What's so different between the Catholic and Protestant Bible?

Question

I have a friends who's Catholic, I'm Protestant, and I looked through their Bible and there's books I've never heard of.

Answer 1

There are books you have never heard of because the Protestants remove them! ( Be sure to read Wisdom- wow!)

Do you know where the Bible came from? I mean, "who' decided 'which' books would make up the Bible?

It was the CATHOLIC CHURCH!

In doing so, the early fathers used the scriptures that were commonly used in the time immediatley preceding Christ. You see, after Christ's passion, some of the Jews who had the power removed certain books from scriptural status.


Why?

Because they were too Christian.

For example, in the Books of Maccabees ( one of which contains the story of Hanukkah), we hear of the Maccabees going into battle- I think against the Philistines. After the battle, Judas Maccabee- the leader- took his surviving men to gather the dead. In the process, they discovered the dead men were wearing amulets- lucky charms of other Gods.

Judas instructed his men to pray for the souls of the dead, that God might not judge them for having the amulets.

So?

This clearly shows there is a reason to pray for the dead.

Again, SO?

SO---if there is only heaven or hell.....if a soul is in Heaven, there is no need for prayer. If it is in Hell, no amount of prayer will do any good....

Then there must be an in between, or it would be a waste of time to pray!. Catholics have dubbed this Purgatory- a place where those who have been faithful, but die with some imperfection on their soul, may be cleansed by the refiners fire.....so they may be perfect and holy and enter heaven.

As Catholics, we believe our prayers on behalf of those being purified is a plea in their favor before God.

Protestants removed those books from the Bible for the same reason the 1st century Jews did. They support the Catholic teachings too much for their comfort.

Answer 2

Catholics include these books - Baruch, Sirach, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, and the Wisdom of Solomon, plus portions of Esther and Daniel - in the Old Testament.

Following the traditions of Martin Luther, most Protestants do not include those works. However, all the patristic evidence we have today shows that all Christians - since Christianity began - pretty much had these books in their bibles.

Sirach is a book of advice from an old sage, the grandfather of the man who set it down. Wisdom of Solomon is another wisdom tradition book, one which makes less personal and more theological arguments than Sirach. The additional material in Daniel tells of a statue of a dragon that Babylonians had dressed up as a god, but which is revealed as false, and adds the "prayer of Azariah in the furnace" to the bit in Daniel where the men miraculously survive being tossed in an oven. Judith tells the story of another woman in the mode of Esther who saves her people - this time by getting a would-be conquering king drunk and then killing him. And you can think of the Book of Tobit as - for all intents and purposes - the first episode of "Touched by an Angel" (and even includes one of the angels you meet later in that show.)

Perhaps the most interesting for those not Catholic are the Maccabees books, which tells the story of what happened to Israel between the end of the Old Testament (as they know it) and the time of Jesus. It tells of a revolution by the Jews against the heirs of Alexander's empire, and includes the storyof the birth of Hannukah. This text can't be found in anyone else's scriptures - not even those of the Jews themselves!

Answer 3

Most of the writings they (the council that determined what went into bible) looked at had to be left out of the bible since it would make it too big.

Answer 4

There is but only one bible.Others if any are a work of fiction.
Any resemblance whatsoever is purely coincidental.
I mean that when bible was interpreted(or rewritten) by many
they included their own convictions & beliefs as facts in the bible.

Answer 5

I don't know - i just thought it was just the way they interprated it