Tuesday, July 24, 2007

The tired old "7 points" as to why the Deuterocanons are not Scripture.

From an online debate I was having at CARM. These "points" are so overused and easily defeated, I wish those opposed to the Catholic Bible would quit using them.

1.Neither Jesus nor the New Testament writers ever quoted from the Apocrypha as Scripture.

Neither Jesus nor the New Testament writers ever quoted Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, or the Song of Solomon. Yet you accept these, so this "point" is defeated.


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2. The Apocrypha contains numerous historical, geographical and chronological errors.
Yet you accept the Book of Esther, which does not correspond at all with the known history of Persia. Point 2 defeated.



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3. The Jews themselves never accepted the Apocrypha as inspired.
Nor do they accept any of the New Testament books as inspired, but you accept those. Also, we do have numerous Jewish scholars who accepted Sirach as inspired. so this point is also defeated.

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4. The Apocrypha contains no predictive prophecy to help substantiate it’s claims.
Tell me, what prophecy is in the "Song of Solomon" or is present in Wisdom? You admit that 73 percent of the Old Testament does not contain prophecy, so this must not be a hard and fast rule.





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5. The Apocrypha never claims to be the inspired Word of God.
Neither does Psalms or Esther, or many other books of the OT, as a matter of fact, only a handful of books make the claims you say they do. So sorry, this point fails also.




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6. The Apocrypha was rejected by many of the leading early church fathers.
And accepted by most, sorry, can't pick and choose history.





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7. Jerome rejected the Apocrypha and left them out of His Latin translation of the Bible (the Vulgate).

Jerome (who lived from 340-420 A.D.) was the man, who translated, for the first time, the Bible from Greek into Latin.

Jerome is considered to be the greatest biblical and Hebrew scholars of the early medieval period.

Jerome’s translation (known as the Vulgate) became thee Bible translation for centuries to follow.

It even became the official translation of the Roman Catholic Church.

So if Jerome left them out of his translation, how did the Apocryphal books end up in the Vulgate, the Catholic Bible?

The Church inserted them into the Vulgate after he died.
I left your entire argument here, because it is laughably WRONG. Jerome never completed his translation, he did not translate the New Testament AT ALL, that does not mean he rejected them. Jerome conceded to Pope Damasus. And Augustine did consider them inspired.



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8. The Apocrypha contains numerous non-biblical and heretical doctrines.
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--The Apocrypha teaches the erroneous unbiblical doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul, suggesting that the kind of body one now has is determined by the character of his soul in a previous life (Wisdom of Solomon 8:19-20).

--The Apocrypha teaches prayer for the dead (2 Maccabees 12:41-46)

--The doctrine of purgatory (that even the righteous must suffer after death for a time before they will be accepted into heaven).

--The Apocrypha teaches that salvation is available through good works in Tobit 12:19.

--The Apocrypha also teaches that salvation is available through the giving of alms.

Tobit 3:9 says...
“It is better to give alms than to lay up gold: alms doth deliver from death, and it shall purge away all sin”

Tobit 4:11 says...
“For alms deliver from all sin and from death, and will not suffer the soul to go into darkness."

These are doctrines that are not supported in the Bible, and are clearly even contradicted by authentic, proven Scripture, Scripture that was validated as true by Jesus Himself.



Are there any claims..or defense for them?

http://www.alwaysbeready.com/
Since you have failed on all your other points. You have not shown that these are not "authentic, proven" Scripture. Which means that your sole basis for your rejection of these books is that they contradict your personal interpretation of other books, so therefore rather than concede that you may be wrong, it must be the Bible that is wrong.

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