What's the diffrence between a catholic bible and a Christian bible?

Question

Im a christian and i would want to know the diffrence between a catholic bible and mine?

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

The difference is in some sense an accident of history. The apostles and Jesus both quote from the removed books. At the time of the apostles there existed a Greek translation of the Hebrew texts called the Septuagint. It was, for all practical purposes, the primary version in use, except in Palestine and was even used there. It was called the Septuagint because 70 translators were put on the job of translating the scriptures into Greek and was considered a work of excellence before the Christians came along.

The early Christians adopted the principal that whatever the apostles did or taught would be handed on as intact as possible and is what we now call apostolic tradition. In the New Testament it is called paradosis. It is clear from the New Testament that the apostles and early evangelists used the Septuagint.

At the time of Jesus, the Jewish community did not yet have a canon, or fixed set of books, other than the pentateuch. After the fall of Jerusalem, the rabbis gathered and began compiling both the written and the oral law. They then began choosing a canon. Realizing the trouble Christianity was causing them and seeking to discredit it, they concluded that God would not reveal himself in Greek. Six books of the Septuagint were authored by Jews in exile and were originally in Greek, so the rabbis removed them. Christians following Jesus and the apostles elected to retain them as they believed the Jews were in greivous error anyway.

For about 350 years Christians debated which books should be read during the liturgy. That was the original purpose of the bible, not to create doctrine but to understand and pray. It wouldn't be used to create doctrine until Luther came along 1500 years later. There were two groups of books, the protocanonicals and the deuterocanonicals.

The protocanonicals are books like Genesis or Luke that everyone accepted from the beginning. The deuterocanonicals are books like what Protestants now call the Apocrypha or 2 John, James, Jude and Revelations (I think Hebews was also deutero too). In 382 Pope Damasus issued the final list and closed the issue of the canon, creating the bible, until Luther reopened of necessity 1200 years later. Any Christian up until Luther would not have doubted what books were in the bible.

Along comes Luther with an unbelievably serious problem. If he rejects papal authority he must also reject the bible since it was selected using papal authority. No papacy, no bible. He was correct in this. To accept the bible is to accept papal authority. He rejected papal authority and also rejected the bible that Damasus promulgated.

He picked his own books. He excluded the books now called the Apocrypha, James, Jude and Revelations. He was forced by other Protestants to put James, Jude and back in, but he did so without acknowledging that they belong there. His theology though excludes them. When later Lutherans officially accepted James, Jude and Revelations, they did not return the books of the Apocrypha. They really don't add much and if you are a Lutheran, their absence really does help support Lutheran theology and their presence makes Lutheran theology a bit uncomfortable but not fatally so.

Finally, old Protestant translations tend to be of poor quality. This is not the fault of the Protestants, it is the fault of both poor textual scholarship and control of the most ancient texts by Catholic and Orthodox authorities. A simple example of this is the carol that has the phrase "peace on Earth, goodwill to men." The actual phrase is "peace on Earth to men of goodwill." That is a very different message. When the KJV was retranslated in 1890 because the errors were so glaring, they removed 20,000 errors and entire denominations were in danger of ceasing to exist as their supporting passages disappeared. There are still denominations that insist on using only the old KJV. There is a myth that the KJV was from the best texts which are called the textus receptus. What they don't realize is that textus receptus simply means they were the texts received from the Geneva Public Library (or the mediaeval equivalent) and it was a poor 12th century Greek text that was missing sizable sections of the bible as well.

All modern Catholic and Protestant bibles use the same source documents. Codex Vaticanus is now available to Protestant scholars and exists in copies now too as do other ancient texts. The only real remaining difference is that the Catholic Church actually has and always has had, a mandatory quality assurance process to make certain that the books are both faithful to the texts and that it is well written for public proclaimation during the services.

Answer 3

The only difference is that the Catholic Bible contains 7 Old Testament Books that yours does not. These are the 7 books that were left out by Martin Luther in the 1500s. They include Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, and Baruch.

God bless,
Stanbo

Answer 4

First, Catholics are Christians. I know because I am Catholic. The proper termonology would be Catholic and Protestant.

The bibles are the same, except the Catholic bible has 7 or so more books than the protestants. I forgot why or when. Here's a good link for more info: http://catholic.com/library/scripture_tradition.asp

God bless.

Answer 5

First off, Catholics ARE Christians... I assume you mean Protestant Bibles?

Protestant Bibles are essentially like Cliff Notes Catholic Bibles. Martin Luther and other editors/reformers took out a lot of the books, chapters, etc during the Reformation and beyond.

Answer 6

Catholic: Bible w/ Apocrypha.
Protestant: Bible Only.

Answer 7

the Christian Bible has 66 books.39 O.T. and 27 N.T.
The Catholic Bible has the same but then they add some of the Apocryphal books that were written pre- New testament and rejected whole heartedly by the Jewish scholars.There are 17 in the Catholic Bible .The only ones worth their salt are I and II Macabees for the historical value.

Answer 8

First off Catholics are Christians, they were the first. The Catholic bible has 7 more books in it. Martin Luther removed 7 books after he left the Catholic Church.

Answer 9

About six Books. The Protestants deleted them because they had a different criterion for choosing the Books to include in the canon. The Catholic Church has 'the rest of the story'.

One thing I don't understand is why the Book of Enoch was not included in it. It was popular with First Century Christians, and was referred to in Scripture, which is supposed to be 'the criteria' for the Protestants. So what happened?

Answer 10

A Catholic bible is a CHRISTIAN bible. You took some of the books out of yours.