Why Protestant Bibles Are Smaller

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RaisedCatholic said:
Catholic Answers senior apologist Jimmy Akin stated that the Pharisees & later Protestants shared the EXACT same OT books in their canons. Jesus affirmed the canon of the Pharisees by referring to is as “the Law & the Prophets.” He then stated that the Pharisees “They HAVE (have possession) of Moses & the Prophets (OT canon)” (Luke 16:14-16,29). St. Paul stated he was a Pharisee & also referred to the OT canon as “the Law & the Prophets.” As a Pharisee, “the Law & the Prophets” (OT canon) would be limited to the books in later Protestant OTs. So, no "mis"information, but from the very words of our Lord & St. Paul.
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As for Jimmy Akin, you have not quoted him in context, so you may very well be putting words in his mouth, or perhaps misinterpreting what he said.

Not only Jesus, but most Second Temple Jews referred to the “Law and the Prophets.” However it was not an established “canon” per se. If ANYTHING was a canon with the Jews it was the Torah. The first 5 books of Moses, the Pentateuch, was absolutely Scripture. The Torah is what was translated into the Septuagint. (Later other books were added.)

The Second Temple Jews did not recognize any “prophets” after the time of Nehemias, but they also had “the writings.” So they had the Torah, the Prophets, and the writings (which included the Historical books and Wisdom books.) But it also included books that are NOT part of any Protestant or Christian canon. Depending on the type of Jew, you would have some books but not others. There was no “Jewish Canon” per se, until after Christianity was established.

Because of your own hermeneutic on Canonical Scripture (something that didn’t come into being until Christianity appeared, which prompted the Jews to likewise establish a canon,) you believe this was a “thing” even before Jesus walked the earth. But it was NOT a thing. WHY? Because the Jews, like today’s Catholics were governed by Tradition and Oral teaching from an authoritative voice. The Scriptures underscored those teachers and teachings.

The major reason early Christians established a canon was to determine which writings were Sacred and could be used in the Christian Liturgy (the Catholic Mass) and which could not.

Christianity (Catholicism) like Judaism, is governed by teachers and Tradition. There was NO such thing as a DIY religion of “My Bible and Me.” That was a sad destructive Protestant invention.
 
adf417 said:
You are the only one getting dizzy here RC and it might be because what you think is not actually circular. There is that option.
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Then respond with an objective non-circular defense that doesn’t involve comments like the “authority” of the Catholic Church defining the Biblical canon. Because you still haven’t done this.
 
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adf417 said:
I am at peace and quite willing to let the people reading this be the objective judge of that.
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IOW, you can’t defend your belief in the “bigger” Catholic OT, without employing Catholic “tradition” & the broken-record phrasing “the Catholic Church ‘gave us our Bibles’” - a “belief” which conflicts with Jesus’ affirmation of the “smaller” OT canon of the Pharisees which He acknowledged.
 
I think it is this way.
Either we accept the entire Septuagint or we should accept only the Hebrew Bible. No cherry picking. If we use the Septuagint this is what our Old Testament should look like( notice however some names are different since they use the Greek rendition)

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RaisedCatholic said:
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adf417:
I am at peace and quite willing to let the people reading this be the objective judge of that.
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IOW, you can’t defend your belief in the “bigger” Catholic OT, without employing Catholic “tradition” & the broken-record phrasing “the Catholic Church ‘gave us our Bibles’” - a “belief” which conflicts with Jesus’ affirmation of the “smaller” OT canon of the Pharisees which He acknowledged.
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🤣🤣🤣 i think if you summarize your argument just one more time in this thread it will become an infallible statement.

Peace!!!
 
AmbroseSJ said:
As for Jimmy Akin, you have not quoted him in context, so you may very well be putting words in his mouth, or perhaps misinterpreting what he said.
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Here is the actual quote - word for word - what Jimmy Akin said about the Pharisees, later Protestants, and the OT canon:

“There were Jews, such as the Sadducees, who acknowledged only the first five books of the Bible – the so-called Law of Moses. The Pharisees honored a much broader canon of Scripture that includes everything that we today would find in the Protestant Old Testament .”

(Source: Akin, Jimmy. “How did the Old Testament canon develop?” “Catholic Answers.” Published on YouTube, Nov 18, 2010. (Begins around the 0:50 mark.)

Jimmy Akin, Catholic Answers “How did the OT canon develop?”

He does go on to “assume” Jesus & the disciples embraced the Deuterocanon too. However, this is merely his assumption, based on his “belief” the Septuagint of today is identical to the Septuagint of Jesus’ day. As you mentioned the Hebrew Bible - not the Deuterocanon too - was the first OT canon to be translated into the Greek Septuagint. Trent Horn, also from Catholic Answers, admitted this in his podcast. This “Hebrew Bible” is what the Pharisees in Jesus’ day embraced.

Historically, while the Jews as a whole didn’t agree on the same OT books, the Pharisees did! This is why Jesus held them accountable with knowing what the OT canon was, by frequently asking them “Have you not READ?” He said this because they would have “read” from a version of the Septuagint which excluded the Deuterocanon. So, you seem to be conflating two different things: the OT canon of the Jews “before & contemporary” with the time of Christ ("Second Temple Judaism), with the OT canon of the Jews “after the time of Christ” which became Rabbinic Judaism. The former did not have an agreed upon canon like you said, but the later DID because it was the canon of the Pharisees which Rabbinic Judaism adopted.
AmbroseSJ said:
Because of your own hermeneutic on Canonical Scripture (something that didn’t come into being until Christianity appeared, which prompted the Jews to likewise establish a canon,) you believe this was a “thing” even before Jesus walked the earth.
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Catholic author Gary Michuta (“Why Catholic Bibles Are Smaller”) stated after the second Temple was destroyed, there were only TWO Jewish sects that “remained intact”: the Christians & the Pharisees. And it was the OT canon of the Pharisees that the post-70 A.D. Jews embraced.

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AmbroseSJ said:
Because of your own hermeneutic on Canonical Scripture (something that didn’t come into being until Christianity appeared, which prompted the Jews to likewise establish a canon,) you believe this was a “thing” even before Jesus walked the earth.
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Sorry, but that is neither historically, nor Scripturally, true. Jesus explicitly stated “They [the Pharisees, NOT the Jews as a whole] have [have possession of] Moses & the Prophets [the OT canon].” By saying this, Jesus was acknowledging the Pharisees “have possession” of the OT canon. He did not say this about any other Jewish sect, including the Sadducees.
AmbroseSJ said:
Christianity (Catholicism) like Judaism, is governed by teachers and Tradition. There was NO such thing as a DIY religion of “My Bible and Me.” That was a sad destructive Protestant invention.
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What the Protestants did was look back to the first century - and even before - & recognized what I just wrote: that while the Jews - as a whole - did not embrace the same OT Scripture, the Pharisees did. And they recognized Jesus was acknowledging their canon as complete, while He did not do this with other Jewish sects like the Sadducees. This explains why ONLY the Pharisees survived alongside Christianity, as one of the two Jewish sects after the destruction of the second Temple. They embraced the OT canon of the Pharisees which Jesus acknowledged, while LATER Catholics began to embrace books which began to be “added” to the Septuagint after the destruction of the Temple. Although Catholicism got the NT canon right, they got the OT canon wrong. And while Rabbinic Judaism got the OT canon right, they rejected the NT canon which was also inspired Scripture, which tells us what the OT canon is.
 
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Prodigal1984 said:
I think it is this way.
Either we accept the entire Septuagint or we should accept only the Hebrew Bible. No cherry picking. If we use the Septuagint this is what our Old Testament should look like( notice however some names are different since they use the Greek rendition)
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This is true if we use the version of the Septuagint of today, which Catholics don’t do - even though they claim that is the version Jesus & the NT writers used (which they didn’t). As Catholic author, Gary Michuta admitted, the Septuagint was a liturgical text, and it continued to grow after the first century. And as Trent Horn, also from Catholic Answers, admitted, the first OT “canon” that was translated into the Septuagint was the Hebrew Bible, not the Deuteros too. So, the Septuagint in Jesus’ day was considerably “smaller” that both Catholic & EO Old Testaments.
 
adf417 said:
i think if you summarize your argument just one more time in this thread it will become an infallible statement.
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The truth of the words of Jesus Himself in Luke 16:14-29 don’t change. Perhaps if you read it enough, you will begin to believe in them.
 
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adf417 said:
You are saying right here. You are getting way to arrogant. Its not becoming of a real Christian.
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Red Herring. Nothing I said is false. Jesus stated explicitly that the Pharisee OT canon was complete. The Catholic Church “added” books that Jesus did not embrace. Since you believe the latter, then you cannot believe the former. That isn’t be “unbecoming of a real Christian.” That’s a factual statement. You cannot believe both, since these two facts oppose each other.
 
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Well I mean many early Christians went to their graves thinking certain books were scripture that aren’t today.
The Church chose the New Testament Canon so in theory they could also choose the Old Testament. We aren’t bound to the Jewish Canon. Not to mention it is only European Jews who have the canon Protestants use. Beta Israel in Ethiopia has a much larger canon. Not all Jews even accept the same one. Just the Protestants accept the European Jews canon.

http://ntcanon.org/table.shtml
 
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RaisedCatholic said:
Red Herring. Nothing I said is false. Jesus stated explicitly that the Pharisee OT canon was complete. The Catholic Church “added” books that Jesus did not embrace. Since you believe the latter, then you cannot believe the former. That isn’t be “unbecoming of a real Christian.” That’s a factual statement. You cannot believe both, since these two facts oppose each other.
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Sorry, that’s false.

There is no EXPLICIT statement by Jesus regarding the canon of the Pharisees, only conjectures which you have inferred.

Secondly, the Catholic Church “included” books that were held to be Sacred since Apostolic times. As you know the Church is nothing if not Traditional. The Church only was interested in those books which were always accepted. The Akin YouTube video you quoted even says this. The problem was not the OT, but the NT. The Catholic Church debated this in the first few centuries of its existence. It reached a final judgement which was agreed to by all, and never again questioned for a THOUSAND years.

As Newman wisely said “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.”
 
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RaisedCatholic said:
author Gary Michuta (“Why Catholic Bibles Are Smaller”) stated after the second Temple was destroyed, there were only TWO Jewish sects that “remained intact”: the Christians & the Pharisees. And it was the OT
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If you want us to accept your claim please give a reference
 
Prodigal1984 said:
Well I mean many early Christians went to their graves thinking certain books were scripture that aren’t today.
The Church chose the New Testament Canon so in theory they could also choose the Old Testament. We aren’t bound to the Jewish Canon. Not to mention it is only European Jews who have the canon Protestants use. Beta Israel in Ethiopia has a much larger canon. Not all Jews even accept the same one. Just the Protestants accept the European Jews canon.
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No doubt there are, and were, Jews who accepted different OT canons. But when we go back to the time of Christ, we find the Pharisees - specifically - shared the same OT canon as Protestants do today. And it was that canon which Jesus affirmed in Luke 16:14,16,29. This same Pharisaic sect is what became Rabbinic Judaism in the late first & early second century, whose OT canon they adopted. Sure, later on other sects within Rabbinic Judaism accepted “bigger” canons, but that was much later well into the second, third, and later centuries. But the Rabbinic Judaism of the first century had the same canon as the earlier Pharisees of Jesus’ day.
 
AmbroseSJ said:
Secondly, the Catholic Church “included” books that were held to be Sacred since Apostolic times. As you know the Church is nothing if not Traditional. The Church only was interested in those books which were always accepted. The Akin YouTube video you quoted even says this. The problem was not the OT, but the NT. The Catholic Church debated this in the first few centuries of its existence. It reached a final judgement which was agreed to by all, and never again questioned for a THOUSAND years.
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I get you believe this, and that is your right. So, can you provide a quote from someone in the church from the first century church who explicitly referred to this “bigger” OT canon? Simply alluding to these extra books doesn’t count since the NT writers ALSO alluded to & even quoted from non-Deuteros.
AmbroseSJ said:
As Newman wisely said “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.”
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And as a Protestant wisely said “To be deep in the Bible is to cease to be Catholic.”
 
JohnR77 said:
If you want us to accept your claim please give a reference
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Here is his quote from Catholic Answers, which begins around the 30:12 mark:

Gary Michuta & Fr. Hugh Barbour - Catholic Answers Live

Here is a separate audio podcast from Gary Michuta on the Catholic Answers where he acknowledges the Eastern Orthodox also used the Septuagint for their OT, but a version which “added” books after the first century. This demonstrates the version of the Septuagint we have today is not the version in Jesus’ day (it begins around the 48:41 mark).

Gary Michuta - Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger -Catholic Answers (podcast)
 
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