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To: OneVike
"OF ALL THE HUMAN TRADITIONS taught and practiced by the Roman Catholic Church, which are contrary to the Bible, the most ancient are the prayers for the dead and the sign of the Cross. Both began 300 years after Christ."

I'll refute the first one for you someone else may go for the others later.

About one hundred years before Christ the Jews were already praying for the dead. You will probably reply that this is not Scripture, fine, it's still history four hundred years before this absurd claim:

2 Machabees 12:44 " (For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed superfluous and vain to pray for the dead,)"

2 Machabees 12:46 " It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins." BTW, the first KJB Bible had 2 Machabees in it.

57 posted on 05/09/2010 8:48:43 AM PDT by GonzoII ("That they may be one...Father")
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To: GonzoII; Natural Law; Arthur McGowan; vladimir998; Judith Anne; roamer_1; c-b 1; ...
Sorry for the double post, I was in error of what i had on my clipboard,

However. As to your claim that 2 Maccabees is proper reason for purgatory to exist is wrong. There is a reason the cannon did not originally have Maccabees in it.

On the basis of the Septuagint, Catholics advocate what is known as the "larger" canon of the Jews in Alexandria; Protestants, on the other hand, deny the existence of an independent canon in Alexandria in view of the "smaller" canon of the Jews in Palestine The actual difference between the Catholic and Protestant Old Testaments is a matter of 7 complete books and portions of two others: namely, Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, together with certain additions to Esther (Esth 10:4-16:24) and to Daniel (Dan 3:24-90; Three; Sus verse 13 and Bel verse 14). These Protestants reject as apocryphal because there is no sufficient evidence that they were ever reckoned as canonical by the Jews anywhere. The fact that the present Septuagint includes them is far from conclusive that the original Septuagint did, for the following reasons:

(1) The design of the Septuagint was purely literary; Ptolemy and the Alexandrians were interested in building up a library. (2) All the extant manuscripts of the Septuagint are of Christian not Jewish origin. Between the actual translation of the Septuagint (circa 250-150 BC) and the oldest manuscripts of the Septuagint extant (circa 350 AD) there is a chasm of fully 500 years, during which it is highly possible that the so-called Apocryphal books crept in. (3) In the various extant manuscripts of the Septuagint, the Apocryphal books vary in number and name. For example, the great Vatican MS, which is probably "the truest representative which remains of the Alexandrian Bible," and which comes down to us from the 4 th century AD, contains no Book of Maccabees whatever, but does include 1 Esdras, which Jerome and Catholics generally treat as apocryphal. On the other hand, the Alexandrian MS, another of the great manuscripts of the Septuagint, dating from the 5 th century AD, contains not only the extra-canonical book of 1 Esdras, but 3 and 4 Maccabees, and in the New Testament the 1 st and 2 nd Epistles of Clement, none of which, however, is considered canonical by Rome. Likewise the great Sinaiticus MS, hardly less important than the Vatican as a witness to the Septuagint and like it dating from the 4 th century AD, omits Baruch (which Catholics consider canonical), but includes 4 Macc, and in the New Testament the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas; all of which are excluded from the canon by Catholics. In other MSS, 3 Maccabees, 3 Esdras and Pr Man are occasionally included. The problem as to how many books the original Septuagint version actually included is a very complicated one. The probability is that it included no one of these variants.

(4) Still another reason for thinking that there never existed in Egypt a separate or "larger" canon is the fact that during the 2 nd century AD, the Alexandrian Jews adopted Aquila's Greek version of the Old Testament in lieu of their own, and it is known that Aquila's text excluded all Apocryphal books. Add to all this the fact that Philo, who lived in Alexandria from circa 20 BC till 50 AD, never quotes from One of these Apocryphal books though he often does from the canonical, and that Origen, who also resided in Alexandria (circa 200 AD), never set his imprimatur upon them, and it becomes reasonably convincing that there was no "larger" canon in Alexandria. The value of the evidence derived from the Septuagint, accordingly, is largely negative. It only indicates that when the translation of the Old Testament into Greek was made in Alexandria, the process of canonization was still incomplete. For had it been actually complete, it is reasonable to suppose that the work of translation would have proceeded according to some well-defined plan, and would have been executed with greater accuracy. As it is, the translators seem to have taken all sorts of liberties with the text, adding to the books of Esth and Dan and omitting fully one-eighth of the text of Jer. Such work also indicates that they were not executing a public or ecclesiastical trust, but rather a private enterprise. Our necessary conclusion, therefore, is that the work of canonization was probably going on in Palestine while the work of translation was proceeding in Alexandria.

According to the traditions preserved in the Mishna, two councils of Jewish rabbis were held (90 and 118 AD respectively) at Jabne, or Jamnia, not far South of Joppa, on the Mediterranean coast, at which the books of the Old Testament, notably Ecclesiastes and Canticles, were discussed and their canonicity ratified. Rabbi Gamaliel II probably presided. Rabbi Akiba was the chief spirit of the council. What was actually determined by these synods has not been preserved to us accurately, but by many authorities it is thought that the great controversy which had been going on for over a century between the rival Jewish schools of Hillel and Shammai was now brought to a close, and that the canon was formally restricted to our 39 books. Perhaps it is within reason to say that at Jamnia the limits of the Hebrew canon were officially and finally determined by Jewish authority. Not that official sanction created public opinion, however, but rather confirmed it.



68 posted on 05/09/2010 9:24:10 AM PDT by OneVike (I am Chuck Wolk, a Freeper in Christ since February of 1998)
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To: GonzoII; OneVike
You will probably reply that this is not Scripture, fine, it's still history four hundred years before this absurd claim: (wrt Maccabees)

Being less likely to avoid the Apocrypha than my brethren, I can still readily attest that this particularly (the prayers for the dead) is one of many problems pointing to the Hellenization of the Apocryphal books. It is also why they are absent from the Masoretic texts.

176 posted on 05/09/2010 12:02:37 PM PDT by roamer_1 (Globalism is just Socialism in a business suit)
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