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