It's a Cannon!! Oh, wait, a canon. Sorry.
Scripture and Canons. Not necessarily two words someone new to learning of the faith would associate the two. This is primarily due to the first image that the word "canon" brings to mind, that is that of a "cannon".
However, the term being used is "canon", only one "n" in the middle. This canon is a rule, more specifically a rule or designation of contents. The Canon of Scripture, is the rule of scripture that pertains to the contents of Scripture. Primarily there are two Canon's of Scripture, the Catholic Canon, and the Protestant Canon. There are specific Orthodox Canon's of Scripture, but the majority of them are akin to the Catholic Canon. The other Orthodox Canon's usually reflect canonical changes after they had left the Catholic Church, so an Orthodox church the split off around 400 A.D. will have a slightly different canon than those that split off in the early 1000's.
With that said let's look at the history of the bible, as a whole, and then we will delve into the main differences and the issues that came from it.
First, both Catholic and Protestant bibles agree on the Tanakh. The Tanakh is an abbreviation of the contents, the Torah (five books of Moses), Nevi'im (books of the Prophets), and the Ketuvim (Psalms and Chronicles). The compilation of these books range from the 13th to the 3rd centuries B.C., and we call this the Old Testament (mostly). The Old Testament was then translated into the more common Greek by the order of Ptolemy the II of Egypt. This is called the Septuagint. This is a short hand for the real title of the Latin Versio Septuaginta Interpretum. It was translated by 72 of the best translators who were Jewish Scholars of the time. They translated it, so that it would be added and preserved in the Library of Alexandria. It is the oldest translation of the Old Testament, i.e. the first translation of the Old Testament. This was the most widely known version of the Old Testament, all 46 books, this is the version, including the standard Hebrew and Aramaic translations of the same 46 books, were around in the time of Christ.
And with Jesus Christ's Incarnation, Ministry, Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, A new Covenant was established between God the Father and Man, through God the Son. His Sacrifice, and the meal that always associates the establishment of a Covenant, i.e., The Eucharist, requires a New Testament to talk on the New Covenant, and of Christ. As such books and letters were written in many languages Koine Greek as the predominant language for many of the letters, but the Church wanted a singular language for the Bible so that the Scripture can be spread along with Sacred Tradition passed down from Jesus Christ to the Apostles, and from them to their disciples and the Church as a whole. This is where St. Jerome enter the picture, a man who was fluent in all of the biblical languages, and the Latin into which he was to translate all 73 books of the bible. Pope Damasus I commissioned St. Jerome (382-405) to translate into a clear and concise Latin, which came to be known as the Latin Vulgate. He used the Septuagint and the Hexapla composed by Origen (231-260) who critically examined the Greek Septuagint and other Greek translations as well as the original Hebrew in 6 by 6 columns to ensure correct translation, and showed the superior translation of the Septuagint over other Greek translations.
The Vulgate became the standard for the Canon of Scripture. That is until John Wycliff, in an anti-clerical mood, decided that the Church cannot tell him what to do regarding Scripture. So he decided to translate the Vulate into English, well him and his followers call the Lollards. Some of which were scholars in the university in England at the time, which typically had the funding of the monarchy of England. However, he ended up preaching errors. Errors such as a denial of the Transubstantiation of the Eucharist, taught Donatism, claimed those in religious societies (like the Dominicans or the Benedictines) were by the act of being a monk became non-observant of the Laws of God, claimed that Pope Sylvester I and Emperor Constantine sinned by legalizing Christianity and enriching the church (giving money to the church to do her charitable acts), and denied the Deuterocanon. There are many errors of John Wycliff, but many seem reducible to the heresy of Donatism, you can read the writings and decrees of the Council of Constance session 8. Wycliff's errors led the church to declare that you have to have Ecclesiastical approval on a bible translation
This denial of the Deuterocanon was certainly an influence on Martin Luther, who also denied the Deuterocanon. However, Martin Luther, although translating the Catholic Bible to make the Luther Bible, consulted the Masoretic text which was compiled by Jewish scribes and scholars who looked upon the Septuagint with suspicion due to the Christian usage, despite its age predating Christianity, and the heritage of Jewish Scholars who compiled it. Regardless of Protestant or Catholic reading, it is accepted that the Luther Bible had many biases based on his beliefs. A runner-up in other Protestant Bibles, this being after the Protestant Reformation, was the Tyndale bible. This often is used as a jab against the Catholics to say that we suppressed biblical translations, and yet it wasn't the Catholic Church that tried and executed Tyndale; it was the Protestant Henry VIII, and his Church of England. the errors of Tyndale were around that he had many translation errors, pointed out by St. Thomas More who was renown for his scholarship in biblical matters, and many terms were mistranslated in favor of an anti-clerical nature.
In an twisted sense of irony Henry VIII used Tyndale's bible as a basis for his own version of the bible, called the Great Bible. It was published under Thomas Cromwell who was a staunch supporter of Tyndale, and then began working for the man who had his hero executed. As a result two more bibles were produce by two groups. The Calvinists who fled to Geneva wrote the Geneva Bible, but it had many puritanical biases laden within. The Bishops Bible was the response to the failed Great Bible of Henry VIII and the Calvinistic Geneva Bible, unfortunately the cost of manufacturing it was too much and the Bishops Bible died in its infancy.
The catholic Response to all of this, in particular the Protestant Reformation, was with the Council of Trent which not only affirmed the inherent authority of St. Jerome's translation and canon from 382 AD, but carefully reconstructed it in the fullness of St. Jerome's version compared to many of the modern copies that had some translation errors. Even compared with the Masoretic texts to ensure the accuracy of the translation that then became the standard of the Church. To translate things into the English as a means to provide the faithful a translation that was free from error, the Rheims New Testament and the Douay Old Testament was compiled in 1582 and 1609, respectively. If their names sound familiar, anytime I linked Scripture it was that translation you've been reading. Their translation wasn't the easiest English to the ear, which is why the English-ness of it was "polished" by Bishop Challoner in 1750.
The last translation of the era, which has maintained its popularity especially in the "reformed" low-church groups in America, such as the Baptists, while Evangelicals and non-denominational groups had abandoned it for the NIV. I am talking about the austere KJV that I, and many others, were more or less raised on. The King James Version (1611) was the Church of England's response to their failed bibles listed above, and the Douay-Rheims Catholic Bible (1582/1609). Following Martin Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, he ensured the Deuterocanon was removed from the canon of Scripture. King James's scholars referred to the Masoretic, Greek, Douay-Rheims, and the Vulgate, but had an obvious preference to the non-Catholic Sources.
So there is a very brief history, honestly as brief as I could make it, without leaving out some of the most important bits. But what does the history have to do with the canon itself? Well, I mentioned a lot of changes, some of the changes were pretty drastic, but in the end, it led to the Protestant Bibles being shorter by 7 books. Catholics (and many Orthodox) have 73 books in the bible, but Protestants only have 66 books. To keep this page short, believe me this page could be made into numerous books, I will address their arguments for removing the books, in the apologetics section in Module 3. I highly encourage you to look into these books, and see what you have been missing.
Books Removed:
Book of Ecclesiasticus (Sirach)
Chapters of Books removed:
Daniel 3:25 Prayer of Azariah
Daniel 13 Susanna
Daniel 14: Bel and the Dragon
Word added by Martin Luther:
Added "alone" to justify his bias to Romans 3:28, it is not present in the original texts.
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