Re: Translations. Questions for everyone. -- Catholic Friends Forum

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Date Posted: 03:28:14 08/04/07 Sat
Author: Joan
Author Host/IP: ip68-0-253-131.ri.ri.cox.net / 68.0.253.131
Subject: Re: Translations. Questions for everyone.
In reply to: Catie 's message, "Re: Translations. Questions for everyone." on 20:23:29 08/03/07 Fri

" YOu can argue that the Catholic church kept the original books, that nothing ws changed and that the protestants changed it. But the protestants have the same argument... That the books Constantine and his council voted on, deemed acceptable, are not accepted as divine holy inspired scripture. Protestants accept the 66 books of the original bible, written by 40 inspired authors, over a period of approximately 1,600 years"

Catholics accept the Alexandrian Canon. Protestants use the Hebrew Canon. The New Testament writers used the Alexandrian canon. Something like 300 quotes from the OT that are in the NT came from the Septuagint, the Alexandrian Canon which is in Greek. This was the popular translaton, because Hebrew was a dying language then. The New Testament was written in Greek. Jesus used the Greek translation, the Septuagint.

The Hebrew Canon wasn't "ratified" (if that's the right word) as the "correct" canon until long after Jesus' death, around 100 AD. Until then, only some of the Jews used that version. Others, including Jesus and the NT writers used the Septuagint translation.

Luther rejected the canon because he agreed with the Jews that certain books shouldn't be included because there was no evidence of Hebrew copies of those books. Well, what do you know? They found copies of some of those books in the Dead Sea Scrolls! :-)

So, one of the reasons that the canon was disputed has been found completely invalid. Luther also wanted to ditch anything that supported belief that he was uncomfortable with, like prayer for the dead. That doesn't sound "inspired" to me.

The councils that decided that canon (OT and NT) were held in 393 and 397, and the canon was approved and closed forever in 405 by Pope Innocent.

This was long after the church was supposedly ruined and made invalid by Constantine. So why would Protestants accept the Canon? How do they know that these books and only these books are the right canon? And if the quotations from the OT in the NT came from the Septuagint, how can they accept the NT as inspired? If they don't believe that the Septuagint translation is good, how can they accept scripture based on that translation as valid and inspired?

The answer, I think, is that they don't accept it. 16 centuries after the canon was closed, they opened it again. Luther decided which books were right, based on mistaken information as shown above, and changed the canon.

How does anyone accept a canon based on misinformation, decided on by someone who was obviously not guided by the Holy Spirit?

The Septuagint was the translation used by Jesus and the New Testament writers. Why would anyone choose to use another, less complete version, especially when it's been proved that the reason for throwing out the books was faulty? The books do exist in Hebrew!

And yet, the Protestants accept the canon of the NT without question, even though that canon was decided by the same councils and pope--all Catholic--after the CC was supposedly ruined by Constantine. These were fully Catholic councils. They didn't meet before Constantine. I know that some Protestants divide things along what I call the Constantinian line, as if everything before Constantine were pure and everything after were impure.

But there were many doctrinal disputes before Constantine. There were sects long before Constantine. In fact, many of Paul's letters were in response to local disputes about belief. So how do Protestants accept that the Catholic council members were guided by the Holy Spirit when deciding on the NT but were not about the OT? Or do they believe that it was Luther who was guided by the Holy Spirit and actually decided the canon of the NT as well, and that it just happened to match the Catholic NT canon?

But who made the decision on the canon, according to Protestants? Did Luther have complete control? Did they have their own councils in the 16th century?

Joan

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