Old Testament of Catholics and Orthodox Different?

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michaelgazin

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I was told that the Greek Orthodox contain in their OT the books of 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, and Psalm 151. Is this claim true, and if so, on what basis since the Orthodox and Catholics submit to the first 7 councils (if I am not mistaken) including the councils that defined the original canon.
 
The general councils you refer to did not define the canon of the Old Testament. Although there were authoritative papal pronouncements regarding the canon of the Old Testament in the late 4th century (Pope Damasus) and in the early 5th century (Pope Innocent I), it was not until the Council of Trent in 1546 that the canon of the Old Testament was dogmatically defined and the Orthodox Churches do not recognized the Council of Trent as a general council. Info on the “Canon of the Old Testament” in the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia.
 
As a follow-up to what Todd wrote, the local councils of Carthage and Hippo under St. Augustine defined the canon of Sacred Scripture to exclude the books you mentioned. However, those books continued to be included in many versions of the Latin Vulgate, and the original Douay-Rheims bible included 3 and 4 Esdras as supplemental material even though the Council of Trent did not include them in the canon. The King James version also included 3 and 4 Esdras in the “Apocrypha” between the Old and New Testaments when it was first published
 
The Seventh Ecumenical Council gave general approbation to all local councils (and the canons from these local councils) that were doctrinally orthodox. Some of these local councils included canons on the Canon of Scripture. The thing to note is that these canons on the Canon contained different lists of books (though there is a basic common set, and ALL the books that the Catholic Church now holds were held to be standard in ALL these local councils).

There is only one way to interpret this - namely, the Church has never depended on the written word ALONE for its Faith. The Faith is encompassed in ALL of Sacred Tradition which included (but not circumscribed by) the books of the Bible. Whatever books of Scripture were considered consonant with the orthodox Catholic Faith were accepted into the Canon. Different segments of the Church had different criteria. Some segments of the Church depended on the orthodoxy of the material, others depended on traditional use, others depended on apostolic authorship, and others yet a combination of these. This is why there are different Canons of Scripture in different parts of the Church. But the primordial rationale was always the same.

Blessings,
Marduk
 
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