For your reflection and discussion.
Protestant Bibles contain all those books, except those rejected by the Protestant Reformers in the 1500’s.
Then later it states:
DISCUSSION: Prior to Jesus’ time, the Jews did not have a sharply defined, universal canon of Scripture. Some groups of Jews used only the first five books of the Old Testament (the Pentateuch); some used only the Palestinian canon (39 books); some used the Alexandrian canon (46 books), and some, like the Dead Sea community....
Obviously there was a precedent for the Protestant Old Testament in the Palestinian canon predating Christ. So to state the Protestant canon was some 1500's creation with sinister motives is just flat out wrong.
The message of salvation is brief. Why add more books?
Fixed it for you. No charge.
Don't give the other side lexical benefit.
bookmark
Thank you for posting this. It is a question that I have wondered about for many years.
ML/NJ
When the canon became a serious issue following the Protestant schism in the early 1500s, Trent dogmatically defined what the Church had consistently taught for more than 1,000 years.Consistently? On the bright side, given the variety of ancient opinions on New Testament Canon, it's a minor miracle that Protestants and Roman Catholics can agree on that much. :)
Luk 18:31 Then he took unto him the twelve, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished.
Jesus appears to know exactly what the Scripture is and what is contained in the Scripture...
Luk 24:25 Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken:
Seems that Jesus thinks the slow of heart and the fools have ALL of the WORDS that the prophets spoke...
Luk 24:27 And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
Again, they had ALL the Scriptures in front of them...
Luk 24:44 And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.
And there, Jesus lays it out...There's the O.T. canon...
So it seems that the OT canon was well established long before Jesus or your church showed up...And the Jewish believers, as we know historically rejected any and all of the extra books which your church later on said were part of the canon...
That settles the thing before your theory ever got off the ground...
My only very personal and subjective and not academic or scholarly thought about the “extra” books was my reaction to these books when I devoured my Bible as an eighteen year old.
When I would read the book of Wisdom or the stuff about Susannah in Daniel or the added stuff in Esther... it just seemed like some old Hebrew guy's idea of philosophy. I tended to wander from these added books simply because they did not “feed” me as the other Scripture did.
The metaphysical implications of the Word — "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God... and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” tells us that your post is very important.
You are actually saying that these other books are, metaphysically, God Himself.
Until I scanned this article, I tended to believe that the Canonical books were because of New Testament references to them. But this does put a few books like Song of Solomon out of the running, I suppose.
I wish I had more time in my life to really investigate why the Protestant scriptures are thus. For now, I've got to take the stand I took as a teenaged new believer and just hug my tattered old, now taped and coverless Jerusalem Bible, (not the New Jerusalem, btw) and do a Thomas Jefferson and skip the added texts. They didn't feed me. They weren't “alive and active, able to cut through the secret thoughts and emotions” like the double-edged sword of the Word.
Perhaps as an add on, when Jesus took this sword of the Spirit (the Word) to counter the Devil's twisted arguments against Him in the temptation in the desert, He used traditional texts to triumph over Satan's schemes.
This is the true import of the Word of God. “To pull down strongholds, and every argument that resists the knowledge of God”. Without God's breathed inherent power of the logical truth of the Word, we cannot be apologists for Him. We cannot disentangle the lies of the Enemy off the unbelievers we minister to. This article seems to skip the work-a-day necessity of the Word.
Those are my only concerns with it. Have no anti Catholic feeling except we don't need any other intermediary but Christ to God and every Catholic I know understands that.
Sorry if sounded preachy or off topic. I'll leave with my fave Jerusalem Bible quote:
“I am a cypress ever green... All of your fruitfulness comes from Me.”
Bless you bro for the post.
Big deal.
The Mormons say THAT compliation is faulty and they have even MORE books than Catholics!
A useful post.