Who Determined the Protestant Canon?

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petra

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I’m interested in getting my historical facts straight. Was there some sort of council? I know that Martin Luther was involved because he also wanted to omit the Book of James, calling it the Epistle of Straw, as well as some other New Testament books. But obviously, he was overridden in that regard.

Who was the group that determined the present day Protestant canon?
 
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petra:
Who was the group that determined the present day Protestant canon?
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Great question. You may already know this but basically, what I have learned is that around 90 AD, after kicking the Christians out of the Temple, an OT canon was established. The strategy for deciding the books was based on certain criteria and they ended up with a canon that excluded the 7 disputed books.

So now, we have two canons of OT scripture. The Christians used the Septuagint and the Non-Christians used the other canon. This canon is what was used to support Luther’s choice of books for the bible - plus he tried to change other books as well.

As to who actually decided to go to that canon, I am not sure. I would love to know more on this history as well.
 
As far as I know the seven books that The Catholic Church included in the Canon at the Councils of Carthage and Hippo ( 380’s and 390’s I think) were all circulated as scriptural at the time of Christ and right before Christ. But the Jews wanting to dis-credit and to seperate from the newly emerging Christian movement stopped using these books because they were overwhelmingly Christian in nature and gave too much validity to Christ in there pages. It was the same Canon confirmed at Trent in 1600 something, exactly the same. The Protestant originators, wanting to join in the discrediting of the Church, decided to go back to what the opposing Jews had declared as scriptural, and dropped the seven books. Alot of Catholic teaching is in those books, purgatory etc… I am not sure by what Authority they did this, since the final authority is scripture(according to Protestants) and no where in scripture is a list of what books are to be included in the Bible. Martin Luther himself thanked the magisterium of the Catholic Church for the Canons.
 
The gathering of Jewish scholars mentioned in the last two posts in ~AD 90 was in the city of Jamnia, and is usually known as the Council of Jamnia. Since the fall of the temple about 20 years earlier, there had developed a schism between the Christian and Jewish communities, so Christian Jews did not take part in the discussions.

However, Martin Luther and King James each sent non-voting delegates to observe.😉
 
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fulloftruth:
The Protestant originators, wanting to join in the discrediting of the Church, decided to go back to what the opposing Jews had declared as scriptural, and dropped the seven books.
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But who were these Protestant originators that dropped those books from the Bible? Obviously Luther was involved, but there must have been others because he also wanted to omit James and Jude but was overridden. Does anybody know who consistuted this group?
 
I know there were seven books “removed” from the Bible by Luther and his crowd: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and I & II Maccabees. What I don’t know is what, specifically, was it in those particular books that he found so “offensive”. I do know that the doctrine of Puergatory is clearest in Maccabbees, but other than that, do not know what the doctrines were that Luther wanted to get rid of.

:confused: Anyone?
 
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Makerteacher:
I know there were seven books “removed” from the Bible by Luther and his crowd: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and I & II Maccabees. What I don’t know is what, specifically, was it in those particular books that he found so “offensive”. I do know that the doctrine of Puergatory is clearest in Maccabbees, but other than that, do not know what the doctrines were that Luther wanted to get rid of.

:confused: Anyone?
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Luther did not technically remove the disputed 7 books from the bible. In 90 AD, as mentioned earlier, the council of Jamnia established another canon, apart from the Septuagint that did not include these books. This was the canon Luther looked to.

From there, he then also considered dropping other books and parts of the bible but that was not done. As for the initial 7 books that make up the difference in our Protestant/Catholic canons, it is due to two canons existing after 90 AD. I find it interesting that this canon is considered over the Septuagint since it was established by Jews that rejected Christianity.

As for your initial question, it is a great question. I too would like to know by whose authority the Protestants accept their current canon. Afterall, Catholics have a Council that established the Catholic canon.
 
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Britta:
Luther did not technically remove the disputed 7 books from the bible.
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In fact he really did. The Gutenberg Bible, and other German and Latin Bibles in use around Wittenberg would have all included the Deuteros. It was not like most people used PCs, but a sizable chunk of the population held out for Macs. The Bible including Deuterocanonical books was the tradition and all that was available.

He personally took the action to remove them. He felt he was justified by faith alone. No, sorry, in this case he felt he was justified by the Council of Jamnia, as you say.
 
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digitonomy:
In fact he really did. The Gutenberg Bible, and other German and Latin Bibles in use around Wittenberg would have all included the Deuteros. It was not like most people used PCs, but a sizable chunk of the population held out for Macs. The Bible including Deuterocanonical books was the tradition and all that was available.

He personally took the action to remove them. He felt he was justified by faith alone. No, sorry, in this case he felt he was justified by the Council of Jamnia, as you say.
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So do you know if Luther did this completely on his own? Or was there a collective group that ultimately determined the Protestant canon?
 
Folks, the Hebrew canon goes way back before the two Councils of Jamnia. You can find the interminably boring details in a good Bible dictionary or Bible encyclopedia, s.v. “Canon.”

The New Testament books that Luther disputed (and which we now accept) were also disputed by many Church Fathers.

If Luther was wrong, then he was wrong; but he wasn’t just dreaming this stuff up.
 
The reason the Protestant Reformers left out the books you mention, the so-called Apocrypha-is that they are written not in Hebrew but in Greek and are not included in the Hebrew Canon of Scripture, the so called “Received Text” from the Council of Jamnia. The early Church used the Alexandrian Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament more widely used in the Apostolic Age than the Hebrew original, that’s why the Greek Books and additions were included in the Christian translations. The Reformers were trying to get back to the Hebrew “roots” of the Old Testament. As for the New Testament canon, it is first mentioned as we know it in 327 by St. Athanasius, the Gelasian Sacramentary about the same time is another of the earliest lists of the canon of the NT. Still to this date there is no agreement on the number or order of the books. Many dissident rites in the East include or leave out different books, such as the Apocalypse and James even the Epistle to the Hebrews. There has never ever been one group of people Protestant who said “These are the NT Canon” There can’t be because there are so many different protestant groups. The Council of Trent established the Canon of Scripture for Catholics in the face of Protestant opposition and only then.
 
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