could someone explain what these books of the bible are and are they indeed supposed to be part of every bible
i was raised southern baptist and converted-of course the only bible we ever used was the king james
please help me understand
yr sister in christ
manie:shrug:
The Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical books are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, 1 Machabees, 2 Machabees, Portions of Esther, Portions of Daniel, and Baruch.
They were originally included in the King James Bible (along with 1 and 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasses) between the Old Testament and the New Testament. I have a King James Bible published by Cambridge Press in England that still follows this practice.
At the time of Christ, two “canons” existed – a canon used in Palestine that didn’t include the Deuterocanonical books and a canon used through out the diaspora (i.e., the Greek Septuagint translation) that did include the Deuterocanonical books. The reason I put “canon” in quotes is because there wasn’t a hard and fast list of what was in or what was out. Some groups, even in Palestine, accepted books that today would be characterized as Deuterocanonical. A Jewish council (the Council of Jamnia) met around 100 AD and defined the Jewish canon, which excluded the Deuterocanonical books. The Protestants adopted that canon. The Catholics and Greek Orthodox used the Greek Septuagint and ended up accepting the additional books in the Septuagint translation. The Council of Trent officially recognized them as canonical.
Interestingly, one of the reasons Martin Luther gave for rejecting some of the Deuterocanonical books was that they weren’t written in Hebrew. We now know that several of them were originally written in Hebrew, and we have recovered some of the original Hebrew text.
That’s a bit simplistic of an explanation, but hopefully it gives you a brief synopsis.
