His tactic is always the same...'create doubt' and in doing so 'destroy faith in God'..and in todays society all the easier for few care to even know the truth let alone seek to find it.
Posted on 07/21/2014 10:28:13 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
>> Apocrypha Books
The apocrypha is a selection of books which were published in the original 1611 King James Bible. These apocryphal books were positioned between the Old and New Testament (it also contained maps and geneologies). The apocrypha was a part of the KJV for 274 years until being removed in 1885 A.D. A portion of these books were called deuterocanonical books by some entities, such as the Catholic church.<<
Looking at my lectionary, the answer is "yes, mostly."
Tobit -- 6 Weekday Mass readings in Year I
Judith -- --
Esther (12:14-16, 21-25)one pericope in the weekday readings
Wisdom -- 15 pericopes in both Sunday and Weekday readings
Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus)-- a whole bunch, spread across both the Sunday and Weekday cycles
Baruch -- 4 pericopes, Sundays and weekdays
Daniel: The Song of Azariah is used as one of the First Readings
I can't find it readily, but I think the Song of the Three Holy Children is sometimes used as a Responsory Psalm, probably when the Fiery Furnace episode is the First Reading
1 Maccabees -- 4 pericopes, all on weekdays of the first cycle
II Maccabees -- 3 pericopes, one on a Sunday, two on weekdays
This is just from running my eyes down the list of the Roman Missal Lectionary, 1970 edition. There might be some "presider's choice of readings" or "alternate readings" for special Masses or feast days of saints, I don't know.
I can't speak for the Orthodox, they have a different lectionary.
It's very nice, by the way, to answer a question by an inquirer who is actually looking for an answer. :o)
You are right. And, because we know that ALL Scripture is God-breathed, we can discern that those extra-canonical books (Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical) that some claim to belong along side the rest of the universally recognized writings are NOT Scripture. Of course, some want to make a big issue over these books and imply that "they" have the whole Bible unlike those of us who are missing out and, somehow, this proves their claim to be the one, true church. But, we know that God would never make mistakes - of which those extra books contain many such errors - and He would never contradict Himself. The prophets of old whom God used to reveal His sacred word KNEW they were speaking as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. You will find no such assurance from the writers of those seven books - if they are even known (some leave open the identity of the author). That is how we CAN know that the 66 book canon is the correct one and, as such, we CAN have assurance that what God tells us is the truth.
“it proves to me that some believe God is the author of confusion, I don’t place myself in that camp.
the Muslims must be laughing their butt off when some say the Christians were using the wrong Bible for 1,500 years.”
I think you’ve missed my point. Just because they weren’t using a “66 book Bible” doesn’t mean that their Bible was wrong.
They had a Bible, both before and after the Reformation, that included the same books. Those books, both before and after the Reformation, included some that were never part of the Hebrew canon, and which were clearly delineated from the Old Testament canonical books.
Then, AFTER the Reformation, the Catholics decided to declare those non-canonical books canonical.
So, if anyone decided they were using the “wrong Bible” after 1500 years, it would appear to be the Catholics.
Gal 3:8 And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.What scripture is this?
Who took themselves out [of Catholicism?]? Your Pope got together with the churches that still agreed with him and voted the rest out.
What? What Pope? Got together with what churches? And "voted" the rest out? When? Who voted and what was the vote?
"Nope, those books[the deuterocanonicals] were never in the canon of inspired literature before the Reformation, so there was nothing to be subtracted."
Can you find me a church before, say, 1500 AD that had a 66-book canon? A church, a synod, a council, a bishop, a scholar, anybody? Even Jerome, whose opinion was strongly influenced by the Jewish scholars who excluded the deuterocanonicals (as well as the entire New Testament!!) did not substitute his individual opinion, or the AD Jews' rabbinical opinions, for the actual practice of the churches:
Said Jerome: "What sin have I committed if I followed the judgment of the churches? But he who brings charges against me for relating the objections that the Hebrews are wont to raise against the Story of Susanna, the Song of the Three Children, and the story of Bel and the Dragon, which are not found in the Hebrew volume, proves that he is just a foolish sycophant. For I was not relating my own personal views, but rather the remarks that they [the Jews] are wont to make against us. (Against Rufinus, 11:33 [AD 402]).
So Jerome acknowledged the principle by which the canon would be settled —the judgment of the Church,what was actually used liturgically in the churches, rather than his own judgment or the judgment of Jews who had rejected Christ.
Of course, it's all more complicated than either of us has yet described. St. Jerome translated Tobias and Judith from Chaldean, parts of Esther and Daniel from Greek. Baruch, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus and the Maccabees he left unchanged from an early Latin version of the Scriptures (the Old Testament which was translated from the Septuagint, and was also called the Italic version).. The Psalms he did translate from Hebrew, but this translation was not popular, and the Clementine Vulgate contains the Old Latin translation corrected by St. Jerome according to the Septuagint.
As for his translation from the Hebrew. A strong argument for favoring the Vulgate over the Masoretic Text seems to me that it is based on pre-Masoretic Hebrew texts. The Vulgate is almost 600 years older than the Masoretic Text.
It's a little equivocal to speak of "the" "Hebrew Canon" (as if there were just one Hebrew Canon) when the Greek LXX, which was translated from the Hebrew --- as was confirmed by the Dead Sea Scrolls --- was translated from an OLDER Hebrew text than the Masoretic.
St Justin Martyr (AD 100 – 165) supports the Septuagint and claims that the Jews altered their Scriptures to eliminate obvious prophecies of Christ: for instance, the still-debated question of "a virgin shall bear a son" vs. "a young woman shall bear a son" in Isaiah.
1. There is not sufficient evidence that they were reckoned as canonical by the Jews anywhere.
2. The LXX design was literary, to build the library of Ptolemy and the Alexandrians.
3. All LXX manuscripts are Christian and not Jewish origin. With a 500 years difference between translation and existing manuscripts. Enough time for Apocryphal books to slip in.
4. LXX manuscripts do not all have the same apocryphal books and names.
5. During the 2nd Century AD the Alexandrian Jews adopted Aquila’s Greek version of the OT without apocryphal books.
6. The manuscripts at the Dead Sea make it clear no canonical book of the OT was written later than the Persian period.
7. Philo, Alexandrian Jewish philosopher (20 BC-40 AD), quoted the Old Testament prolifically, and even recognized the threefold classification, but he never quoted from the Apocrypha as inspired.
8. Josephus (30-100 AD.), Jewish historian, explicitly excludes the Apocrypha; numbering the books of the Old Testament as 22 neither does he quote the apocryphal books as Scripture.
9. Jesus and the New Testament writers never once quote the Apocrypha, although there are hundreds of quotes and references to almost the entire book of the Old Testament.
10. The Jewish scholars of Jamnia (90 AD) did not recognize the Apocrypha.
11. No canon or council of the Christian church recognized the Apocrypha as inspired for nearly four centuries.
12. Many of the great fathers of the early church spoke out against the Apocrypha---for example, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Athanasius.
13. Jerome (AD 340-420) The great scholar and translator of the Latin Vulgate rejected the Apocrypha as part of the canon.
14. Not until 1546 AD in a polemical action at the counter-Reformation Council of Trent (1545-63), did the apocryphal books receive full canonical status by the Roman Catholic Church.
(http://www.truthnet.org/Bible-Origins/6_The_Apocrypha_The_Septugint/index.htm)
Genesis 12:3
I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."
Genesis 18:18
Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him.
Genesis 22:18
and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me."
Genesis 26:4
I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed,
Is this what you were asking for?
Didn’t Moses pen the first five books?
It seems to be not so much on Sundays, but sometimes, particularly the ones I would expect. FWIW, Lutheran Bibles (I'm LCMS) included the 14 books until the churches in the US started using English language Bibles, maybe 100 years ago or so. In 2012 the denomination printed them once again, cf. here. And thank you for a quick response!
Moses probably didn't have a pen :-) OTOH, Joseph was stuck in the pen for maybe seven years...
I was going to join in the counter reformation, but when I saw the price of the granite slabs it was more than my budget could handle, so I stuck with the original linoleum.
(Yes, he's trying to lighten it up here)
13. Jerome (AD 340-420) The great scholar and translator of the Latin Vulgate rejected the Apocrypha as part of the canon.
You seem to forget that, while under the influence of rabbinical scholars who did not believe Jesus was the Messiah (a group Jesus called "spiritually blind") Jerome's initial opinion was against the LXX; but he later included the deuterocanonicals in his translation precisely because he did not want to rely on his own opinion, or on rabbinical opinion influenced by their ongoing anti-Christian polemic, but on the actual practice of the church. He went with the texts received and preserved by the churches for liturgical use.
That established a principle: The guiding authority is (1) not your opinion (2) not rabbinical opinion, but (3) the actual practice of the churches.
And that leads directly into your last point:
14. Not until 1546 AD in a polemical action at the counter-Reformation Council of Trent (1545-63), did the apocryphal books receive full canonical status by the Roman Catholic Church.
That's an unfortunately common misunderstanding of the way texts are recognized as canonical. The Council invented nothing, added nothing and imposed nothing: it confirmed (that's an important key word, "confirmed") the identical list already approved by the Council of Florence (1442), which in turn is the same as the earliest canonical lists extant from the synods of Carthage and Rome in the fourth century.
This business of something lacking "full canonical status" unless it's confirmed in an Ecumenical Council is a misunderstanding of what a Council does.
Although the Canon wasn't dogmatically defined in an ecumenical council until 1546, it had been first believed by the ancient Christian community (sensus fidelium), then celebrated liturgically, then recognized by local synods, then supported by scholastic argument, and lastly --- many centuries later, and under pressure of controversy by dissenters --- formally defined as a dogma of the Faith.
That, by the way, is the normal course of doctrine: it is first anciently believed based on what was handed down to them; then celebrated; then clarified by argument, then defined. And not the other way around!
Ecumenical Councils are generally prodded into action by dissent, controversy, conflict. There's no particular reason to define things which nobody out there is bug-tussling about. The purpose of the Council is to confirm what has been received by the Church, and by the Church I mean Christendom: by believers East and West going back to Apostolic times.
Toodle-oo!
“does any human or group of humans have the authority to declare the definitive canon of Scripture?”
Well, of course, the Church has that authority, given to them by Jesus. To be clear though, I am defining the Church as the Scriptures define it, the universal body of all believers. If half the Church gets together and decides to declare a canon, it can only be valid for their churches, and can’t be expected to be accepted by the rest of the Church.
His tactic is always the same...'create doubt' and in doing so 'destroy faith in God'..and in todays society all the easier for few care to even know the truth let alone seek to find it.
His tactic is always the same...'create doubt' and in doing so 'destroy faith in God'..and in todays society all the easier for few care to even know the truth let alone seek to find it.
His tactic is always the same...'create doubt' and in doing so 'destroy faith in God'..and in todays society all the easier for few care to even know the truth let alone seek to find it.
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