by request:

"A Short Exposition on the Old Testament Canon of Scripture, the 'Apocrypha' and the 'deuterocannonical' books of scripture" or "Why Catholics and Protestants don't have the same bible"

Skywalker requested this post, and because I could not produce a well argued answer off of the top of my head, I had to do some research.  While I generally knew the answer, I thought it more prudent to look and find a more complete answer, so as to avoid ambiguity.

It seems that the Catholic canon of scripture includes 7 and half of two, books that the Protestant does not.  These seven are: Wisdom, Sirach (also known as 'Ecclesiasticus') Judith, Baruch, Tobit and 1 and 2 Maccabees.  The latter half of Daniel and Esther are missing also.

The Old Testament (hereafter referred to as the OT) used by the Catholic canon, came from what is called the "Septuagint."  This was the Aramaic translation of the OT which was used by the Aramaic speaking Jews in the holy land, at the time of Christ's life.  History tells us that Christ would have had the Septuagint as a complete text, in all of the synagogues that he would have visited.  This version of the scriptures was the common text until AD 100.

It seems that in the year AD 100, a group of Jewish Rabbis, who wished to go back to the Hebrew language origins of the Jewish faith, decided to re-compile the OT.  (Keep in mind that the Christian canon of scripture had not yet been laid down, and Christianity was still a small religion)  These rabbis excluded the 7 and two halves books from their scriptures, because no Hebrew manuscripts of these books could be found. 

Now, enter Christianity.  In AD 397 and 393 the men of the Church gathered and decided to pick and choose what books were to be kept, and which were to be gotten rid of, in order to form a Christian set of scriptures.  Because they were the books that Christ would have read, they decided to keep the Septuagint in it's entirety, later adding the books that we now have as the New Testament.  By this point in history, the Hebrew OT had largely been forgotten.

This form of the scripture, (the one that contained the missing books) was the official and used canon until Martin Luther came about in the 16th century.  It was the Bible that was used by the Church fathers and the bible against which the Church's several councils decided their theological matters.  Many of the church fathers quoted from these books, quite frequently.  It seems that St. Augustine was rather fond of Sirach, and many of the Church councils depended on Maccabees for some hefty theological points.

Now hundreds of years later, when Martin Luther's reformation grew and became a secession rather than just a reformation, he decided to make changes to the canon of scripture.  He wanted to remove St. James' letter calling it "and epistle of straw."  He also advocated taking out parts of Peter's 1st and 2nd letters.  In order to legitimize his scripture changes, he also advocated using the Hebrew OT.  After the reformation, even more books were taken out of scripture, but somehow (this I couldn't figure out) made it back in before this silly exposition was written.

Now, no one thought that Hebrew versions of those other books existed, until the "Dead Sea Scrolls" were found.  These scrolls contained the Hebrew versions of the missing books, thereby defeating any claim that Luther might have had. 

This small lesson in scripture history also teaches us other things: The idea of purgatory is rather disliked my most of the Protestant church, even though it was an idea that has existed since before Christ.  Protestants find no scriptural basis for it because it's scriptural basis is found mostly in Maccabees 1 and 2.  Similarly, the idea that Daniel is a book that prefigures the end times, is an idea that has only developed in the last 200 years, because the second half of the book was missing from the Protestant scriptures.  Were this second half included, the book would make a lot more sense.

I believe that this about sums it up.  I'm sure plenty of hearty discussion will follow.

-Nicolas

I have a tremendous headache, and while I wanted to leave a longer entry, consider this:

1. Most of us Christians would consider the most precious blood of our Lord, to be a very very sacred thing.  It was spilled for our redemption.  This idea is not dependent on your belief in matters transubstantiational. 

2. When a woman is pregnant, her child's blood mingles with hers, and the child recieves nourishment.

3. Was it not the blood of our Lord which ran through his mother's veins?  How can she not be blessed, holy, saintly, and worthy of our most high admiration and praise considering that she bore the blood of our Savior in her own body?  How can we not praise and honor her knowing that this most salvific fluid, while sustaining the Christ child with bodily nourishment sustained our Lady with a most complete form of grace?

The Epistemology of Belief

As the Xanga-religion polemic moves forward on all your pages, I (the 2nd operator of this page, who goes by the psudonym nicolas, after the blessed saint of myra) have noticed that alot of the time, many of you argue about the epistemology of belief.  epistemology, for all of you non-philosophy majors, is the study of human knowledge: how we know things, why we know them, and how we can be sure of them.  in this piece i propose a simple system of epsitemology for apologetics.  it is my hope that this simple system will make the argument of religious matters much less cumbersome and ad hominim.  as a roman catholic, i will focus on many points of the roman catholic theology, and explain why it is that we feel it appropriate to have a certain belief in them.  most of these points will be along the same lines of teaching that you orthodox kids believe.

how then, are we sure of any religious belief?  for most of us, religious belief is a matter of very simple blind faith, and this is ok.  we don't feel the need to extrapolate st. thomas' cosmological argument, or the cartesian ontological argument, because we have what philosophers have called the "sensus divinitatis" (i think that's the proper spelling; you latin scholars can correct me).  we have a very general and basic feeling that there exists a higher power in this world and that he watches over us.  we are fortiunate enough to have been raised in some sort of christian tradition which has further extended our belief in the divine to include - but not be limited to - the trinity, the divinity of christ, eternal salvation or damnation, satan, the old testament prophets, some sort of belief in a eucharistic practice, the church and the sacred scriptures.  we then confirm and extend this specific theology even further, through a variety of methods.  some of us may look to the writings of the church fathers, others to the teachings of the magisterium, and still others to the personal interpretation of the scriptures.  we are sure that our interpretation of scripture is correct, (or the teachings of the magisterium, authentic and so on) by what we believe to be a system of epistemological certainty.  we believe what we believe because at the end of the rope, we have an epistemological anchor that we believe to be holding our ship in place. 

concede me an anaology: i believe that my brother just crossed the street, because i saw him cross the street, and due to the fact that my eyes have not seriously decieved me in 22 years of life, i am willing to accept this belief as true, and wave at my brother on the other side of the street.  let us call this sort of knowledge, 'first hand knowledge' hereunto refered to as FHK.

now, another analogy.  i believe that my wife is in the office in the building next to me, because the secretary of my office told me that she saw my wife walk into her office a second ago.  i believe the secretary because she is a sweet little cuban lady who has yet to mislead me or anyone else that i know of, and because i am in the habit of believing the audible messages that enter my ears.  we will call this sort of second hand knowledge "knowledge by report" hereunto known as "KBR." (not to be confused with the halliburton subsidiary 'kellog brown and root')  other ways of acquiring this knowledge are by reading it in books, watching it in films, and so on.

it seems that all of our knowledge comes from one of these two sources: because we experienced it, or because someone or something told us about it.  i have never been to africa, but i believe that there are elephants on the serengetti because i have seen them in movies, read about them in books, and even met a person who has hunted for them.  (it should be noted that i do not advocate the killing of endangered species, especially pachyderms)  i know that i am wearing a shirt because i looked down and saw it a second ago.

now, let us consider christ.  i have not had first hand knowledge of the historical figure named Jesus Christ.  i was not alive in AD 33 to see him alive, nor has he ever appeared to me.  all knowledge i have about christ, i have gathered from what someone else has told me, or from what i have learned from some other media.  i have been told many things about christ, too.  i have been told that he has two natures, and that he had a beard, and even that he married someone and had kids who escaped to france and that he never married and was chaste for his entire life.  i accept two of these beliefs, and reject one because i believe some of the sources that told me this information to be true, and others to be false.

much of the information i have been given about christ, i believe to be true because it came to me from my church, the roman catholic church.  i believe the teachings of this church to be true, because i trust in the solidity of their "expert opinion" over the "expert opinion" of dan brown.  i place epistemological priority on their opinion because they have many scholars that work for them, and they have been studying jesus for a long time, and dan brown has not.  i trust them because i have read about how they came to their conclusions and i have read about how dan brown came to his conclusions, and i trust that their conclusions are more accurate than those of dan brown.

so, in summary:

1. i do not have any FHK about the historical figure called Jesus Christ.

2. i have some knowledge of Christ.

:. 3. This knowledge must be KBR.

4. some knowledge that i have about Christ conflicts with other knowledge that i have about christ.

:. 5. in order to have a logically sound belief about Christ, i am forced believe some of the KBR that i have acquired about Christ and reject other KBR about christ.

6. i reject some of the KBR about Christ, because i believe it's source to be less reliable than the source of the counterpart information.

now, the same logic applies in the larger sense.  for example, i trust the teachings of the church over my own interpretation of the scriptures because i believe that the church better has the ability to soundly decide matters than i do.  furthermore, if the KBR that the church has, comes from FHK, then it is the case that their KBR is more reputable than my KBR. 

imagine for a minute that we are in an icecream store full of elderly people.  lets imagine that i see a brown ice cream, and i ask for it, thinking that it is chocolate.  let's also imagine that all of the elderly people in the store see another brown ice cream, and ask for it, thinking that this chocolate.  lets assume for the sake of argument, that these geriatrics are from all over the world, and have traveled extensively.  lets assume that they have all been to culinary school, and that they all have very reliable tastebuds, too.

now, lets assume that i say "mine is chocolate." i say this because i taste the ice cream that i have, and believe, according to what i have been taught, that it is chocolate.

then all of the geriatrics say "no, ours is chocolate."

so who has the more reputable answer?

the epistemologically responsible thing to do would be to accept the geriatrics belief, and jettison mine.  their combined experience is far more reputable in matters of chocolate than mine is.  they have had training, and have lived many more years than i have.  it is more probable that they are correct about chocolate, and i am wrong.  consider that they have been to culinary school, and have met people who have produced chocolate before.  their KBR comes from FHK, and therefore if more knowledeable than the KBR that i have, which may have come from some other source of KBR, which came from some other source of KBR.

now, lets consider the church.  when the church says X, it is more epistemologically correct for me to believe them, than to believe my own belief about -X, if X is in the field of their expertiese.  i am epistemologically obligated to accept their pronouncement about X, if X has to do with something about faith, or morals, or theology, or whatever it is that they seem to know about. 

if X happens to out of their field of study, then i am not obligated to believe X.  this would mean that X had to be something like information about fishing at lake jackson in tallahassee, florida, something which i would probably have more knowledge of.

so, when the church says that that it is immoral for me to use a condom when participating in conjugal activities with my wife, i believe them.  i am not an expert in morality.  i have do not have the burden of 2000 years of moral study behind me.  even though most of the men in the church have never participated in conjugal activities, i still believe them, because the matter is that using a condom is *immoral* not about the mechanics of condoms, or their effectiveness, or whatever.

making sense?  this is the way that we must operate.  if benny hinn tells you that the eucharist is not the actual body and blood of christ, but the catholic church tells you that it is, you are expected to believe the church; the church has more combined experience, has the burden of tradition, and has more expert knowledge on the subject than benny hinn does.

now we face the question of honesty.  how can we be sure that the church, or benny hinn, is being honest with us?  if there is no dishonesty at face value, then we must try to find some sort of motive.  there does not seem to be any compelling motive for benny hinn, or the church to be dishonest with us (after all, both tell us that they genuniely care for the welfare of our souls) so we can believe that there is no malice involved with anything that either may tell us.  if we accept one and reject the other, it is because the other must be mistaken through no fault of their own, not because they are being dishonet with us. 

so in conclusion,

1. we accept the expert opinion of group A over group B if we can determine that group A's qualifications exceed those of group B, and that there is no detectible malice or deception coming from either group.

the same applies to arguments.

many of you out there reject what someone tells you, even though they certify it to be true.  people on the catholic and protestant sides are guilty of this.

if i tell you, and i swear that i am being honest, that catholics do not worship mary or the saints, then on the grounds of being epistemologically responsible, you are forced to believe my opinion unless you can find reason that i am lying to you for some purpose.  though it may *seem* to you that i am lying, my assertion that i am not should be enough to persuade you.  why then, does it seem like i am lying to you?  considering that i as a catholic, no more about catholicism than you do, it must be the case that you do not have all of the information that i have about what we ae talking about.  if i have studied marian theology, and i tell you that catholics do not worship mary, and you still don't believe me because it doesn't make sense to you, then it must be the case that you are do not posses the same amount of knowledge that i posses.  to save you the trouble of having to ingest all of the information, i simply tell you that catholics do not worship mary, and i expect you to believe me.

imagine that a doctor told you that the only way to get food poisoning was to eat rotten food.  lets imagine that you ate only fresh food, but you still have a stomach ache.  you go to him and you say, "doctor you are wrong.  you told me that the only way to get food poisoning was to eat rotten food, and so i only ate fresh food, but i still have a stomach ache."  any normal person would assume that you are wrong, that you don't have food poisoning, but maybe have ruptured your appendix, or are having internal bleeding, or something like that.  we are inclined to think that because the doctor has been to medical school, then he must know what he is talking about, and that you do not, even though you read about the symptoms and the sickness.  you are obviously wrong, and because the doctor has no good reason to be lying to you about food poisioning, then he must be right.

so let us synthesize all of this.

as a catholic, i believe that the church is correct about matters of faith and morals, because they have the burden of "expert opinion" on their side.  i also believe, that while scripture may suggest some things to me when i read it, i only believe what the church tells me is correct: it is more probable that i am incorrect that the spirit is guiding me than it is probable that the church is incorrect that the spirit is guiding them, because there are more of them than me, and they devote their entire lives to such things, whereas i go fishing most of the time.  i believe that they have authority, because given the evidence, it is more probable that they are right.

furthermore, when i tell you something about the catholic faith, and you are a non catholic, you must believe me about what i tell you, because i have the burden of expert opinion on my side.  *****this is not to say that you must believe the teachings themselves, but rather my report ABOUT the teachings.*****  until you can prove that my REPORT of the catholic faith is not what the catholic faith actually teaches, or you can prove that i am trying to decieve you, then you must believe me.

i hope this clears up some things for some of you.  it can get mighty tedious trying to argue with someone who will not believe you. 

i hope that you all are blessed as we try to continue our discussions.  i pray that through the intercession of st. thomas aquinas, we may all come to see the truth given to us by God.

bless you all,

-nicolas