mhansen:
No sir, my theory is not lacking. I understand which versions of the Bible were printed with which books. The fact remains that the Protestant version of the Bible is based on the official Jewish canon, regardless of when it was officially “adopted.” On the other hand, the Catholic Bible is based on the Septuagint, which is NOT official Jewish canon.
The “additional” books found in the Septuagint were dropped from official Jewish Scripture around 90-100 A.D. That is historical fact. If the Catholic Church wishes to continue to view these books as canon, even though Judaism does NOT, that’s fine. Nobody says they can’t, and that’s not my decision. Many Protestants have decided to go with the offical Jewish canon because (as I stated before) Christianity has its roots in Judaism.
Please, feel free to look it up. The people on this thread made it seem like it was the Protestants who arbitrarily took the books out, when in fact it was done by the Jews centuries ago.
Mike
Christianity definately has its roots in Judaism, and it grows from those roots starting with Christ, our namesake. The fact that Jews themselves tossed books out of Scripture
after Catholics were already running around using the Septuagint and writing the New Testament (it was completed before Jews cast out the Septuagint) means nothing to us. Christ quoted the Septuagint, the Apostles quoted the Septuagint, it’s the canon that was used by them, as Jews growing up and as Christians teaching, and it’s the one we use.
The modern Jews are NOT the Jews of the time of Christ, not even close. It would be much more accurate to say that Catholics and Jews
share their roots in Ancient Temple Judaism; modern Jews went off in one direction, and Catholics in another. To say that they alone carry the torch of Temple Judaism is completely ahistorical, espescially since it’s Catholics who keep alive the Temple worship where modern Jews do not.
Regardless, your argument has another hole in it, which is that the motivation for Luther to cast out the Deuterocanonicals didn’t end with them, but included books of the New Testament. It was only after much debate that the New Testament wasn’t chopped up just as bad as the Old.
Interestingly, Wormwood’s point about “better understanding through less reading” is precisely the motivating factor behind these edits. Luther couldn’t square the texts of those books (new and old) with his personal interpretation of the other books, so he wanted to drop them (he ended with just dropping the old). Rather than try to rectify it, possibly having to
gasp change his personal opinion to match that of the Church’s, he sought to ignore them completely. It’s colored Protestant theology since that very day.
After all, how many Catholics have heard “Jesus didn’t give men the authority to forgive sins” only to point the Protestant debater to John 20:23? We wrote the books and put the Bible together, we’ve definately read it carefully.
) Why that story got deleted by you know who, I’ll never understand. 
