The Apocrapha...?

Question

What do you think of these books of the Bible that were "left out"?

Answer 1

The apochrypha are not left out. They are part of the Catholic Bible. Anything other than the Catholic Bible is just expurgated text.

Protestants don't believe that they are the inspired word of God. However they believe that the other books are the inspired word of God. This is their biggest inconsistency.

Protestants will tell you that men were guided by God in putting the Bible together. It was the Catholics at the Council of Rome who decided which books were to be part of the Bible and which one's were not. How can Protestants say that God guided the Council to include some books, but that God made a mistake with the others?

Someone above claims that the Catholics added the apochrypha at the Council of Trent in the 1500s. Many Protestants think that the Catholic Church added them at this time. This is not true.

These books were included when St Irenius translated the Bible into Latin and were included in the list when the Council of Rome (third century) decided which books should be part of the official Bible. The Council of Trent made their statement about which books were official only because Martin Luther decided that the books do not belong.

Answer 2

Up until the 1880’s every Protestant Bible (not just Catholic Bibles) had 80 books, not 66! The inter-testamental books written hundreds of years before Christ called “The Apocrypha” were part of virtually every printing of the Tyndale-Matthews Bible, the Great Bible, the Bishops Bible, the Protestant Geneva Bible, and the King James Bible until their removal in the 1880’s! The original 1611 King James contained the Apocrypha, and King James threatened anyone who dared to print the Bible without the Apocrypha with heavy fines and a year in jail. Only for the last 120 years has the Protestant Church rejected these books, and removed them from their Bibles. This has left most modern-day Christians believing the popular myth that there is something “Roman Catholic” about the Apocrypha. There is, however, no truth in that myth, and no widely-accepted reason for the removal of the Apocrypha in the 1880’s has ever been officially issued by a mainline Protestant denomination.

Answer 3

Though the Bible canon has been identified to be complete, reading the other books can give a little insight on the motivation and influences from the other authors of the Bible.

There are several instances when the Canon of Scriptures quote the Apocrypha books. Such as the the Book of Jude in the Bible quoting the Apocrypha's book of Enoch:

Jud 1:14 {It was} also about these men {that} Enoch, {in} the seventh {generation} from Adam, prophesied, saying, "Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones,
Jud 1:15 to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him."

Answer 4

Yeah, I have heard of some books of the Bible that were left out because they didn't promote the same ideals the church at the time was advertising. Like if you're advertising for a diet and people caught you eating donuts, they think the diet's not worth it and leave it for another diet. You got to understand that religion is a personal thing. It's up to you to believe in what you believe about God, or gods, or no religion at all. Christianity has merged into what a collective group of mainly men believe and conform to and they punish those who don't believe in what they do. Martin Luther was slammed when he realized this and formed the Lutheran branch of Christianity. Religion is your own business and you believe in what you believe. A book, family, and church cannot do it for you. The Bible is only a guide to Christianity, you have to follow through on your own.

Answer 5

Apcrypha comes from the Greek word apocryphos, meaning "hidden or concealed"
In the fourth century A.D., Jerome was the first to name this group of literature Apocrypha. Apocrypha consists of the books added to the Old Testament by Roman Catholic Church. Protestants reject these additions to canonical Scriptue.

They are excluded from Hebrew Canon for four reasons:
1) They abaund in historical and georaphical inaccuracies ad abachronisms.
2) They teach doctrines that are false and foster practices that are at variance with inspired Scripture.
3) They resort to literary types anddisplay an artificiality of subject matter and styling out of keeping with inspired Scripture.
4) They lack the distinctive elements that give genuine Scripture its divine character, such as prophetic power and poetic and religious feeling ( Unger, NUBD,85)

Answer 6

They were not left out. They were never part of the Bible, and never used by the early Church fathers. The Catholics officially added them to their Bible at the council of Trent in the 1600's.

Answer 7

There are TWO different understandings of the term Apocrypha.

Protestants use Apocrypha to refer to the deutercanonical books. Catholics and Orthodox, who accept the deutercanonical books as the inerrant and inspired word of God use Apocrypha to refer to those writings not within the scope of Jewish/Christian tradition and there are book of the Old Testament and New Testament. They are typically fictious works by heretics or groups masquerading as Jews/Christians. Here is a good article that goes through several of those books. These books, both Catholics and Protestants can agree, are not a part of the canon or the tradition of the faith. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01601a.htm

Does the Protestant claim against the deutercanonical books have merit?

Claim: The deutercanonical books are not of Hebrew origin, not of the divine language, etc.
Rebuttal: The deutercanonical books were written by Jews during the Diaspora were the common language was Greek. Jews living in Palestine 200 years before Christ also wrote some of their texts in Greek. The NT itself is written in Greek. The Jews of the time of Christ used the deutercanonical books as sacred scripture. It is not until the destruction of the temple in 70AD and the subsequent movement by the surviving authorities to stabilize Judaism and to combat the spread of Christianity and to disassociate themselves does the Hebrew only canon take shape and become canonized in ca. 80-90AD. The Greek books were removed because they supported Jesus being the messiah.

Claim: The NT does not quote the deutercanonical books.
Rebuttal: This is false. The deutercanonical books were used both by the writers of the New Testament and by the communities of the early Christians as their writings and liturgies point out. The Greek versions of the scriptures are quoted in the NT and not the Hebrew versions.

Here are some quotes in the NT
Matt. 2:16 - Herod's decree of slaying innocent children was prophesied in Wis. 11:7 - slaying the holy innocents.
Matt. 6:19-20 - Jesus' statement about laying up for yourselves treasure in heaven follows Sirach 29:11 - lay up your treasure.
Luke 2:29 - Simeon's declaration that he is ready to die after seeing the Child Jesus follows Tobit 11:9.
Rom. 1:23 - the sin of worshipping mortal man, birds, animals and reptiles follows Wis. 11:15; 12:24-27; 13:10; 14:8.
Eph. 6:13-17 - the whole discussion of armor, helmet, breastplate, sword, shield follows Wis. 5:17-20.
Rev. 19:11 - the description of the Lord on a white horse in the heavens follows 2 Macc. 3:25; 11:8.
Rev. 19:16 - description of our Lord as King of kings is taken from 2 Macc. 13:4.
Rev. 21:19 - the description of the new Jerusalem with precious stones is prophesied in Tobit 13:17.
Read more here http://www.scripturecatholic.com/deuterocanon.html

Claim: The Church Fathers did not use the deutercanonical books.
Rebuttal: This is false. The deutercanonical books were well quoted as any Index of Scriptural References and Citations in the Fathers will tell you: Here are 2 examples.

The Having then this hope, let our souls be bound to Him who is faithful in His promises, and just in His judgments. He who has commanded us not to lie, shall much more Himself not lie; for nothing is impossible with God, except to lie. Let His faith therefore be stirred up again within us, and let us consider that all things are nigh unto Him. By the word of His might He established all things, and by His word He can overthrow them. 'Who shall say unto Him, What hast thou done ? Or, who shall resist the power of His strength?'[Wisdom 12:12,ll:22] When and as He pleases He will do all things, and none of the things determined by Him shall pass away? All things are open before Him, and nothing can be hidden from His counsel. 'The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handy-work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. And there are no words or speeches of which the voices are not heard.'[Ps. 19:1-3]." Clement of Rome,To the Corinthians, 27:5 (c. A.D. 80).

"'Be just in your judgement' [Deut 1:16,17 Prov 31:9] make no distinction between man and man when correcting transgressions. Do not waver in your decision. 'Do not be one that opens his hands to receive, but shuts them when it comes to giving' [Sirach 4:31]." Didache, 4:3-5 (A.D. 90).


Claim: But Jerome didn't accept the deutercanonical books in his compilation of the Latin Vulgate!!
Rebuttal: This is a half-truth. Protestant's do not read further in St. Jerome's works than this statement. While it is true that St. Jerome originally went with only the Hebrew, he was over-ruled by the Church of the East and West to which he gladly accepted and concurred with their judgment that the deutercanonical books belonged to the canon (cf. any good life of Jerome as well as "The Building of Christendom" by Carroll.)

Claim: But Trent...it declared the canon...it...Trent ...did...it.
Rebuttal: People do not understand what an Ecumenical Council does. It has no power to change or otherwise invent doctrine. All the bibles prior to Trent had the deutercanonical books, and those books were used in the liturgy of the Church. Trent only upholds what has always been in the Bible and rejects those who try to take books out of the Bible and do harm to the inspired world of God.

As we can see the thought that the deutercanonical books do not belong to the canon is an argument that does violence both to history, and the content of New Testament which relies on those books as quotes and prophecies fulfilled by Christ.

Answer 8

I am not answering your question because I am not really well versed with such information but in a way thank you for asking because I myself was enlightened with a number of good answers.