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.
elaborate at will. the fact is protestants profess 'scripture! scripture! scripture!" but eagerly denounce scripture as relativistic and outdated the moment it mandates something they would hate to do since it defies cultural norms made up by their ancestors.
the disconnect is plain. protestants postulate that something is untrue i post the scripture reference and protestants refute scripture with 'personal stances'.
how many protestants does it take to dance around the truth? just one but all are equally prone.
But we Orthodox do not consider the Church Fathers to be infallible and untainted. No one is untainted. Even the Apostles were sinners.
The basis for our trust is known as the consensus patrum, that on which the Church as a whole agreed, based on the the Scripture and what the Church practices and believed since the beginning.
For example, St. Gregory of Nyssa was a student of Origen and shared with Origen the universal salvation belief (i.e. that all, including the damned, will eventually be saved), but the Church never consented to that. However, St. Gregory of Nyssa is one of the top Cappadocian Fathers of the early Church in other teachings to which the Church as a whole did consent.
The same is true of St. Augustine, whose works were practically unknown to the Greek-speaking Church in the East until the 15th century. When his works were finally translated the Orthodox Church rejected many of his teachings (the so-called "original sin" and total depravity for example), but still considers him a saint because of his other superb work and life, and because no matter what he wrote he always deferred to the Church and its collective understanding of the Scriptures.
The only way anything God gives us remains pristine is if we have no will of our own, bus simply act as God dictates.
Certainly, God gives each and every one of us a pristine soul. That soul, through our own defective will and fallen nature, becomes tainted. God certainly doesn't give us a defective soul.
In Hebrews 8, the New Testament writer reminds us that the First Covenant was made imperfect by idolatrous Jews. God's covenant with His people was perfect when it was given to Moses.
We are the source of corruption and change. God is perfect and unchanging. The Spirit moves us and leads us but He does not make us perfect.
"Most of us Pentecostal Armenians do the same thing good Calvinists do on that score."
Yeah, but you have to have lots of pictures in your bibles and different colored print to show who is speaking, otherwise your mind wanders.
Oh, I'll disagree with it myself, if only for clarification. You'll have to define at a minimum what these doctrines are that you claim incompatibly divide these hypothetically still-Protestant denominations, before I'll even entertain accepting your premise.
And this is really the point: Did God ever intend such confusion, such heights of discord and disunity, in His Church, even if we allow for the possibility of an "invisible church"? IOW, even if the number of doctrinally divided denominations was only TWO, isn't that enough to make the point that there CAN'T be an "invisible church"?
Speaking for myself, I cannot see God, who is NOT the author of confusion, allowing members of His Church to wonder whether or not His Son is God, much less all the other doctrines that clearly divide at LEAST 10 Protestant denominations from another.
And while you're having trouble imagining it, try to imagine why He permitted the Catholics and the Orthodox to fall out of communion with each other as well...
Sounds good, but the "ideal" state so many of us hope to attain is to become completely transparent, so as not to be even noticed, in order for God's light to shine through us unimpeded. In other words, we become invisible. So, it really will not matter what color He assigned us to begin with. We will be indistinguishable from the air (our egos will cease to exist, and with them our personalities too).
OH BBBBBTTTTTT with lots of slobbers and spit!
Actually, my MESSAGE !TRANSLATION! VERSION doesn't have such. LOL.
Read Hebrews 8. Sufficiently protected for fruitful edification...yeah right. What a crock.
AAAH-HAH!
I knew we'd get you to that point if we were patient. 8~)
A lot of my closer friends have been good Calvinists for decades!
I've always thought of Calvinists in good terms and mostly as good . . . welll . . . except when I haven't.
Just as the First (Old) Covenant was not protected from corruption, nothing else that deals with us is. God knew that mankind would become awful and that He would have to bring His people back on track through select individuals. By allowing evil, He allows corruption by definition.
Even if we are acceptable to God (made righteous) we are not made perfect. We are simply forgiven.
Spirit moves (motivates) us. Leaders motivate people, but they don't do their homework.
The Protestant bible doesn't say that Mary is able to hear prayers, that she is the Mother of God, that she is the mother of the church, that she is the Queen of Heaven, that she was immaculately conceived, that she was ever virgin, or that she is our co-redeemer.
I think you got that right, k. :)
AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AND PRAISE GOD FOR THAT!
BUT, ACTUALLY
THEIR'S DOES NOT SAY THAT EITHER! LOL.
They just manufactured it out of polluted political air.
See, I told you they shouldn't shave their heads. ;-0
See, I told you they shouldn't shave their heads. ;-0
See, I told you they shouldn't shave their heads. ;-0
So, the theology doesn't matter! I guess that makes Arians, Nestorians, Monophysites, Moromons and Jeohva's Witnesses, Bogomils and Ebionites all part of one happy "church' and family. They all, one way or another, call on Christ.
Doesn't the NT say that the devils believe and tremble as well? What does that make them?
8~)
I know what you mean. Here is an example:
From #327 "ROTFLOL BLTTM [Belly Laugh To The Max] FOMCLOL [Falling Off My Chair Laughing Out Loud] ROTFLMHO [Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Head Off] ITTM [Incredulous To The Max] GTTM [Guffaws To The Max] SHSMEACAB [Shaking Head So Much Ears Are Creating A Breeze] SHSMIHCBFMLN [Shaking Head So Much I Have Cheek Bruises From My Long Nose]"
Priceless. :)
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