http://catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0120.html and then Taylor Marshall disagrees with that link here http://taylormarshall.com/2012/03/defending-the-book-of-tobit-as-history.html
also from comment 163 here:http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/01/holy-church-finding-jesus-as-a-reverted-catholic-a-testimonial-response-to-chris-castaldo/
I admit I am no expert of the history and development of the LXX, but I have read scholarship that suggests the LXX existed as a unified collection in the 1st century. For example, the prologue to the book of Sirach in the Deuterocanon, which was written somewhere between 200 and 175 BC, suggests the existence of the LXX. Jobes and Silva on p.34 of “Invitation to the Septuagint,” write,
The Greek text of the Wisdom of Joshua ben Sira (also known as Sirach or Ecclesiasticus)… contains a prologue that makes reference to a [Greek] translation of ‘the law, the prophets, and the rest of the books.’ “
Furthermore, in “The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible,” M. Abegg, P. Flint, and E. Ulrich note on p.xi that that fragments of the Greek text include the John Rylands Papyrus 458, which dates from the 2nd century BC, and Papyrus Fouad 266, which originated about 100 BC. Furthermore, other fragments of the Greek text include 2nd century BC fragments of Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Rahlfs nos. 801, 819, and 957), and 1st century BC fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the Minor Prophets (Rahlfs nos. 802, 803, 805, 848, 942, and 943). All that to say, I’m not convinced there is “no evidence” for LXX as a unified collection in the 1st century AD or earlier. At this point we may have to agree to disagree on the strength of the evidence.
The Church does not deny that there are ancient writings which are "apocryphal." During the early Christian era, there were scores of manuscripts which purported to be Holy Scripture but were not. Many have survived to the present day, like the Apocalypse of Peter and the Gospel of Thomas, which all Christian churches regard as spurious writings that don't belong in Scripture.
During the first century, the Jews disagreed as to what constituted the canon of Scripture. In fact, there were a large number of different canons in use, including the growing canon used by Christians. In order to combat the spreading Christian cult, rabbis met at the city of Jamnia or Javneh in A.D. 90 to determine which books were truly the Word of God. They pronounced many books, including the Gospels, to be unfit as scriptures. This canon also excluded seven books (Baruch, Sirach, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, and the Wisdom of Solomon, plus portions of Esther and Daniel) that Christians considered part of the Old Testament.
The group of Jews which met at Javneh became the dominant group for later Jewish history, and today most Jews accept the canon of Javneh. However, some Jews, such as those from Ethiopia, follow a different canon which is identical to the Catholic Old Testament and includes the seven deuterocanonical books (cf. Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 6, p. 1147).
Needless to say, the Church disregarded the results of Javneh. First, a Jewish council after the time of Christ is not binding on the followers of Christ. Second, Javneh rejected precisely those documents which are foundational for the Christian Church—the Gospels and the other documents of the New Testament. Third, by rejecting the deuterocanonicals, Javneh rejected books which had been used by Jesus and the apostles and which were in the edition of the Bible that the apostles used in everyday life—the Septuagint.
and
The canon of Scripture, Old and New Testament, was finally settled at the Council of Rome in 382, under the authority of Pope Damasus I. It was soon reaffirmed on numerous occasions. The same canon was affirmed at the Council of Hippo in 393 and at the Council of Carthage in 397. In 405 Pope Innocent I reaffirmed the canon in a letter to Bishop Exuperius of Toulouse. Another council at Carthage, this one in the year 419, reaffirmed the canon of its predecessors and asked Pope Boniface to "confirm this canon, for these are the things which we have received from our fathers to be read in church." All of these canons were identical to the modern Catholic Bible, and all of them included the deuterocanonicals.
This exact same canon was implicitly affirmed at the seventh ecumenical council, II Nicaea (787), which approved the results of the 419 Council of Carthage, and explicitly reaffirmed at the ecumenical councils of Florence (1442), Trent (1546), Vatican I (1870), and Vatican II (1965).
This list of 27 books along with the 46 books of the Old Testament (including) the deuterocanonical ones) was affirmed as the official canon of Sacred Scripture for the Catholic Church by the synods of Hippo (393), Carthage I and II (397 and 419). The letter of Pope St. Innocent I in 405 also officially listed these books. Although some discussion arose over the inclusion of other books into the Church's canon of Sacred Scripture after this time, the council of Florence (1442) definitively established the official list of 46 books of the Old Testament and 27 of the New Testament.
Church Councils listed and affirmed the present Catholic canon, which was only formally closed at the Council of Trent in the 16th century.
and
Ultimately, the "Reformers" decided to ignore the canon determined by the Christian Councils of Hippo and Carthage (and reaffirmed and closed at the Council of Trent4), and resort solely to those texts determined to be canonical at the Council of Jamnia.
The Council of Jamnia?Now we have to back up a bit: around A.D. 90-100, after the Temple fell, a rabbinical school was formed by Johanan ben Zakkai. The "Council of Jamnia" (also called "Jabneh" or "Javneh") is the name given to the decisions made by this pharisaic school. I repeat: the gathering at Jamnia was a Jewish, not a Christian,"council" consisting of Pharisees some 40 years after the Resurrection of our Lord. At that time, Jews were being scattered, and the very existence of Jewry per the Pharisees' vision of "Jewry" was being threatened. At this time, too, Christianity was growing and threatening that same Jewish identity, resulting in severe persecution of Christians by Jews. In reaction to these things and to the fact that "Nazarenes" (i.e., "Christians", who at that time were overwhelmingly Hebrew) used the Septuagint to proselytize other Jews, Zakkai convened the Jamnian school with the goals of safeguarding Hillel's Oral Law, deciding the Jewish canon (which had theretofore been, and possibly even afterward remained 5, an open canon!), and preventing the disappearance of Jewry into the Diaspora of the Christian and Roman worlds. So, circling their wagons, they threw out the Septuagint that they had endorsed for almost 400 years. Note that at the time of Christ, most Jews spoke Aramaic, Latin (the official language of the area), and/or Greek (the lingua franca at that time), not Hebrew, which was a sacred language used by priests for the Hebrew liturgy. In any case, a new Greek translation was created by Aquila -- but one without the ancient Septuagint's language that proved more difficult for the Jews to defend against when being evangelized by the Christians, the point being that any idea that a book "had" to have been written in Hebrew to be "Biblical" wasn't the issue.Moving the story along: in other words, the Protestant "Reformers" decided against the canon held dear by the Apostles in favor of a canon determined by Pharisees some 40 years after Jesus rose from the dead -- the same Pharisees who denied the Truths of the entire New Testament, even accusing the "Nazarenes" of stealing Jesus' body from the tomb and lying to the world! (Interestingly, it was Zakkai's successor, Gamaliel, who forced the "Nazarenes" out of the synagogues. Gamaliel also made it obligatory for Jews to pray the "Prayer of Eighteen Petitions," the 12th petition, which is still prayed today, known as the birkat, being "For apostates may there be no hope, and may the Nazarenes and heretics suddenly perish.")
And do you know why the Book of Maccabees was thrown out by the Jewish Council? Because the Council was conducted under the auspices of the Flavian Roman Emperors and they decided that that particuar book, which tells of the Maccabean Revolt, might be inflammatory and incite rebellion by the Jews. So, all those Protestant Bibles are lacking the Book of Maccabees, which speaks clearly of praying for the dead, because a pagan emperor pressured the Pharisees, around 40 years after the Resurrection of Christ, to exclude it. And lest anyone is still tempted to think that it was the "Roman Church" that came up with these books and that they were not written by pre-Christ Jews (an assertion I've actually read at "Messianic" websites), Jews in other parts of the world who didn't get news of the Council of Jamnia's decisions still use those "extra" 7 books to this very day (research the canon used by Ethiopian Jewry).
Mileto, bishop of Sardis, an ancient city of Asia Minor, c. 170 AD created the earliest list of books identical to the Roman Catholic canon today. Following this Pope Damasus, 366-384, in his Decree, listed the books of today's canon. The Council of Hippo, a local north African council of bishops listed the books of the Old and New Testament in 393 AD, the same as the Catholic list today. The Council of Carthage did the same four years later and again in 419. Down through the ages Christians used Bibles, always with the Deuterocanonical books included. In fact, the Gutenberg Bible, the first Bible to be mass printed, contained these books and followed the Catholic canon. Finally, the Council of Trent DID reaffirm the traditional canon in the face of the errors of the Reformers who rejected seven Old Testament books from the canon of Scripture at that time."
Around this time there were no less than five instances when the canon was formally identified: the Synod of Rome (382), the Council of Hippo (393), the Council of Carthage (397), a letter from Pope Innocent I to Exsuperius, Bishop of Toulouse (405), and the Second Council of Carthage (419). In every instance, the canon was identical to what Catholic Bibles contain today. In other words, from the end of the fourth century on, in practice Christians accepted the Catholic Church's decision in this matter.
from here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/01/the-canon-question/ from comment 742
If I can boil down your argument, you are saying that Judith doesn’t seem to you like parable, legend, historical fiction, or parody; therefore the writer must have intended to relate history. And the author, though intending to relate true history, begins the book with a historical error of the greatest possible magnitude.If I understanding you correctly, then the problem I have with this argument is that the conclusion is absurd. We can’t reasonably believe that that a Jewish writer in this time period intended to relate true history and yet began the “history” by confusing the two greatest enemies of the Jewish people (Nebudchanezzar and the kingdom of Assyria).
from comment 176 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/03/world-vision-and-the-quest-for-protestant-unity/
So, it may be that the conversation should pause long enough to ensure mutual comprehension, and then proceed.
Ιn particular the issue of Scripture and its role in the Church (in EVERY era) needs to be clearly understood before anything else happens.
Will you please agree, specifically, to the following eighteen items?
On a point-by-point basis, you need to either affirm or deny that….
1. The Jews didn’t have a fixed canon in Christ’s time;
2. Some Jews regarded only the 5 books of Moses as authoritative;
3. Other Jews regarded something similar to, though not always identical to, the Protestant OT canon to be authoritative;
4. Still other Jews regarded something similar to, though not always identical to, the Catholic OT canon to be authoritative;
5. The “OT canon” question cannot thus be settled by appeals to pre-Christian Jewish authorities settling the issue, since they hadn’t;
6. By the time Jewish sages formed a consensus which included (for example) Esther but excluded (for example) 1 & 2 Maccabees, Christ had already come; Christ had already died; Christ had already risen; Christ had already ascended; the Holy Spirit had already come at Pentecost; the Proto-Council of Jerusalem had already exerted authority over the Christian faithful (Acts 15); the Apostles had already taught their message “by word of mouth, or by letter” as being “what it really is, the Word of God”; and all the original Twelve apostles had died;
7. There is therefore no just cause for a Christian to appeal to anti-Christian Jewish sages of the early 2nd century (over and against the authority of the early Christian bishops!) to get an authoritative OT canon;
8. When the Jewish sages started excluding the Deuterocanonical books (e.g., Wisdom), it was partly to undermine Christian apologists (since Wisdom contains a detailed prophecy of Christ’s suffering which was being used by Christian apologists to persuade many Jews that Jesus was the Messiah);
9. The New Testament books used by Protestants today, when quoting the Old Testament, mostly quote the Septuagint word-for-word…and either quotes or alludes to various OT books which are in the Catholic OT, but excluded from the Protestant;
10. Before 370 A.D. we have no record of any Christian authority using the same 27 NT books which Catholics and Protestants agree upon today, but after 370 A.D. everyone agreed for 1,100 years until Luther tried unsuccessfully to exclude James, Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation in the 1500′s;
11. Before 370 A.D. we have varying OT canons from Christian witnesses but they invariably at least one of the books which Catholics regard canonical (Judith, Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees) is included, and usually all but one or two are included (and the one or two vary);
12. After 370 A.D. authorities agreed upon an OT canon of 46 books identical to the Catholic OT canon, and this continued until Luther and Calvin’s day;
13. After the death of the last of the Twelve (John) there was no way Christians could appeal to the Twelve to get a New Testament canon or an Old Testament canon (neither of which was yet known to the faithful), so, wherever Christians got their canon of Scripture, it wasn’t from the Twelve;
14. Until the Church had set the canon to show what was and wasn’t “Scripture”, it was impossible to take “Sola Scriptura” as a valid methodology for discerning whether a given doctrine was heretical or orthodox…and in historical fact, the Christian faithful did not do so;
15. The Christian faithful, instead, found out what was orthodox from “The Church” in the following way: They accepted what was said by their bishop (provided he had Apostolic Succession and could trace his authority and his teachings on the disputed matter back through his predecessor to the Apostles); and when there were disputes between bishops they appealed either to the bishop of Rome, or to a council called-and-conducted with the consent/agreement of the bishop of Rome, to resolve the dispute;
16. The reason that the Christian faithful accepted the 27-book NT canon and the 46-book (Catholic) OT canon when, after 370, these were finally standardized was because their bishop, and especially the bishop of Rome, had said so;
17. You cannot get a canon of Scripture from Scripture itself inasmuch as (a.) Scripture never says what the canon should be or gives any standard for determining it; (b.) even if it did, you wouldn’t know whether it was trustworthy because the book including the canon might not, itself, be canonical; and,
18. Consequently, any Christian claiming to have an infallible knowledge of which books should be in the Bible is ABSOLUTELY forced to admit that he’s relying, for that knowledge, on an infallible authority OTHER THAN the authority of Scripture itself.
this includes different articles with links
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/01/the-canon-question/#comment-119988
Regarding our old conversation about Judith, I stumbled across an interesting point in Warren Carroll’s “History of Christendom” volume 1, and that made me want to come back to our conversation about Judith.
Re-reading your comment, it seems your point was that you considered it an error that the book says that Nebuchadnezzar was the “King” of Assyria, and that he ruled “from Ninevah”. I am curious what translation you have been using, because after reading what Carroll says, I wondered if we are reading similar translations.
Here is the translation of Judith in the New American Bible, Revised Edition on the USCCB website:
It was the twelfth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, who ruled over the Assyrians in the great city of Nineveh.
Verse 1 says that Nebuchadnezzar ruled over the Assyrians who lived in Ninevah. Warren Carroll’s history confirms that in the 12th year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar (593BC?), the Babylonian Empire did in fact occupy and rule over the city of Ninevah. Even Wikipedia confirms there is archeological evidence that Ninevah was sacked in 612 B.C. by a coalition which included the Babylonian empire, and we see in dates throughout the 6th century B.C., that the Babylonian Empire controlled the area around Ninevah.
Given these historical corollaries, a few of inferences seem very reasonable to make:
1. Nebuchadnezzar did rule over the Assyrians who lived in Ninevah (as attested by Judith and external sources)
2. In the context of Judith, it would be very reasonable to call him King of the Assyrians, because he was, in fact, the King over the Assyrians who lived in Ninevah, and that’s the group of Assyrians that are being talked about in the book. The book never states he was _not_ King of the Babylonians. A modern analogy is that the Queen of England is also called the Queen of Ireland in the context of Northern Ireland, even though most of Ireland is independent.
3. Being King over Ninevah does not make Nebuchadnezzar is of Assyrian origin, nor does the book ever say he is an Assyrian.
4. If Nebuchadnezzar was indeed waging military campaigns to the west of Ninevah, then it would make sense that he resided in Ninevah for periods of time during these campaigns.
Just some other things I want to remember. The Septuagint had the deuterocanonical books
some of the Septuagint copies but not all also had what we call 3 Esdras and some didn't --RC don't include it. Ezra and Nehemiah were sometimes referred to as 1 and 2 Esdras and then there were 3 and 4 Esdras which normally are now called 1 and 2 Ezra. RC does not include these last 2. Our oldest full copies of the OT come from Septuagint translations--the Vaticans (325-350 AD) and Alexandrin (450 AD). The Sinaiticus contains some too. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain some (these are from around 168bc to 68 ad---need checking on dates). The oldest full Hebrew copy--according to wiki--The oldest extant manuscripts of the Masoretic Text date from approximately the 9th century CE,[5] and the Aleppo Codex (once the oldest complete copy of the Masoretic Text, but now missing its Torah section) dates from the 10th century.
There is, perhaps, another way to view the historical events presented in The Book of Judith, by positioning them in the range of the time of Judges during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I (circa 1150-1104 B.C.). Along with this realignment of Judith’s historical existence, there are several supporting textual, historical, geographical, and logical arguments that suggest Judith was indeed a real person who accomplished exactly those deeds reported in the “inspired” Old Testament book that bears her name.
- Nebuchadnezzar I reigned in Mesopotamia some time from 1150 – 1104 B.C. (accounts vary as the period was constantly ablaze with war among Kassites, Elamites, Babylonians, Assyrians, and other peoples in the region). According to the Kings List, AssuriaNebuchadnezzar I held sway over the entire region for an interval after defeating the Elamites and Kassites, encompassing all of Mesopotamia including Nineveh. Then, in a sudden reversal, the Assyrian King, Tiglath-Pilaser I, defeated Nebuchadnezzar I and reclaimed Assyria. The archeological record shows that Nebuchadnezzar I, during his reign, reached Syria, coinciding with the detail in Judith that Nebuchadnezzar’s army destroyed Damascus.
- The biblical genealogy of Judith fixes her time six generations after her great, great, great, great grandfather, Gideon. That might set Judith’s birth around 1125 B.C. and could make her about 19 years of age at the time of the events of Judith. If Nebuchadnezzar’s reign came to an abrupt end, as would be surmised after a humiliating defeat by the Israelites upon Judith’s triumph over Holofernes, then the reign and fortunes of Nebuchadnezzar I would coincide with the events of Judith. Additionally, the name of Nebuchadnezzar and his victories would probably have been erased from the Assyrian record by Tiglath-Pilaser I.
- The Book of Judith contains a speech in the tent of Holofernes by Achior, leader of the defeated Ammonites, in which he accurately repeats the major events of the Hebrew race, beginning with the forefathers of Abraham in Chaldea and ending with the crossing of the Jordan and the Hebrew entry into Canaan after spending 40 years in the desert following the exodus from Egypt. Achior’s recount of Hebrew history at least implies he is making the speech in the time of Judges, for absolutely no mention is made of David’s or Solomon’s glorious kingdoms.
- St. Jerome, Doctor of the Catholic Church (342-420 A.D.), said he had access to an Aramaic text of Judith when he translated it to Latin. Yet this claim by possibly the greatest biblical scholar ever (who lived 1,600 years closer to the events of Judith) is dismissed by current scholars because they cannot find such a text. Modern scholarship seems to give no weight to post exilic oral tradition.
Many persons would have benefited from the destruction of Jewish Holy Texts for reasons ranging from national hegemony, misogynism, and personal cult / reputation to anti-Semitism, and religious competition. Speculating on this aspect of “missing texts” might open many cans of worms:
If David was inspired by and raised on the deeds of Judith, not only would his cult and glory have been challenged by Judith’s, he also would have mirrored her prayers and the Judith Hymn of Praise in his own Psalm compositions. David’s character, as a king with a considerable harem and as a king who sent another man (Uriah, the Hittite) to his death so he could possess Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, would have stood in stark contrast to the very “God fearing” Judith. David’s fame has not suffered by missing texts of Judith.
The beheading of Holofernes by Judith and the following defeat of Nebuchadnezzar’s army by the Israelites would have, historically, freed the Philistines (then under the foot of Holofernes along the coastline), emboldened them, and eventually enabled them to defeat Saul, cut off his head, and hang it on the wall of Beth-shan (as Judith indeed beheaded her enemy, Holofernes, and hung his head on the wall of Bethulia). Perhaps the Philistines’ actions in beheading Saul and displaying his head was in response to Judith’s similar actions and David’s decapitation of Goliath’s after David had already killed Goliath with Goliath’s own sword.
The claims by scholars that the writer who composed Judith in the First or Second Century B.C. borrowed from Psalms, Isaiah, and others would be reversed, were Judith held as historical. Indeed, David, other Psalmists, Isaiah, and others would be indebted to Judith.
Nebuchadnezzar II would have every reason to have any record of the humiliated, former king of his name utterly destroyed, including all the cities, documents, and relics of the events.
When, in 1534 A.D., Martin Luther grouped the deutrocanonical books at the end of the Old Testament (of which Judith was considered one by the Catholic Church), Protestants came to regard Judith as noncanonical Jewish literature, “…not held equal to sacred scriptures and yet useful for good reading.” Catholic scholars might give the historical possibilities of Judith another look or join with the Protestants and determine Judith does not belong as part of the canon. After all, Pope Paul VI, in his endorsement of the notes introducing the New American Bible, states the texts of the New American Bible are, “Everything and only those things that He (God) wanted.” One word of is needed to remove the irritating question raised at the beginning of this note, and that word is, “Perhaps.”
Copyright @ 2011Kevin Mirek
http://www.holynameofmaryparish.com/documents/Deuterocanonical%20Books.pdf
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