How 27 Writings Became The New Testament

[Katholikos]

Hey, Dairygirl, my brain just slipped into gear. I realized where you got the idea that the apocryphal books were added as an addendum at the back of the Bible. Keeeerect! But it was Martin Luther's Bible. He removed eleven books and parts of Esther and Daniel from the canon of Scripture -- four NT books and seven from the OT + E & D as noted, and put them in a separate section at the back of his German translation of the Bible c. 1545. The NT books were Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. The OT books were Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus (aka Sirach), Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. Luther not only separated these writings, he wrote prefaces for them explaining why he did not consider them Scripture. And to be doubly sure folks didn't make any mistake about the fact that he rejected them, he left the pages unnumbered so they couldn't be confused with the rest of the writings he considered Scripture.

His followers later restored the NT writings, but let Luther's cuts to the OT stand. When the KJV was first published in 1611, the translators followed Luther's strategy and put the so-called apocrypha in an addendum at the back. They were dropped altogether in later editions. That's why to this day they are missing from Protestant Bibles.

Sorry that didn't come to mind sooner. It's very late and I'm tired. I'll check back as soon as I can, but I'll be out of commission in the morning.

Likos

[Katholikos]

Reza,

Catholic Cid (computer guy extraordinaire) formatted your post with the red print and sent it to me in a PM so that I could respond to it. That's the reply I have been working on, but was delayed due to eye surgery. I'll try to have it completed soon.

But I notice in your other posts there's more of the red. If you want me to reply, please use the quote function and not the red print. Don't know if it's just my computer, but the red won't reproduce in the "reply" mode. Others may not have the problem. I'm not very savvy about computers.

Peace, Likos

[dairygirl4u2c]

Well, here's Jerome, apparently on the addendum matter...

a noncatholic friend says this:
[quote]Jerome included them as an addendum, as a favor to some friends, but his prefaces are enough to show he didn't see these books as inspired Scripture. He stated that they were useful and good to read, but they weren't to be used to support the doctrines of the Church. 2 Timothy 3:16 tells you that ALL Scripture is profitable for doctrine, so for Jerome to say this about these books goes to show, once again, his position on their non-canonicity.[/quote]quotes from jerome
[quote]The stories of Susanna and of Bel and the Dragon are not contained in the Hebrew…. For this same reason when I was translating Daniel many years ago, I noted these visions with a critical symbol, showing that they were not included in the Hebrew.... After all, Origen, Eusebius and Appolinarius and other outstanding churchmen and teachers of Greece acknowledge that, as I have said, these visions are not found amongst the Hebrew, and therefore they are not obliged to answer to Porphyry for these portions which exhibit no authority as Holy Scripture (Preface to Daniel)

...and...

I say this to show you how hard it is to master the book of Daniel, which in Hebrew contains neither the history of Susanna, nor the hymn of the three youths, nor the fables of Bel and the Dragon; because, however, they are to be found everywhere, we have formed them into an appendix, prefixing to them an obelus, and thus making an end of them, so as not to seem to the uninformed to have cut off a large portion of the volume.[/quote]

[Katholikos]

[quote name='dairygirl4u2c' post='1259880' date='Apr 29 2007, 08:03 PM']Well, here's Jerome, apparently on the addendum matter ... a noncatholic friend says this:
quotes from jerome[/quote]

Jerome was not a bishop of the Catholic Church and did not participate in the Council of Rome. Perhaps he was a spectator at most. He and others were free to express their opinions until the canon was settled. After that, [i]Roma locuta est, causa finita est. [/i] Rome has spoken, the case is closed.

I posted the list of the canonical writings from the Councils of Rome and Carthage II. Did you read them?

The opinions of Jerome, whatever they may have been, did not prevail. What matters is the contents of the canon. The writings of the Septuagint (LXX) that the Catholic Church inherited from Jesus and the Apostles were canonized and named the Old Testament. The table of contents of the Vulgate is well known and is identical to the canons of both Rome and Carthage II.

[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon#Early_Christianity"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_cano...ly_Christianity[/url]

QUOTE

Early Christianity had no well-defined set of scriptures outside of the Septuagint. . .

According to J. N. D. Kelly [a Protestant scholar], "It should be observed that the Old Testament thus admitted as authoritative in the Church... always included, though with varying degrees of recognition, the so-called Apocrypha or deuterocanonical books."
END QUOTE

QUOTE
Encyclopedia of Early Christianity [a Protestant book]
Second Edition, Everett Ferguson, Editor

The [Greek] Septuagint was the Bible of the earliest church . . . The church spread the Septuagint, together with her own writings contained in the New Testament, throughout the world in its missionary activities . . . Until the Protestant Reformation, [u]the canon of the church was the longer canon of the Septuagint. Only then did the Hebrew text of the Old Testament replace the Septuagint.[/u]
END QUOTE (underscore added)

Did you get that? "together with her own wrirings contained in the NT." The Church wrote the NT.

Be sure to send this to your Protestant friends.

Likos

[RezaMikhaeil]

[quote name='Katholikos' post='1259711' date='Apr 29 2007, 01:17 PM']Reza,

Catholic Cid (computer guy extraordinaire) formatted your post with the red print and sent it to me in a PM so that I could respond to it. That's the reply I have been working on, but was delayed due to eye surgery. I'll try to have it completed soon.

But I notice in your other posts there's more of the red. If you want me to reply, please use the quote function and not the red print. Don't know if it's just my computer, but the red won't reproduce in the "reply" mode. Others may not have the problem. I'm not very savvy about computers.

Peace, Likos[/quote]

This forum only allows so many quotes, so I use the red instead. And to answer your question, no the red doesn't work in reply mode, that's why you have to copy and past what I wrote, and reply to it as such.

[CatholicCid]

[code]This forum only allows so many quotes, so I use the red instead. And to answer your question, no the red doesn't work in reply mode, that's why you have to copy and past what I wrote, and reply to it as such.[/code]

A trick I like to use is after 5 or so quote tags, I start putting in code tags. Looks almost the same and I don't believe there is a limit on them (I just tested and had 50+ in one post no problem). The text will then show up in reply.

[code]doggy?[/code]

[ code ] text [ /code ]

(I find it ironic I can't use the code tags to show the code tags)

Edited April 30, 2007 by CatholicCid

[CatholicCid]

[quote name='CatholicCid' post='1260544' date='Apr 30 2007, 08:26 AM'][code]This forum only allows so many quotes, so I use the red instead. And to answer your question, no the red doesn't work in reply mode, that's why you have to copy and past what I wrote, and reply to it as such.[/code]

A trick I like to use is after 5 or so quote tags, I start putting in code tags. Looks almost the same and I don't believe there is a limit on them (I just tested and had 50+ in one post no problem). The text will then show up in reply.

[code]doggy?[/code]

[ code ] text [ /code ]

(I find it ironic I can't use the code tags to show the code tags)[/quote]

And I actually meant quote the user you are quoting in Code tags when you run out of Quote tags (you can use like a max of 10 or something on one page) and put your text inbetween. Not just put the code tags inside one large quote tag.

Ie

Say I run out of quote tags

[code]Puppies rule[/code]
I disagree, Cats rule.

Instead of

[quote]Puppies Rule
[code]I disagree, Cats rule[/code][/quote]


Woops, was going to edit <<, didn't realize I was quoting my post. Sorry for the double post.

Edited May 1, 2007 by CatholicCid

[jesussaves]

Good point Katho. I was going to look up the time frame but was too lazy. I thought Jerome was during the closing of the canon, so I wasn't sure if it was before or after he did that stuff. I do doubt whether he stopped after Rome..

“St. Jerome distinguished between canonical books and ecclesiastical books. The latter he judged were circulated by the Church as good spiritual reading but were not recognized as authoritative Scripture. The situation remained unclear in the ensuing centuries...For example, John of Damascus, Gregory the Great, Walafrid, Nicolas of Lyra and Tostado continued to doubt the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books. According to Catholic doctrine, the proximate criterion of the biblical canon is the infallible decision of the Church. This decision was not given until rather late in the history of the Church at the Council of Trent. The Council of Trent definitively settled the matter of the Old Testament Canon. That this had not been done previously is apparent from the uncertainty that persisted up to the time of Trent” (The New Catholic Encyclopedia, The Canon).

But you provide convincing evidence.
I think what does "canonical" mean matters here. As at trent they specified "sacred and canonical".

Edited May 1, 2007 by jesussaves