We won't debate if 2 Maccabees is canon or not as the Jews rejected it and it was not considered canon by the early church.
Thus we go back to the Old Testament for proof of praying for the souls of the dead and I accept that.
We can go back to the OT and see sacrifices being made in the Temple....doesn't mean we should do them today.
What we do have is this from the New Testament being addressed to a primarily Jewish audience.
Therefore it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; 25nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own. 26Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. 27And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, 28so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him (Hebrews 9:23-28 NASB).
The message of the NT rejects the concept of purgatory.
"In his preface to the New Testament, Luther ascribed to several books of the New Testament different degrees of doctrinal value: "St. John's Gospel and his first Epistle, St. Paul's Epistles, especially those to the Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, and St. Peter's Epistle-these are the books which show to thee Christ, and teach everything that is necessary and blessed for thee to know, even if you were never to see or hear any other book of doctrine. Therefore, St. James' Epistle is a perfect straw-epistle compared with them, for it has in it nothing of an evangelic kind." Thus Luther was comparing (in his opinion) doctrinal value, not canonical validity."
Interesting. What of the other 3 Gospels? The remainder of the NT? Not enough doctrinal value? Really?
" The version of the Bible in use at the time of Jesus was the Septuagint (abbreviated LXX, for the 70 men who translated it from Hebrew into Greek by the beginning of the first century B.C.).
This version of the Bible included the seven Deuterocanonical books. This was the version of the Old Testament used by the New Testament authors and by Christians during the first century A.D.
With the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70 A.D. and because the Christians were seen as a threat, the Jewish leaders saw a need to get their house in order. One thing that they did was to decide officially the list of books that were to compose their Scriptures.
They did this at the Council of Jamnia (about 100 A.D.), at which they rejected the seven Deuterocanonical books because they believed that they were not written in Hebrew. (In 1947, however, fragments in Hebrew of Tobit and Sirach were discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls. In addition, most Scripture scholars believe that 1 Maccabees, Judith, Baruch and parts of Wisdom were also originally written in Hebrew.) The early Church did not require all Scripture to be written in Hebrew, and the New Testament books were written in Greek.
The early Church continued to accept the books of the LXX version, although some debate about these books continued through the 5th century.
This list, as accepted by the Catholic Church, was affirmed by the Council of Hippo in 393 A.D., by the Council of Carthage in 397 A.D., and by Pope Innocent I in 405 A.D. At the Ecumenical Council of Florence in 1442, the Catholic list was again restated, against those who wanted to include even more books. "
" In the 16th century, Martin Luther adopted the Jewish list, putting the Deuterocanonical books in an appendix. He also put the letter of James, the letter to the Hebrews, the letters of John, and the book of Revelation from the New Testament in an appendix. He did this for doctrinal reasons (for example: 2 Maccabees 12:43-46 supports the doctrine of purgatory, Hebrews supports the existence of the priesthood, and James 2:24 supports the Catholic doctrine on merit). "
So if Luther dropped the books from the Old Testament because they were not in the Hebrew Bible (how convenient!) what was his reason for cutting then rearranging the New Testament?!
The Luther Bible is a German language Bible translation from Hebrew and ancient Greek by Martin Luther.
Luther added the word "alone" (allein in German) to Romans 3:28 controversially so that it read: "So now we hold, that man is justified without the help of the works of the law, alone through faith"[8] The word "alone" does not appear in the Greek texts,[9] but Luther defended his translation by maintaining that the adverb "alone" was required both by idiomatic German and the apostle Paul's intended meaning,[10] and that sola was used in theological tradition before him.
The Apostle Paul's intended meaning. Hmmm... I wonder how he was able to divine that? And by what divine right was permission given him to change the wording?
" He also had harsh words for the Revelation of John, saying that he could "in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it."[13] In his translation of the New Testament, Luther moved Hebrews and James out of the usual order, to join Jude and the Revelation at the end, and differentiated these from the other books which he considered "the true and certain chief books of the New Testament. The four which follow have from ancient times had a different reputation."[14] "
Again, quite interesting. Amazing also that a man who wanted so much to stick to the Hebrew Bible became so anti-Semitic afterward... Ahhh, but that's another thread...