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Why Catholic Bibles are Bigger

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Michuta tackles a very touchy subject, one with direct bearing upon sola scriptura. Why do only Catholic bibles have the texts known as the Deuterocanonicals?

The problem is compounded by the fact that Protestant bibles used to contain these same texts. "Before 1599 nearly all Protestant bibles included the Deuterocanonical books...It was not until the middle of the 17th century that the tide began to turn" (p 245) and the texts were removed. Michurta sets out to explain how, and why, this came about.

The ancient Jews did not develop a canon before Christ died. "Judaism was comprised of as many as twenty-four distinct parties...and each...had its own distinctive theology and preferences in matters of canonicity" (p 13).

One fact Michurta proves is that the early Christians used the Deuteros frequently. There are quotations from the Deuteros in Luke, Revelation, Matthew, Romans, Hebrews, and James. In addition, 1 Clement, Barnabas, Polycarp, Hermas, the Didache, and many more used portions of the Deuteros.

So how and when did the number of Jewish texts begin to differ from those of the early Christians? Michuta provides an in-depth discussion of how the canon was chosen, for both the Jews and the Christians, regarding the Deuteroes. He lists all the councils where they were discussed, as well as all the early fathers who quoted from the Deuteroes.

This is an outstanding book. Yes, you need it in your library.

Mr. Michuta's work will be trouble for the Sola Scriptura crowd. After all, how can one claim to follow the Bible alone when one cannot claim to know what books are to be included in the Bible? Perhaps they would do better to claim "part of the Bible alone" instead. Such is the evidence contained in this thorough study of the deuterocanonical books.

Mr. Michuta begins this study with the Protestant assertion that the new testament writers did not consider the deuterocanonical books as canonical. With a dizzying array of new testament to deuterocanonical parallels, he buries that assertion under the tremendous weight of evidence to the contrary. He proceeds then to bury the claim that the apostolic, ante-Nicene, and early church fathers did not consider these books canonical - and again Mr. Michuta provides a plethora of evidence to the contrary. In the process of providing the historical evidence to bury the Protestant position, Mr. Michuta gives us some insight through the effect of the second Jewish rebellion and anti-Christian bias on the development of the Jewish canon on which Protestants base their own canon. It is a damning indictment indeed that the Protestant canon would be based on the work of enemies of the faith.

But Mr. Michuta is not finished with this dark history of the Protestant rejection of the very scripture they would claim to venerate. He continues with the influence of Jerome's "Hebrew veritas" and why it was rejected by the church. Then he proceeds to challenge the Protestant apparent belief in the infallibility of Jerome above the church. He also provides us with the summary of Martin Luther's test - simply stated, only books that support Martin Luther's theology were accepted by Martin Luther. Rejecting the pillar and foundation of truth, Luther was left with his fiat alone - his questionable doctrines being the test of scripture rather than the other way around as has been claimed for too long. The same seems to be apparent from the evidence of writings from other "reformers" as well.

The assertion of the Bible alone as a replacement for the true pillar and foundation of truth is quite obviously not scriptural. Nor is it supported by historical evidence. It is, of course, a logical assertion in light of the related assertion of private interpretation - after all, if we each can interpret scripture with equal authority, then why not just claim to have the power of interpreting what is included in scripture? Sola scriptura is a position fraught with contradictions and ambiguity. This solid work of historical and scriptural evidence makes those contradictions quite evident to any open-minded enough to see them.

Mr. Michuta closes this work with two appendixes to further enhance our understanding of the Protestant position of sola scriptura and Biblical inerrancy. Both are problematic in light of the evidence contained earlier in the book and Mr. Michuta provides thoughtful nuances to that evidence in these appendixes. Do not neglect to read them as well.

This is an important subject. It is a subject that cannot be taken so lightly as it has been in the past. Catholics who might be thinking of conversion would do well to study and understand the rejection of scripture that conversion would entail. Protestants who claim to venerate the scriptures would do well to better understand the historical and scriptural evidence that seem to contradict their claim. No one who asserts the scriptures as authority can afford to ignore this topic.

This material is especially worthwhile for two kinds of readers: 1) Protestants desiring to understand one more element of the Catholic Church and 2) Catholics who don't know why they have "extra" books. The footnotes and works cited also provide plenty of further reading for serious students. This isn't light reading or devotional material, but clearly defends the deuterocanonical or apocryphal books. [...].

This is the book that we've been waiting for. With very little rhetoric or argument, Michuta goes systematically through Church History and shows how the disputed books of the Old Testament were received and used by Christians from the beginning right up until modern times.

He lets each age of Church History address us in its own words. In the process he answers all of the major lines of argumentation that have been adduced for excising them from the Bible.

Also very interesting is the story of how these seven books came to be entirely excluded from the pages of Protestant Bibles. At the time of the Reformers and for a long time after, they were printed in a separate section but still included in Protestant published Bibles. It was only in the 1800s that nearly all Protestant publishers began printing Bibles completely without them. The reasons for this change are revealing.

This book clears up a lot of confusion and misconception related to the differences between the Catholic Bible and the Protestant Bible. The extensive documentation of historical church writings related to the canon of scripture are presented in a clear and easy to read manner. This book convincingly argues the fact that the complete Bible of Christianity is comprised of 73 books, not 66 books.

Why Catholic Bibles are Bigger tells the story of how some Protestants used the removal of the Deuterocanon from the Bible as a proxy for their attack on Catholicism. Some reviewers have characterized this work as unscholarly, but the 770 footnotes (not to mention the numerous in-line citations), and the argument-response approach of the author stand in evidence against that charge.

The facts are devastating to the Protestant case, which has been held as the conventional wisdom in the English-speaking Christian world, including among Catholics.

The following chain of facts was especially enlightening, as it shows the origin of the Deuterocanon being 'questionable':

* At the time of the Apostles, there exist various Jewish sects (Sadducees, Pharisees, and many others) most of whom have very sharp theological disagreements.

* There is no defined Jewish canon at this time, but many accept the Deuterocanon via the Greek Septuagint, which had been around for close to 2 centuries and held in great respect. Both Philo and Josephus ascribed divine inspiration to its authors.

* The Dead Sea Scrolls testify to Deuterocanon books in Hebrew intermixed with the Protocanon.

* During the Second Jewish Revolt (A.D. 132-135) Christians (then still considered a Jewish sect) were pressured by Rabbi Akiba ben Joseph to renounce Jesus, join the revolt, and accept Bar Cochba as the Messiah.

* Christians refused this apostasy and were treated by Jews as heretics and traitors.

* The same Rabbi Akiba ben Joseph noted above becomes the first Jewish writer to explicitly reject the New Testament and the Deuterocanon - thus proving that Christians and some Jews saw the Deuterocanon as scripture, or Akiba would not have had to inveigh against it.

* Under Akiba in the middle of the 2nd century, Judaism begins to adopt a definitive canon that excludes the Deuterocanon, and this would eventually become the Masoretic Text.

So there it is. Well into the 2nd century of Christianity, the Deuterocanon is declared unclean by a Rabbi that also rejected the New Testament as revelation and Jesus Christ as the Messiah: Protestants, meet your canonical grandpa.

The above point is one of many established within the first 70 pages of this work. There is much, much more, and most of it is even more convincing since the historical record is richer as the author proceeds through the centuries.

Some other interesting points:

* An overwhelming number of the Early Fathers - including Jerome(1), whom Protestants make great appeal to - quoted the Deuterocanon as scripture in their writings, as did an astounding number of the early Reformers:

* The King James Version contained the Deuterocanon, with cross references from the Protocanon in the margins.

* The Feast of the Dedication mentioned in John 10 (Hanukah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, and the backdrop of Christ's light of the world speech) is only mentioned 1 Maccabees 4 of the Deuterocanon.

The saddest part of the whole mess is that the same tactics those Protestants steadily employed to slowly remove the Deuterocanon from the Bible eventually where taken up by the 'Enlightenment' and Modernists to attack first the Protocanon and eventually the New Testament. As the Reformed scholar Edward Ruess predicted: "the scoffs thrown at the little fish of Tobit will sooner or later destroy Jonah's whale."

(1) "Does not the Scripture say: 'Burden not thyself above thy power' [Sirach 13:2]..." (Jerome, To Eustochium, Epistle 108, in NPNF2, VI:207)

This book is NOT an easy read. It is PACKED with facts and supportive documentation, which makes reading it a worthwhile endevor. The author assumes that the reader does not know anything about the topic and therefore he proceeds to build a strong foundation which leads the reader to the author's conclusions. Good book and worth the money.

I loved this book because it covered the who, what, when, where and why the books of the Bible were put in. Great footnotes.

If you study the Bible with an open heart, you will find that this book will give you more than the bible it will give you Tradition. read this book you will gain intimate understanding of a story of our brothers who gone before us. and how, why, what we call the bible today. Now was it 66 or 73 books in the bible...You will know.

I bought this realizing that it was apologetics but thinking that it could be helpful nonetheless in terms of references to conciliar documents about the apocrypha. This is true. The book, however, is undoubtedly a work of apology; its central thesis, repeated over and over again, is that the canon comes from Christ. The book contains scholarship, but it is not scholarship; the author does not evaluate competing arguments in a scholarly way. He demonstrates only limited awareness of the many academic works published on these questions in the last decade before publication of his book. The book is full of spelling and typographical errors; he could have used a good editor.

In spite of all this, I'm glad I bought it because it does provide good references to specific documents that I can look up and evaluate for myself.