Catholic And Protestant Bibles

[MrsFrozen]

When I asked my priest why the Protestant Bible was missing 7 books, he told me that it was because the Catholic Bible is translated from the Greek texts, while the Protestant Bible is translated from the Hebrew texts because Hebrew was the language Jesus spoke.

I just happened upon a website that claims that Martin Luther removed these seven books himself because they didn't suit his needs, and also subtracted certain sections of Esther and Daniel. This site claims he also added words to the Bible.

My question is, which is true? A., B., or a little of both? Would you please give me some background information of the different Bibles and how they came to be that way? I don't want to have a discussion with a Protestant and start saying things that aren't true. Thank you very much!

[Winchester]

Your priest is kind of right. Jesus spoke Aramaic. He also quoted from the Septuagint (Greek texts) indicating He spoke Greek. I believe He also spoke Hebrew. Peter's name, for instance, is given in the Bible as "Cephas" which is Aramaic for "rock".

The early Christian Churches used both the Hebrew and Greek Canons of the OT, with the longer Greek text being approved some 300+ years after Christ's death. This is not to say the books in the Hebrew Canon are incorrect, just that the books not in the Hebrew but in the Greek are canonical.

The Deuterocanonical books (the "Apocrypha" as labeled by protestants) have been controversial for some time, and ML chose to follow the decision of Jewish Rabbis and choose the shorter canon. Some have said this was because he lost debates unless the theological positions supported by the Deuteros were left unsupported by an absence of those books from the Bible. ML also wanted to remove the book of James from the NT, probably because it interefered with his Grace alone theory of Salvation. He referred to it as an "epistle of straw", and was persuaded not to remove it by his friends.

"Alone" is the word added after "Faith" in one of the NT verses by Protestant bibles, although whether ML did this alone, I cannot say.

I wrote an article about this in the Debunk some time ago. Perhaps you will find the bibliography helpful in your research: Winchester Bible article