To Catholic: Do They Still Tell You That?

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To Catholic: Do They Still Tell You That?

Forum: Theological Expressions
Re:

Dealing With Roman Catholics
Re:

Catholics Love The Gospel, resist the protestant interpretation of the Gospel.
Re:

Does Catholics read the same Bible as we are?
Re:

Do Roman Catholics Read The Bible At All?
Re:

extra books (a Catholic)
Date: 2001, Apr 27
From: Christopher Yip CKHY

Do they actually still tell you that Protestants TOOK OUT the extra books from the bible?
Would you trust a Church that is dishonest? Would you trust a Church that does not stick to historical facts? These are things for you to consider.
If the Apocryphal books have always been regarded as inspired Scriptures along with the rest of the 66 books, then indeed Protestants are wrong. If, on the other hand, these books have never been given equal canonical inspired status as the rest of the 66 books, then Roman Catholicism has lied and has continued the same deception today.
You talked about bigotry and lying and anger. Now, if you can put all these aside for a moment and consider the following, I would like to hear your response. To be fair, I will present both sides of the arguments and I would like to hear an honest response:
1. New Testament Allusions.
ACCEPT: The New Testament reflects the thought of and records some events from the Apocrypha. Hebrews, for instance, speaks of women receiving their dead by resurrection (Heb 11:35), and makes reference to 2 Maccabbees 7 and 12. The so-called wider Apocrypha or Pseudepigrapha are also cited by the New Testament (Jude 14-15; 2 Ti 3:8).
REJECT: The New Testament never cites an Apocrypha book as inspired. Allusions to these books lend no more authority to them than do the New Testament references to the pagan poets. Further, since the New Testament quotes from virtually every canonical book of the Old Testament and verifies the contents and limits of the Old Testament while omitting the Apocrypha, it seems clear that the New Testament definitely excludes the Apocrypha from the Hebrew canon. Josephus, the Jewish historian, expressly rejects the Apocrypha by listing only twenty-two canonical books. According to him (Against Apion, I. 8) and the Talmud, the succession of prophets ended in Nehemiah’s day with Malachi around 400 BC. The Talmud records, “After the latter prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, the Holy Spirit departed from Israel.”
2. New Testament Usages of the Septuagint.
ACCEPT: The Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament made at Alexandria is known as the Septuagint (LXX). It is the version most often cited by New Testament writers, for it was in many respects the Bible of the apostles and the early Christians. The LXX contained the Apocrypha. The presence of these books in the LXX supports the broader Alexandrian canon of the Old Testament as opposed to the narrower Palestinian canon which omits them. The Alexandrian Canon accepted 7 additional books (1 & 2 Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, Sirach, Wisdom and Baruch) and some additions to Daniel (Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Jews, Susannah, Bel and the Dragon) and Esther, which totalled 11 additions.
REJECT: Palestine was the home of the Jewish canon, not Alexandria, Egypt. The great Greek learning centre in Egypt was no authority in determining which books belonged in the Jewish Old Testament. (my note: James Akin erred here. In determining the canon of the Old Testament, the Jews, rather than the Christian church, is the more reliable source because it is the Old Testament we are talking about when it comes to the Apocrypha). Alexandria was the place of translation, not of canonisation. The fact that the LXX contains the Apocrypha only proves that the Alexandrian Jews translated the other Jewish religious literature from the intertestamental period along with the canonical books. Philo, the Alexandrian Jew, clearly rejected the canonicity of the Apocrypha at the time of Christ as does official Judaism at other places and times. In fact, the extant copies of the LXX date from the fourth century AD and do not prove what books were in the LXX of earlier times.
3. The Earliest Complete Manuscripts of the Bible.
ACCEPT: The earliest Greek manuscripts of the Bible contain the Apocrypha interspersed among the Old Testament books. Manuscripts Aleph, A, and B all include these books, revealing that they were part of the early Christian bible.
REJECT: The early Greek manuscripts of the Bible date from the fourth century. They follow the LXX tradition which contains the Apocrypha. As was noted above, this is a Greek translation, not a Hebrew canon. Jesus and the New Testament writers quoted most often from the LXX but never once from any book of the Apocrypha. At best, the presence of the Apocrypha in Christian Bibles of the fourth century shows only that these books were accepted to some degree by Christians at that time. It does not indicate that either the Jews or earlier Christians accepted these books as canonical, to say nothing of the universal church, which has not held them to be canonical.
4. Early Christian Art.
ACCEPT: Some of the earliest records of Christian art reflect usage of the Apocrypha. Catacomb scenes sometimes draw on the history of the faithful recorded in the intertestamental period.
REJECT: Artistic representations are not grounds for determining the canonicity of the Apocrypha. Catacomb scenes from the Apocrypha indicate only that believers of the period were aware of the events of the intertestamental period and considered them part of their religious heritage. Early Christian art does nothing to settle the question of the canonicity of the Apocrypha.
5. The Early Church Fathers.
ACCEPT: Some of the very early church Fathers, particularly in the West, accepted and used the Apocrypha in their teaching and preaching. Even in the East, however, Clement of Alexandria recognised 2 Esdras as fully canonical. Origen added Maccabbees as well as the Letter of Jeremiah to his canonical list. Irenaeus quoted from the Book of Wisdom, and other Fathers cited other Apocrypha books.
REJECT: Many of the great early church Fathers, including Melito, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Athanasious, spoke against the Apocrypha. Jerome who produced the Latin Vulgate cared little for the Apocrypha and only made a hasty translation of portions of it – Judith, Tobit, the rest of Esther, and the additions to Daniel – before his death. As a result, the Old Latin version of the Apocrypha was brought into the Latin Vulgate Bible during the Middle Ages over Jerome’s dead body. No important Father before Augustine accepted all the Apocrypha books canonised by Trent.
6. The Influence of St. Augustine.
ACCEPT: St. Augustine (c. 354-430) brought the wider Western tradition about the Apocrypha to its culmination by giving to them canonical status. He influenced the church councils at Hippo (AD 393) and Carthage (AD 397) which listed the Apocrypha as canonical. From this time the western church used the Apocrypha in public worship.
REJECT: The testimony of St Augustine is neither definitive nor unequivocal. First, Augustine at times implies that the Apocrypha had only a deuterocanonicity (City of God 18.36) instead of a primary canonicity. Further, the Councils of Hippo and Carthage were small local councils influenced by Augustine and the tradition of the Greek Septuagint translation. No qualified Hebrew scholars were present at either of these councils. The most qualified Hebrew scholar of the time, Jerome, argued strongly against Augustine in his rejecting the canonicity of the Apocrypha. Jerome refused even to translate the Apocrypha into Latin or to include it in his Latin Vulgate versions. It was not until after Jerome’s day and literally over his dead body, that the Apocrypha was brought into the Latin Vulgate. And it is this amended version of the Latin Vulgate that received the Roman Catholic Church’s blessing at the Council of Trent in 1543.
7. The Council of Trent.
ACCEPT: In 1546 the post-Reformation Roman Catholic church Council of Trent proclaimed the Apocrypha as canonical, declaring,
“The Synod … receives and venerates … all of the books both of the Old and of the New Testament [including Apocrypha] – seeing that one God is the Author of both … as having been dictated, either by Christ’s own word of mouth or by the Holy Ghost … if anyone receives not as sacred and canonical the said books entire with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the Catholic Church … let him be anathema.” (Philip Schaff, ed., The Creeds of Christendom, 6th ed. rev. (New York, Harper, 1919), 2:81)
Since the Council of Trent, the books of the Apocrypha have had binding and canonical authority in the Roman Catholic Church.
REJECT: The action of the Council of Trent, seen in historical light, was both polemical and prejudicial. In debates with Luther, the Roman Catholics had quoted the Maccabees in support of prayer for the dead (2 Maccabees 12:45-46). Luther and Protestants following him challenged the canonicity of that book, citing the New Testament, the early Church Fathers, and Jewish teachers for support. The Council of Trent responded to Luther by canonising the Apocrypha. Not only is the action of Trent obviously polemical, but it was prejudicial, since not all of the fourteen (fifteen) books of the Apocrypha were accepted by Trent. 1 and 2 Esdras (Roman Catholic, 3 and 4 Esdras; the Douay version names the canonical books of Ezra and Nehemiah as 1 and 2 Esdras respectively) and the Prayer of Mansseh were rejected. The rejection of 2 Esdras is particularly suspect, for it contains a strong verse again praying for the dead (2 Esdras 7:105). In fact, some medieval scribe had cut this section out of the Latin manuscripts of 2 Esdras, and it was known by Arabic manuscripts until found again in Latin by Robert L. Bently in 1874 at a library in Amiens, France.
The decision at Trent did not reflect either a universal or indisputable consent within the Catholic Church of the Reformation. During that very time, Cardinal Cajetan, who opposed Luther at Augsburg in 1518, published a “Commentary on All the Authentic Historical Books of the Old Testament” (1532) which omitted the Apocrypha. Even before this, Cardinal Ximenes distinguished between the Apocrypha and the Old Testament canon in his Complutensian Polyglot (1514-1517). With this data in view, Protestants generally reject the decision of Trent as unfounded.
8. Non-Catholic Usage.
ACCEPT: Protestant bibles even since the Reformation have often contained the Apocrypha. Indeed, in Anglican churches the Apocrypha is read regularly along with the other books of the Old and New Testament in public worship. The Apocrypha is also used by churches in the Eastern Orthodox tradition.
REJECT: The use of Apocrypha among Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant churches has been uneven. Some have used it public worship. Many Bibles contain translations of the Apocrypha, although it is placed in a separate section, usually between the Old and New Testaments. However non-Catholics have employed the Apocrypha, they have never given it the same canonical authority of the rest of the Bible. Instead, its use has been more devotional than canonical among non-Catholics.
9. The Dead Sea community.
ACCEPT: Books of the Apocrypha were found among the scrolls of the Dead Sea community at Qumran. Some of these books were written in Hebrew, indicating their use among Palestinian Jews even before the time of Christ.
REJECT: Many noncanonical books were discovered at Qumran, including commentaries and manuals. It was a library and as such it contained numerous books not believed by the community to be inspired. Since no commentaries on or authoritative quotes from the Apocrypha have been discovered at Qumran, there is no evidence to demonstrate that they held the Apocrypha to be inspired. We may assume that they did not regard the Apocrypha as canonical. Even if evidence to the contrary is found, the fact that the group was a sect which had broken off from official Judaism would mean that it was not expected to be orthodox in all its beliefs. As far as we can tell, however, they were orthodox in their view of the canonicity of the Old Testament; that is, they did not accept the canonicity of the Apocryphal.
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Having weighed the evidences, you must face the issues honestly. If you need to leave the Roman Catholic Church in order to find and worship God in the way He intended it to be, please do so. There is indeed a rich tradition in the Roman Catholic Church - with all its antiquity and all. The house of God should be majestic and inspiring - a fitting testimony to His glory and majesty but these are secondary issues. The Anglicans, for example, retain much of these traditions while adhering to the sole authority of the bible. That is one Church you can go to.
We do not want to bash Roman Catholics. That is not the purpose. The language at times may have gotten a bit coarse and I apologise for it. But we believe that the Gospel has been eclipsed by the RCC for thousands of years. One pope may claim to teach infallibly some doctrine which demands the obedience and subscription of all Roman Catholics, like Honorius and his monotheletism, only to find out 50 years later that it is a heresy deserving eternal anathema and damnation. Against this, we have the sure Word of God which cannot mislead.
YOu said you read the bible everyday. Do you find any of the Roman Catholic dogmas there such as baptismal regeneration, penances, Mary, purgatory and such? Pick up a lexical commentary - one that explains the context and exegetes the biblical text in its original language, and discover for yourself the truth.
Christopher