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Father William Saunders is dean of the Notre Dame Graduate School of Christendom College and pastor of Our Lady of Hope Parish in Sterling, Virginia. The above article is a “Straight Answers” column he wrote for the Arlington Catholic Herald. Father Saunders is also the author of Straight Answers, a book based on 100 of his columns and published by Cathedral Press in Baltimore.

How shall we discuss this in an ecumenical way, when the article itself disparages non-Roman Bibles and extols Roman Bibles?

Getting in before the 3000 posts.

Question: Who has the authority to determine the canon of Scripture?

Scripture used to be based upon stone tablets, scrolls, hard copy and the Bible.

Today it is based upon a biased controlled ego centric media moguls that have digitized everything so that they can now globally edit the words not only of history, but of the Bible itself.

We the subjects of their propaganda have not begun to understand just how pliable the media has made society to their beliefs.

There are about 18 books mentioned in the Bible that are not in the bible. Although they are not accepted in the Bible they can be use for history and reference like Josephus and Usher and other historians.

“the Fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, the Jewish rabbis convened the Council of Jamnia (90-100), at which time they established what books would be considered their Sacred Scripture.”

This is a myth. A complete invention that this article wants us to believe as fact, with no evidence.

As for the apocrypha, Pope Gregory the first, 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 is an important distinction. They considered these books useful for instruction in righteousness, kind of like a positive story, but not to be brought forward for the confirmation of doctrine. 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.

To put a new spin on things - I would think the true test of God inspired writings is whether they continue to inspire the reader towards God. And although there are other tests necessary to verify the writings’ age, authenticity, religious content etc than can be no truer test than it inspires true, sacrificial love for God.

Blessings

Mel

have less books

have fewer books

The good father apparently went to public school.

An interesting and instructive commentary.

Catholic Scripture Study Bible - RSV Large Print Edition

"We are compelled to concede to the Papists
that they have the Word of God,
that we received it from them,
and that without them
we should have no knowledge of it at all."

~ Martin Luther

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Ping!

Books included in the Bible Ping!

Thought this might interest you two.

I should point out that the canon of Scripture was actually fixed by the disciplinary session of the Sixth Ecumenical Council in 692 (called by Western scholars variously the Trullan Synod or Quinisext Council — though both Orthodox and Latin hierarchs, at least before the Latin Schism referred to its canons as those of the Sixth Ecumenical Council). One of its canons explicitly gave the canons of the Synod of Carthage of 419 universal force throughout the Church.

There is the fact, very uncomfortable for protestant defenders of the short canon, that it is not only the Latins, whom they like to vilify as “adding” books to the Bible, but the Orthodox and Monophysites (Copts, Armenians Ethiopians, Syrian Jacobites) and the Nestorians (Assyrian Church of the East), that is all Christian confessions still extant and dating from before the 16th century, include in their canon of Scripture all or most of the books the protestants reject under the name “the Apocrypha”.

You can quibble about 4th Maccabees and 2nd Esdras, maybe they don’t belong, but all of us in the East think that all of you in the West (Latin and protestant alike) are missing the 151st Psalm and the Prayer of Manasseh, and most of us think you should all have 3rd Maccabees in your Bibles — the Copts and Ethiopians stand with you Westerners on that one and against the Armenians and the Jacobites.

I would observe that this unanimity exists despite the fact that the Assyrians have been out of communion with the rest of us since 431, the Copts, Ethiopians and Jacobites since 451, the Armenians since 506.

Placemark to read.

BfL

‘Last week, my friend who is a Baptist was visiting and came with me to Mass. The first reading was from the second Book of Maccabees. She had never heard of that book.’
.................................................
Did she tell you that after she woke up?

the Bible

Yes, there is a difference between Catholic and Protestant editions of the Bible. However, to appreciate this question and its answer, one must first remember that almighty God never handed anyone a complete Bible and said, "Here it is." Rather, over the centuries of salvation history, the Holy Spirit inspired the authors of Sacred Scripture to write down God's revelation to us. As time went on, the Church compiled these books to form a Canon — an authoritative set of Sacred Scripture — and declared it "God's Word."

Note carefully the assumption that's slipped in.

I asked a question several years ago, ( Which Bible is a Catholic translation?).

Never did get an answer.

I have a 1911 KJ Bible which has the other books in it, and have heard but can not verify that although king James was not Catholic he also did not think the Bible of the Church of England quite filled the bill.

He wanted the scriptures translated by some one other than those who already had their minds made up.

A very good article.