Do Catholics, protestants and orthodox believe in the same bible? or is there any difference?

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 Catholic Bibles have 7 books in the Old Testament that are not in Protestant versions. Orthodox have the same 7 books but some additional books.

During Jesus' times, there were Hebrew and Greek speaking Christians. The Old TEstament manuscripts were in both languages. However, since there were no Hebrew manuscripts for the 7 books, the Jewish scribes considered them doubtful.

At the time of the Protestant Reformation the 7 books were first accepted then rejected as apocrypha, meaning doubtful.
The Catholic Council of Trent reaffirmed their belief that the 7 books were valid.
St. Matthews gospel has more references to old testament prophecies than any of the other 3 gospels and I understand all come from the Greek rather than the Hebrew.

Also some of the Hebrew manuscripts to the 7 books have been found in recent years.

Now, my personal opinion. I do not think the inclusion or exclusion of those 7 books would make a person convert from Catholicism to Protestantism or from Protestantism to Catholicism. I became a Catholic reading the King James Version.

There are some passages in Maccabees regarding praying for the dead. However, I believe most knowledgeable Protestants are aware that Jews say Kadish for their dead.

Also the background for the Jewish feast of Hanukkah comes from the book of Maccabees.

Answer 3

The Catholics and Orthodox( the latter for the most part) follow the Alexandrian Judeo-Christian Septuaguint(LXX) canon for the OT and the Protestants(but not all) follow the Pharisee Palestinian Jamnian canon for the OT. Most modern Jewish denominations accept the pharisee Jamnian canon and not the Saducee or Qumran canons. Some Eithiopians and other Orthodox have other books like 3 and 4 Maccabees and 3 and 4 Esdras.
All Trinitarian Christians(to my knowledge) accept the decisions of the Catholic/Orthodox councils and have the same number of NT books. Som e Gnostic groups accept the Gnostic Gospels and other OT and Nt Pseudepigrapha like the Gospel of Thomas.

Answer 4

No. The apocrypha in the Catholic bible contains books that are not included in the King James version of the bible. Furthermore, different protestant religions use different versions of the bible, which have different interpretations of scripture. Once, I was listening to a Catholic coworker argue about religion with a Jehovah's witness coworker. They couldn't even compare scriptural references, because their bibles were written so differently!

Answer 5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon