Transcript:
If you’ve ever opened a Protestant Bible, you’ve likely noticed a major difference
from our own Catholic Bible: their Old Testament has fewer books than ours.
Well, that, and their Bible actually looks like it’s been used before instead of sitting
on a shelf for years… but that’s a different topic.
Whereas the Catholic Bible contains 73 books, the Protestant version only contains 66.
Making things even more confusing, Orthodox Bibles contain 76, 78, or even 79 books, depending
on the Tradition.
Where does this discrepancy come from, and who’s ultimately right?
This is Catholicism in Focus.
While it may seem entirely foreign to us today, there was actually a time in the Church before
the Bible existed.
For centuries, in fact, the Church was guided by the Hebrew Scriptures and a random bunch
of recently written texts that varied from place to place.
God most certainly inspired many texts throughout our history, but we weren’t exactly given
a table of contents to know which ones they were.
Which is why, for more than three centuries, there was no “official canon” of scripture
but rather, every local area had its own versions of the Bible.
Some included books that would later be removed—things like 1 Clement and the Didache—while others
originally excluded certain books we consider canonical today—such as James or Revelation.
As the Church began to develop in many different directions over this time, heretical ideas
like Arianism and Docetism forced the Church to work together beyond the local level, convening
councils and promulgating doctrine.
There was a growing desire, particularly in the West, to formalize and legally assert
the teachings of the Church.
To do so, the Church set three criteria for accepting works into the New Testament.
To be considered inspired and worthy of entry into the canon, a text must, one, be associated
with an Apostle, two, be widely circulated and prominent in liturgies, and three, contain
theology consistent with our understanding of God.
Many lists can be found dating back to as early as Marcion in the year 140, but the
earliest extent list of books as they appear in the Catholic Bible today can be found in
a letter from St. Athanasius in 367.
This list was later included at the Councils of Carthage in 397 and 419, and reasserted
1000 years later at the Council of Florence in the 15th century.
At least in the Western Church, that is more than 1600 years of consistent teaching on
the canon of scripture.
So how is there still so much discrepancy in the Christian world today?
The issue can be understood on two fronts for two very different reasons.
We’ll start with Orthodox Churches.
One thing that is often forgotten about the relationship between the Eastern and Western
Churches is that the East simply doesn’t share the same level of legalism that the
West does.
Whereas Catholics want to define and categorize everything, setting rules for everything under
the sun, the Orthodox Churches have always placed a greater emphasis on mystery.
And so, while the Council of Carthage listed the 73 books of the Bible in 397 and the Eastern
Church had no objection to this, it also didn’t treat this teaching as definitely closing
the canon either.
Particularly in Antioch, local customs continued, and texts like 3rd and 4th Maccabees, the
Prayer of Manassah, and Psalm 151— things that were not listed at Carthage—continued
to be a part of their liturgies.
For them, there is no need to make definitive distinctions between inspired and uninspired
books, as if it were a black and white issue.
Instead, they recognize a gradation of inspiration over a wide range of texts.
It’s why even today, believe it or not, there are many individual Eastern Churches
in communion with one another that have slightly variant versions of both Testaments.
It doesn’t make sense to our Western, legalistic mindset, but it is a Tradition that is as
old, if not older than our own.
This is quite different, however, from the issue with the Protestant canon of Scripture.
Rather than add to the canon of the Council of Carthage with a more ancient Tradition,
the Protestant Bible has removed from it.
To understand this, we must look to the formation of Old Testament.
For those in the ancient Greek-speaking world, Christian or Jew, the only version of the
Old Testament available was the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament compiled
during the Greek occupation of the Jews in the centuries before the birth of Christ.
It was the version of Scripture that Jesus himself would have known, and is cited by
rabbis for centuries.
But just as there is an affinity for the Latin language in the Catholic Church, so too, is
there an affinity for the Hebrew language for some Jews.
The original scriptures were written in Hebrew, not Greek, and so in the early middle ages,
there was a growing desire among Jews to recapture what was seen as the more authentic version
of the text.
Between the 6th and 10th centuries, Jewish scribes called Masoretes began compiling,
translating, and preserving their scriptures in Hebrew.
Because the books of Tobit, Judith, Baruch, Sirach, Wisdom, First and Second Maccabees
were written during the Hellenistic period, a time when Jews spoke and wrote only in Greek,
these books were never recorded in Hebrew, and thus, seen as inauthentic, and thus, removed.
When Luther came along and began studying Scripture, seeking to reform the Church to
its earliest roots, he naturally looked to the Jews of his day, believing that they had
the oldest, most authentic version of Scripture.
This was unfortunately not correct, as the Masoretic Text is actually about 1000 years
younger than the Septuagint, and so he falsely concluded that the Catholic Church must have
added inauthentic books to justify our doctrines.
And so, following medieval Jews rather than the ancient Church, when Luther and the other
Protestants issued a translation of the Bible, they removed seven books that had guided Christians
since the beginning, leaving their total at just 66.
A decision, unlike the Orthodox Churches, that signifies a distinct break from Tradition.
It’s an example of how, even though Catholics and Orthodox Christians can disagree on some
things, we’ve never really too far apart.
While we would argue that the canon was set in 397 and we have remained faithful to that
tradition for more than 1600 years, we can also recognize some truth in the plurality
of ancient canons: technically speaking, the canon was never actually promulgated at an
Ecumenical Council until Trent, and so the East has always had its own distinct and completely
valid method from ours.
The idea of REMOVING texts from the canon, however, of taking it upon oneself to revise
the local councils of one’s own Church, going against a tradition that had existed
since before the time of Christ… that’s a bit more problematic, and ultimately the
attitude that doomed the Reformation.
Who are we, especially when dealing with Scripture, to believe that we know more than our spiritual
mothers and fathers that came before us and compiled this incredible book?
God may not have given us an official list, but when Christians do the same thing for more than
1000 years… it’s probably good not to mess with it.
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