The Apocrypha: is it scripture?

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From CRI: “The Catholic church itself didn’t canonize them until the Council of Trent, after the Reformation began.”

Let me make something perfectly clear: at no point did either the Roman Catholic or Orthodox Churches add these books to a preexisting canon. The Church had used the deuterocanonical books for many centuries prior to the Council of Trent. It was only in response to the Reformers’ rejection of these books and adoption of the Hebrew canon that the Roman Catholic Church reaffirmed their use.

“These books don’t claim to be inspired.”

Neither do most of the other books of the Bible. However, the Qur’an, the Book of Mormon, the Mahābhārata, and the Watchtower all claim divine inspiration. Does this claim prove anything?

“They contain historical inaccuracies and contradictions. For example, Antiochus Epiphanes is made to die three different deaths in three different places.”

In fact, the same is true of the death of King Saul in the Protestant-accepted Old Testament:
Saul killed himself by falling on his sword (1 Sam 31.4-6)
The Philistines killed Saul on Gilboa (2 Sam 21.12)
The Lord put Saul to death (1 Ch 10.13-14)

I have found a list of more than two hundred apparent contradictions and inaccuracies in the same Bible that is accepted by every single Protestant. It is not my intention to demonstrate biblical fallacy, so I won’t post the list here. My point is simply that a case against the inclusion of the books of the Deuterocanon on the grounds of alleged inaccuracy or inconsistency is not to be made by anyone who accepts the rest of the Bible.

“These books teach immoral and ungodly things like lying, suicide, etc.”

The deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament do not so much teach these actions as record them. Likewise, the Old Testament accepted by Protestants records—and in some cases actually seems to condone—acts of:
incest (Gn 19.30-36; 2 Sam 13.1-14),
rape (Gn 34.1-2; ),
infanticide (Ex 12.29-30; Nm 31.1-18),
human sacrifice (Jdg 11.29-40),
murder (2 Sam 11.14-17),
adultery (2 Sam 11.2-4), and
slavery (Ex 21.2-6; Lv 25.44-46)

How we are supposed to regard such passages is a subject for someone with much more theological knowledge than I have, but the point is that the recording of immoral acts is not a disqualification for canonicity.

Bottom Line:
Look, the Church never added the books of the Old Testament Deuterocanon to the Bible as some claim, but has recognized them as part of Sacred Scripture since the beginning; even since before it recognized the New Testament! The Church that compiled the rest of the Bible is the very same Church that has always included these seven books in question. Why accept that the Church was right on the one hand and wrong on the other? If you accept the books of the Protestant Bible as Scripture, then you have no reason not to accept the Deuterocanon; but if you reject the Deuterocanon, then what reason could you possibly have not to reject the rest of the Bible?
Is the Church the “Pillar and Foundation of Truth” or isn’t it?
 
It is a long post but once again. The contents of the LXX at the time of Christ were in flux in regards to the DC.
The Catholic scholar Daniel Harrington writes the following “the edges of the Christian Old Testament canon were still fluid”. (The Canon Debate 199)

I will say once again; absolute statements about the nature of the OT canon at the time of Christ are not possible.
If anyone has more recent research or dissertations that suggest otherwise, I am open to hearing the facts. It is an area of interest and I believe I have most of what has been written about it.
This says nothing about the validity of the DC; I am just trying please please to be historically accurate.
 
Christalone,

May the peace of Jesus Christ be with you. You make an interesting point but you’ve missed some very important history in your ascertions. I used to feel the same way, but I dug in history for myself to find the truth, this is what I’ve found. First, one must ask where the Bible comes from? The Catholic Church was the first to compile it. Second, one must ask did their religion come from Christ? Protestants have no historical link to Christ without the Catholic Church. So Catholic history is protestant history. Here’s a brief overview of the history of the Bible, and the books in question. If it is refutable I’d like to know.

Christ and the early Christians used the Septuagint, this is very clear even in Protestant literature. Early Christians were heavily persecuted by Rome and the Jews. Their persecutions worked, we’re still seeing the effects of it today over the disputed books. Early Christian communities were hunted down and martyred, and those that survived were often lucky to have even 1 book of the New Testament. Remember few could read at this time. Christians couldn’t gather publicly until 313, when Constantine declared his Edict of Milan. Without Constantine, I can make a strong case that we may not have had a Bible for a lot longer. St. Irenaeus was the first to declare all 4 Gospels as canonical. He was also instrumental in denouncing the Gnostic gospels, saying he knew bishops all the way back to the Apostles, and none of them were gnostics. He died in 202, before him most Christians would only follow 1 of the Gospels. In 367 Bishop Athanasius was the first to declare all 27 books of the New Testament as canonical. The Synod of Hippo in 393 was the first to declare a canon of Sacred Scripture, the same canon the Catholic Church uses today. The Council of Carthage in 397 was headed by St. Augustine, and upheld the canon of Hippo. St. Augustine considered the canon closed. The canon remained open until the Council of Trent in 1563 officially closed the canon. The canon had not been challenged until the Reformation. Luther denied the septuagint books, he was following in the footsteps of St. Jerome.

Before I go into Jerome there’s some important Jewish history we have to look at. In 100 AD the Jews held a Council in Jamnia, Palestine, in response to the Christian problems in the faith. The Council decided to throw out all books not written in Hebrew. They kept the Hebrew(masoretic) texts and threw out the Greek(Septuagint). This was 70 years after Christ. The Septuagint was still used by Jews during the time of Christ.

St. Jerome was the first to translate the Bible into one language. Pope Damascus commissioned him to translate from the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic into Latin, this was the Vulgate. Jerome translated it from 382 to 405 AD, well after the canon had been declared at Hippo and Carthage. He had moved to Palestine for more accuracy in translating the Hebrew. Jerome was heavily influenced by post-Jamnia Rabiis and decided not to use the Septuagint texts. This went against the early Church tradition, the Synod of Hippo, and the Council of Carthage. St Augustine was extremely upset, but Jerome and Augustine weren’t great friends. But they did not divide the Church! Jerome still used the Septuagint for translating the psalms. During the Reformation Luther needed a means to get rid of Maccabbees, the strongest case for purgatory, Jerome’s list of books allowed this. Maccabbees is the story of Judas Maccabeus who won a great battle, the ceremony in remembrance of the battle is what we know today as Hannukah(sp?). The Catholic Church still uses Jerome’s translation of the Vulgate, with the 7 books of the septuagint. The Catholic Church did not add these books, they just didn’t remove them as Jerome did. The Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran have discovered Hebrew copies of some of the disputed books. Of the fuller quotations in the New Testament of the Old, nearly 100 agree with the modern form of the Septuagint and 6 agree with the Hebrew text.

St. Jerome was a phenominal translator, is considered a early father of the Church and is a Saint, but at that he did not have the authority to declare the canon of the Bible, only the Church as a whole has that authority. Although it makes a strong case for the Jewish tradition, it casts aside the Christian tradition. The Synod of Hippo chose to stick with the Christian tradition, and the Catholic Church has maintained that for 1600 years. If you feel led that these books are not inspired, I challenge you to do what Luther and Henry VIII didn’t do, reform the Church. Any Catholic can go through the proper channels to work at reform in the Church. It’s not as easy as starting a new Church, but shouldn’t we work at reforming the Church that Jesus Christ founded rather than starting new ones. May God go with you.

Jake McCoy
 
Christalone said:
The apocrypha consists of a set of books written between approximately 400 B.C. and the time of Christ. The word “apocrypha” (απόκρυφα) means “Hidden.” These books consist of 1 and 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the Rest of Esther, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, (also titled Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah, Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, The Additions to Daniel, The Prayer of Manasseh, and 1 and 2 Maccabees.

The Protestant Church rejects the apocrypha as being inspired, as do the Jews, but in 1546 the Roman Catholic Church officially declared some of the apocryphal books to belong to the canon of scripture. These are Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees Wisdom of Solomon Sirach (also known as Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch. The apocryphal books are written in Greek, not Hebrew (except for Ecclesiasticus, 1 Maccabees, a part of Judith, and Tobit), and contain some useful historical information.

Is the Apocrypha Scripture? Protestants deny its inspiration but the Roman Catholic Church affirms it.
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This is an extract from 5 myths about 7 books. This bears some reading as it basically denounces every claim you have made.

Myth 2

Christ and the Apostles frequently quoted Old Testament Scripture as their authority, but they never quoted from the deuterocanonical books, nor did they even mention them. Clearly, if these books were part of Scripture, the Lord would have cited them.
This myth rests on two fallacies. The first is the “Quotation Equals Canonicity” myth. It assumes that if a book is quoted or alluded to by the Apostles or Christ, it is ipso facto shown to be part of the Old Testament. Conversely, if a given book is not quoted, it must not be canonical.
This argument fails for two reasons. First, numerous non-canonical books are quoted in the New Testament. These include the Book of Enoch and the Assumption of Moses (quoted by St. Jude), the Ascension of Isaiah (alluded to in Hebrews 11:37), and the writings of the pagan poets Epimenides, Aratus, and Menander (quoted by St. Paul in Acts, 1 Corinthians, and Titus). If quotation equals canonicity, then why aren’t these writings in the canon of the Old Testament?
Second, if quotation equals canonicity, then there are numerous books of the protocanonical Old Testament which would have to be excluded. This would include the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Obadiah, Zephaniah, Judges, 1 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Lamentations and Nahum. Not one of these Old Testament books is ever quoted or alluded to by Christ or the Apostles in the New Testament.
The other fallacy behind Myth #2 is that, far from being ignored in the New Testament (like Ecclesiastes, Esther, and 1 Chronicles) the deuterocanonical books are indeed quoted and alluded to in the New Testament. For instance, Wisdom 2:12-20, reads in part, “For if the just one be the son of God, he will defend him and deliver him from the hand of his foes. With revilement and torture let us put him to the test that we may have proof of his gentleness and try his patience. Let us condemn him to a shameful death; for according to his own words, God will take care of him.”
This passage was clearly in the minds of the Synoptic Gospel writers in their accounts of the Crucifixion: “He saved others; he cannot save himself. So he is the king of Israel! Let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him. He trusted in God; let Him deliver him now if he wants him. For he said, ÔI am the Son of God’” (cf. Matthew 27:42-43).
Similarly, St. Paul alludes clearly to Wisdom chapters 12 and 13 in Romans 1:19-25. Hebrews 11:35 refers unmistakably to 2 Maccabees 7. And more than once, Christ Himself drew on the text of Sirach 27:6, which reads: “The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had; so too does a man’s speech disclose the bent of his mind.” Notice too that the Lord and His Apostles observed the Jewish feast of Hanukkah (cf. John 10:22-36). But the divine establishment of this key feast day is recorded only in the deuterocanonical books of 1 and 2 Maccabees. It is nowhere discussed in any other book of the Old Testament. In light of this, consider the importance of Christ’s words on the occasion of this feast: “Is it not written in your Law, ÔI have said you are gods’? If he called them Ôgods,’ to whom the word of God came — and the Scripture cannot be broken — what about the One Whom the Father set apart as His very own and sent into the world?” Jesus, standing near the Temple during the feast of Hanukkah, speaks of His being “set apart,” just as Judas Maccabeus “set apart” (ie. consecrated) the Temple in 1 Maccabees 4:36-59 and 2 Maccabees 10:1-8. In other words, our Lord made a connection that was unmistakable to His Jewish hearers by treating the Feast of Hanukkah and the account of it in the books of the Maccabees as an image or type of His own consecration by the Father. That is, He treats the Feast of Hanukkah from the so-called “apocryphal” books of 1 and 2 Maccabees exactly as He treats accounts of the manna (John 6:32-33; Exodus 16:4), the Bronze Serpent (John 3:14; Numbers 21:4-9), and Jacob’s Ladder (John 1:51; Genesis 28:12) — as inspired, prophetic, scriptural images of Himself. We see this pattern throughout the New Testament. There is no distinction made by Christ or the Apostles between the deuterocanonical books and the rest of the Old Testament.
 
Do you see the problem from Shea’s site. You cannot say you do not have fixed canon and contend the LXX contain the DC. We do not know if the LXX at the time of Christ contained the DC.
But there’s the rub: The Septuagint version of Scripture, from which Christ quoted, includes the Deuterocanonical books, books that were supposedly “added” by Rome in the 16th century. And this is by no means the only citation of the Septuagint in the New Testament. In fact, fully two thirds of the Old Testament passages that are quoted in the New Testament are from the Septuagint. So why aren’t the deuterocanonical books in today’s Jewish Bible, anyway? Because the Jews who formulated the modern Jewish canon were a) not interested in apostolic teaching and, b) driven by a very different set of concerns from those motivating the apostolic community.
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In fact, 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.
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Shea overstates his case about Jamnia as well as this link indicates:
  1. Although Christian authors seem to think in terms of a formal council at Jabneh, there was no such thing. There was a school for studying the Law at Jabneh, and the rabbis there exercised legal functions in the Jewish community.
  2. Not only was there no formal council, there is no evidence that any list of books was drawn up at Jabneh.
  3. A specific discussion of acceptance at Jabneh is attested only for the books of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. Even so, arguments regarding these books persisted in Judaism centuries after the Jabneh period. There were also subsequent debates about Esther.
  4. We know of no books that were excluded at Jabneh. In fact, Sirach, which was read and copied by Jews after the Jabneh period, did not eventually become part of the standard Hebrew Bible (cf. Raymond Edward Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland Edmund Murphy, The Jerome Biblical Commentary [Prentice-Hall, 1996, c. 1968], vol. 2, 522).
    catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0409fea4.asp
 
BrianH said:
Do you see the problem from Shea’s site. You cannot say you do not have fixed canon and contend the LXX contain the DC. We do not know if the LXX at the time of Christ contained the DC.

Shea overstates his case about Jamnia as well as this link indicates:
  1. Although Christian authors seem to think in terms of a formal council at Jabneh, there was no such thing. There was a school for studying the Law at Jabneh, and the rabbis there exercised legal functions in the Jewish community.
  2. Not only was there no formal council, there is no evidence that any list of books was drawn up at Jabneh.
  3. A specific discussion of acceptance at Jabneh is attested only for the books of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. Even so, arguments regarding these books persisted in Judaism centuries after the Jabneh period. There were also subsequent debates about Esther.
  4. We know of no books that were excluded at Jabneh. In fact, Sirach, which was read and copied by Jews after the Jabneh period, did not eventually become part of the standard Hebrew Bible (cf. Raymond Edward Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland Edmund Murphy, The Jerome Biblical Commentary [Prentice-Hall, 1996, c. 1968], vol. 2, 522).
    catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0409fea4.asp
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Thanks for the correction:thumbsup:
 
JonNC said:
Given the trend of Christalone to post more than one thread of essentially the same subject, I’ll link to a dialogue between Gabriel of 12 and me on the subject of Luther and the canon. Perhaps before you “tell it to his face”, you might want to know what Dr. Luther (no need for quotes) did.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=347086&page=3
posts 37 - 40.

Jon
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I know what:rolleyes: “Dr Luther” had to say, and I also know that he was forced to cave on the physical inclusion of the Deuterocanonicals. He denied they were canonical however, because:rolleyes: “Dr Luther says so”.
I realize that I am, as it were, attacking a “sacred cow” for Lutherans, but the truth is the truth, & in this case, the truth is that Luther was the one who started the whole non-Catholic Christian rejection of the DCs, & he did so, because he knew that they contradicted his personal opinions…
There are, by the bye, some:mad: strong words of warning to people who try:crying: slicing & :crying:dicing God’s written words. They are in the book of Revelation…which was also on “Dr Luther’s” list of ‘Troublesome Texts To Be Done Away With’.

:)PS: The quotation marks are there because I was quoting Herr Luther, who called himself “Dr Luther”…I only dispense honorifics to them as I feel deserve them. Luther lost his when he wrote “On the Jews & Their Lies”. He gets :rolleyes:…only because (A) I would like to stay here a while, & (B)I have:yup: considerably mellowed with age.
 
Zooey said:
I know what:rolleyes: “Dr Luther” had to say, and I also know that he was forced to cave on the physical inclusion of the Deuterocanonicals. He denied they were canonical however, because:rolleyes: “Dr Luther says so”.
I realize that I am, as it were, attacking a “sacred cow” for Lutherans, but the truth is the truth, & in this case, the truth is that Luther was the one who started the whole non-Catholic Christian rejection of the DCs, & he did so, because he knew that they contradicted his personal opinions…
There are, by the bye, some:mad: strong words of warning to people who try:crying: slicing & :crying:dicing God’s written words. They are in the book of Revelation…which was also on “Dr Luther’s” list of ‘Troublesome Texts To Be Done Away With’.

:)PS: The quotation marks are there because I was quoting Herr Luther, who called himself “Dr Luther”…I only dispense honorifics to them as I feel deserve them. Luther lost his when he wrote “On the Jews & Their Lies”. He gets :rolleyes:…only because (A) I would like to stay here a while, & (B)I have:yup: considerably mellowed with age.
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I will allow you to bask in your “version” of the “truth”.

Jon
 
Christalone said:
The apocrypha consists of a set of books written between approximately 400 B.C. and the time of Christ. The word “apocrypha” (απόκρυφα) means “Hidden.” These books consist of 1 and 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the Rest of Esther, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, (also titled Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah, Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, The Additions to Daniel, The Prayer of Manasseh, and 1 and 2 Maccabees.

The Protestant Church rejects the apocrypha as being inspired, as do the Jews, but in 1546 the Roman Catholic Church officially declared some of the apocryphal books to belong to the canon of scripture. These are Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees Wisdom of Solomon Sirach (also known as Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch. The apocryphal books are written in Greek, not Hebrew (except for Ecclesiasticus, 1 Maccabees, a part of Judith, and Tobit), and contain some useful historical information.

Is the Apocrypha Scripture? Protestants deny its inspiration but the Roman Catholic Church affirms it.
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First I know I join this conversation late, but I have been reading Ecce Fides by Fr. John J. Pasquini. He gives a great history and facts of the DC books. Below is a section of where he talks about the DC books. I found it informative.
Why do Catholics have more books in the Old Testament than Protestants or Jews?
During the Protestant Reformation Martin Luther (ca. 1534), after loosing a debate against the great
18
Catholic scholar Johann Eck on the topic of purgatory, decided to drop seven books from the Old Testament
—many of which Johann Eck made reference to in defense of the Catholic faith–1 and 2 Maccabees,
Sirach, Wisdom, Baruch, Tobit, Judith and parts of Daniel and Esther (These books are often referred to as
deuterocanonical books). Martin Luther only made this momentous decision some seventeen years after
his founding of the Protestant movement. Why did he not make these changes in 1517? What made him
change his mind all these years later? The answer is that these books were a problem for his theology and
the theology of Protestantism and thus had to be eliminated.
Despite Luther’s predicament with Johann Eck, another reason for dropping these books from the
canon of the Scriptures by Protestants was because they were written in Greek and found in the Septuagint
(Greek) version of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is for this same reason that the Jewish people in the year 90 to
100 AD excluded these books. Many today argue that since these books are not in Hebrew and since the
Jewish people today do not have these books in their Hebrew Scriptures, then they do not belong in the
Bible.
As Catholics we would respond by taking a closer look at history before coming to such a quick
conclusion. The first thing to recognize is that at the time of Jesus these deuterocanonical books were
accepted as Scripture. Furthermore, the New Testament quotes the Old Testament approximately 350
times, and in approximately 300 of those instances (86% of those instances), the quotation is taken from the
Greek, not Hebrew, Septuagint version of the Old Testament which contains the books that Protestants and
Jews eliminated. Also, the deuterocanonical books that the Protestants and Jews eliminated are quoted in
the New Testament not less than 150 times.
It is only after the Jewish Council of Jamnia (ca. 90-100), after the fall of Jerusalem (ca. 70), and after
an official break between the Pharisees and Jewish Christians, that a change occurs.
The Pharisees recognized that more and more Christians were coming from the Greek speaking Gentile
world, and in order to distinguish themselves from the Christians they sought to remove all traces of Greek
from their Scriptures. (Ironically, a lot of the Greek versions of the books they took out have in recent
years been found in the original Hebrew).
It is crucial for us as Christians to recognize that the Greek Septuagint (LXX) version of the Scriptures
was used by Jews throughout the Greek speaking world and was recognized as inspired prior to the Jewish
Council of Jamnia (ca. 90-100).
Another important point is that by the time of the Jewish Council of Jamnia (ca. 90-100) the Christian
Church (ca. 33) had already been established as the authoritative determiner on all matters concerning faith
and morals, which included the formation of the canon of the Scriptures. Furthermore, the Jewish Council
of Jamnia never made a statement regarding the closing of the Canon.
It is important to reiterate that the early Church always accepted the deuterocanonical books as part of
the Scriptures. It was often quoted in the early Church (i.e., the Didache 4:5 (ca. 70); Barnabas 6:7 (ca.
74); Clement 27:5 (ca. 80), etc.).
However, the most important reason why the deuterocanonical books were accepted by the Catholic
Church is because the apostles themselves accepted them. The apostles often quoted from the Greek
Septuagint version of the Scriptures, thereby affirming its importance and validity. For example, compare
Matthew 1:23 with Isaiah 7:14. Matthew is quoting from the Septuagint version of the Scriptures, the same
version that holds the deuterocanonicals. Another example can be found in Luke’s Gospel. Luke chapter
1:5 to chapter 3 is entirely constructed from the Septuagint version of the Bible.
As you look throughout the New Testament footnotes you will find the abbreviation for the Septuagint,
LXX, throughout. There are 340 places where the New Testament quotes the Septuagint and only 33 places
where the Hebrew only version of the Bible is quoted.
The point is that if the Greek Septuagint was good enough for the apostles, it is good enough for us
Catholics.
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continued below
 
continued from above.
Let us look at the following passage from the deuterocanonical book of Wisdom:
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Let us lay traps for the upright man, since he annoys us and opposes our way of life, reproaches
us for our sins against the Law, and accuses us of sins against our upbringing. He claims to have
knowledge of God and calls himself a child of the Lord. We see him as a reproof to our way of
thinking, the very sight of him weighs our spirits down; for his kind of life is not like other
people’s and his ways are quite different. In his opinion we are counterfeit; he avoids our ways as
he would filth; he proclaims the final end of the upright as blessed and boasts of having God for
his father. Let us see if what he says is true, and test him to see what sort of end he will have. For
if the upright man is God’s son, God will help him and rescue him from the clutches of his
enemies. Let us test him with cruelty and with torture, and thus explore this gentleness of his and
put his patience to the test. Let us condemn him to a shameful death since God will rescue
him…(Wisdom 2:12-20, NJB).
This passage was written approximately one century before the crucifixion of Christ, yet one cannot
but be amazed at the similarity between this passage and the passage describing the Passion of our Lord
and Savior. We have here in the book of Wisdom the pre-figuration of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
It is not surprising that the Protestant Reformers never completely threw out the deuterocanonical
books of the Old Testament. They saw them as worthy of being kept in an appendix. To this very day,
these books are found in an appendix to the Old Testament. This very act is a testament to the discomfort
that these sixteenth century revolutionaries had and modern day Protestants have in eliminating the
deuterocanonical books./QUOTE]
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I think it explains it quite well. (source Ecce Fides Pillar of TruthFr. John J. Pasquini)
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I have a question for those catholics who believe they know which books of the apocrypha/deuterocanonicals that Jesus and the apostles used as inspired text.

a.) Which version of the septuagint did Jesus and the apostles use?
b.) Precisely what books were contained within this particular version of the septuagint?

Also, it would seem that the claims that the so-called Council of Jamnia even discussed the apocrypha/detueros is inaccurate.

See the article from Steve Ray
catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0409fea4.asp

The important points of this article:
Some cautionary points should be noted here:
  1. Although Christian authors seem to think in terms of a formal council at Jabneh, there was no such thing. There was a school for studying the Law at Jabneh, and the rabbis there exercised legal functions in the Jewish community.
  2. Not only was there no formal council, there is no evidence that any list of books was drawn up at Jabneh.
  3. A specific discussion of acceptance at Jabneh is attested only for the books of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. Even so, arguments regarding these books persisted in Judaism centuries after the Jabneh period. There were also subsequent debates about Esther.
  4. We know of no books that were excluded at Jabneh. In fact, Sirach, which was read and copied by Jews after the Jabneh period, did not eventually become part of the standard Hebrew Bible (cf. Raymond Edward Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland Edmund Murphy, The Jerome Biblical Commentary [Prentice-Hall, 1996, c. 1968], vol. 2, 522).
I don’t recall any Catholic apologists such as Pacwa, Michuta, Sungenis, Ray, etc. making claims about Jamnia but find it very common on CAF.
 
Zooey said:
I know what:rolleyes: “Dr Luther” had to say, and I also know that he was forced to cave on the physical inclusion of the Deuterocanonicals. He denied they were canonical however, because:rolleyes: “Dr Luther says so”.
I realize that I am, as it were, attacking a “sacred cow” for Lutherans, but the truth is the truth, & in this case, the truth is that Luther was the one who started the whole non-Catholic Christian rejection of the DCs, & he did so, because he knew that they contradicted his personal opinions…
There are, by the bye, some:mad: strong words of warning to people who try:crying: slicing & :crying:dicing God’s written words. They are in the book of Revelation…which was also on “Dr Luther’s” list of ‘Troublesome Texts To Be Done Away With’.

:)PS: The quotation marks are there because I was quoting Herr Luther, who called himself “Dr Luther”…I only dispense honorifics to them as I feel deserve them. Luther lost his when he wrote “On the Jews & Their Lies”. He gets :rolleyes:…only because (A) I would like to stay here a while, & (B)I have:yup: considerably mellowed with age.
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Just a few observations:

I don’t believe you are catholic but yet seem to share many of their beliefs. Why not go ahead and convert?

Your synopsis of why Luther rejected the deutero’s is rather shallow. Perhaps you should actually read what Luther had to say on the matter…just a suggestion.

You take issue w/ Luther’s anti-semitism but seemingly give the catholic church, which has quite a history of anti-semitism, a pass. Why is that?
 
SemperReformada said:
I have a question for those catholics who believe they know which books of the apocrypha/deuterocanonicals that Jesus and the apostles used as inspired text.

a.) Which version of the septuagint did Jesus and the apostles use?
b.) Precisely what books were contained within this particular version of the septuagint?.
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We don’t know which version of the septuagint Jesus used, though it’s my understand the septuagint as a whole generally contained the deuterocanonical books. Most of the OT quotes in the NT are from the septuagint and not the Hebrew versions. Because of Christian use Jews rejected the Septuagint and began a new Greek translaiton.

We do know that the deuterocanonical books were quoted by Christ, and quoted from or alluded to in the Epistles and Revelation. The Church fathers quoted from them and the Church decided they were canonical as with the NT at the Council of Rome 382 AD. Some Jews do use them, most don’t, but then they reject the NT.
SemperReformada said:
Also, it would seem that the claims that the so-called Council of Jamnia even discussed the apocrypha/detueros is inaccurate.

See the article from Steve Ray
catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0409fea4.asp

The important points of this article:
Some cautionary points should be noted here:
  1. Although Christian authors seem to think in terms of a formal council at Jabneh, there was no such thing. There was a school for studying the Law at Jabneh, and the rabbis there exercised legal functions in the Jewish community.
  2. Not only was there no formal council, there is no evidence that any list of books was drawn up at Jabneh.
  3. A specific discussion of acceptance at Jabneh is attested only for the books of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. Even so, arguments regarding these books persisted in Judaism centuries after the Jabneh period. There were also subsequent debates about Esther.
  4. We know of no books that were excluded at Jabneh. In fact, Sirach, which was read and copied by Jews after the Jabneh period, did not eventually become part of the standard Hebrew Bible (cf. Raymond Edward Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland Edmund Murphy, The Jerome Biblical Commentary [Prentice-Hall, 1996, c. 1968], vol. 2, 522).
I don’t recall any Catholic apologists such as Pacwa, Michuta, Sungenis, Ray, etc. making claims about Jamnia but find it very common on CAF.
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I’ve read a million different things about this council: that it didn’t discuss the canon, that it did, that there is no written evidence but some say oral evidence, that they had no authority to make any binding decisions, and have even read that in never even happened.

“…Let us bind the just one, because he is displeasing to us’[Wisdom 2:12]. And Moses also says to them, ‘Behold these things, saith the Lord God: Enter into the good land which the Lord sware to give to Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and inherit ye it, a land flowing with milk and honey’ Ex. 33:1, Lev. 20:24].” Epistle of Barnabas, 6 (A.D. 74).

“…Or, who shall resist the power of His strength?’[Wisdom 12:12,ll:22] When and as He pleases He will do all things, and none of the things determined by Him shall pass away? All things are open before Him, and nothing can be hidden from His counsel…” Clement of Rome,To the Corinthians, 27:5 (c. A.D. 80).

“‘Be just in your judgement’ [Deut 1:16,17 Prov 31:9] make no distinction between man and man when correcting transgressions. Do not waver in your decision. ‘Do not be one that opens his hands to receive, but shuts them when it comes to giving’ [Ecclesiasticus 4:31].” Didache, 4:3-5 (A.D. 70).

“What sin have I committed in following the judgment of the churches? But when I repeat what the Jews say against the Story of Susanna and the Hymn of the Three Children, and the fables of Bel and the Dragon, which are not contained in the Hebrew Bible, the man who makes this a charge against me proves himself to be a fool and a slanderer; for I explained not what I thought but what they commonly say against us.”
Jerome, Against Rufinus, 11:33 (A.D. 402).
 
Canto
The earliest surviving copies of the LXX, 300 years after Christ, still do not contain the same DC books. I have found the word that is used most often is “flux”. We do not know the contents of the LXX circa 30 AD.
Great site to find books on the topic
kalvesmaki.com/LXX/LXXFAQ.htm
 
BrianH said:
Canto
The earliest surviving copies of the LXX, 300 years after Christ, still do not contain the same DC books. I have found the word that is used most often is “flux”. We do not know the contents of the LXX circa 30 AD.
Great site to find books on the topic
kalvesmaki.com/LXX/LXXFAQ.htm
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Hi Brian. I suppose what I was trying to get at, to put it another way, is that we can’t say the the septuagint didn’t contain the deuterocanon. The various manuscripts contain at least some of the DC books (not aware of any that containe none ???), St Jerome knew of some in Hebrew and they have been found among the dead sea scrolls.

The ed. of the New Jerusalem Bible in his books on how the Bible came to us noted “After the Sack of Jerusalem in 70AD the extreme militant party of the Jews, the Zealots, made a final stand in the great fortress-palace built by King Herod high above the western shore of the Dead Sea. This in its turn was captured by the Romans in 73 AD after two years of siege and a desperate last stand by the Zealots. Josephus tells us that the defenders committed suicide to a man, and when the Romans broke in the discovered only a couple of women, cowering in a bunker. In the ruins of the synagogue was discovered Chapters 39-44 of Ben Sira in Hebrew. Until then the Book had been known only in a Greek translation.”

According to wiki Sirach (Ben Sira) "is occasionally quoted in the Talmud and works of rabbinic literature. The Greek Church Fathers also called it “The All-Virtuous Wisdom,” while the Latin Church Fathers, beginning with Cyprian[2], termed it Ecclesiasticus because it was frequently read in churches, leading to the title liber ecclesiasticus (Latin and Latinised Greek for “church book”)…

Ben Sira was used as the basis for two important parts of the Jewish liturgy. In the Mahzor (High Holy day prayer book), a medieval Jewish poet used Ben Sira as the basis for a poem, KeOhel HaNimtah, in the Yom Kippur musaf (“additional”) service for the High Holidays. Recent scholarship indicates that it formed the basis of the most important of all Jewish prayers, the Amidah. Ben Sira apparently provides the vocabulary and framework for many of the Amidah’s blessings. Many rabbis quoted Ben Sira as an authoritative work during the three centuries before the advent of Yavneh.

…Some people claim that there are several allusions to the book of Sirach in the New Testament. These include The magnificat in Luke 1:52 following Sirach 10:14, the description of the seed in Mark 4:5,16-17 following Sirach 40:15, Christ’s statement in Matthew 7:16,20 following Sirach 27:6 and James 1:19 quoting Sirach 5:11.[8]

The distinguished patristic scholar Henry Chadwick has claimed that in Matthew 11:28 Jesus was directly quoting Sirach 51:27.[9]"

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirach

handsonapologetics.net/category/deuterocanon - interesting article suggesting that the septuagint might have been used in Israle/Palestine and debunking the 2 canon theory.
 
Correct. It is not accurate to say the LXX DID NOT contain the DC either circa 30 AD. The earliest copies of the LXX all contain SOME of the DC. I believe that most people who are historians would agree the nature of the LXX canon, which is anachronistic term anyway, was fluid.
 
BrianH said:
Correct. It is not accurate to say the LXX DID NOT contain the DC either circa 30 AD. The earliest copies of the LXX all contain SOME of the DC. I believe that most people who are historians would agree the nature of the LXX canon, which is anachronistic term anyway, was fluid.
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I have a question.

Since the printing press had not been invented,and every book had to be copied by hand, is the absence of certain books proof that they weren’t included in the accepted cannon?

Isn’t it possible that the person who commisioned (sp?) the book chose the books he wanted to pay for?

Maybe it’s more like iTunes than a statement on the canon. You pick only the songs you really want to hear. You don’t deny that the other songs are properly found in the album (fossil-speak, I know), but you choose to only copy some of them.

I’m not stating, just asking. What do you think?
 
kalt said:
I have a question.

Since the printing press had not been invented,and every book had to be copied by hand, is the absence of certain books proof that they weren’t included in the accepted cannon?

Isn’t it possible that the person who commisioned (sp?) the book chose the books he wanted to pay for?

Maybe it’s more like iTunes than a statement on the canon. You pick only the songs you really want to hear. You don’t deny that the other songs are properly found in the album (fossil-speak, I know), but you choose to only copy some of them.

I’m not stating, just asking. What do you think?
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Yes, it is possible. It would be difficult to prove or disprove.
 
BrianH said:
Yes, it is possible. It would be difficult to prove or disprove.
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I think it’s more than possible. It was common to commision just the Psalms, for example. And there are oodles of NT volumes in print today. Neither of these editions prove that the compilers and the owners deny the canon.
 
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