Catholic Bible Study !

As Catholics were responsible for writing the New Testament (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit), the Catholic Church doesn't "interpret" the Bible. We explain it. Protestants can only "interpret", because they are not the author (guided by the Holy Spirit), and therefore, can only guess at the possible meaning of a chapter, passage or phrase, just as anyone can only guess at any author's intentions in any other book. As the author, the Catholic Church is the only proper authority to consult in matters pertaining to the Bible

Catholic And Protestant Bibles

The Old Testament

The Protestant Old Testament omits several entire books and parts of two other books. To explain how this came about, it is necessary that we go back to the ancient Jewish Scriptures. The

Hebrew Bible contained only the Old Testament and from its Old Testament it excluded seven entire books - namely, Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, First and Second Machabees - and parts of Esther (10:14 to 16:14) and Daniel (3:24- 90; 13; 14).

These books which are missing in the Jewish Bible came to the Catholic Church with the Septuagint, a pre-Christian Greek translation of the Old Testament. In the Septuagint Version they are placed among and given equal rank with the other Old Testament books as in our Catholic Bible today. Since the Hebrew is older than the Septuagint Bible, the list of books in the former is called the first canon or collection while the catalog of books in the latter is called the second canon or collection. The seven additional books are found only in the second collection and always associated with it.

Jewish opposition to the additional books of the second collection was due to the circumstances in which the Jews lived and to the spirit of the times. During the last centuries which preceded the coming of Christ the Jews - because of the captivities, persecutions and antagonisms from outside nations became more and more conservative and looked with increasing suspicion on anything that was new. Since the additional books were of comparatively recent origin and since some of them were written in Greek - the language of paganism - they naturally aroused the opposition of the Jews. The fact, too, that the early Christians used the Septuagint in their controversies with the Jews only served to confirm the latter in their opposition to this translation of the Old Testament.

The Protestants of the sixteenth century objected to the additional books because of the doctrinal teachings of these books. The Second Book of Machabees, for example, contains the doctrine of purgatory, of prayers and sacrifices for the dead (12:39-46). The book of Tobias teaches the importance in the eyes of God of good works. The Protestants could not reject some without excluding all of the additional books. Hence, in drawing up their list of Old Testament books they went back to the first collection of Biblical books of the Palestinian Jews. They removed the additional books, which had been in the Bible up till 1517 and placed them at the end of the Bible in a special appendix. In addition, they labelled them as "apocryphal" (spurious, uninspired), a designation which helped to lower them in the estimation of Protestant readers.

The Lutheran and Anglican Bibles still carry these books in the appendix or give them at least a secondary place. But the other Protestant churches reject them entirely. In 1827 the British and Foreign Bible Society decided not to print or handle Bibles that contained the additional books and not to aid financially companies that published Bibles containing them. As a result these books have practically disappeared from Protestant Bibles.

The Catholic Church has always considered these books as inspired and of the same rank as the other Old Testament books. Her attitude is based upon the following facts:

1) The Apostles and New Testament writers quoted principally the Septuagint. In fact, of the three hundred and fifty Old Testament quotations found in the New Testament, about three hundred are taken from the Septuagint.

2) Some of the New Testament writers made use of the additional books themselves, particularly of the Book of Wisdom, which seems to have been St. Paul's favorite volume. The Epistle of St. James - to take another example - shows an acquaintance with the Book of Ecclesiasticus. If the Apostles and New Testament writers used some of the additional books, did they not thereby approve the entire Septuagint collection?

3) The additional books were accepted in the Church from the beginning. The Epistle of Pope Clement, written before the end of the first century, makes use of Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom, gives an analysis of the book of Judith, and quotes from the additional sections of the book of Esther. The same is true of other early Christian writers.

4) The oldest Christian Bibles in existence (Codex Vaticanus, etc.) contain the additional books intermingled with the rest, just as we find them in the Catholic Bibles today.

5) The oldest Christian lists of Biblical books contain the additional books. In 382 Pope Damasus in a Roman Council issued a formal list of Old and New Testament books and the list contains the same books as we have in our Bibles.

6) Finally, Christian art of the first four centuries - especially that found in the catacombs and cemeteries - furnishes among others the following illustrations from the additional books: Tobias with the fish (Tobias 6), Susanna (Daniel 13), Daniel and the dragon (Daniel 14), the angel with the three children in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3:49), Habacuc and Daniel in the lion's den (Daniel 14:35).