Tobit 12:15
I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the saints and enter into the presence of the glory of the Holy One. [see Revelation 1:4 and 8:3-4 below]
2 Maccabees 7:29
[A mother speaking to her son:] Do not fear this butcher, but prove worthy of your brothers. Accept death, so that in God's mercy I may get you back again with your brothers. [see Hebrews 11:35 below]
2 Maccabees 12:44
For if he were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead. [see 1 Corinthians 15:29 below]
2 Maccabees 15:14
And Onias spoke, saying, "This is a man who loves the brethren and prays much for the people and the holy city, Jeremiah [bodily dead], the prophet of God."
1 Corinthians 15:29
Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? [see 2 Maccabees 12:44 above]
Hebrews 11:35
Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection. [see 2 Maccabees 7:29 above]
Revelation 1:4
...Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne. [see Tobit 12:15 above]
Revelation 8:3-4
And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. [see Tobit 12:15 above]
Religion Moderator,
How can you post an Ecumenical Thread that contains oppositional language and attacks in the main article?
For example, this quote:
“In the 16th c., Luther, reacting to serious abuses and clerical corruption in the Latin Church, to his own heretical theological vision (see articles on sola scriptura and sola fide), and, frankly, to his own inner demons”
I suggest the Ecumenical tag be removed or the thread removed. People should follow the rules on the Religion Moderator home page...
Canon of Scripture Ping!
I love this stuff. It’s a spectator sport for me but I’m happy that there are people at work figuring it out.
Protestants, Catholics, and most Orthodox agree now 1 that the New Testament should consist at least of the 27 Books (Matthew through Revelation/Apocalypse) that the Catholic Church determined were canonical, but the Protestant Old Testament is lacking 7 entire books 2 (Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus/Sirach, Baruch, I Maccabees, and II Maccabees), 3 chapters of Daniel and 6 chapters of Esther, leaving them with 66 incomplete books while Catholic Bibles have 73 books. How did this come to be?
Notice the assumption that got slipped in.
What is the difference between the Apocrypha and the Deuterocanonical books?
Roman Catholic mythology ...
“It was a standard Jewish version of the Old Testament, used by the writers of the New Testament, as is evidenced by the fact that Old Testament references found in the New Testament refer to the Septuagint over other versions of the Old Testament. Let me reiterate: the then 300+ year old Septuagint version of Scripture was good enough for Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul, etc., which is evident in their referencing it over 300 times (out of 350 Old Testament references!) in their New Testament writings — and the Septuagint includes 7 books and parts of Esther and Daniel that were removed from Protestant Bibles some 1,500 years after the birth of Christ.”
This is just an assumption based on evidence that doesn’t actually exist. Only the Books of Moses were translated by the “70” translators and made up the LXX originally (hence the name, LXX, the seventy). At least, so goes the legend, and thats all it really is. No one knows when the Apocrypha, some of which was originally written in Greek in the first place, were translated into Greek. In fact, the apocrypha were translated and retranslated multiple times, and we do not know who did this or if those who did them even believed that these were inspired scripture.
The assertion that the Apostles must have endorsed the apocrypha is based on the idea that they exist as naturally combined with the rest of the Greek Old Testament. But this is merely an assumption based on Christian copies of the LXX which don’t even include all the same books that the RCC includes today, or sometimes holds extra, for example 3-4 Maccabees, the Shepard of Hermes, or The Epistle of Barnabas.
The Jewish position is, instead, given by Josephus when he explains that these books were not considered to be on par with scripture since they were written during the period when the succession of the Prophets failed.
From Artexerxes to our own time the complete history has been written but has not been deemed worthy of equal credit with the earlier records because of the failure of the exact succession of the prophets. ... We have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine...(Flavius Josephus, Against Apion 1:8)
(The Jews combined books, just as the Prophet books all lumped into one, 1 and 2 Kings as one book, etc, corresponding to the 22 letters of their alphabet.)
The Babylonian Talmud also does not mention the apocrypha, but only the standard Old Testament scriptures:
http://cojs.org/cojswiki/Babylonian_Talmud_Bava_Batra_14b-15a:_The_Order_of_Scripture
And, to top it all off, the inclusion of all sorts of books in various Christian copies of the LXX does not imply that they were all considered equal or even divine. For example, “Pope” Gregory the first mentions this when quoting Maccabees:
Concerning which thing we do nothing irregularly, if we adduce a testimony from the books, which although not canonical are published for the edification of the people. For Eleazar wounding an elephant in battle, slew him, but fell under him whom he had destroyed. Morals, book 19, on 39th chap, of Job.
Notice how he mentions that they are put forward not for the “confirmation of the faith,” but for “edification of the faithful.” This same idea is repeated by many authors:
Athanasius on the apocrypha:
“But for the sake of greater exactness I add this also, writing under obligation, as it were. There are other books besides these, indeed not received as canonical but having been appointed by our fathers to be read to those just approaching and wishing to be instructed in the word of godliness: Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit, and that which is called the Teaching of the Apostles, and the Shepherd. But the former [standard new and old testament canon], my brethren, are included in the Canon, the latter being merely read.” (Thirty-Ninth Festal Epistle, A.D. 367.)
Rufinus on the Apocrypha:
“They were willing to have all these read in the churches but not brought forward for the confirmation of doctrine.” (Rufinus of Aquileia, Exposition of the Creed)
Cardinal Cajetan calls them not “canonical for the confirmation of the faith,” but “canonical” only in a certain sense for the “edification of the faithful.”
Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St. Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed amongst the apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecciesiasticus, as is plain from the Protogus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the Bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the Bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clearly through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage. (Cardinal Cajetan, Commentary on all the Authentic Historical Books of the Old Testament, cited by William Whitaker in A Disputation on Holy Scripture, Cambridge: Parker Society (1849), p. 424)
Official prefaces to Latin translations of the scripture making the same distinction:
At the dawn of the Reformation the great Romanist scholars remained faithful to the judgment of the Canon which Jerome had followed in his translation. And Cardinal Ximenes in the preface to his magnificent Polyglott Biblia Complutensia-the lasting monument of the University which he founded at Complutum or Alcala, and the great glory of the Spanish press-separates the Apocrypha from the Canonical books. The books, he writes, which are without the Canon, which the Church receives rather for the edification of the people than for the establishment of doctrine, are given only in Greek, but with a double translation. ( B.F. Westcott, A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament (Cambridge: MacMillan, 1889), pp. 470-471.)
I’ll also add one final point, that is, that the apocrypha usually expose themselves as not being inspired scripture. Judith, for example, says that Nebuchadnezzer is King of the Assyrians, which is wrong, amongst many other historical and geographical errors. Tobit features an “Angel of the Lord” teaching witchcraft. Maccabees apologizes for possibly containing errors, since he wrote it to the best of his ability. So does Sirach.
Thus, the assertions by this article are just that... assertions, but have no connection to the historical reality of the matter.