Catholic and Protestant Bibles: What is the Difference?

Catholic Exchange.com ^ | 02-06-07 | Mary Harwell Sayler

[Salvation]

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Catholic and Protestant Bibles: What is the Difference?

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March 6, 2007

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.

 

© Copyright 2007 Catholic Exchange

[Quix]

INDEED.

[kosta50]

AG, God is not partial. He did not create us lustful and enevious, cunning and deceitful. We develop into those personalities. Otherwise, we would have to assume that criminals are ciminals because God created them as criminals. Our personalities are an expression of our fallen nature. Some are more fallen than others.

[wmfights]

As usual you've missed the point.

[Quix]

Goodness!!!

Call out the drums and trumpets!

I AGREE WITH YOU!

Miracles never cease.

[kosta50]

It is clear from the above that the Orthodox maintain the separation of iconography from other forms of art, to the point of not considering iconography art at all

That is correct. Icons are not painted; they are written. The iconographers take a bath and put on clean clothes before 'writing' an icon, and always preceded by a prayer. Ivons are not to be used as 'decorations' because they are considered holy images.

[Mad Dawg]

SLOW DOWN! PLEASE!

You are making assumptions about what I am contending.

What makes you think that our physical wellbeing is the only 'happiness' possible?

Can you please show how that necessarily follows from what I said? You're making this confrontational where it doesn't need to be, as far as I'm concerned.

The "You call that Paradise?" was what in English we call a "Joke". It's related to the Italian gioco and it has to do with "playfulness". I commend the concept.

I was asking was about how, unless I misunderstand you, you are saying every difference among humans is a consequence of the Fall, so I was hoping for a refinement of that proposition in the light of what seems to me to be the indisputably Biblical assertion that the division of human-type personnel into sexes is part of God's notion before the Fall.

In this post you seem to think that a difference between this human and that human is inevitably a distraction from obeying the first and great commandment. I don't see how.

IN another post you say that personalities are results of the Fall. I don't see how.

What makes you think that our physical wellbeing is the only 'happiness' possible?

It SEEMS that you are suggesting that "physical well-being" (a pretty anaemic way of saying "making whoopie") is guaranteed to make us unhappy because it is essentially sinful or the result of sin. So Adam and Eve would not have enjoyed obedience to the command to be fruitful and multiply? (Heck, even San Francisco obeys the "be fruitful" part. No, wait. I think that's different.)

Notas mihi fecisti vias vitae;
adimplebis me laetitia cum vultu tuo:
delectationes in dextra tue usque ad finem.

Ps 16 (15) v 11
[got my Vulgate today]

[kosta50]

Call out the drums and trumpets! I AGREE WITH YOU!

The thump you may have heard was my jaw hitting the floor. :)

[kawaii]

The point is that a bunch of emotion and mostly iliterate west europeons 1400 years after Christ do not inspire confidence that they were acting in the Holy Spirit.

There were 7 ecumenical councils attended by hundreds of Bishops, and thousands of priest an laity from England to Persia.

I take Christ at his word that he would send the Holy Spirit of Truth the Comforter to his church, and do not beleive for a second it would be present at the ecumenical councils.

I do not see any reason it would manifest itself solely on a few dozen angry west europeons who started off by re-writing scripture.

[Mad Dawg]

"dextra tue" SHOULD BE "dextera tua". Ooops.

[Kolokotronis]

"In some (Russian, Serbian) women stand on the left, men on the right, in Greek monasteries the same is observed, but in Greek American churches everyone is scattered, and so on."

There is even some variation in the churches in Greece. For example, usually in the smaller villages, the women are indeed on the left and the men on the right, but in larger towns and in most churches in the cities, everyone is all mixed up. In village churches I have never seen pews, but I have seen folding chairs. In some of the "renovated" churches in larger towns I have seen odd pews made up of what appear to be connected carved chairs. In our village there are a number of tiny churches. They are only used on the feast day of the saint after whom the church is named. On those feast days, the women are inside and the men stand outside by the door and windows (they do actually participate; they aren't outside smoking!).

Quick note; from my experience most organs at least in Greek Churches here in the States, are only used for the key, though some years back they were used for the melodies. I have never seen them in Greece in any church.

[Kolokotronis]

Meant to ping you guys to #670

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Our personalities are an expression of our fallen nature. Some are more fallen than others.

You have just negated the Fall and all that it implies.

As Christ showed us when He gave life to the molding body of Lazarus, dead is dead. Unless we are born again by the Holy Spirit, we remain in darkness.

"For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?" -- 1 Corinthians 4:7

[FourtySeven]

FWIW, ask how those doctrines and dogmas were arrived at and what was the environment. Then measure those doctrines and dogma against the only true solid source we have, Scripture. If these doctrines and dogmas stand then you are probably where you were meant to be. If you have doubts, pray and study Scripture for the answers.

Good advice, absolutely. I have done that with the doctrines of the Church, by the way. First among my (previously) Protestant notions to fall was sola scriptura. Without that, there's no reason to believe that every doctrine must EXPLICITLY be in the Bible. On the contrary, now, I believe that nothing can CONTRADICT Scripture, a wholly different statement (if you don't see it as such, think about it some, I'm sure you will).

From this understanding, the errancy of sola scriptura, I have now come to understand that while not every doctrine of the Church is explicitly in Scripture, none of it violates Scripture. Is that statement debatable? Yes, but only if one still adheres to the notion of sola scriptura. In sola scriptura, the entire notion that the Church is erroneous in Her claims rests, and in its (sola scriptura's) error, the Protestant notion of "read the Bible for yourself" falls flat on its face. Scripture is a guide, a "fact checker" if you will, never to be violated, but not the source of all dogma/doctrine for all time.

Understanding the fundamental error of sola scriptura is the key to understanding the error of the entire "Reformation". It is, for me, the foundation upon which my faith on the Church rests, and indeed, there exists no Scripture or combination of Scriptures that have the key elements, "Written word" and "Only" in them, with relation to doctrine. IOW, the absolute statement, without qualifiers, "The WRITTEN word is the ONLY source of doctrine" (emphasis added) exist no where in Scripture.

Without such, there exists no proof for sola scriptura.

[kosta50]

I know it's scriptural, AG. Unlike most of you, I don't just drink this stuff. I actually chew it! Find me the connection. Where is the basis for us judging the angels, as if God's judgment is not enough? The fallen angles have already been judged (that's scriptural as well).

[Kolokotronis]

""dextra tue" SHOULD BE "dextera tua". Ooops."

Ah, well, that explains it! I thought we had another "Romish innovation" on our hands! :)

[Mad Dawg]

I'd better back off from this sub-thread. I must have missed something. You seem to be saying that personalities are the result of sin. That seems to me to be like saying lungs are the result of pneumonia. But you're so assured that I must be missing a step or twelve in the argument. Let me just watch for a bit.

[kosta50]

You have just negated the Fall and all that it implies

You have not understood me properly. I am the one who claims we were created all in the same image and likeness, so Christ correctly asks "For who maketh thee to differ from another?"

Our persoanlities are an expression of what we have become through our fallen nature. Some are in the greater state of the fall then others; some are dead; others are slowly recouperating. God did not give us our fallen personalities. They are a result of being born in a fallen world. There is no place for them in heaven.

[Mad Dawg]

It's the little known red-neck Vulgate.

[kosta50]

On those feast days, the women are inside and the men stand outside by the door and windows (they do actually participate; they aren't outside smoking!)

That's the Serbs!

[Quix]

Thanks.

Certainly I try and read all those I'm pinged too.

Mercifully for y'all's sake, I don't respond to all the pings! LOL.