The Sacred Canon

Published 27 Mar 2017

The two sources of Divine Revelation that we know are Scripture and Tradition. Scripture is inspired by revelation of God, while tradition is by commandments and doctrines of men. Catholic Church accepts that revelation comes before scriptures.(Spiritbride, July 10 2002) The Canon of Sacred Scripture is the bible itself, which God gave to us as a valuable gift of life.

Moses’s five books include Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Historical books in the bible comprise Book of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Nehemiah, 1st and 2nd Books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, and the 2nd Book of Esther. Prophetic books are books which contain prophecies, and it include Book of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and twelve books of the minor prophets, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habbakuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. Doctrinal books include The Book of Job, Proverbs, Psalms, Ecclesiastes and Book of Song of Solomon.(Alexander, October 8, 2000)

Jeremiah and Baruch are closely related and both were placed under the Book of Jeremiah. Lamentations make Jeremiah and Baruch distinct in Greek Septuagint. So they were separated as two different books. Lamentations was separated because it is not probable that it is just written by only one man because the themes of the five poems were hardly treated

The difference between the Catholic bibles and Protestant bibles is mainly in the number of books it contained. Catholic bibles contain 46 books, while Protestant’s contain 39. The books omitted from the Protestant’s bible but is in the Catholics bible are the Books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus), First and Second Maccabees, Baruch, and parts of Daniel and Esther.Protestants call those as Apocrypha while Catholics call it Deuterocanonical books. Deuterocanonical books contain words to live a holy life and inspiring stories of Jewish heroes. These books record the history of Jews from Babylonian exile and during the birth of Christ. (Speyrer, June 1991)

Protestants omitted Apocrypha because during the early times, there were two Jewish bibles which were widely used, one was the Hebrew bible and the other was Septuagint bible. When translations of bibles were rampant, they translated the longer version which consisted of 80 percent of Septuagint’s content. And that longer translation was now used by the Catholics. On the other hand, during the time of Martin Luther, scholars preferred to translate the shorter version which is the Hebrew bible, as the basis of their Old Testament. Other than that, no other differences exist between the Old and the New Testament.

The Scriptures started during the time of Moses because God was inspiring Moses during his time to write down narrations, revelations, laws, and commandments. God gave the Scriptures to bring man into fellowship with Him. Scriptures are holy in content because God is the source of all that is written in it, and because those were not the lifeless perceptive of sacred truth created by people in the past, but it is a living, active way by which God communes with us the truth that He will bless us.

References:

  • Alexander, B. (October 8, 2000). Understanding the Bible.
  • Durgy, S. (October 22, 1999). The Inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures: Issues in the Inerrancy of Holy Scripture.
  • Kelly, J. A. (2002).
  • Letter of Jeremiah. (2005).
  • Speyrer, J. (June 1991). The Catholic Difference.
  • Spiritbride. (July 10 2002).
  • What is the difference between Protestant and Catholic Bibles?
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