What books were removed from the Bible and why?

[Gorgias]

What you’re bringing up here is a technicality. I mean, the words are still there but the teaching is not.

I think this has more to do with “precision” than “technicalities.” The text only talks about adding or removing from the text.

And is it also within the authority of man (bishops) to abrogate parts of the Mosaic Law. Such as when Peter declared all foods to be clean, except of course for his Aunt Jenny’s mutton stew.

Re-read your Gospels. Mark 7:19 says, “thus Jesus declared all foods clean.” Jesus… not Peter.

 

[UltimateChikorita]

Lutheranism: when you’re so sola scriptura you remove any books in the bible that disagree with you

 

[adf417]

The Protestant Churches did not remove books from the Bible. They all would not be able to get together and make a decision like that. The KJV Bible and other Protestant Bibles had translators who included the “Apochrypha”. The decision to remove books was made by the publishers. It is publishers who regularly come up with new translations that are “easier to read” (but may water down the message). A smaller, easier-to-read Bible is easier to sell.

I find it hard to believe protestants did not know the books were being removed prior to publication. And what you suggest is that if publishers wanted to remove the book of Revelation for cost reasons they could and nobody would care. Protestants are united enough today to make this a grave concern and i think they were just as united back then meaning their concern for those books was null.

Peace!!!

 

[Vonsalza]

If any protestants are actually reading this, you’re missing books ultimately because your protestant forefathers decided to exclude deuterocanonical work form their scripture.

Older expressions of Christianity had a more nuanced view of the bible beyond in-or-out. As a result, some texts were weighted less than those in the primary canon - but still good for instruction.

This is an echo of the Jewish relationship to their holy texts which was even more graded and nuanced. To illustrate, if there was an ancient Jewish equivalent to fundamentalist protestantism, it would have probably excluded most of the OT past the books of Moses as those are sources for “The Law”. You’d just have the Pentateuch/Torah (as most list it).

 

[stoplooklisten]

Similar to what Vonsalza said, Catholicism “grades” the Books of the Bible and, obviously, the Gospel Books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have a prominence greater than other books like the Book of Job.

 

[otrrl]

didn’t read all the intervening comments, perhaps this is a repeat.

The short answer is that Martin Luther would only accept the books of the OT for which there was a Hebrew/Aramaic original. In other words, he rejected the Vulgate and the Septuagint.

Now, he had a good point, about wanting to translate from the oldest reliable texts. He didn’t want a translation (german) which was translated from the Vulgate (Latin) version which was a translation of Hebrew and Aramaic texts. The NT was in Greek, so he had no choice there. So it made sense except for two things:

1. The Septuagint was a Greek version of the sacred Hebrew and aramaic texts which was made BY JEWS. So, it should have been a reliable indication of which books belonged in the Bible. But, he didn’t go that way.
2. Almost 500 years later, the missing Hebrew texts were located in Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls). So, Luther was overly skeptical about the books that should be in the Bible.
3. According to The Jewish Study Bible, 2nd Edition (Oxford U. Press), there were several scriptural traditions represented as Qumran, one of which was the “proto” Septuagint, in Hebrew. What course of action Luther would have taken with that knowledge is obviously hard to predict.
4. The book of Tobit in Catholic Bibles is missing in the Jewish “Bible” – the TANAKH – and for good reason. In it, there is a story about a supernatural spirit who comes to earth in the visible form of a man, It’s understandable that Jews would want to ignore that possibility,; the next step would be for God to become man and they wanted to hide that whole idea from their canon of scripture. Even though the book is considered to be fiction, they didn’t even want to consider that as possibly being inspired.

 

[stoplooklisten]

There are a variety of opinions and perspectives out there outside the RCC.

The apocrypha is a selection of books which were published in the original 1611 King James Bible. These apocryphal books were positioned between the Old and New Testament (it also contained maps and geneologies). The apocrypha was a part of the KJV for 274 years until being removed in 1885 A.D. A portion of these books were called deuterocanonical books by some entities, such as the Catholic church. - Source: APOCRYPHA KJV

Topic for research: What happened in 1885 A.D.?

 

[otrrl]

I think “apocrypha” means “hidden” – these were writing that were supposed to be hidden from believers. The version of the story I heard is that the Puritans in the US removed the books entirely.

 

[stoplooklisten]

In 1885, The Revised Version Bible was published as a revision of the King James Authorised Version, commissioned by the Church of England. The Apocrypha (15 books) were removed from the KJV around this time. The Apocrypha for the Revised Version were not published until some years later.

 

[BartholomewB]

1. Almost 500 years later, the missing Hebrew texts were located in Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls). So, Luther was overly skeptical about the books that should be in the Bible.

Fragments of Tobit and Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) in Hebrew and Aramaic were found among the Dead Sea scrolls, but as far as I’m aware no trace has ever been found there of any Hebrew texts of the other deuterocanonicals: Judith, Wisdom, 1 & 2 Maccabees, and Baruch.

Further details in @patrick457’s posts on this earlier thread:

Dead Sea Scrolls don't include the Apocrypha? Sacred Scripture

Actually, we have two or three deuterocanonical books from the Judaean Desert: Tobit (sixty-nine fragments from five manuscripts found within Cave 4 in Qumran: four in Aramaic and one in Hebrew), Sirach (two copies preserving portions of just three chapters from Qumran, one representing six chapters from Masada; note also that the hymn in Sirach 51:13-30 is found within the Psalms Scroll from Qumran’s Cave 11), and the Epistle of Jeremiah (in a very small, badly-mutilated Greek fragment picture…