Grant, good one.
earlier, Grant E. Metcalf, wrote:
>Sharon Hooley ask: "Is there a difference between the Catholic Bible
>and the new Jerusalem Bible?"
>
>Angel wrote: "There is no such thing as a 'Catholic' bible. The
>Roman Catholic church recognizes the New Jerusalem bible,
>however. She recognizes all bibles which are translated from the
>Septuagint wherein are found the deuterocanonical books."
>
>john schwery comments: When I see a version with the Apocrypha
>added, that is a Catholic Bible."
>
>Grant comments: Below I will provide several quotations which
>indicate that there is a Roman Catholic version of the Bible
>officially designated by the Council of Trent, 1546. I also provide
>the info from the title page of a braille New Testament given to me
>45 years ago which seems to indicate that there is a Roman Catholic Bible.
>
>Begin:
> The New Testament of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Translated from the
> Vulgate, A Revision of the Challoner-Rhemes Version, Edited by
> Catholic Schollars, under the Patronage of THE EPISCOPAL COMMITTEE
> of the CONFRATERNITY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, St. Anthony Guild
> Press, Patterson, New Jersey. End of quotation.
>This comes in ten braille volumes with multitudinous explanatory
>notes reflecting Roman Catholic views.
>
>Secondly, I quote numerous snipits from: Baker Encyclopedia of
>Christian Apologetics, Norman L. Geisler, 1999. This is lengthy. I
>will provide the entire 8 pages if you want to read the full
>section. Write me off list.
>Begin:
> Apocrypha, Old and New Testaments. Apocrypha most commonly
> refers to disputed books that Protestants reject and Roman
> Catholics and Orthodox communions accept into the Old Testament.
> The word apocrypha means "hidden" or "doubtful." So those who
> accept these documents prefer to call them "deuterocanonical," or
> books of "the second canon."
> ...
> The Septuagint and the Apocrypha. The fact that the New
> Testament often quotes from other books in the Greek Old Testament
> in no way proves that the deuterocanonical books it contains are
> inspired. It is not even certain that the Septuagint of the first
> century contained the Apocrypha. The earliest Greek manuscripts
> that include them date from the fourth century A.D.
> ...
> It is also important to remember that these books were not part
> of the Christian (New Testament period) writings. Hence, they were
> not under the province of the Christian church to decide. They were
> the province of the Jewish community which wrote them and which
> had, centuries before, rejected them as part of the canon.
> ...
> The Catholic Arguments in Summary. At best, all that the
> arguments urged in favor of the canonicity of the apocryphal books
> prove is that various apocryphal books were given varied degrees of
> esteem by various persons within the Christian church, usually
> falling short of claims for the books' canonicity. Only after
> Augustine and the local councils he dominated pronounced them
> inspired did they gain wider usage and eventual infallible
> acceptance by the Roman Catholic church at Trent. This falls far
> short of the kind of initial, continual, and full recognition among
> Christian churches of the canonical books of the Protestant Old
> Testament and Jewish Torah (which exclude the Apocrypha). True
> canonical books were received immediately by the people of God into
> the growing canon of Scripture. ... Any subsequent debate was by
> those who were not in a position, as was the immediate audience, to
> know whether they were from an accredited apostle or prophet. ...
> Arguments for the Protestant Canon. Evidence indicates that the
> Protestant canon, consisting of the thirty-nine books of the Hebrew
> Bible and excluding the Apocrypha, is the true canon. The only
> difference between the Protestant and ancient Palestinian Canon
> lies in organization. The ancient Bible lists twenty-four books....
> The Palestinian Jews represented Jewish orthodoxy Therefore, their
> canon was recognized as the orthodox one. It was the canon of
> Jesus, Josephus, and Jerome. It was the canon of many early church
> fathers, among them Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Athanasius.
> ...
> Jewish Rejection. In addition to the evidence for the
> propheticity of only the books of the Jewish and Protestant Old
> Testament, there is an unbroken line of rejection of the Apocrypha
> as canon by Jewish and Christian teachers.
> Philo, an Alexandrian Jewish teacher (20 B.C.-A.D. 40), quoted
> the Old Testament prolifically from virtually every canonical book.
> However, he never once quoted from the Apocrypha as inspired.
> Josephus (A.D. 30-100), a Jewish historian, explicitly excludes
> the Apocrypha, numbering the Old Testament as twenty two books (=
> thirty-nine books in Protestant Old Testament). Neither does he
> ever quote an Apocryphal book as Scripture, though he was familiar
> with them. In Against Apion (1.8) he wrote:
> For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us,
> disagreeing from and contradicting one another [as the Greeks have]
> but only twenty-two books, which are justly believed to be divine;
> and of them, five belong to Moses, which contain his law, and the
> traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. This interval
> of time was little short of three thousand years; but as to the
> time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes king of
> Persia, who reigned at Xerxes, the prophets, who were after Moses,
> wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The
> remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the
> conduct of human life. [Josephus, 1.8.
> These correspond exactly to the Jewish and Protestant Old
> Testament, which excludes the Apocrypha.
> The Jewish teachers acknowledged that their prophetic line
> ended in the fourth century B.C. Yet, as even Catholics
> acknowledge, all apocryphal books were written after this time.
> ...
> Jesus and the New Testament writers never quoted from the
> Apocrypha as Scripture, even though they were aware of these
> writings and alluded to them at times (e.g., Heb. 11:35 may allude
> to 2 Maccabees 7, 12, though this may be a reference to the
> canonical book of Kings; see 1 Kings 17:22). Yet hundreds of
> quotations in the New Testament cite the Old Testament canon. The
> authority with which they are cited indicates that the New
> Testament writers believed them to be part of the "Law and
> Prophets" [i.e., whole Old Testament] which was believed to be the
> inspired and infallible Word of God (Matt. 5:17-18; cf. John
> 10:35), Jesus quoted from throughout the Old Testament "Law and
> Prophets," which he called "all the Scriptures" (Luke 24:27).
> ...
> Early church council rejection. No canonic list or council of
> the Christian church accepted the Apocrypha as inspired for nearly
> the first four centuries. This is significant, since all of the
> lists available and most of the fathers of this period omit the
> Apocrypha. The first councils to accept the Apocrypha were only
> local ones without ecumenical force. The Catholic contention that
> the Council of Rome (382), though not an ecumenical council, had
> ecumenical force because Pope Damasus (304-384) ratified it is
> without grounds. It begs the question, assuming that Damasus was a
> Pope with infallible authority. Second, even Catholics acknowledge
> this council was not an ecumenical body. Third, not all Catholic
> scholars agree that such affirmations by Popes are infallible.
> There are no infallible lists of infallible statements by Popes.
> Nor are there any universally agreed upon criteria for developing
> such lists. At best, appealing to a Pope to make infallible a
> statement by a local council is a double-edged sword. Even Catholic
> scholars admit that some Popes taught error and were even heretical.
> Early fathers' rejection. Early fathers of the Christian church
> spoke out against the Apocrypha. This included Origen, Cyril of
> Jerusalem, Athanasius, and the great Roman Catholic Bible translator, Jerome.
> ...
> Conclusion. Differences over the Old Testament Apocrypha play a
> crucial role in Roman Catholic and Protestant differences over such
> teachings as purgatory and prayers for the dead. There is no
> evidence that the Apocryphal books are inspired and, therefore,
> should be part of the canon of inspired Scripture. They do not
> claim to be inspired, nor is inspiration credited to them by the
> Jewish community that produced them. They are never quoted as
> Scripture in the New Testament. Many early fathers, including
> Jerome, categorically rejected them. Adding them to the Bible with
> an infallible decree at the Council of Trent shows evidence of
> being a dogmatic and polemical pronouncement calculated to bolster
> support for doctrines that do not find clear support in any of the
> canonical books.... (End of quotations.)
>
>Hopefully this has been helpful to your understanding of Biblical
>history and its canonicity.
>
>Listening for His shout!
>
>Grant E. Metcalf
>Bartimaeus Alliance of the Blind, Inc.
>Email: [log in to unmask]
>Desk: 650-754-4207
>Home: 650-589-6890
>Website: http://bartimaeus.us/
John
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