Old Testament - seven extra books in Catholic Bibles

[Pwrlftr]

Is budhism an institution?

Don’t get all technical on me now.

I don’t know if it’s an institution or not. Is it?

Nonetheless it’s bee around for awhile.

 

[joandarc2008]

Yet for hundreds of years many non-Catholic churches insist that only those books, (selected by the Catholic Church) govern the principles of Christianity; the church’s interpretation is to cast out the window because, because, because some 16th Century guys decided they had a better spin. That is harsh, yes but actually, in essence, true.

I think before making such harsh statements we need to look at this in historical context. At the time there were many scandals and issues within the Roman Catholic Church. After the reformation the Church itself in her wisdom went through and did it’s own inventory and housecleaning in order to deal with many of the issues that ML had brought to the table. Granted I am not speaking of the things like changing the books recognized in the Bible - but instead I am looking at the issues such as the amount of wealth and scandal that there was in the hierarchy of the Church back then. This was one of the main objections that caused ML’s thesis. We cannot look at ourselves objectively without seeing our faults as well or we are doomed to repeat them.

God bless,

 

[joandarc2008]

Ginger, are you Catholic?

 

[NotWorthy]

I don’t think either Carthage or Hippo were infallible councils and many Catholic sources say that the canon of the OT wasn’t infallibly settled until Trent. Regardless, I am not sure why the vulgate went out w/ the negative commentary from Jerome.

You can go to newadvent.org and look under the section for the deutero’s for more information.

No, they were not infallible. But they were blessed and approved by the Pope (which did not make it infallible either).

At this point, it was Church Doctrine, but not dogma. This is what allowed people to question the Canon.

Think of the Church’s teaching on Transubstantiation. She taught it prior to the 12th century, even if She didn’t use the word Transubstantiation. It was only after the Dogmatic declaration that it was made infallible, but it was taught for 1100 years prior (albeit with a less full understanding).

 

[Ginger2]

Ginger, are you Catholic?

I was raised Catholic but left the church when I was in my twenties.

 

[AliciaCL]

I think before making such harsh statements we need to look at this in historical context. At the time there were many scandals and issues within the Roman Catholic Church. After the reformation the Church itself in her wisdom went through and did it’s own inventory and housecleaning in order to deal with many of the issues that ML had brought to the table. Granted I am not speaking of the things like changing the books recognized in the Bible - but instead I am looking at the issues such as the amount of wealth and scandal that there was in the hierarchy of the Church back then. This was one of the main objections that caused ML’s thesis. We cannot look at ourselves objectively without seeing our faults as well or we are doomed to repeat them.

Granted. The Church was in a bad way. Misbehaving, etc. We minimize it. However, the Reformers changed doctrine. That didn’t address the bad things that were going on. Hundred of years later, the splits in Christianity has us in a pickle.

 

[Pwrlftr]

No, they were not infallible. But they were blessed and approved by the Pope (which did not make it infallible either).

At this point, it was Church Doctrine, but not dogma. This is what allowed people to question the Canon.

Think of the Church’s teaching on Transubstantiation. She taught it prior to the 12th century, even if She didn’t use the word Transubstantiation. It was only after the Dogmatic declaration that it was made infallible, but it was taught for 1100 years prior (albeit with a less full understanding).

I am with you on this but I still don’t know why the vulgate was promulgated along w/ the disparaging remarks by Jerome concerning the canonocity of the deutero’s.

 

[Pwrlftr]

Budhism isn’t an institution as the church is. It’s a philosophy/religion that has no human corporate organization.

Yeah…I think you are correct.

 

[patrick457]

Ginger, are you Catholic?

No. Ginger2’s profile lists her (?) religion as Protestant.
Just curious though, if you (Ginger2) don’t mind. What denomination are you presently in?

 

[NotWorthy]

I am with you on this but I still don’t know why the vulgate was promulgated along w/ the disparaging remarks by Jerome concerning the canonocity of the deutero’s.

You got me on that one. I’ll see what I can find out. Did Jerome recant these in later editions of the same translation?

 

[Pwrlftr]

No, they were not infallible. But they were blessed and approved by the Pope (which did not make it infallible either)…

NotWorthy,

I am pretty sure we had a discussion about a year ago where you were of the opinion that the pope blessing and approving these two councils made them infallible. Am I right?

If I am, why have you changed your mind on the infallibility of these councils?

 

[joandarc2008]

Granted I also believe the split changed doctrine because it allowed a bunch of maybe more “well-intentioned” people to swayed by people that were less “well-intentioned” who wished to have some of the religious rules changed. Yes, I am referring to the eventuality of what happenned with Henry VIII and the Anglican Church. Not all Anglicans are bad, most are good, but Henry the VIII was horrible. However, I do find an amazing parallel from where we are now to what happenned at the Tower of Babel. (not sure if I spelled correctly.) People started worshipping incorrectly by building a tower of large magnitude. God was not pleased. The Holy Spirit came upon them and made them speak in tongues (different languages) so that they could not communicate and could not finish the abberration. Well, here we are. The Church was in dire straits. Things were going you know where in a handbasket with the Crusades. We were doing things in God’s name that should not have been done. Well, the Holy Spirit shows up again and here we are a few centuries later speaking in tongues (although it does strangely all look like English) and can’t understand a word we are saying to each other. Why? What abberration were we on our way to. Could that have been what the Book of Revelations was really alluding to. I love the words of St. Jude the best (my dh’s patron saint) in versus 18-22.

God bless,

 

[John1]

Let me first preface this post with a greeting of a Happy New Year to you and to everyone else in these forums.

The good thing is, you got your stuff right!
Luther did translate the Deuteros (though technically, the ones who actually did the job were mostly Philipp Melanchthon and Justus Jonas) and moved them to a separate section, so we shouldn’t be too harsh on him.

Initially Luther did have a low view of the books of Esther, Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. He called the Epistle of James “an epistle of straw,” finding little in it that pointed to Christ and His saving work. In his Preface to the New Testament he wrote:

In sum: the gospel and the first epistle of St. John, St. Paul’ s epistles, especially those to the Romans, Galatians and Ephesians; and St. Peter’s first epistle, are the books which show Christ to you. They teach everything you need to know for your salvation, even if you were never to see or hear any other book or hear any other teaching. In comparison with these, the epistle of James is an epistle full of straw, because it contains nothing evangelical. But more about this in other prefaces.

Luther developed this view on the Epistle of James in his Preface to the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude, where he shows his belief that the epistle was not written by an apostle and that the contents are “contrary to Paul and the rest of Scripture” in ascribing justification by works.

He also had harsh words for the book of Revelation, saying that he could “in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it.” Fortunately though his views on some of these books changed as time went on.

Excellent post! For what it’s worth I wanted to add that in " The History of the Church" by Eusebius in Book 3.25 the Epistle of James is listed as one of the disputed books, so Luther wasn’t the first to have a problem with it.

I’m not taking up for Luther, because as Ginger2 said earlier in his writtings he doesn’t come across as the nicest guy to have a conversation/debate with. I read his piece “Bondage of the Will” and came to that conclusion. Of course, he was replying to a piece that Erasmus had wriiten that had some derogatory remarks in it about him.

 

[Pwrlftr]

You got me on that one. I’ll see what I can find out. Did Jerome recant these in later editions of the same translation?

There is some controversy over whether Jerome changed his mind or not. I’ll see if I can dig an article up that I found but awhile back I posted something showing how Jerome never changed his mind and had a link to Mark Shea’s website where he stated that he had made a mistake in an article which claimed that Jerome changed his mind and finally accepted the deutero’s.

 

[Pwrlftr]

I’m not taking up for Luther, because as Ginger2 said earlier in his writtings he doesn’t come across as the nicest guy to have a conversation/debate with. I read his piece “Bondage of the Will” and came to that conclusion. Of course, he was replying to a piece that Erasmus had wriiten that had some derogatory remarks in it about him.

I think this is called an understatement. ML was given to hyperbole and harsh language but as you pointed out, his antagonists were none to nice either.

 

[AliciaCL]

Granted I also believe the split changed doctrine because it allowed a bunch of maybe more “well-intentioned” people to swayed by people that were less “well-intentioned” who wished to have some of the religious rules changed. Yes, I am referring to the eventuality of what happenned with Henry VIII and the Anglican Church. Not all Anglicans are bad, most are good, but Henry the VIII was horrible. However, I do find an amazing parallel from where we are now to what happenned at the Tower of Babel. (not sure if I spelled correctly.) People started worshipping incorrectly by building a tower of large magnitude. God was not pleased. The Holy Spirit came upon them and made them speak in tongues (different languages) so that they could not communicate and could not finish the abberration. Well, here we are. The Church was in dire straits. Things were going you know where in a handbasket with the Crusades. We were doing things in God’s name that should not have been done. Well, the Holy Spirit shows up again and here we are a few centuries later speaking in tongues (although it does strangely all look like English) and can’t understand a word we are saying to each other. Why? What abberration were we on our way to. Could that have been what the Book of Revelations was really alluding to. I love the words of St. Jude the best (my dh’s patron saint) in versus 18-22.
QUOTE]

I guess we’re actually in agreement. Current non-Catholics are generally good and they have definite things to contribute but trying to get them back, well it seems like an (name removed by moderator)enetrable wall, so deep is their refusal to actually listen to what we are saying without feeling insulted. You may be onto something with the Tower of Babel similarity but don’t know what it means for our future. We can only try to be better Catholics and try to explain when and where an opportunity may arise. P.S. Joan of Arc is my patron said. Great minds think alike? Ha-ha.

 

[NotWorthy]

NotWorthy,

I am pretty sure we had a discussion about a year ago where you were of the opinion that the pope blessing and approving these two councils made them infallible. Am I right?

I hope I didn’t present it that way. The Pope blessed them and made them the official Canon accepted by the Church. I’ll go with that. Since these weren’t Ecumenical Councils, but local councils, then that doesn’t make it DeFide.

But until the Pope makes a Dogmatic Statement making it binding on the Church Faithful, the Church faithful can question it all the want. I’m sorry if I led you to believe it was “Case Closed - no further discussions allowed”. It wasn’t until Trent that all wiggle room was removed, but Trent certainly didn’t add these books as our good sister Ginger claims.

 

[twb1621]

I can’t find the post now, but someone suggested I read about why Luther excluded the seven books in question. So I did…

I presented you this post of thats what you are referring to…?
Regarding the history and removal of the deuterocanonicals;

The deuterocanonicals teach Catholic doctrine, and for this reason they were taken out of the Old Testament by Martin Luther and placed in an appendix without page numbers. Luther also took out four New Testament books – Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation – and put them in an appendix without page numbers as well. These were later put back into the New Testament by other Protestants, but the seven books of the Old Testament were left out. Following Luther they had been left in an appendix to the Old Testament, and eventually the appendix itself was dropped (in 1827 by the British and Foreign Bible Society), which is why these books are not found at all in most contemporary Protestant Bibles, though they were appendicized in classic Protestant translations such as the King James Version.

The reason they were dropped is that they teach Catholic doctrines that the Protestant Reformers chose to reject. Earlier we cited an example where the book of Hebrews holds up to us an Old Testament example from 2 Maccabees 7, an incident not to be found anywhere in the Protestant Bible, but easily discoverable in the Catholic Bible. Why would Martin Luther cut out this book when it is so clearly held up as an example to us by the New Testament? Simple: A few chapters later it endorses the practice of praying for the dead so that they may be freed from the consequences of their sins (2 Macc. 12:41-45); in other words, the Catholic doctrine of purgatory. Since Luther chose to reject the historic Christian teaching of purgatory (which dates from before the time of Christ, as 2 Maccabees shows), he had to remove that book from the Bible and appendicize it. (Notice that he also removed Hebrews, the book which cites 2 Maccabees, to an appendix as well.)

To justify this rejection of books that had been in the Bible since before the days of the apostles (for the Septuagint was written before the apostles), the early Protestants cited as their chief reason the fact that the Jews of their day did not honor these books, going back to the council of Javneh in A.D. 90. But the Reformers were aware of only European Jews; they were unaware of African Jews, such as the Ethiopian Jews who accept the deuterocanonicals as part of their Bible. They glossed over the references to the deuterocanonicals in the New Testament, as well as its use of the Septuagint. They ignored the fact that there were multiple canons of the Jewish Scriptures circulating in first century, appealing to a post-Christian Jewish council which has no authority over Christians as evidence that “The Jews don’t except these books.” In short, they went to enormous lengths to rationalize their rejection of these books of the Bible.

Rewriting Church History

In later years they even began to propagate the myth that the Catholic Church “added” these seven books to the Bible at the Council of Trent!

Protestants also try to distort the patristic evidence in favor of the deuterocanonicals. Some flatly state that the early Church Fathers did not accept them, while others make the more moderate claim that certain important Fathers, such as Jerome, did not accept them.

It is true that Jerome, and a few other isolated writers, did not accept most of the deuterocanonicals as Scripture. However, Jerome was persuaded, against his original inclination, to include the deuterocanonicals in his Vulgate edition of the Scriptures-testimony to the fact that the books were commonly accepted and were expected to be included in any edition of the Scriptures.

cin.org/users/james/files/deuteros.htm

 

[joandarc2008]

Sorry correction it is 18-23 Jude.

1:17. But you, my dearly beloved, be mindful of the words which have been spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ:

But you, my dearly beloved, be mindful, etc… He now exhorts the faithful to remain steadfast in the belief and practice of what they had heard from the apostles, who had also foretold that in aftertimes (lit. in the last time) there should be false teachers, scoffing and ridiculing all revealed truths, abandoning themselves to their passions and lusts; who separate themselves from the Catholic communion by heresies and schisms. Sensual men… carried away and enslaved by the pleasures of the senses.

1:18. Who told you that in the last time there should come mockers, walking according to their own desires in ungodlinesses.

1:19. These are they who separate themselves, sensual men, having not the Spirit.

1:20. But you, my beloved, building yourselves upon your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,

1:21. Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, unto life everlasting.

Building yourselves upon your most holy faith… Raising by your actions, a spiritual building, founded, 1st, upon faith; 2d, on the love of God; 3d, upon hope, whilst you are waiting for the mercies of God, and the reward of eternal life; 4th, joined with the great duty of prayer.

1:22. And some indeed reprove, being judged:

1:23. But others save, pulling them out of the fire. And on others have mercy, in fear, hating also the spotted garment which is carnal.

And some indeed repove being judged… He gives them another instruction to practice charity in endeavouring to convert their neighbour, where they will meet with three sorts of persons: 1st, With persons obstinate in their errors and sins; these may be said to be already judged and condemned; they are to be sharply reprehended, reproved, and if possible convinced of their error. 2d, As to others you must endeavour to save them, by pulling them, as it were, out of the fire, from the ruin they stand in great danger of. 3d, You must have mercy on others in fear, when you see them through ignorance of frailty, in danger of being drawn into the snares of these heretics; with these you must deal more gently and mildly, with a charitable compassion, hating always, and teaching others to hate the carnal garment which is spotted, their sensual and corrupt manners, that defile both the soul and body.

I think this was a warning of the coming schisms and reformations of the Church. And the most amazing part of it is that one of the main things that the Catholic Church seems to disagree so much on with the Protestant churches has to do with sexual morality. How could any “reformer” not question the validity of such scriptual warnings and yet carry any validity himself?

God bless,

 

[joandarc2008]

I am sorry that last post did not print what it was supposed to - let me see if I can find it while I am here at work. Sorry.