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Which Bible do you believe to be the true Bible - the Protestant, the Roman Catholic, or the Coptic?
3/13/2015 | Laissez-Faire Capitalist

Posted on 03/13/2015 12:40:51 PM PDT by Laissez-faire capitalist

1.) The King James Bible and/or Protestant Bible contains 39 Old Testament books and 27 New Testament books.

Roman Catholics include all of these books within their sacred canon, with the addition of other books not included within the Protestant Canon.

The Coptic Bible contains more books than all of the aforementioned (including the 27/39) and books that Roman Catholics believe to be canonical - and some other books.

2.) The First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD issued the Nicene Creed, adhered to by almost all Christians (Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Protestants and Coptics) with the exception of a few Protestant denominations. St. Jerome noted in his writings that the Book of Judith was considered (at the First Council of Nicaea) to be "sacred scripture."

The principal argument used against deuterocanonical books is that supposedly neither Jesus nor the Apostles quoted from them. If this is indeed true, then a counter argument is that neither Ezra, Nehemiah or Esther were quoted from.

It has been posited that to quote from one book in a set ("history": Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther or "poetry": Ecclesiastes or Song of Solomon) validates the entire set. But this counter argument used against Roman Catholics, Coptics and Greek Orthodox is grounded in conflation and extrapolation and opens up the door to 3:

3.) If Jude quoted from the Book of Enoch (Jude 1:14) and the Assumption of Moses (Jude 19), then to quote one verse from those books would validate the whole of both books.

4.) Some argue that we need to look to the "Deluxe" sets (Codex Alexandrinus, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) --- the oldest surviving Greek Manuscripts available --- to determine what books are or are not canonical. The problem with this is that each codex contains at least one book that neither Protestants nor Catholics believe to be Canonical and secondly, until the discovery made by Tischendorf and others of these codices. the long ending of Mark (Mark 16:9-20) was believed for over 1000 years to be valid. But none of theses codices contains the long ending while both the long and short ending can be found among Greek fragments.

So which of the aforementioned Bibles do you believe to be the "true" Bible?


TOPICS: Catholic; General Discusssion; History; Mainline Protestant; Other Christian; Other non-Christian; Skeptics/Seekers; Theology
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To: one Lord one faith one baptism
I am not holding my breath to get answers to the two simple questions put forth in post #54.

the Bible picked up by Martin Luther in the year 1515, exactly 500 years ago and decades before the Council of Trent, HOW MANY BOOKS WERE IN IT?

That's because it's a goofy question...One that you obviously don't know the answer to yourself...So you tell us how many and I'll tell you where you are wrong...

81 posted on 03/14/2015 11:41:09 AM PDT by Iscool
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To: Laissez-faire capitalist
It depends on whether you believe the Holy Spirit is perfect ensuring His Word remains intact. (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one, by the way).

Someone has to believe the Holy Spirit cannot and did not protect the canon of the Bible from including error (which means the Holy Spirit is imperfect) in order to accept the anti-Christ Pharisee Approved Luther Subset of Scripture.

People under a strong delusion spout all sorts of lame arguments to support their not accepting the entire Bible because their starting point is Self and Self Alone which they claim ensures that their Self will never err because they're led by the same Holy Spirit they insist is imperfect and incapable of protecting His Word from the inclusion of error.

The only Copt I've talked with says the Coptic Church accepts additional books in their Bible because the Jews lost the knowledge of why to accept those books when the Temple was destroyed and the Catholic Church never accepted their knowledge as genuine. Whether that's the reason Copts have additional books in their Bible or only what the person I asked about it believed I don't know.

Whatever their reasoning, it again comes down to whether someone believes the Holy Spirit is perfect or not since the Copt claim of superior knowledge amounts to saying an imperfect and inept Holy Spirit could not ensure the additional books they accept were accepted by all of Christianity. A heresy that denies the perfection of the Holy Spirit just as much as Protestant Self and Self Alone based doctrine rejecting a large portion of the Old Testament does.

Bottom line, if someone wants to deny the perfection of the Holy Spirit, which is blaspheming the Holy Spirit, (and in doing so denying the deity of the Father and the Son at the same time), there's nothing except their own desire for the Grace to see the Truth that can stop them. If their happy with having their Self on the throne rather than Jesus Christ, so be it.

82 posted on 03/14/2015 3:36:07 PM PDT by Rashputin (Jesus Christ doesn't evacuate His troops, He leads them to victory.)
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To: Tao Yin
Plus a very solid smackdown of the interpretation of predestination Calvin spewed :

Sirach 15:12 Say not : He hath caused me to err : for He hath no need of wicked men.
Sirach 15:13 The Lord hateth all abomination of error, and they that fear Him shall not love it.
Sirach 15:14 God made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel.
Sirach 15:15 He added His commandments and precepts.
Sirach 15:16 If thou wilt keep the commandments and perform acceptable fidelity for ever, they shall preserve thee.
Sirach 15:17 He hath set water and fire before thee : stretch forth thy hand to which thou wilt.
Sirach 15:18 Before man is life and death, good and evil, that which he shall choose shall be given him :
Sirach 15:19 For the wisdom of God is great, and He is strong in power, seeing all men without ceasing.
Sirach 15:20 The eyes of the Lord are towards them that fear Him, and he knoweth all the work of man.
Sirach 15:21 He hath commanded no man to do wickedly, and He hath given no man license to sin :
Sirach 15:22 For He desireth not a multitude of faithless and unprofitable children.

83 posted on 03/14/2015 9:39:59 PM PDT by Rashputin (Jesus Christ doesn't evacuate His troops, He leads them to victory.)
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To: CynicalBear

And that will be an eternal covenant He makes with Israel at that time


what an insult to Christ.

Jesus established the new, ETERNAL covenant in his blood at the cross. the old covenant has been done away with and the promised new eternal covenant has been established.

there are no other covenants coming, the PERFECT has come.


84 posted on 03/15/2015 6:00:04 AM PDT by one Lord one faith one baptism
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To: rusty schucklefurd

I will following your numbering:

1. direct quotes have never been a criteria for canonicity. these books were not “hidden”, therefore calling them Apocrypha is inaccurate. quite the contrary, they were in the Greek OT used by Paul and the Church from day one.
did Paul ever warn the Church these books were not Scripture?
2. some Church Fathers expressed doubt, but the large majority did not. Jerome included them in the Latin Vulgate despite his doubts. He did not substitute his personal judgement for the Holy Spirit working thru the Church.
3. Christians don’t look to non Christians for truth. truth comes from the Holy Spirit guiding the Church.
4. same answer as #1
5. this is the same specious thinking that leads Jehovah Witnesses to say no Church council proclaimed the divinity of Jesus for 300 years, so up until then, no one believed Jesus was divine. WRONG! Church councils convened to resolve some dispute or controversy, such as circumcision in the 1st century. The Catholic Church had always read these books at Mass and they teach the Apostolic Faith, therefore they met the two part test for Scripture. when the Council of Carthage in 397 gave us the complete canon of Scripture, where was the opposition? where were the “protestants” to oppose these 7 books? there was universal acceptance of the canon by both the Latins and Greeks in the Catholic Church. don’t you think the author of the scriptures, the Holy Spirit would also protect the true canon?

finally, why argue over these books? same reason if someone said that Revelation or Philemon are not canonical. No doctrine of the Church would change if these books were dropped from the canon, but it would be wrong not to have the full scriptures inspired by the Holy Spirit in the Bible.
the other reason of course is we are commanded to be “one”, and those outside of the historical Christian Faith violate this command by attacking the Church over the Scriptures.


85 posted on 03/15/2015 6:20:07 AM PDT by one Lord one faith one baptism
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To: Iscool

You really think the Jews of the O.T. didn’t know that they had the scriptures and oracles


you really think the pillar of truth, the Church was not guided by the Holy Spirit to correctly choose which books were Scripture and which were not?
you really think NO ONE had a correct Bible until the 16th century?


86 posted on 03/15/2015 6:23:49 AM PDT by one Lord one faith one baptism
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To: one Lord one faith one baptism
You really think the Jews of the O.T. didn’t know that they had the scriptures and oracles

you really think the pillar of truth, the Church was not guided by the Holy Spirit to correctly choose which books were Scripture and which were not?
you really think NO ONE had a correct Bible until the 16th century?

Didn't want to answer that question, eh??? The books were chosen and being disseminated hundreds of years before your religion even knew what the Trinity was...HUNDREDS OF YEARS...

That's like Al Gore claiming he wrote the Constitution...

87 posted on 03/15/2015 6:42:15 AM PDT by Iscool
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To: Iscool

even knew what the Trinity was


you mean hundreds of years before my “religion” invented the Trinity, don’t you?


88 posted on 03/15/2015 7:13:18 AM PDT by one Lord one faith one baptism
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To: one Lord one faith one baptism
you mean hundreds of years before my “religion” invented the Trinity, don’t you?

Your religion likes to think it did...And tell people it did...

89 posted on 03/15/2015 7:24:35 AM PDT by Iscool
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To: Iscool

isn’t that what the Jehovah Witnesses teach??

how is the Watchtower doing these days anyway?


90 posted on 03/15/2015 7:29:08 AM PDT by one Lord one faith one baptism
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To: one Lord one faith one baptism

Your point that the lack of direct quotes is not a criteria against canonity would have some merit except for the fact that the Old Testament books had already been accepted into the canon by the Jews—where the Apocrypha had not. The Jews recognized the Old Testament canon, and they did not include the Apocrypha in it. This is significant because of what Paul says:

“”Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the benefit of circumcision? 2 Great in every respect. First of all, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God.” (Rom. 3:1-2).

A point I did not touch on in my last post to you is this:

Jesus referenced the Jewish Old Testament canon from the beginning to the end and did not include the Apocrypha in his reference. “From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the house of God; yes, I tell you, it shall be charged against this generation.” (Luke 11:51).

The traditional Jewish canon was divided into three sections (Law, Prophets, Writings), and an unusual feature of the last section was the listing of Chronicles out of historical order—placing it after Ezra-Nehemiah and making it the last book of the canon. In light of this, the words of Jesus in Luke 11:50-51 reflect the settled character of the Jewish canon (with its peculiar order) already in his day. Christ uses the expression “from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah,” which appears troublesome since Zechariah was not chronologically the last martyr mentioned in the Bible (Jeremiah 26:20-23). However, Zechariah is the last martyr of which we read in the Old Testament according to Jewish canonical order (II Chron. 24:20-22), which was apparently recognized by Jesus and his hearers.

This means that the same Old Testament canon, according to the Jewish tradition, is arranged differently than how we have it in the Protestant Bible today. This was the arrangement to which Jesus was referring when he referenced Abel and Zechariah, the first and last people to have their blood shed—as listed in the Old Testament Jewish canon. Obviously, Jesus knew of the Apocrypha and was not including it in his reference.

Related to this point is also Jesus’ reference to the scriptures as a whole in Luke 24:44.

“Now He said to them, ‘These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”

I have read where Catholic apologists say that the Old Testament is referred to, by the Jews, in three parts: the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings - which is true, and it is also true that it is within these writings that are sometimes found books of the Apocrypha. But this designation is not used by Jesus. On the contrary, as you just read, Jesus referenced the Old Testament and designated its three parts as the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms—not as the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. It looks like a deliberate omission by Jesus of any reference to the Apocyrpha.

I think you are way too casual in glossing over the fact that many of the Church Fathers strongly objected to the Apocrypha as being scripture. Jerome only included it in his translation because he was forced to over his objections. He rejected it because he believed the Jews established and recognized the proper canon of the Old Testament.

I disagree with you that omitting Revelation would have no bearing on the doctrine of the Bible. As to Philemon, possibly, except for the fact that we KNOW Paul wrote the letter and his writings have been considered scripture within a few years of their being written.

Look, if Catholics want to consider the Apocyrpha as scripture, that’s your affair. Go for it.


91 posted on 03/15/2015 8:29:37 AM PDT by rusty schucklefurd
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To: Laissez-faire capitalist
I use this one.


92 posted on 03/15/2015 8:58:03 AM PDT by Delta 21 (Patiently waiting for the jack booted kick at my door.)
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To: Jolla

It’s all red letters.


93 posted on 03/15/2015 9:03:16 AM PDT by Gamecock (Joel Osteen is a minister of the Gospel like Colonel Sanders is an Infantry officer.)
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To: Laissez-faire capitalist

It’s not for me to say

My Bible was constructed from old scripture by a ruthless homosexual who wanted to institute a uniform word of his doing to reflect his Presbyterian say so in the Church of England

Jimmy Boy

Yes I know some religious scholars claim he didn’t like boys even in the face of much evidence to the contrary

I sure got no call to bash others books....lol


94 posted on 03/15/2015 9:09:27 AM PDT by wardaddy (Dems hate western civilization and GOP are cowards...We are headed to a dark place)
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To: one Lord one faith one baptism

His everlasting covenant with Israel has not been completely fulfilled yet.


95 posted on 03/15/2015 9:24:20 AM PDT by CynicalBear (For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus)
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To: CynicalBear

His everlasting covenant with Israel has not been completely fulfilled yet


another insult.

what about “it is finished” don’t you understand?


96 posted on 03/16/2015 7:55:41 AM PDT by one Lord one faith one baptism
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To: rusty schucklefurd

I read your post twice and I appreciate your tone.
the one factor I did not see is - what role does the Holy Spirit play in preserving the Word of God.

I think we both would agree the Holy Spirit is the author of the Scriptures.

I would go a step further and declare He is also the guardian of the Scriptures.

what good would the Scriptures be if they could be lost, corrupted or ADDED TO WITH OTHER BOOKS.

so when the canon of the OT and NT was being decided by the Church in the 4th century, what role did the Holy Spirit play, if any?

“it seemed good to the Holy Spirit..........”

did the Holy Spirit care if the correct canon was arrived at?
Jesus promised the Holy Spirit would be sent by the Father in his name to lead us to ALL TRUTH.
did this truth include the canon of Scripture?

all the factors you mentioned were known to the fathers and bishops in the 4th century and yet, they still came up with 46 OT books and 27 NT books.

for you to be correct that they got it wrong and 1,100 years later “protestants” would get it right, one of the following must be true:

1. the Holy Spirit was indifferent to the canon. so leaving up to fallible men, they got it wrong.
2. the Holy Spirit wanted them to have 66 books canonical, but the Holy Spirit was not powerful enough to work His will.

which of the two do you hold to?

the Catholic position is the Holy Spirit does care that the Word of God is protected, He did lead the bishops to truth in deciding the canon, and 90-95% of all people claiming a belief in Christ since Pentecost have used the 73 book Bible.


97 posted on 03/16/2015 8:07:45 AM PDT by one Lord one faith one baptism
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To: one Lord one faith one baptism
>>what about “it is finished” don’t you understand?<<

LOL! I understand it well but evidently you don't. There is lot's more God has planned for Israel.

98 posted on 03/16/2015 2:53:40 PM PDT by CynicalBear (For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus)
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To: CynicalBear

“I understand it well”

anyone who says there is another covenant coming from God, or that the new covenant in Jesus blood is incomplete has no idea what the Christian Faith is. PERIOD.


99 posted on 03/16/2015 6:07:38 PM PDT by one Lord one faith one baptism
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To: one Lord one faith one baptism
>>anyone who says there is another covenant coming from God<<

Who has ever said "another covenant"? Surely not I nor have I seen anyone else who has.

>>that the new covenant in Jesus blood is incomplete<<

Once again, who has ever said that?

There are seven years of the covenant God made with Israel left. Once the "full number of the Gentiles has come in" God will finish what He promised Israel.

Romans 11:25 For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. 26 And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob

100 posted on 03/17/2015 5:33:05 AM PDT by CynicalBear (For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus)
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