Hebrew And Greek

[CICCIO]

What is the diference between the Greek and Hebrew texts. There was a post earlier talking about the Protestants using the Hebrew Canons and Catholics using the Greek Canons and how in te early churches both were used. Why did the change come? Why is there a difference in the nomber of books contained? Whats the sotry behind their seperate existances? And why did we choose the Greek version?

[BLAZEr]

I think you're confusing two issues, but I know what you're referring to so let me see if I can clear this up.

The first thing to understand is that there was only ONE canon of Old Testament scriptures for 1450 years of the Church's history. Martin Luther, when he fell into heresy, decided to stop using the Church's Old Testament canon (and the New Testament canon, though that was quickly rectified) instead, he used the Old Testament that was decided upon in Jerusalem about 30 years after Christ died. There are various problems with this, as I will point out, but the important thing to understand is that we are referring here to the books of the Old Testament and the dispute is whether some books (1st, 2nd Maccabbees, Song of Songs, Sirach, parts of Daniel, etc.) were considered authoritative in the Early Church.

The canon that the Church has always used (for 2000 years) is what is appropriately called the "Septuagint" which means "seventy" in Greek. The canon of the Old Testament that was put together by the Sadducees 30 years after Christ's death is what is called the "Hebrew" bible and is used by Protestants.

The "Greek" canon (septuagint) was the bible that Jesus would have been familiar with in the various rabbinical schools in Judea. There is a two fold reason for this. First, the dominant culture in and around Jerusalem was Greek (or Hellenistic) culture. Rome was the political authority but not the cultural authority. They were too new and too backward to compare to the Greeks. This means that the Jewish communities in Jerusalem were heavily influnced by Greek philosophical schools. In the same way, those Jews who were more closely aligned with Greek culture were the Jews who had the most influence in the Rabbinical councils.

Greek thought added one very important idea to Jewish thought: the immortality of the soul. In fact, the New Testament must be read with this idea clearly in mind. The two schools opposing Christ's mission are the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees were Rabbi's who believed in the immortality of the soul and the Resurrection of the Body, as well as angels. The Sadducees were those who did not believe in the souls immortality nor in a bodily resurrection, nor did they believe in angels.

After Christ's death and the following persecution of Christians, the Sadducees influenced great control in the Synagogues. In order to help destroy the popular belief that Christ has been resurrected the Saducees insisted on supressing books that supported ideas that were common in the Christian community. The stories of the Maccabees, Sirach, and the Song of Songs, were the among those that were cast out.

The Church maintained its use of those books for two explicit reasons. All of the Apostles continued to refer to them and Christ himself quotes from them. Now, when the Church finally made the official pronouncement of a Canon of Scritpure (Old and New Testaments) the canon used for the Old Testament was the Septuagint.

When Martin Luther began his protestant revolt, he threw out many books of the bible that did not fit his theological agenda (Reform and eventual destruction of the Roman Catholic Chruch). This included the Letter of James, Peter, and parts of the book of Revelation and the Letter to the Hebrews. He also rejected the Church's authority to declare and Old Testament canon so he began to use what other Jews in Europe were using which is called the Jerusalem canon and does not include all of the books of the Septuagint.

Hope that helps.