The Holy Bible

An anonymous commenter asked the following question: 

AnonymousOctober 7, 2015 at 6:16 AM

Hello Diana. Can you post something about the history of the Bible. Why do Protestants say we added books? Please post a blog when you have the time. Thank you.

First of all, we never added books to the Holy Bible.  The canon of the books was first held in the Council of Rome in 382 A.D. under Pope Damasus.  Later councils such as the Council of Hippo re-affirmed it.  Since that time, we have used the same books in the Holy Bible for thousands of years.  It has not changed.  After the Protestant Reformation took place, the Council of Trent re-affirmed the books of the Bible because the Protestants challenged the Catholic Church on the canon of the books.  Our Protestant brothers mistakenly thought that the Catholic Church had added additional books to the Bible at the Council of Trent when actually the council was only re-affirming the books. 

  

One only need to look back in history to see that the Catholic Church had never added books.  The Latin Vulgate, which was written by St. Jerome toward the end of the fourth century contained all the books in the Catholic Bible today.  The Gutenberg Bible, printed in 1455 by Johannes Gutenberg with the use of his invention, the printing press, contained all the books in the Catholic Bible today.   The Douay-Rheims Bible, published in France in 1582, contained all the books in the Catholic Bible today. 

All the Bibles printed before the Protestant Reformation contained all the books in the Catholic Bible.  The Protestant Reformation began in 1517, and the first Protestant Bible that was published was the King James Bible in 1611.  The ORIGINAL King James Bible of 1611 actually had all the books that the Catholic Bible had, but seven of those books were labeled as "apocrypha" by the Protestants because they did not consider it "inspired by God."  Later, these 7 books including parts of Esther and Daniel were omitted from the King James Bible. 

 What the Protestants called "apocrypha", Catholics have accepted as inspired scripture for thousands of years.  The canon of inspired scripture was already closed at the end of the fourth century.  If anyone changed the Holy Bible, it was not the Catholics.  It was the Protestants.  They changed the Holy Bible by removing 7 books from the Old Testament and parts of Esther and Daniel.  The person who removed these books was Martin Luther, the Father of Protestantism. There were no council in the Protestant religion to determine which books to remove from the Holy Bible.  It was simply removed by one man who decided to follow the Palestinian canon of scripture.  The Catholic Church, on the other hand, had always been following the Alexandrian canon of scripture for thousands of years. 

Nevertheless, the Protestant Bible is not to be demeaned in any way because it is still a Christian Bible.  Although it is incomplete in that there 7 books missing, the rest of the books nonetheless were all approved and considered "inspired by God" by the Catholic Church thousands of years ago. You may also find the following article from EWTN an interesting read. 

http://www.ewtn.com/vexperts/showmessage.asp?number=438095