Saturday, April 11, 2009

On the Roman Catholic Apocrypha

Biblically literate Protestants might nod and say "a post on Tobit, Judith, the Books of Maccabees etc" to which I say, no not at all. These books, Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, Sirach, 1 & 2 Maccabees, might be termed deutero-canonical by Roman Catholics but they are, nevertheless, counted as part of the Old Testament. They are not considered Apocrypha. On the other hand, even biblically literate Roman Catholics might shake their heads and mutter "Roman Catholic Apocrypha? What's he on about?".

And I would probably have done the same as them not many years ago. And even when I stumbled across the Roman Catholic Apocrypha it took me a while to recognise just what they were. I first became aware of them when I was given a copy of the Latin Vulgate Bible. I was intrigued to discover that following the New Testament there was an appendix. In this appendix were the following texts/books: Prayer of Manasseh, 3 Ezra (1 Esdras), 4 Ezra (2 Esdras), Psalm 151, and the Epistle of Paul to the Laodiceans (about which I plan to write at a later date). Apparently the books were placed here by Pope Clement VIII in 1592 "lest they utterly perish". By his time, of course, the Roman Catholic Old Testament canon had been set by the Council of Trent; the Council had made no space in the canon for these four books/texts.

What intrigued me further was that I had a copy of the Douay-Rheims Challoner English Bible, a translation from the Vulgate, that had been pretty much the normative English language Roman Catholic Bible from the 18th to 20th centuries. But this Bible did not include the Vulgate Appendix. More recent Roman Catholic English language bibles, translating from the Greek and Hebrew texts rather than the Vulgate, have likewise not bothered to reproduce the Vulgate Appendix.

However I very recently discovered that the original Douay-Rheims Bible did translate the Vulgate Appendix (with the exception of Laodiceans). It was printed as an Appendix in the 2 Volume Douay-Rheims Old Testement. The Appendix was in volume 2 following the Wisdom and Prophetical books. Curiously the Appendix stands in the same relationship to the Douay-Rheims Bible as a whole as the Apocrypha does in both the King James and Luther's German Bibles. And, of course, while much smaller than the Lutheran and Anglican Apocrypha, the same books are found in all 3 collections.

It set me wondering about the Bible of medieval Western Christendom but with a bit of searching I was able to ascertain that its Old Testament contained the deutero-canonicals of the modern Roman Catholic Old Testament but also these four texts of the Vulgate Appendix and Protestant Apocrypha. All these texts were part of the Old Testament of the Gutenberg Bible of 1452/3. So it would appear that the Bible of Western Christendom was 'pruned' by both Roman Catholics and Protestants in the 16th century.

Interesting, too, that, with the exception of 4 Ezra, all of these texts are in the Old Testament of the Greek Church and all of the texts are part of the Old Testament of other eastern churches. In other words then, medieval Christians of east and west were in greater biblical harmony or concordance than modern Christians. Why, I wonder, did Rome go to bat so strongly to preserve the canonical status of the deuterocanonicals but not these four texts? Did anyone speak up for any or all of these texts? I would dearly love to know.

So Roman Catholics, effectively, have Old Testament Apocrypha, except that they don't know about them and no Roman Catholic bibles bother to include them. Furthermore, and as I said I plan to write more on Laodiceans later, Clement VIII saw fit to also include Laodiceans in the Appendix to the Vulgate. Therefore, as well as an Old Testament Apocrypha collection, Roman Catholics have a New Testament Apocrypha as well, again never included in any Roman Catholic bible translation. Maybe it's about time that Roman Catholics become more biblically literate and rediscover their own Apocrypha and obviously for that to happen it's necessary for Roman Catholic bibles to include all the texts of the Roman Bible, canonical and apocryphal.


1 comment:

  1. 請你這一次不要再刪
    跨宗教 跨領域
    悉怛多缽怛囉阿門證據時效
    Blogger 未分類文章 提到...

    *Weiss 前世今生來生緣

    「大師們。」她輕聲說:「他們告訴我的。他們說我活過86次。」

    「帶著對任何有關輪迴轉世的科學論文的強烈渴望,我翻遍了醫學圖書
    館。讀得越多,就越意識到,儘管曾認為自己頭腦的每方面都受過良好的
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    管確鑿與否,我覺得難以相信。」

    「這經驗再加上隨後其他病人的經驗,我的價值觀開始轉變,從物質轉入
    精神,而且更關心人我關係,不再汲汲於名利,我也開始理解甚麼是可以
    帶走而甚麼帶不走。確實,在這之前我一定也不相信肉體死亡後我們的某
    一部份還有生命。」
    * 於 March 12, 2009 02:46 AM 回應

    *

    57樓

    57樓

    「那幾週,我重溫了在哥倫比亞大學念一年級時所學的比較宗教課的課
    本。在《聖經》舊約和新約全書中確實提到輪迴轉世。公元325年,羅馬康
    斯坦丁大帝和他的母親海倫娜,將新約中關於輪迴轉世的內容刪去了。」

    在《前世今生》一書中也提到,大師們通過凱瑟琳共示現了10餘次,談話涉
    及到人類的不朽及生命的真正意義:「我們的任務是學習,豐富知識成為
    神那樣的生命。直到我們可以解脫了,然後我們會回來教誨和幫助其他
    人。」



    蔡昀叡?"! 靈修

    2009年3月11日 下午 12:04

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