Posted on 10/10/2004 4:38:20 PM PDT by Stubborn
These are the books of the OT in my bible - where are you seeing the other 5?
THE PENTATEUCH BOOKS
Genesis
Exodus
Leviticus
Numbers
Deuteronomy
THE HISTORICAL BOOKS
Joshua
Judges
Ruth
1 Samuel
2 Samuel
1 Kings
2 Kings
1 Chronicles
2 Chronicles
Ezra
Nehemiah
Tobit
Judith
Esther
1 Maccabees
2 Maccabees
BOOKS OF WISDOM AND POETRY
Job
Psalms
Proverbs
Ecclesiastes
Song of Solomon
Wisdom of Solomon
Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)
THE PROPHETICAL BOOKS
Isaiah
Jeremiah
Lamentations
Baruch
Ezekiel
Daniel
Hosea
Joel
Amos
Obadiah
Jonah
Micah
Nahum
Habakkuk
Zephaniah
Haggai
Zachariah
Malachi
A little clarification of the Bible here.
Bel and the Dragon is part of the Book of Daniel. Protestants don't have it in theirs because it is not in the Hebrew Canon.
The Hebrew Canon was decided on by the Jews at the Council of Jamniah, circa 90 AD. It was specifically in reaction to, and to replace, the older Septuagint Greek Canon, which was the only Jewish "Bible" per se from the period of about 200 BC until 90 AD.
When the Gospels and epistles refer to "The Scriptures" they are certainly not referring to the New Testament...it wasn't written yet. And they were not referring to the Hebrew Canon or the Masoretic Text, because they weren't chosen or written yet either. They were referring to a rather amorphous bunch of Jewish Scriptures, the ONLY compendium of which was in general use was the Septuagint.
The canon of Jesus and the Apostles was the Septuagint Canon. There was no other until 90 AD, by which time, of course, Jesus and most of the Apostles were dead.
The Septuagint Bible has in it all of the books that are present in the Old Testament of the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles...Tobit, the Maccabbees, Judith, and the long versions of Daniel and Esther, among other things. This was generally used by the Church, and in various councils from Damascus to Carthage was verified. Jerome, alone, it is true, preferred the Hebrew Canon for the Vulgate, but importantly, he was overridden by the Pope (Pope Damasus) who followed the previous Councils.
More importantly, Jerome ACCEPTED the Pope and the Council's authority. When he made his Vulgate translation, it includes the books of the Septuagint that are not in the Hebrew Canon. So, yes, there is an argument in writing of Jerome in favor of the Hebrew Canon, against the much older Septuagint Canon (90 AD vs. 200 BC), but Jerome not only lost that argument, but accepted the opinion of the wider Church on the subject and made his translation of the full Septuagint Canon, and NOT the Hebrew Canon which he had EARLIER stated he preferred. He was convinced to change his mind.
I won't say that it's disingenuous to cite Jerome's argument. Clearly Jerome was sincere. And this was a long time ago, few people really know the whole history, and therefore that Jerome was persuaded to abandon his position and adopt the general teaching of the Church is not generally known.
We should point out that the original King James Translation of 1611 included the deuterocanonical books (the so-called "apocraypha") and it was only later that they were excluded, as the English Church itself became persuaded by the arguments of the Lutherans and others in favor of the Hebrew Canon.
The best argument for the Septuagint Canon of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches is that it is almost 300 years older than the Hebrew Canon, it was the only Biblical compendium in existence in Jesus' day (so when Jesus refers to the Scriptures, or the Apostles do, they are referring to the Septuagint, the only Bible as such then in existence), and the Jews chose to get rid of the Septuagint Canon in favor of the Hebrew Canon (later the Masoretic Text) because there are elements in the deuterocanonical books that rather strongly favor the Christian argument over the Jewish opposition. The Jews at Jamnia chose the expedient of simply eliminating those books from their Bible so that the Christians would no longer be able to rely upon them in arguing for conversion from Jews.
Luther's decision in favor of the Hebrew Canon is interesting, but we needn't go into it here, because it's not germane to the topic.
Jesus' and John's and James' and Peter's Bible...the ONLY Bible at the time...was the Septuagint of circa 200 BC. Catholics and the Orthodox have always used that Canon. The Jews adopted their own, new and abridged Canon in 90 AD.
The Protestants later adopted the Hebrew Canon, and not the Septuagint Canon, for their own reasons, part of which was an understandable historical misunderstanding that the Hebrew Canon was actually older than the Septuagint Canon of the Catholics, but that turns out to have been a misconception.
Not much point in arguing about it, really.
It's unfair to cite to Jerome to argue for the Hebrew Canon, since he was himself persuaded to change his mind and his Vulgate is based on the Septuagint Canon.
Biker,
I've taken some time to think about what you wrote before giving a reply. The problem is that the different avenues of argument mostly descend into definitional shoving matches.
For example, you wrote: "Moral relativism is a view that claims moral standards are not absolute or universal."
The immediate response is "A view of WHOM?" And the answer is "human beings". Human beings are the frame of reference when we speak of religion, morality, and everything else. Morality is part of the social order of human beings, at least by the definition that I use. Dogs certainly exhibit emotion or behavior, but one can hardly describe a dog as "immoral" - it's on a different mental plane of existence.
Likewise, it seems odd to describe gravity, or anything else emanating from God, as "moral" or "immoral". These things just ARE. The morality is what WE develop, the laws for us to deal with it and Him. That's the way I would answer.
It would not be a satisfactory answer to you. You would shove back with a different concept of the word "morality".
So rather than going on in a vein of semantics, I thought I would turn to a different part of what you wrote that I found much more fruitful to comment upon.
It is this part:
"God is constant? Is constancy a value which God must adhere to in order to act justly? There is no reason God need be constant and the evidence certainly disputes that he is. For example, God finds his creation Good, he then regrets he ever created Man. In "God: A Biography," Jack Miles does an excellent job detailing the contradictory thoughts and behavior of God as revealed by the Old Testament. God, in fact, is a changing, evolving, troubled, confused, and indecisive deity."
What I have to say here will probably not be very responsive to you from the perspective of our discussion, but it opens up an interesting vista on a real key difference between Catholic thought and much Protestant thought.
You've cited examples above of the emotional states of God as described in the Old Testament. And those accounts are indeed there. A Catholic such as myself need not read those accounts as literal history...God was literally surprised, there was literally a man, a woman, an apple and a serpent, there was literally a flood and a literal Ark, the world is 6000 years old, etc. Certainly I don't read any of it in that sense. I think that the world is 4 billion years old, and that man descended from primates. This is completely acceptable belief within the Catholic faith. Genesis is not, in my view, a scientific text or an historical pictograph of the actual literal events of man's past; it is a sacred poem on creation, describing the ultimate origins of the world in the act of Creation by a purposeful God, and describing the choice of man to sin which has estranged, and continues to estrange, man from God. I read the Gospels more literally, and think that Jesus of Nazareth really did walk out of a tomb alive. But Genesis, the book of the Bible which refers to the supposed emotional states of God on which your argument hangs: I take this all to be allegory and metaphor. I don't think that God, floating someplace, literally got angry at men and literally flooded the whole Earth, saving only 8 on a boat with a bunch of animals. That is a myth. It teaches some importance things, but it does not teach us anything about the actual emotions of God, because it is not describing an actual historical event. How would the author know what was going on in God's mind anyway?
Now, in truth, when I read Genesis I see a very different story. I do not see this as the story of a distant past, but as a literal autobiographical account of the birth into the world and life of each and every one of us men and women. We are born naked, unashamed and innocent, into a world that receives us, and in which our needs are provided. We mature in this world of wonder and delight and we name things. And we are aware of God. I once heard a story about a little girl who hovered over her baby brother and asked him to tell her what God was like, because she was starting to forget. Now, I think that the relationship of Adam (and Eve) to God, in all innocence, is the story of each of us. We come from God as souls that knew Him. We awaken innocent in the flesh in a world of wonder. And then sin comes and temptation, and we become estranged...from God, from male and female, from our brethren (the story of Cain and Abel). We end up with the cursed of Adam, forced to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow.
So, I do think that Genesis is to be taken literally. But it is the literal biographical sketch of me, and of you.
If you've never thought of it that way before, I'd encourage you to go back and read it with that in mind. You will find that Genesis tracks the story of your life, even in its subtleties. God inspired the Bible, and the great "hook" that He inspired to be at the very front of it is the most interesting story of all: the story of YOU. That is Genesis. That is how I see the mythical half of Genesis. Once Genesis moves into proto-history, it becomes the legends of the Jewish People, but that's a different case...and one already deals with a less emotionally fickle God.
Now, quite clearly this approach I take to Genesis renders any discussion from Genesis of the fickle nature of God's character that you brought up utterly moot. Genesis is an allegory, and it's a literal parable of the life of each and every boy and girl. That's what I see there. I'm just not the guy to argue the point you were trying to make about God's emotional state. You'd need to find someone who takes Genesis literally in a very different way than I take it literally. I take it as a literal autobiographical parable that has incredibly relevant and personally revelatory information in it. I think it provides no useful information about geological or human history at all: for that I consult the geologists and Darwin, not Genesis.
So, given my different use of the text, I'm afraid I cannot engage you on God's mental state using the fickle God of Genesis. I think that God in Genesis only looks fickle, because Genesis is written from the perspective of the young and maturing human mind reflecting on God. The states attributed to God in it are identifiable in my own trajectory to adulthood. That's what I think Genesis is.
You need a different person to argue your point with, and I'm sure this site will be happy to supply.
(For my part, I am not going to argue my view of Genesis. I merely suggest that anyone wishing to say that God didn't mean it as I think He did, as an letter telling each reader's autobiography, should read it and think of it as the parable of YOU. I doubt you will ever be able to shake off the hauntingly clear portrait of yourself, and your own memories of God that will emerge from the exercise. But don't bother to fight with me about Genesis, please. That's what Genesis means and is, as far as I am concerned. You are free to see it differently. Take a walk in the moccassins I have offered you before you dismiss the concept.
Now, back to your criticism, you wrote:"Yes, God, like Stalin, may have the power to destroy for whatever reason he prefers. From God's point of view, might makes right. He can offer us no justification for his moral decisions other than, "because I said so." (Isn't that the position of the moral relativist?)"
I'd say that no, it's not the position of the moral relativist. Because the moral relativist is necessarily human, and has to negotiate with things. What you have described is not really the Stalin. You've described, rather, the logic of the hurricane. The hurricane is literally the logic of God.
You wrote this: "If, however, God can offer us no justification for his moral decisions other than, "because I said so," (and I believe that he, in fact, cannot offer us any other justification)"
I'd say that God does not offer to justify himself. The hurricane does not negotiate. Nor does the sunshine. They just ARE. Now, we would like to negotiate with God, to argue our case. But God doesn't seem to be much open to the argument. I'm sure God could offer a justification if He wanted to. But He doesn't.
You wrote: "are we to listen to what he has to say so that we maximize physical pleasure and minimize physical pain? Are those who find value in God’s moral decisions and make the decision to follow them hedonists? If so, why is hedonism the right measure of moral worth? If pain and pleasure should not be our guiding principle, as it has not been for many who have fought despots (including those who have acted in God’s name) throughout history, then why should we listen to anything God has to say?"
Pain and pleasure seem like pretty good arguments to me.
You wrote: "As you say, gravity is a fact we have to live with, but so is the necessity for us to make moral decisions. If God's justification for his moral decisions is limited to "because I said so," so is ours, because although the faithful may claim to follow the will of God, when asked why it is a good thing to do so, all they can say is, "because I said so.""
To which I would say: no - because we are not God. "Because I said so" is an argument from a human being. God does not argue. He simply IS, and DOES. We react to that. God does not negotiate. There is no "because I said so", although you're right that human beings trying to save others from what they perceive as pain might say not to do something "because God says so".
"We are made in God’s image because we share with God the capacity to make moral decisions that have no justification other than that they are what we believe to be right."
Perhaps. Perhaps it means that we look like God. Jesus said he was God, and he looked like us. Maybe God physically looks like us in His preferred state somewhere. Maybe "image" here means literal image, as in "thou shalt not make a graven image", which is usually not interpreted as meaning "thou shalt not take moral decisions such as you think God might take, because that is you attempting to create a simulacrum of God".
Finally, you wrote: "As God’s moral decisions are not absolute or universal, neither are ours, and, at best, those who seek to follow the will of God will necessarily change their moral views as God’s views change. We are all, both mortal and immortal alike, moral relativists."
I don't see any evidence of any change in the laws of nature since the time of the rise of man, and natural law certainly seems to be both absolute and universal, so I'm not sure what you mean about God changing His views. God is. Man reacts. Man forms moral judgments based on what is, which is to say, God.
I may break this post into a couple of sections, rather then one long post that may turn any interested readers off. I have done a lot of work on this subject and I pray someone will benefit from it.
A little clarification of the Bible here.
Bel and the Dragon is part of the Book of Daniel. Protestants don't have it in theirs because it is not in the Hebrew Canon.
You forgot to mention Susanna, and The Prayer of Three Children.
The Hebrew Canon was decided on by the Jews at the Council of Jamniah, circa 90 AD. It was specifically in reaction to, and to replace, the older Septuagint Greek Canon, which was the only Jewish "Bible" per se from the period of about 200 BC until 90 AD
There’s no proof of what was accomplished at the council of Jamniah, and Jewish sites deny the meeting had anything to do with the canon. You are right though, the Hebrew canon was never listed as we see it today, but that was because it was read in the synagogues and Temple all the time, and it was assumed that everyone knew they were the inspired words of God. There was no need for a strict canon until it became an issue.
It was the same thing your Church faced when the reformers began to question the canonicity of the apocrypha books, and the Church found it had no strict laws in place to enforce their additional books, so the Council of Trent was called on to make their canon a Church law with teeth.
When the Gospels and epistles refer to "The Scriptures" they are certainly not referring to the New Testament...it wasn't written yet.
That’s correct
And they were not referring to the Hebrew Canon or the Masoretic Text, because they weren't chosen or written yet either. They were referring to a rather amorphous bunch of Jewish Scriptures, the ONLY compendium of which was in general use was the Septuagint.
Your right in using the term, “in general use.” Many Jews had to copy the Torah in their lifetime, so there were plenty personal copies and manuscripts available.
The canon of Jesus and the Apostles was the Septuagint Canon. There was no other until 90 AD, by which time, of course, Jesus and most of the Apostles were dead.
I doubt that the LXX had an organized canon either. Remember, it was taken from Hebrew manuscripts three hundred years or so prior, and if the Jews didn’t have an official listing in Jesus day, there’s not much chance they had one in Egypt 300 years earlier.
The Septuagint Bible has in it all of the books that are present in the Old Testament of the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles...Tobit, the Maccabbees, Judith, and the long versions of Daniel and Esther, among other things.
The Greek Orthodox kept all 18 of the apocrypha books, but the Catholic Church rejected six of them. If the acid test was how many of the apocrypha you kept, then the Orthodox won hands down. :) Lol
This was generally used by the Church, and in various councils from Damascus to Carthage was verified. Jerome, alone, it is true, preferred the Hebrew Canon for the Vulgate, but importantly, he was overridden by the Pope (Pope Damasus) who followed the previous Councils.
This can’t be true, pope Damascus died in 384, some 20 years before Jerome completed the Hebrew to Latin translation, so Damascus had no idea that Jerome would leave the apocrypha out of the OT. He certainly couldn’t have overridden Jerome since he knew nothing about the controversy that would arise around 400AD, when news was getting out, that Jerome had left the apocrypha out of his translation.
The early church knew which books the Hebrews considered inspired, so the church fathers adopted most of them right away, except for the book of Esther. They had trouble with it because it was strictly Hebrew history, and was not known for sure if it was inspired or not, and even the Hebrews had their doubts at the time, and that was one of the reasons given for the council of Jamniah.
The apocrypha books took a long time before the church began to see any merit in them, but since the church believed the Septuagint was an added bonus from God to his new church, they kept trying to find some merit in them until they eventually did. As you said, this is another whole story. Lol
JH :) Just two more to go.:)
More importantly, Jerome ACCEPTED the Pope and the Council's authority. When he made his Vulgate translation, it includes the books of the Septuagint that are not in the Hebrew Canon. So, yes, there is an argument in writing of Jerome in favor of the Hebrew Canon, against the much older Septuagint Canon (90 AD vs. 200 BC).
I found nothing in Jerome’s history to point to his ever changing his stance on the use of the apocrypha, but here’s a quote from him after he had finished his translation, and it doesn’t appear that he’s mellowed on the issue, and this is as late as 405AD, long after he finished the work on his translation..
THE PREFACE OF JEROME ON THE BOOK OF JUDITH
Among the Jews, the book of Judith is considered among the apocrypha; its warrant for affirming those [apocryphal texts] which have come into dispute is deemed less than sufficient. Moreover, since it was written in the Chaldean language, it is counted among the historical books. But since the Nicene Council is considered to have counted this book among the number of sacred Scriptures, I have acquiesced to your request (or should I say demand!): and, my other work set aside, from which I was forcibly restrained, I have given a single night's work, translating according to sense rather than verbatim. I have hacked away at the excessively error-ridden panoply of the many codices; I conveyed in Latin only what I could find expressed coherently in the Chaldean words.
If Jerome has had a change of heart, why would he continue disparaging the readers of the apocrypha, and slam the Church officials as though their bullies? Here’s more…….
Letter CVII. To Laeta.
”Let her avoid all apocryphal writings, and if she is led to read such not by the truth of the doctrines which they contain but out of respect for the miracles contained in them; let her understand that they are not really written by those to whom they are ascribed, that many faulty elements have been introduced into them, and that it requires infinite discretion to look for gold in the midst of dirt. Cyprian’s writings let her have always in her hands. The letters of Athanasius and the treatises of Hilary she may go through without fear of stumbling. Let her take pleasure in the works and wits of all in whose books a due regard for the faith is not neglected. But if she reads the works of others let it be rather to judge them than to follow them.”
Jerome stated that it requires infinite discretion when looking for gold in the midst of dirt. It doesn’t sound like he’s had a change of heart here either.
but Jerome not only lost that argument, but accepted the opinion of the wider Church on the subject and made his translation of the full Septuagint Canon, and NOT the Hebrew Canon which he had EARLIER stated he preferred. He was convinced to change his mind.
Jerome translated two apocrypha books, Tobit and Judith, and no others. His Prologus Galeatus (prefaces) was his trademark, and he prefaced every book he translated, or mentioned it in another preface, and you’ll find none of them in any of the other apocryphal book.
When he made his Vulgate translation, it includes the books of the Septuagint that are not in the Hebrew Canon.
As I pointed out above, he translated only two apocrypha books under duress from his Church, and he did no others. The ones you see in the later bibles were taken from the LXX and injected into Jerome’s Bible.
Here is what he said he would do with the apocrypha.
Jerome
I once more began to study Chaldee. And, to confess the truth, to this day I can read and understand Chaldee better than I can pronounce it. I say this to show you how hard it is to master the book of Daniel, which in Hebrew contains neither the history of Susanna, nor the hymn of the three youths, nor the fables of Bel and the Dragon; because, however, they are to be found everywhere, we have formed them into an appendix, prefixing to them an obelus, and thus making an end of them, so as not to seem to the uninformed to have cut off a large portion of the volume.
He would place them in an appendix, far away from the inspired canonical books.
JH :) One more to go. :)
I won't say that it's disingenuous to cite Jerome's argument. Clearly Jerome was sincere. And this was a long time ago, few people really know the whole history, and therefore that Jerome was persuaded to abandon his position and adopt the general teaching of the Church is not generally known.
There is not one statement from Jerome that hints he had a change of heart toward the apocrypha. They were never allowed in his bible, and it was almost 200 years after he died that his bible was introduced to pope Gregory, around 582AD, and by then it no longer resembled the bible Jerome had written.
They had corrupted the pure translation he had strived so very hard for, by cramming eighteen apocrypha books in with the inspired canonical books. He’d have rolled over in his grave if he had known it.
We should point out that the original King James Translation of 1611 included the deuterocanonical books (the so-called "apocraypha") and it was only later that they were excluded, as the English Church itself became persuaded by the arguments of the Lutherans and others in favor of the Hebrew Canon.
They had become convinced the apocrypha should not be placed among the canonical books because of Jerome’s prefaces that cried out to your people for over 900 years.
A large percentage of your Church never accepted them, and many of the early fathers rejected them also.
the KJV originally included the apocrypha since the Latin Vulgate had them, but they eventually came out with a second edition that had removed them, and they became so popular that request for the ones with the apocrypha dropped off to nothing.
Printing was a business, and you know about supply and demand. :)
The best argument for the Septuagint Canon of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches is that it is almost 300 years older than the Hebrew Canon, it was the only Biblical compendium in existence in Jesus' day (so when Jesus refers to the Scriptures, or the Apostles do, they are referring to the Septuagint, the only Bible as such then in existence), and the Jews chose to get rid of the Septuagint Canon in favor of the Hebrew Canon (later the Masoretic Text) because there are elements in the deuterocanonical books that rather strongly favor the Christian argument over the Jewish opposition. The Jews at Jamnia chose the expedient of simply eliminating those books from their Bible so that the Christians would no longer be able to rely upon them in arguing for conversion from Jews.
Whew, and I thought I had a problem with making my sentences too long. :)
As far as the Hebrew manuscripts or scrolls being more pure from error in 300BC then they were in 2 or 300 AD, pure is a relevant term when it comes to different faiths. We all read with our own predigest, but Jerome did say he found a few while working with them.
I’ll agree that the Septuagint helped keep the Hebrew copyist more honest. However Jesus never quoted from an apocrypha book one time, so it’s doubtful they were in the Septuagint of that day.
Jesus was a Hebrew, and He read and taught from the Hebrew scrolls in the synagogue, so if the Temple and the synagogue didn’t use them, why would Jesus or his disciples since they followed the traditions of the Jews?
The story of the council at Jamnia, and the Jews organizing their first canon is unsubstantiated, and they claim it never happened. It wasn’t until around 600AD that they came out with a canon listing of their books in the Masoretic text.
Jesus' and John's and James' and Peter's Bible...the ONLY Bible at the time...was the Septuagint of circa 200 BC. Catholics and the Orthodox have always used that Canon. The Jews adopted their own, new and abridged Canon in 90 AD.
I would still like to see proof of that, it could very well be just a story. But if it’s true, what would be wrong with the Jews being pressured to finally make a canon, since there had never been a need for it prior to all the claims now being made by the Christian church.
Do you believe they had the apocrypha books in their collection of literature, but threw them all away because the Christians were now using them to………………….what? If the Jews had wanted them, of felt they were inspired, why wouldn’t they have kept them for themselves? It seems obvious they meant nothing to them, just as Jerome felt.
The Protestants later adopted the Hebrew Canon, and not the Septuagint Canon, for their own reasons, part of which was an understandable historical misunderstanding that the Hebrew Canon was actually older than the Septuagint Canon of the Catholics, but that turns out to have been a misconception.
If God gave the Jews charge over His oracles as Paul wrote in Romans 3:1-2, why wouldn’t it be wise to assume they had it right?
If God ever ask me why I chose to follow the Hebrew scriptures, rather then some that had gone from Hebrew to Greek, then to Latin, then to English, I think I already know what my answer will be. :)
Not much point in arguing about it, really. It's unfair to cite to Jerome to argue for the Hebrew Canon, since he was himself persuaded to change his mind and his Vulgate is based on the Septuagint Canon.
I have never been a Catholic, and I knew nothing about Catholicism until around three years ago, and like you I had come to the conclusion that the Catholic Bible was taken from the Septuagint Greek as you seem to believe,
That single question started me on a six-month study of Jerome, and the origin of the Latin Vulgate Bible. I had believed as you, that since the Catholics made such a roar over the apocrypha books, it must be because they were in the Septuagint, and so the Septuagint must be where their Bible came from.
I was wrong, just as you and all Catholics are wrong who think that the apocryphal books were included in Jerome’s Bible that he finished in 404AD. Think about it a moment. After Jerome finished his Translation of the OT, that was when these two Church bishops came knocking at his door, demanding he at least translate Tobit, and Judith, before they would leave.
We know he did a quickie job on the two books and, and he placed his famous prefaces on each of them, and you can’t find another apocryphal book in the Latin Vulgate that has his preface attached to them. The question is, where did the Church find these other apocrypha books that Jerome had refused to translate or put in his bible?
They took them out of the old Latin vulgate that men like Origen, or Theodotius, or Eusebius had translated much earlier from the LXX, and since their prefaces were generic, they used them since they looked like Jerome’s at first glance.
The Hebrew text was no longer pure, it was corrupted with books that were not divinely inspired by God through his prophets, but now included writings by men no one had ever heard of.
That was the first big mistake the church made, when they began insisting on these books being placed among the canonical, and they started on the way to becoming the Church of Bishops, and a political power that Jesus had warned his disciples about. Matthew 20:25-26, and Mark 10:42.
To sum up. Jerome’s attitude on the apocryphal writings had never wavered since he began his work in 390AD. Since he had completed all his translations, and his Bible had been sent out to friends and others, it’s clear his attitude remained the same, even when he acquiesced to translate two books, and his attitude had not changed even then.
Now even if someone found something that suggested he had later had a change of heart, what possible effect would it have in the translation he had already completed?
JH :)
Well, JHavard, I have to say you have produced quite a bit of scholarship there. I learned a few things from it, so thank you.
Going point by point through what you said, I'll try to hit some of the highlights.
You: "You forgot to mention Susanna, and The Prayer of Three Children."
I also didn't mention Sirach or the Book of Wisdom. This was not an oversight, really. I was merely citing some examples, not attempting to be exhaustive. You, on the other hand, were quite exhaustive in your response (but interesting, not exhaustING), so I shall endeavor to be more careful and precise in mine. On the general board I got burnt last night because I published there some very vague statistics about the American Revolution that I had pulled together once from a lot of places. Folks were all over me like white on chalk, challenging everything. Now, over there I COULD have probably gone back through and put together the arguments again, but I didn't bother because I really don't care all that much for the topic (Had I wanted to, I could have noted, for example: the British intentionally used SMALLPOX infection against the American colonists, just as they had against the Indians in 1763. Washington knew this, and ordered all letters coming from Boston to be dipped in vinegar before being brought into the Continental Army encampment. Nevertheless, 130,000 colonists (out of 2 million in 1775, and not the 3.8 million posted on the thread there from the 1790 census) dies of smallpox during the Revolution, a cataclysmic increase over the previous century in America, and it was due to intentional British use of germ warfare in the American Revolution. I count 110,000 of those civilian dead as specific casualties of the war. Obviously the battle death statistics which are more easily accessible and compared don't. Likewise, when the British retreated from Boston and other places, they actually spiked the medicine supplies they left behind with arsenic, resulting in several thousand casualties. Again, I add these war-related, intentional deaths by atrocity to the total war death figure. I also add in all of the starvation from the burning of crops, and death from exposure from the intentional burning of cities. I add in all the civilian deaths from Indian raids out in the Wyoming Valley. Add all those different war-related causes of death and maiming in there, some of which you have to dig for, and the American Revolution becomes a lot more horrible than the simple soldier battle deaths indicate. And no, the Union and Confederates did not intentionally unleash smallpox or put arsenic in medical supplies to kill each other off during the Civil War. Most Civil War deaths were battle deaths. Most Revolutionary War deaths were civilians. The point of this long parenthetical, posted here and not there, is that I do not just pull numbers and concepts out of my butt. But I also am not terribly interested in fighting about issues like that, so I'm not going to go back to the general board and be a history professor to folks over there. It just isn't that interesting. But here - religion is interesting, so I'll take the time and respond at greater length.)
You: "There’s no proof of what was accomplished at the council of Jamniah, and Jewish sites deny the meeting had anything to do with the canon. You are right though, the Hebrew canon was never listed as we see it today, but that was because it was read in the synagogues and Temple all the time, and it was assumed that everyone knew they were the inspired words of God. There was no need for a strict canon until it became an issue."
Now, let's unpack this.
First, let's be really, really careful about what we assert was done or not done in the Temple. The most authoritative First Century source about the Temple and actual Jewish practices is Josephus ben Matthias, the Jewish priest, Jewish general during the Revolt, and historian of the Jews to the Romans. He records in exhaustive detail the Jewish legends, beliefs, and many of the practices of the actual Temple, at which he was a priest. We don't have any other comparable work by any other Jewish Priest of the Temple. The Talmud, the book of Jewish legal traditions, was written centuries after the destruction of the Temple and the end of the Judaism of the Bible, except for the oldest part, the Mishna, and even it was generally put down after the Temple was gone, and in the Second Century. Traditions passed down to the sons and grandsons of priests are remembered one way, but they do not have the authority of an actual priest of the Temple, writing about the actual Temple.
The image that Josephus gives us is a Temple rite that was focused on the sacrifices. Much in the way that the Catholics and Orthodox are focused on the Sacraments as mystical rites where God is literally present in divine power (as opposed to the Bible), the Jewish Temple was focused on rites and the actual presence of God. Yes, the Law was important, but the Temple was about sacrifices and rites and rituals, not about reading texts. The synagogues, where the sacrifices could not be performed, filled that role, but they were secondary to, subordinate to, and adjunct to, the Temple. The center of Judaism was not the written word. One of the reasons that the Jews had only the Greek Septuagint as a sort of quasi Bible is that, outside of the Torah, the other Jewish Scriptures were, and are, of only secondary importance. But even given the authority of the Torah, the center of Judaism was by no means the Torah, it was the Temple, with its sacrifices and High Priest, an utterly papal figure (although Greek and Roman interference in the selection of High Priests reduced their authority considerably, there there was still a mystic aura). God lived in the Temple, in the Holy of Holies, and nowhere else. The Jews were legalistic about their Torah, yes (there was no Talmud yet), but the final authority on the law was the Sandhedrin, and the chief of the Sanhedrin was the high priest. This was the model that every Jew, including all the apostles, understood.
So, if one transposes modern rabbinnical Judaism with its Talmud back on the Judaism of the Temple, one really commits an error of anachronism. The better analogy of the Temple with its sacrifices, which were the CENTER of Jewish religion, and its literal presence of God, and its Sanhedrin with absolute authority over all Jewish law, and its High Priest with final authority over the Sanhedrin, would be the medieval Catholic Church, with its Curia and its all-powerful Pope. Now restrict the real presence of God in the Eucharist to one place, the Papal altar in Rome, and you have the model for the Judaism of the Priest Josephus. Jews became rabbinnical and the synagogue became the authoritative expression of Judaism only with the levelling of the Temple. For as long as the Temple was up, the synagogue was merely an educational annex, completely subject and subordinate in every sense, legally, morally, spiritually and in lines of authority, to the Temple.
That's why there was no Jewish Canon as such before the Temple was pulled down. Because the texts were just an adjunct. The Torah was, and remains, primordial. No Jew has ever believed that every book in the Bible is of equal authority. That is absurd. The Torah, which Christians call the Pentateuch, and only the Torah, is the core, the heart, the body, and the soul of the Law. The other material is all descriptive and helpful, but it is not The Law. The Torah outranks everything else in Judaism. And the Talmud interprets the Torah. The other books of the Hebrew Bible, to tell the truth, are somewhat tertiary. Jews won't say that directly, but it is Torah and Talmud (and compilations of what the Talmud means) that are authoritative. The rest of the Hebrew Scriptures are cited to in passing as references for the core of the Traditions.
In short, Judaism is not Protestantism, which is why the Jews were just not so terribly concerned about the exact books of the secondary canon.
But once the Christians started using the later Greek texts of the Septuagint, particularly parts of Maccabbees, Wisdom and Sirach, the Jews did have a good incentive to want to get those books off the table. The polemic between Jews and Christians was quite fierce in the early centuries, so one cannot just accept the Jewish historical argument that the Jewish formulation had nothing to do with the Christian challenge. That is simply not the case. It did.
Now, as to there being no need for a strict canon in old Catholicism, that is largely true, and for reasons that parallel the Judaism of the Temple. Old Catholicism was primarily sacramental. What was important was the sacraments. Those were instituted by God. It was they that brought God to Earth and contained the religious "Magic" so to speak (no, Christians wouldn't use the word "magic", but I can't think of a better word to describe the old Catholic belief in literal supernatural mystic power in the sacraments). Old Catholicism was a sacramental religion of rites and ritual sacrifice, just like Templar Judaism. It was a religion of powerful priests and illiterate peasants, to which the Bible was an adjunct, a source of lessons, parts of which were to be read to the laity at Mass (they could not read it themselves), but it was in no sense the core of the religion. The Old Catholic would have told you that God gave man the Sacraments, and that the Sacraments are what is Holy and Central. The Bible is an aid to the faith of the Sacraments.
There are modern Catholics, like me, who still believe exactly that: the Sacraments are the Catholic religion, and the bones, heart and brain of the revealed religion. It is through the sacraments, only, that God comes directly to earth and is physically present right there to the priest and petitioner. Hence the Catholic...or my version of Catholic...obsession with spiritual cleanliness and purity if one is going to stand in the literally physical presence of God and not be damned for profaning His Name. This old style Catholicism is really the Judaism of the Temple Priests, which was ritualistic, based on sacrifice, believed in the literal physical presence of God, and was not legalistic or particularly intellectual. I think that the Eucharist is the slaughter of lambs, and that the altars of the Catholic Church are the LITERAL continuation of the blood sacrifices of the lambs of the Temple. I think that the Temple stands, and it is the sacrifical Church. My Catholicism is terribly Old, and terribly Templar Jewish in its understanding.
Most Catholics come at Catholicism through Western custom. I come at it as the New Temple of the New Covenant, with the Sacraments as the continuing Sacrifice, and the Pope as the High Priest, and the Bishops as the Sandhedrin. Literally.
Which means I'm crazy, and therefore someone like Tantumergo who is not insane should discuss these things with you.
But since no one else rises to the cause, I guess I shall soldier on for the moment.
Basically I agree with you that there was no need for a really strict canon in either the Old Temple (Templar Judaism) or the New Temple (Catholicism), because God was and is in the sacrifices, and texts were and are quite secondary to all of that. A help, a codification, but subject to interpretation by the priests who are the only ones actually sanctified and purified to stand in the presence of God, touch the things of God, consecrate the sacrifice, be ritually pure, etc.
That said, I see the basic Catholic/Orthodox canon being more or less duplicated by many of the early councils, including Carthage before the Vulgate. Pope Damascus' list corresponded to the modern Canon. Since Catholicism is not based on the Bible for its authority, but based on the authority given to the apostles, you're right that it didn't matter so much...until the Protestant Reformation began to wield the Bible as a weapon of authority against the Templar Church.
The ancient Jewish parallel was the sanctuary at Samaria, where the ONLY sacred text was the Torah. All the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures were rejected as apocryphal. Easy to see why. Read Kings and Chronicles, and one sees condemnation heaped on the Northern Kingdom for schism, with its destruction accounted to the judgment of God. Like Protestants reject the Catholic deuterocanonical works as apocryphal, the Samaritans rejected the rest of the Hebrew scriptures other than the Torah as apocryphal.
All of that being what it is, I basically agree that the issue of what, exactly, constituted the OLD Testament was not all that important until the Protestant Reformation. There are concepts in the deuterocanonical works, such as prayers to cover the sins of the dead, and the inchoate concept of post-death atonement which can be described as the proto-text for the concept of purgatory, also the increase of grace through almsgiving and charitable works, which are very Catholic, and very much not Protestant.
You: "Your right in using the term, “in general use.” Many Jews had to copy the Torah in their lifetime, so there were plenty personal copies and manuscripts available."
True, but of course everybody agrees on the Pentateuch, and Jews always have thought that the Pentateuch is the most authoritative part of all Scripture, so this doesn't tell us anything about the availability of the REST of the Jewish Scriptures beyond the Torah and the Septuagint. Certainly the Apostles and Jesus were quoting the Septuagint when they made references to the "apocrypha", since there was no other source for those texts.
You: "I doubt that the LXX had an organized canon either. Remember, it was taken from Hebrew manuscripts three hundred years or so prior, and if the Jews didn’t have an official listing in Jesus day, there’s not much chance they had one in Egypt 300 years earlier."
I think my point would not be that the Jews had an official listing, but rather that there was a book/collection of books that was available, and the Jews and the Apostles and Jesus all quoted from that which was widely available. For as long as the Temple was up, the sacrifices and the Temple were the pinnacle of the religion, so the issue of freezing a canon was less important. There was still the Sanhedrin and the High Priests to authoritatively rule on all matters of law, etc., so having an authoritative compilation of the legal texts and persuasive authority was less important. Only once the Temple was no more and Judaism had had its very core cut out of it was a new Judaism made based primarily on texts and arguments, and not sacrifice and priestly authority.
You: "The Greek Orthodox kept all 18 of the apocrypha books, but the Catholic Church rejected six of them. If the acid test was how many of the apocrypha you kept, then the Orthodox won hands down. :) Lol"
I actually do find my own argument persuasive, that the Septuagint was "the" Bible, to the extent there was a Bible, in the age of the apostles. Certainly Jesus and the apostles used words and concepts found in the deuterocanonical books. If that is true of the additional books from the Septuagint in the Orthodox Canon, then I am likely to consider them to be authoritative works as well. Orthodox and inspired. I won't call them "canonical", only because that is a legal term with a precise legal meaning. But also the inspired Word of God? Could very well be. This argument is bolstered by the fact that many of the early councils, West and East, in preparing lists of texts included many of the works not found in the Canon of the Council of Trent, but found in the Orthodox Canon. I am inclined to think that the Orthodox Canon more fully contains the Septuagint, and that those books are authoritative, probably inspired, and should be read. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find an Orthodox Bible in English, and the reason I want one is specifically to get those texts translated by men under the authority of Bishops in the Apostolic succession. I have various Protestant Bibles, and my Jewish Torah translations, and I tend to read them in parallel when I look at Biblical passages, to see how the denominational translators skew the language to fit a denominational argument. I personally consider the Catholic translation to be normative because it is under the authority of Bishops in the apostolic succession, and ordained priests of the Holy Ghost, and I don't think that God will let the Church err in its formal translations. When it comes to translations of the Torah, I think the Jews have greater authority in correctly translating Hebrew than anybody else (and I find the Catholic and Jewish translations of the Pentateuch to be the closest in idiom and meaning, unsurprisingly). But there is no Catholic translation of the books contained in the Orthodox Bible that aren't in the Catholic Old Testament. Now, I probably could find them in translation from scholars, etc., but I trust translations more that are made under the protection of the Holy Spirit, by ministers in the Apostolic Succession whom God will not allow to grievously err in transmitting Scripture. And that's why I want an Orthodox Bible in English that has those books.
But I can't find one.
I won't read the books until I find one from the Orthodox, because first impressions are crucial, and I want to start out with a book that is protected by God from error before reading how other folks translate it.
My logic is probably naive and disturbing, but that's how I think and believe.
You: "The apocrypha books took a long time before the church began to see any merit in them, but since the church believed the Septuagint was an added bonus from God to his new church, they kept trying to find some merit in them until they eventually did. As you said, this is another whole story. Lol"
Now, I don't accept this. There are literally hundreds of places where the Apostles and Jesus use language that has its closest OT homologue in the Deuterocanonical work. Indeed, the explicit doctrine of the resurrection of the dead does not appear in the Old Testament until Maccabbees, and that's a central Christian belief and always was. I think that the deuterocanonica, being closest in time to the era of the Apostles and Jesus, and coming within the same ethnic milieu and languages, was particularly widespread and used in the First Century. All of the places that the Apostles and Jesus seem to take ideas from them makes me think this.
Personally, I think that the reason the Protestants reopened the issue of the deuterocanonical works was because some of the books contain the concepts of prayers and alms to atone for the sins of the dead, and the increase of grace through charity. I think that these concepts were particularly offensive to certain Protestant theological concepts, and so the fact that they didn't appear in the Hebrew Canon made it easy for the Protestant Fathers to justify the switch. That Jerome also preferred the Hebrew Canon gave the Protestants a Doctor of the Church and a great authority on which to hang their hat, and they did, and have, as most of the rest of the commentary you made reveals.
In truth, I don't think it is very important, because - as I said above - I think that God comes to earth in the Sacraments, and that the Sacraments are Holy and all that a man needs. The Bible is useful in leading men to faith, but when it leads men to fight about faith and move away from the Sacraments, I think it would be better to avoid the Bible and its disputes rather than turn away from the physical presence of God in the Sacraments He instituted.
Obviously a Protestant MUST see this differently, because his theology places the Bible front and center.
Now, I am not going to argue the point, and I do not mean to offend, but to be truthful, in my own opinion, there is something vaguely idolatrous in the Protestant treatment of the Bible. The Eucharist is literally God. The Bible is not. I don't think it's sound to prefer the Bible over God, and yet the Bible is used to say that the Eucharist is symbolic of God. This, to me, is idolatry, worshipping the Bible, and failing to worship God.
That said, I don't think Protestants go to Hell for it, because I think that it is an innocent error, today, and the grace of God covers all.
I just think it is unfortunate.
I am quite sure that I am going to be spanked hard for the last paragraph, but I mean no offense.
That's the end of your first round of comments, JHavard, and since I still have miles of work to go before I sleep, I think I will postpone my own further comments until tomorrow.
As I said before, thank you for your post, it is interesting. At least it gave me the opportunity to allow the Christians to call me a Judaizer, the Catholics to accuse me of heresy for proclaiming that I think that the additional books in the Orthodox Bible were probably also inspired by God, and the Protestants to be offended by my suspicion that Sola Scriptura is a form of idolatry, with the Bible itself as a graven image.
When I say "No offense intended" to all of this, I don't expect that to be much of a shield, alas.
Namarie.
Re: part two.
Ok, here you really get into Jerome, and I learned quite a bit of the details of history.
As to my comments about Pope Damascus selecting the Canon to be translated, I have read that elsewhere in a couple of places. If what you've written is correct about the disparity in dates between Damascus' selection of the Canon and Jerome's translation, then it would appear that it was successors of Damascus who pressed his selection of Canon on an unwilling Jerome.
I will pass over most of your comments on Jerome and accept that you are presenting his words and a reasonably accurate history here. My comment would be to look at the bigger picture. I have seen Jerome strongly cited to before by Protestants, and I think I understand why now. Here was an ancient Church Father from the Patristic Period whose written arguments about the biblical Canon corresponded to later Protestant arguments. Therefore he's a natural. I doubt that Protestants would take Jerome up on the rest of his theology, thoughts on all of the sacraments, or Mary, for example, but he is a very useful figure for arguing a certain Biblical position.
Now, as to the deuterocanonical, "apocryphal" books all being written in "Chaldee", Jerome is apparently using either Aramaic our outright Chaldean texts. Many of the deuterocanonica may have been originally written in Greek. However, recent archaelogical discoveries, including the Nag Hammuradi (sp.?) finds, have included ancient texts of the deuterocanonica written in Hebrew.
Now, we should remember that there is a considerable difference of degree of intensity about this subject from our two positions. You are a devoted Protestant, for whom the Bible is the central pillar of the religion. Therefore, what books are seen as inspired and what books are not is primordial. If the Catholics are right, or if the Orthodox are right, then up to 18 full books of the inspired Word of God has been lopped off due to human tradition, and the full Word of God has been partly supressed. On the other hand, if the Catholics and Orthodox are wrong, and the Jews were right in choosing the Old Testament Canon, then the Catholics and Orthodox have lapsed into grievous error, from a Protestant perspective, because they have added to the Word of God, and added false and dangerous doctrines thereby.
On the other hand, from my Catholic point of view, it scarcely matters. The core of my faith is the Sacraments inaugurated by God. The Bible, interpreted properly, makes the importance of the Sacraments stand out in sharp relief, but Christianity is just as valid for utter illiterate peasants as for educated people in a post-printing press world...and what makes that so is the Sacraments. So, the Catholic Canon provides ample inspiration. The abridged Protestant Canon does too. Theologians can argue over what is left out in the latter, but from the sacramental perspective, it doesn't make any difference anyway, really. The Orthodox Canon is even more expansive, and provides, no doubt, even more insight if read properly with the proper supervision and explanation of ordained authorities. So, it's not that the Bible is not important, it's that it's not AS important, when you get right down to it, to me as it is to you. It is a part of my religion, a useful body of information, a compendium of God's revelation. But the Sacramental Eucharist on the altar is actually God. Obviously if one believes that, the Eucharist and the related Sacraments overwhelm the Bible and every other thing in terms of importance.
Which doesn't mean it's not worth discussing these things. It's just worthwhile to remember the disconnect, and to remember that in any sort of discussion across the lines of faith between a devout Catholic and a devout Protestant, the pillars of each other's faiths are different enough that it is exceptionally easy to become angry at each other without knowing why.
My third and last reply to your third and last interesting expose on Jerome and the deuterocanonica.
You wrote: "They had corrupted the pure translation he had strived so very hard for, by cramming eighteen apocrypha books in with the inspired canonical books."
I'd say this is conclusory. "Corrupted" and "apocrypha" prejudge the case. If all you've written about Jerome's position is true, and he never changed his mind, the fact that his view did not prevail does not mean the Bible that became the Latin standard was "corrupted" or that the books Jerome called "apocrypha" were apocryphal. It means that Jerome had a strong opinion, and the Church did not ultimately agree and went a different way. I know that YOU and the Protestants agree with Jerome and disagree with the Church, but that does not mean that you're right. It just means that you agree with Jerome.
In the grand hierarchy of authorities, there were Church Councils and Popes that produced canons of Scripture. Not all of those Councils agreed with each other on the canon, but one thing in common in all of the concilar canons was the presence of some deuterocanonical works. No Church Council and no Pope agreed with Jerome's position of accepting the Hebrew canon and rejecting ALL of the deuterocanonical works. He had a strong opinion, apparently. And that's what it was. But Jerome was by no means the only scholar of Scripture who ever lived in the early Catholic Church, and he was by no means the only man in the Church whom the Holy Spirit guided to produce the canon of the Bible. If Jerome really was fixed in his opinion to the bitter end, on that detail it was Jerome against whole councils of the Church and Popes. I see no discernible reason to think that Jerome was right and they all were wrong.
You wrote: "However Jesus never quoted from an apocrypha book one time, so it’s doubtful they were in the Septuagint of that day."
Now here, I have to strongly disagree. When I look in my Bible and see the cross references, there are plenty of them cross referencing Jesus and the pertinent passages in the deuterocanonica. There is a nice website that I'll go fish up that lists over a hundred references in the New Testament to the deuterocanonica. As is often the case, cross references can be made between SEVERAL books of the OT and a passage in the NT. In certain cases, however, the exact parallel language of what the apostle or Jesus said is found in the deuterocanonica, with the referenced passages in the other parts of the OT being less directly on point. I am persuaded by these cross references and similarities that Jesus and the Apostles treated at least some of the deuterocanonica just like any other piece of Scripture, and did not make the distinction we are making here by calling these books "deuterocanonical" (or certainly "apocryphal"!)
You've got more of a dog in this fight than I do, so I'll just post the website link tomorrow, and let you go and try to debunk it if you must.
You: "Do you believe they had the apocrypha books in their collection of literature, but threw them all away because the Christians were now using them to………………….what? If the Jews had wanted them, of felt they were inspired, why wouldn’t they have kept them for themselves? It seems obvious they meant nothing to them, just as Jerome felt."
I think, based on reading Josephus, that the Jews were divided into at least three strongly divergent philosophical mindsets: Pharisee, Sadducee and Essene, as well as divided by social class, with the Cohanite priesthood standing at the top. The Pharisees, the philosophical adversaries of Jesus and the Apostles, were not in charge until after the destruction of the Temple (and with it, the Cohanite dominance and the Sadduccees). I think that the Essenes and folks who thought like them, by contrast, probably were the Jews who more than anyone else embraced Christianity, which is why they disappear quite suddenly from history. When the Pharisees took control of Judaism after the destruction of the Temple, the priests and the Sadduccee leadership, there were philosophical, intellectual and religious rivals within Judaism, but none more prominent, vocal, or dangerous (from the Pharisee perspective) than the Christians (Essenes?). The Pharisees were also staunch nationalists in a jingoistic sense. The deuterocanonical works' cardinal sin may have been that they were not believed to have been originally written in Hebrew. That Pharisaic Judaism ascendant had xenophobic notions of ethno-religious purity does not mean that God didn't inspire the books written in Greek and Aramaic. (After all, God did inspire the Greek New Testament, right?) It means that xenophobic, Pharisaic Jews would not accept anything not written in Hebrew, and ancient, as having any authority. Note that the whole story of Channukah is not found in the Hebrew Bible. You have to read Maccabbees, in the Catholic or Orthodox Bible, to get the story.
You: "Jesus was a Hebrew, and He read and taught from the Hebrew scrolls in the synagogue, so if the Temple and the synagogue didn’t use them, why would Jesus or his disciples since they followed the traditions of the Jews?"
Again, I think we have to be very careful about what we assert about the First Century. Jesus was a Jew. That does not mean that he spoke Hebrew, or that the scrolls that were being read in synagogues were written in Hebrew. The languages of First Century Palestine were Aramaic and Greek, and the Peshitta (Aramaic translation of the Scriptures) and midrashim from the era are written in Aramaic, not Hebrew. Of course after the destruction of the Temple and the arch-nationalist Jewish revolt of the late 60's, and then again in the 120's, the surviving Jews became adamantly, belligerently, xenophobically Hebrew, and focused on a nationalistic return to roots. We do know that much. But the indications from Josephus and others, from decades earlier, when the Temple was still up and still the center of Jewish life, do not let us so blithely conclude that the synagogues of 30 AD were like the virulently Hebrew and nationalist synagogues of 130 AD, or the forcibly Hebrew synagogues of 2004.
The scrolls Jesus read from in the synagogues MIGHT have been Aramaic Peshitta. We do not know, and we cannot know, the linguistic complexion of Jesus' teaching or any particular synagogic practice in Palestine in 30 AD. And we certainly cannot simply accept at face value the nationalistic retrojections of later centuries. Remember, the same traditions that might insist everything was in Hebrew also contain the lovely information that Jesus was the son of a Roman soldier named Ben Pantera. Now, if you believe in the virgin birth and reject that nasty little bit of nationalist propaganda, then you can't just blithely accept the argument of the same nationalists that focused on Hebrew purity. That was their desiderata, but it doesn't mean it was so.
As far as Jesus and his disciples not using the so-called aprocrypha, the site I will provide giving the 100+ references to the deuterocanonica in the New Testament is to me a pretty persuasive argument that actually Jesus and his disciples DID use these books.
You: "I had believed as you, that since the Catholics made such a roar over the apocrypha books, it must be because they were in the Septuagint, and so the Septuagint must be where their Bible came from."
No, Catholics don't make much a roar about the deuterocanonica, or any other books of the Bible for that matter. Catholicism is focused on the sacraments. It's the Protestants that are focused on a Sola Scriptura approach to Christianity, using the Bible. In discussions with Protestants, Catholics bring up the deuterocanonical books as a pointed challenge to the Protestant assertions, because what Catholics are really challenging is the AUTHORITY by which Protestants make their claims, or shortened the Bible. A Catholic would say what I said in response to your citing Jerome: Jerome was one guy with an opinion. A saint, to be sure, but just one guy on that score. Councils of Bishops and the Pope decided otherwise, and they have the authority given them by God to do so. Jerome differed with those appointed by God to make the decisions. Therefore, Jerome lacked authority, and was wrong, and the Pope and the Councils were right, by definition. Exactly what you might do with the Bible, opening a passage and saying "Vicomte, you are wrong because it says here...", a Catholic would do concerning Jerome and all that. The Pope and the Councils said this. God does not permit the Church to err on transmitting the faith. Therefore, Jerome was wrong because the Pope and Councils said so. End of argument. That is as satisfying to the Catholic mind as a good passage of Scripture might be to the Protestant mind. Obviously when we try to talk to each other, there will be a lot of talking past each other...which doesn't mean we cannot learn from the other.
Catholics bring up the deuterocanonica when talking with Protestants because it's the sort of argument that, to the Catholic mind, ends the arguments completely. By what AUTHORITY did Luther abridge the Bible? Bringing up Sirach is really a challenge to the authority of the Protestant approach to religion, not a desire to actually discuss the contents of Sirach.
The deuterocanonica WERE in the Septuagint. The question is whether or not the Septuagint is properly the Christian Canon. Catholics and the Orthodox say yes. Protestants say no. There is no resolution to the issue, because neither accepts the other's basis of authority in the claim.
So, what do we make of all that today, in the here and now?
Well, I say, if we're smart, we don't as Christians shoot into the circle of friends. We'll find out in Heaven who was exactly right on each doctrinal point...or more likely, we'll find out how off the mark we ALL were. But the more important point is that we'll BE in Heaven, despite our differing approaches to Tobit and Jerome. I think it's more important we not lose sight of that, and keep our powder dry to face the onslaught of evil that besets us in the world.
JHavard, your discussion was interesting. I appreciate the details on Jerome, and will provide you that link tomorrow.
Thank you, and I've enjoyed your imput also. Unless there's one particular subject that you'd like to follow up on, I'll just summerize these last post with a few questions on subjects that still don't make sense, and perhaps you can enlighten me.
Do you finally agree that the Catholic Church official Latin Vulgate Bible was translated from the Hebrew text?
Do you agree that there are five apocryphal/deutero books in the Catholic Bibles, that were not approved by the Council of Trent, 1546ad?
1, Additions to Esther
2, The epistle of Jeremiah, the last chapter in Baruch
3, Susanna (in Daniel)
4, Bel and the Dragon (in Daniel)
5, Prayer of Three Children) (in Daniel)
Did you read the history from the Catholic Encyclopedia about Bellermine the Jesuit bishop, and Pope Clement, and all the lies and hypocrisy that went on over the Bible?
Its obvious that the Catholic Church places its traditions over the Bibles written word.
You admit the Bible is no longer the authority in your Church, even though several of your popes were also sola scripturist.
The question is, why, when we debate your doctrine with other Catholic, they desperately try to prove the legitimacy of their claims by using the Bible, which they also claim has no authority over your traditions?
Why the facade that you hold the Bible to such a high regard, and pretend you received your authority from it?
Why won't Catholics be honest, and admit that most of their doctrine is founded on secret traditions, and it's no one's business that they can't be proven from the Bible?
Why do they debate us, when in their hearts they are saying, because we're Catholics, the oldest Christian Church in the world, we don't need your damn approval on anything, and we're right because we said so.IPSE DIXIT
Maybe I’ll think of a few others later on. If you can think of any dishonesty or hypocracy in the non- Catholic Churches, I’d be interested in hearing what they are.
Oh, one more thing, you mentioned that Catholics look at our use of the Bible as though it’s idolatry, and we worship it as a God.
I audibly laughed when I thought about how Catholics kneel and pray toward statues, and kiss feet and relics, and rings, and have icons and crosses and beads and idolize anything or anyone that gives them a good feeling, but it bothers you that in order for us to read Gods written word, we have to hold the Bible in front of our face, you somehow see this as idolatry. Go Figger, LOL
JH :)
Ugh. Another long list of questions to respond to.
I will try, although I expect that my responses will do nothing but elicit further indigestion.
You: "Do you finally agree that the Catholic Church official Latin Vulgate Bible was translated from the Hebrew text?"
Do I admit it? No. The official Latin Vulgate Bible also contained all of the deuterocanonical works (as well as the New Testament, which is not from any Hebrew text, but I know what you mean). You have taught me that Jerome didn't make the translations of most of the deuterocanonica, so they were translated by someone else to become part of the official Latin Vulgate Bible. Apparently the official Latin Vulgate Bible was not synonymous with Jerome's translation.
As to the texts that Jerome used, I seriously doubt he just used the Hebrew text. Jerome was a great scholar. He probably consulted plenty of overlapping texts, including the Septuagint and Origen's Hexalpa. If he preferred the Hebrew Text, I'd expect he used it as a tie breaker when there were differences. Alternatively, perhaps when he did his actual translation, for the Old Testament he sat down with just the Hebrew Text, but that would only be because his earlier scholarship had already done the winnowing process described above, and he had already made the call based on that that he preferred the Hebrew text.
I am no different. While I have several bibles from different religions, which I use to get a sense of how different sectarian theologians approach their translation to key points of Scripture, when I am reading for my own edification [as opposed to when dragged into an argument by some terrible Protestant ;) ] I only use the New American Bible, because I prefer the modern English idiom, and find the cross references and commentaries interesting.
You: Do you agree that there are five apocryphal/deutero books in the Catholic Bibles, that were not approved by the Council of Trent, 1546ad?
1, Additions to Esther
2, The epistle of Jeremiah, the last chapter in Baruch
3, Susanna (in Daniel)
4, Bel and the Dragon (in Daniel)
5, Prayer of Three Children) (in Daniel)
No. 1&2 Maccabbees, Wisdom, Sirach, Judith and Tobit also all come to mind as deuterocanonica (what you'd call "apocrypha") which are in the Bible. I don't know if those were approved at Trent or not (and frankly don't care, since if not, they've been approved since, and the Popes since Trent have the same authority as the Pope at Trent and the Popes before Trent to state what the faith is). It may be what you are getting at is that the other deuterocanonica were approved at Trent, but these particular "additions" to books already in the Bible were not.
I suspect that something different was going on.
All the books you've mentioned are parts of other books.
Now, of course, the Protestants subtracted out those books and called them apocrypha, and perhaps Jerome would have agreed with them (then again, perhaps not...I don't know, and really don't care what Jerome thought. He's an interesting guy, but by no means the final authority on what the Bible is, in my book). I rather suspect that if Trent did not mention these things, it is because Trent included the books themselves as being in the Canon. And since Catholics are not Protestants and had considered these parts of the books to be integral parts of those books for centuries, since the beginning in some cases, I wouldn't expect them to make a special mention of chapters of certain books as being in the Canon. When a Catholic said "Daniel" in 1500, or 1400, or 1000, he meant the Book of Daniel as it appears in the Catholic Bible, including Bel and the Dragon and all that. Obviously a Protestant doesn't. But Trent was not peopled by Protestants, but by Catholic clergy, who probably meant what Catholics mean by Daniel, or Esther, or Jeremiah...which is to say the complete texts, with all of the parts that a Protestant would say are apocryphal. It would not be normal for a Catholic theologian to make a distinction between the different parts of a book, since as far as the Church is concerned, it's all one book.
There's a website that contains all of the pronouncements of all 21 of the Councils of the Church that the Catholic Church calls Ecumenical (the Orthodox don't call those after the 7th Ecumenical, because they weren't there). I suppose you could prove my assumption that the Council of Trent meant all of Daniel, all of Esther and all of Jeremiah when they wrote "Daniel", "Esther" and "Jeremiah" as parts of the canon is wrong. You are welcome to do so. For my part, because it barely matters to me either way, going back and mucking around in 16th Century conciliar records sounds like an unenjoyable way to spend time and consume oxygen.
You: "Did you read the history from the Catholic Encyclopedia about Bellermine the Jesuit bishop, and Pope Clement, and all the lies and hypocrisy that went on over the Bible?"
No. I am certain that there have always been pistols among the clergy. I assume that God did not let the writers of the Bible err as to what he meant to say when they wrote the sacred Scriptures, and I likewise assume that God did not let the Church err and fail to transmit what he wanted to transmit. Similarly, I assume that God does not let the Church's translators err, and that the translated Catholic Bible, in English, is just as much the inerrant word of God as the oldest manuscripts in Hebrew and Greek, because God is with the Church and won't let the Church make an error like that. Therefore, exploring the vices and bad tempers of the men whom God used to get from there to here seems like dwelling on sin as opposed to just trusting that God didn't let sinful men misappropriate his Scriptures.
You: "Its obvious that the Catholic Church places its traditions over the Bibles written word."
No, that's not it. Rather, the Bible is a key part of the written Tradition of the Church. The Bible is important, because God expressed His will therein, inerrantly. The Councils of the Church, including the Councils of the Church that decided what exactly the Bible is, are important, because God expressed His will through them, inerrantly. Bible and Church are not separate. The Bible is part of the Tradition of the Church. It can no more be separated from the Church and have meaning than a diary can be meaningfully separated from its autobiographical author.
You: "You admit the Bible is no longer the authority in your Church, even though several of your popes were also sola scripturist."
No, I don't "admit" that. The Bible is important. But it is not a law book. It is a record. It is a source of inspiration. The Sacraments are the center of the Church. The Bible and other Church records are the story of how the Sacraments got there, where they came from, what they mean. The Catholic Church is not BUILT ON the Bible, but on the Apostles and their Acts. The Bible came out of the Church several centuries after the Church had been doing that, and it was compiled by the Church to assist in its mission. Jesus left a Church and Sacraments to draw close to God, not a Bible dispensary.
You: "The question is, why, when we debate your doctrine with other Catholic, they desperately try to prove the legitimacy of their claims by using the Bible, which they also claim has no authority over your traditions?"
The Bible is part of the Traditions. Think of the Bill of Rights. The 1st Amendment does not supersede the 4th, nor the 4th the 1st. First and Fourth Amendments have to be read together, along with the rest of the Constitution, to get the Constitution. And even then, to know what the Constitution means in application, you need the Supreme Court. The Traditions of the Church are the Constitution. The Bible is the Bill of Rights. The Church is the Supreme Court. The Pope is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. All the parts of the Church: Bible, Council, Pope, are protected from error on fundamental matters of faith and morals by the direct power of God.
Catholics debate Scripture with you for two reasons.
One is that Scripture is a repository of Catholic faith. The Bible is not external to the Church - it's the Church's own diary, and the Church understands what it meant when it composed and compiled the different pieces of the Bible, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. So, educated Catholics understand that Scripture is important and use it accordingly.
The other reason is less edifying. In America in particular, there are a lot of Catholics who want to out-Protestant the Protestants and play Sola Scriptura. The problem with that, of course, is that the marrow of Protestantism is the Scriptures (coupled with their own interpretive traditions of the Scriptures, which few Protestants will admit to having).
I never play this game. Rather, I point to the places where the Scriptures conflict with themselves, or where they are just flat out wrong. Example: Jesus says that the smallest seed is the mustard seed. That's absurd. Jesus is quite wrong. There are lots of seeds smaller than mustard seeds. So, does this mean that the Bible utterly collapses? Well, if I were to play Scripture Alone, and have to take everything absolutely literally, I could say "Yup". Jesus is supposed to be God, but he got a basic feature of botanical reality wrong. So he must not have really been God after all, huh? Of course, nobody does that. They say, correctly, that Jesus is speaking to a crowd in a parable, and making a POINT. His point is not a botanical lesson, but to talk about something really, really small that sprouts into a great plant. Obviously that's what he meant. We all agree. But that ain't Sola Scriptura. That's interpretive reading, taking the literal word and, upon finding that it cannot be taken literally, interpreting it allegorically.
Clearly there is nothing wrong with that.
Another case: did the cock crow once, twice or thrice during Peter's denials of Jesus? These little details do not change the story, but they DO mean that the accounts cannot be taken word-for-word literally, because word-for-word literally, they directly conflict, and one has to be wrong, and then you have error in the inerrant Word of God.
So, there is interpretive license.
Now, Sola Scripturist Protestants will say that this interpretation, to make the Bible make sense and hang together, is itself Sola Scriptura, but then we run into further problems.
Jesus was wrong, in a strict botanical sense, about the mustard seed. But we all agree that this does not matter.
Well, then, why does the fact that Genesis is obviously an allegory, and the Earth is obviously a lot older than 6000 years, and the evidence of evolution, create such anger and religious bellicosity? There are seeds smaller than the mustard seed, and man descended from primates all under the direction of God. What's the big deal? And why the difference in treatment between the two? Why must ONE thing be taken allegorically, to save Jesus from being wrong, but Genesis be taken absolutely literally? Based on WHAT, in the BIBLE ALONE, does one decide that Jesus is speaking allegorically, but Genesis 1 and 2 have to be taken utterly word-for-word literally?
Based on nothing. The different interpretive approaches are examples of interpretive decisions and traditions within Protestantism itself. Protestants will rarely ADMIT that they have traditions that determine how one may read different passages, but they do. Worse, Genesis 1 conflicts with Genesis 2. So, were Adam and Eve made on the 6th day, after the green plants, per Genesis 1? Or was Adam made before the green plants and sitting on a dusty empty world that God made green for him, per Genesis 2? Again, there are ways to get around this problem with allegory and metaphor, but the Bible does not say what those ways are. The maneuvers one uses to get around the problem are very stylized, and vary by religion. They too are traditions.
The Catholics say: science tells us man evolved and the earth is old. Adam and Eve is a sacred poem on Creation.
But some Protestants say that Genesis must be taken absolutely literally...but not the mustard seed.
Protestants use their traditions of Bible interpretation to make the tacks and jibes necessary for it to all hang together, which is great, but it's different from the way Catholics use the book.
You: "Why the facade that you hold the Bible to such a high regard, and pretend you received your authority from it?"
What facade? The Bible is the inspired Word of God. The Church was made by God. The Sacraments are the literal presence of God. God does not trump God. It's all God. Protestants say that of those three, only the Bible is God. Catholics do not pretend to have receive their authority from the Bible. A more precise statement of Catholicism is that the Church and its Sacraments were given to man by God, protected from error in constitution by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Bible was given by God to man through the Church, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Protestants would say that the Bible must be read in a way that does not cause it to conflict with itself because it is all the inspired Word of God. Catholics would say that the Bible, the Sacraments, and the Church must be read together in ways that do not cause any element to conflict with any other element, because it is all the Inspired Word of God. Catholics believe that Sacraments, Church and Bible are all infallibly from God. And so Catholics believe that it is always error to read the Bible in a way that denigrates the Catholic Church or the Sacraments, because God cannot oppose God. Protestantism was FOUNDED on the idea of using the Bible to counter the Church. Obviously this is not possible under Catholic theology. Because Church and Bible and Sacraments all three are inerrant expressions of God's will.
You: "Why won't Catholics be honest, and admit that most of their doctrine is founded on secret traditions, and it's no one's business that they can't be proven from the Bible?"
Because that wouldn't be honest. There is nothing secret about Catholic traditions. I just laid it out for you. Catholics believe that the Sacraments were given by God, and therefore are necessary and cannot be challenged. Catholics believe that the Church was made by God, and that God protects the Church with the Holy Spirit so that the Church is the infallible Word of God. Catholics believe the same thing about the Bible. And they believe that all three things mutually support. Therefore, Catholics believe that any interpretation of the Bible that challenges the other Holy expressions of God: Church and Sacraments, is by definition error. The Church cannot err any more than the Bible can, because both are the inspired Word of God. That isn't secret. It's repulsive, of course, to the Protestant way of looking at things anyway.
You: "Why do they debate us, when in their hearts they are saying, because we're Catholics, the oldest Christian Church in the world, we don't need your damn approval on anything, and we're right because we said so. IPSE DIXIT"
Well, there are Catholics who do that. They do it because human beings are belligerent creatures who like to argue. They do it for the same reason that you cast all of your questions in a sharp, pointed and sarcastic tone: because they - like you - think that they're right. I think that wise Catholics should refrain from that sort of thing, because it's just pointless. Worse, it sows dissension, anger and even hatred among the faithful. There are bigger fish to fry...real, diabolical evil in the world...than each other. Protestants don't agree with each other about most things. And they don't agree with Catholics. And read the Catholics on this site tearing each other's heads off, and one quickly sees how effective the Devil has been at using human bile to wreck the necessary unity of God's People.
The Cathechism says that Protestants and the Orthodox can go to heaven. It's not because the Catechism says it that they can, but because God says so. But the Catechism correctly represents God's position. There are Sola Scripturists of Catholic and Protestant stripe who will scream that the Cathechism is wrong, and that the damned heathens in the Church next door don't are going to fry in Hell, because they interpret lines of Scripture or sacred traditions a bit differently. But all these folks who believe this are full of it. Not only that, they're going to be surprised after their death to find all of those former Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Sikhs in Heaven. Presumably up there, at least, we'll all share the same religion...but if our basic characters pass through the to other side, it could be that the native bile and stubbornness of man means that there's religious difference among men in heaven. I doubt it, but the DESIRE to chap each other's hide seems to be one of the greater pleasures of the species...are we to be deprived of the joy of rancorous anger in Heaven?
You: "Maybe I’ll think of a few others later on. If you can think of any dishonesty or hypocracy in the non- Catholic Churches, I’d be interested in hearing what they are."
I don't like to focus on the motes in others' eyes. I think that most evangelical Protestant faiths are sincere. Further, they are obviously inspired by the Holy Spirit, because they are doing a better job of bringing adults to God in droves than either the Catholics or the Orthodox. So who am I to undermine the work of the Holy Spirit. I have little good to say, however, about denominational leaders who are ordaining openly gay bishops, who trumpet homosexual marriage as a Christian good, and who proudly stand, as Christian denominations, in favor of the murder of the unborn. I make a sharp distinction between the Evangelicals, who are obviously inspired by God, and whose scandals resemble Catholic scandals: some minister who can't keep his dick in his pants (though I observe that evangelical sins, at least, tend to be heterosexual slips among adults, while the pedophilic homosexual acts of fallen priests are of a different degree of revoltingness in my eyes). But the sins of some of the older mainline liberal Protestants seem like frank eruptions of the Devil, causing the monetary and power corruption that existed in the Catholic Church back in the 1500s that helped bring on the Reformation to look like choirboy pranks by comparison. How can a Christian Church preach abortion as a Christian right?
Many Protestant sects do. Now, that is serious evil. That's the outbreak of the Devil. Those clergy that are doing that - I don't want to negotiate or understand them. I want them to repent and leave the cloth. By contrast, the Evangelicals are doing the work of Jesus. Hopefully they end up marrying nice Catholic girls and we can get their kids regularized through baptism. Evangelism by Baptists isn't leading people astray. It's bringing the wicked and lost back to Jesus in a way that touches them in their condition. But those Protestant Churches that preach abortion and gay marriage from the pulpit: that IS leading people astray. Their faithful need to leave and join another Church. Preferably Catholicism or Orthodoxy, but if they can't stomach our ancient ways, then at least the Baptists who are not wallowing in the error of sanctifying sin!
You: "Oh, one more thing, you mentioned that Catholics look at our use of the Bible as though it’s idolatry, and we worship it as a God."
I was needling you, of course. Holding the Bible above the Sacraments and the Church is like holding the book of Isaiah above the rest of the Bible and saying that everything must be interpreted solely in terms of this, and everything that conflicts with this is wrong. That's making an idol out of Isaiah. Sola Scriptura makes a sort of an idol out of the Bible. But that's my opinion. I don't think that evangelicals who do it think that's what they're doing, and I do think it all works out alright in the end. But hey, there are Protestants out there who call the Catholic Church the Whore of Babylon, so why not toss around a couple of inflammatory statements of my own, just for the Hell of it (literally)? Jesus promised us that he'd forgive us our blasphemies so long as we didn't blaspheme the Holy Spirit. I'm hoping that that part, at least, is literally what God meant. I need to rely on a dispensation.
You: "I audibly laughed when I thought about how Catholics kneel and pray toward statues, and kiss feet and relics, and rings, and have icons and crosses and beads and idolize anything or anyone that gives them a good feeling, but it bothers you that in order for us to read Gods written word, we have to hold the Bible in front of our face, you somehow see this as idolatry. Go Figger, LOL"
No, it's not the holding up of the book that I say is idolatry. It's saying that the book is above God, whose visible body on Earth is the Catholic Church, and who is actually visible in the Sacraments...this is vaguely idolatrous. But I'll stop using the word in a serious conversation, because of that blaspheming the Holy Spirit business. The Bible IS the inspired Word of God, along with the Church and the Sacraments. And the Holy Spirit is obviously with the evangelicals as well as the Orthodox and the Catholics. Who am I to deny the obvious movement of God in the world through evangelical conversions?
The trick is figuring out how to bring all us Christians back into the fold.
And I already said the answer: Calvin hasn't got a prayer in competition with a pretty Catholic girl. And then the baby gets sealed by God in baptism and we've got him. The husband? Well, he ends up being a lifelong pain in the ass about religion to his Catholic wife. Like you. Right?
Basically, anyone who is incapable of learning is invincibly ignorant. This applies to those who have not yet attained the age of reason or have attained the age of reason yet due to some mental disorder or other impediment to learning, renders them unable, through no fault of their own, to advance in any type of knowledge. Those invincibly ignorant, provided they are baptized, will, without a doubt, get to heaven.
Liberal Catholics too often mis-apply "Invincible Ignorance" to basically all non-Catholics, which is of course heresy. They also apply "Invincible Ignorance" whole heartedly to the "ignorant native", which is also error.
Pre-Vatican 2, we were taught that all un-baptized infants and children who die before the age of reason go to Limbo and that all unbaptized adults go to Hell.
If we are to believe the words of Our Lord as defined by the Councils, including Florence and Trent, then we are bound to believe that God's mercy is repeatedly demonstrated in our regeneration through Baptism with water and not in His automatic dissmisal of the necessary requirements for our convenience.
The words of Our Lord mean what they say in Mark 16:16 He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned. So 100% actually do get sent to Hell, merely for lack of belief.
Invincible Ignorance is one thing, plain old ordinary everyday ignorance is another - and ignorance ain't no virtue.
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