The apocrypha (deuterocanonicals)?

Question

Why did Catholics add books to the Old Testament? The men of the great assembly met between 310 and 410 BC. During this period they decided which books should be included in the Tanach (the Jewish Bible). The books that they included exactly match the Protestant Old Testament. Thus the books that were to be included in the OT were decided by Jews at least 300 years before Jesus was born on Earth. Since the law and the OT was given to the Jews why did the Catholics add to it? Men who were part of this assembly included Ezra, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. I would think these guys would know what they were doing. So why did the Catholics add these books when the Jews considered them uninspired?

CC - everything I said is true. Look it up. And this was 300-400 years before Jesus and many of the OT prophets were at this assembly.

CC - please don't say I lie it rather annoys me. Look this up. It is Jewish history. Not the council of jamnia. The Men of the great assembly. Calling it a lie does not make it any less the truth.

To everyone who says I do not know what I am talking about look up the men of the great assembly. This is history. Here I will provide a link to make it easy for you.

http://www.aish.com/literacy/jewishhistory/Crash_Course_in_Jewish_History_26_-_The_Great_Assembly.asp

Tuberoot - I will admit I have not read them all. I have read a bit of them. I would rather devote my time when I am going to study the Bible to books that are the inspired word of God.

Peter Priesthood - You mention Jerome. He did not consider the apocrypha inspired.

As, then, the Church reads Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees, but does not admit them among the canonical Scriptures, so let it also read these two volumes (Wisdom of Solomon and Eccesiasticus) for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of the Church...I say this to show you how hard it is to master the book of Daniel, which in Hebrew contains neither the history of Susanna, nor the hymn of the three youths, nor the fables of Bel and the Dragon...(Ibid., Volume VI, Jerome, Prefaces to Jerome's Works, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs; Daniel, pp. 492-493).

CC - I do not know why they were added in the Greek version. All I know is these men many of whom were the OT prophets did not put them in. It seems that would have some weight.

Answer 1

--YOU ARE indeed correct:

--THIS IS SOME OF THEIR REASONING:
*** si pp. 301-302 Study Number 4—The Bible and Its Canon ***

**APOCRYPHAL BOOKS OF THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES
--13 What are the Apocryphal books? These are the writings that some have included in certain Bibles but that have been rejected by others because they do not bear evidence of having been inspired by God. The Greek word a·po′kry·phos refers to things “carefully concealed.” (Mark 4:22; Luke 8:17; Col. 2:3) The term is applied to books of doubtful authorship or authority or those which, while considered to be of some value for personal reading, lacked evidence of divine inspiration. Such books were kept apart and not read publicly, hence the thought of “concealed.” At the Council of Carthage, in 397 C.E., it was proposed that seven of the Apocryphal books be added to the Hebrew Scriptures, along with additions to the canonical books of Esther and Daniel. However, it was not until as late as 1546, at the Council of Trent, that the Roman Catholic Church definitely confirmed the acceptance of these additions into its catalog of Bible books. These additions were Tobit, Judith, additions to Esther, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, three additions to Daniel, First Maccabees, and Second Maccabees.
--14 The book of First Maccabees, while not in any way to be reckoned as an inspired book, contains information that is of historical interest. It gives an account of the struggle of the Jews for independence during the second century B.C.E. under the leadership of the priestly family of the Maccabees. The rest of the Apocryphal books are full of myths and superstitions and abound with errors. They were never referred to or quoted by Jesus or the writers of the Christian Greek Scriptures.
--15 The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, of the first century C.E., in his work Against Apion (I, 38-41 [8]), refers to all the books that were recognized by the Hebrews as sacred. He wrote: “We do not possess myriads of inconsistent books, conflicting with each other. Our books, those which are justly accredited, are but two and twenty [the equivalent of our 39 today, as is shown in paragraph 11], and contain the record of all time. Of these, five are the books of Moses, comprising the laws and the traditional history from the birth of man down to the death of the lawgiver. . . . From the death of Moses until Artaxerxes, who succeeded Xerxes as king of Persia, the prophets subsequent to Moses wrote the history of the events of their own times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God and precepts for the conduct of human life.” Thus Josephus shows that the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures had been fixed long before the first century C.E.
--16 Biblical scholar Jerome, who completed the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible about 405 C.E., was quite definite in his position on the Apocryphal books. After listing the inspired books, using the same counting as Josephus, numbering the 39 inspired books of the Hebrew Scriptures as 22, he writes in his prologue to the books of Samuel and Kings in the Vulgate: “Thus there are twenty-two books . . . This prologue of the Scriptures can serve as a fortified approach to all the books which we translate from the Hebrew into Latin; so that we may know that whatever is beyond these must be put in the apocrypha.”

*** si pp. 300-301 pars. 10-12 Study Number 4—The Bible and Its Canon ***
--10 Establishing the Hebrew Canon. Jewish tradition credits Ezra with beginning the compiling and cataloging of the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures, and it says that this was completed by Nehemiah. Ezra was certainly well equipped for such a work, being one of the inspired Bible writers himself as well as a priest, scholar, and official copyist of sacred writings. (Ezra 7:1-11) There is no reason to doubt the traditional view that the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures was fixed by the end of the fifth century B.C.E.
--11 We today list 39 books of the Hebrew Scriptures; the traditional Jewish canon, while including these same books, counts them as 24. Some authorities, by putting Ruth with Judges and Lamentations with Jeremiah, counted the number of books as 22, though still holding to exactly the same canonical writings. This made the number of inspired books equal the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. The following is the list of the 24 books according to the traditional Jewish canon:

The Law (The Pentateuch)
1. Genesis
2. Exodus
3. Leviticus
4. Numbers
5. Deuteronomy
The Prophets
6. Joshua
7. Judges
8. Samuel (First and Second together as one book)
9. Kings (First and Second together as one book)
10. Isaiah
11. Jeremiah
12. Ezekiel
13. The Twelve Prophets (Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, as one book)
***The Writings (Hagiographa)
14. Psalms
15. Proverbs
16. Job
17. The Song of Solomon
18. Ruth
19. Lamentations
20. Ecclesiastes
21. Esther
22. Daniel
23. Ezra (Nehemiah was included ith Ezra)
24. Chronicles (First and Second together as one book)
--12 This was the catalog, or canon, that was accepted as inspired Scripture by Christ Jesus and the early Christian congregation. It was only from these writings that the inspired writers of the Christian Greek Scriptures quoted, and by introducing such quotations with expressions like “as it is written,” they confirmed these as being the Word of God. (Rom. 15:9) Jesus, in speaking of the complete inspired Scriptures written up till the time of his ministry, referred to the things recorded in “the law of Moses and in the Prophets and Psalms.” (Luke 24:44) Here “Psalms,” as the first book of the Hagiographa, is used to refer to this whole section. The last historical book to be included in the Hebrew canon was that of Nehemiah. That this was under the direction of God’s spirit is seen in that this book alone provides the starting point for reckoning Daniel’s outstanding prophecy that “from the going forth of the word to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem” until the coming of the Messiah there would be a period of 69 prophetic weeks. (Dan. 9:25; Neh. 2:1-8; 6:15) The book of Nehemiah also provides the historical background for the last of the prophetic books, Malachi. That Malachi belongs in the canon of the inspired Scriptures cannot be doubted, since even Jesus, the Son of God, quoted it a number of times. (Matt. 11:10, 14) While similar quotations are made from the majority of the books of the Hebrew canon, all of which were written prior to Nehemiah and Malachi, the writers of the
--Christian Greek Scriptures make no quotations from any so-called inspired writings written after the time of Nehemiah and Malachi down to the time of Christ. This confirms the traditional view of the Jews, and also the belief of the Christian congregation of the first century C.E., that the Hebrew Scripture canon ended with the writings of Nehemiah and Malachi
--THE CANON of the entire Bible was finished when John finished 3 John*** si p. 304 par. 24 Study Number 4—The Bible and Its Canon ***

--24 Apocryphal Writings. Internal evidence confirms the clear division that was made between the inspired Christian writings and works that were spurious or uninspired. The Apocryphal writings are much inferior and often fanciful and childish. They are frequently inaccurate. Note the following statements by scholars on these noncanonical books:

“There is no question of any one’s having excluded them from the New Testament: they have done that for themselves.”—M. R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament, pages xi, xii.

“We have only to compare our New Testament books as a whole with other literature of the kind to realize how wide is the gulf which separates them from it. The uncanonical gospels, it is often said, are in reality the best evidence for the canonical.”—G. Milligan, The New Testament Documents, page 228.

“It cannot be said of a single writing preserved to us from the early period of the Church outside the New Testament that it could properly be added to-day to the Canon.”—K. Aland, The Problem of the New Testament Canon, page 24.completed 3 John!

Answer 2

1) Which men are talking about? The first canon of Scripture was issued at Carthage, 397 AD. The list compiled at Nicea didn't even include any canons - it was just a list sent to the printers.

2) I don't know where you got your information on the Jewish Old Testament. You should know that the Tanach was compiled in the early 90's AD at the Council of Yavneh (Jamnia), and only excluded the Apocrypha in an attempt to exclude the New Testament as well.

3) The Protestant New Testament includes Esther, which was rejected by both the Jews and the early Church.

4) Why do you accept the book of Revelation? It wasn't accepted at the Council of Carthage in the 4th century, and it wasn't accepted by the Council of Trullo in the 6th century. In fact, it wasn't officially accepted by any Christian community until the Council of Trent!

5) Why did early Christians quote from the Apocrypha as Scripture?

6) Why did all Protestant Bibles before 1769 include the Apocrypha?

Answer 3

The Jews at the time Jesus used to different collections of Bible books (although not canons properly, because there was no fixed canon at the time), one is the one that protestants later chose, one is the one that the other churches (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and the Oriental churches, with some minor variations).

If you think the Catholics chose the wrong canon, you obviously also have to say that Jesus, his apostles and most of the Jews in Palestine (some of whom became the first Christians) chose the wrong canon, because they generally used the Old Greek Septuagint translation, which happens to include the same books as the Catholic OT canon.

Luther and his fellow reformers later chose the other canon because it was the official Jewish canon, ignorant of the fact that it became the official Jewish canon first in the period after the death of Jesus and the founding of the Christian Church. The Early Church understandably didn't follow the Jewish decisions on the issue, but kept using the Septuagint (i.e. the Catholic canon).

Answer 4

Oh, Edge, I'm disappointed in you, stooping to a lie.

You KNOW that those books were in the Greek Septuigent 200 years before Christ was born, which means it is IMPOSSIBLE that the church "added" them. We are an APOSTOLIC church, not a PHARISAAIC church. It doesn't matter what the Jews in Jamnia said. The Jews decision is not binding on Christians.

You don't seem to mind the church's decision on the New Testament canon, do you? Then why do you challenge the same church on the OT canon

EDIT: Okay then, "Men of the great assembly". If that is so, why did the 70 rabbis include them in their greek translation, the Septuigent?

Answer 5

Did you also know that the apocrypha was included in the KJV until the 1700s?

And the Apocrypha is NOT in the Jewish Holy Texts, it is a part of the Old Testament, which deals with things BEFORE Jesus. The New Testament deals with things AFTER Jesus.

Just to make it clear...

Old Testament = before Jesus
New Testament = after Jesus

The Apocrypha ALSO deals with things BEFORE Jesus, therefore when Jerome was deciding what books to be canonized, those books had to be placed in either before Jesus or after Jesus...and since they were before Jesus they were included in the Old Testament.

Answer 6

They didn't add them and your dates are wrong. It was about 90 AD that the jewish rabbis had the meeting where it was decided only books in hebrew would be recognized as sacred. When christianty began the septagunent was in use in the holy land. this was the old testament in greek. martin luther decided in the 1500's to use the jewish version of the old testament. for 1500 years the bible was based on the greek version of the old testament, which by the way the new testament was also originally written in.

Answer 7

I am not a Catholic. If you read those books, many of which were in the 1611 King James, then perhaps God didn't show you anything in them. I am reading those books from an Oxford Bible, and there is more to them than you seem to be saying.

Did you know that the name 'Apocrypha' means 'Hidden'? In these Last Days, wouldn't that intrigue you to at least read them?

Answer 8

The Catholics didn't add any books, they just didn't exclude them. There are more gospels than you can poke a stick at, not just Matthew Mark Luke and John, but they were just excluded like the gospel of Thomas, mary Magdalene, Timothy the list goes on if every piece of scripture was included in the bible it wouldn't fit in a book shelf

Answer 9

Everyone has there own viewpoint....But I think the catholics Took the Torah and added the new testament to it....I think the Protestants removed what they didn't like. Theirs was a coupe of hundred years earlier.

Answer 10

The catholics and the protestants added much more to the OT. They added the entire NT.

Answer 11

they added it to their bible at the council of trent in the mid 1500’s a.d., primarily in response to the protestant reformation. the apocrypha support some of the things that the roman catholic church believes and practices which are not in agreement with the bible. examples are praying for the dead, petitioning “saints” in heaven for their prayers, worshipping angels, and “alms giving” atoning for sins.