Dear Powerball:
I've been looking into the catholic faith and I wanted you to explain the extra books found in the catholic bible. Why are the bibles different?
Thanks for the email. The books you are asking about are called the Apocrypha. The Protestant OT is based on the Hebrew canon used by Hebrew-speaking Jews in Palestine. The Catholic OT is based on the Greek Canon used by Greek-speaking Jews throughout the Mediterranean, including Palestine - i.e. the Septuagint, translated byJewish scholars - including 6 from each tribe - according to tradition.
The Septuagint was the translation used by Jesus and the NT writers. We know this because the great majority of the OT quotations found in the NT are from the Septuagint.
The Hebrew Canon was debated by the Jews until well into the 3rd century. At that time - during the ongoing Christian persecutions - they rejected seven books found in the Septuagint - Wisdom, Sirach, Judith, Baruch, Tobit, and 1 and 2 Maccabees (as well as portions of Daniel and Esther) primarily because they could find no versions of these books written in Hebrew. Since the Church used the Septuagint from the beginning, it simply ignored the decision by the Jews and continued to use the Septuagint.
When the Church officially determined the books that comprise the Canon of the Bible at the Councils of Hippo (AD 393) and Carthage (AD 397), it approved the 46 books of the Septuagint as the Canon of the OT. Thus, for more than 1500 years, the OT canon was a matter of uncontested faith - with each of the seven rejected books being quoted by Early Church Fathers as "Scripture" or as "Inspired".
During the Reformation, Martin Luther proposed the adoption of the 39-book Hebrew canon. Luther's reason for rejecting the Deuterocanonicals is because they taught doctrines that he rejected - including purgatory and prayers for the dead. Those doctrines are still rejected by most protestants today despite the fact they are included in the oldest Bibles.
So to answer your question, the Catholic Bible includes the OT used by Jesus and all of the NT writers and defined by the same Church that defined the list of 27 NT books that we all agree upon. A protestant bible includes only the OT defined by the Jews in the 3rd century.
1 comment:
including purgatory and prayers for the dead.
Lets not also forget commending suicide, lying, assassination, and sorcery, plus conflicting timelines, self-contradictions, contradictions with canonical scripture, and even a claim of inacuracy.
Many of the Church Fathers also didn't think they were canonical, and they weren't offically "set in stone" as canonical until the Council of Trent.
It is also interesting that 3 and 4 maccabees aren't included, as they are in the Eastern Orthodox bible.
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