Adding Books to the Bible.

Maybe we should all ask, WHY would you want to add/remove anything from the Bible? Even if it wasn't written by God himself, literally, it is still GOD'S WORD. Not man's.

Nessie said:

Maybe we should all ask, WHY would you want to add/remove anything from the Bible? Even if it wasn't written by God himself, literally, it is still GOD'S WORD. Not man's.

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It comes down to what we believe. Is the Bible enough or do we need extra material.

I believe the Bible is enough, extras will only get us into trouble.

Removing is just as bad as adding.

Don't do either.

Robert43 said:

How can the Catholics add their own church books to Bible? Or even take away meanings of the Bible?


Robert.

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Well, because they give equal weight to the traditions of their church as they do to Scriptures. Also it is not "their own" church books as in something created by them. While many Jews did and currently do reject these as inspired by God or part of Jewish biblical canon, I believe they were incorporated into the Septuagint available during Jesus' time. While I do not consider the Apocrypha to be a part of Scripture, I really haven't studied them extensively.

Was that really the purpose of this post???

I ask because I do not agree with catholcism, but I have no interest in causing strife with them either. I mean, if I am in conversatin with them I will stand firm for the Truths of the Bible where the contradict with catholicism. But in the end, what that organization does as it relates to the Lord they will stand accountable for. And that goes for all of us really.

I am not saying that the intent of your post will cause strife, but do you really think a catholic will read this and say "Oh, now I see the light!" so to speak?

Plus, I was really enjoying this conversation and think there are many more benefits to such a discussion other than just proving catholics wrong. A number of non-catholic Christians can learn from this to, as have I.

Thanks!

Robert43 said:

How can the Catholics add their own church books to Bible? Or even take away meanings of the Bible?


Robert.

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Well since the Catholic/Orthodox churches are the ones that collected the books and set the original canon(before I was born as early as 100ad), for the Christian faith, it could be argued that they didn't add to the canon at all, but we as protestants removed books from the canon.

It is my understanding that it wasn't until the 19th century that the puritans removed the apocrypha from the protestant Bible.

Hope this helps.

Maybe the following would be helpful...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocrypha

Robert43 said:

Hi, I will change the post to say how can any church Catholic or Protestant add to or take away from the Bible?

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What about those who are neither Catholic or Protestant, including non-Christians?

Robert43 said:

Hi, I will change the post to say how can any church Catholic or Protestant add to or take away from the Bible?

Robert.

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LOL!!

Kripost said:

What about those who are neither Catholic or Protestant, including non-Christians?

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Well, I am neither catholic or protestant, but I am Christian. LOL

Guess this can go on forever!

did anyone read my post? seeing as revelations was written before the 'bible' was put together - it is simply talking about the book of revelations! there is no way it can be any different!adding books to the bible wouldnt be too bad - it would just be stupid - as none of us have been there! the bible is about the word or God and what Jesus was like - seeing as the word has been already said in the Bible, and Jesus is no longer on Earth - what would there be to add to the bible?

if we are talking about poems, such as footprints maybe - it wouldnt be too much of a problem - but it wouldnt be a bible it would be 'the bible with poems' - i dont see how any books can or would need to be added really!

Well, I guess if you want to be super-strict or superstitious about it, aren't you adding to the book of Revelation when you bind it inside the same covers with the other books of scripture? When you add chapter and verse numbers? Page numbers? Notes and cross-references? Maps? A table of contents?

Mr Tom said:

Okkk, just to clear this up - Revelations is obviously talking about THAT book and not the bible in general:

a) the bible is a 'library' and not a book
b) (most obviously) the bible was put together AFTER revelations was written, so the writer (possibly Paul) would not have known that the 'bible' was going to be created!

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Actually your point is a good one but it was John not Paul who wrote Revelation:Revelation 1:1-2 "A Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to Him to declare to His servants things which must shortly come to pass. And He signified it by sending His angel to His servant John, 2 who bore record of the Word of God and of the testimony of Jesus Christ and of all the things that he saw."

I agree with you that John may not have had any idea that the rest of his writings or anyone elses would have been collected, and put into one volume. So perhaps for this reason we can assume that John was speaking of this book only.

But I would truly hate to be the one to change any of them myself.

And one could say that without the Catholic Church the books of the Bible we own today would not have survived over the years.

Here is a pretty good site on the canon:
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~gavinru/canon.htm

And another:
http://members.aol.com/bob78999/canon.html

The annoying issue here is that in point of fact, if one accepts the passages from Revelation, Deuteronomy, and Proverbs as God's command regarding the Bible, it is the Protestants who are in error, if not all Christians together totally.

The process works like this:

God inspired a wide variety of writers to produce Scriptural works. These can be usefully grouped, as the Jews did, into three categories:

The Law (Torah) -- consisting of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

The Prophets (Neba'im) -- including the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve (i.e., the single scroll including the twelve final books of the Old Testament, the so-called "Minor Prophets")

The Writings -- including the remainder of the Old Testament

To this grouping the Church added the four Gospels, Acts, Revelation, and an assortment of letters written by Apostles and other early Church leaders, constituting the New Testament as we know it.

In the course of all this, a wide variety of works were accepted as Scripture in some places and rejected in others.

Most notably, fifteen works were deemed part of The Writings by the Jews of the diaspora which were later, after Christ's death, formally rejected by the Jews of Palestine. These constitute the deuterocanonical works, and were included in the Septuagint, the ancient translation of the Old Testament into Greek. The Orthodox Churches have held to Septuagint-plus-New-Testament as constituting the Bible ever since.

The Western Church held to the use of the full Scriptures, focusing largely on a specific selection of texts from the proterocanon but with a few deuterocanonical readings included, and without establishing a formal canon, up until the time of the Reformation.

St. Jerome, the great Scripture scholar who translated the Bible into Latin, was skeptical about the value of the deuterocanon but did in fact include it.

Luther and other Reformers found the value of the proterocanon and the choice of the Palestinian Jewish leaders, along with Jerome's skepticism, to suggest that the additional 15 books of the deuterocanon were not as truly Scripture as the proterocanon and the New Testament. They therefore placed them in a separate collection.

In reaction against the Reformers, the Catholic Council of Trent established a canon consisting of the proterocanon, 12 books from the deuterocanon, and the New Testament. I and II Esdras were excluded as largely duplicating Ezra and Nehemiah, and the Prayer of Manasseh was preserved as the canticle Kyrie Pantocrator but not permitted canonical status as a separate book of Scripture.

But nobody "added books to Scripture" and if anyone "excluded books" it would be Protestantism and Catholicism, which omitted 15 and 3 respectively of what had been considered part of the Canon up until the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.

Lollard said:

Actually your point is a good one but it was John not Paul who wrote Revelation.

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lol i keep making comments like that! thankyou for correcting me!

Mr Tom said:

lol i keep making comments like that! thankyou for correcting me!

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No worries friend, at least you didn't say it was Ringo, or George

Polycarp1 said:

Luther and other Reformers found the value of the proterocanon and the choice of the Palestinian Jewish leaders, along with Jerome's skepticism, to suggest that the additional 15 books of the deuterocanon were not as truly Scripture as the proterocanon and the New Testament. They therefore placed them in a separate collection.

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Hey Polycarp!
I don't want to single out just one part of your brilliant post, but I have a question about this above statement. Did at anytime the fact that none of the DC books were written in Hebrew (or had any copies in Hebrew but only in the Greek) at all any factor or did I get some bad information?

Lollard said:

Hey Polycarp!
I don't want to single out just one part of your brilliant post, but I have a question about this above statement. Did at anytime the fact that none of the DC books were written in Hebrew (or had any copies in Hebrew but only in the Greek) at all any factor or did I get some bad information?

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On target. One of the arguments used against the deuterocanon was that the books were not known in Hebrew at the time -- as it happens, at least one (Ecclesiasticus, AKA the Wisdom of Jeshua ben Sirach, or Sirach) was in fact written in Hebrew but only the Greek version was known to have survived (thanks to the Septuagint) -- we now have an unearthed manuscript of the original Hebrew text but it was not known at the time of the Reformation, and apparently for a long time before that.

The sort of scholarly analysis that is offensive to many conservative "Bible-believing Christians" suggests that several of the deuterocanonical books were actually late writings originally in Greek -- which hardly affects their canonicity.

Polycarp1 said:

as it happens, at least one (Ecclesiasticus, AKA the Wisdom of Jeshua ben Sirach, or Sirach) was in fact written in Hebrew but only the Greek version was known to have survived (thanks to the Septuagint) -- we now have an unearthed manuscript of the original Hebrew text but it was not known at the time of the Reformation, and apparently for a long time before that.

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I had heard that Ecclesiasticus was very close to becoming part of the canon, but to be honest with you I can't remember why it wasn't considered "inspired" or whatever the term is that seperates it from the canon.

Thanks again for the fount of information!