Old Testament - seven extra books in Catholic Bibles

[guanophore]

The truth can stand on its own. We do not need to lie to prove our point. If we stick to the truth, people will either come around to acceptance or let their pride get in the way and hang on to their errors.

Of course their are those who are spiritually blind and really see something that isn’t there.

It is quite ironic to read this post, after having come to this point in the thread.

 

[littleone]

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

So are you saying that Jesus TOLD you to leave the church?
Did you ever do works in the church such as working with the poor, like feeding them, gardening, picking them up of the side of the road to give them a ride home, working with youth, etc…
Or were you just a bye stander, one who in those days said you were a catholic and now are furious about the church and only argue futile points, points that you might have to search your heart to find out why you are in the state you are, (if you are).

I have met others who have left the church and done many good works in the churches they are now in and they still have JOY and POSITIVE points about the catholic church. They left only because Jesus had other works for them.

Think about your state.

Godbless and happy new year.

 

[guanophore]

Just curious Ginger2,Which one of the hundreds of protestant churches do you belong to?I am not trying to offend,just wondering.

Ginger2 has shared with us that she is her own church unto herself. She is her own Bishop and Magesterium, and final authority on the nature of Christainity an meaning of scripture.

 

[guanophore]

I don't understand what you are talking about.

You have demonstrated this quite well.

But I am not equip to discuss ML and the New Testament. How am I supposed to know if you are portraying his thoughts accurately?

This much is clear.

What you don’t seem to realize is that, though you don’t know much about Luther, what he believed and taught, you unknowingly accept much of what he instituted.

ML believed the RC was grossly misleading and taking advantage of people.  He no longer trusted the church.  It seems logical he would question everything he was taught in search of truth.

Sounds just like the OP!

If he really removed some books from the OT because they “countered his will” then why did he keep James when you claim it countered his will.

His cronies convinced him to put it back.

To say that others wouldn’t allow him is a weak argument as I would ask why did these others then allow ML to remove the Apocrypha.

I think the fact that he wanted to remove the books was weak too. It was also the publisher, who wanted to save money.

I just don’t think you can have it both ways.

No need! Catholics know that the Septuagint was the version that was approved by the Church, along with the 27 books of the NT. That is the only way we need to have it.

I think I'll let you have the last word.

Happy New Year

I would be happy to let you have the last word, especially if it was “I stand corrected…the books were not added at Trent”.

 

[guanophore]

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

Glad you are actually studying these things about which you have made such uninformed assertions. That is a step in the right direction.

So, to a certain extent I was mistaken. The Catholic Church did not add the books as a counter to the Reformation. But they proclaimed them inspired for the first time.

So, what was the Church proclaiming in all the previous councils? That they were beneficial to read?

 

[Ginger2]

…So how can I trust these bogus rationalizations given by Protestant scholars …

I wouldn’t ask you to trust. I don’t turn to them. Why would I expect you to?

But it is obvious that the same person who wrote the rest of Daniel did not write Bel and the Dragon the styles are completely different.

 

[Ginger2]

My questions regarding Protestants truncating the Book of Daniel (and Esther) always seem to be a discussion ender for some reason.

I do go to sleep every night. I don’t recall ever writing on my PC while I have been asleep, but since I would have been asleep, I probably wouldn’t remember doing so.

 

[Ginger2]

Indeed. Of all the stock Protestant protests against the deuterocanonical writings, the view that their tone, theme, subjective relevancy, etc. should exclude them is the most preposterous. As if any man’s personal opinion has ANY bearing on the truth of Sacred Scripture. Truth just is, regardless of how anyone feels about it or protests against it. We can accept it or reject it, but we can’t change what it is.

It’s not a matter of excluding them About two years ago I had a similar dialog on this forum and expressed that I have no problem with Christians reading these books. The problem is with holding them out as equal authority to God’s Holy Word.

Perhaps the story of Bel it true. Many people write true stories, it does not make them the Word of God. We can write true stories about our personal experiences with God working in our lives - that doesn’t mean they are inspired of God and belong in the Bible.

The story has a good Christian message, but that does not qualify it as Holy Scripture.

My claim about Bel and the Dragon is simply that it is not part of Daniel as it was obviously not written by the same person.

 

[Ginger2]

You’re welcome.

Of course, this section may have been another, independent tale about Daniel that was only appended to the whole work later, but nevertheless it is a good example of Jewish satire on the foolishness of idolatry (as shown by Daniel exposing the fraudulent priests of Bel and managing to destroy the living ‘dragon’ that the Babylonians worshipped).

I agree.

I looked up some info this morning and read that the title to the Septuagint text reads: “From the prophecy of Habakkuk, the son of Jesus [Joshua], of the tribe of Levi.”

I think that settles it, as the Book of Daniel claims to have been written by Daniel in many places.

Bel and the Dragon is written in 3rd person. I overlooked that point last night.

Still a very useful story with a sound Christian message!

 

[Ginger2]

The Palestinian Jews that rejected Christ rejected the Deuterocanonicals in part because they were used by Jesus and the Apostles, and in part because there were references to Him they did not wish to include.

This is such an empty defence.

Why did they keep other books Jesus referenced? Jesus frequently referenced the Hebrew Scriptures, yet all those books were kept. But never quoted Bel.

Bel and the Dragon does not mention Jesus or even any prophecy that could be linked to Jesus. If the Jews were doing away with Scriptures that pointed to Jesus, Why toss out Bel?

 

[Ginger2]

I would be happy to let you have the last word, especially if it was “I stand corrected…the books were not added at Trent”.

lol

 

[Pwrlftr]

The Church accepted the collection of books used by Jesus and the Apostles, the Alexandrian Septuagint.

Earlier in this thread it was pointed out that the manuscripts of the septuagint we have are all Christian copies and only date to around the 4th century AD. Additionally, I don’t think a single manuscript contains exactly and only the OT books that the Catholic Church accepts as canonical. There are omissions and additions but if I remember corrrectly, not a single manuscript matches the OT canon used by the Church. Essentially if one is to argue that inclusion in the septuagint established canonocity than we should all accept 3 and 4 Maccabees. Also based on what we information we have, one can not say for sure what books Jesus and the apostles used as canonical scriptures.

Josephus used the LXX in his citation of the Hebrew canon and as we know, Josephus did not list the deutero’s as part of the canon.

Josephus:

For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, [as the Greeks have,] but only twenty-two books.
Against Apion 1:8

Philo who some scholars claim to have only known the Greek scriptures apparently didn’t recognize the deutero’s as canonical.
F.F. Bruce:

Philo of Alexandria (c 20 BC-AD 50) evidently knew the scriptures in the Greek version only. He was an illustrious representative of Alexandrian Judaism, and if Alexandrian Judaism did indeed recognize a more comprehensive canon than Palestinian Judaism, one might have expected to find some trace of this in Philo’s voluminous writings. But, in fact, while Philo has not given us a formal statement on the limits of the canon such as we have in Josephus, the books which he acknowledged as holy scripture were quite certainly books included in the traditional Hebrew Bible…he shows no sign of accepting the authority of any of the books which we know as the Apocrypha.
9F.F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1988), pp. 29-30

As Lee McDonald writes, there is no evidence that the Jews of Alexandria held to a broader canon than those in Palestine:
Lee McDonald:

The biggest problem with the theory of the Alexandrian canon is that there are no lists or collections one can look to in order to see what books comprised it. Pfeiffer himself acknowledged that no one knows what the canon of the Alexandrian and other Diaspora Jews was before the LXX was condemned in Palestine, ca. 130 CE. Long ago E. Reuss concluded that we know nothing about the LXX before the time when the church made extensive use of it. That includes the condition of the text and its form as well as its extent. Another problem with the Alexandrian canon theory is that it has not been shown conclusively that the Alexandrian Jews or the other Jews of the Dispersion were any more likely to adopt other writings as sacred scriptures than were the Jews Palestine in the two centuries BCE and the first century CE. Further, there is no evidence as yet that shows the existence of a different canon of scriptures in Alexandria than in Palestine from the second century BCE to the second century CE….Since the communications between Jerusalem and Alexandria were considered quite good during the first century BCE and CE, it is not certain that either the notion or extent of divine scripture would be strikingly different between the two locations during the period before 70 CE…Although the Jews of the Dispersion were more affected by Hellenism than were the Jews of Palestine, there is little evidence to show that this influence also affected their notion of scripture or the boundaries of their scriptures.
Lee M. McDonald, The Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1995), p. 91.

F.F. Bruce confirms these conclusions when he says:
FF Bruce:

It has frequently been suggested that, while the canon of the Palestinian Jews was limited to the twenty-four books of the Law, Prophets and Writings, the canon of the Alexandrian Jews was more comprehensive. There is no evidence that this was so: indeed, there is no evidence that the Alexandrian Jews ever promulgated a canon of scripture.
F.F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1988), pp. 44-45. See also Roger Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), pp. 382–386.

If you can lay out how you know what books Jesus and the apostles considered canonical or how you know what the contents of the so called Alexandrian canon are I would like to see it.

None of the disproves what the Church infallibly accepted at Trent but I think your statement is way over reaching.

 

[ac_claire]

This is such an empty defence.

Why did they keep other books Jesus referenced? Jesus frequently referenced the Hebrew Scriptures, yet all those books were kept. But never quoted Bel.

Bel and the Dragon does not mention Jesus or even any prophecy that could be linked to Jesus. If the Jews were doing away with Scriptures that pointed to Jesus, Why toss out Bel?

About Bel and the Dragon, I can’t say. But to the broader question of why the Jews removed the deuteros…I think that’s probably been answered already in this thread, but just in case anyone’s interested I’ll quote Mark Shea’s research on this:
Mark Shea:

It wasn’t until the very end of the apostolic age that the Jews, seeking a new focal point for their religious practice in the wake of the destruction of the Temple, zeroed in with white hot intensity on Scripture and fixed their canon at the rabbinical gathering, known as the “Council of Javneh” (sometimes called “Jamnia”), about A.D. 90. Prior to this point in time there had never been any formal effort among the Jews to “define the canon” of Scripture. In fact, Scripture nowhere indicates that the Jews even had a conscious idea that the canon should be closed at some point.

The canon arrived at by the rabbis at Javneh was essentially the mid-sized canon of the Palestinian Pharisees, not the shorter one used by the Sadducees, who had been practically annihilated during the Jewish war with Rome. Nor was this new canon consistent with the Greek Septuagint version, which the rabbis regarded rather xenophobically as “too Gentile-tainted.” Remember, these Palestinian rabbis were not in much of a mood for multiculturalism after the catastrophe they had suffered at the hands of Rome. Their people had been slaughtered by foreign invaders, the Temple defiled and destroyed, and the Jewish religion in Palestine was in shambles. So for these rabbis, the Greek Septuagint went by the board and the mid-sized Pharisaic canon was adopted. Eventually this version was adopted by the vast majority of Jews - though not all. Even today Ethiopian Jews still use the Septuagint version, not the shorter Palestinian canon settled upon by the rabbis at Javneh. In other words, the Old Testament canon recognized by Ethiopian Jews is identical to the Catholic Old Testament, including the seven deuterocanonical books (cf. Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 6, p. 1147).

 

[Pwrlftr]

It has been said that the Jews threw out the deutero-canonical books. Apparently this means that at one point the Jews accepted the deutero-canonical books as scripture.

As shown earlier in this thread, it is doubtful that the council of Jamnia even discussed the deutero’s much less made a ruling on them. I even provide a quote from Steve Ray and if memory serves me, Gary Michuta does not believe the council of Jamnia had anything to do w/ throwing out books (I could be wrong, it’s been awhile since I read his book).

Can anyone provide a list of the books the Jews believed to be canonical during the time of Jesus and the apostles? Something from a person of that time period?

 

[Pwrlftr]

About Bel and the Dragon, I can’t say. But to the broader question of why the Jews removed the deuteros…I think that’s probably been answered already in this thread, but just in case anyone’s interested I’ll quote Mark Shea’s research on this:

AC Claire,

I think Shea is behind the times on Jamnia. If you search on this thread for Jamnia you will find that there is no evidence that Jamnia even discussed the deutero’s much less threw them out.

 

[Pwrlftr]

See the following link for what Gary Michuta has to say about Jamnia:
74.125.45.132/search?q=cache:wLPr8LnMw3cJ:handsonapologetics.com/DeuteroQuestions/Was%2520There%2520A%2520Council%2520At%2520Jamnia.doc+%2Bmichuta+%2Bjamnia&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

if it doesn’t work, google: +michuta +jamnia

 

[patrick457]

Can anyone provide a list of the books the Jews believed to be canonical during the time of Jesus and the apostles? Something from a person of that time period?

Aside from Josephus, as I’ve oft said, at the time of Jesus Judaism was characterized by diversity, so providing books that were believed to be canonical would be a bit tricky since what is true for one group would most likely not hold true for the other.

However, all of the various groups of Judaism did believe that the five books of the Torah as sacred and mostly (except for a few exceptions) considered them to be ‘closed’, so I guess that’s one we can be sure of.

 

[Pwrlftr]

Aside from Josephus, as I’ve oft said, at the time of Jesus Judaism was characterized by diversity, so providing books that were believed to be canonical would be a bit tricky since what is true for one group would most likely not hold true for the other.

However, all of the various groups of Judaism did believe that the five books of the Torah as sacred and mostly (except for a few exceptions) considered them to be ‘closed’, so I guess that’s one we can be sure of.

I pretty much agree. It’s just that several posters, IMHO, make far over reaching statemets without anyway of substantiating their claims.

But we do have Josephus and Philo for example that give some clue into this world, and they dont list the dueteros in their works as being included in the Hebrew bible.

Even if there was diversity it wouldn’t necessarily be unreasonable to have someone list the books of the supposed Alexandrian canon.

I guess we will see where this goes.

 

[ac_claire]

AC Claire,

I think Shea is behind the times on Jamnia. If you search on this thread for Jamnia you will find that there is no evidence that Jamnia even discussed the deutero’s much less threw them out.

Ah, ok. Sorry then, my bad. I thought Mark Shea was a reliable source.

 

[NotWorthy]

I wouldn’t ask you to trust. I don’t turn to them. Why would I expect you to?

But it is obvious that the same person who wrote the rest of Daniel did not write Bel and the Dragon the styles are completely different.

Interesting. Does this mean you reject most of Isaiah? How about John, chapter 21?