Supporters of the KJV?

Question

Can you explain why,( if those 7 books Luther removed were not inspired,) do so many New Testament passages support them?
Heb 11:35 - Paul teaches about the martyrdom of the mother and her sons described in 2 Macc. 7:1-42.

Heb. 12:12 - the description "drooping hands" and "weak knees" comes from Sirach 25:23.

Mark 9:48 - description of hell where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched references Judith 16:17.

Matt. 11:25 - Jesus' description "Lord of heaven and earth" is the same as Tobit 7:18 - Lord of heaven and earth.

Matt. 2:16 - Herod's decree of slaying innocent children was prophesied in Wis. 11:7 - slaying the holy innocents.

Matt. 9:36 - the people were "like sheep without a shepherd" is same as Judith 11:19 - sheep without a shepherd.

Luke 2:29 - Simeon's declaration that he is ready to die after seeing the Child Jesus follows Tobit 11:9.

Rev. 1:4 – the seven spirits who are before his throne is taken from Tobit 12:15 – Raphael is one of the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the saints before the Holy One.

Rev. 1:18; Matt. 16:18 - power of life over death and gates of Hades follows Wis. 16:13.

Rev. 8:3-4 - prayers of the saints presented to God by the hand of an angel follows Tobit 12:12,15.

2 Tim. 3:16 - the inspired Scripture that Paul was referring to included the deuterocanonical texts that the Protestants removed. The books Baruch, Tobit, Maccabees, Judith, Sirach, Wisdom and parts of Daniel and Esther were all included in the Septuagint that Jesus and the apostles used.

Gratvol - those books were in the Bible for hundreds of years. Who gave Luther the authority to remove them? You attempt to defend their rejection of the deuterocanonicals on the ground that the early Jews rejected them. However, the Jewish councils that rejected them (e.g., School of Javneh (also called “Jamnia” in 90 - 100 A.D.) were the same councils that rejected the entire New Testatment canon. Thus, Protestants who reject the Catholic Bible are following a Jewish council that rejected Christ and the Revelation of the New Testament.

Southern, you may like your KJV just fine, but you're missing parts of the truth.

Max, you're right. On the canonical level, a particular target of Martin Luther's ire was the New Testament epistle of James. The epistles assertion that "faith without works is also dead" absolutely rubbed Martin the wrong way (as it had Paul before him). Luther commented that James was "a right strawy epistle" and questioned whether a book of such inferior worth even belonged in the New Testament.

On a more practical level, Luther's disfavor had more catastrophic consequences. His ultimate condemnation of the Peasants' Revolt ultimately lead to the loss of 100,000 lives. He came to support the execution of Anabaptists who he felt disrupted the public order and refused to stay in banishment.

And in a sentiment with far-reaching consequences, Martin Luther came to advocate severe repression for the Jewish population in Germany, offering suggestions to: "Burn down their synagogues, forbid all that I enumerated earlier, force them to work, and deal harshly with them, as Moses did in the wilderness, laying three thousand lest the whole people perish."

Here are some quotes from Luther which shows that he taught the heresy of Once Saved Always Saved:

"Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here in this world we have to sin. This life is not a dwelling place of righteousness"

"No sin will separate us from the lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day."
Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: do not drink, answer him: I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to."

"your sin cannot cast you into hell"

"No sin can harm me"

Here are some quite shocking quotes from Luther which show that he was a rabid anti-Semite:

"The Jews deserve to be hanged on gallows, seven times higher than ordinary thieves"

"We ought to take revenge on the Jews and kill them."

"The blind Jews are truly stupid fools"

"Now just behold these miserable, blind, and senseless people."

eject them forever from this country"

"they are nothing but thieves and robbers"

"What then shall we do with this damned, rejected race of Jews?"

"Such a desperate, thoroughly evil, poisonous, and devilish lot are these Jews"

"They are the real liars and bloodhounds"

"We are at fault for not slaying them."

I fail to see why people defend such a man.

Gravtol - the Jews wanted them excluded because they wanted to combat the spreading Christian cult. They pronounced many books, including the Gospels, to be unfit as scriptures.

Answer 1

I don't have an answer. I just come to cheer.

Bravo!!! Bravo!!! Too bad so many of these folks are utterly unwilling to even take a look at the wrongs they believe in.

Someone mentioned Luther also desperately wanted to take out Revelation. This is true. He also wanted desperately to take out the Book of Esther because Esther was way too Jewish and therefore, well, icky - as far as Luther was concerned.

Answer 2

The Protestants decided that the 7 books did not meet the requirement of being inspired by the Holy Spirit. Why those particular books didn't make the cut is something that I've never understood. As you say, they are certainly quoted often enough by other Biblical writers whose works were considered inspired by God.

There are now NKJV Bibles that do include the Apocrypha, but I prefer the new NASB version that has the texts of Judith, Tobias, and the rest of the "missing" books. It just seems a little more accurate for today's language than any of the other translations.

Answer 3

the palestinian and septuagint texts of the bible were in circulation during the time of Jesus. Because the christians were using the septuagint text , the jews decided to go with the palestinian canon. they made this determination AFTER the apostles chose the septuagint text.

Luther didnt remove the 7 books in question directly but rather adopted the canon of the jews because it didnt have , among other things, maccabees in it which has a teaching about praying for the dead , a teaching he detested. Luther wanted to get rid of revelation, james, peter and a host of other texts as well, but was convinced not to.

Even today some protestant bibles have the "apocraphal"books in the back. If they are not the word of God, why have them in the bible at all?

Answer 4

Great question!!! Probably because if they read those texts they would find a lot of truth in those missing books, such as "purgatory", amongst many other things. Martin Luther removed those books to fit his agenda and to try and discredit The Holy Roman Catholic Church, the Church Jesus established

Answer 5

Well done, I'll have to modify this, expand on it, and put it up on my blog. It's well-written and the points well-made.

One of my favorite parallels is Jesus with the Sadducees in Mt. 22.23-33. It's not exactly Tobit, but the parallels are uncanny :).

Answer 6

The lost books of the Bible are still part of many Bibles, depends on which Bible a person gets. I don't know that I would go so far as to say the lost books of the Bible are supported. I understand that most if not all of the lost books of the Bible, including the first five books of the Bible came directly from the first Babylon.

Answer 7

Martin Luther wanted to remove Revelation as well. That would have solved some of it.

Answer 8

First off, the Catholic Bible is from a separate Greek text than the Textus Receptus which we get the KJV from.

And, if our current books of the Bible you mentioned that support the Apocrypha, then why do we need the apocrypha?

Answer 9

well Have you ever read the book of Mormon?? It is written just like you describe, there are a lot of bible quotes mixed in with a lot of other stuff..

Answer 10

How about I just rip this in two seconds.

If books such as Maccabees, Tobit, Jubilees, ben seria ,and others.

That were written by Jews, for Jews long before Jesus were not accepted by Jews as scripture then a Christian would be foolish to accept what what was not seen as scripture.

that aside they are very interesting examples of Second temple era Judea literature, and Maccabees very well might have a lot of historical accuracy.

Edit-- New Testament scripture dose not apply because naturally that would not have been added into the Canon.

But as for Jewish works for what other reason would they have to reject them except that they did not see them as divine in nature?