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To: impimp

Good link:

Luther wanted to remove the Epistle of James, Esther, Hebrews, Jude and Revelation.

Calvin and Zwingli also both had problems with the Book of Revelation, the former calling it “unintelligible” and forbidding the pastors in Geneva to interpret it, the latter calling it “unbiblical”.

Many non-Catholic Christians like to accuse Catholics of “adding” Books to the Bible at the 16th c. Council of Trent. This is absolutely, 100% false. This Council, among other things, simply affirmed the ancient accepted books in the face of Protestant tinkering. How could Luther have relegated the deuterocanonical books to an appendix if they hadn’t already been accepted in the first place? The Gutenberg Bible was printed in 1454 — and it included the deuterocanonical Books. How could the Church have “added” them at the Council of Trent that began 91 years later? Most Protestant Bibles included the deuterocanonical Books until about 1815, when the British and Foreign Bible Society discontinued the practice! And note that Jews in other parts of the world who weren’t around to hear the Council of Jamnia’s decision in A.D. 100 include to this day those “extra” 7 books in their canon.

The Orthodox Russian and other branches of the Eastern Orthodox Church have a New Testament identical with the Catholic. In Syria the Nestorians possess a Canon almost identical with the final one of the ancient East Syrians; they exclude the four smaller Catholic Epistles and Apocalypse. The Monophysites receive all the book. The Armenians have one apocryphal letter to the Corinthians and two from the same. The Coptic-Arabic Church include with the canonical Scriptures the Apostolic Constitutions and the Clementine Epistles. The Ethiopic New Testament also contains the so-called “Apostolic Constitutions”.

As for Protestantism, the Anglicans and Calvinists always kept the entire New Testament But for over a century the followers of Luther excluded Hebrews, James, Jude, and Apocalypse, and even went further than their master by rejecting the three remaining deuterocanonicals, II Peter, II and III John. The trend of the seventeenth century Lutheran theologians was to class all these writings as of doubtful, or at least inferior, authority. But gradually the German Protestants familiarized themselves with the idea that the difference between the contested books of the New Testament and the rest was one of degree of certainty as to origin rather than of instrinsic character. The full recognition of these books by the Calvinists and Anglicans made it much more difficult for the Lutherans to exclude the New Testament deuteros than those of the Old. One of their writers of the seventeenth century allowed only a theoretic difference between the two classes, and in 1700 Bossuet could say that all Catholics and Protestants agreed on the New Testament canon. 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.


428 posted on 06/25/2013 10:34:11 PM PDT by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
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To: Salvation; impimp

The real question is DID Luther “remove” any books? The answer is NO, he didn’t.


429 posted on 06/25/2013 11:18:27 PM PDT by boatbums (God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to Him.)
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To: Salvation

What is the source for your comments?


430 posted on 06/25/2013 11:19:28 PM PDT by boatbums (God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to Him.)
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To: Salvation
I'm still waiting for you to tell us the link from which you copied this. I'd like to check out the sources since a lot of it sounds like simply opinion. An opinion that is wrong-headed on several of the so-called “facts”.
459 posted on 06/26/2013 3:57:26 PM PDT by boatbums (God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to Him.)
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