King James was a Fraud...

First of all, this isn’t even true. Most of the deuterocanonical books were originally written in Hebrew, and only later translated into Greek (along with the rest of the Hebrew Old Testament)--This was called the Septuagint. The Septuagint was the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. According to the Protestant International Bible Commentary:

Interestingly the completed LXX (Septuagint) not only contained the 39 books of the Hebrew canon; it also contained other books as well, books commonly called apocryphal . . . books that for the most part were written in Hebrew and translated into Greek. (Only Wis., 2 Mac. and Ad. Est. were originally composed in Greek.)


Gerald F. Hawthorne, “Canon and Apocrypha of the Old Testament,” International Bible Commentary, ed. F.F. Bruce, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1986), 34.
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Also, even if we exclude the deuterocanonical books, the rest of the Old Testament was not written exclusively in Hebrew. Many parts were also written in Aramaic (e.g., Ezra 4:8-6:18; Daniel 2:4-7:28). Since when does the word of God have to be only in Hebrew.

Furthermore, even if this arguement WERE true, the Jews are the one who did not beleive Christ was the son of God, so their opinion does not hold much water with me.

The council of Hippo was the FIRST COUNCIL THAT COMPILED THE BIBLE as we know it today, it is a historical fact. The Church Councils at Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) both listed the deuterocanonical books as Scripture, which was simply an endorsement of what had become the general consensus of the Church in the west and most of the east. The point is, the apocryphal books were used for over 1100 years by BOTH Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians until that punk Martin Luther decided they were not good enough, and King James decided they were to Catholic and concurred with Luther.

 

jozak, when you're old enough, i wanna have your baby. that was a great post.

 

he's old enough...

 

i think i ran him off. i'll just be a babysitter, then.

 

Yeah - but he's a Catholic, so she'd have to agree to marry him first!

 

KC I would love to have your baby, but we'd have to raise Catholic

 

lol. anything for you, darlin'.

 

How messed up is this? I am quoting Roman Catholic sources and you are quoting Protestant sources. LOL. Did you read that entire article? BTW, I know what the Septuagint is, but everything that I have found shows that the Septuagint was NOT used by Palestinian Jews (and therefore NOT used by Christ).

Did I say they had to be written in Hebrew? I meant Hebrew as in "Palestinian Jew." Sorry for the mixup. No, the word of God does not have to be written in Hebrew.

ad hominem. Whether the Jews believed Christ or not is not a reasonable means to discredit their scriptures. The idea is that the scriptures Christ learned and taught from and read to others in synagogue did NOT contain the Apocrypha. If Christ didn't use them and read them for instruction, why should we?

Have you actually looked for their reasons for rejecting the Apocrypha? James, I don't know much about, but Luther was a scholar, a priest, and a monk. He would have written VERY detailed reasons as to why he rejected the Apocryphal books. I haven't looked into it myself, so I cannot answer the question for you (unfortunately).

 

I doubt very much that James personally had much input into this process. It was rather done on his behalf by others, scholars and so on. I repeat my previous point that James was simply a worldly monarch who was engaged in a process of appropriating the teaching of the church and altering it to suit his political agenda.

 

They were included in the Septuagint which was the "Bible" of the Apostles, period. Again, I will gladly take the word of the apostoles over the Palestinian Jews who did not beleive Christ was the son of God. Even St. Augustine beleived the Septuagint was apostolically-sanctioned and inspired, and this was the consensus in the early Church.

It certainly is reasonable, and it is not ad hominem at all. You are leaving out a very important fact: The Jews did not define a canon of their Scriptures until 70 AD, after the coming of Christ. Since then, The Roman Catholic Church, ( or Christianity as a whole, whichever you beleive) has been the institution empowered with all authority (cf. Matthew 16:18-19; 18:18; Ephesians 3:10; Acts 15). What the Jews may or may not have decided in a council after Christ in 70 AD, is, as I said before..... irrelevant. They rejected Christ. Why should I trust their authority over the Apostoles, their bible the Septuigant, and early church fathers/saints?

You want to know the REAL reason Luther rejected the Apocrypha? He removed the deuterocanonical books from his Bible due to their clear teaching of doctrines which had been recently rejected by Protestants, such as prayers for the dead (Tobit 12:12, 2 Maccabees 12:39-45 ff.; cf. 1 Corinthians 15:29), intercession of dead saints (2 Maccabees 15:14; cf. Revelation 6:9-10), and intermediary intercession of angels (Tobit 12:12,15; cf. Revelation 5:8, 8:3-4). Luther and the other reformers made NO SECRET of this.

[size=-1]Luther even tried to throw out other books of the Bible which are accepted as canonical by all Protestants. He considered Job and Jonah "mere fables", and Ecclesiastes "incoherent and incomplete". He wanted Esther to be "tossed into the Elbe" river!!! WHO DID THIS GUY THINK HE WAS? A P*U*N*K*; that is what he was.[/size]

As I have stated before---393 AD--first bible completed, and all 7 apocryphal books included. Since this council also finalized the 66 canonical books which all Christians accept, it is quite absurd for Protestants to delete seven books from this authoritative Canon, they cant have it both ways. If they are going to accept the council, they have to accept all of it, otherwise, they need to admit their bible is incomplete.

 

There were people who rejected the Apocrypha BEFORE Luther, you know? St Jerome was probably the biggest name.

The problem is that it is VERY hard (I think impossible) to reconcile some concepts in the Apocrypha with some Old and New Testament concepts. For example, Purgatory vs. "Absent from the body is to be present with the Lord." And no, it wasn't cut and dried universal acceptance until Luther, either. There were debates both for and against. It wasn't until Luther and the Council of Trent that the Roman Catholic church was "forced" to state their position.

You will probably disagree with what I said, Jozak, but I am pulling my info from Roman Catholic, Protestant, and secular sources (several different ones) and they all seem to agree. I liked what I found here:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/sbrandt/canon.htm

" We have arrived at an awkward position. The Jewish canon seems not to have been closed, and Christians relied on the decidedly larger but somewhat uncertain canon of the LXX -- until the time of Jerome when at which time many felt that the Jewish canon was more worthy of attention. One is left with a canon that remained uncertain until a very late period consisting of two parts. A list of books which all were certain about and a list of several more that had an uncertain status. Some regarded the deuteros as being merely apocryphal or non-canonical (following Jerome's preface), but others regarded as Scripture (following Augustine or Origen) or perhaps as quasi-Scripture. For this reason I find the claim that Protestants removed books from Scripture to be roughly as exaggerated as the claim that Catholics added the books at the Council of Trent. The truth, it seems, was that an ambiguity truly existed which was very difficult to resolve. This ambiguity persisted until the time of the Reformation at which time Trent was called upon to make a pronouncement with regard to their status. Trent did not attempt a careful examination of history or archeology, but based it first on the fact that the books were read alongside other sacred books in worship and had been since the beginning, and second the pronouncements of previous councils. In other words, it trusted that the Holy Spirit would be most efficacious in working through the universal practice of reading the books in the Churches, or in authoritative pronouncements accepted by many Churches rather than the individual opinions of Jerome, those following him, or the beliefs of the Hebrews."

 

Ah....he did oppose them, but then he changed his mind. Besides, he was one of the very few early church fathers who opposed it.

Nonsense. The council of Trent was not FORCED to do anything. Your article even says this:
"Several local councils of the Church were to endorse the books later to be endorsed by Trent. These were, the Council of Rome (AD 382), Hippo (AD 393), and Carthage (AD 397 and 419). The Council of Nicea II (AD 797) approved everything said by Carthage (AD 419)."

Let's hypothetically say that the charge is true, that the Council of Trent added or was forced to recognize the 7 disputed books in 1546. The fact is Luther rejected the Apocrypha as early as 1519. It was that year Luther had a debate with J. Maier Eck about purgatory. When confronted with 2 Maccabees 12:46 as a proof passage, Luther said that this book was not Scripture. This was fairly difficult for him to say if the book did not get added/recognized until 1546.



Ever since the Councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage in the late 4th century AD, Christians were taught that the deuterocanonical books are Scripture. It was not, however, until 1546 that these books were solemnly and dogmatically defined AGAIN as belonging to the canon, because it was not until then (Reformation) that the inspiration of those books was called into question. As I said before, the 7 disputed books contain lots of scriptural proof for "different" Catholic doctrine, especially purgatory. Long story short, Luther decided it be better to side with the Jews concerning the canon, so as to justify his breaking with Church teaching concerning certain doctrines. What Luther did, then, was simply cowardly. When given biblical proof for a doctrine he disagreed with, he asserted that, "Well, these books shouldn't be in the Bible." But that's easy. Someone could argue that the Virgin Birth of Jesus is not in the Bible. When confronted with passages from Matthew and Luke, the person could just say, "Yeah, well, those books don't belong in the Bible, though." This is possibly the most foolish thing I have heard in the history of Christianity. All the council of Trent did was RE AFFIRM what had been commonly accepted by Christians for hundreds of years, prior to the Reformation. You can say they were argued, but the fact is they were in the ORIGINAL CANON of the bible. Hell, you could argue about Revelation, and many people did, what's the difference? Should they have taken out Revelation as well? People have this notion that if you don't like something, with the bible let's say, you can just take it out and create a new one. Luther or King James did not have the authority to do so.

 

and the popes not a political figure?
what right did the catholics have to take parts out? there is a lot of shit missing from the bible... you didnt translate the originals so how do you know what you call the bible is really the bible? it could easily have been altered to be of better use in controlling the populace, which it has consistently been used for throughout history

 

In Medieval Times Popes were ecclestial as well as political figures sometimes. King James had no ecclestial authoirty whatsoever (besdies running the church of England which I think is fraudulent anyway) to remove 7 books out of the original bible.

We didn't take ANYTHING out of the bible, have you even read the last (how many pages this is)???? The whole point of the thread was proving this! I suggest you either re-read my original post or start educating yourself.

What are you talking about? You need to be specific and cite facts to prove what you are saying, which I don't even know what is. There were dozens of books that did not make the "Cut" when the bible was compiled for the first time, but the early church fathers had to pick ones that would do the best job. Everyone used the same bible up until the 1500's when Martin Luther decided to take them out, and then later when King James decided not to include them in his bible as well. It's absurd to give any justification for removing books out of the original bible becasue it does not fit your political/religious agenda.

Who is "YOU"? ME PERSONALLY? WHO? Specify. The original bible was in Latin first, then slowly over time was translated into other languages.