On what grounds did the Protestant reformers remove certain books from the Bible?

Question

The removed books are sometimes referred to as the "Apocrypha." They appear in Catholic Bibles, but not Protestant Bibles.

Answer 1

There have been various councils down through history that decided on which books were canonical and which were not. I think the "Jewish" cannon [what Christians refer to as the Old Testament] was decided about 300-400 BCE

I believe that the Council that formed what we might call the "Catholic Bible" was formed about 300 CE.

And the Protestant versions begin appearing during the Reformation period.... My understanding is that some Catholic scholars question some of these books as well... I believe a lot of the questions have to do with the language that the original texts were written in..

Douay-Rheims Catholic Bible
http://www.drbo.org/
* The 7 Deutero-Canonical books, erroneously called
"The Apocrypha", can only be found in Catholic Bibles.

The Apocrypha there are quite a number of Books that fall under this category and many of them were never part of any Cannon, Catholic or Protestant..
http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/apo/index.htm

Why the Apocrypha Isn't in the Bible.
http://www.jesus-is-lord.com/apocryph.htm

and there is also something called the Psuedopigrapha

Answer 2

It replaced into no longer the protestant reformers that left the books out, they have been bumped off plenty later. The 1611 KJV truthfully contained the Apocrypha and a few KJV contained it into the 1850's or so For the 2nd area of your question, The "Septuagint " replaced into initially purely the 1st 5 books of the bible. Later the the remainder of the Tanach replaced into translated into Greek. "Septuagint" can propose the Greek translation of the Torah, it could propose the Tanach (what Christians call O.T.) or it would desire to propose the bible used via the Orthodox church which incorporates the Appocrypha. on an identical time as those books have been possibly properly customary interior the 1st century,this is uncertain whether or no longer they have been blended right into a unmarried e book as we expect of of a bible on the instant.

Answer 3

when st. jerome translated the canon of the bible into latin he left out a whole heap of books about jesus and his life that were commonly known in the world of his time (the acts of thekla, the gospel of thomas, the later acts of peter ...).

the catholics didn't like these books so they left them out. the catholics called the books they left out the 'gnostic' texts.

when the protestants came along a thousand years later there were quite a few books they didn't like either. at first the protestants printed these books as an appendix, and called them the 'apocrypha'.

later the protestants decided to leave those books out altogether.

if we wait long enough there won't be any books left in the bible at all. just a whole list of namecalling ('gnostic', 'apocrypha', 'straw epistle' ...).

Answer 4

Obviously the Apocrypha contained ideas which were not in agreement with Protestant theology. They also regarded the sources of the Apocrypha as inferior revelation or deliberate heresy.

Answer 5

It boils done to power,King James, absolute power. The Roman emperors had a lot to do with what went in to the new testament! Lets face it , all of the organized religions are about power and control. What ever grounds they chose....