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.
So,
CHRIST AS THE ONE
MEDIATOR
BETWEEN GOD AND MAN
is NOT in your Bible?
What a surprise! LOL. /sar.
1 Timothy 2:5
For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;
Warning, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, dogs and cats . . . prepare yourselves for the rationalizing, rubber Bible manipulations of logical Biblical facts to weasel out of what the plain Scripture says! LOL.
read your own post. you suggest folks NEED NO MEDIATOR that they themselves can commune personally with God.
Rom 7:4 Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, [even] to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.
1Cr 10:16 The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?
1Cr 12:27 Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.
Eph 4:12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:
UHHHHHH
Since when was talking to Jesus NOT talking to God?
Magicsterical, INDEED!
SMHSHMEACAB
GTTM
Sigh
And such a perspective expects me to take it seriously as a Christian perspective??? LOL.
Magicsterical, INDEED!
SMHSHMEACAB
GTTM
Sigh
If it was not for the "prosties" the bible would be IN LATIN WHICH NOBODY BUT RCC PRIESTs COULD READ then and NOW... not to speak of the fact is was "then" against the law in most places to even READ IT...
Obviously you have not read Fox's Book of Martyrs.. it is online for FREE...
i AGREE with you!!!
And I HAVE read Fox's Book of Martyrs.
do you deny the scriptures i posted which assert that the church is the body of Christ?
Jesus was in the trinity long before he was called Jesus and met then Mary and Joseph.. Jesus is not Jesus' name anyway.. God existed before Adam or even Satan or the Earth..
I'm not flaming you I'm supporting you..
one who asserts that talking to Christ is the same as talking to the Holy Spirit or to the Father denies the trinity, which I suspect you do anyway.
Then tell me how did Christ pray to God the Father?
Is that really a very logical question given that I think I mentioned the church universal of all believers in all sects being the Body of Christ.
Of course I believe ALL Scripture is the inspired Word of God.
But I think you knew that.
Is that really a very logical question given that I think I mentioned the church universal of all believers in all sects--THAT IS ALL REMOTELY BIBLICAL SECTS--being the Body of Christ.
Of course I believe ALL Scripture is the inspired Word of God.
But I think you knew that.
Thought so but wanted to make it explicit! LOL.
Well, you're about as wrong as you can be. I know there are protestant churches that don't preach the Word of God as they should and God will take care of that apostasy, but there are many churches out there that DO. YOUR church/denomination is not the only one, kawaii. That's a deception from the pit of hell. I'm sad for you and others like you who think your church is the only true church. You will be very surprised in heaven.
which I suspect you do anyway.
= = =
What a sad commentary on insight, understanding, perceptiveness, accuracy-in-mind-reading etc.
In the slight chance that it might be edifying about my personal theology--I'm a fierce Trinitarian regardless of what others wholesale inaccurately assert about me.
Oh, wait. Maybe that was just a brazen slam-jab.
I assert that talking to Jesus is talking to the God-head. The One The Father placed ALL THINGS under.
anyone who beleives that anyone in all sects is a Christian has just dropped several chapters of what st paul wrote about wolves.
you're rejecting the authority of the body of Christ. in doing so yo reject scripture.
Oh! that WE could be transparent in EACH OTHER NOW... as it will be when language is no longer an issue.. Diamond then will be ultra metaphorical.. When words or even personal NAMES are not needed.. OH! only if I had the need or desire to explain "merging" (BOW) to these fine folks.. however I do not..
Sad, isn't it Quix? Sigh.
I assert that talking to Jesus is talking to the God-head.
Jesus--The One The Father placed ALL THINGS under--strikes me as The One with a LOT more clout than Mary when it comes to communicating as THE ONE AND ONLY MEDIATOR between THE FATHER and man.
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