Many folks are puzzled by the fact that the non-Catholic Bible has seven fewer books in its Old Testament than the Catholic Bible. For an extensive discussion on this topic, watch this video from
Fr Martino:
The condensed version is:
In 2nd Century BC, Jewish scholars
translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. Seven of the books were
originally written in Greek, not Hebrew, but the 70 rabbis doing the project
kept them anyway.
In 400 AD, St Jerome translated the
Bible into Latin (called the Vulgate version). He opined that only those
originally written in Hebrew should be part of the Canon, the other 7 should be
tossed out. St Augustine weighed in, and said no, we should retain them all.
The Council of Hippo in 393 confirmed that all 46 OT books shall remain in the
Canon.
During the
reformation, Martin Luther raised the issue again, and said the 7 Greek books
should be dropped. A few years later, the Council of Trent reaffirmed the
Church's Canon of 46 OT books. Luther & his followers decided to stick with
only 39 books in their OT. So, today we have 2 separate versions of the OT.
3 comments:
Love that you post this info. Some I knew, some long forgotten, and some never knew.
Great Homily Ken!
Thanks, Bob. Great to have you back in the diocese!
-Ken
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