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.
the idea of 'multiple turths' is from the devil mary. plain and simple it's a way to say that truth is turht and falisy is true also.
complete and utter anti-Christianity designed to steal the faithful into those pits of hell you mention.
so you're suggesting that Christ prayed to himself. When he said 'Father taken this burden from me' he was talking to himself?
me thinks you're not a beleiver in the trinity.
And your women better wear a head covering or you won't get into heaven, by golly.
WRONG.
WHOLESALE WRONG BEGINNNING TO END ON A LIST OF COUNTS.
I think you know virtually nothing with any accuracy about me or my theology.
Sad, that.
"do you deny the scriptures i posted which assert that the church is the body of Christ?"
This whole discussion is just nonsense. Can any one say metaphor?
Metaphors to describe the church, take your pick:
Family of God the Father (Ephesians 3:14-15,2 Corinthians 6:18)
Brothers and sisters with each other in God's family (Matthew 12:49-50)
Bride of Christ (Ephesians 5:31-32)
Branches on a vine (John 15:5)
Olive tree (Romans 11:17-24)
Field of crops (1 Corinthians 3:6-9)
Building (1 Corinthians 3:9)
Harvest (Matthew 13:1-30,John 4:35)
New temple and new priesthood with a new cornerstone (1 Peter 2:4-8)
God's house (Hebrews 3:3-6)
Pillar and foundation the truth (1 Timothy 3:15)
Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-27)
Temple of the Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 6:16)
so says quix. do i beleive quix or do i beleive scripture. me thinks i'll stick with scripture thanks.
Hosepipe--INDEED!
Mary, thanks. Too sadly true.
Ask HIM..
Christ is either who he says he was.... and still IS..
-OR-
He isn't who he says he was.... and still ISN'T..
You talk like Christ IS DEAD...
ah now we see real protestantism in action. when it's something protestants like 'its the truth' when its something they reject its 'just a metaphor and means something completely opposite'.
Ascribing such to my theology is utter unmitigated hogwash.
With no basis in fact at all.
the only mediator we need is Jesus Christ, who IS God in the flesh. Mary or the saints or any other former human being can not mediate on our behalf. Yes, they can pray for us but Jesus is the true mediator. HE goes to the Father on our behalf, nobody else can.
me thinks you're not a beleiver in the trinity.
= = =
It's, I suppose, logical, that rubber Bible, Scripture-mangling customs and habits would faciliate it being very easy to mangle and distort all out of truthful reality someone else's theology.
But it's not prety. Not preferred. Not appreciated. Not true.
I encourage you to abandon such wholesale inaccurate mind-reading characterizations of my theology. I have noted that I am a fierce Trinitarian. God knows that. Everyone who knows me and understands me a gnat's burp's worth knows that.
I cannot be responsible for your being out of touch with my reality on that score. You'll have to answer to God for that.
But I can and will fiercely slap down the wholesale lie that I'm not a strong believer in The Trinity.
GRRRR.
you talk like there's no trinity. like you can ignore Christ when he says that he's the only way to the father. and instead simply proceed to the father for yourself.
Since God created us with our various personality types, I'm sure He wants us to keep them. He just wants us to change our stinking thinking and then our behavior (which comes when we change our thinking). I'm still going to be a maternal woman but now I will be even MORE so.
God will eventually make abundantly clear who has stuck closer to His Word and who has not. I can rest quite peacfully in that conviction.
He MUST be kidding, right? Right? No? SIGH.
rest peacefully then.
the rest of us wil look forward to eternal life.
i suppose the folks in sodom and gammorah felt the same about their personality types. did God want to keep those around?
Is the Scripture about
Christ enabling us to
CRY DADDY directly
also removed from your Bible?
What a surprise!
check out revelations; the saints can indeed intercede for us.
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