Hello. A Happy Easter wish to all (a day after Easter).
This person’s argument against Protestantism seems to be based on the canon of scripture - the “66 books” as he calls it.
I would like to ask all the Catholic Christians who care to answer - because I really do not know the answer to this question:
Which books of “the 66 books” does the Catholic Church deem not accepted as part of the Canon of Scripture to which the Catholic Church looks for the basis of our shared faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord?
Thanks in advance.
The New Testament canon of the Catholic Bible and the Protestant Bible are the same with 27 Books.The difference in the Old Testaments actually goes back to the time before and during Christ’s life. At this time, there was no official Jewish canon of scripture.
The Jews in Egypt translated their choices of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek in the second century before Christ. This translation of 46 books, called the Septuagint, had wide use in the Roman world because most Jews lived far from Palestine in Greek cities. Many of these Jews spoke only Greek.
The early Christian Church was born into this world. The Church, with its bilingual Jews and more and more Greek-speaking Gentiles, used the books of the Septuagint as its Bible. Remember the early Christians were just writing the documents what would become the New Testament.
After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, with increasing persecution from the Romans and competition from the fledgling Christian Church, the Jewish leaders came together and declared its official canon of Scripture, eliminating seven books from the Septuagint.
The books removed were Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom (of Solomon), Sirach, and Baruch. Parts of existing books were also removed including Psalm 151 (from Psalms), parts of the Book of Esther, Susanna (from Daniel as chapter 13), and Bel and the Dragon (from Daniel as chapter 14).
The Christian Church did not follow suit but kept all the books in the Septuagint. 46 • 27 = 73 Books total.
1500 years later, Protestants decided to keep the Catholic New Testament but change its Old Testament from the Catholic canon to the Jewish canon.
The books that were removed supported such things as
- Prayers for the dead (Tobit 12:12; 2 Maccabees 12:39-45)
- Purgatory (Wisdom 3:1-7)
- Intercession of saints in heaven (2 Maccabees 15:14)
- Intercession of angels (Tobit 12:12-15)
The books they dropped are sometimes called the Apocrypha.
Here is a Catholic Bible website: http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/
The author does not argue that the 66 books are not inspired. They are. But the Protestant Canon is truncated to avoid scriptural contradictions of Protestantism, which illustrates the point that an extrascriptural authority is required to even form the canon, let alone interpret the content.