Why Protestant Bibles Are Smaller

  • Thread starter Thread starter RaisedCatholic
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
R

RaisedCatholic

Guest
I was looking for Gary Michuta’s books, “Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger” & “The Case for the Deuterocanon.” But I couldn’t remember his name or the name of his books! So, I went on Amazon, and I just decided to type “Old Testament canon” in its search engine. There were a lot of books on the page. When I went on the second page, there was a book called, “Why Protestant Bibles Are Smaller” (sounds like a play-on-words on Mr. Michuta’s book!) I also remember a couple of years ago Trent Horn produced a video on YouTube with a similar title. When I viewed the back cover, it looks like it’s written by a former Catholic who converted to Protestantism. It only has a couple of reviews, but both of them are positive (one of them is written by another former Catholic). Has anyone heard of this book or the author? He claims he uses mostly Catholic resources, including Catholic Answers, to defend the Protestant OT canon, and even mentions Gary Michuta, Trent Horn, and even Jimmy Akin! 😮 In the Table of Contents, it includes chapter titles on the Septuagint, the Vulgate, the early church fathers, various church councils including the Ecumenical Council of Trent, & even the Douay-Rheims. The part you can read for free on Amazon only goes up through part of Chapter One in his book. Was wondering if it would be a good resource to see how a convert from Catholicism to Protestantism “thinks” what the OT should include, since he utilizes all these Catholic sources for support. What are your thoughts?
 
Last edited:
I’m not going to give him money to find out, but remember that just using someone’s name doesn’t prove they’ve been cited accurately or in context. And since he’s concluded that the Protestant canon is accurate, I’d guess they probably weren’t.
 
Last edited:
Why Catholic Bibles are smaller than Orthodox Bibles is a more interesting question to me that most Catholic apologists don’t really have satisfactory answers too in my eyes.
Like Catholics always talk about the Septuagint for why Catholics have more books than Protestants right but then Orthodox literally just use the Septuagint since it never needed to be translated or anything from Greek since that’s what they spoke. So yah I’m interested to know why 1 Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and 3 and 4 Maccabees aren’t in Catholic Bibles.
 
Last edited:
Prodigal1984 said:
Why Catholic Bibles are smaller than Orthodox Bibles is a more interesting question to me that most Catholic apologists don’t really have satisfactory answers too in my eyes.
Like Catholics always talk about the Septuagint for why Catholics have more books than Protestants right but then Orthodox literally just use the Septuagint since it never needed to be translated or anything from Greek since that’s what they spoke. So yah I’m interested to know why 1 Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and 3 and 4 Maccabees aren’t in Catholic Bibles.
Click to expand...
Because they haven’t featured in western liturgical traditions. Roman Catholics don’t say Eastern Catholics are incorrect for using them.

Modern, western view of what it is for something that is be canon is largely driven by Protestants and a response to that.
 
Prodigal1984 said:
Why Catholic Bibles are smaller than Orthodox Bibles is a more interesting question to me that most Catholic apologists don’t really have satisfactory answers too in my eyes.
Like Catholics always talk about the Septuagint for why Catholics have more books than Protestants right but then Orthodox literally just use the Septuagint since it never needed to be translated or anything from Greek since that’s what they spoke. So yah I’m interested to know why 1 Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and 3 and 4 Maccabees aren’t in Catholic Bibles.
Click to expand...
Im not. Im secure with why we have what we have. I am curious in the differences in the 2 histories this book will reveal though.

Peace!!!
 
Yah but 1(3) Esdras, 2(4) Esdras, and the Prayer of Manasseh are in the Vulgate. They were put in an appendix after Clement Vlll released his Vulgate. And all three are used in liturgy.
Actually those three are part of the standard Protestant apocrypha because they were in the Vulgate. I’ve talked to Protestants before wondering why the Church accepted some at Trent but not all of them. It actually is something they don’t grasp and make it seem like the Church cherry picked 2 Maccabees because chapter 12 justifies prayers for the dead yet rejected 2(4) Esdras because chapter 7 seems to reject them.

I know because I converted from Anglicanism some years back and used to ask why the Church says they accept the books but they don’t accept those three texts. I still really haven’t gotten a completely adequate answer.
 
Last edited:
Prodigal1984 said:
It actually is something they don’t grasp and make it seem like the Church cherry picked 2 Maccabees because chapter 12 justifies prayers for the dead yet rejected 2(4) Esdras because chapter 7 seems to reject them.
Click to expand...
It seems like bad logic because the Orthodox pray for the dead.

And it bears saying not all Orthodox are in agreement on these books, either.
 
Last edited:
Prodigal1984 said:
Why Catholic Bibles are smaller than Orthodox Bibles is a more interesting question to me that most Catholic apologists don’t really have satisfactory answers too in my eyes.
Like Catholics always talk about the Septuagint for why Catholics have more books than Protestants right but then Orthodox literally just use the Septuagint since it never needed to be translated or anything from Greek since that’s what they spoke. So yah I’m interested to know why 1 Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and 3 and 4 Maccabees aren’t in Catholic Bibles.
Click to expand...
When I checked out the Table of Contents, he has a chapter on the Eastern Orthodox Bible, and I believe he has a section on the Prayer of Manasseh, but they are later chapters, not in the free section online. Might be interesting to get it just to find out what he has to say about the “bigger” Orthodox Bibles.
 
Wesrock said:
It seems like bad logic because the Orthodox pray for the dead.

And it bears saying not all Orthodox are in agreement on these books, either.
Click to expand...
In the TOC, there is a subsection that deals with 2 Maccabees & Purgatory. But again, not in the free section, but a alter chapter. 🙁
 
angel12 said:
prove they’ve been cited accurately or in context. And since he’s concluded that the Protestant canon is accurate, I’d guess they probably weren’t.
Click to expand...
I checked out the free section which includes Chapter 1. And he quotes Jimmy Akin. I looked it up, and he does quote him word-for-word. Don’t know about Trent and Gary Michuta. They must be in later chapters.
 
Prodigal1984 said:
Why Catholic Bibles are smaller than Orthodox Bibles is a more interesting question to me that most Catholic apologists don’t really have satisfactory answers too in my eyes.
Like Catholics always talk about the Septuagint for why Catholics have more books than Protestants right but then Orthodox literally just use the Septuagint since it never needed to be translated or anything from Greek since that’s what they spoke. So yah I’m interested to know why 1 Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and 3 and 4 Maccabees aren’t in Catholic Bibles.
Click to expand...
Because the Church settled on the 73 book canon circa 400 AD. What other reason should there be?
 
Prodigal1984 said:
Yah but 1(3) Esdras, 2(4) Esdras, and the Prayer of Manasseh are in the Vulgate. They were put in an appendix after Clement Vlll released his Vulgate. And all three are used in liturgy.
Actually those three are part of the standard Protestant apocrypha because they were in the Vulgate. I’ve talked to Protestants before wondering why the Church accepted some at Trent but not all of them. It actually is something they don’t grasp and make it seem like the Church cherry picked 2 Maccabees because chapter 12 justifies prayers for the dead yet rejected 2(4) Esdras because chapter 7 seems to reject them.

I know because I converted from Anglicanism some years back and used to ask why the Church says they accept the books but they don’t accept those three texts. I still really haven’t gotten a completely adequate answer.
Click to expand...
When I read the part of Chapter 1 that is free, he does address (at least in part) why Protestants didn’t accept some of the books in Catholic OTs.
 
Thom18 said:
Because the Church settled on the 73 book canon circa 400 AD. What other reason should there be?
Click to expand...
In the TOC, there is a chapter on the church councils, with subsections on the Councils of Rome, Hippo, & Carthage. Since he brought them up specifically, I’m sure he addressed something about them. He also has a chapter on the Vulgate that was completed around 400 by St. Jerome. But, again, it’s not in the free section on Amazon! 😩
 
Thom18 said:
Because the Church settled on the 73 book canon circa 400 AD. What other reason should there be?
Click to expand...
That’s Catholic apologetics 101. The truth is far more complicated.
The reason 1(3) Esdras very well could belong in the Bible is because at the Council in circa 400,Ezra-Nehemiah were considered one book. They weren’t split into two until the middle ages. Hence when the Councils called two books of Esdras, they probably were saying Ezra-Nehemiah and 1(3) Esdras. Later councils with the split of the two books probably overlooked this fact. Especially since most Church Fathers used 1 Esdras when citing, so it was probably just as popular as our Ezra-Nehemiah in the early Church and precedes our canonical books in the Orthodox Bibles.
The Prayer of Manasseh was appended to the end of 2 Chronicles in most ancient Vulgates and also is how it is placed in most Orthodox Bibles thus an argument could be made they just considered it part of that book.
 
Last edited:
Wesrock said:
Because they haven’t featured in western liturgical traditions.
Click to expand...
This is what it really comes down to.

While the Bible exists as an exercise of the teaching authority of the bishops of the undivided Orthodox and Catholic Church, when they made the cut, there was pretty much a 100% correlation with which books were used in liturgy, and which were not.

Notably absent was the Protevangelicum, which is the source of much of what we know/believe about Mary . . .

(as far as the title, my snarky response would be something about it stemming from a smaller understanding, but . . . 😱😜:roll_eyes:)
 
Prodigal1984 said:
Hence when the Councils called two books of Esdras, they probably were saying Ezra-Nehemiah and 1(3) Esdras.
Click to expand...
I heard that before. If this is true, and 1 & 2 Esdras in the councils are really Ezra-Nehemiah and 1(3) Esdras, would not that mean the books in those 4th century church councils be different than the “1 & 2 Esdras” at the later Ecumenical Councils of Florence (1441) & Trent (1546)? I wonder if that’s addressed in his book?
 
dochawk said:
While the Bible exists as an exercise of the teaching authority of the bishops of the undivided Orthodox and Catholic Church, when they made the cut, there was pretty much a 100% correlation with which books were used in liturgy, and which were not.
Click to expand...
Which makes me wonder, if the east & the west had the exact same books in their Bible after those early church councils, why do the Eastern Orthodox have “bigger” Bibles than Catholic Bible, and why don’t all Eastern traditions have the exact same books even within the Eastern Orthodox tradition? I wonder if this gets addressed in his book, since he devotes a whole chapter to the Eastern Orthodox Bible.
dochawk said:
(as far as the title, my snarky response would be something about it stemming from a smaller understanding, but . . . 😱😜:roll_eyes:)
Click to expand...
Maybe. But I’d still be curious what his thoughts are since he is a former Catholic, and used mostly Catholic resources (according to the back cover of his book on Amazon).
 
po18guy said:
He is making things up.
Click to expand...
He very well might be. But when I looked at some of the Catholic sources he used (including Catholic Answers) in the free section you can read on Amazon, he quotes word-for-word them. I’d be curious if he’s consistent with his quoting throughout the book or not. I’d almost be tempted to get it just to see his research. But from what I’ve read in the free section on Amazon, he quotes word-for-word & is pretty consistent.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top