:)
The original 1611 King James Version contained the Deuterocanon and King James threatened anyone who dared to print the Bible without it with heavy fines and a year in jail.
Up until the late 1800’s every Protestant Bible (not just Catholic Bibles) had these books written hundreds of years before Christ called the Deuterocanon that were part of Wycliffe’s bible ( the original printing even commended the Book of Tobit) and part of virtually every printing of the Tyndale-Matthews Bible, the Great Bible, the Bishops Bible, the Protestant Geneva Bible, and the King James Bible, until their removal in the late 1800’s!
Only for the last 120 plus years have protestants rejected these books, and removed them from their Bibles. This has left most modern-day Christians believing the popular myth that there is something ‘Roman Catholic’ about it.
Numerous references to it in the margins (of books considered canonical) treating it the same as other Scripture:
● Matt. 6:7 references Ecclesiasticus 7:14
● Matt. 23:37 references 2 Esdras 1:30
● Matt. 27:43 references Wisdom 2:15-16
● Luke 6:31 references Tobit 4:16
● Luke 14:13 references Tobit 4:7
● John 10:22 references 1 Maccabees 4:59
● Rom. 9:21 references Wisdom 15:7
● Rom. 11:34 references Wisdom 9:13
● 2Cor. 9:7 references Ecclesiasticus 35:9
● Heb. 1:3 references Wisdom 7:26
● Heb. 11:35 references 2 Maccabees 7:7
● MATTHEW 27:43: He trusts in God; Let God Deliver Him now, if he desires him; for He Said, ‘I AM The Son Of God.’”
~OT Deuterocanonical “Wisdom Book” is Matthew’s source on the clear reference to “The Son of God” above.
WISDOM 2:15-16, 17-18: Let us see whether his words be true; let us find out what will happen to him in the end. 18 For if the righteous one is the Son of God, God will help him and deliver him from the hand of his foes.
~Whereas, Psalms 22 omits “Son of God”.
The Onlyists claim, ‘The King James translators knew the Apocrypha was not scripture, so they placed it BETWEEN the Old and New Testament...’ [James L. Melton, “Fables And Facts About The King James Bible”, Bible Baptist Church: Sharon, TN, 1996;
http://www.biblebelievers.com/jmelton/fables.html
But if they knew it was not Scripture, then why include it at all? And if there was nothing wrong with it, why take it out later? In contrast, most of the MODERN versions [NIV, NKJV, RSV, etc...] criticized by the KJV-Onlyists do not contain the Apocrypha at all... and never did!
There is no widely-accepted reason for the removal of the Apocrypha in the 1880s that has ever been officially issued by a mainline Protestant denomination.
http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history
Well there is, and your statements are either sophistry or ignorance. For while Luther himself translated and included Deuterocanonical ("second canon) books in his translation, these were placed separately as not being Scripture proper (and later publishers dropped them to save printing cost back then, since there was lack of demand for them.
And the issue of the canon was not definitively settled for Catholics until Trent. Thus scholarly disagreements over the canonicity (proper) of certain books could and did continue down through the centuries and right into Trent, until it provided the first "infallible," indisputable canon - after the death of Luther. Thus Luther was no maverick but had substantial RC support for his non-binding canon. Read the linked page before parroting the typical RC propaganda which FR has seen most off - and refutations over the years, by the grace of God. But I see that you are quite new here.
And as for the LXX,
The Septuagint (LXX) is a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, beginning in the 3rd century B.C. and thought to be completed (as regards Jewish translators) early in the 2nd century A.D. The title LXX refers to the 70 scribes, and with “Septuagint” from “septuaginta” denoting 70 in Latin (In his City of God 18.42, while repeating the story of Aristeas with typical embellishments, Augustine adds the remark, "It is their translation that it has now become traditional to call the Septuagint" — The Canon Debate, McDonald & Sanders editors, p. 72).
As for type of translation, it was more a paraphrase,
“It was not a literal translation, however, since it incorporated commentary in the text, consciously attempting to harmonize biblical and Greek thought and to include halakhic and aggadic ideas which were current in Palestinian commentary. Some interesting features of the text are its deletion of all anthropomorphic expressions and the provision of many readings of the text which are different from the standard masoretic version. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0013_0_12632.html
The Septuagint was favored by the principal force behind early acceptance of the apocrypha, that being Augustine, who believed the miraculous legend of its translation. According to one account from the Talmud, (BT Megillah 9a, Of 3.) and which contains many strange ideas, Philadelphus [Ptolemy II] sent for seventy-two Hebrew scholars, six from each tribe of Israel, to undertake the work. He secluded these men on the island of Phares, where each worked separately on his own translation, without consultation with one another. According to the legend, when they came together to compare their work, the seventy-two copies proved to be identical.
This story, while highly unlikely, convinced many that the Septuagint had a supernatural quality which helped gain its acceptance for several hundred years, until the time of Jerome some four hundred years after Christ. (http://www.trinitarianbiblesociety.org/site/articles/lxx.html)
The story of the origin of the LXX was embellished as time went on and is considered a fable by scholars, and Jerome chided Augustine for criticizing his differences from it and misunderstanding the nuances of his translations (http://www.bible-researcher.com/vulgate2.html).
Greek was the common language in the Roman empires, and the N.T. does reference the LXX heavily, which certifies that at least these parts of the Torah (see below) were faithful translations, while this was followed by the Hebrew Masoretic translations (due to Jewish doubt on the LXX) and which Jerome affirmed, and which all major Bible translations translate the O.T. from.
However, Philo of Alexandria (1st c A.D.) states that only the Torah (the first 5 books of the O.T.) was commissioned to be translated, leaving the rest of the O.T. following in later centuries, and in an order that is not altogether clear, nor do all LXX manuscripts have the same apocryphal books and names.
For many reasons (and see note on Jamnia) it is held that the Septuagint is of dubious support for the apocrypha.
For while Catholics argue that since Christ and the NT quotes from the LXX then we must accept the books we call the apocrypha. However, this presumes that the Septuagint was a uniform body of texts in the time of Christ and which contained all the apocryphal books at that time, but for which there is no historical evidence. The earliest existing Greek manuscripts which contain some of them date from the 4th Century and are understood to have been placed therein by Christians.
Furthermore, if quoting from some of the Septuagint means the whole is sanctioned, then since the Psalms of Solomon, which is not part of any scriptural canon, is found in copies of the Septuagint as is Psalm 151, and 3 and 4 Maccabees (Vaticanus [early 4th century] does not include any of the Maccabean books, while Sinaiticus [early 4th century] includes 1 and 4 Maccabees and Alexandrinus [early 5th century] includes 1, 2, 3, and 4 Maccabees and the Psalms of Solomon), then we would be bound to accept them as well.
Also, Scripture can include an inspired utterance such as from Enoch, (Jude. 1:14,15; Enoch 1:9) but the book of Enoch as a whole is not Scripture. (Enoch also tells of over 400 foot height angelic offspring, and of angels (stars) procreating with oxen to produce elephants, camels and donkeys: 7:12-15; 86:1-5.)
Addressing the theory that the first century Septuagint contained the the apocryphal books, we have such scholarly testimony as the below: The Septuagint is a pre-Christian Jewish translation, and the larger manuscripts of it include various of the Apocrypha. Grabe's edition of the Septuagint, where the theory was first propounded, was based upon the fifth-century Codex Alexandrinus. However, as we now know, manuscripts of anything like the capacity of Codex Alexandrinus were not used in the first centuries of the Christian era," and since, in the second century C.E., the Jews seem largely to have discarded the Septuagint in favour of revisions or translations more usable in their controversy with the church (notably Aquila's translation), there can be no real doubt that the comprehensive codices of the Septuagint, which start appearing in the fourth century, are all of Christian origin. An indication of this is that in many Septuagint manuscripts the Psalms are followed by a collection of Odes or liturgical canticles, including Christian ones from the NT. Also, the order of the books in the great fourth and fifth-century Septuagint codices is Christian, not adhering to the three divisions of the Hebrew canon; nor is there agreement between the codices which of the Apocrypha to include. Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus all include Tobit, Judith, Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, and integrate them into the body of the or rather than appending them at the end; but Codex Vaticanus, unlike the other two, totally excludes the Books of Maccabees. Moreover, all three codices, according to Kenyon, were produced in Egypt," yet the contemporary Christian lists of the biblical books drawn up in Egypt by Athanasius and (very likely) pseudo-Athanasius are much more critical, ex-cluding all apocryphal books from the canon, and putting them in a separate appendix. Mulder, M. J. (1988). (Mikra: text, translation, reading, and interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in ancient Judaism and early Christianity. Phil.: Van Gorcum. p. 81 ) Edward Earle Ellis writes, “No two Septuagint codices contain the same apocrypha, and no uniform Septuagint ‘Bible’ was ever the subject of discussion in the patristic church. In view of these facts the Septuagint codices appear to have been originally intended more as service books than as a defined and normative canon of Scripture,” (E. E. Ellis, The Old Testament in Early Christianity [Baker 1992], 34-35. British scholar R. T. Beckwith states, Philo of Alexandria's writings show it to have been the same as the Palestinian. He refers to the three familiar sections, and he ascribes inspiration to many books in all three, but never to any of the Apocrypha....The Apocrypha were known in the church from the start, but the further back one goes, the more rarely are they treated as inspired. (Roger T. Beckwith, "The Canon of the Old Testament" in Phillip Comfort, The Origin of the Bible [Wheaton: Tyndale House, 2003] pp. 57-64) Manuscripts of anything like the capacity of Codex Alexandrinus were not used in the first centuries of the Christian era, and since in the second century AD the Jews seem largely to have discarded the Septuagint…there can be no real doubt that the comprehensive codices of the Septuagint, which start appearing in the fourth century AD, are all of Christian origin. Nor is there agreement between the codices which the Apocrypha include...Moreover, all three codices [Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus], according to Kenyon, were produced in Egypt, yet the contemporary Christian lists of the biblical books drawn up in Egypt by Athanasius and (very likely) pseudo-Athanasius are much more critical, excluding all apocryphal books from the canon, and putting them in a separate appendix. (Roger Beckwith, [Anglican priest, Oxford BD and Lambeth DD], The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church [Eerdmans 1986], p. 382, 383; http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2008/01/legendary-alexandrian-canon.html) Likewise Gleason Archer affirms, Even in the case of the Septuagint, the apocryphal books maintain a rather uncertain existence. The Codex Vaticanus (B) lacks [besides 3 and 4] 1 and 2 Maccabees (canonical, according to Rome), but includes 1 Esdras (non-canonical, according to Rome). The Sinaiticus (Aleph) omits Baruch (canonical, according to Rome), but includes 4 Maccabees (non-canonical, according to Rome)... Thus it turns out that even the three earliest MSS or the LXX show considerable uncertainty as to which books constitute the list of the Apocrypha.. (Archer, Gleason L., Jr., "A Survey of Old Testament Introduction", Moody Press, Chicago, IL, Rev. 1974, p. 75; http://www.provethebible.net/T2-Integ/B-1101.htm) The German historian Martin Hengel writes, “Sinaiticus contains Barnabas and Hermas, Alexandrinus 1 and 2 Clement.” “Codex Alexandrinus...includes the LXX as we know it in Rahlfs’ edition, with all four books of Maccabees and the fourteen Odes appended to Psalms.” “...the Odes (sometimes varied in number), attested from the fifth century in all Greek Psalm manuscripts, contain three New Testament ‘psalms’: the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Nunc Dimittis from Luke’s birth narrative, and the conclusion of the hymn that begins with the ‘Gloria in Excelsis.’ This underlines the fact that the LXX, although, itself consisting of a collection of Jewish documents, wishes to be a Christian book.” (Martin Hengel, The Septuagint as Christian Scripture [Baker 2004], pp. 57-59) Also, The Targums did not include these books, nor the earliest versions of the Peshitta, and the apocryphal books are seen to have been later additions, and later versions of the LXX varied in regard to which books of the apocrypha they contained. “Nor is there agreement between the codices which of the Apocrypha include. (Eerdmans 1986), 382. The two most complete targums (translations of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic which date from the first century to the Middel Ages) contain all the books of the Hebrew Bible except Ezra, Nehemiah and Daniel. And Cyril of Jerusalem, whose list rejected the apocrypha (except for Baruch) exhorts his readers to “read the Divine Scriptures, the twenty-two books of the Old Testament, these that have been translated by the Seventy-two Interpreters,” the latter referring to the Septuagint but not as including the apocrypha. (http://www.bible-researcher.com/cyril.html) ^ As for the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, these included not only the community's Bible (the Old Testament) but their library, with fragments of hundreds of books. Among these were some Old Testament Apocryphal books. The fact that no commentaries were found for an Apocryphal book, and only canonical books were found in the special parchment and script indicates that the Apocryphal books were not viewed as canonical by the Qumran community. — The Apocrypha - Part Two Dr. Norman Geisler http://www.jashow.org/Articles/_PDFArchives/theological-dictionary/TD1W0602.pd
I wonder what Mathew 23:9 references?
“WISDOM 2:15-16, 17-18: Let us see whether his words be true; let us find out what will happen to him in the end. 18 For if the righteous one is the Son of God, God will help him and deliver him from the hand of his foes.
~Whereas, Psalms 22 omits “Son of God”.”
In Psalm 22 David is prophesying as the spirit of God was giving utterance...he was directly communicating the anguish of Christ directly to all humans at all points of history. Wisdom 2 is speaking of its subject in the third person...Psalm 22 is Jesus Christ speaking in the first person...understandable that there might be no reference to “the son of God” in the third person when Christ(the Real son of God) via the spirit of grace speaking thru David was speaking as himself. Psalm 22 also quotes what Christ would say on the cross...”My God My God why hast thou forsaken me?” It also states what the Romans would do with his clothes...”They have cast lots for my vesture”!
It might be true some scriptures may reference small bits of the Apocrypha...but I think you are wrong about Matthew 27:43...Matthew may have been referring to both Psalm 22 and Wisdom 2.
I do think the arguments over the apocrypha can be solved this way. If references to books or verses from books in the apocrypha can be found in the New testament..then those books should be added back in. If not, then the other books not so referenced in some way should be left out. Now the book of Enoch as we have it, is difficult to fathom in terms of its place in canon for when you read it it seems chopped up,... though Jude quotes some of it. Perhaps a completed accurate book of Enoch can be found in another cave someday.