Actually, God gave us the OT through the Jews and gave us the NT through the Apostles. The Holy Spirit is the one who has kept it safe.
All man has done is write documents proclaiming the wrong canon. The RCC has 7 uninspired OT books plus uninspired additions to Daniel and Esther.
We know what is inspired because we trust that God led Abraham’s decendants to preserve the correct OT inspired books. We know that the NT is inspired because they were written by the apostles and we have faith that God has used people down through the ages to preserve those holy books.
So everyone has a right to use scripture because it is inspired by God and is profitable to make a man complete ready for every good work.
2 Timothy 3:16-17
[16] All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
[17] that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
**
Hi DD 2007,
I bet you are one of the guys who think about the King James Version: “If it was good enough for the apostle Paul, it is good enough for me!”
I hope you realize that St. Paul, of course, was 1550 years too early for the KJV. The New Testament books are written between 51-125AD. The Apostles used the OT. The Catholic church made and used the NT. The Protestants corrupted it and have false interpretations of Jesus’ teachings!
The original New Testament writers wrote in Koine Greek, the language of the common man in the first century A.D.
Marcion, a businessman in Rome, taught that there were two Gods: Yahweh, the cruel God of the Old Testament, and Abba, the kind father of the New Testament. Marcion eliminated the Old Testament as scriptures and, since he was anti-Semitic, kept from the New Testament only 10 letters of Paul and 2/3 of Luke’s gospel (he deleted references to Jesus’s Jewishness). Marcion’s “New Testament”, the first to be compiled, forced the mainstream Church to decide on a core canon: the four Gospels and Letters of Paul. 140AD
The periphery of the canon is not yet determined. According to one list, compiled at Rome c. AD 200 (the Muratorian Canon), the NT consists of the 4 gospels; Acts; 13 letters of Paul (Hebrews is not included); 3 of the 7 General Epistles (1-2 John and Jude); and also the Apocalypse of Peter. 200AD
The earliest extant list of the books of the NT, in exactly the number and order in which we presently have them, is written by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, in his Festal letter # 39 of 367
AD
Council of Rome (whereby Pope Damasus started the ball rolling for the defining of a universal canon for all city-churches). Listed the New Testament books in their present number and order. c382AD.
The Council of Hippo, which began “arguing it out.” Canon proposed by Bishop Athanasius. 383 AD
The Council of Carthage, which refined the canon for the Western Church, sending it back to Pope Innocent for ratification. In the East, the canonical process was hampered by a number of schisms (esp. within the Church of Antioch). 397 AD
However, this was changed by …
The Ecumenical Council of Nicaea II, which adopted the canon of Carthage. At this point, both the Latin West and the Greek / Byzantine East had the same canon. 787AD
However, … The non-Greek, Monophysite and Nestorian Churches of the East (the Copts, the Ethiopians, the Syrians, the Armenians, the Syro-Malankars, the Chaldeans, and the Malabars) were still left out. But these Churches came together in agreement, in 1442A.D., in Florence.
The system of chapters was introduced by Cardinal Hugo de S. Caro, 1238
At the Council of Florence, the entire Church recognized the 27 books. This council confirmed the Roman Catholic Canon of the Bible which Pope Damasus I had published a thousand years earlier. So, by 1439, all orthodox branches of the Church were legally bound to the same canon. 1442AD. This was 100 years before the Reformation.
The first complete English Bible was not produced until John Wycliffe produced his in the fourteenth century. He translated from the Latin Vulgate which was the most widely used version at that time.
In hiscorrupted translation of the Bible from Greek into German, Luther removed 4 N.T. books (Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation) and placed them in an appendix saying they were less than canonical. 1536AD
At the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church reaffirmed once and for all the full list of 27 books. The council also confirmed the inclusion of the Deuterocanonical books which had been a part of the Bible canon since the early Church and was confirmed at the councils of 393 AD, 373, 787 and 1442 AD. At Trent Rome actually dogmatized the canon, making it more than a matter of canon law, which had been the case up to that point, closing it for good. 1546AD
The next major step in the development of the English Bible was Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament published in 1526 and portions of the Old Testament published later. Tyndale’s version was significant because it was translated from a newly published Greek New Testament rather than from the Vulgate. After Tyndale’s, a number of other versions were produced. Among them were the Coverdale Bible, the Matthews Bible, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, and the Bishops’ Bible.
The in 1611 the King James Version was published to provide a Bible which could be used by both Anglicans and Puritans 4,200 changes were made then and thousands since.
The latest news on the KJV? :**
**Click On: After 400 years the KJV of the Bible is still the same! **
for her and await some better, more open chance to talk. Sometimes when people are ready they hint. I’m looking for words to get through blocks, too, but more for dealing with anti-Christians than with anti-Catholic Christians, so I’m trying to learn more sensitivity to when it’s time to retreat and when it’s time to try another tack.
