Protestants: Please explain to me what gave Martin Luther the power to remove books?

[Christos Anesti]

"Women received their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they might rise again to a better life" (Heb. 11:35).

This verse is talking about the Old Testament saints whom we are to emulate. There are few places in the non-deuterocanoical books of women receiving their dead back alive but none of people being tortured and refusing to accept release for the sake of a better resurrection. This story is however found in 2 Macc.

"It happened also that seven brothers and their mother were arrested and were being compelled by the king, under torture with whips and cords, to partake of unlawful swine's flesh. . . . ut the brothers and their mother encouraged one another to die nobly, saying, 'The Lord God is watching over us and in truth has compassion on us . . . ' After the first brother had died . . . they brought forward the second for their sport. . . . he in turn underwent tortures as the first brother had done. And when he was at his last breath, he said, 'You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life'" (2 Macc. 7:1, 5-9).

and

"The mother was especially admirable and worthy of honorable memory. Though she saw her seven sons perish within a single day, she bore it with good courage because of her hope in the Lord. She encouraged each of them . . . [saying], 'I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws,'" telling the last one, "Do not fear this butcher, but prove worthy of your brothers. Accept death, so that in God's mercy I may get you back again with your brothers" (2 Macc. 7:20-23, 29).

 

[Christos Anesti]

New Testament refernces to the Deuterocanon.
http://scripturecatholic.com/deuterocanon.html

 

[Epiphoskei]

Okay, now I understand what you are saying much more clearly.

I don't think it takes adequate account of a fuzzily defined idea become a tightly defined one.

When you say fuzzy, what exactly do you mean? I agree the idea of canon and what was canon had not been finalized, but there were still some things, like the Torah, that were indisputably scripture, and there were those which were clearly well outside. The books of the Deuterocanon seem to be ignored by the major sources we have on this period to such an extent we can safely put them in the "out" catagory and interpret their absence from the Tanakh as growing out of an absence from the Jewish understanding of the Law and the Prophets. Philo doesn't use them. Christ doesn't use them. Josephus doesn't have a canon big enough to contain them. The only reason they seem to be adopted by the Church is their presence in the Septuagint. And as the Septuagint was not written to be a Hebrew Canon, this was a mistake.

 

[Epiphoskei]

They haven't ? Theodore of Mopsuestia rejected the Song of Solomon and the book of Job as canonical. Marcion rejected ALL of the OT books as canonical for that matter.

All right, to be exact, I should have written the disputed books in the case of the deuterocanon do not have a strong case from historical evidence. By indisupted books I do not mean the 66 book canon, but simply the majority of which which have never been disputed by any serious churchman or segment of the church. And by disputed books I do not mean exclusivly things outside the 66 book canon. Some books which have been disputed, like Job and Esther and the Song of Solomon, stand on a more reasonable footing. But the likes of Marcion should be written off as having nothing to add to the dispute, not being a Christian at all.

How has the tradition of including those books been proven deformed?

"Canon" implies that a book has to meet a certain standard to be scripture. When we allow traditions to set the canon, we confuse what Canon even is. It should be a set of books that meet certain criterion, instead it becomes a set of books we all agree on. Now if that is your definition of canon, obviously it can't be deformed, it's nothing more than arbitrary consensus. But if for something to be canon it has to meet certain criterion, it is wrong to canonize what does not meet these criterion.

The Deuterocanon, as I have argued above, simply do not meet any criteria for canonicity other than the "we say so" criterion. And as the very idea of a canon is a collection of books that qualify by some standard, to include books that do not qualify by any historic standard is a mistake by definition.

 

[Christos Anesti]

All right, to be exact, I should have written the disputed books in the case of the deuterocanon do not have a strong case from historical evidence.

A strong case for what? Their use as scripture among the early Christians? A strong case for them being inspired?

 

[ebia]

When you say fuzzy, what exactly do you mean? I agree the idea of canon and what was canon had not been finalized, but there were still some things, like the Torah, that were indisputably scripture, and there were those which were clearly well outside.

What I mean is that, in (say) 30AD there are a few books that everyone agrees are scripture - pretty much just the 5 books of Torah, books that nobody considers scripture, and lot of books at varying places in between regarded as varyingly important by varying people; for example there were signficant groups who didn't regard books like Daniel as scripture. Trying to nail that down is meaningless. We are trying to tighly define something that wasn't tighly defined in Jesus time simply because we want to; because we want to think in terms of simple black-and-white categories rather than follow the more nuanced and somewhat ambiguous idea of the New Testament period.

Having a well defined canon for the New Testament is fair enough. IMO trying to have one for the Old Testament that doesn't recognise the shades of grey is misleading - any such canon would be wrong; it's trying to create a precision that simply is not there. As I said before, I don't think we should use the word canon for anything except the New Testament; to try to apply it to the Old is to impose anachronistic ideas onto it.

The church inherited an idea of scripture with fuzzy edges - to trim those edges or to hem them is to alter what we inherited - we should stick with the fuzzy edges rather than impose ideas that aren't there for sake of simplicity.

 

[Epiphoskei]

A strong case for what? Their use as scripture among the early Christians? A strong case for them being inspired?

A strong case for being scripture or for being accepted on their own merits for reasons outside the fact that they were in the Septuagint.

 

[Epiphoskei]

What I mean is that, in (say) 30AD there are a few books that everyone agrees are scripture - pretty much just the 5 books of Torah, books that nobody considers scripture, and lot of books at varying places in between regarded as varyingly important by varying people; for example there were signficant groups who didn't regard books like Daniel as scripture. Trying to nail that down is meaningless. We are trying to tighly define something that wasn't tighly defined in Jesus time simply because we want to; because we want to think in terms of simple black-and-white categories rather than follow the more nuanced and somewhat ambiguous idea of the New Testament period.

Having a well defined canon for the New Testament is fair enough. IMO trying to have one for the Old Testament that doesn't recognise the shades of grey is misleading - any such canon would be wrong; it's trying to create a precision that simply is not there. As I said before, I don't think we should use the word canon for anything except the New Testament; to try to apply it to the Old is to impose anachronistic ideas onto it.

The church inherited an idea of scripture with fuzzy edges - to trim those edges or to hem them is to alter what we inherited - we should stick with the fuzzy edges rather than impose ideas that aren't there for sake of simplicity.

I can agree with a lot of that, but I believe we have to say that the books which were universally recived were a little better defined than just the Torah. The Saducees were the only group to go Torah-only, and Christ rejected this view when he cited from the Law and the Prophets, the Torah and the Nevi'im. The use of that term in multiple places in Second Temple literature has to indicate that by the first century, many of the Prophets had already begun to take their place in a more defined "canon," for lack of a better term. Certainly things are still fuzzy, but mostly around the edges in the cases of specific books.

 

[bamabilly]

Learned a lot in these five pages, very stimulating.
Thanx all

 

[ebia]

I can agree with a lot of that, but I believe we have to say that the books which were universally recived were a little better defined than just the Torah. The Saducees were the only group to go Torah-only, and Christ rejected this view when he cited from the Law and the Prophets, the Torah and the Nevi'im. The use of that term in multiple places in Second Temple literature has to indicate that by the first century, many of the Prophets had already begun to take their place in a more defined "canon," for lack of a better term. Certainly things are still fuzzy, but mostly around the edges in the cases of specific books.

My point wasn't for Christians to draw the line at Torah, but to show the impossibility of finding a definitive place to draw the line anywhere else.

 

[Chaplain_MArk]

Not being Condesending - But the Catholic version of the Bible is like the Jewish laws
God gave 12 laws and the sad - u -see's and the pharasees added more to them "because they could" They made God's simple things hard. Since the Catholics derived from the church Peter founded. They also added to what Peter gave them.
In the garden there were two trees. One the tree of life the other the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
If you eat of the tree of life you will do what is Gods way. however - If you eat of the tree of knowledge you will do things without him, Religion does just that.

 

[MrPolo]

Not being Condesending - But the Catholic version of the Bible is like the Jewish laws

Could you be more specific as to how the Catholic canon is like Jewish law as opposed to Protestant tradition on the canon? I could not follow your logic.

 

[Chaplain_MArk]

I think I was very clear in my answer -
I said that the pharisees and sadducees added to the Law that God laid out for then 12 laws - now there are 613. The Catholic "The Apocrypha" is also an extra book. An added book
That is what I was trying to say. When we eat from the tree of knowledge we are apart from God. In other words we are doing our own thing. The extra books and laws are from that same tree.

 

[MrPolo]

I think I was very clear in my answer -
I said that the pharisees and sadducees added to the Law that God laid out for then 12 laws - now there are 613. The Catholic "The Apocrypha" is also an extra book.

I see. I think your argument would be much stronger if you were able to demonstrate Catholics added books to Scripture rather than that Protestants removed them.

 

[Christos Anesti]

Did St Paul add to the scriptures when he refernced a story from the book of Maccabees? Hebrews 11:35 makes refernce to 2 Maccabees 7

 

[Hentenza]

Did St Paul add to the scriptures when he refernced a story from the book of Maccabees? Hebrews 11:35 makes refernce to 2 Maccabees 7

Paul didn't quote from Maccabees but from 1 Kings.

 

[Christos Anesti]

Can you post the part from 1 Kings that speaks of this : "Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they might rise again to a better life." I've already posted the quote from 2 Macc that shows exactly this.

 

[Chaplain_MArk]

I'm smiling because the books of Maccabees is an added book to the Bible since it was not God inspired but from the tree of knowledge of good and Evil. Man's writting not God's inspired word.

 

[MrPolo]

Can you post the part from 1 Kings that speaks of this : "Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they might rise again to a better life." I've already posted the quote from 2 Macc that shows exactly this.

Hentenza is likely referring to 1 Kings 17:17-24 which references women receiving back their dead. This only refers to the first half of Hebrews 11:35. The second half of Hebrews 11:35 is not in 1 Kings. Of some interest, is that the People's New Testament and the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary, both Protestant commentaries, agree that the "torturous" second-half of Hebrews 11:35 is a reference to Maccabees.

 

[wildboar]

At any rate, even if the CE was right, there remains debate as to what goes in the Bible unto today among Christian sects, no? People still question the canon after Trent because they don't regard Trent as having any authority. So it doesn't mean Florence wasn't authoritative just because there were skeptics after that. They thus must appeal to some other authority, however.... They say it's not Carthage, Hippo, Florence, Trent, et al.... it's someone else... Often that someone is just "God", but we are not told to whom or how He revealed it...

It seems to me that the most conservative approach would be to allow the reading of the Apocryphal books in the churches but to only use the undisputed books to establish doctrine. Even the common term in Roman Catholicism--deuterocanonical--implies that these books are not on the same level as the rest of the canon. The Council of Trent also said that the Latin Vulgate in use at the time of the Council must not be questioned or rejected. Nevermind the fact that there were many variations at the time from the edition produced by Jerome. And since that time there have been revisions of the Vulgate. So either Trent was in error or the Roman Catholic Church today is in error. The Roman Catholic Church also now allows translations that are not based on the Vulgate and has abandoned its anathemas against those who question the authenticity of the Johannine Comma (which was found in the Vulgate at the time of Trent but not in Jerome's Vulgate). I wouldn't want the text of my Bible subjected to the whims of some infallible council who decision could be overthrown by a council later on. I think it better to recognize that the Christian church as a whole has been able to discern which books are canonical throughout history.