Jews did not have those seven books in their OT and so he thought they should be excluded from the protestant bible. (It didn’t hurt that some of those books were supportive of Catholic teachings 😉 ) The interesting tidbit is this: when the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered they found fragments of at least some of the 7 books in ancient HEBREW. So the justification for having removed at least some of those books is eliminated. So far, I haven’t heard of any protestant rushing out to right this wrong. :hmmm:
 
I’m non-denominational but probably lean more to the Protestants. I used to be Catholic, but I started reading the Bible, and found to many conflicts for my comofort.

I use the KJV and reference many versions, it contains the same information from the Textus Receptus, and yes I am aware that the KJV had the Apocryphal books until the 1800s. Any book of the Bible can be taken out and God’s message is not lost. It is important to know The Word Of God which is The Bible. History of and reasons for the different vestions can be found else where. I’m trying to give a non-Catholic’s reason of what he’s willing to base his eternity on!

The addtional OT books Catholics have in there bible’s:
History=Tobit, Judith,
Poetic=Wisdom, Sirach,
Prophetic=Baruch, and 1&2 Maccabees

I don’t use the Bishops/Vulgate verstions because they were not part of the earliest LXX (Septuagent) version, they do not claim to be The Word Of God, historical inacuracy’s and other reasons that I wont bother getting into at this time.

And as far as “Sola Scriptura”, Its in The Bible, and if you would like verses, I’ll be more than happy to give them to you. Just be aware that if you take The Bible to be The Word Of God, you will probably start questioning the Catholic Church.

God Bless.
 
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gottarlt:
I’m non-denominational but probably lean more to the Protestants. I used to be Catholic, but I started reading the Bible, and found to many conflicts for my comofort.

I use the KJV and reference many versions, it contains the same information from the Textus Receptus, and yes I am aware that the KJV had the Apocryphal books until the 1800s. Any book of the Bible can be taken out and God’s message is not lost. It is important to know The Word Of God which is The Bible. History of and reasons for the different vestions can be found else where. I’m trying to give a non-Catholic’s reason of what he’s willing to base his eternity on!

The addtional OT books Catholics have in there bible’s:
History=Tobit, Judith,
Poetic=Wisdom, Sirach,
Prophetic=Baruch, and 1&2 Maccabees

I don’t use the Bishops/Vulgate verstions because they were not part of the earliest LXX (Septuagent) version, they do not claim to be The Word Of God, historical inacuracy’s and other reasons that I wont bother getting into at this time.

And as far as “Sola Scriptura”, Its in The Bible, and if you would like verses, I’ll be more than happy to give them to you. Just be aware that if you take The Bible to be The Word Of God, you will probably start questioning the Catholic Church.

God Bless.
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Okay give us the verses.
 
This post is for “How do Protestans know which Canon to use?” Which verses did you want, why I use The Bible I do or why “Sola Scriptura”? Which probably needs to be a separate thread if one doesn’t already exist.
 
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gottarlt:
This post is for “How do Protestans know which Canon to use?” Which verses did you want, why I use The Bible I do or why “Sola Scriptura”? Which probably needs to be a separate thread if one doesn’t already exist.
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You said Sola Scriptura is in the Bible. Of course it isn’t but I’m interested to hear what verses you have in mind. You can just quickly give them to me. If I want to respond I can do it in another thread.
 
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gottarlt:
they do not claim to be The Word Of God, historical inacuracy’s and other reasons that I wont bother getting into at this time.
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Gosh, that sounds like uhmm…ALL OF SCRIPTURE. Scripture doesn’t claim unity, inerrancy, or scientific-historical accuracy, and moreover, it doesn’t claim Sola Scriptura. You’re in a pickle of a a position here, friend.
 
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