By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM
Part 12
In order to understand the fundamental and unquestionable difference between the complete canon of the Bible adopted by the Catholic Church and the mutilated one adopted by Protestants, we must go back in history to the time of Jesus, when the Jews had two canons of the Bible, the Hebrew one and the Greek one.
There was no unifying Magisterium among the Jews; there were rabbinical schools. The Pharisees, for instance, accepted the five first books of Moses plus the prophets, whereas the Sadducees did not accept the prophets, only the books of Moses. They were viscerally divided in their biblical canons. The only unity they had was that the Hebrew canon was legalistic in that the Scribes and Pharisees of Jerusalem, the enemies of Jesus, accepted only books that had been written in the Holy Land, before the Prophet Micheas and in the Hebrew language.
These subjective, gratuitous criteria had been invented by them, and were never binding on the Christian converts. These converts generally used the Greek version of the Bible, known as the Septuagint, which had a larger canon. Jesus and the apostles quoted from the Greek Bible most of the time; about 85 percent of quotations come from the Septuagint.
After the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, the Jews dispersed among the nations, after having lost the Temple, the Mosaic sacrifices, and the priesthood. Jesus foresaw the destruction in detail, even the military strategy used by the Romans to conquer Jerusalem. Then Jews, led by their Scribes and Pharisees, out of hatred for the new “Christian sect,” refused to use the Greek Bible and stuck to the Hebrew one, alleging that the Christians had “adulterated” the Greek text.
The early Christians did not care much about their opinions, as the Church became God’s people under a new Covenant. This is a very important historical reality, that the Hebrew canon was adopted by the Scribes and Pharisees, whereas the Greek canon — the Septuagint — was adopted by the Christians in the early Church, following the example of Jesus and the apostles.
But the New Testament did not give birth to the Church of Jesus Christ; on the contrary, it was the Church of Jesus Christ that gave birth to the New Testament. Jesus wrote no book, and ordered nobody to write any book. He preached orally, and formed His apostles orally, and gave them the mission to preach orally to the whole world. Some of them wrote books, gospels and epistles.
The New Testament as we know it was formed in the fourth century by the Catholic Church, and not in the first century by the apostles. Yes, the Bible did not come down to us from Heaven in a parachute, all neatly printed and bound in a single volume and in English. No, it took three centuries for the New Testament to be defined, and the Old Testament to be confirmed in its entirety.
But it was not a simple process, either. Alongside the four Gospels we know today, there were 11 others in circulation, several epistles attributed to St. Paul and other apostles, acts, apocalypses, etc. And to complicate matters, there were Christian communities that did not accept the Catholic epistles like the ones of Saints James, Jude, Peter, and John.
It is understandable: How could the people know which books were authentic, and which ones were not? The matter remained unresolved for three centuries, but there were no problems because the Popes and bishops who constituted the Magisterium of the Church were there to guide the people as Jesus had commanded them.
Finally, in the year 394, a council was held in the city of Hippo, in North Africa, by the good efforts of St. Augustine, and the canon of the New Testament was finally defined. In 397, another council, held in Carthage, confirmed it and the canon was sent to Rome to be sealed and given authority by the Pope.
The important point to notice in this simple historical narrative is this: For three whole centuries there was no precisely defined canon of the Bible as we have today. The people did not know for sure which books constituted the Bible, until the Church of God, the Roman, Apostolic, Catholic Church, defined it with infallibility. In those centuries, as after them, God’s people were guided by the Magisterium, the bishops in union with the Pope.
Therefore it is illogical, contradictory, and nonsensical for Protestants to accept the canon of the New Testament, which was defined by the authority of the Catholic Church, and refuse the same authority in her interpretation of the same New Testament. The Jews also accepted the prophecies about the Messiah but did not accept the fulfillment of those same prophecies in Jesus, their Messiah.
Where do Protestants differ from the original canon of the Bible? They accept the New Testament canon as defined by the Catholic Church in her councils but refuse to accept seven books of the Old Testament that Luther removed from his particular Bible: Maccabees I and II, Tobias, Judith, Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, and Baruch.
And why did he remove them? Simply because the first book of the Maccabees teaches the usefulness of prayers for the dead — which is Catholic teaching on Purgatory. And, since he did not believe in Purgatory or in good works for the dead, he removed the book from the Bible — as simple as that. But it would be difficult for him to explain why he removed Maccabees I and not Maccabees II, of course.
So, he got the bright idea of claiming that since the Jews did not accept those seven books, we Christians should not accept them either. After all, the Jews were the carriers of the Old Testament.
The result: Most Protestants, if not all, fell for the idea, but they conveniently forgot that the Jews who removed those seven books were the Scribes and Pharisees, the enemies of Christ and of all Christians. In their detestation of the new “Christian sect,” they accused them of having adulterated the Septuagint — because Jesus and the apostles generally quoted from the Septuagint, the Greek Bible, and not from the mutilated Hebrew Bible of the Scribes and Pharisees.
To make a long story short, Protestants have adopted the canon of the Bible used by the Scribes and the Pharisees, whereas the Catholic Church adopted the canon of the Bible of the apostles of Christ and of the early Christians. Enough said.
Next article: Difficulties of biblical interpretations.
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(Raymond de Souza is an EWTN program host; regional coordinator for Portuguese-speaking countries for Human Life International [HLI]; president of the Sacred Heart Institute, and a member of the Sovereign, Military, and Hospitaller Order of the Knights of Malta. His website is: www.RaymonddeSouza.com.)
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