Old Testament - seven extra books in Catholic Bibles

[guanophore]

The point is the split between the Orthodox and Rome came long after Hippo and Carthage and relatively shortly before Trent. If the canon was already known and accepted by the entire church bythe forth century, and only officially confirmed at Trent, Why are the bibles different?

Did the RC suddenly decide to remove four books. If so then the RC did not know at Hippo or Carthage what was inspired Scripture as has been repeatedly claim here.

No, Ginger2, you are trying to derail the discussion by taking the focus off your OP. The point of the discussion is your assertion that the RCC “added” books to the Holy Scriptures as a response to Luther. I think you are grasping at straws now, because it has been clearly demonstrated to you that you posted a false accusation that has no historical merit.

What if you were to be intellectually honest, admit that you were wrong, then we can move on to the differences between the Latin and Orthodox Canon? It is an excellent topic, but is not appropriate to use as a smokescreen to cover your error.

 

[Ginger2]

As Patrick457 points out, until a matter becomes controversial, the Church does not usually make definitive statements on a subject.

Excellent point!!! The earliest canons match today’s Protestant Bibles! They were not contested by anyone for over 100 years!!!

Can you tell me when the first canon or suggestion of including the deuteros was? Then we can see if anyone during that time period disagreed. We can determine when dispute began.

 

[Ginger2]

No, Ginger2, you are trying to derail the discussion by taking the focus off your OP.

So I’m not allowed to respond to accusations the deuteros were affirmed in the 4th century when 1100 years before ML was even born.

Catholics can bring up all any any “evidence” they can muster? But am I to limit my responses to ML?

Let’s see how that works…

Can you show me the outcome of the Councils of Hippo and Carthage? /QUOTE]

Me: Martin Luther… uh…according to ML…um … Martin Luther wasn’t born, yet.

(Pardon me for using you as an example, Notworthy. I think you have done a wonderful job making your points and our dialog has been very interesting. I just had to point out this thread is not about ML, it’s about whether the deutoros were always accepted or added at Trent.)

 

[joandarc2008]

OK, Ginger and Company, nobody added or removed anything from the Old Testament as far as the extra seven books go. Here is what happenned.

The Jewish Faith had their religious books and teaching which would later become the Old Testament. (To ignore this is to not do anybody any good.) Their original writings were in Hebrew. As Judaism spread throughout the land and Greek was spoken by most and Hebrew was more of a scholar and religious language stories were told and added in Greek. However, these extra seven books (which is where the Jewish Faith gets Hannukah and other such celebrations) were not brought into the complete fold at the time. Therefore you had two versions the one with the extra books for the “common folk” in Greek with the extra stories that had been passed on by oral tradition and final written down but not accepted. You then had the one for the religious scholars in Hebrew.

When the Christian Church which later became known as the Catholic Church translated the Old Testament it translated the version for the “Common Folk” which was in Greek and contained the extra books. When Martin Luther posted his thesis as another sign of protest he went back and retranslated the other “Old Testament” for the scholars which did not have the extra seven books into (and I can’t remember here if it was Latin or German but I want to say German.). That is how that split occurred. I hope that helps.

God bless

 

[guanophore]

I have no need to reconcile anything to Jerome. He is not my authority. He is merely a respected church father, **one of many** who felt the deuteros were not inspired. He is mentioned only to support the fact that the deuteros were not always accepted by the church, but later added.

This is a strawman, Ginger2. The Church’s teachings and doctrines have never been determined by one man, whether in agreement of dissent. One can find some writings everywhere that will dissent. Clearly the Judiazers were dissenting against the Gospel of Grace in the book of Acts. However, dissenters do not determine doctrine. On the contrary, it is dissent that sharpens doctrine. The Church functions just like the council in acts, the Teaching Authority appointed by Christ together with the HS discern and proclaim God’s will. Using Jerome, or any other dissenter as an excuse that this is not what happens is making up something that does not exist. Church Doctrine is determined by the infallible council. The council determined that the Alexandrian Septuagint would be placed with the 27 books of the NT to form what we have today as the Bible. The reformers went back, dug out some dissention, and departed from the Teaching of the Church, based upon the testimony of those who rejected Christ.

Why keep asking me to defend something I do not support.

You are using Jerome to support rebellion against the authorities appointed by Christ. Even Jerome, despite his misgivings, submitted.

The claim is the deuteros were always accepted at least from the 4th century after Hippo and Carthage - but **Jerome didn't accept them!. **

The claim is that they were proclaimed by the Church, the teaching authority appointed by Christ.

I just read your vegetarian example. Well, try applying it here. Individuals do not, by what they claim, or fail to claim, do not change the infallible teaching of the Church.

Anyway, you are wrong, Jerome did obey the Church, and included the deuteros, because He was a good Catholic, and knew that, even if his personal opinon was otherwise, He should obey the authorities appointed by Christ. Luther was not so.

 

[Alindawyl]

Either you accept the authority of the Church to set the canon or you don’t. Jerome and any others who disagreed at the time still submitted to the authority of the Church, regardless of their personal disagreement.

No such submission from Protestants, for they reject the authority of the Church.

But if you don’t accept the authority of the Church to set the canon of the Bible, then what authority DO you rely upon? The Bible used in the Latin Rite contained 73 books for a thousand years, before Luther decided to excise some of them for being “inconvenient”. On what basis did he reject not only the authority of the Church but a thousand years of tradition in deciding what was the proper canon, the decision of those Jews in the years after the destruction of the Second Temple who did not convert to Christianity and who refused to consider as their canon any book they didn’t have a copy of in Hebrew, as joandarc2008 has alluded to?

Sounds pretty flimsy to me, relying on the decision of a group of people who rejected Christ rather than those who accepted and followed him. But that’s already been said more than once in this thread, to no avail…

 

[irishpatrick]

Ginger2,

May I respectfully ask, why are you still posting on this thread?

In your original post you posed a challenge. Your challenge (reduced to its simplicity) was that Catholics added seven books to the NT.

Your challenge has been fully vetted and debunked. No matter the side arguments over various versions, etc., it has been proved beyond any doubt that the Catholic Church has held those seven books as part of the formal Canon of Scripture since the close of the fourth century. Therefore, beyond any question at all, it was clearly the reformers who removed the seven books, for it has been proved (over and over) that the full Canon held all 73 books until the reformers yanked seven of the books out of their personally chosen canon. This is not arguable once you read the early councils.

The debate over whether or not the seven books should have been included in the Canon at the close of the fourth century is subject for another thread.

So, why does this thread continue?

 

[Ginger2]

Ginger2,
… it has been proved beyond any doubt that the Catholic Church has held those seven books as part of the formal Canon of Scripture since the close of the fourth century…

The oldest OT canons agree with the Protestant Bibles - dating back to the 1st century.

Why was there no one to disputing these canons if they were false?

Why leave them go unchallenged for hundreds of years.

Why did it take over 300 years for anyone to suggest the deutoros might be part of the inspired Scriptures?

Why were other canons suggested after Hippo and Carthage?

While the RC can continue to claim it has held Apocrypha as sacred since the 4th century, the Protestants can claim to have an almost if not identical canon since the 1st century.

 

[irishpatrick]

The oldest OT canons agree with the Protestant Bibles - dating back to the 1st century.

Why was there no one to disputing these canons if they were false?

Why leave them go unchallenged for hundreds of years.

Why did it take over 300 years for anyone to suggest the deutoros might be part of the inspired Scriptures?

Why were other canons suggested after Hippo and Carthage?

None of that matters…your challenge has be debunked.

 

[Mad_Amos]

A question, slightly digressional but apropos nonetheless:

If we are to devalue the Septuagint and its subsequent validation by the texts of Qumran, how are we then to assuage the controversy that exists concerning the Masoretic translation of Psalm 22?

 

[Ginger2]

None of that matters…your challenge has be debunked.

Then I guess you are finished here! Have a Happy New Year.

 

[Chris_LaRock]

What I would like to know is why the Jews reject these books, and how they were determined to be scripture later on?

 

[irishpatrick]

Then I guess you are finished here! Have a Happy New Year.

Why are you here? Your topic is closed to further debate in any real way.

 

[JRKH]

Originally Posted by JRKH
A thought this morning:

Actually what all of this arguing back and forth proves is the need for a clear authority to tell us which books are to be considered inspired and which are not. I am not, by any stretch, a biblical scholar - or scholar of any kind for that matter. However I do recognize a certain amount of common sense when I see it.

Let me try to explain a bit.

Whithout doing any kind of real research, a Christian in America today will find two different canons of the Bible in wide circulation - The Protestant and the Catholic. Now we are told, especially by Protestants, that the Bible is the True, Holy, Inspired Word of God. Yet if this is true, then why does one Holy Bible have 66 books while another Holy Bible contains 73 books. Obviously there is a problem here for a person trying to learn about Christianity.
So the natural qestion becomes, why the difference and which is correct. How can I accept “The Bible” as “God’s Holy Word” until I resolve this issue? Surely you do not wish to tell me that there can be two versions of “God’s Holy Word” with one containing 7 plus more books than the other. That certainly cannot make sense. So I must look for the authority of the Bible canon. Who put it together and how. Since the two most common Bibles in my country are the Protestant and Catholic versions at the very least I should look at why the difference between these two. (Besides that is the crux of your original question.)

An examination of the historical development of the Christian Church Bible Canon in the west (which is of particular interest to us) reveals that, until the Protestant Reformation, the deutero’s were included in Canon as used by the Western Church from the 4th century on. This was the Bible which Martin Luther, as well as other “Reformers” would have known. So this is the basis for our “western” understanding of the canon.
Now it can also be shown that there were a number of Church Councils who either defined or confirmed the Books at 73 prior to the Reformation. So far as I am aware none of the Councils in the West after Hippo promulgated a canon other than the 73 book canon. This clearly establishes that the officially accepted Catholic canon included the deutero’s. It is important to note that these were accepted and confirmed by COUNCILS of BISHOPS after prayerful deliberation for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Also that these councils were those of the ONE Christian Church in Western Europe.

Now we come to the Reformation. Was it a council of reformers that changed the long accepted canon? The answer is no. It was one man, Luther, who called into question this canon and caused it to be changed. In addition, Luther sought to remove several books from the NT. James and Revelation among them. The point of this is simple. The Catholic Canon was formed and maintained repeatedly by official Church council. The Protestant canon was formed by a single rebellious priest.

So which should I, as a person wishing to Know God’s Word, put my trust in. The Bible held as sacred by the Chuch since 400 AD? Or the one that was truncated 500 years ago.

I will grant you that there are other variations in history. It is very difficult to maintain a clear line over 2000 years from the time of Christ until today. However, the Catholic Church does have that line. Thus, when looking for the valid authority by which to determine the correct canon, The Church wins hands down.

As to the rest, I will leave that to the proper Scholars.
The Bottom line, for my posting Paul’s Quote, is that He obviously looked to a wider canon than the Protestants allow.

Peace
James

 

[irishpatrick]

Ginger2

Do you have the humility to admit that you were wrong about the canon?

 

[Mad_Amos]

Luther sought to remove several books from the NT. James and Revelation among them.

Interesting. Jerome’s questioning of the deuterocanonical books renders them ‘suspect’ in the mind of the original poster, and yet Luther’s doubts concerning James and Revelation fail to produce a similar effect. By such logic must we now remove these works from the list of protocanonical writings, since they have not 'been always received by Christendom without dispute’?

This is doubly curious when you consider the fact that Jerome did not adjudicate the Catholic canon, whereas the Protestant Bible is borne solely of Luther’s personal opinion.

 

[Alindawyl]

Interesting. Jerome’s questioning of the deuterocanonical books renders them ‘suspect’ in the mind of the original poster, and yet Luther’s doubts concerning James and Revelation fail to produce a similar effect. By such logic must we now remove these works from the list of protocanonical writings, since they have not 'been always received by Christendom without dispute’?

This is doubly curious when you consider the fact that Jerome did not adjudicate the Catholic canon, whereas the Protestant Bible is borne solely of Luther’s personal opinion.

Because Luther was quite outspoken at one time about his dislike of Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation, should we change the title of this topic to “New Testament - why aren’t there four fewer books in Protestant Bibles?”

An excellent point. If Jerome’s personal opinion on the deuterocanonical books is to be used as an argument in favor of excising them from the Bible, why shouldn’t Luther’s personal opinion on those four NT books likewise be used to excise them from the Bible? The vast majority of the reformers disagreed with Luther, but then again the vast majority of the Church disagreed with Jerome as well. Definitely curious why one disagreement is not only ok but a point of argument, while the other isn’t.

 

[Ginger2]

Interesting. Jerome’s questioning of the deuterocanonical books renders them ‘suspect’ …

That is merely one piece of information amidst volumes.

…the Protestant Bible is borne solely of Luther’s personal opinion.

Not so, the Old Testament was preserved by the Jews. The Jews did not consider the Apocrypha inspired.

The earliest canons did not include the Apocrypha.
The earliest canons were not disputed.

The Catholic Encyclopedia admits the Deuteros were contested at first.

The Catholic Church acknowledges it did not determine a canon until Trent - after the Reformation.

etc., etc., etc.,…

I think I have shown plenty of evidence to place into question the seven books added to the Catholic Bible.

 

[irishpatrick]

Ginger

It is not debatable that the early councils approved the canon as Catholics hold. Do you admit that fact?

 

[CWBetts]

You have placced all your faith in an excommunicated monk.