Protestant 66 books of old testament question?

[JonNC]

JonNC:

Occasionally one sees threads pop up here asking things like, “how can a Protestant observe Lent when it’s not in the Bible?” Well, for someone raised Lutheran that’s frankly a silly question.

I was the one who asked that question at the beginning of Lent this year. Silly or not, it resulted in a gratifyingly lively and informative thread.

I hope you don’t misunderstand. I wasn’t trying to insult. Note, please, that I meant from my Lutheran perspective.
Apology if I offended.

Jon

 

[BartholomewB]

You certainly didn’t offend, Jon. On the contrary, on looking back through that old thread I notice that you contributed many useful and entertaining comments.

 

[JonNC]

The Prayer of Manessah and 1 and 2 Esdras are in the 1611 KJV. They also are in an appendix to the Clementine Vulgate. They are all used in liturgy too. However in traditional Catholicism 1 and 2 Esdras are called 3 and 4 Esdras as Ezra and Nehemiah are 1 and 2 Esdras in the Vulgate.
They were in the Vulgate but when it came to the Council of Trent reaffirming books considered scripture since the earliest Councils and Florence, these three were not part of it, but because of their history in the Church Pope Clement Vlll put them in an appendix to the Vulgate in 1592 ; also they were in Douay Rheims Bibles appendix until 1752. Personally I think they should still be appended to Catholic Bibles. Only one i know of published today is the side by side Douay Rheims and Clementine Vulgate English and Latin published by Baronius Press.

I was aware of the information in your first paragraph, but the rest is very interesting.
Thanks for the informative post.

 

[JonNC]

Some scholars actually believe all three were considered scripture during the middle ages; St Ambrose cited 4 Esdras and Thomas Aquinas cited the Prayer of Manessah in Summa Theologica.

Great posts.
One of the things your posts point out is that the Church has never really had a consensus on the canon, and I always feel like we are throwing Church Fathers and the like under the bus when we insist on a canon without regard to their views, for or against.

 

[CzechMan]

Yes, the church never really had a consensus on the canon. Well, then the delegates to the council of Trent felt it is better to have a doctrine on what the canon is than just to continue as it was, with different opinions and no doctrine on what is the canon. After all, some Protestants already started having a doctrine that the canon has 66 books. So the council of Trent must have felt it is advantageous for the Catholic church to have a doctrine on the canon too. Whatever doctrine they chose, whichever books they chose, for some of the books they would be in disagreement with some Church Fathers and agreement with other Church Fathers. Well, that is inevitable when you come up with a doctrine on which there had been no consensus. The Protestants who came up with the canon of 66 books of course also disagreed with many Church Fathers. But they too felt it is better to have a doctrine about it than not to have any. And with their doctrine of sola scriptura they certainly felt that it is important to have a doctrine about the extent of the canon, so people could know what books they should rely on. The Catholic church for many centuries did not feel the need for a canon doctrine, because when in doubt about some doctrine, they could rely on their holy tradition for some explanation, so they were not reliant on scripture alone. So they did not feel such a need to know whether for example 4 Esdras is inspired or not.

 

[JonNC]

I don’t disagree with any of this. As I said in my post, it seems to me that a 66 book canon disregards the Fathers as much as the the 73 book canon.
I don’t see any particular solution to that issue. Just an observation

 

[poche]

It was recognized as the Bible at the time when it was translated.

 

[JonNC]

It was recognized as the Bible at the time when it was translated.

What was?..

 

[poche]

The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Bible (aka Old Testament) It was the Bible of the Hebrews and was translated into Greek at the request of the king of the Egyptians before the time of Christ.

 

[JonNC]

The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Bible (aka Old Testament) It was the Bible of the Hebrews and was translated into Greek at the request of the king of the Egyptians before the time of Christ.

Okay. Thanks. I just couldn’t connect you post to what you were responding to.
Of course, that doesn’t discount the variancein acceptance of particular books among the Fathers.

 

[BartholomewB]

The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Bible (aka Old Testament) It was the Bible of the Hebrews and was translated into Greek at the request of the king of the Egyptians before the time of Christ.

It’s more than just a translation. Some of the books in the Septuagint were not translated from a Hebrew original but were written in Greek by Jewish authors, for instance Wisdom and 2 Maccabees.