Difference between Roman Catholic and Protestant Bible?

Question

Why does the Roman Catholic Old Testament have 46 books, while the Protestant Bible has 39 (maybe with an apocrypha added)?
help??

Answer 1

The New Testament canon of the Catholic Bible and the Protestant Bible are the same with 27 Books.

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 of 46 books, 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 books removed were Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom (of Solomon), Sirach, and Baruch. Parts of existing books were also removed including Psalm 151 (from Psalms), parts of the Book of Esther, Susanna (from Daniel as chapter 13), and Bel and the Dragon (from Daniel as chapter 14).

The Christian Church did not follow suit but kept all the books in the Septuagint. 46 + 27 = 73 Books total.

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

Here is a Catholic Bible website: http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/

With love in Christ.

Answer 2

Actually the original King James Version included all 73 inspired books, just as they were defined once and for all time by the bishops of the Catholic Church at the Council of Carthage in 397 AD. It was the decision of Martin Luther to remove 10 of the inspired books from the Holy Bible - 3 New Testament books and 7 Old Testament books. Fortunately his followers would not hear of removing the writings of the Apostles themselves, and were close to a revolt over the issue. So Luther backed off and left the New Testament intact, but still removed the 7 Old Testament texts. This is why the Protestant Bible is incomplete, having only 66 books instead of the full 73. And if Luther had his way, Protestants would have only 63 books. The Catholic Church still uses the full and complete Holy Bible, as it was originally defined, and as it was used by every Christian on earth for 1,200 years between the time it was compiled and the time Luther removed parts he didn't like.

Other than these 7 missing books, the only differences between the original version and the Protestant version are a few words Luther inserted into the text here and there, in an effort to support some of his new doctrines. For example, in places where the text states that faith is required for salvation (a true statement), Luther inserted the word "alone", in effect rewriting the text to say that "faith alone" is required for salvation (an untrue statement that directly contradicts other statements in the Word of God).

Answer 3

"The Apocrypha refers to 14 or 15 books of doubtful authenticity and authority that the Roman Catholics decided belonged in the Bible sometime following the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Council of Trent (1545-1563) canonized these books. This canonization took place largely as a result of the Protestant Reformation. Indeed, Luther had criticized the Catholics for not having scriptural support fur such doctrines as praying for the dead. By canonizing the Apocrypha (which offers support for praying for the dead in 2 Macabese 23:45-46), the Catholics suddenly had "scriptural" support for this and other distinctively Catholic doctrines.
Roman Catholics argue that the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament) contained the Apocrypha. As well, church fathers like Iranians, Tortellini, and Clement of Alexandria used the apocryphal books in public worship and accepted them as Scripture. Further, it is argued, St. Augustine viewed these books as inspired.
Protestants respond by pointing out that even though some of the Apocryphal books may have been alluded to in the New Testament, no New Testament writer EVER quoted from ANY of these books as holy Scripture or gave them the slightest authority as inspired books. Jesus and the disciples virtually ignored these books, something that wouldn't have been the case if they had considered them to be inspired.
Moreover, even though certain church fathers spoke approvingly of the Apocrypha, there were other early church fathers - notable Origin and Jerome - who denied their inspiration. Further, even though the early Augustine acknowledged the Apocrypha, in his later years he rejected these books as being outside the canon and considered them inferior to the Hebrew Scriptures.
The Jewish Council of Jamie, which met in A.D. 90, rejected the Apocrypha as Scripture. Combine all this with the fact that there are clear historical errors in the Apocrypha (especially those relating to Obit) and the fact that it contains unbiblical doctrines (like praying for the dead), and it is clear that these books do not belong in the Bible. In addition, unlike many of the biblical books, THERE IS NO CLAIM IN ANY APOCRYPHAL BOOK IN REGARD TO DIVINE INSPIRATION.

Answer 4

The Bible (Catholic version) contains the seven dueterocanoniacal texts (often incorrectly labelled as apocrypha) which were removed by King James in his translation in the middle ages to form the protestant version of the Bible.

Personally, I prefer the St Ignatius Press version of the Bible over the Protestant version though.

Answer 5

I think if you read the first page of the protestant version it says "This book has been edited from the original letterbox version for better reading by those with lower IQ's, and for content" I am not saying all Catholics are smarter than Protestants, just that Catholics did not really read the bible unless they were priests. Protestant religious leaders did not, in the beginning, need anywhere near as much training and education to become religious leaders..

Answer 6

Yes as you have said above the amount of books included in the Catholic Bible is greater than the Protestant one which has 66 against the 72 other than that i don't think there are any major differences

Answer 7

There is only one true God. He took flesh and became man only once. When man, He founded only one religion and one Church, the Roman Catholic Religion and the Roman Catholic Church.

That Church is the divinely appointed guardian of the writings divinely inspired by God, known as the Bible. This Holy Bible is like no other book, because no other book has God for its principal author.

Nevertheless the Bible is not the foundation of the Church, but the Church is the foundation of the Bible. That is why Catholics need Mother Church as the guardian and interpreter of the Bible.

Alas, Protestants have sown much confusion in the domain of Bible translations and Bible Studies, and in our own time their errors have been renewed by the pseudo-Catholics known as modernists.

One cannot have God for his Father, who will not have the Church for his Mother, and likewise, one cannot have the Word of God for his faith who will not have the Church for his teacher. It is the infallible teaching authority of the Church, as promised by Christ, which alone preserves God's Word from erroneous interpretation.

Answer 8

The Old Testament used by the Catholic Church was the Greek and Hebrew writings that were used by Jesus and His disciples (the book of Maccabees is the only place in teh OT where resurrection of the body is mentioned).

In reaction to the spread of Christianity, the Jewish leaders rejected the list of books used by Jesus and His disciples and adopted a list that included ONLY Hebrew writings.

1500 years later, the Protestant reformers, just like the Jewish leaders of Jesus' time, rejected the scriptures used by Jesus and His disciples and adopted the Jewish text.

Answer 9

In about the year 90 CE, after the Jewish Temple was destroyed by Rome, a council of Jewish rabbis made a determination of which books would belong in the canon of Hebrew scripture. They decided that anything that appeared to be written after the time of Ezra (4th Century BCE) was not to be regarded as inspired. There were no scientific or critical methods for determining the actual dates of books, so determinations were based on the books' internal claims. (For example, Daniel claimed to speak in the Persian period, so it was included in the list, although many current scholars suspect he was speaking of his experience in the later Antiochene occupation.)

The books that were "excluded" appeared in the Septuagint, the first Greek translation, made for the Jews of Alexandria in the Third Century BCE. Outside of Jerusalem, this was THE Bible for the largely Greek-speaking world. It was the version the gospel writers quoted and that all Christians considered inspired, despite the rabbis' later decision.

In the 5th Century CE, Jerome was asked to make a Latin translation of the Septuagint and what had come to be known as the New Testament for Romans who no longer understood Greek. As he translated, he realized that the Septuagint was a translation itself, so he quickly sought out a Hebrew tutor and a Hebrew copy of the scriptures. That is when he discovered the difference between the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Some of the Greek books did not exist in the Hebrew. He had to make a decision.

Jerome elected to translate everything for the sake of completeness. However, he wanted it clear that not all of the "Old Testament" was Jewish. So he separated the Greek books and portions, placing them in a separate section he called "apocryha" ("hidden"). They were still in the Bible, but they had been sequestered from their usual position.

A thousand years later, abuses had crept into the Church. The Renaissance was proceding at full speed and advances in science, literature, and the arts were occuring. Popes and prelates were a part of it. They wanted to look up to date, including their architecture. This meant a building campaign and fundraising to support it. The normal taxes weren't enough and some clever schemes were hatched. The most unethical one was the promise that the suffering of dead loved ones enduring purgatory for their minor sins could be shortened by a financial donation to the Church.

Martin Luther, a Catholic priest, posted a list of abuses (including the selling of "indulgences") he protested, on a church door in the town if Wittenburg. He hoped to engage in a debate with Church authorities about the propriety of its practices, but he found himself ignored, blocked and ultimately excommunicated. The Church addressed his issues, somewhat, at the Council of Trent many years later, but meanwhile Luther felt it necessary to build a type of Christianity that hewed closer to his vision.

Careful study of the Bible drove Luther to determine that "salvation" was something that couldn't be earned or bought, only accepted as a gift from God, without intermediaries. To be consistent with his beliefs, Luther identified the Roman practices that appeared to violate these basic tenets and determined to keep them out of the Protestant Church.

At about this time, the Greek Bible was re-"discovered" by Western Europe, and various people set about translating it into their local languages, contrary to the wishes of the Roman Church. But the apocrypha presented a challenge. There were ideas in those books that were deemed not compatible with Luther's understanding of "Church". In 2 Maccabees, for example, people pray on behalf of the dead. Luther had determined that such an act was impossible. The rabinnical council's decision and Jerome's separation of the books provided a convenient excuse for dumping the whole thing (although the Greek texts they were using had the books in their original, unseparated order). Luther had wanted to drop the letter of James as well, but couldn't find an historical precedent for it.

The "Catholics", as the Roman Church was now known, eventually came out with an English translation of the Latin Vulgate, with the apocryphal books in their Septuagint order (in 1609, two years before the King James Version), but the lines of disagreement had been drawn. Since then, the official canon of the Bible for Catholics and Protestants has been as we have it now (with the Anglicans a little more indecisive about the issue).

Answer 10

Being an ordained minister I know the Bible quite well. So I am goignt o make it simple all of you to understand those are the Chapters which are contradictory to the rest of the Bible. Proving Jesus was not the Messiah.