What makes the maccabees inspired?

[godsent]

We say the maccabees is inspired,and we use purgatory for it,but why dont protestants use it,when did they start not beliveving in purgatory,was it when martin luther got his way?

 

[Jennifer123]

It’s my understanding that Luther and the other reformers tossed out Maccabees along with other canons of scripture - I would assume that’s when Protestants stopped believing in purgatory.

Maccabees and the other books were part of the original list of inspired books grouped together to make the Bible by the Church in one of the early councils.

 

[Della]

When some of the reformers began to teach “sola fide” or “faith alone” the need for purgatory disappeared from their teaching. After all, if one is justified by faith alone there is no longer temporal punishment for sin either, here or in the afterlife. So, rejecting purgatory grew out of a faulty understanding of justification taught by some of the reformers, including Luther. And since Maccabees supports purgatory (not proves it–no Bible verse ever “proves” anything but is a witness to or supports Church teaching), Maccabees was taken out of the OT, but Luther did include them as an addendum in his bible.

 

[PhilNeri]

Maccabees is part of a group of books in the Old Testament called the Deuterocanonicals. The Deuterocanonical books were accepted as inspired in the Septuagint, the translation into Greek of the Jewish Scriptures. It is fairly certain that Jesus and the Apostles quoted from the Septuagint. At the Council of Jamnia at about 90 AD, the Jews removed them from the Jewish canon of Scripture. This was after the Church had been around for a while. Part of the reason the Deuterocanonicals were removed was that they were being used to convert Jews to Christianity. The Church, needless to say, kept the Deuterocanonicals. That is how it stayed until Luther in the 1500’s. When some of the books in the Deuterocanonicals (such as Maccabees) conflicted with his opinion, he removed them, claiming to get back to the original canon. This was totally ridiculous. The Jews had made their changes after Jesus had founded the Catholic Church. They no longer had any valid authority to do so. Luther also disliked other books in the New Testament, including 2 Peter, James (no surprise here), Revelation, and some others. He couldn’t remove them because there was no excuse.

This is why the Catholic Church has the Deuterocanonicals in the Bible and Protestants don’t. They call the Deuterocanonical books the Apocrypha. Hope this answers everything.

 

[LuigiColetta]

What is funny(and sad at the same time) is that by not accepting the Septuagint version, Some Jews can call Jesus a man who distorted the Word of God (for us an oxymoron, since He is The Word of God)

In Luke, Jesus reads from Isaiah 61:1, and he uses “recovery of site to the blind” which isn’t found in the Hebrew version of the Tanach and, in most(all?) protestant bibles, and sadly even in some(most?) of our currently approved old testament scripture. It is found in the Septuagint version though.

Just for your info…

Peace,
Luigi

 

[dnewbern]

PhilNeri,

Thanks for an excellent synopsis of how the seven books of the Old Testamant (e.g. Macabbees, Sirach, etc.) were removed by the Jews from their Scacred Scripture in 90 A.D., and by Luther in the 1500’s.

It’s profoundly ironic that the Jews removed the books because Christians were using them to convert Jews to Christianity, and then Luther 1,450 years later supported the Jewish deletion. It looks as though Luther would have honored those seven books, rather than trashed them.

 

[Beebs]

PhilNeri made an excellent point that Luther disliked Revelation.
Luther original placed it in an appendix with hopes of removing it.

The most amazing part is some Protestants. now site Revelation (even though the verse meant only the Book of Revelation alone) as “proof” of sola-scriptura.

Is’nt irony great!

Beebs

 

[copland]

It must be understood that it took THE CHURCH to determine what books were to be in the Bible in the first place, since there were a very large amount of Scriptures being circulated early on in the Church. By 393AD at the Council of Hippo,THE CHURCH defined the canon, which is exactly the same list of books that were defined at Trent. Also a few years after Hippo at the COuncil of Carthage, St. Augustine and the Church defined the canon again with the same list of books, and there were many other councils that did the same thing after Carthage. The Council of Trent gave the final definition so that it would never be an issue and so it would be binding for good.

So I would say the real question to ask someone who does not believe in the authority of the Catholic Church is this, “Why do you believe any of the other books of the Bible to be Canon? What about all the other books such as Clement, Hermas, Barnabas, etc that did not make it into the canon? Why would you leave them out, these men’s names are in the Bible as fellow workers of the Apostles? Most Protestants don’t even realize that so many other writings exist, and even if some of them do they have never studied them enough to give an educated answer to why these books are not good enough to be canon, they just rely on some Pseudo-‘scholar’ who give a very biased reformation minded opinion. Also, if the Bible is there only authority, then who had the authority to determine what books are canon in the first place?”

As for the Greek Septuagint, I know from personal research of my own that at least 85% of the NT quotations of the OT come straight from the Septuagint verbatum. I have experience as a translator and in textual criticism, and I am very familar with the Greek NT and the LXX (Septuagint). And if the LXX was good enough for the authors of the NT then it is good enough for me! All the early Apostolic Fathers quoted the LXX, such as St. Clement, St. Barnabas, St. Hermas, St. Justin, St. Irenaeus, the author of the Didache, etc.

Also among the Dead Sea Scrolls you will find Tobit, Sirach in Aramaic and Hebrew!

One thing you will find among Protestants concerning the Bible is that for many of them it has become to them a religion of a Book, the 66 books of the Protestant Bible that is. Many of them are very confused about where the Bible comes from and they just take a ‘leap of blind faith.’ They love the Bible, and their zeal is to be admired by Catholics, and alot of Catholics have alot to learn from there zeal. But the system of sola scriptura is flawed with many weak spots. And many protestant sects rely totally upon that system. Most of the followers love Jesus with all there hearts and do make it to Heaven, but the system leads to theological anarchy and confusion, which is the reason why they accept just part of the Word of God and miss out on the fulness of the Faith.

 

[Elzee]

dnewbern:

PhilNeri,

Thanks for an excellent synopsis of how the seven books of the Old Testamant (e.g. Macabbees, Sirach, etc.) were removed by the Jews from their Scacred Scripture in 90 A.D., and by Luther in the 1500’s.

I’ve always been a little confused on this …is this correct:
The Jews removed these books in 90 A.D. for the reasons stated in this thread. Luther then decided to go with 'their version 'of the OT in his German translation. *(originally actually removing James, Reveation and I think a couple other books and changing some wording, but that’s another topic…)

*So…did that Jewish version hang around all those years between 90 A…D. and the 1500’s. Was it used by all Jews during those years? Is it still used by the Jewish people today?

 

[St.Curious]

Do I have to clear this up again?

Do some research people. Luther left the “apocrypha” books in the OT. Jeez.

- seriously, he did. It was not he that took them out.