Why does the Catholic Bible have Apocrypha and Maccabees and the rest of the Christians Bibles don't?

Answer 1

those extra books werent inspired by God. Plus, there not necessary.

Answer 2

The answer is both simple and unfortunately complex.

The Catholic Church's standard of truth is "what did the apostle's believe and/or do?" The evidence of that truth is that the particular belief was held across the Church and not simply a local belief. Futher evidence is the Church's profession of that belief across time.

The ancient Church did not have a bible, except the Septuagint, which is the Hebrew scriptures translated into Greek. Both Jesus and the Apostle's quote from it. At the time of Christ, there were more Jews outside Palestine than in Palestine. This is part of what made the spread of Christianity so easy.

When you read the earliest Christians speak of scripture, they are not speaking of our bible, but rather the Septuagint. The Jewish people did not yet have an official bible. That would not occur until long after the deaths of the apostles.

Following the expulsion of the Jews from Palestine by the Romans, the rabbis gathered to preserve everything. Part of their task was to determine what books in the writings are canonical. As part of their observation, they saw how Christians were, in their opinion, misusing their writings. They concluded that the Christian writings are false and the simplest evidence is that they are in Greek and God speaks Hebrew not Greek. As a side effect of this decision, the books Protestants call the Apocrypha were kicked out of the canon as they either were originally written by Greek speaking Jews or their primary usage was in the Greek.

In 405, Pope Innocent promulgated the list of books we now call the old and new testaments following local synods at Lyodacea, Hippo Regius, Rome and Carthage. It is on his authority alone the books of the New and Old Testament sit.

Over one thousand years later, Luther arrives on the scene and rejects papal and episcopal authority. In doing so, he rejects the bible and in doing so rejects his own argument for scripture alone. So he begins the process of picking the books himself. He accepts the protocanonicals, the books that all early Christians accepted without debate such as Genesis, Exodus, Luke or 1 Corinthians. He rejected some of the deuterocanonicals which include things like 1&2 Maccabees, 2 John, or Revelations. He rejected the books that Protestants now call the Apocrypha and he also kicked out James, Jude and Revelations as completely false books and had quite harsh words for them.

In the 17th century, Lutherans returned James, Jude and Revelations to their canon but not the OT books. As a result, Protestants have ended up with a shorter bible. For a while, with James, Jude and Revelations out, it was quite a bit shorter. He basically rejected the books that disagreed with him and which supported the Catholic position.

As a note, both Jesus and the Apostles quote from the "missing" books. They quote them as scripture or alude to them. Although there really isn't a big loss to Protestantism without these books, these books do in some cases act as refutations to early Reformation positions. This is important because if the early reformers were in contradiction to scriptures and so changed the scriptures, it should raise a flag as to what else they may have been in error on.

Certainly important segments of the institutional Catholic Church were in sin and error. As one Lutheran priest put it, the problem is that the Catholic Church ended up adopting 93 1/2 of the 95 Theses of Luther. The Catholic Church moved on and Protestantism is stuck in the ideas of the sixteenth century. The reasons for the Reformation are simply gone now. It still exists because people can't figure out how to get back because their teachings have strayed so far from the ancient teaching, in most cases. Only the oldest of the Protestant groups are close to the early faith. The newer groups, of which there are now tens of thousands, are getting farther and farther away from a Christianity early Christians would have recognized.

Answer 3

Every book of the Bible(Old Testament) was written by Hebrews with the exception of Job(he very well could of been a decendant of Esau).All the "so-called" Apocrypha was also written by Hebrews.As the Hebrews put their books together to form the Tanach(Jewish Bible)they rejected the apocrypha as not authentic.Who should know more about their own Bible?If the Jews reject them then we should too,with the exception of 1rst Maccabees(for historical reasons)and the books of Jasher and Enoch which are both quoted from in the Old and New Testaments(Joshua and Jude for ex.)but books like Tobias and Susanna are just nice stories.

Answer 4

The difference in the Old Testaments actually goes back to the time before and during Christ’s life. At this time, there was no official Jewish canon of scripture.

The Jews in Egypt translated their choices of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek in the second century before Christ. This translation, called the Septuagint, had wide use in the Roman world because most Jews lived far from Palestine in Greek cities. Many of these Jews spoke only Greek.

The early Christian Church was born into this world. The Church, with its bilingual Jews and more and more Greek-speaking Gentiles, used the books of the Septuagint as its Bible. Remember the early Christians were just writing the documents what would become the New Testament.

After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, with increasing persecution from the Romans and competition from the fledgling Christian Church, the Jewish leaders came together and declared its official canon of Scripture, eliminating seven books from the Septuagint.

The Christian Church did not follow suit but kept all the books in the Septuagint.

1500 years later, Protestants decided to change its Old Testament from the Catholic canon to the Jewish canon. The books they dropped are sometimes called the Apocrypha.

With love in Christ.

Answer 5

The men who prayed over and met in committee and through the years forming the Bible and deciding on which books should be included did not include the Apocrypha because they could not find compelling references to the ancient scriptures or accepted text from the Hebrew scrolls (Scriptures). The Catholic Scholars also prayed over their choices but did not have the same criteria as the protestants.

Answer 6

--Is Catholic--

There are TWO different understandings of the term Apocrypha.

1. Protestants use Apocrypha to refer to the deutercanonical books. The deutercanonical books are books written in Greek during the dispersion of the Jews. They were accepted scriptural books in ancient Judaism, though there were groups that did not accept them. At the time of Jesus, the texts were in fact used and were known by Jewish teachers (as evidenced by their usage in the Gospels)

2. 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. This is a distinct catagory from Jewish/Christian writings that are not scriptural. These include books written in both pre and post Christ. 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

The Protestants REMOVED books from the canon of scripture. Luther had issues with certain verses in the deutercanonical books (those OT books in Greek) so he decided to use the Hebrew canon which did not include those books. It is important to note that the Hebrew only canon was canonized in ca 90ad as a response to Christians using the OT. It was done to distinguish Judaism as HEBREW only, exclusive, and not at all about the Greco-Romans (which were starting to be the dominant group in the early Church). The Greek translations of scripture, including the Greek only books, as a whole, because they are not missing centuries of Jewish though and revelation, more clearly point to Jesus being the messiah than does the older Hebrew only texts. In addition the early Christians used the Greek scriptures. The Gospels themselves use the Greek texts. See for yourself here:
http://www.scripturecatholic.com/septuagint.html
http://www.scripturecatholic.com/deuterocanon.html


ANYBODY who says that the early Christians didn't know what books were scripture and which were not, or that they didn't have a very narrow list of which books, has never read anything on the subject. As Protestant church historian J. N. D. Kelly writes, "It should be observed that the Old Testament thus admitted as authoritative in the Church was somewhat bulkier and more comprehensive [than the Protestant Bible]. . . . It always included... the deutercanonical books" (Early Christian Doctrines, 53).

Pope Innocent I wrote "A brief addition shows what books really are received in the canon. These are the things of which you desired to be informed verbally: of Moses, five books, that is, of Genesis, of Exodus, of Leviticus, of Numbers, of Deuteronomy, and Joshua, of Judges, one book, of Kings, four books, and also Ruth, of the prophets, sixteen books, of Solomon, five books, the Psalms. Likewise of the histories, Job, one book, of Tobit, one book, Esther, one, Judith, one, of the Maccabees, two, of Esdras, two, Paralipomenon, two books . . ." (Letters 7 [A.D. 408]).

Let me deal with two more false claims made against the canon of Scripture as held by Catholics.

Claim: Jerome didn't accept the Greek books in his compilation of the Latin Vulgate using instead the Hebrew only canon.
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 ORIGIONALY 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 Greek books belonged to the canon (cf. any good life of Jerome as well as "The Building of Christendom" by Carroll.)

Claim: Trent declared the canon...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 Greek 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.

Answer 7

Because our Bible is the true words of God - The Catholic Bible, The Mormons Bible, The Jehovah's Witness Bible - has chapters added to say what they want to believe - Christians do not add chapters to our Bible - ours is the true word of GOD!@

Answer 8

Because that's what Christians all about. Keep changing the bible to suite their lives on present day. May be in 1000 year later there's a new bible again.

Answer 9

some books in the catholic bible are also in the jewish torah. I think it's just a carrying over from judasim. they were'nt added through corruption as some would like people to think.

Answer 10

Some do!
The apocrypha should be taken with a grain of salt, many are writing after the alleged author is dead, or the author is a discredited, or there is no reference, unknown author.

Answer 11

because the catholic bible was the ORIGINAL bible that was accepted by the early church fathers by the 4th century, but when martin luther came along about 1000 years later, he rejected the apocryha inorder to support his new theology. Luther even tried to get rid of the book of revelations!!