Posted on 03/07/2007 9:10:18 AM PST by Salvation
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Catholic and Protestant Bibles: What is the Difference? |
Question: What's the difference between a Catholic Bible and a Protestant one? Is our Old Testament the same as a Jewish Bible? If not, why?
Answer: The most noticeable differences occur in the number of books included and the order in which they have been arranged. Both the Jewish Bible and the Hebrew canon in a Protestant Bible (aka Old Testament) contain 39 books, whereas a Catholic Bible contains 46 books in the Old Testament. In addition, the Greek Orthodox, or Eastern Orthodox, Church accepts a few more books as canonized scripture.
To give you a quick overview of a complicated subject, here's what happened: Several hundred years before the birth of Christ, Babylonian conquerors forced the Jews to leave Jerusalem. Away from their Temple and, often, from their priests, the exiled people forgot how to read, write, and speak Hebrew. After a while, Jewish scholars wanted to make the Bible accessible again, so they translated Hebrew scriptures into the Greek language commonly spoken. Books of wisdom and histories about the period were added, too, eventually becoming so well known that Jesus and the earliest Christian writers were familiar with them. Like the original Hebrew scriptures, the Greek texts, which were known as the Septuagint, were not in a codex or book form as we're accustomed to now but were handwritten on leather or parchment scrolls and rolled up for ease in storage.
Eventually, the Jewish exiles were allowed to return to Jerusalem where they renovated the Temple. Then, in A.D. 70, warring peoples almost completely destroyed the sacred structure, which has never been rebuilt. Without this central place of worship, the Jews began looking to the Bible as their focal point of faith, but to assure the purity of that faith, only Hebrew scriptures were allowed into the Jewish canon. By then, however, the earliest Christians spoke and read Greek, so they continued to use the Septuagint or Greek version of the Bible for many centuries. After the Reformation though, some Christians decided to accept translations into Latin then English only from the Hebrew texts that the Jewish Bible contained, so the seven additional books in the Greek translation became known as the Apocrypha, meaning "hidden." Since the books themselves were no secret, the word seemed ironic or, perhaps, prophetic because, in 1947, an Arab boy searching for a lost goat found, instead, the Dead Sea scrolls, hidden in a hillside cave.
Interestingly, the leather scrolls had been carefully wrapped in linen cloth, coated in pitch, and placed in airtight pottery jars about ten inches across and two feet high where, well-preserved, they remained for many centuries. Later, other caves in the same area yielded similar finds with hundreds of manuscripts no longer hidden. Indeed, the oldest copies of the Bible now known to exist are the Dead Sea scrolls of the Septuagint.
Because of this authentic find from antiquity, many publishers in the twentieth century added back the books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, First and Second Maccabees, as well as additions to Esther and Daniel. So now, when an edition of the Bible says "with Apocrypha" on the cover, the extra books from the Septuagint will usually be placed between the Old and New Testaments or at the end of the Bible. Catholic Bibles already contained those books, however, so you'll find them interwoven with other Old Testament books of history and wisdom writings.
For the New Testament, it's a different story and short. All of the books were written in Greek or Aramaic from the start. Although some debate occurred about which Gospels or Epistles should be included, all Christians eventually accepted all of the same 27 books in the same order. So, as long as you choose an edition that does not add explanatory notes opposed to a Catholic perspective, any reputable translation of the New Testament is fine.
That is excellent to hear.
Again, I call your attention to the scriptural fact that God called out to Adam, "where are you?". For this to make any sense, the inspired author was telling us that Adam was making his own choices.
Are you saying that what we call "human nature" is learned? That makes no sense. You said yourself that Christ had two natures. Did He only have one until He learned the human one? I really disagree with that.
FK: "As I understand your belief, Jesus went and snatched him out of Hades, thus proving that Adam did repent at some point."
I don't see why He would have done that. I don't believe it. That's for sure.
Well, then what are those icons from the Luther thread all about? I remember them, and they showed Jesus "freeing" Adam from, I think, Hades. Am I way off course here?
FK: "Once the sin [of Adam] was committed though, the deed was done and could not have been undone."
The Christian teaching is that by repentance the sins are forgiven, committed to oblivion, which is as good as if they never happened (great is God's mercy).
No, no, no. :) We're talking about Adam's sin. He could repent and be saved himself, just like the rest of us. However, once he committed that sin, its effects could not be undone. We call that original sin, and I know you understand the principle as another idea. Once Adam sinned, history was changed forever, regardless of whether he later repented or not.
FK: "God is behind God's plan, not Adam's pride."
But if God is sovereign and doesn't allow free will then Adam's pride is not his pride but part of God's will and plan. Then why would Adam be punished? For obedience?
To me, this is the same as saying that satan is God's fault BECAUSE He gave him free will, knowing what would happen. Neither is true. All creatures will be held accountable for their sins.
Your error is assuming that everyone who is not a catholic is protestant.
You are putting forth the hypothesis if not A then B without allowing for the possibility of C-Z.
You are using very sloppy logic....
Yes, it has become clear to me that that is probably what Alex Murphy was saying to me, however my more general point is clear: There are at least 2 Protestant denominations on that list, and to deny that, well, I won’t say since that got me into trouble last time. But you’re a smart guy, you can read between the lines.
That one of the points I was making to you.
...however my more general point is clear
No, it's still as muddled as it ever was. Unless you'd like to include the Great Schism of 1054, the split following the Council of Chalcedon, etc etc etc in your argument :)
My main point is clear, despite your protestations (excuse the pun) to the contrary. Think of the movie “Highlander”: There can be only one. Catholics and Orthodox would agree on that point, we would just disagree on which one that “one” is.
You and other Protestants however, clearly don’t agree that there can be (or even should be) only one, true Church, that is visible. Despite what Scripture says (that Christ estabilished a Church that the gates of hell would not prevail against, and also said it would be visible, in Matthew), and despite the fact that there IS more than one Protestant denomination, and these denominations are clearly different doctrinally, you and apparently others here seem to want to have your cake, and eat it too.
On one hand, you want there to be a unified “invisible church”, yet the other, don’t want to say it’s DOCTRINALLY unified, so you don’t have to prove it is. I would submit that something that isn’t unified around doctrine can’t really be unified at all. This “invisible church” of yours and other Protestants, if it isn’t unified doctrinally, is nothing more than universalism.
Trust me that point is quite clear to anyone reading along, that doesn’t have a dog in this fight.
Your main point remains squishy, porous, incapable of penetration or even just making purchase, incapable of supporting weight, and is exceedingly sparse and lightweight overall. Oh, and it tickles when you poke me with it. My advice is "next time, don't bring a Nerf ball to a gun fight". But I will admit that your pun was clever. That part I would keep.
No hard feelings? [pun intended]
You are right... Better stick to the Douay-Rheims. Incidentally, the NIV is not approved for use in any Catholic liturgies.
>> His Spirit within us bears witness with our Spirit as Scripture declares. <<
And how do you discern spirits?
By comparing them to scripture?
But how do you tell what is scripture?
By discerning His Spirit, of course!
Do you see the problem here?
>> Protestants are using some non-Catholic source of authority to determine which books are legitimate. <<
Yes, for the Old Testament, it’s the explicitly anti-Christian Council of Jamnia. Not a great source. St. Jerome DID hold the books of the Septuagint to be scripture, but he did not understand where they came from. The Septuagint is a canon from before the Jewish rejection of Christ; Luther’s comes from their explicit rejection of him. St. Jerome saw the differences between the Jamnian (Masoretic) text and the New Testament, and concluded the apostles based the New Testament on a translation which erred greviously. In fact, we now know that the Septuagint is based on Hebrew texts remarkably similar to those found in Qumran cavesm from before Christ.
Salvation was referring to the New Testament.
The problem appears to be . . .
in the level of experience
on the other side of the issue . . .
JESUS SAID that His sheep knew HIS VOICE.
Evidently there’s a problem there . . .
either those listening are not His sheep . . . or the sheep need their ears cleaned out . . . or perhaps there’s a dreadful lack of experience hearing and obeying and He’s waiting for the obeying to catch up before trying to communicate further.
Or, perhaps alternately, the other side is trying to insist that JESUS THE CHRIST; KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS . . . didn’t know what He was talking about.
#########
The problem appears to be . . .
in the level of experience
on the other side of the issue . . .
JESUS SAID that His sheep knew HIS VOICE.
Evidently there’s a problem there . . .
either those listening are not His sheep . . . or the sheep need their ears cleaned out . . . or perhaps there’s a dreadful lack of experience hearing and obeying and He’s waiting for the obeying to catch up before trying to communicate further.
Somehow I got your post after posting to a much more recent article, and mistook it for being part of the much more recent thread.
Incidentally, the claim that the KJV is translated from Greek transcripts was made by the KJV scholars, but it was, in fact, largely copied (nearly verbatim in places) from the Geneva bible, which actually was created mostly from the Vulgate.
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