Martin Luther's New Testament Canon?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dogface_Soldier
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
D

Dogface_Soldier

Guest
I have frequently heard that in Luther’s first edition of the Bible, in addition to the OT Deutero-Canonicals, he relegated Hebrews, Jude, James, and Revelation to the the status of Aprochypha. If this is true, it would provide a powerful argument for the necessity of authority, since all Trinitarian Christians accept the 27 NT books as canonical.

Can anyone provide links to primary sources attesting to this?

Thanks.
 
Yeah he didn’t like them, and like the OT books, he considered removing them. There was lots of mentioning of “faith AND works”…but he didn’t go that way.
 
I think he wanted to remove them, but the idea wasn’t popular, so he left them there. I’m not sure about the deutero’s, but they eventually left Lutheran bibles.
 
Swiss_Guy said:
I think he wanted to remove them, but the idea wasn’t popular, so he left them there. I’m not sure about the deutero’s, but they eventually left Lutheran bibles.
Click to expand...
And Protestant Bibles all together. That’s why they have 66 and we have 73.
 
Dogface_Soldier said:
I have frequently heard that in Luther’s first edition of the Bible, in addition to the OT Deutero-Canonicals, he relegated Hebrews, Jude, James, and Revelation to the the status of Aprochypha. If this is true, it would provide a powerful argument for the necessity of authority, since all Trinitarian Christians accept the 27 NT books as canonical.

Can anyone provide links to primary sources attesting to this?

Thanks.
Click to expand...
PBS just rebroadcast its 2002 two-hour mini-series on Martin Luther. As reliable as that information is,

Luther was extoled in this series for all his revolutionary ideas. He was hailed as one of the great emancipators of all time. (right) The documentary also pointed out that people did not follow Luther in everything, and that he was against the German peasant revolt, which eventually ended up with 100,000 people dying. That they call emancipation, with a straight face? But, I digress.

Many years ago when I studied logic in college, one of the straightforward rules was that anything follows from a contradiction. Assert A, Assert not-A, therefore, infinity (anything follow).

So, when Luther contradicted the Church and attacked its power, he thought he was fully justified in “reviewing” the Bible, which had been asserted by the Church.

In the sphere of the OT, he rejected any book which was not found in Hebrew. Well, it took over 400 years and the Dead Sea scrolls to show that some of the the books in the Septuagint WERE in fact penned in Hebrew. so, he was wrong on that point.

Feeling so good about dispatching these books in the OT, it’s no surprise that he revisited the issue of canonicty of the NT books, and had his eye on eliminating some of them, too. Yes, James, in particular, was “too Catholic” for him.

Martin Luther established the idea, right for him, wrong for us, that every man should decide for himself.

Of course, we SHOULD decide, but we should also listen to the Church. I see no reason to disagree with it.

In England and elsewhere, the idea prevailed that you could have any interpretation of the meaning of scripture – ***except ***the Catholic one. (right–?)
 
Dogface_Soldier said:
I have frequently heard that in Luther’s first edition of the Bible, in addition to the OT Deutero-Canonicals, he relegated Hebrews, Jude, James, and Revelation to the the status of Aprochypha. If this is true, it would provide a powerful argument for the necessity of authority, since all Trinitarian Christians accept the 27 NT books as canonical.

Can anyone provide links to primary sources attesting to this?

Thanks.
Click to expand...
He took out/rubbished the books that contradicted his personal doctrines.
 
Zenkai said:
No he didn’t. He just took out the ones that weren’t in the Hebrew Bible.
Click to expand...
So is it just a coincidence that all these specific books are the only ones that contradicted his own doctrines?? I don’t think so!
 
thistle said:
So is it just a coincidence that all these specific books are the only ones that contradicted his own doctrines?? I don’t think so!
Click to expand...
Uh, how exactly did the Deuterocanonical books contradict his “doctrines”? The only thing I could think of is prayers for the dead in 2 Maccabees. What about the other 6?
 
Zenkai said:
Uh, how exactly did the Deuterocanonical books contradict his “doctrines”? The only thing I could think of is prayers for the dead in 2 Maccabees. What about the other 6?
Click to expand...
Read the writings of Luther and you will see.
 
Zenkai said:
Uh, how exactly did the Deuterocanonical books contradict his “doctrines”? The only thing I could think of is prayers for the dead in 2 Maccabees. What about the other 6?
Click to expand...
Just off the top of my head I can see that Revelations showing that the saints and angels in Heaven have the prayers of the saints (notice the lower case S) in bowls of incense. This indicates that the communion of saints is indeed real, and would definitely be a contradiction.

The book of James contains one very pertinent verse that most protestants ignore, it is the only verse in the bible that has ‘faith’, ‘works’, and ‘alone’ in the same sentence. Sola fide would easily be dismissed with this verse, so I can see that being against the theme of things. (cf James 2:24)

I would imagine Hebrews is of the same reasoning.

[bibledrb]hebrews 11:4[/bibledrb]
[bibledrb]hebrews 11:8[/bibledrb]

Both of which show faith AND works. They obeyed. I’d have to look to find out the reasoning behind the other books, but I agree with Thistle that Luther did indeed want to remove these particular books because they interfered with the gospel as he saw it.
 
thistle said:
Read the writings of Luther and you will see.
Click to expand...
It doesn’t matter what his writtings say. The fact of the matter is that he didn’t remove any books from the Bible, even though he didn’t like several of them.
 
Dogface_Soldier said:
I have frequently heard that in Luther’s first edition of the Bible, in addition to the OT Deutero-Canonicals, he relegated Hebrews, Jude, James, and Revelation to the the status of Aprochypha. If this is true, it would provide a powerful argument for the necessity of authority, since all Trinitarian Christians accept the 27 NT books as canonical.

Can anyone provide links to primary sources attesting to this?

Thanks.
Click to expand...
Even though these and similar statements are often asserted here at CAF, it’s a falsehood. Luther didn’t remove any books from any Bible…
 
This may be a little off topic but I thought it pointless to create an entirely new post. But does anybody know if the church fathers/the early church generally accepted all the Apocrypha? and if so was it the first time, in the 16th century, that Christians had relegated them? or had some not used them before hand? :signofcross:
 
Who got rid of the six books that separate the Protastent from the Cannonical scripture, Luther , Zwigli,Calvin, who was it?
 
Zenkai said:
It doesn’t matter what his writtings say. The fact of the matter is that he didn’t remove any books from the Bible, even though he didn’t like several of them.
Click to expand...
Why does the Protestant Bible have less books than the Catholic Bible? We didn’t add books. The Protestants took them out.
 
thistle said:
Why does the Protestant Bible have less books than the Catholic Bible? We didn’t add books. The Protestants took them out.
Click to expand...
Luther used the Hebrew canon, not the Greek canon. However, he kept the additional books that were in the Greek canon and put them in a seperate section called “Apocrypha”. Then, 300+ years after that, the printing press was invented. So the printing companies took that section out to save paper and money because those books were not used very often.
 
Zenkai said:
Luther used the Hebrew canon, not the Greek canon. However, he kept the additional books that were in the Greek canon and put them in a seperate section called “Apocrypha”. Then, 300+ years after that, the printing press was invented. So the printing companies took them out to save paper and money because those books were not used very often.
Click to expand...
Whether he physically took them out or separated them as non-inspired but interesting is not relevant. He did not consider these books as part of the Canon and the reason was they contradicted his own doctrines.
 
thistle said:
Whether he physically took them out or separated them as non-inspired but interesting is not relevant. He did not consider these books as part of the Canon and the reason was they contradicted his own doctrines.
Click to expand...
Once again: there is NOTHING in the Duterocanonicals that contradicted his views, except perhaps prayers for the dead in 2 Maccabees.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top