What are the books that protestants took out of the Bible?

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Chellow said:
You folks give too much credit to Luther, he died in 1546, but it wasn’t till 1885 that most Protestant removed the deuterocanonical books. My question is why then? Was it that a publishers wish to save ink and paper? Who made this decision to remove them then and why.
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The books were removed from the canon of the Bible.
 
kalt said:
They were removed from the canon.

Is there a Protestant Bible that includes the books in its canon?
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I have an Oxford Annotated NRSV. It has all those books in there. And I too think you’re giving Luther too much credit. The first Geneva Bible, as did the first King James Bible, had all those books too.

Sister Mary Francis may have been a little mistaken in catechumen classes. Unless I am mistaken, the Catholic Canon wasn’t really spelled out in dogma until the Council of Trent, and the first non-Catholic entity to officially list canonical books was the Articles of Religion of the Anglican Church. I don’t know about other non-Catholic entities (I’m sure it’s in the Westminster Confession, but I didn’t look it up).

O+
 
IowaJay said:
The Lutheran confessions do not define the canon. The fact that Bibles used by many Lutherans today do not have the deuterocanonicals/apocrypha is more a custom than a firm belief. Luther personally believed that their canonicity was suspect, but still included them in his German translation. Personally, I no longer buy a Bible that does not have the deuterocanon/apocrypha in it.

A huge pet peeve of mine, however, is whenever I see it written on a site like this, or hear it on EWTN radio, that the contents of the Bible were undisputed for over 1,000 years until Martin Luther came along and on his own whim went against church tradition in disputing the canonicity of these books. That allegation completely ignores the fact that Cardinal Cajetan - the one sent by the Vatican to deal with Luther - also disputed the canonicity of these books, which was well known due to his writings on the subject. So, it is an absolute fallacy to state that the Luther’s actions were without support in the then-existing Catholic Church when the Vatican’s approved emissary held basically the same views as Luther on this subject.
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Cardinal Cajetan sought to counteract and to defeat the “Lutheran Movement” on the ground on which it had chosen to reject the authority of the Catholic church and of Tradition. With Rabbinical assistance being himself unversed in Hebrew, and with the aid of current Greek versions, he prepared a literal" translation of the bible, including the OT and all of the NT except the Apocalypse which on account of it’s difficulties he was unwilling to undertake.
It was his object he declared in a letter to Clement VII, to ascertain the true literal sense of the Scriptures and NEVER conflicted with the Sacred Word and with the teachings of the church.
This position much criticized in his time, is now quite in line with the common method of Catholic exegetics.
Unlike Luther, who with regard to the NT it required all powers of resistance on the part of the more conservative reformers to prevent Luther from flinging out the Epistle of St. James as unworthy to remain with the Scriptures “An Epistle of straw” as he called it, Luther dishonored the Epistle of St. Jude and Hebrews and the Apocalypse declaring they were not on the same level as the rest of the books.
Whenever any book, such as Maccabees taught a doctrine he didn’t like, he simply said “Throw it overboard” and overboard it went.
What surprises us Catholics is the audacity of this man who could change a doctrine of the Apostle of God, namely St. Paul.
But this was the outcome of the Protestant standpoint. Individual judgement, no authority outside of oneself. And as a result, we have seen the corruption of God’s Holy Word.
 
O.S.Luke said:
Well said Iowa Jay, but you will find yourself stating this one in vain. Once OTCA says something, it is law around here. Even if Catholic history disagrees with her.

O+
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We Catholics believe in the bible interpreted to us by the church because God entrusted to her the bible as part of His Word, and gave a promise that she would NEVER err in telling us what it means and explaining to us the many things hard to be understood, which St. Peter tells us are to be found within it.
In the Catholic church, we listen, we obey, to her we submit our judgment and our intellect, knowing she will never lead us wrong. In her we find peace and comfort, satisfaction and solution of all our difficulties, for she is one infallible teacher and guide appointed by God. This is a logical, consistent, clear, and intelligible method of attaining and preserving the truth, a perfect plan of Christianity. It is the Catholic plan; it is Christ’s plan.
the Catholic church is the only body in these days which teaches infallibly that the bible, and the whole of it, is the Word of God, and defends it’s inspiration, and denounces and excommunicates anyone who would dare to impugn it’s Divine origin and authority.
That she guarded it and defended it all through the ages, and preserved it from error and destruction; that she has ever held it in highest veneration and esteem, and has grounded her doctrines upon it; that she alone has the right to call it her book; that she alone posesses the true bible and the whole bible, and that copies of the Scriptures existing outside her pale, are partly incorrect and partly defective, and that whatever is in them is true, is true because derived from her who alone posesses the book in it’s fullness and truth.
If you WERE Catholic, you would love God’s Holy Word more, you would understand it better, and you would admire the Catholic church for her ceaseless vigilance, untiring zeal, and unswerving fidelity to the commission entrusted to her by Almighty God. period.
 
OneTrueCathApos said:
Cardinal Cajetan sought to counteract and to defeat the “Lutheran Movement” on the ground on which it had chosen to reject the authority of the Catholic church and of Tradition. With Rabbinical assistance being himself unversed in Hebrew, and with the aid of current Greek versions, he prepared a literal" translation of the bible, including the OT and all of the NT except the Apocalypse which on account of it’s difficulties he was unwilling to undertake.
It was his object he declared in a letter to Clement VII, to ascertain the true literal sense of the Scriptures and NEVER conflicted with the Sacred Word and with the teachings of the church.
This position much criticized in his time, is now quite in line with the common method of Catholic exegetics.
Unlike Luther, who with regard to the NT it required all powers of resistance on the part of the more conservative reformers to prevent Luther from flinging out the Epistle of St. James as unworthy to remain with the Scriptures “An Epistle of straw” as he called it, Luther dishonored the Epistle of St. Jude and Hebrews and the Apocalypse declaring they were not on the same level as the rest of the books.
Whenever any book, such as Maccabees taught a doctrine he didn’t like, he simply said “Throw it overboard” and overboard it went.
What surprises us Catholics is the audacity of this man who could change a doctrine of the Apostle of God, namely St. Paul.
But this was the outcome of the Protestant standpoint. Individual judgement, no authority outside of oneself. And as a result, we have seen the corruption of God’s Holy Word.
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Here’s a tip for you. If you present a fair-minded argument based on facts, with appropriate citations to authority, you’ll get a lot further in your defense of your faith.

Catholic apologist Art Sippo wrote a fair article on this issue. I suggest you read it.

catholic-legate.com/articles/deuterocanons.html

“The history of the Deuteros is relatively complex and not as straight forward as either “hard shell” Protestants or Catholics would like. There is no question that the Deuteros were used as Scripture throughout the Patristic and Medieval periods but there were different levels of reception for different books. Some scholars described the Deuteros as prophetic (i.e., inspired) but not canonical (i.e., part of the Jewish Canon). You can see from the traditional Bibles of the various Eastern Churches that the exact limit of the OT canon was never simply restricted to the protocanon. (The Ethiopian Bible has everything but the kitchen sink!).”
Also, the Deuteros contained some things that did not square with the new Protestant theologies of the 16th Century (e.g., an indifferent free will, post-mortem purgation, or prayers for the dead). Even though these had been immemorial customs/beliefs even among pre-Christian Jews (not to mention every Christian generation thereafter) the 16th Century Reformers thought these things were inappropriate, and decided to suppress them. On that basis, they could not possibly admit that the Deuteros were inspired and had to deny ANY authority to them. So the Protestant objections to the Deuteros were strongly motivated by systematic theological preferences and not by an actual understanding of the history of the use of these books within the Church.

By the same token, ***Catholics tended to act as if the reception of the Deuteros was necessarily a touchstone for orthodoxy when in fact, many good Catholic scholars in the past had not considered them to be very important at all. ***
In that time of controversy in the 16th Century, Cajetan was a pro-papal Catholic who strongly opposed Luther and his theological errors. Also, at the time that Cajetan’s book was published, the prot/cath divide on the canon had not yet developed. It was still an intermural debate among Catholics which reached back as far as St. Jerome. Even after Trent, it wasn’t clear that the differential reception of the deuteros (a la St. Jerome) was forbidden. What Trent settled once and for all was that the Deuteros were part of Scripture, and were both inspired and inerrant. It did not make these books CENTRAL to the Christian revelation, so differential reception was still possible. "

So, I will repeat my earlier point. I think Luther’s views on this point are flawed. But, to put all the blame on Luther on this issue is historically misguided.
 
O.S.Luke said:
I have an Oxford Annotated NRSV. It has all those books in there. And I too think you’re giving Luther too much credit. The first Geneva Bible, as did the first King James Bible, had all those books too.

Sister Mary Francis may have been a little mistaken in catechumen classes. Unless I am mistaken, the Catholic Canon wasn’t really spelled out in dogma until the Council of Trent, and the first non-Catholic entity to officially list canonical books was the Articles of Religion of the Anglican Church. I don’t know about other non-Catholic entities (I’m sure it’s in the Westminster Confession, but I didn’t look it up).

O+
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Including the books in a bound edition and including them in the canon are two different things.
 
IowaJay said:
Here’s a tip for you. If you present a fair-minded argument based on facts, with appropriate citations to authority, you’ll get a lot further in your defense of your faith.

Catholic apologist Art Sippo wrote a fair article on this issue. I suggest you read it.

catholic-legate.com/articles/deuterocanons.html

“The history of the Deuteros is relatively complex and not as straight forward as either “hard shell” Protestants or Catholics would like. There is no question that the Deuteros were used as Scripture throughout the Patristic and Medieval periods but there were different levels of reception for different books. Some scholars described the Deuteros as prophetic (i.e., inspired) but not canonical (i.e., part of the Jewish Canon). You can see from the traditional Bibles of the various Eastern Churches that the exact limit of the OT canon was never simply restricted to the protocanon. (The Ethiopian Bible has everything but the kitchen sink!).”
Also, the Deuteros contained some things that did not square with the new Protestant theologies of the 16th Century (e.g., an indifferent free will, post-mortem purgation, or prayers for the dead). Even though these had been immemorial customs/beliefs even among pre-Christian Jews (not to mention every Christian generation thereafter) the 16th Century Reformers thought these things were inappropriate, and decided to suppress them. On that basis, they could not possibly admit that the Deuteros were inspired and had to deny ANY authority to them. So the Protestant objections to the Deuteros were strongly motivated by systematic theological preferences and not by an actual understanding of the history of the use of these books within the Church.

By the same token, ***Catholics tended to act as if the reception of the Deuteros was necessarily a touchstone for orthodoxy when in fact, many good Catholic scholars in the past had not considered them to be very important at all. ***
In that time of controversy in the 16th Century, Cajetan was a pro-papal Catholic who strongly opposed Luther and his theological errors. Also, at the time that Cajetan’s book was published, the prot/cath divide on the canon had not yet developed. It was still an intermural debate among Catholics which reached back as far as St. Jerome. Even after Trent, it wasn’t clear that the differential reception of the deuteros (a la St. Jerome) was forbidden. What Trent settled once and for all was that the Deuteros were part of Scripture, and were both inspired and inerrant. It did not make these books CENTRAL to the Christian revelation, so differential reception was still possible. "

So, I will repeat my earlier point. I think Luther’s views on this point are flawed. But, to put all the blame on Luther on this issue is historically misguided.
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I understand why you keep harping on this Cardinal, seeing you are Lutheran. What more would you do than to blame it on anyone else but Luther?
 
:)🙂
susanafe said:
Baruch, Wisdom. Tobias, Judith, Ecclesiasticus (also called Sirach), 1 & 2 Maccabees. There are also several chapters of the book of Daniel and Esther that were removed. Why? As I understand it Martin Luther questioned these books, and also a few more books that weren’t removed, saying they shouldn’t be included in the Holy Bible. I always wondered why people could accept the fact that someone removed books out of the Scriptures. What gives anyone the authority to do that? Do you mean that for 1500 years the Holy Bible contained error? No, I don’t think I can agree with that.
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I don’t know the bible so well… (learning process) but do any of these books contain anything that Catholics believe in and protestants don’t… I know 2 Maccabess had a story about praying for the dead (purgatory)…?
 
Xochitl_Guzman said:
haha! sorry, I didn’t mean to write it like that or offend protestants…which i probably already did.
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I don’t think you offended anyone, not me for sure. As I wrote before, it is a contentious subject. I hope you will read some of the links offered, both Lutheran and Catholic, and ignore polemics on both sides.

Jon
 
OneTrueCathApos said:
I understand why you keep harping on this Cardinal, seeing you are Lutheran. What more would you do than to blame it on anyone else but Luther?
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Nice. You won’t counter the argument with a reasonable response, so you put the blame on the poster. And did you READ what he said about Luther? Obviously not.

OTCA - that’s dishonest apologetics. You’re better than that. Why not consider the post rather than blame the poster?

O+
 
OneTrueCathApos said:
We Catholics believe in the bible interpreted to us by the church because God entrusted to her the bible as part of His Word, and gave a promise that she would NEVER err in telling us what it means and explaining to us the many things hard to be understood, which St. Peter tells us are to be found within it.
In the Catholic church, we listen, we obey, to her we submit our judgment and our intellect, knowing she will never lead us wrong. In her we find peace and comfort, satisfaction and solution of all our difficulties, for she is one infallible teacher and guide appointed by God. This is a logical, consistent, clear, and intelligible method of attaining and preserving the truth, a perfect plan of Christianity. It is the Catholic plan; it is Christ’s plan.
the Catholic church is the only body in these days which teaches infallibly that the bible, and the whole of it, is the Word of God, and defends it’s inspiration, and denounces and excommunicates anyone who would dare to impugn it’s Divine origin and authority.
That she guarded it and defended it all through the ages, and preserved it from error and destruction; that she has ever held it in highest veneration and esteem, and has grounded her doctrines upon it; that she alone has the right to call it her book; that she alone posesses the true bible and the whole bible, and that copies of the Scriptures existing outside her pale, are partly incorrect and partly defective, and that whatever is in them is true, is true because derived from her who alone posesses the book in it’s fullness and truth.
If you WERE Catholic, you would love God’s Holy Word more, you would understand it better, and you would admire the Catholic church for her ceaseless vigilance, untiring zeal, and unswerving fidelity to the commission entrusted to her by Almighty God. period.
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Nice polemic.

Now… what about an intelligent and honest reply to the posts in question?
 
O.S.Luke said:
No argument.

Did you READ what I said?!?
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Yes. Having the books “in there” is not that same as including them in the canon.

Protestant’s routinely argue that the books weren’t “taken out” of the Bible, because they are included in the same binding. But when pressed, they have to admit that the books were removed from the canon.

Sometimes I wonder if Protestanst know what books are and aren’t in their own canon, when we constantly get the “they’re in there” response. Don’t they realize that these books were removed from the canon?!

I’ve met many Protestants who don’t have any idea that a bunch of Catholics got together to decide the canon. I don’t know where or how they think we got the Bible. Maybe they think it was written and finalized by the apostles, and handed down since shortly after Jesus’ death? I really don’t know. I think it’s just that they’ve never really thought about where it came from.
 
OneTrueCathApos said:
You “think so”? Are you guessing here? This is absolutely not true. Please state your source on which popes have “flat out” stated this, and list your source for having been disputed since 397, since you also say “most definitely”.
I’ll be waiting for your answer.:compcoff:
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Gregory the Great
With reference to which particular we are not acting irregularly, if from the books, though not Canonical, yet brought out for the edifying of the Church, we bring forward testimony. Thus Eleazar in the battle smote and brought down an elephant, but fell under the very beast that he killed.
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An Exposition on the Book of the Blessed Job, Volume 2, Part 3, Book 19, Paragraph 34
lectionarycentral.com/GregoryMoralia/Book19.html

He is referring to 1 Maccabees as not canonical.
And Eleazar, the son of Saura, saw one of the beasts harnessed with the king’s harness: and it was higher than the other beasts; and it seemed to him that the king was on it: And he exposed himself to deliver his people, and to get himself an everlasting name. And he ran up to it boldly in the midst of the legion, killing on the right hand, and on the left, and they fell by him on this side and that side. And he went between the feet of the elephant, and put himself under it: and slew it, and it fell to the ground upon him, and he died there.
(1 Maccabees 6:43-46 DRB)
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SyCarl said:
Gregory the Great

An Exposition on the Book of the Blessed Job, Volume 2, Part 3, Book 19, Paragraph 34
lectionarycentral.com/GregoryMoralia/Book19.html

He is referring to 1 Maccabees as not canonical.
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For the past 1,612 years all Catholic Bible have contained the deuterocanonical books, are you telling me that you are using a Catholic source to legitimize your canon?

Just face the fact your founding fathers removed the deuterocanonical books from your Bible only 125 years ago.
 
Chellow said:
For the past 1,612 years all Catholic Bible have contained the deuterocanonical books, are you telling me that you are using a Catholic source to legitimize your canon?

Just face the fact your founding fathers removed the deuterocanonical books from your Bible only 125 years ago.
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And can you face the fact that Gregory referred to 1 Maccabees as non-canonical? Didn’t he know what the Church had supposedly already defined?
 
SyCarl said:
And can you face the fact that Gregory referred to 1 Maccabees as non-canonical? Didn’t he know what the Church had supposedly already defined?
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At some time in the past I myself have pondered the possibility of excepting some protestant belief, but pondering is not excepting. So I can entertain your point and except that he may have, but he did not make it a canon.

Now can you face the fact your founding fathers removed the books from the Bible more or less 125 years ago?
 
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