St. Benedict's Farm is a lay Catholic community. While our Catholic faith is most important to us, we have a concern to build bridges between our various Christian communions. For over 25 years, we have had the pleasure of monthly dialog with ministers of differing traditions. In this section of our website we hope to continue that dialog, by presenting and refreshing from time to time, some aspect of the Catholic faith. Our purpose here is two-fold: to inform about the Catholic faith... and to promote and encourage unity between Christians.
Our first issue deals with "How and why is 'the Catholic Bible' differs from 'the Protestant Bible'"?
The Difference
There are seven additional books in the Catholic Old Testament, and small sections added to Esther and Daniel. These seven books are Tobias, Judith, 1 & 2 Maccabees, Eclesiasticus (also known as Sirach), Wisdom and Baruc. The New Testaments are the same, as are all the other books of the Old Testament. How did this state of affairs come about?
The Canon
The canon (official list) of Holy Scripture was very slow in developing, with the list of inspired books not being "officially" declared until well into the 16th century. The Reformation was the goad that pushed for a Catholic decision. Until that time, to be sure, there was controversy, especially after the Jewish community defined their canon, excluding what Catholics call the deuterocanonical books. These books are termed Apocrypha by Protestants. In defining their canon, the Hebrews rejected these books, in spite of the fact that they had been widely used by the Jewish community at that time, and even after that time. Portions of the Apocrypha were found in the Qumran cave parchment discoveries. Scholars believe the Jews wished to exclude from the canon, a) books written outside Israel, b) books written in anything other than Hebrew, and c) books written later than 100 AD. In any event, the deuterocanonical books were axed. In doing so, that did violence to a very important set of Scriptures contained in the Septuagint.
THE SEPTUAGINT gets its name from 70 Jewish scholars who translated the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek. Learned men see fragments and phrases from this book quoted in the New Testament, even by Jesus. In any event, this book was in widespread use in Jesus' time, and it became the main corpus for St. Jerome's Latin translation, the Vulgate, the Bible used by Catholics for centuries. Ironically, Jerome, influenced by his Hebrew language teachers, had his doubts about some of the deuterocanonical books. However, he dutifully translated them for the Church, and they have come into common usage right on up to the Council of Trent, when the Catholic canon was sealed. Luther chose to follow the Hebrew canon, and the rest of the Reformation churches followed suite. Luther was a great polemicist, and his decision to follow the Hebrews came about within the context of one of his inflamed debates. The Scholar writes: "Earlier, the Wycliffe Bible (1382) had a 39-book OT canon (like Jerome). Nevertheless, in debating purgatory with J. Maier of Eck (1519), it was Luther who broke with Church tradition and began a new era in discussions on the OT canon. (Already in 1518, A. Bodenstein of Karlstadt, arguing against Eck, placed scriptural authority above that of the Church.) Confronted by 2 Maccabees 12:46 (Vg) as "scriptural proof" for the doctrine of purgatory, Luther rejected 2 Maccabees as Scripture. He denied the right of the church to decide canonicity, arguing that the inherent quality of the biblical book attests to its canonical and scriptural status. Polemics hardened Luther in his position until he recognized as OT books only those 39 cited in Jerome's list. When he published his German Scriptures in 1534, he grouped Judith, Wisdom, Tobias, Sirach, Baruch, 1 & 2 Maccabees and portions of Esther and Daniel as "Apocrypha," "Books which are not held equal to the Sacred Scriptures and yet are useful and good for reading." Publishing the Apocrypha immediately after the OT, Luther affected the Protestant canon." The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Prentice Hall, 1990, p.1042
Many believe Luther would have liked to exclude the Epistle of James also, calling it "an epistle of straw." Some opine this never happened, because Luther's confreres wouldn't allow it. Luther however, did print the deutero books in a special section and recommended them "for pious reading," but not for building doctrine. Custom over the centuries has gradually eliminated them altogether from Protestant Bibles, except for pulpit, study and ecumenical Bibles. We have found them to be a goldmine of wisdom and exhortation. On the other hand, doctrine is not the strong suite of these books... with one exception: one of the two Maccabees' books contains a scripture on praying for the dead, a common practice among Catholics. At another time, we will take up this question.