John Sessoms wrote: >> From: >> frank theriault >> On 1/3/07, Tom C <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> Just one side point... neither purgatory or a burning hell are taught >>> by the >>> Bible. So yes a strange, in fact, false logic.<snip> >> Indeed! >> >> The concept of purgatory is Roman Catholic dogma (perhaps other >> Christian sects believe in it, I don't know). What has Catholicism >> ever had to do with the Bible? >> >> cheers, >> frank, recovering catholic > > Wasn't it a bunch of Roman Catholic priests who decided what would be > in and what would not be in the Bible? >
Pretty much, for the New Testament at least. St Jerome was the guy who put it together and it was approved initially in 392AD and finally in 397AD at a pair of Church Councils. The Old Testament is different. The Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches use the Septaguint Canon, which originated between 300 and 100 BC and was in common use amongst hebrews until after 200AD, when Jewish use moved towards the Masoretic Canon, which is the basis for the shorter Protestant Old Testament and dates in it's full form to between 700 and 1000AD. Note the Catholic Church uses their translation of the Septaguint Canon, part of the Vulgate Bible, while the Orthodox Churches are split between the Vulgate and the original Septaguint texts in Greek. The 7 books in the Septaguint that aren't used by the Protestant Churches are the Deuterocanonical Books, originally written in Greek. These are often confused with the Apocrypha, which are the approcimately 150 books which claim to be Canonical for the New Testament. The Catholic Church determined them to not be Canonical, but they do fall into other categories (From outright blasphemy to being considered works of the 'Doctors of the Church', the great theological writers of the Catholic Church). It's interesting to note that Luther did not accept the traditional New Testament, notably referring to 2 James as 'an epistle of straw'. He attempted unsuccessfully to have 7 books removed from common use. All were from the post-Acts section of the New Testament. Yeah, I researched this a fair bit a while back, out of historical interest. -Adam -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
