Catholic Bible

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Bible
The Catholic Bible is the Bible comprising the whole 73-book canon recognized by the Catholic Church,
including the deuterocanonical books.
Contents
[hide]
1 Books included in the Catholic Bible
o 1.1 Old Testament
o 1.2 New Testament
2 English versions
3 Differences from other Christian Bibles
4 See also
5 References
Books included in the Catholic Bible[edit]
See also: Old Testament#Content and New Testament#Content
The Catholic Bible is composed of the 46 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament.
Old Testament[edit]
Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy;
Historical books: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2
Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith, Esther, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees;
Sapiential books: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Wisdom, Sirach;
Prophetic
books: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Baruch, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, N
ahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.
Of these books, Tobit, Judith, parts of Esther, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and parts of
Daniel are deuterocanonical and are not found in the Protestant Bible, but are found in the Bibles of Eastern
Christianity.
New Testament[edit]
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2
Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2
Timothy, Titus,Philemon, Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, Revelation.
The Bible - 73 or 66 Books?
So why does the
Catholic Bible have 73
books, while the
Protestant Bible has
only 66 books? Some
protestants believe that
the Catholic Church
added 7 books to the
Bible at the Council of
Trent in response to
Luthers Reformation, but that couldnt be further from the
truth.
In about 367 AD, St. Athanasius came up with a list of 73 books for the Bible that he
believed to be divinely inspired. This list was finally approved by Pope Damasus I in
382 AD, and was formally approved by the Church Council of Rome in that same
year. Later Councils at Hippo (393 AD) and Carthage (397 AD) ratified this list of 73
books. In 405 AD, Pope Innocent I wrote a letter to the Bishop of Toulouse
reaffirming this canon of 73 books. In 419 AD, the Council of Carthage reaffirmed
this list, which Pope Boniface agreed to. The Council of Trent, in 1546, in response
to the Reformation removing 7 books from the canon (canon is a Greek word meaning
standard), reaffirmed the original St. Athanasius list of 73 books.

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So what happened? How come the King James Bible only has
66 books? Well, Martin Luther didnt like 7 books of the Old
Testament that disagreed with his personal view of theology, so
he threw them out of his bible in the 16
th
Century. His reasoning
was that the Jewish Council of Jamnia in 90 AD didnt think
they were canonical, so he didnt either. The Jewish Council of
Jamnia was a meeting of the remaining Jews from Palestine who
survived the Roman persecution of Jerusalem in 70 AD. It
seems that the Jews had never settled on an official canon of OT
scripture before this. The Sadducees only believed in the first 5
books of the Bible written by Moses (the Pentateuch), while the
Pharisees believed in 34 other books of the Old Testament as
well. However, there were other Jews around from the
Diaspora, or the dispersion of the Jews from the Babylonian
captivity, who believed that another 7 books were also divinely
inspired. In fact, when Jesus addressed the Diaspora Jews (who
spoke Greek) he quoted from the Septuagint version of the
scriptures. The Septuagint was a Greek translation by 70
translators of the Hebrew Word. The Septuagint includes the
disputed 7 books that Protestants do not recognize as scriptural.
Initially, Luther wanted to kick out some New Testament Books as well, including
James, Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation. He actually said that he wanted to throw
Jimmy into the fire, and that the book of James was an epistle of straw. What is
strange is that Luther eventually accepted all 27 books of the New Testament that the
Catholic Pope Damasus I had approved of in 382 AD, but didnt accept his Old
Testament list, preferring instead to agree with the Jews of 90 AD. Luther really
didnt care much for Jews, and wrote an encyclical advocating the burning of their
synagogues, which seems like a dichotomy. Why trust them to come up with an
accurate canon of scripture when you hate and distrust them so much? And why trust
the Catholic Church which he called the whore of Babylon to come up with an
accurate New Testament list? Can you imagine the outrage by non-Catholics today if
the Pope started throwing books out of the Bible? But strangely, Luther gets a pass on
doing that exact same thing.
For the record, Jesus took the Kingdom away from the Jews (Matthew 21:43), and
gave it to Peter and His new Church (Matthew 16:18), so the Jewish Council of
Jamnia had no Godly authority to decide anything in 90 AD. They used 4 criteria for
deciding whether or not certain books were canonical
1. The books had to conform to the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the Bible-
......Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy);
2. They could not have been written after the time of Ezra (around 400 BC);
3. They had to be written in Hebrew;
4. They had to be written in Palestine.
So this method employed by first century Jews would automatically exclude all of the
Gospels, and the Epistles of the New Testament, which were also written in the first
century. But there were other books written before Christ, after Ezra, and some in
Greek as well. These 7 books were accepted by the Diaspora Jews (the Alexandrian
Canon) who were not in Palestine. These 7 books are Tobit, Judith, Baruch, Wisdom,
Sirach, First Maccabees, and Second Maccabees, as well as additional verses of
Daniel and Esther. These books are called the deuterocanon, or second canon, by
Catholics, and the apocrypha, or hidden/obscure, by Protestants (Christians who
protest against the Catholic Church).
There are several objections to these 7 books, besides not being approved at the
Jewish Council Jamnia. Some say that since the New Testament never references
these disputed books, then that proves that they are not canonical. But that isnt right,
because the non-disputed books of Ecclesiastes and Ezra arent mentioned in the New
Testament at all, not even once. By this standard then, Ecclesiastes and Ezra arent
canonical either. On the other hand, there are many references indeed from the
deuterocanonicals in the New Testament. Anybody who reads the book of Wisdom 2:
12-20 would immediately recognize that this is a direct reference to the Jews who
were plotting against Jesus in Matthew 27:41-43:
Wisdom 2:12-20: "Let us lie in wait for the righteous man,
because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he
reproaches us for sins against the law, and accuses us of sins
against our training. He professes to have knowledge of God,
and calls himself a child of the Lord. He became to us a reproof
of our thoughts; the very sight of him is a burden to us, because
his manner of life is unlike that of others, and his ways are
strange. We are considered by him as something base, and he
avoids our ways as unclean; he calls the last end of the righteous
happy, and boasts that God is his father. Let us see if his words
are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life;
for if the righteous man is God's son, he will help him, and will
deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. Let us test him with insult
and torture, that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance.
Let us condemn him to a shameful death,for, according to what he says, he will be
protected."
Matthew 27: 41-43: So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him,
saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him
come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God
deliver him now, if he desires him; for he said, `I am the Son of God.
Another similar instance of this is Hebrews 11:35 being a direct reference to 2
Maccabees 7, where the mother and her 7 sons were slaughtered by the evil King for
not forsaking the Jewish law. Romans 1:19-25 is also referenced in Wisdom 12-
13. The clincher, of course, is that Jesus Himself observed the feast of Hannukah, or
the Dedication of the Temple, in John 10. This can be found in the Old Testament
book of First Maccabees, Chapter 4, which is in the Catholic Bible, but not in the
Protestant Bible.
Additionally, there are some unscriptural books referenced in the New Testament, like
Enoch and the Assumption of Moses (in the book of Jude), so if the standard is that
books referenced in the New Testament are canonical, then Enoch and the
Assumption of Moses would be in the Old Testament, but they are not.
Some people object to these 7 books because they claim some of the early church
fathers like St. Jerome didnt think they were divinely inspired. While its great that
all of a sudden so many non-Catholics start quoting the early Church Fathers, its not
right to quote them on this and then not on the Eucharist, the papacy, or the
supremacy of Rome, all which prove that the Catholic Church was the only Church
around in those days. St. Jerome initially had some concerns about these books,
saying that the Palestinian Jews didnt consider them canonical, but St. Jerome was
not infallible, and later agreed that they were. All of the early Church Fathers accepted
these disputed books as divinely inspired.
Still others object to some of the disputed 7 books because of historical or
geographical errors in them. And there are some, but it has to be remembered that not
all stories in the Bible are historical. For instance, was there really a rich man who
died and went to hell, and then saw his poor servant in the bosom of Abraham? Was
there really a young man who sold his inheritance and went off to a faraway country
and squandered it, and returned home as the prodigal son? Was there really a
vineyard where the workers who showed up late got paid the same as the workers who
worked all day? Or is it rather not more important that these parables teach important
theological lessons than it is for them to be 100% historically accurate? In other
words, books of fiction that relate Biblical truths can be divinely inspired.
Its important also to note that the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls included the
book of Tobit and the book of Sirach, proving that the people back then thought them
canonical, because they were found with the book of Isaiah and other Old Testament
books.
And you can check all of this out for yourself. The first bible ever printed was
the Gutenberg Bible, in the century BEFORE Luther started his Reformation. And
the 7 books are indeed in that Bible. To see for yourself, click here.
And an interesting numerology coincidence occurs here as well. In the bible, the
number 7 denotes perfection (God rested on the 7th day, 7 spirits that minister to God,
7 sacraments), and the number 3 represents the Holy Trinity. On the other hand, the
number 6 represents imperfection (as in 666). Therefore, 73 books sure sounds a lot
better than 66 books!
To check out a great list of all of the New Testament references to the
deuterocanonicals by Catholic genius and all around good guy Jimmy Akin,
clickhere.
Some of the more interesting items in these 7 books are as follows:
In 2 Maccabees 12:39-45, we learn how Judas Maccabees prayed for the dead and
made atonement FOR THEM by sending money to the temple as a sin offering
(purgatory).
In 2 Maccabees 6:12-14, we learn how God punishes nations.
In 2 Maccabees 2:4-7, we learn the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant and
when it will be found (Sorry Indiana Jones!).
In 2 Maccabees 15:12-17, we learn about how saints in heaven pray for us and help us
out here on earth.
In Wisdom 7, we see a biblical type of the Blessed Virgin Mary known as "wisdom."
In Sirach 38:1-15, we learn about the role of the physician and how God uses him/her
to cure us.
In Tobit, we learn about the Archangel Raphael (a name which means God Heals), the
only place in the entire bible where he is mentioned. We also learn about the anti-
marriage demon Asmodeus.
In Judith, we see a biblical type of Mary crushing the head of the serpent; Judith cuts
off the head of the evil General Holofernes, and saves Israel.