Is it true that the first version of the "King James Bible" was the Catholic concordance?

[grayhog86]

Can someone help me here.

Isn’t it true that the first version of the “King James Bible” was the Catholic concordance - including the deuterocanonical (sp?) texts?

If true, wouldn’t these KJV-only Protestants be suprised to know this?

 

[Ruthie]

Yes, it included the Deuterocanonicals. You can prove it by searching Amazon.com!

Honest 1611 KJV-only people will admit this, but say that the translators didn’t believe they were inspired.

I’m a little vague on the details, but I’ll give it a shot. There were two different versions of the OT. The one in common usage in Jesus’ time was in Greek, and included the Deuterocanonicals. After the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, a council of Jews gathered, and put together a new canon which did not include the Deuterocanonicals. Based on that, some scholars decided that the Deut’s were not canonical. If I recall correctly (which may be doubtful), St. Jerome didn’t want to include them - but, like every good Catholic, he obeyed the leaders of the Church.

It is said that the Jews of that council excluded the Deut’s because they supported Jesus as the Messiah. It is also said that the Protestants excluded them because they confirm several Church teachings. How much truth there is to these rumors, I don’t know.

God bless you,

Ruthie who feels foggy today.

 

[Todd_Easton]

It is my understanding that, although the deuterocanonical books were included in the original King James Version, they were removed from their proper positions among the other inspired books of the Bible and consigned to a useful but uninspired “Apocrapha” appendix, which later publishers of the KJV dropped.

 

[NotWorthy]

After the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, a council of Jews gathered, and put together a new canon which did not include the Deuterocanonicals. Based on that, some scholars decided that the Deut’s were not canonical. If I recall correctly (which may be doubtful), St. Jerome didn’t want to include them - but, like every good Catholic, he obeyed the leaders of the Church.

It is said that the Jews of that council excluded the Deut’s because they supported Jesus as the Messiah. It is also said that the Protestants excluded them because they confirm several Church teachings. How much truth there is to these rumors, I don’t know.

God bless you,

Ruthie who feels foggy today.

I think the reason St. Jerome wished to remove the Deutero’s was that it was thought at the time that they (the Deutero’s) were only written in Greek and had never been written in Hebrew. Again, as you mentioned, St. Jerome was a loyal Catholic and acquiesced.

But later on, the Dead Sea Scrolls proved Jerome’s original reasoning to be incorrect. I think parts of all the seven Deutero’s, except for one, had been found written in Hebrew among the DSS.

As for the alleged Council of Jamnia’s reasonings for dismissing the Deutero’s, I don’t think they so much pointed out Christ as the Messiah as much as they emphasized what were Christian teachings. For example, Maccabees certainly is used to support Purgatory, a very un-Jewish theology. But what the Council neglected to consider (or downright rejected is probably more accurate), is that even if Maccabees was not Scriptural, it certainly did reflect the Jewish thinking of the time that there was an afterlife.

 

[Ruthie]

It is my understanding that, although the deuterocanonical books were included in the original King James Version, they were removed from their proper positions among the other inspired books of the Bible …

Todd’s right. They were put into their own section, between the OT and the NT, at least in the 1611 version.

God bless us all,

Ruthie, less foggy today