Recently our Bible Study group was referred to the book of Sirach to help our discussion. This book does not appear in most Protestant Bibles currently available. It does appear in the Roman Catholic Bible and in the Orthodox Bible. In fact, the Orthodox Old Testament has more books than either the Roman Catholic and Protestant. Many of these apocryphal books also appear in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Why aren’t they in the Protestant Old Testament? Why don’t many Protestants know about them or even know about the Maccabees? Shouldn’t the history of Israel/Judah be important in the study of Christianity?
Anne Quast
Those books are important to history, they just aren’t considered to be inspired by God by most Protestants so that’s why most don’t know about them. How many Protestants or Catholics do you know that go out of their way to read a historical book over 2000 years old? No one is going to go out of their way to find these books if they don’t need to. You’ll find Sirach, Maccabees and some others in the Harper Collins NRSV study Bible which is a Protestant Bible with apocrypha and non-canonical books. One of my favorites is Bel and the Dragon which was an addition to Daniel. There are a lot of apocryphal and non-canonical works known from history, not just the ones you list. Here’s a website with a lot of them online: ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
I think the motivation was that early Protestants were trying to focus on the important books. Sirach is not canonized by the Jews either. So if it not canonized by those of the first covenant, why should it be important to those of the second covenant?
A criteria for the Protestant Old Testament was whether it was in the Jewish Canon.
I am studying the Old Testament since 15 years ago either in Hebrew and either in Greek languages. Unfortunately the Old Testament it doesn’t talk about God at all and as result we would not have to take in consideration the New Testament as well.
P.S I am Italian and i apologize for my English language
Gianluca
In doing some research on my own, I find it mind boggling that the Canons are so restrictive when the books included in the Canon reference the books left out of the canon so often. Especially considering the gospels reference the books left out of the canon. IF it was good enough for Jesus, it seems it would be good enough for the Canon.
And that is not all. In researching the Torah there are references from one version of Deuteronomy that is identical to another version’s Exodus, but not its own version of Exodus. There are so many versions of the truth that can be interpreted that it is absolutely mindboggling. IT is hard not to get sucked down rabbit holes and section off information that is or is not important to the thesis being researched. 😀
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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