The Septuagint Old Testament Translation verses the Jamnian

The Septuagint Old Testament Translation verses the Jamnian (Palestinian) and Massoretic Old Testament translations

Is the Catholic Old Testament Accurate? Why is it different from the Jewish Old Testament and Protestant translations?

The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament formulated by the 72 best Hebrew scholars using the oldest and most perfect scrolls of sacred scripture circa 250BC, was used universally by Jews at the time Jesus preached the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. It was the principal scriptural translation that Jesus and the Apostles used (probably along with its Aramaic translations) in referring to Old Testament passages. When Jesus read from prophecy in the synagogue, it was the Septuagint translation of Isaiah that He read from in Luke 4:16-21, and when He said, “search through Scripture” in John 5:39, He meant the Greek translation Septuagint!

The events and teachings recorded in the books of the Septuagint, St. Augustine explained, were events and teachings “That were observed and celebrated in obedience to the Law.” He went on to write that they “were by the way of prior announcement of Christ who was to come.” The Church naturally adopted the Septuagint as the only inspired Testament to Christ’s nature and mission as promised by the Old Covenant. To this day, the Septuagint is the sole and official canon of the Church’s Old Testament, and when the Septuagint is compared with other Old Testament translations against the Old Testament manuscripts discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls it is amazing to discover that it is more faithful to the ancient text than any other translations including the Jewish Old Testament translation, the Tanach.

In 66AD the Roman occupied province of Judea rose up against the power of its Roman oppressors. The Roman Empire responded with characteristic ferocity. In 70AD the Roman army conquered Jerusalem and set fire to the Holy Temple, which was utterly destroyed. Of course, God’s people no longer needed a Temple to worship the One True God. We now had immediate access to God through Jesus Christ as our Savior. Before the revolt thousands of Jews had converted to Christianity and during the revolt more than a million Jews had been killed by the Romans, with most of the survivors sold into slavery. The Jewish Rabbis were desperate to save their Old Covenant faith but with the death of almost all the priestly families and the destruction of the Temple [the only place where sacrifice to Yahweh could be offered] they would have to re-invent the Jewish faith. Jochanan ben Zakkai, one of the great surviving Jewish scholars, took other scholars, rabbis and scribes with him to the village of Jamnia where they settled and began to assess the situation. The surviving rabbis were determined to fight Christianity and to preserve the “sacred trust”, as they understood it.

The surviving Jewish scholars needed to develop a new form of Judaism that would unite all Jews, at least until the Temple could be rebuilt, and to somehow undercut the Christian claims of the divinity of Jesus and His identity as the long awaited Messiah. During this time the rabbis responded to the use by Christians of the prophetic passages in Septuagint to prove Jesus was indeed the Messiah by assembling a completely new Greek version of Jewish scripture. The reinterpretation and reinventing of Judaism at Jamnia at the close of the first century AD was heavily influenced by rabbis who were particularly zealous enemies of Christianity (Acts 5:17-19). By this time the Greek translation known as the Septuagint had become an anathema to them because it was being successfully used by Christians to proselytize Jews. In order to undermine the Christian claim that Jesus was the Messiah they rewrote the prophetic texts that Christians used as proof of the Messiahship and divinity of Christ. One of them for example, a scholar named Aquila, removed the word parthenos = virgin form Isaiah 7:14 and rewrote the passage as neanis = young woman, so that the passage now read “…a young woman shall conceive” instead of “the virgin shall conceive.” This deception allowed them to assert that the prophecy didn’t match what the Christians were teaching about the very nature of Christ. It was easy for them to get away with this rewriting of sacred scripture because the Romans had been so thorough in their destruction of sacred texts that very few survived, and those that did survive were in the hands of the Jamnian scholars.

While the Jamnian Palestinian canon (still written in the Greek language) may have been composed in good faith in an attempt to save Judaism, it was really a fabrication, in the sense of being a set of texts purposefully changed and then presented as if it was the genuine ancient version which was eventually retranslated back into Hebrew by the Massoretic scholars in the early Middle Ages. It is profoundly different from the original text of the Greek Septuagint, which is the Old Testament of the Catholic Church.

As Christianity exploded out of Palestine and into Syria and Asia Minor it was difficult for the Church to produce copies fast enough of the Septuagint translated into the various common spoken languages of new Christians. As a result, errors crept into the manuscripts by the late fourth century. “I am not so ignorant as to suppose that any of the Lord’s words are in need of correction,” St. Jerome complained, “but the Latin books are proved to be faulty by the discrepancies that they all exhibit among themselves.”

To solve this problem, Pope St. Damasus sent St Jerome out into the desert near Bethlehem with the task of making a complete standard Latin translation, corrected from beginning to end and compared carefully against the best surviving Hebrew and Aramaic texts as well as against oldest Greek texts. Jerome was the most learned biblical scholar of his time. He knew more about Hebrew Scriptures than anyone else alive -- even the Jewish scholars, who had begun working on a Hebrew translation of the Old Testament from the Greek (a Hebrew Jewish Bible no longer existed), used to visit Jerome and consult with him when they had questions. St. Jerome is still regarded as an authority among Jewish scholars today because he alone preserved many pre-Jamnian texts that had been destroyed. He completed his work after only 35 years in 426AD. His translation is called the Vulgate because it is written in the “vulgar” or common language, the non-classical Latin that the common people spoke. For more than a thousand years this was the only Bible translation that Christians used.

As Christianity continued to gain ground, Jewish scholars decided it was time to re-translate the Sacred Texts back into Hebrew. It wasn’t until the early Middle Ages that a translation back into Hebrew was completed. This translation omitted 7 books and parts of Daniel and Esther that were included in both the Septuagint and the later Greek Old Testament translation. This re-translation back into the original tongue of the Old Covenant people is known as the Masoretic Texts and is named for the German Jewish scholars known as the Masorites who produced the Hebrew text. It was decided at that time that only those books whose copies were available in the Hebrew language would be accepted into the Jewish canon. The result changed Judaism forever [however, a Hebrew text of Tobit was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls!]

The Protestant Reformation in the 16th century spawned many translations of Sacred Scripture in the common language of western European nations but the Protestant scholars did not use Jerome’s translation. Instead, for their Old Testament translations, they consulted the reworked Jewish Masoretic texts which were finally completed circa 800 AD. Of course, in many ways it fitted their theology better than the Catholic texts. Most Protestants rejected the existence of Purgatory so they disposed of Maccabees I and II like the Massoretic scholars (which is quite amazing when you consider that the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah celebrates an event only recorded in the books of I & 2 Maccabees), and they disposed of Tobit as well because it didn’t agree with their theology of salvation by “faith alone.” Like the Massoretic translation, the Protestants would drop 7 Old Testament books and well as parts of Esther and Daniel that could only be found in the Greek. That is why the Old Testament of a Protestant Bible is so different from that of the Catholic Church’s Bible translations; whole books have been taken out of the Protestant versions, and the texts that remains have been thoroughly rewritten. Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has revealed that the Catholic version of the Old Testament is far more accurate than the Jewish or Protestant versions, most Protestant publishing companies [with the exception of the King James Version Bibles] have corrected many of the errors in their Old Testament translations. Jewish publishing companies, however, have failed to make these corrections [please note that the oldest copies of the Dead Sea Scrolls Old Testament texts predate the Massoretic texts by almost 1000 years!].

The Catholic Church has updated the language of her Old Testament and New Testament translations when necessary but has never changed its substance. The Old Testament texts of the New Jerusalem Bible, the New American Bible, and other Catholic translations are materially the same as they were when Christ read them himself and the Church’s attitude toward them is the same as that stated by Pope St. Leo the Great fifteen centuries ago: “In the area of moral precepts, no decrees of the earlier Testament are rejected; rather, in the Gospel teaching many of them are augmented, so that the things that give salvation might be more perfectly and more lucid than those that promise a Savior.”

The 7 Deuterocanonical Texts no longer found in Protestant translations nor in the Jewish Tanach:

The 7 books were among the last additions to the Greek Septuagint canon of the 1st century and were accepted into the Catholic canon only after a hesitancy among certain 3rd century Church Fathers. But they have been quoted in the letters of the Church Fathers from the earliest centuries of the Church and appeared in the official canonical lists in the West from the time of the Roman Synod of 382 AD and in the East from 692 AD in the Council of Trullo. Even Protestant reformer Martin Luther did not discard these texts from his German language Old Testament translation but placed them between the Old and New Testaments

We have NO historical record of ANYONE in the early church denying the status of the Septuagint's canon. Even Origen's alleged denial is an argument from silence.

Well, we have atleast one who is not arguing from silence. [Trumpets, please ---- that's enough]

What about Saint Melito from Sardis. The following written by Melito about 170 AD is From the Book of Extracts:

"Melito to his brother Onesimus, greeting:-- As you have often, prompted by your regard for the word of God, expressed a wish to have some extracts made from the Law and the Prophets concerning the Saviour, and concerning our faith in general, and have desired, moreover, to obtain an accurate account of the Ancient Books, as regards their number and their arrangement, I have striven to the best of my ability to perform this task: well knowing your zeal for the faith, and your eagerness to become acquainted with the Word, and especially because I am assured that, through your yearning after God, you esteem these things beyond all things else, engaged as you are in a struggle for eternal salvation.

"I accordingly proceeded to the East, and went to the very spot where the things in question were preached and took place; and, having made myself accurately acquainted with the books of the Old Testament, I have set them down below, and herewith send you the list. Their names are as follows:--

"The five books of Moses--Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; Joshua, Judges, Ruth, the four books of Kings, the two of Chronicles, the book of the Psalms of David, the Proverbs of Solomon, also called the Book of Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, Job, the books of the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, of the twelve contained in a single book, Daniel, Ezekiel, Esdras. From these I have made my extracts, dividing them into six books."

There were no Deuts in his list. How can anyone ignore his testimony?

Well atleast Melito's views didn't cost him his halo. And weren't a lot of his views commonly held by the church in his area in his day.

And the canon that he listed was within the mainstream of ante-Nicene church tradition. The chart below illustrates this. It did not copy well but comes from a website "bible-researcher.com/canon04".

The chart demonstrates that acceptance of an OT canon with Deuts did not begin until Augustine and the Council of Carthage circa 397 AD.

Disputed Books of the Old Testament

The table below shows which of the disputed Old Testament books are included in Christian catalogs of canonical books up to the eighth century. Y indicates that the book is plainly listed as Holy Scripture; N indicates that it is placed in an inferior class of books; M indicates that the terminology of the author may be construed as a reference to the book as Holy Scripture. An S indicates that the author does not mention the book in his catalog, which implies its rejection. See notes on the authorities below.

KEY Esth. - Esther Bar. - Baruch Eccl. - Ecclesiasticus Wisd. - Wisdom of Solomon Tob. - Tobit Jud. - Judith Mac. - First and Second Maccabees

1. Greek Authors. Date Esth. Bar. Eccl. Wisd. Tob. Jud. Mac. Melito 160 S S S S S S S Origen 225 Y M S S S S N Cyril of Jerusalem 348 Y Y N N N N N Council of Laodicea 363 Y Y S S S S S Athanasius 367 N Y N N N N S Gregory of Nazianzus 380 S S S S S S S Amphilocius of Iconium 380 M S S S S S S Epiphanius 385 Y S N N S S S Stichometry of Niceph. 550 N Y N N N N N Synopsis of Sac. Scrip. 550 N S N N N N S Leontius 590 S S S S S S S List of the Sixty Books 650 N S N N N N N John of Damascus 730 Y S N N S S S

2. Syrian Greek. Date Esth. Bar. Eccl. Wisd. Tob. Jud. Mac. "Apostolic Canons" 380 Y S N S S M Y

3. Latin Authors.* Date Esth. Bar. Eccl. Wisd. Tob. Jud. Mac. Hilary of Poitiers 360 Y M S S M M S Cheltenham List 360 Y M S M Y Y Y Rufinus 380 Y M N N N N N Jerome 390 Y M N N N N N Augustine 397 Y M Y Y Y Y Y 3rd Council of Carthage 397 Y M Y Y Y Y Y Codex Claromontanus 400 Y M Y Y Y Y Y Letter of Innocent I 405 Y M Y Y Y Y Y Decree of Gelasius 550 Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Cassiodorus 560 Y M Y Y Y Y Y Isidore of Seville 625 Y M Y Y Y Y Y

First, I won't allow you to cloud the issue by getting bogged down in side issues. I repeat: No author rejected the Septuagint. Several authors distinguished them as not being in the Hebrew canon, and thus unavailable for comparative translation (Origen, Jerome, etc.). Others noted that they were useless in apologetics to the Jews, since the Jews did not recognize their authenticity. And no author accepts, for instance, Esther but not Baruch.

Here's how good your chart is:
(1) it repeats the insipid canard that Jerome rejected the Septuagint's books, despite Jerome's explanation that he was representing the opinion of the Jews, and assertion that anyone who would believe he would reject them is a "fool and a slanderer." If anything, Jerome demonstrates that acceptance of the disputed books was de rigeur; even if Jerome failed to see the wisdom of the Catholic canon, he felt obliged to acknowledge the findings. (Notions he did so grudgingly are unfounded but irrelevant.)
(2) it lists Rufinus as opposing the disputed book's canonicity. It was Rufinus who accused Jerome of heresy for not having accepted them.
(3) it suggests Origen's omission of the books implies rejection; Origen (like Jerome) was preparing a translation including Hebrew, for which the disputed books were not available.
(4) the council of Laodicea's canon is commonly considered a fake; the Galatian council lists 59 rulings, making no mention of the 60th where this canon lies; In fact, a list of specifically rejected books does exist, including several apocryphal books, and it does not include any of the debated books, despite warnings that all non-canonical books must be prohibited from services. Thus, the council implicitly recognized the disputed books or (improbably) failed to recognize their significant existence.

The only author in your list which holds up is Nazanius, who was (for some reason) deposed as bishop, before being re-affirmed at the Council of Carthage, which felt the odd urge to clarify the books of the bible when it did so.

>> The chart demonstrates that acceptance of an OT canon with Deuts did not begin until Augustine and the Council of Carthage circa 397 AD. <<

It is far from exhaustive, highly inaccurate, and fails to list any author who simply refers to the Septuagint. The list of authors who cite as scripture books among the disputed list is quite vast, but these do not need to enumerate which books they accept, since they equate scripture simply with the Septuagint.

Oh, and I found this aboslute clincher:

Several of those who enumerate the Hebrew canon list "22 books": 1. Genesis, 2. Exodus, 3. Leviticus, 4. Numbers, 5. Deuteronomy, 6. Ruth, 7. Samuel, 8. Kings, 9. Chronicles, 10. Esdras (Ezra/Nehemiah), 11. the 12 lesser prophets, 12. Proverbs, 13. Psalms, 14. Daniel, 15. Esther, 16. Job, 17. Canticles (Song of Songs), 18. Jeremiah/Lamentations, 19. Ezekiel, 20. Ecclesiastes, 21. Judges, 22. Joshua.

Well, guess what? Esdras (Nehemiah 14) reveals how many books there were in holy scripture, before Esdras was written. Know how many there were? 24.

Since the events described in Esdras too place before Esdras hadn't been written yet, that means we have to find three extra books.

Seperating Jeremiah into Jeremiah and Lamentations gives us one; it might be tempting to seperate Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, but such a notion hadn't occured to anyone at the time of Esdras; these books were published as single volumes, until the switch from scrolls to codices.

Well, guess how many Septuagint books had taken place at the time of Esdras? 24. (It's unclear whether the Wisdom of Solomon was; recombining Jeremiah and Lamentations allows for its inclusion in this list; it's plain that 1 & 2 Maccabees, Sirach and Tobit are much later.)

Inclusion of this table again makes it quite obvious that you could care less about the truth, but merely trying to make a point, even if it involves ignoring the points I have already pointed out to you two weeks ago. I gave you a detailed refutation of this site on Origen's view of Scriptures with QUOTES!

That is why it is pointless to argue with someone like you on this matter. You don't really care about the "truth", only with "proving" Catholics wrong. Thus, you go elsewhere and stir the pot hoping that no one will notice your pet site's errors. Thus, Scripture tells us about such men...

"A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid: Knowing that he, that is such an one, is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned by his own judgment." Titus 3:10,11

Here it is again from a different source: The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

1] In the Eastern Church:

"The Peshitta, or Syriac version, dating from circa 150 AD, omits Chronicles; Justin Martyr (164 AD) held to a canon identical with that of the Jews; the Canon of Melito, bishop of Sardis, who (circa 170 AD) made a journey to Palestine in order carefully to investigate the matter, omits Est. His list, which is the first Christian list we have, has been preserved to us by Eusebius in his Eccl. Hist., IV, 26; Origen (died 254 AD), who was educated in Alexandria, and was one of the most learned of the Greek Fathers, also set himself the task of knowing the "Hebrew verity" of the Old Testament text, and gives us a list (also preserved to us by Eusebius, Eccl. Hist., VI, 5) in which he reckons the number of books as 22 (thus agreeing with Josephus). Inadvertently he omits the Twelve Minor Prophets, but this is manifestly an oversight on the part of either a scribe or of Eusebius, as he states the number of books is 22 and then names but 21. The so-called Canon of Laodicea (circa 363 AD) included the canonical books only, rejecting the Apocrypha. Athanasius (died 365 AD) gives a list in which Esther is classed as among the non-canonical books, but he elsewhere admits that "Esther is considered canonical by the Hebrews." However, he included Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah with Jeremiah. Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium (circa 380 AD), speaks of Esther as received by some only. Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem (died 386 AD), gives a list corresponding with the Hebrew canon, except that he includes Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah. Gregory of Nazianzus in Cappadocia (died 390 AD) omits Esther. But Anastasius, patriarch of Antioch (560 AD), and Leontius of Byzantium (580 AD) both held to the strict Jewish canon of 22 books. The Nestorians generally doubted Esther. This was due doubtless to the influence of Theodore of Mopsuestia (circa 390-457 AD) who disputed the authority of Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther and Job. The oriental churches as a whole, however, never canonized the Apocrypha."

2. In the Western Church:

"Between 100 and 400 AD, the New Testament writings became canonical, occupying in the Christian church a place of authority and sacredness equal to those of the Old Testament. The tendency of the period was to receive everything which had been traditionally read in the churches. But the transference of this principle to the Old Testament writings produced great confusion. Usage and theory were often in conflict. A church Father might declare that the Apocryphal books were uninspired and yet quote them as "Scripture," and even introduce them with the accepted formula, "As the Holy Ghost saith." Theologically, they held to a strict canon, homiletically they used a larger one. But even usage was not uniform. 3 and 4 Esdras and the Book of Enoch are sometimes quoted as "Holy Writ," yet the western church never received these books as canonical. The criterion of usage, therefore, is too broad. The theory of the Fathers was gradually forgotten, and the prevalent use of the Septuagint and other versions led to the obliteration of the distinction between the undisputed books of the Hebrew canon and the most popular Apocryphal books; and being often publicly read in the churches they finally received a quasi-canonization.

"Tertullian of Carthage (circa 150-230 AD) is the first of the Latin Fathers whose writings have been preserved. He gives the number of Old Testament books as 24, the same as in the Talmud Hilary, bishop of Poitiers in France (350-368 AD), gives a catalogue in which he speaks of "Jeremiah and his epistle," yet his list numbers only 22. Rufinus of Aquileia in Italy (died 410 AD) likewise gives a complete list of 22 books. Jerome also, the learned monk of Bethlehem (died 420 AD), gives the number of canonical books as 22, corresponding to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and explains that the five double books (1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Jeremiah-Lamentations) correspond to the five final letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In his famous Prologus Galeatus or "Helmed Preface" to the books of Samuel and Kings, he declares himself for the strict canon of the Jews; rejecting the authority of the deutero-canonical books in the most outspoken manner, even distinguishing carefully the apocryphal additions to Esther and to Daniel. As the celebrated Catholic writer, Dr. Gigot, very frankly allows, "Time and again this illustrious doctor (Jerome) of the Latin church rejects the authority of the deutero-canonical books in the most explicit manner" (General Intro, 56)."

This was the Prologue to the preceding:

"In making the transition from the Jewish to the Christian church, we find the same canon cherished by all. Christians of all sects have always been disposed to accept without question the canon of the Jews. For centuries all branches of the Christian church were practically agreed on the limits set by the Jews, but eventually the western church became divided, some alleging that Christ sanctioned the "larger" canon of Alexandria, including the Apocrypha, while others adhered, as the Jews have always done, to the canon of the Jews in Palestine taking the eastern or oriental church first, the evidence they furnish is as follows:"

A 22 book OT canon was the accepted TRADITION of the church until the end of the 4th century when the Pope told Jerome to put the Deuterocanonicals into his bible --- a decision that went against his better judgment as a scholar. Jerome stated quite clearly that the church does not accept the deuterocanonicals. He was stating a well known fact. The RCC yaps about how holy its Tradition is, but clearly in this case it wasn't very holy.

I wrote..."I gave you a detailed refutation of this site on Origen's view of Scriptures with QUOTES!"

You lamely responded... "You provided nothing to me that refuted the information from this site

Perhaps this will jog your memory...

Someone once listed your source as authoritative, and I still have problems with it...

Namely, the key is incorrect and misleading.

...S indicates that the author does not mention the book in his catalog, which implies its rejection.

That is faulty logic. Jesus Himself doesn't mention all the books of the Old Testament as we know them. Would anyone suggest that He was rejecting Chronicles or Nehemiah?

Secondly, the listing is NOT accurate. For example, Origen DOES discuss some of the Deuterocannonical writings that your list supposedly says he didn't.

"You begin by saying, that when, in my discussion with our friend Bassus, I used the Scripture which contains the prophecy of Daniel when yet a young man in the affair of Susanna, I did this as if it had escaped me that this part of the book was spurious. You say that you praise this passage as elegantly written, but find fault with it as a more modern composition, and a forgery; and you add that the forger has had recourse to something which not even Philistion the play-writer would have used in his puns between prinos and prisein, schinos and schisis, which words as they sound in Greek can be used in this way, but not in Hebrew. In answer to this, I have to tell you what it behoves us to do in the cases not only of the History of Susanna, which is found in every Church of Christ in that Greek copy which the Greeks use, but is not in the Hebrew, or of the two other passages you mention at the end of the book containing the history of Bel and the Dragon.Origen,To Africanus, 5

Origen is defending the Greek version of Daniel (which the Protestant reformers of the 1500's removed), as well as the story of Bel and the Dragon. Later, Origen writes:

"Wherefore I think no other supposition is possible, than that they who had the reputation of wisdom, and the rulers and elders, took away from the people every passage which might bring them into discredit among the people. We need not wonder, then, if this history of the evil device of the licentious elders against Susanna is true, but was concealed and removed from the Scriptures by men themselves not very far removed from the counsel of these elders." Origen,To Africanus,9

Origen gives his explanation to why the Greek version of Daniel was removed from the Hebrew Bible. Origen definetely considers it Scriptures.

How about this?

"But he ought to know that those who wish to live according to the teaching of Sacred Scripture understand the saying, 'The knowledge of the unwise is as talk without sense,' [Sirach 21:18] and have learnt 'to be ready always to give an answer to everyone that asketh us a reason for the hope that is in us.’ [1 Pt 3:15] " Origen, Against Celsus, 7:12

Can we agree that Origen considered Sirach as Scripture? "Tobias (as also Judith), we ought to notice, the Jews do not use. They are not even found in the Hebrew Apocrypha, as I learned from the Jews themselves." However, since the Churches use Tobias, you must know that even in the captivity some of the captives were rich and well to do. Tobias himself says, "Because I remembered God with all my heart; and the Most High gave me grace and beauty in the eyes of Nemessarus, and I was his purveyor; and I went into Media, and left in trust with Gabael, the brother of Gabrias, at Ragi, a city of Media, ten talents of silver" (Tobias, 1:12-14). Origen, To Africanus, 13

Origen speaks highly of Tobit. Elsewhere, he says "And it is written..." the formula used to describe a Scriptural passage.

"But that we may believe on the authority of holy Scripture that such is the case, hear how in the book of Maccabees, where the mother of seven martyrs exhorts her son to endure torture, this truth is confirmed; for she says, ' ask of thee, my son, to look at the heaven and the earth, and at all things which are in them, and beholding these, to know that God made all these things when they did not exist.'" [2 Maccabees 7:28]" Origen, Fundamental Principles, 2:2

2 Maccabees is SCRIPTURE! Boy, Martin Luther would not be happy to hear this quote from Origen...

He also writes similarly about Wisdom as well. Thus, just in Origen, the website you post is woefully inadequate for those in search of the truth...

10,895 posted on 02/20/2007 6:57:04 AM PST by jo kus

DOES THIS RING A BELL? Can you still say I have shown you NOTHING to refute your website? Your re-posting this garbage makes it pretty clear where you stand regarding the truth...

That is not a refutation. Those quotes just show how good Origen was at rhetoric that obscured the truth and allowed him to function on both sides of any issue. After all this is the same Origen who wrote: "The Scriptures are of little use to those who understand them as written". So should this apply to his writings as well???

Either way we are left with a dilemma over whether to believe Origen there or believe about Origen here:

"Origen ... set himself the task of knowing the "Hebrew verity" of the Old Testament text, and gives us a list (also preserved to us by Eusebius, Eccl. Hist., VI, 5) in which he reckons the number of books as 22 (thus agreeing with Josephus). Inadvertently he omits the Twelve Minor Prophets, but this is manifestly an oversight on the part of either a scribe or of Eusebius, as he states the number of books is 22 and then names but 21." [International Standard Bible Encyclopedia]

So what did Origen really believe about the canon? What did Eusebius believe Origen believed? Origen has made a fool out of a lot of people, and if you want to base your beliefs on his rhetorical writings, you can join his club.

But you are still left with lot of other church fathers who accepted the Jewish canon of 22 books. So how do you dismiss all of these patriarchs of holy Tradition?

it is the only book in the Hebrew Bible not represented among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Indeed, the revised and expanded Greek version of Esther was most likely produced to make the book more acceptable." (Invitation to the Apocrypha, p. 53

Yes. I would imagine that this (and what you wrote earlier) was the reasoning behind why Esther didn't make the Jewish "Canon" until well into the third century. The Greek "additions" added some interesting comments and made the writing more relevant to religious use.

How are you Joe? Haven't seen you for a while.

Thanks for asking. I have been fine. I have withdrawn from many of these discussions, as they don't seem to go anywhere rather quickly. So rather than arguing back and forth, I have decided to just drop out on some of these discussions.

Enjoying the beautiful Arizona weather - and now I have a ton of yard work to do!

I hope all is well with you, as well.

Brother in Christ

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