Question
Mr. Zavala. I would like to know whether it is true that the Catholic Bible has too many books, or whether it is the other way around—that our Protestant brethren’s Bible is missing some because they have been taken away. If you could answer me I would be grateful, for at work there are Protestant coworkers who tell me that we have books to spare.
Answer:
Greetings, and I answer your concern.
The Bible is divided into two main parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. Each of these parts is a series of books; hence its name “Bible,” which in Greek is “Biblos” and means books, or a collection of books. This “list of books inspired by God” is called the “biblical canon.”
In the New Testament, both Catholics and Protestants have 27 books; on that there is no disagreement. But in the Old Testament it is indeed different, for we Catholics have 46 books while our Protestant brethren have 39.
The difference is 7 books, which are called deuterocanonical (Tobit, Judith, Baruch, Wisdom, Sirach, and 1 and 2 Maccabees).
Why? Here is the answer.
1.- The Old Testament in the time of Christ. When Jesus Christ began his public ministry, obviously nothing of the New Testament yet existed, but only the Old Testament, and of the latter there were two canons or lists in use. The first list, with 47 books, was the so-called version of the Seventy, or Alexandrian canon; the other canon had fewer books, for it had 39, and was known as the Hebrew or Palestinian canon. Both were used, since there was no single closed list that everyone had to follow. Up to this point, whether someone chose to use one list or the other was relatively unimportant.
2.- The Apostles and their disciples used these seven books. Since the version of the Seventy was written in Greek and was widely known, the Apostles of Jesus also used these books when quoting passages of the Old Testament, including the seven that some Protestants today do not accept and that Catholics do accept, in order to follow the example of the Apostles. Approximately two-thirds of the quotations the Apostles made are taken from the Alexandrian canon, that is, from the list that includes these seven deuterocanonical books.
Therefore, a first important comment to make is that if the Apostles and their disciples used them, it is surely because they regarded them as sacred books; and for this reason, years later, when the New Testament was written—done almost entirely in Greek—they did not hesitate to use those seven books and to leave references showing that they had used them.
A very clear example is in Hebrews 11, which encourages us to follow the testimony of the heroes of the Old Testament: “Women received their dead raised to life again. Others were racked, not accepting deliverance, that they might find a better resurrection” (Heb 11:35).
If we look for where that is in the Bible, nowhere in the Protestant Old Testament will it be found—from beginning to end, from Genesis to Malachi—there is no one being tortured and refusing to accept deliverance out of hope for a better resurrection. If you want to find what is mentioned in the Letter to the Hebrews, you must look in the Old Testament of a Catholic Bible—in the deuterocanonical books that we have and that they removed from the Bible; the account that narrates that situation is found in 2 Maccabees chapter 7.
So it is not the Catholics who have too many books, but rather our separated brethren who are missing some.
In fact, many of them do not know why or when those books were taken away from their Bibles. Also, in Acts 7:43 Stephen speaks of “the god Rephan”; that is taken from the Greek version of the Seventy, which contains the deuterocanonicals, since in the other version, which does not have them, it is called “the god Kaiwan” (Am 5:26). So if Stephen used the word “Rephan,” it is because for them the version of “the Seventy”—which contains the 7 books that Protestants reject—was the normal one; and we, just like Stephen, do accept them.
3.- The Catholic Church was the one that established the biblical canon (the list of inspired books).
Another reason why these books are used in the Bible in the Catholic Church is that we want to be faithful to the list that was approved in the beginning by Christianity. Let us give an example to make it simpler: if we have a book X, and one person tells us it is missing pages while another tells us it has too many, a very sure way to know who is right is to seek out the author of the book and the original book; in that way we will settle our doubts by comparing what we are told with what it originally was.
In the case of Sacred Scripture: Who? and When? was the decision made to define which books we ought to have in the Bible. Let us find it in history: the canon of Scripture, Old and New Testament, began to be defined at the Council of Rome in the year 382, under the authority of Pope Damasus I. It was later confirmed at the Council of Hippo in 393 and at the Council of Carthage in 397. It is important to note that all these canons were identical to the modern Catholic Bible, and all of them included the deuterocanonicals. So if anyone says there are more or fewer, one must turn to the Catholic Church, which was the only one of the present-day churches that decided how many and which books were recognized as the Word of God. She gathered them; she approved them. I say that Protestants ought, every night in their prayers, to give thanks to the Catholic Church, for if they have it, it is thanks to this Church.
4.- The Jews kept the short canon and the Christians the long one. Looking at what the Jews decided, we find that they, around the year 90–100, also established their canon or list of the Old Testament and kept the short canon, mainly because for them, if it was not written in Hebrew it would not have the same value; and with this they set aside the longer list and, of course, any other book written in Greek, as was the New Testament. So the Jews were left without those seven books, and the Christians did include them.
If we are Christians, whom are we going to obey? Of course, the Christian authorities of those times. This is another reason why in the Catholic Bible they are indeed included: to be faithful to primitive Christianity.
Moreover, there are some Jews, such as those of Ethiopia, who continued with the long canon that includes the seven books we have. Remember that all the points we are explaining can be confirmed by yourself by looking up books and encyclopedias that deal with this topic.
5.- The Early Church also used the deuterocanonicals. To prove this we will quote the Protestant scholar Mr. J. Kelly, who says: “It should be observed that the Old Testament thus admitted as authoritative in the Church was somewhat larger and more comprehensive than the [Protestant Old Testament]… It always included, though with varying degrees of recognition, the so-called deuterocanonical books. The reason for this was that the Old Testament which passed in the first instance into the hands of Christians was the Greek translation known as the version of the Seventy… most of the biblical quotations found in the New Testament are based upon it rather than upon the Hebrew… In the first two centuries at any rate the Church seems to have accepted as inspired all, or most, of these additional books, and to have treated them without further question as Scripture.” Remember that this was said by a Protestant professor.
So, if the Church used them in the early centuries, all the more should we. One last important detail is that for many centuries the Protestant Bible also contained these seven books. Even Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin had them in their Bibles, at least as an appendix. It was only in the year 1835 that they were printed without them for the first time. In fact, today, thanks to research, to ecumenism, and to love of the truth, there are more and more serious Protestants who are once again including them in their new biblical editions.
We hope to have answered your question, and do not forget to help us promote this site, Defiendetufe.org.
May God continue to bless you.
Author: Martin Zavala M.P.D.
Source: Defiendetufe.org
