I read a thread over in OBOB that had to do with protestants getting rid of books that were apart of the original canon.. I am just curious of what all went on..Is the othodox scriptures different? i just would like to learn a little more. Am I missing anything by not know what's in theses books..Were some chosen that were removed...Two things..I am not one of the sharper tools in the shop so don't get to deep..And don't make this into a catholic bashing thread,, I just want a different part of the story...Thanks..God Bless..Kim
Well, thing was, they never were scripture.
See it starts with the Jewish canon. A canon always limited to what you would see as the Protestant New Testament. Even when the Jews often killed the prophets they still knew their prophets. And we see in the New Testament that the Jews were given the oracles of God.
Now in order to claim the Apochryphal books are scripture. You have to accept some rather "interesting" things. You have to believe that the oracles of God, those inspired to write scripture, moved back to Egypt against the commands of God, and wrote scripture there. And this during a time when there were no prophets.
So you basically have to decide scripture can be written by someone who is not a prophet of God.
Now we have the Septuagint. Which some would like to say this is the bible of Jesus and therefore anything in it today is automatically approved by Jesus as scripture. First, we know the Apochryphal books were not an original part of the Septuagint, we really don't know when they were added, it seems to be doubtful at best that all of them were part of the Septuagint at the time of Jesus. And while some quotes do seem to be from the Septuagint, not all are. The agreement seems to have gotten greater over time in the Byzantine family of manuscripts.
We also see things like the testimony of Athanasius the bishop of Constantinople who clearly did not believe the Apochryphal books were scripture. He gives the reasons for what is scripture and he lists the books. He makes on mistake in that he didn't include Esther and then puts one of the apochryphal books in it's place, but it seems to be a real twist of history to think the Orthodox church accepted the Apochryphal books as scripture from the start when the Bishop of Constantinople around the year 400 clearly did not and taught against that.
Then we have the Vulgate. This is really what the Catholics base their canon on and not the Septuagint, that's why they differ on the Apochryphal books to include.
Take Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate. He did not recognize the Apochryphal books as scripture. Matter of fact, he didn't even bother to translate them at first. At the behest of the Pope, he did do a quick translation of those you find in the Vulgate, mostly just taking some of the Old Latin and doing a bit of a rework or just taking them as they were.
And we should not where the word Apochrypha comes from, Jerome used it. And so calling them Apochrypha really comes to us from the Latin Vulgate. And how do we know the Apochryphal books were not scripture. Well again from the Vulgate, Jerome clearly stated so in his prefaces.
So we get this history story from the Catholics that councils right at the time set the canon, and Jerome, translating the Vulgate seems oblivious to the existence of such an authoritative statement.
Now move ahead to the time of setting the Catholic canon which occurs at Trent, what is the sole thing looked to as the authority to set the canon (in a very small split vote) it's the Vulgate and every book in it's pages is presumed to be scripture. Obviously Jeromes prefaces were not always copied and included in the church in those days.
So we have the case of the Protestants, who agree with the Jews, who agree with the foremost Eastern Bishop, who agree with Jerome, and we are accused of taking away the books of scripture. Surely one of the strangest conclusions in church history.
You can also study the early fathers and how many books they said the scriptures contained. Generally they point to the same number as the Jewish alphabet, or two more which was what you got when you didn't combine a couple of the books. None of them point to a number high enough to include the Apochryphal books. And they don't make case for including the Apochryphal book under the Prophets either.
