The whole Biblical Canon therefore consists of the canons of the Old and New Testaments. If, as seems certain, the exact content of the broader catalogue of the O. T. Scriptures (that comprising the deutero books) cannot be established from the N. T., a fortiori there is no reason to expect that it should reflect the precise extension of the narrower and Judaistic Canon. Whence came this unfavorable view of the closing volume of the Christian Testament?Zahn attributes it to the influence of Lucian of Samosata, one of the founders of the Antioch school of exegesis, and with whose disciples Eusebius had been associated. the spurious Epistle to the Laodiceans is found among the canonical letters, and, in a few instances, the apocryphal III Corinthians. Both these Fathers show not only a personal acquaintance with the Gospel and the thirteen Pauline Epistles, but they suppose that their readers are so familiar with them that it would be superfluous to name them. So neither a fluctuating Septuagint nor an inexplicit N. T. conveys to us the exact extension of the pre-Christian Bible transmitted by the Apostles to the Primitive Church. The unique quality of the Sacred Books is a revealed dogma. Describing the origin of St. Marks Gospel, he speaks of Hebrew (Aramaic) Logia, or Sayings of Christ, composed by St. Matthew, which there is reason to believe formed the basis of the canonical Gospel of that name, though the greater part of Catholic writers identify them with the Gospel. 6 Furthermore, the early Christian canon lists from 2 CE and many lists from 4 CE closely cohere with the books of the Hebrew canon and do not include the deuterocanonical books; that is, . According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church , Catholic ecclesiology professes the Catholic Church to be the sole Church of Christ i.e., the one true church defined as one, holy, catholic , and apostolic in the Four Marks of the Church in the Nicene Creed. of the period are more liberal; the extant ones have all the deuterocanonicals and, in some cases certain apocrypha. And it is significant of the general trend of ecclesiastical authority that not only were works which formerly enjoyed high standing at broadminded Alexandriathe Apocalypse of Peter and the Acts of Paulinvolved by Athanasius with the apocrypha, but even some that Origen had regarded as inspiredBarnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didachewere ruthlessly shut out under the same damnatory title. The first was the Palestine canon which is identical to the Protestant Old Testament. They adduce the fact that certain deutero books were quoted with veneration, and even in a few cases as Scripture, by Palestinian or Babylonian doctors; but the private utterances of a few rabbis cannot outweigh the consistent Hebrew tradition of the canon, attested by Josephusalthough he himself was inclined to Hellenismand even by the Alexandrian-Jewish author of IV Esdras. It was probably about this time that the Jewish tradition developed the idea of an immortal soul. ), when, moved by the fact that the Septuagint had become the O. T. of the Church, it was put under ban by the Jerusalem Scribes, who were actuated moreover (thus especially Kaulen) by hostility to the Hellenistic largeness of spirit and Greek composition of our deuterocanonical books.. Contents 1 Names 2 Composition 2.1 Jewish legend 2.2 History 2.3 Language On the other hand, the Oriental Church imported a Western authority which had canonized the disputed books, viz., the decree of Carthage, and from this time there is an increasing tendency among the Greeks to place the deuteros on the same level with the othersa tendency, however, due more to forgetfulness of the old distinctions than to deference to the Council of Carthage. Wildeboer, Origin of the Canon of the O. T., Par. Death is there an eternal sleep, and retribution takes place in this life. the Palestinian Hagiographa and the Prophets, themselves inferior to the Law. Both of these were handed down by the Jews; the former by the Palestinian, the latter by the Alexandrian, or Hellenist, Jews; in consequence, this large topic must be subdivided: The Jewish Bible of today is composed of three divisions, whose titles combined form the current Hebrew name for the complete Scriptures of Judaism: Hat-Torah, Nebiim, wa-Krthubim, i. e. The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. Yet it was known at Rome as early as St. Clement, as the latters epistle attests. The Decretum pro Jacobitis contains a complete list of the books received by the Church as inspired, but omits, perhaps advisedly, the terms canon and canonical. Nearly all the N. T. writings were evoked by particular occasions, or addressed to particular destinations. Thus, like Origen, St. Jerome adduces thetestimony of the ancientsand ecclesiastical usage in pleading the cause of the Epistle to the Hebrews (De Viris Illustribus, lix) . The Catholic church based its Bible off the expanded Greek translation and early on shifted which books were included. In appreciating his attitude we must remember that Jerome lived long in Palestine, in an environment where everything outside the Jewish Canon was suspect, and that, moreover, he had an excessive veneration for the Hebrew text, the Hebraica veritas as he called it. The word canon as applied to the Scriptures has long had a special and consecrated meaning. That literature was grouped under the Kethubim, or Hagiographa, which neither was the direct product of the prophetical order, namely, that comprised in the Latter Prophets, nor contained the history of Israel as interpreted by the same prophetic teachersnarratives classed as the Former Prophets. The catalogues of Hippo and Carthage are identical with the Catholic Canon of the present. This Gospel was announced to the world at large by the Apostles and Apostolic disciples of Christ, and this message, whether spoken or written, whether taking the form of an evangelic narrative or epistle, was holy and supreme by the fact of containing the Word of Our Lord. All other evidences fall short of the certainty and finality necessary to compel the absolute assent of faith. Alexandria, with its elastic Scriptures, had from the beginning been a congenial field for apocryphal literature, and St. Athanasius, the vigilant pastor of that flock, to protect it against the pernicious influence, drew up a catalogue of books with the values to be attached to each. a special indwelling of the Holy Ghost, beginning with Pentecost: Matth., x, 19, 20; Acts, xv, 28; I Cor., ii, 13; II Cor., xiii, 3; I Thess., ii, 13, are cited. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Alexandrian-canon, biblical literature: The Alexandrian canon. Whatever may have been all the influences ruling the personal Canon of Eusebius, he chose Lucians text for the fifty copies of the Bible which he furnished to the Church of Constantinople at the order of his imperial patron Constantine; and he incorporated all the Catholic Epistles, but excluded Apocalypse. What Is Lent About In The Catholic Church. Canon of the Holy Scriptures. The only trace of opposition now remaining in German Protestant Bibles is in the order, Hebrews, coming with James, Jude, and Apocalypse at the end; the first not being included with the Pauline writings, while James and Jude are not ranked with the Catholic Epistles. In his disputation with Eck at Leipzig, in 1519, when his opponent urged the well-known text from II Machabees in proof of the doctrine of purgatory, Luther replied that the passage had no binding authority since the book was outside the Canon. What Is Lent About In The Catholic Church. During this intermediate age the use of St. Jeromes new version of the O. T. (the Vulgate) became widespread in the Occident. Since the Council of Trent it is not permitted for a Catholic to question the inspiration of these passages. Holy Biblical source The prayer incorporates two greetings to Mary in Saint Lukes Gospel : Hail , full of grace, the Lord is with thee. and Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. The word , (kecharitmn), here translated as full of grace, admits of various translations. It is also alleged that the grandson of Jesus Sirach, who translated his grandfather's work during his abode in Egypt, knew no difference between the Hebrew and Greek canon, though he speaks of the Greek version; but he speaks as a Palestinian, without having occasion to allude to the difference between the canonical books of the Palestinian and Egyptian Jews. The result of this tendency among the Greeks was that about the beginning of the twelfth century they possessed a canon identical with that of the Latins, except that it took in the apocryphal III Machabees. The compilatory Glossa Ordinaria was widely read and highly esteemed as a treasury of sacred Iearning during the Middle Ages; it embodied the prefaces in which the Doctor of Bethlehem had written in terms derogatory to the deuteros, and thus perpetuated and diffused his unfriendly opinion. the words and acommandments of Jesus Christ) bore with it its own sacredness and authority from the very beginning. The Writings, more generally known by a title borrowed from the Greek Fathers, Hagiographa (holy writings), embrace all the remaining books of the Hebrew Bible. The remaining Books.In this formative period the Epistle to the Hebrews did not obtain a firm footing in the Canon of the Universal Church. Proofs might be multiplied that our canonical Gospels were then universally recognized in the Church, to the exclusion of any pretended Evangels. Jewish way of organizing the books of the OT (Hebrew) Pentateuch. Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained, and the tentacular can't use its tentacles on another target. They employ Matthew, Luke, and John. The Catholic church based its Bible off the expanded Greek translation and early on shifted which books were included. Generally, the term is applied to writings that were not part of the canon. Bringing the Bible directly to the people Published in 1611, the King James Bible spread quickly throughout Europe. Lucian, then, according to Zahn, would have compromised between the Syriac Canon and the Canon of Origen by admitting the three longer Catholic Epistles and keeping out Apocalypse. In this period the position of the deuterocanonical literature is no longer as secure as in the primitive age. Why do the Catholics use these 7 books ? He comments on the Susanna chapter, often quotes Wisdom as the work of Solomon, and employs as Sacred Scripture Baruch and the Machabees. The Canon of the Old Testament in the Catholic Church. These same conservative students of the Canonnow scarcely represented outside the Churchmaintain, for the reception of the documents composing these groups into the sacred literature of the Israelites, dates which are in general much earlier than those admitted by critics. There is a current friendly to them, another one distinctly unfavorable to their authority and sacredness, while wavering between the two are a number of writers whose veneration for these books is tempered by some perplexity as to their exact standing, and among these we note St. Thomas Aquinas. The Torah, or Law.Until the reign of King Josias, and the epoch-making discovery of the book of the law in the Temple (621 B.C. Named in the order in which they stand in the current Hebrew text, these are: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Canticle of Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Esdras, Nehemias, or II Esdras, Paralipomenon. Nor had they the criterion of language for the separation of canonical and uncanonical; both classes were before them in the same tongue. No unfavorable argument can be drawn from the loose, implicit character of these citations, since these Apostolic Fathers quote the protocanonical Scriptures in precisely the same manner. The oldest extant copies date from the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, and were therefore made by Christian hands; nevertheless scholars generally admit that these faithfully represent the O. T. as it was current among the Hellenist or Alexandrian Jews in the age immediately preceding Christ. The full realization of this truth came slowly, at least in the Orient, where there are indications that in certain quarters the spell of Palestinian-Jewish tradition was not fully cast off for some time. The Book of Enoch was considered as scripture in the Epistle of Barnabas (16:4) and by many of the early Church Fathers, such as Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus and Tertullian, who wrote c. 200 that the Book of Enoch had been rejected by the Jews because it contained prophecies pertaining to Christ. Neitherand this is remarkablein the proceedings is there manifest any serious doubt of the canonicity of the disputed writings. And the clause cum omnibus Buis partibus regards especially these portions.For an account of the action of Trent on the Canon, the reader is referred back to the respective section of this article: II. The result of its deliberations, presided over, no doubt, by the energetic Damasus himself, has been preserved in the document called Decretum Gelasii de recipiendis et non recipiendis libris, a compilation partly of the sixth century (Turner, in Journal of Theological Studies, I, 1900), but containing much material dating from the two preceding ones. THE CANON OF THE CHRISTIAN OLD TESTAMENT. In imitation of his master he divided religious literature into three classes: (a)Homologoumena, or compositions universally received as sacred, the Four Gospels, thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, Hebrews, Acts, I Peter, I John, and Apocalypse. The 59th (or 60th) canon of the provincial Council of Laodicea (the authenticity of which however is contested) gives a catalogue of the Scriptures entirely in accord with the ideas of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. To this period or a little earlier belongs the pseudo-Clementine epistle in which we find, for the fist time after II Peter, iii, 16, the wordScriptureapplied to a N. T. book. But, as Zahn observes, there is good reason to believe that the tradition handed down by Papias, of the approval of St. Marks Gospel by St. John the Evangelist, reveals that either the latter himself or a college of his disciples added the Fourth Gospel to the Synoptics, and made the group into the compact and unalterable Gospel, the one in four, whose existence and authority left their clear impress upon all subsequent ecclesiastical literature, and find their conscious formulation in the language of St. Irenseus. Required fields are marked *, When calculated using the Gregorian calendar, Easter is guaranteed to happen on a Sunday between the 22nd and the 25th of April. (Revue Biblique, 1903, 226 sqq.) 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