If the Catholic Church has tried to conceal or destroy the "real" Scriptures ...?

Question

why is there such substantial similarity between Catholic Bibles and non-Catholic Bibles?

Given that the American liturgy uses NAB or NASB translations, which has minimal contextual difference from other translations, and given that apologists trace very little of the uniquely Catholic doctrines to the Deuterocanonicals (books disputed by non-Catholics in the West), there is substantial agreement between Catholics and non-Catholics on the corpus of Scripture.

How, then, can the Roman Catholic Church be accused of attempting to hide, distort or destroy Scripture when it so readily relies upon it?

Answer 1

I think it was the Gnostics who tried to distort and destroy the catholic scriptures!

Lets not forget that the gnostics too have their "gospel" which is still in existence today. If the catholic church was really out to destroy or distort gospels like that rediculous movie "Stigmata" attempts to assert, why are the gnostic gospels so readily accesible even today? The catholic church remarkably, painstakingly, preserved, clarified and set apart the scriptures as we know them today, for a reason. History attests to this. Even protestantism, with all of its objections, never broke from the admission that the catholic church had the authority to declare the canon of scripture (save the septugiant).

The truth is that the catholic church has a message to deliver to the world given it by Christ himself and even the very gates of hell shall not prevent it from doing so.

Answer 2

I think it is wonderful that you read the Bible. However, but look around you at all the different Protestant denominations there are and none of them interpret the Bible the same way. There are things that some take literally that others don't and some take metaphorically that some don't. If you are an American you know we have a Constitution. However, we are not allowed to each one interpret that constitution ourselves. That is why we have courts and the Supreme Court. The Bible is for more complicated than the U.S. constitution. There are scriptures, if taken literally, that contradict each other. You have to also understand if you are reading it in English and I presume you are, it is a translation. Translating from the original languages to English is not very easy. That is why there are footnotes in Bibles. It is frequently very difficult to literally translate and make a sentence readable. Another example, Did Mary have other children? You can't prove it one way or the other by the Bible. In the Aramaic at the time of Jesus, they had one word for brother and cousin. You seem to be making references to Hebrew dietary laws and perhaps confusing them with the church laws regarding fasting and abstinence. In the Catholic Church, there is doctrine and there is church law. They are not the same. Some Church law is of human origin and some divine. The Church cannot change divine law. It can change human laws and those are the laws of fast and abstinence. For instance, in Mexico, they were never required to abstain from meat on Friday.What Holy Days of obligation you must observe can be different from country to country. Many laws regarding marriages can be changed. For instance, a Catholic can now be married in a Protestant Church. It is an incorrect statement for a person to say we were married by Father Smith. The priest never never marries anyone. The couple marry each other. The priest has always been the church's official witness. A marriage contract is between 3, God, the man and the woman. The priest is not a party to the contract and this was taught way before Vatican 2. There has been a big thing made over Pope Benedict's pronoucement on limbo. I have a catechism published before Vatican 2 and it expressly states that Limbo is not a doctrine but an hypothesis. Still there is a religion website that states Pope Benedit to end the doctrine of Limbo. Of course, the catechism I read wasn't for school children but for adults. See, too many people think if they went to 12 years of Catholic Schools they know everything about the Catholic Church. As one of my friends states they have a little better than a nursery school education in the Catholic Church when they get out of High School.

Answer 3

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 that were removed supported such things as
+ Prayers for the dead (Tobit 12:12; 2 Maccabees 12:39-45)
+ Purgatory (Wisdom 3:1-7)
+ Intercession of saints in heaven (2 Maccabees 15:14)
+ Intercession of angels (Tobit 12:12-15)

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 4

Read the book " The Lost Gospels"
The Catholics created the NT from existing writings . Much of it was edited , changed or simply not used , sometimes destroyed .
Similar things happened in the creation of the OT , but the Jews were mostly responsible for those things . And other parts of what might be considered Bible are simply stand alone documents such as the Dead Sea Scrolls . The Catholics were the only ones copying the NT , usually in certain monastaries , for centuries .Therefore changes were likely made during that period .

Answer 5

Believe me! I have no particular brief for the Roman Catholic Church, and in the next answer I may be just as critical of her as the next atheistic heretic:

But you do point out one of the more unfortunate results of the popularity of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code". I would advice all to read Bart Ehrman's books to get a more accurate understanding of the reality.

The historical forces that led men to chose the the canon as it is--the doctrinal results are substantially shared by all Christian denominations both Catholic and Protestant. Most who hanker after the alleged rejected books would be horrified if society were structured according to the doctrines of those books--at least the books we have any hint at all about their content. The process of making Scripture--like that of sausage and politics--is not pleasant to think about--But in this case, the proto-orthodox whose views shaped, and yes distorted, the making of Christian scripture were more attune to modernist thinking than most if not all of their opponents. I will take the proto-orthodox over the gnostics of almost any stripe.

Answer 6

I suggest that U pick up a good Bible Handbook such as Halley's for study and learn how the catholic church has Killed People, Destroyed and Forged Documents in an attempt to Deny (by Papal Bulls) the common mans access to Scripture thereby Controlling the Populace for their Organizations Evil Gains!!! Of course I'm sure U only ask to see if anyone else can "Bolster" the church so U don't have to do Ur own Research. John

Answer 7

The Catholic church put together the original Bible with the guidence of the Holy Spirit. Protestents modified the Bible.

Answer 8

Since the beginning of Christian era, Catholic crusaders trying to hide the scriptures to the people. They have their own teachings like babies baptism, baptism of the dead, purgatory and their priest is the holiest person live on earth, teachings of confessing their sins to their priest not to Jesus, and to worship idols. They can preach some of the doctrines of the bible but not all of it because they will be a hypocrite. They start teaching of their sermon from latin words that even their highest priest did not know what exactly meaning of their teaching. This is the reason why Marthin Luther become a protestant leader because when he discover that the catholics hide their bibles to the people and they taught false doctrine. If you have a time to buy or go to public library take a look at the history of the protestant church and find out for your self if I'm telling wrong or right information. About translation of the bibles, you can used any translation of the bibles out there but not the New World Translation Bibles (Jehovah Witness Bibles) They are all translation. The original is from Hebrews and Greek writings. I found out there is couple of books in the Catholics Bibles are not included in the Protestant Bibles. The book that are not included in Protestant Bibles are the books NOT Inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Hope some of this may help you grow in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Answer 9

OK you do know how the books of the bible were chosen right??? there were hundres of books "inspired" by god so a bunch of men in skirts with beards decided that the books left on the table after all of them supposedly lifted to the air were the ones that were the real scriptures... which magically seem to be all the books that give Jesus God like properties in the new testament and in the old... well those that conform with the non pagan customs... the vatican library has thousands of books but it doesn't accept them as the word of God. so is it concealing information... I do believe it is... because what gave the right to those men to compile THE BOOK out of what they wanted it to have... besides all the other bibles are translations and tranlations of the original latin copies they found translated by monks who put whatever they wanted in those scriptures.... I do believe God inspired people and his message was given Is in in the bible you read today NO... it was lost on thousands of years of hiding said information

Answer 10

rico3151 CATHOLICS ARE CHRISTIANS. It's all political now isn't it. Everyone wants to be right, just look at all the store front churches.