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To: Mr Rogers

At the time of Christ, there were Jews who read only the five books of Moses as scripture (the Sadducees), Jews who read only the books of Moses plus the Prophets, and Jews who read the entire Old Testament canon plus several books which not even Catholics include. There were no groups of Jews which read the entire Protestant canon, and only the Protestant Canon. The Catholic canon consists of those books which had been translated into Greek for the benefit of Jews living in diaspora.

After the destruction of the Temple, the Jews decided that they had to agree on a set canon. The reason that they did not include the book of 2 Maccabees is that it argued for a resurrection of the body, and seemed to suggest an imminent arrival of the Messiah. These notions were blamed for causing the Christian movement, which the Jews in turn blamed for their destruction, so they were removed from the bible. (There was a false notion at the time of Luther that 2 Maccabees had been a Greek book; we now have pre-Christian, Hebrew manuscripts.)

Regardless of whether 2 Maccabees was read by Jews as scripture, it offers historical proof that notions such as participatory atonement, purgation, and the Resurrection of the Dead were already held as truth, before the Catholic Church, since manuscripts of 2 Maccabees are older than Christ.


68 posted on 11/01/2009 1:25:59 PM PST by dangus (Nah, I'm not really Jim Thompson, but I play him on FR.)
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To: dangus

There are historical documents from the time of Christ and before that indicates otherwise. Jerome argued against accepting the Apocryphal books as canon based largely on Jewish rejection of them, although he gave way when outvoted.


73 posted on 11/01/2009 1:43:00 PM PST by Mr Rogers (I loathe the ground he slithers on!)
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