“This is referring to Luther. The bible existed before Luther, so he didn’t make it.”
You started out talking about the Vulgate as the oldest and most reliable, and then started talking about people taking a book they didn’t make and doing what they want with it. When, in reality, Luther made the same pronouncements as Jerome did with the apocrypha who actually translated the Vulgate, and didn’t actually remove them. He just put them in their own section as Catholics had done in their own versions of the Latin Vulgate for centuries up to before Trent.
Furthermore, I don’t see why you would even make a statement like this, since not all Bible translations are based on the Latin Vulgate. There is no copyright on the vulgate or a ban on them, but even if there was, we still wouldn’t lose access to the scripture, which wasn’t written in Latin anyway. So unless you are trying to claim that Jerome wrote the Old and New Testament, or that the Apostles did not really write the New Testament, then your post is nonsensical and irrelevant.
Human, I think what JCB is getting at here is the idea that the Vulgate is authoritative. It’s the King James debate, in the Roman Catholic flavor, except the Roman Catholics have a more impressive looking framework for it. How many Protestants have you come across who complain that what you just read from the NIV or NASB “doesn’t match the King James”? Same fundamental issue here.
“Luther made the same pronouncements as Jerome did”
So you’re admitting then that Luther took a book that was very old and chose to rewrite it to his preferences, removing books that he did not like?
How is this any different from what the Witnesses do and what the Mormons do?
If Luther didn’t remove them from the Bible - why do you remove them from yours?
“since not all Bible translations are based on the Latin Vulgate”
Not all bible translations are good translations.
“There is no copyright on the vulgate”
Again, not a good argument. The Vulgate has been in existence over a millenium before the first protestant. Protestants have as much authority over the text as Mormons do.
“we still wouldn’t lose access to the scripture, which wasn’t written in Latin anyway.”
Which book was the one Luther used? The Vulgate. Did Luther appropriate it for himself and his purposes? Yes. That’s the point here. Despite the fact that he had absolutely nothing to do with the book, he went around and took stuff out and said that the stuff he was taking out was stuff that wasn’t important anyways.
This is a far cry from the Word of God. Or Christ saying, “not the least stroke of the pen”. But I guess he meant, “Not the least stroke of the pen, until the time of Luther”.
“then your post is nonsensical and irrelevant.”
I suggest you address the four claims that I did make. Luther and all protestants have exactly zero authority to make changes to scripture, just as Mormons have zero authority to do the same.