Posted on 08/19/2002 5:30:51 PM PDT by JMJ333
9) Protestantism, following Martin Luther, removed the deuterocanonical books from their Bibles due to their clear teaching of doctrines which had been recently repudiated by Protestants, such as prayers for the dead (Tobit 12:12, 2 Maccabees 12:39-45 ff.; cf. 1 Corinthians 15:29), intercession of dead saints (2 Maccabees 15:14; cf. Revelation 6:9-10), and intermediary intercession of angels (Tobit 12:12,15; cf. Revelation 5:8, 8:3-4). We know this from plain statements of Luther and other Reformers.
10) Luther was not content even to let the matter rest there, and proceeded to cast doubt on many other books of the Bible which are accepted as canonical by all Protestants. He considered Job and Jonah mere fables, and Ecclesiastes incoherent and incomplete. He wished that Esther (along with 2 Maccabees) "did not exist," and wanted to "toss it into the Elbe" river.
11) The New Testament fared scarcely better under Luther's gaze. He rejected from the New Testament Canon ("chief books") Hebrews, James ("epistle of straw"), Jude and Revelation, and placed them at the end of his translation, as a New Testament "Apocrypha." He regarded them as non-apostolic. Of the book of Revelation he said, "Christ is not taught or known in it." These opinions are found in Luther's Prefaces to biblical books, in his German translation of 1522.
I said, "They regularly referred to the deuterocanonicals in their writings" then went on to cite a passage dealing with purgatory. Here is the rest of the quote:
"There are a couple of examples of women receiving back their dead by resurrection in the Protestant Old Testament. You can find Elijah raising the son of the widow of Zarepheth in 1 Kings 17, and you can find his successor Elisha raising the son of the Shunammite woman in 2 Kings 4, but one thing you can never find -- anywhere in the Protestant Old Testament, from front to back, from Genesis to Malachi -- is someone being tortured and refusing to accept release for the sake of a better resurrection. If you want to find that, you have to look in the Catholic Old Testament."
"The story is found in 2 Maccabees 7, where we read that during the Maccabean persecution, "It happened also that seven brothers and their mother were arrested and were being compelled by the king, under torture with whips and cords, to partake of unlawful swine's flesh. . . . [B]ut the brothers and their mother encouraged one another to die nobly, saying, 'The Lord God is watching over us and in truth has compassion on us . . . ' After the first brother had died . . . they brought forward the second for their sport. . . . he in turn underwent tortures as the first brother had done. And when he was at his last breath, he said, 'You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life'" (2 Macc. 7:1, 5-9)."
So far I have quoted Maccabees, Tobit, and the Part of Daniel that is excluded in the protestant Bible. I don't know about the apostles carrying the LXX under their arms, but being the teachers and evangelizers they were, I would not be suprised that they used them regularly.
Best regards,
michelle
Can you dispute that the apostles used the Septuagint, the Greek edition of the Old Testament which they used to evangelize the world, or are you just here to use fancy html code and throw spitballs?
Did a google search on "Knessiah Gedolah" and got 19 hits all refering to recent meetings. Can you supply some references?
How about the Book of Enoch quoted by Jude?
Before getting to Tobit…
This same argument AGAINST the Deuteros (Jerome "rejected" them - a false claim in itself; so they then say he was coerced by the Church--not accounting for the fact that for 1200 years after Jerome everyone else must also have been coerced) has been made by a number of Fundamentalists (Norman Geisler, Ron Rhodes et al.) much better than has been shown here. Their arguments center on Jerome, however these “more knowledgeable” heretics also will include Origen, Athanasius, and Cyril of Jerusalem. Of course, their “arguments” are based on self-determination. They alone (who needs an infallible teaching authority when you can be your own infallible teaching authority (read: Pope PhD), along with the heresiarch, can and must determine for themselves not only what is inspired and what is not inspired, but also that they can interpret the meaning of that inspired scripture correctly for themselves regardless of how simple minded they may be. Everyone has that right in their wonderful system.
The weight of 1200 years of history and scholarship is irrelevant to them. If it’s from Rome, you see, it’s automatically wrong regardless. That is the bottom line. The fact that many hundreds (indeed, thousands) of other denominations interpret these scriptures differently (each claiming to be lead by the “spirit of truth”) does not discourage them or give them any pause at all. Since they can’t defend the differing doctrines, they simply choose to ignore the incredible damning indictment against their own belief system and the fact that Christ established ONE CHURCH. Basically it boils down to this, as long as these many interpretations do not correspond to a Catholic teaching, you can believe it.
What follows is the real reason for my post. Those Catholics who are familiar with the writings of St. John of the Cross will recognize this material concerning Tobit and "magic." The links are not operational.
WE may say that there are three reasons for which this journey[80] made by the soul to union with God is called night. The first has to do with the point from which the soul goes forth, for it has gradually to deprive itself of desire for all the worldly things which it possessed, by denying them to itself;[81] the which denial and deprivation are, as it were, night to all the senses of man. The second reason has to do with the mean,[82] or the road along which the soul must travel to this union -- that is, faith, which is likewise as dark as night to the understanding. The third has to do with the point to which it travels -- namely, God, Who, equally, is dark night to the soul in this life. These three nights must pass through the soul -- or, rather, the soul must pass through them -- in order that it may come to Divine union with God.2. In the book of the holy Tobias these three kinds of night were shadowed forth by the three nights which, as the angel commanded, were to pass ere the youth Tobias should be united with his bride. In the first he commanded him to burn the heart of the fish in the fire, which signifies the heart that is affectioned to, and set upon, the things of the world; which, in order that one may begin to journey toward God, must be burned and purified from all that is creature, in the fire of the love of God. And in this purgation the devil flees away, for he has power over the soul only when it is attached to things corporeal and temporal.
3. On the second night the angel told him that he would be admitted into the company of the holy patriarchs, who are the fathers of the faith. For, passing through the first night, which is self-privation of all objects of sense, the soul at once enters into the second night, and abides alone in faith to the exclusion, not of charity, but of other knowledge acquired by the understanding, as we shall say hereafter, which is a thing that pertains not to sense.
4. On the third night the angel told him that he would obtain a blessing, which is God; Who, by means of the second night, which is faith, continually communicates Himself to the soul in such a secret and intimate manner that He becomes another night to the soul, inasmuch as this said communication is far darker than those others, as we shall say presently. And, when this third night is past, which is the complete accomplishment of the communication of God in the spirit, which is ordinarily wrought in great darkness of the soul, there then follows its union with the Bride, which is the Wisdom of God. Even so the angel said likewise to Tobias that, when the third night was past, he should be united with his bride in the fear of the Lord; for, when this fear of God is perfect, love is perfect, and this comes to pass when the transformation of the soul is wrought through its love.
5. These three parts of the night are all one night; but, after the manner of night, it has three parts. For the first part, which is that of sense, is comparable to the beginning of night, the point at which things begin to fade from sight. And the second part, which is faith, is comparable to midnight, which is total darkness. And the third part is like the close of night, which is God, the which part is now near to the light of day. And, that we may understand this the better, we shall treat of each of these reasons separately as we proceed.
ASCENT OF MOUNT CARMEL – BOOK I
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