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Your New Testament was changed by Luther and does not have all the books. That really is too bad for you guys and gals.

Don't apologize for us...Luther's bible was created from the 'Majority Texts', something your church avoided...

Luther took the 'lock' off the scriptures and made them available to the world...Without Luther, you wouldn't have a bible to read in a language you could understand...

Don't apologize for us...Luther's bible was created from the 'Majority Texts', something your church avoided...

The better question is: Which books of the Old Testament did the Apostles accept as Scripture? Did they accept the 46 books as in the Catholic Douay-Rheims Bible or the 39 books as in the King James version?

The Septuagint was accepted among the Hellenistic sect of Judaism (of which St. Paul was a member) and this canon did indeed include the same Old Testament books as the present-day Catholic Bible. In addition, the entire New Testament was written in Greek (Hellenist) with the exception of the Gospel of St. Matthew, which was written in Aramaic (the language spoken by Christ). Over 85% of the quotes from the Old Testament that are used in the New Testament are from the Septuagint.

The Palestinian Old Testament canon was not compiled until between 70-90 A.D. and then, it was done so by the non-Christian Jews in violent reaction to early Judeo-Christianity. The Palestinian canon was the one chosen by Martin Luther based on the acceptance of it by the 16th century German-Jewish community of Luther's time. This canon excludes the seven books that were accepted by the Apostles as Scripture. Why was the canon of the Protestant Old Testament decided by Jews and not Christians? In addition, why did Luther attempt to eliminate the Book of St. James and the Book of Revelation? Is it because the first contradicted his dogma of "faith alone" as opposed to grace, faith and works "combined?" And the second book proving the Catholic Church's stance on nothing "impure" entering into Heaven therefore "necessitating" purgation ?

(On a personal note, I have to run some errands but will be back to this thread later)

Luther took the 'lock' off the scriptures and made them available to the world...Without Luther, you wouldn't have a bible to read in a language you could understand...

Total myth. Between the 7th and 14th Centuries, the Bible was available in at least a dozen vernacular languages. The main reason Bibles were not so widespread is because of the cost of making one. In the days before the prining press, Bibles were written by hand and were extremely expensive to produce.

Every Church had one for use in the Liturgy and possibly one more for public use. They were chained down to prevent theft of such an expensive item.

Of course, the invention of the printing press changed all that. The printing press was invented in 1454, before Luther even was born. The printing press not only allowed the Bible to become more accessible and affordable, it also allowed the supply to catch up to the demand for Bibles in the vernacular.

From one website on the topic, I find these statistics for vernacular editions (not copies) of the Bible, all before Luther brought the Bible "to the Masses":

20 in Italian, 26 in French, 19 Flemish, 2 in Spanish, 6 in Bohemian, 1 in Slavish, and 30 in German, for example the German Strasbourg translation published in 1466. To these editions of the whole Bible, must be added 94 printings of single sections, in the dialects of Europe. Besides these editions in the vernacular, there were 62 editions in Hebrew such as the 1477 Bologna Hebrew translation, 22 in Greek, and 343 in Latin, a language known to all the educated classes.