From what I read, I don't think Maccabees even pretends to be historical, but it seems instead to be a, I dunno, philosophical text?
it is strange to me, though, that I could be reading a bible, and it isn't the right bible...How can one tell when they're reading the real bible and the fakes?
Does it not matter if the bible contains the actual truthful books, so long as they're untampered with?
Or do you view bibles that contain the fake books as sacrilegious in some way? For holding them in the binding at all.
I was a little surprised to find that some people were entirely unaware of this Book, but I knew of it.
There's plenty of people who are unfamiliar with the story of how we got the Bible, both Christians and non-Christians. There's a lot of misinformation out there from those that imagine the Bible more-or-less just fell from heaven to those that believe in conspiracy theories involving Constantine and/or the Council of Nicea.
A brief rundown of the history of how we got the Bible looks something like this:
Sometime in the third century BCE in the city of Alexandria a group of Jewish scholars made a translation of holy books into Greek, which is referred to as the Septuagint or LXX (both mean "Seventy", a reference to the seventy-two scholars which tradition says did the translation).
The early Christians wrote, taught, and spoke primarily in Greek (specifically Koine, the common tongue of commerce and trade), every quotation in the New Testament to "The Scriptures" (i.e. the "Old Testament") is taken almost verbatim from the Septuagint. It was a readily available translation of Scripture which Greek-speaking Jews were familiar as well as God-fearing Gentiles; it also made Gentile converts have something which they could easily hear read in their tongue.
This, however, does not mean there was a specifically or really clearly defined list of books which were "Scripture", some books were in dispute.
After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD several things happened: For one the increasing chasm between the early Jesus movement and Judaism became much more defined; and for another the Sadduccees who depended entirely on the Temple effectively became a non-existent sect of Judaism--leaving Pharisaism as
de facto Judaism. It's probably that sometime after this, as part of general de-Hellenization efforts (which had long been a matter of controversy within Judaism) those books which didn't have a more demonstrable Hebrew pedigree were largely cast aside. Though there seems there was still plenty of wiggle room among the Diaspora.
Rather early on the early Christians began to circulate the epistles of Paul which seem to have achieved scriptural status by the early 2nd century. The Four Gospels likewise came to be more-or-less universally accepted within the first quarter or half of the 2nd century. Other books continued to be disputed, such as Peter and John's epistles, the Epistle of Jude, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Clemintine epistles, the Shepherd, (etc), this list of disputed books was rather small though (it did not, for example, include any other gospel texts, such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Truth, or the Gospel of Philip; books such as this were never up for discussion but were universally excluded by the proto-orthodox churches).
As the years went on the New Testament Canon became more clearly defined, by the 4th century most of the New Testament had been more-or-less agreed upon, though some books continued to be in dispute: For example early codices from the 4th and 5th centuries contain 1 Clement, the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd, the Armenian Canon continued to contain III Corinthians for some time, and the Revelation of St. John struggled to find acceptance in the East until the time of St. John of Damascus in the 8th century. In the West the Vulgate (and early English translations such as the Wycliffe Bible done in the 14th century) continued to contain the spurious Epistle of Paul to the Laodiceans.
Concerning the Old Testament the Church, East and West, more-or-less accepted the list of books found in the Septuagint, but a certain selection of these books--the Deuterocanon (meaning "Second Canon")--didn't find universal support. For example in the 5th century St. Jerome questioned their place in the Canon, likewise earlier in the 4th century St. Athanasius lists most of these books outside of the Canon proper (though he includes Baruch as Canon but regards Esther as extra-canonical).
This debate never died in the West, as it was picked back up again by the Protestant Reformers in the 16th century, particularly by Martin Luther. Luther did not desire to remove these books from the Canon, but did regard them as having lesser value and therefore shifted them from their traditional order in the Old Testament to their own section between the Old and New Testaments, calling them "Apocrypha". They remained in Protestant Bibles for quite some time, and still do in many Protestant Bibles today. However in English Bibles they were fully removed by a number of English Bible publishers in the 18th and 19th centuries.
In Lutheran churches we regard them as "Not inspired, but good to read". I believe the Church of England and other member churches in the Anglican Communion continue to have readings from them in the lexionary (Ebia can correct me if I'm wrong here).
The ultimate reason they aren't found in most English Protestant Bibles today (and those Bible translations done or influenced by translation groups which reject these books outright) is because they were removed by English Bible publishers.
Their total ejection from most Protestant Bibles is, I think, a rather sad state of affairs as these books are of tremendous value. Most of the Bibles I own do not contain them, though I wish they did.
In any event, what this all ultimately means is that the contents of the Biblical Canon has mostly come through discussion, debate and rough consensus.
-CryptoLutheran
