Why did the RCC change the Bible?

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Someone on here questioned the validity of the books known as ‘apocrypha’?

I was reading through the wisdom of solomon, and saw what I could only understand to be prophecies about Jesus. More specifically, the mocking he endured while on the cross. Something along the lines of - He claims to be God’s son, so let’s see if God protects him’ - ‘If you are of God, save yourself’. I forget right off hand where it was.

If Messianic prophecies can be found in the apocrypha, then I would have no choice but to accept them as inspired. Simple as that.
 
Chris_LaRock said:
Someone on here questioned the validity of the books known as ‘apocrypha’?

I was reading through the wisdom of solomon, and saw what I could only understand to be prophecies about Jesus. More specifically, the mocking he endured while on the cross. Something along the lines of - He claims to be God’s son, so let’s see if God protects him’ - ‘If you are of God, save yourself’. I forget right off hand where it was.

If Messianic prophecies can be found in the apocrypha, then I would have no choice but to accept them as inspired. Simple as that.
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Yep. It’s in Wisdom chapter 2.
 
exoflare said:
Yep. It’s in Wisdom chapter 2.
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Wis 2:12 Let us, therefore, lie in wait for the just, because he is not for our turn, and he is contrary to our doings, and upbraideth us with transgressions of the law, and divulgeth against us the sins of our way of life.
Wis 2:13 He boasteth that he hath the knowledge of God, and calleth himself the son of God.
Wis 2:14 He is become a censurer of our thoughts.
Wis 2:15 He is grievous unto us, even to behold: for his life is not like other men’s, and his ways are very different.
Wis 2:16 We are esteemed by him as triflers, and he abstaineth from our ways as from filthiness, and he preferreth the latter end of the just, and glorieth that he hath God for his father.
Wis 2:17 Let us see then if his words be true, and let us prove what shall happen to him, and we shall know what his end shall be.
Wis 2:18 For if he be the true son of God, he will defend him, and will deliver him from the hands of his enemies.
Wis 2:19 Let us examine him by outrages and tortures, that we may know his meekness, and try his patience.
Wis 2:20 Let us condemn him to a most shameful death: for there shall be respect had unto him by his words.
Wis 2:21 These things they thought, and were deceived: for their own malice blinded them.
Wis 2:22 And they knew not the secrets of God, nor hoped for the wages of justice, nor esteemed the honour of holy souls.

(man! I LOVE this e-sword program!)
 
exoflare said:
que? :confused:
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E-Sword is a computer program that has mulitiple bible translations on it. You can look things up in any bible translation you want to, and compare how that same thing is rendered in another translation. I copied and pasted that Wisdom portion from it.
 
And here are some of the quotations
from the Deuterocanon in the New Testament

Matt. 2:16 - Herod’s decree of slaying innocent children was prophesied in Wis. 11:7 - slaying the holy innocents.

Matt. 6:19-20 - Jesus’ statement about laying up for yourselves treasure in heaven follows Sirach 29:11 - lay up your treasure.

Matt… 7:12 - Jesus’ golden rule “do unto others” is the converse of Tobit 4:15 - what you hate, do not do to others.

Matt. 7:16,20 - Jesus’ statement “you will know them by their fruits” follows Sirach 27:6 - the fruit discloses the cultivation.

Matt. 9:36 - the people were “like sheep without a shepherd” is same as Judith 11:19 - sheep without a shepherd.

Matt. 11:25 - Jesus’ description “Lord of heaven and earth” is the same as Tobit 7:18 - Lord of heaven and earth.

Matt. 12:42 - Jesus refers to the wisdom of Solomon which was recorded and made part of the deuterocanonical books.

Matt. 16:18 - Jesus’ reference to the “power of death” and “gates of Hades” references Wisdom 16:13.

Matt. 22:25; Mark 12:20; Luke 20:29 - Gospel writers refer to the canonicity of Tobit 3:8 and 7:11 regarding the seven brothers.

Matt. 24:15 - the “desolating sacrilege” Jesus refers to is also taken from 1 Macc. 1:54 and 2 Macc. 8:17.

Matt. 24:16 - let those “flee to the mountains” is taken from 1 Macc. 2:28.

Matt. 27:43 - if He is God’s Son, let God deliver him from His adversaries follows Wisdom 2:18.

Mark 4:5,16-17 - Jesus’ description of seeds falling on rocky ground and having no root follows Sirach 40:15.

Mark 9:48 - description of hell where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched references Judith 16:17.

Luke 1:42 - Elizabeth’s declaration of Mary’s blessedness above all women follows Uzziah’s declaration in Judith 13:18.

Luke 1:52 - Mary’s magnificat addressing the mighty falling from their thrones and replaced by lowly follows Sirach 10:14.

Luke 2:29 - Simeon’s declaration that he is ready to die after seeing the Child Jesus follows Tobit 11:9.

Luke 13:29 - the Lord’s description of men coming from east and west to rejoice in God follows Baruch 4:37.

Luke 21:24 - Jesus’ usage of “fall by the edge of the sword” follows Sirach 28:18.

Luke 24:4 and Acts 1:10 - Luke’s description of the two men in dazzling apparel reminds us of 2 Macc. 3:26.

John 1:3 - all things were made through Him, the Word, follows Wisdom 9:1.

John 3:13 - who has ascended into heaven but He who descended from heaven references Baruch 3:29.

John 4:48; Acts 5:12; 15:12; 2 Cor. 12:12 - Jesus’, Luke’s and Paul’s usage of “signs and wonders” follows Wisdom 8:8.

John 5:18 - Jesus claiming that God is His Father follows Wisdom 2:16.

John 6:35-59 - Jesus’ Eucharistic discourse is foreshadowed in Sirach 24:21.

John 10:22 - the identification of the feast of the dedication is taken from 1 Macc. 4:59.

John 15:6 - branches that don’t bear fruit and are cut down follows Wis. 4:5 where branches are broken off.

Yes…there’s more too. 🙂
 
Change the bible? What bible? There was no bible before the Church first ruled on the canon of the bible. And when the Church did rule, in the 4th century, the deuterocanonicals were there. There has never been a bible canon which did not include them, until the Protestants removed them. There was never a bible canon to which the Church then added books. If you disagree, provide that bible canon.

And of course, in the Dead Sea Scrolls we find, wonder of wonders, Hebrew versions of some of the deuterocanonicals! So the whole argument is void. So why is this disproven argument still raised 60 years later?
 
Obviously, if the books known as apocrypha were not inspired, they wouldn’t contain prophecies about Christ.

The only thing that even remotely raised the question of inspiration in my mkind would have been the Jews’ rejection of it in thier rendering of the OT. But the dead sea scrolls cleared that up.
 
The contention of this thread (and I can understand you’re not wanting to read through the whole thing though it does seem reasonable that you might have read the original post anyway), is that Jerome, when translating the Bible, did not include the Old Testament Deuteros.

His remarks to Rufinus were made 4 or more years before he completed his Latin Bible and his opinion had become considerably more solid against the canonicity of the texts in question by that time.

My further contention is that there is no record whatsoever of Jerome encountering any censure for this but that his bible was accepted from his hand with gratitude by the Church as the authoritative Latin version.

Then those old texts started creeping back in. No Papal fiat brought about their immediate inclusion, they just gradually were readmitted. Human nature being what it is, people were loathe to let go of what they were used to.

The final point is that the Bible as Jerome gave it to the church omitted these books, so, therefore the Church changed the Bible.

Now, you can argue that Jerome isn’t authoritative, and that his opinion is, ultimately irrelevant, but, in the absence of an official Church pronouncement denying Jerome’s opinion and the corresponding directive requiring the correction of his work, this becomes meaningless since it implies necessarily that the church effects dogmatic proclamation via a kind of laissez-faire vox populi alone, without Papal confirmation.

Those 4th century councils were not ecumenical but local and are useful for establishing precedent but your church didn’t get around to establishing this in a universally binding manner until Luther was already dead.
 
Steadfast said:
Those 4th century councils were not ecumenical but local and are useful for establishing precedent but your church didn’t get around to establishing this in a universally binding manner until Luther was already dead.
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Those Councils were approved by the Pope. There is NO record of Catholic Canon of the OT that did not include the Deuterocanonicals.
 
NotWorthy said:
Those Councils were approved by the Pope. There is NO record of Catholic Canon of the OT that did not include the Deuterocanonicals.
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They were approved by the Pope?

Really?

Then why did Jerome feel free to omit the OT Deuteros in 404 and why was it necessary for the Church to solemnly promulgate her canon at Trent?

Oh, and could you prove it, please?
 
Steadfast said:
They were approved by the Pope?

Really?

Then why did Jerome feel free to omit the OT Deuteros in 404 and why was it necessary for the Church to solemnly promulgate her canon at Trent?

Oh, and could you prove it, please?
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You mean why did Jerome feel free to contest the canonicity of the Deuterocanons? Because he thought they weren’t written in Hebrew. This, of course, was proved wrong with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Can you prove that he omitted them?🙂
 
NotWorthy said:
You mean why did Jerome feel free to contest the canonicity of the Deuterocanons? Because he thought they weren’t written in Hebrew. This, of course, was proved wrong with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Can you prove that he omitted them?🙂
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All I can offer is the scholarly opinion of Dr. de Hamel quoted in the OP.

I’m still looking for some evidence that he included them.
 
***The Church Councils at Hippo (393) and Carthage (397, 419), influenced heavily by St. Augustine, listed the deuterocanonical books as Scripture, which was simply an endorsement of what had become the general consensus of the Church in the west and most of the east.

*****Pope Innocent I concurred with and sanctioned the canonical ruling of the above Councils (Letter to Exsuperius, Bishop of Toulouse) in 405. - this from Catholic Apologetics Network.

**
 
The canon of Scripture, Old and New Testament, was given at the Synod of Rome in 382, under the authority of Pope Damasus I. It was reaffirmed at the Council of Hippo in 393 and at the First Council of Carthage in 397. In 405 Pope Innocent I reaffirmed the canon in a letter dispatched to Exuperius, bishop of Toulouse. Another council at Carthage in 419 reaffirmed the canon of its predecessors and asked Pope Boniface to “confirm this canon, for these are the things which we have received from our fathers to be read in church.” All of these canons were identical to the modern Catholic Bible, and all of them included the deuterocanonical books.

This comes from "The Catholic Legate"
 
Steadfast said:
Oh, and could you prove it, please?
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Excuse me? You started a thread asserting that the Catholic Church added books to “the Bible”. It is entirely your obligation to prove that the Church added books to “the Bible”. Not to a Bible, but “the Bible”, meaning, obviously, the authoritative canon. Show us an authoritative canon taught by the Church that did not include the deuterocanonical books. You cannot, because none has ever existed.

As to Trent, if you want to claim that the deuterocanonicals were never dogmatically added to the canon until Trent, fine, but then neither were any of the gospels or epistles. Where does that leave you?
 
Hey, if the Saint James Bible was good enough for Jesus it’s good enough for me;)

And I always thought that the Thompson Chain Reference Bible was attached together by metal links.

And my favorite hymn is “Gladly the cross eyed bear.”

“Scuse me while I kiss this guy”…Jimi Hendrix
“There’s a bathroom on the right.” Creedence Clearwater
 
Mystophilus said:
Christopher de Hamel is a well-known and widely-respected scholar of medieval texts. He is also merely human.

“Jerome now eliminated these books… At some early stage, as it came to be copied and recopied and as it entered the life of the Latin-speaking Church, all the rejected books and passages found their way back in again… Jerome’s saintly bones would revolve in their reliquaries if they could have seen what happened next.”

The books and passages which Jerome questioned were entered into the Vulgate by Jerome, as his prologues and later comments clearly demonstrate. Jerome was uncertain about their inclusion, but his patron demanded them, and so he included them.

The Roman Catholic Church did not insert those texts. However, at the Council of Trent, in 1546, they did define those texts as part of their canon because they had been in use for more than 1200 years, and because the early Protestant Reformers had rejected them, following the reservations of both Jerome and the Jews regarding their origins.

Note also that the Orthodox Church have never bothered with a Latin translation of the Bible, and also read those other texts in their churches, as they have been doing for 2000 years.
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Correct. Actually, the term “deuterocanonical”, or “other canon”, refers to the “list” from which the Protestants, particularly Luther, drew their books. It was established after the destruction of Massada by the Romans that certain books (notably the 7 books of the “Apocrypha”) were not acceptable to JEWISH theologians and were therefore left out of the canon. It was from this “synod” of rabbis and elders that Luther drew his inspiration for the “correct” version of the Bible, the KJV.

Brett

P.S. I put my reply here because I like what the original poster said. Well done!
 
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