septuagint and apocrypha, is the apocrypha scripture?

[disciple]

We are looking at why some books which are excluded from protestant Bibles are found in catholic bibles and orthodox bibles, it makes a very interesting study, which we will benefit from.

[disciple]

Most of our protestant english bibles end at Malachi, and begin again in Matthew, there is a 430 year gap between the 2 books, a silence. What happened during those years? the books of the maccabees tell us.Do you think these books should be held equal with the rest of scripture? if you do then why? Do you value them yet not on the same level? or do you just completely ignore them? these seem to be the 3 approaches toward these books. Personally ive decided on the second approach. although I am still open for change looking forward to hearing more from you!

[Don]

I think the RCC Council of Trent declared the RCC Apocrypha as Scripture, so that is the answer for RCC people. The EOC Apocrypha is slightly larger/different. For those that do not hold to those 2 traditions, a discussion is possible, but the answers for RCC and EOC are already determined.

Don

[Darth_Bill]

From the LDS perspective:

http://scriptures.lds.org/dc/91/1

1 VERILY, thus saith the Lord unto you concerning the Apocrypha—There are many things contained therein that are true, and it is mostly translated correctly;

2 There are many things contained therein that are not true, which are interpolations by the hands of men.

3 Verily, I say unto you, that it is not needful that the Apocrypha should be translated.

4 Therefore, whoso readeth it, let him understand, for the Spirit manifesteth truth;

5 And whoso is enlightened by the Spirit shall obtain benefit therefrom;

6 And whoso receiveth not by the Spirit, cannot be benefited. Therefore it is not needful that it should be translated. Amen.

[michael_legna]

Here is an example of one of the book of Maccabees being quoted in the New Testament which shows the writers of the New Testament considered it canonical.

Hebrews 11 encourages us to emulate the heroes of the Old Testament and in the Old Testament "Women received their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they might rise again to a better life" (Heb. 11:35).

There are a couple of examples of women receiving back their dead by resurrection in the Protestant Old Testament. You can find Elijah raising the son of the widow of Zarepheth in 1 Kings 17, and you can find his successor Elisha raising the son of the Shunammite woman in 2 Kings 4, but one thing you can never find -- anywhere in the Protestant Old Testament, from front to back, from Genesis to Malachi -- is someone being tortured and refusing to accept release for the sake of a better resurrection. If you want to find that, you have to look in the Catholic Old Testament -- in the deuterocanonical books Martin Luther cut out of his Bible.

The story is found in 2 Maccabees 7, where we read that during the Maccabean persecution, "It happened also that seven brothers and their mother were arrested and were being compelled by the king, under torture with whips and cords, to partake of unlawful swine's flesh. . . . [b]ut the brothers and their mother encouraged one another to die nobly, saying, 'The Lord God is watching over us and in truth has compassion on us . . . ' After the first brother had died . . . they brought forward the second for their sport. . . . he in turn underwent tortures as the first brother had done. And when he was at his last breath, he said, 'You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life'" (2 Macc. 7:1, 5-9).

One by one the sons die, proclaiming that they will be vindicated in the resurrection. "The mother was especially admirable and worthy of honorable memory. Though she saw her seven sons perish within a single day, she bore it with good courage because of her hope in the Lord. She encouraged each of them . . . [saying], 'I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws,'" telling the last one, "Do not fear this butcher, but prove worthy of your brothers. Accept death, so that in God's mercy I may get you back again with your brothers" (2 Macc. 7:20-23, 29).

[michael_legna]

Originally Posted by Don

I think the RCC Council of Trent declared the RCC Apocrypha as Scripture, so that is the answer for RCC people.

No Don this is a misrepresentation developed by some Protestants as a strawman attack on the Catholic position. I am surprised that you picked this up without checking it as it is such a well known error and so simple a catch.

The deuterocanonical books were part of the canon all the way back in the 300's at the Council of Hippo and Carthage. They were in the Vulgate and every Catholic Bible since the beginning of the Church.

What happened at the Council of Trent was a reiteration of the declaration of the canon - dogmatizing it in response to the attacks by the Reformers. There was no new decision or instruction promulgated in this issue.

[bornagain]

This is interesting - not my words, don't blame me!!

There are some people who say the Bible is missing books, books that help justify what they hope to believe. Sometimes people claim that the Bible was edited to take out reincarnation, or the teaching of higher planes of existence, or different gods, or ancestor worship, or "at-one-ment" with nature. But again it is only to justify their beliefs.
The "lost books" were never lost. They were known by the Jews in Old Testament times and the Christians of the New Testament times and were never considered scripture. They weren't lost nor were they removed. They were never in the Bible in the first place.
The additional books were not included in the Bible for several reasons. They lacked apostolic or prophetic authorship, they did not claim to be the Word of God; they contain unbiblical concepts such as prayer for the dead in 2 Macc. 12:45-46; or have some serious historical inaccuracies.
Nevertheless, the Roman Catholic church has added certain books to the canon of scripture. In 1546, largely due in response to the Reformation, the Roman Catholic church authorized several more books as scripture known as the apocrypha. The word apocrypha means hidden. It is used in a general sense to describe a list of books written by Jews between 300 and 100 B.C. More specifically, it is used of the 7 additional books accepted by the Catholic church as being inspired. The entire list of books of the apocrypha are: 1 and 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the Rest of Esther, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, (also titled Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah, Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, The Additions to Daniel, The Prayer of Manasseh, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. The books accepted as inspired and included in the Catholic Bible are Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees Wisdom of Solomon Sirach (also known as Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch
The Pseudepigraphal books are "false writings." They are a collection of early Jewish and "Christian" writings composed between 200 BC and AD 200. However, they too were known and were never considered scripture.
The deuterocanonical (apocrypha) books are those books that were included in the Greek Septuagint (LXX) but not included in the Hebrew Bible. The recognized deuterocanonical books are "Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (also called Sirach or Ben Sira), Baruch (including the Letter of Jeremiah), 1 and 2 Maccabees, and additions to the books of Esther and Daniel. The canon of the Greek Orthodox community also includes 1 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and 3 Maccabees, with 4 Maccabees as an appendix."
Interesting???

- Chris.

[disciple]

Thanks Chris, that was very interesting, what i have read of the apocrypha is definitely of inferior quality to the rest of the books,[my opinion], although there is some definite history in maccabees thats valuable. and the books of wisdom, have some valuable lessons in them.The missing chapters of Ester, the prayer of mannaseh, in all honesty i dont feel as comfortable or assured reading these books as Ido the others, of course that just may be the protestant side of me, i have decided to do more personal research on this subject

[Orthokid]

Just passing through...

Chris: OK, you didn't author that; who did??

The author seems to put the OT "apocrypha" (or deuterocanonicals... "secondarily canonical") in the same bag with the NT "apocrypha". These are equines of alternate hues... The NT "apocyrpha" includes some books that were included as "canonical" in many Christian localities until things became more uniform in the 300's and 400's. And there are also a slew of books that are pretty much garbage from that era and as late as the 300's, purporting tol be of apostolic authorship. Some new gnostic outfits are flaunting these as "scripture", but... that's about it.

The OT deuterocanonicals were in the Greek translation of the Bible's OT that was in use at the time of Christ. There seems to be little or no argument that this translation -- the "Septuagint" or LXX" -- was in wide circulation in His day. (The name and LXX designations refer to Latin and Roman number representations of 70, which is roughly the number of people involved in the translation into Greek.)

Since it was widely circulated, and since Paul was an apostle to the Greeks, and since plenty of Jews of the era also knew Greek... if it was erroneous to include this in the Greek translation of the 1st century... and if it was truly important that they be removed... I would think that Christ or one of the epistles would have addressed this "problem". For me, their silence speaks louder than any "logic" of man looking back 2,000 years. They registered no complaints; should we??

Also in that article you quote from... beware of circular reasoning. For example, "...they contain unbiblical concepts such as prayer for the dead..." Hmmmm... to paraphrase, this is excluded from being in the Bible because it's not in the Bible... OY!!! We Orthodox don't deem scholarship to be on a very high level of Christian thought, but... bad scholarship screams at some of us.

Another example: " The "lost books" were never lost. They were known by the Jews in Old Testament times and the Christians of the New Testament times and were never considered scripture." Well.. nobody has EVER claimed that the "apocrypha" were lost! "Hidden".. .but LOST!!?? And if they were NEVER considered Scripture by the Christians of the New Testament times... then why, oh why, do ALL the older churches -- RCC, EOC and those who split from the rest as early as the late 300's -- ALL without exception include most or all of the OT deuterocanonical books?? This is overwhelming evidence that it was accepted by the "NT Christians" before 400 AD... and wasn't questioned for over 1,000 years after that. Is this author saying that the Christians from 400 to 1500 AD were neither OT nor NT but... "Other Testament"??? OY! OY! OY!

For whatever it's worth, about five years ago, I was seriously "involved" with a woman who got her Master's Degree in Christian education from a Lutheran (ie very Protestant) seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. She went on to become one of the first Lutheran deaconesses here, getting a big spread in the Washington Post at the time. She went on to work for the government for some 20 years, becoming Orthodox about ten years before her death.

What she was taught in Protestant seminary was that Luther made a boo-boo. Yes... Luther made an error according to a Lutheran seminary. The error had to do with the reasons for eliminating the the deuterocanonical books from the OT. His mistake was that he thought that the Hebrew "canon" was more authentic, since it was older... he thought that the Roman church had added stuff, so he wanted to return the OT to it's rightful canon. The problem is that the oldest known Hebrew translations and "canons" we have go back to roughly 60 years after Pentecost... at a time when Chritsians and Jews (ie. the Jews that didn't accept Christ as Messiah) were at enmity. They got rid of some of the "newer" OT stuff because... it was too Christian!! For example... Christians did things like pray for the dead, and ... Jews used that as part of their opposition to the new faith.

It was a boo-boo.

All that is according to the seminary; don't blame me if you don't like it, or if you disagree, or if you have some newly revealed secret about history (*cough!*) that "proves" this all false. Any complaints should be directed to the source.

Alas, this wonderful woman died about 1.5 years ago. Even though she married someone else after we broke up, she is still one of my best friends ever. Not WAS once of my best friends... IS one of my best friends. And you know what?? I still pray for her, and I have no doubt that she still intercedes on my behalf... just as we did for each other prior to her repose. I know one thing: neither she, nor anyone else, is ever beyond the reach of God's mercy, and that's what I pray for. If God's mercy doesn't extend everywhere, then we have a God of limits... and that's not MY God.

In Christ, Steven

[bornagain]

Symeon - I find that spooky!!

- Chris.