Were the Protestants who removed books from the Bible in 1600 prophets of God?

Question

Why do fundamentalist protestants believe that it is o.k. that their forefather's removed books from the Bible...but, have a hard time with Mormons or JW's who add to it?

Protestant/Fundamentalists...how do you know your people were prophets and led by God in their removal of these books?

Answer 1

In Jesus' times, the Old Testament manuscripts were in Hebrew and Greek. The 7 books not in the Protestant Bible have no Hebrew manuscripts and were rejected as apocrypha, meaning doubtful, by Jewish scribes.

They were incuded in the Christian canon by St. Jerome and the scholars who determined which books were valid and which were doubtful.

St.Matthew's gospel has more references to Old Testament prophecies than any of the 4 gospels. I understand they all come from the Greek manusccripts.

At the reformation, Protetants did include the 7 books under a separate section but later excluded them.

The Council of Trent reaffirmed that the 7 books were canonical for the Catholic church.

Answer 2

James,

It was NOT the Protestants that did this! It was St. Jerome, in the beginning and later, the Catholic church removed several writtings because some were so close to other writings that are in the Bible!

Now, I did some research on this a few years ago and I also found out that they left out some of these writings as they would "confuse" the populas! LOL!! The populas at that time did not even have a Bible!! So, I think there is more to this!

I personally, believe that we all have the right to read all these books! You can go online and look for,"The lost Books of the Bible." There, you will find all other writings and they are fascinating!!

Good luck in your search and I agree with you! No man had/has the right to keep these books from us anymore!!

Answer 3

Probably ANY answer would be conjecture. They MAY have been prophets. They may also have been very practical and considered the actual content of the books.
One great accomplishment that they took care of by removing these books (if you are referring to the books called the Apocraphia) was to keep it simple.

Jesus, in talking about His second coming, (Matthew 24) tells us that we should "understand" what the prophet Daniel had written about this period (Daniel ((the prophet)) 9:27) But to keep some other book called Daniel which was more a historical book but not of such great value, could cause great confusion to someone who was not familiar with the scripture., but on reading the words of Jesus about the end time wanted to see what Daniel had written about it.

This is not something that only Protestants have done; the Church of Rome has had numerous councils throughout the years to decide on the validity of books and have disallowed many.

They -incidentally- in their hurry to brand Martin Luther's writings "heresy", even wanted him to recant valid Catholic doctrine that his writings embraced. Of course he said, "I cannot!"

To my understading, the scholars of Islam have done something similar, and weeded out lots of things which they could not accept as being really what Mohammed had received, and what was left is the Koran.
This is a common practice. It does not DETRACT, but rather preserves purity.
I am encouraged by the churches- great or small, which have admitted that they were wrong about some dogma. The Catholics , on occasion, have done it; Jehovah's Witnesses too! It's the "right" ones, who can do "no wrong" that really scare me, and that God has such a hard time with.

ps. to my understanding some parts of certian of the prophetic books were also written in Aramaic. This could explain their even being hidden to Hebrew scribes.

Answer 4

"did Protestant eliminate books from the bible or catholics further them?" Protestants with out any authority from Christ are turning out to be rid of 7 books of the Bible from the previous testomony. those books are referred to as the Deuterocanonical books. "whether it replaced into further or got rid of, didnt protestants saved the single that replaced into divenely inspired and non-apocryphal?" No! "doesnt it make greater experience to maintain the main precise and in basic terms the divinely inspired scripture?" of course, tell it to the Protestants. "why Catholics desperate to characteristic the greater suitable 15 books which distinctly plenty make Catholicism and protestanism distinctive in some ideals and doctrines that catholicism has." The Church is the authority that canonized the Christian Scriptures 1750 years in the previous the Protestants got rid of 7 finished books from the previous testomony. as some distance because of the fact the version in doctrines the Bible explains it like this...It says that the time will come while some will now no longer be waiting to undergo the sound doctrine of the Church and could seek for out fake instructors that fulfill their itching ears. that's the prophecy of the Protestant riot of the Church. God bless! In Christ Fr. Joseph

Answer 5

I believe they were led by the Holy Spirit to do so. Just as the Nicene Council rejected certain manuscripts to be included in the NT, so those inspired by God removed unworthy documents from the book.

really, only the essentials were left in my belief. Jesus said that things are established in the company of two or three witnesses. you'll notice if Jesus quoted the OT, it was either said once or twice before in the OT.

Answer 6

They did not "remove books from the Bible in 1600". The first Protestant bible (that I am aware of) was ordered by King James I of England (also ruled as James VI in Scotland)in 1611...or at least, that's when it came out. That edition had the "missing" books in it....why or when they were removed is unknown to me but I DO know that we Catholics did NOT ADD them in as we've been acused of.

During the time of Jesus and the apostles, the Greek Scriptures (the Septuagint) were in use (Hebrew had died out).

After the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D., leading Jews gathered in the city of Yavneh (Jamnia) around the year 90 A.D. to discuss the continuation of Judaism at a religious council. Since its worship was temple-based, it now needed to change its methodology. More prominence was given to synagogues and many of the religious festivities/holy days came to be celebrated in the home -- as they are today.

At that same council, the Christian sect of Judaism was declared to be heretical (for worshipping a man -- Jews do not accept Jesus' divinity) and added one stanza to their most important prayer -- the Amida -- that denounces all heretics (so that Christians would not pray this prayer against themselves and leave....Christians of Jewish decent still worshipped in synagogues almost to the end of the first century). The decision was made also to drop the use of the Greek Septuagint version of the Bible because many Jewish leaders at Jamnia felt that some of those "exttra" books were too Christocentric. It was pretty much Martin Luther who dropped these books from the Bible: "Prayers for the dead and the living praying and offering sacrifices for the dead motivated Martin Luther to REJECT (emphasis mine) these books as apocryphal because they supported Catholic doctrine and practice" (see ref. #3 below for citation).

So....Fundies...why not use the original Scriptures that Jesus himself used -- rather than the one used by the same group who once labeled us Christians are heretics? I'm curious as to why you don't use it.

AND.....answer this, please, Fundies.....if we Catholics are so wrong in our choice of what is canonical or not in the OT....why have you always taken our word for it as to which are inspired by God to be included in the New Testament? YOu're certainly free to do your own research and to come up with your own NT like Martin Luther did.....he wanted to drop out Revelation (thought it irrelevant), Hebrews (author unknown) and the Epistle to James which he called an "epistle of straw" because James insisted on works as necessary for salvation:

"14What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? 15Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? 17In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
18But someone will say, "You have faith; I have deeds."
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.

19You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

20You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless[d]? 21Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23And the scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,"[e] and he was called God's friend. 24You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone (Jas. 2:14-24).

Final thing.....you claim that the Bible is infallible -- and rightfully so. If it is indeed infallible, do you think that a fallible institution would ever be capable of producing something that is INfallible? The Catholic Church then, that determined the Canon of the NT during council in 382 by Pope St. Damasus PROVES itself to be INfallible (I'm certainly not advocating that all of its MEMBERS are thus....but it is as a Divine institution founded by Jesus!). The canon was OFFICIALLY defined at the Counil of Trent in 1545-1563....AFTER the likes of Luther had challenged the NT list. Between 382 and Luther, EVERYONE had accepted the Canon of the NT as defined by the Church...

Answer 7

No, they were control freaks who wanted nothing but to keep their power and status. Not many people were educated back then and the wealthy controlled the populous.

Answer 8

There were no divinely inspired prophets of God after the bible was completely written (by its original penman). The bible is the Word of God; Jehovah Himself is the Divine Author of the Holy Scriptures.

(2 Timothy 3:16) All Scripture is inspired of God

(2 Peter 1:20-21) No prophecy of Scripture springs from any private interpretation. For prophecy was at no time brought by man’s will, but men spoke from God as they were borne along by holy spirit.

(Acts 28:25) The holy spirit aptly spoke through Isaiah the prophet to YOUR forefathers

(Acts 1:16) For the scripture to be fulfilled, which the holy spirit spoke beforehand by David’s mouth

(Mark 12:35-36) Jesus began to say as he taught in the temple: “...By the holy spirit David himself said [a particular Scripture]

(2 Samuel 23:1,2) And these are the last words of David: “...The spirit of Jehovah it was that spoke by me, And his word was upon my tongue.

(Zechariah 7:12) The law and the words that Jehovah of armies sent by his spirit, by means of the former prophets

(Luke 1:68-70) Blessed be Jehovah the God of Israel, because he has turned his attention and performed deliverance toward his people... just as he, through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, has spoken


But this so-called "question" seems less concerned with magnifying the Divine Author and more concerned with demeaning Jehovah's Witnesses. Jehovah's Witnesses have distributed more than 145 million copies of "New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures", in dozens of languages.
http://watchtower.org/languages.htm

The entire text of NWT is freely available at the official website of Jehovah's Witnesses, and a personal printed copy can be requested at no charge:
http://watchtower.org/bible/
https://watch002.securesites.net/contact/submit.htm
http://watchtower.org/how_to_contact_us.htm


Jehovah's Witnesses certainly like NWT, but they are happy to use any translation which an interested person may prefer, and in fact Jehovah's Witnesses themselves distribute other translations besides NWT. Jehovah's Witnesses attach no particular infallibility or inspiration to NWT.

The "New World Translation Committee" which oversaw the translation work request anonymity 'en perpetuity', and are likely all dead since the primary work was completed 45 years ago. Guesses at specific names have always been merely guesses. Since the same manuscripts used by the NWT translators are still widely available for study, and since there are dozens of alternate translations for comparison, anyone who chooses to use NWT does so informedly.

It seems that the vast majority of the criticism against the New World Translation is actually as a proxy for blind hatred against Jehovah's Witnesses. The hatred must be "blind" since secular experts of biblical Hebrew and Greek have consistently refused to condemn any particular verse or phrase as an unacceptable translation. Instead, it is religionists with preconceived theologies who bigotedly insist upon particular wordings, since these are necessary to prop up the shaky tenets of their false worship.

(2 Timothy 4:3-5) For there will be a period of time when they will not put up with the healthful teaching, but, in accord with their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves to have their ears tickled; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, whereas they will be turned aside to false stories. You, though, keep your senses in all things, suffer evil, do the work of an evangelizer, fully accomplish your ministry.

It seems significant that the relatively small religion of Jehovah's Witnesses are the ones best known for their worldwide preaching work. Yet Jesus commanded that ALL who would call themselves "Christian" perform this public work:

(Matthew 28:19,20) Go therefore and make disciples of people of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit, teaching them to observe all the things I have commanded you. And, look! I am with you all the days until the conclusion of the system of things.

Learn more:
http://watchtower.org/e/20000622/
http://watchtower.org/e/pr/index.htm?article=article_04.htm
http://watchtower.org/e/na/
http://watchtower.org/e/20020915/article_01.htm
http://watchtower.org/e/20050715/article_02.htm

Answer 9

6 of 1 and half dozen of the other.

Answer 10

This whole bible business seems more complicated than I thought...