Why is the protestant bible shorter?

[john_aurelius]

The Septuagint (LXX) doesnt belong to the Greek Orthodox Church just because of the Language.

It was written by Jewish translators in Alexandria and was adopted by many Jewish people of the diaspora (and even within Palestine as certain finds in the DSS are in Greek).

The Bible that Paul and Peter used, in Rome was this same version and is as Catholic as the Vulgate.

The Old and New Testaments are both comprehensively substantiated by Codex Vaticanus (B) in Greek as early as the 4th C.

Personally I’m very thankful to have éxtra’books due to the fact that they are a record of the Jews and their history and doctrines such as the Resurrection. An important doctrine for Christians as well (cf 2 macc) the martyrdom contained in those documents reflect those of Polycarp as well.

Eventually, the Jews tried their hand at some 'new, literal’translations, Theodotion, Aquilla and were all faithfully preserved and compared by Origen.

Their inclusion beats "400 years of silence"that Protestant literature professes of God’s Word.:bible1:

 

[Poor_Soul]

Actually, most people would dispute that there was Council of Jamnia; it’s pure conjecture. (You can read about it here, if you like: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Jamnia).

If you want to claim that there was, then I would be interested in what sources you are drawing this from.

Thanks Dave but I dont really like going to wikipedia for my sources especially when anyone could edit those articles.

I do appreciate the correction and was able to find this article about the “Council”

catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0409fea4.asp

The point still remains however that there was and is no proof that the OT Canon was closed before Chirsts death so a Christian should be very skeptical of the canon that is used by the Jews for the OT.

 

[JonNC]

I personally have no idea - My GUESS would be he was still trying to reform the Church, not break from it? - I would like to hear YOUR answer.

I think that’s an excellent observation, even though he had already been excommunicated by the time he did his translation. I would also submit that he held not only the historic opinion regarding the D-C’s in high regard, but the books themselves also.

I only ask the question because ISTM that in our post-Reformation, post-Trent world, we - both sides - tend to turn the historic disputes about the canon into an argument about Luther, and about Trent, and I think that’s oversimplistic. It is not so simple as “Catholics added books”, or “Luther removed books”. I’m not accusing you or WCH of this, but your comments made me think along these lines.

Jon

 

[Dave_Noonan]

Thanks Dave but I dont really like going to wikipedia for my sources especially when anyone could edit those articles.

I do appreciate the correction and was able to find this article about the “Council”

catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0409fea4.asp

The point still remains however that there was and is no proof that the OT Canon was closed before Chirsts death so a Christian should be very skeptical of the canon that is used by the Jews for the OT.

I do very much appreciate your hesitancy about Wikipedia, but at least the information is out there for people to challenge (which you can read about in the comments), something that isn’t possible in a static internet source. For example, I could just as easily point to goodly number of questionable assumptions in the This Rock article: that there was a canonized Septuagint by the time of Paul, that the Septuagint was the main Bible used by diaspora Jews, that the rabbis made a retranslation of the Septuagint(!), that the rabbis even had something like a “council” and that what’s described in the Talmud is a “council,” or that the events compiled hundreds of years later in the Talmud are historical, or that the rabbis even decided on a canon at Javneh, and even if they did, whether any Jews would have even cared. Like things on Wikipedia (or maybe even more so) much of the information in the article is un-sourced so I have no idea where the author is getting many of his ideas or whether his sources are reliable. He seems to want to argue that the Javneh “council” isn’t authoritative, but in actuality, the whole thing is just sort of made up. But anyway, the people cited in article–Geisler and Swaggart (?!) lol–are simply using this made up “Council” as sort of an ex post facto justification for the shorter Protestant canon, which is just silly and wrong.

I don’t think the reformers ever gave a whip about what the Jews thought about the biblical canon. Jews were not particular popular at the time. If someone could point me to something in this regard, I’d appreciate it.

 

[ajcstr]

I am but a pion but it is kind of curious that people have spent much more time studying this than I have and still come up with different answers so I would say that this is certainly not the clear cut issue that I once thought it was.

Not to change direction too much, I have always wondered why the Orthodox accept Macc 3 & 4 and the Catholic Church does not. Must be that there were different versions of the LXX ?