The Bible - A Catholic Book

JMJ

It never ceases to amaze me the amount disinformation about the origins of the Bible.

I was once browsing at a bookstore and found a book about the Catholics by Protestants and it claimed that the Catholic only set the Biblical Canon at the Council of Trent.

This is FALSE.

The canon was first established at the Synod of Rome in 382 and has been unchanged since that time. The Council of Trent simply reaffirmed it.

Here's an excerpt from Catholic Answers: Didn't the Catholic Church add to the Bible?

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.

By the time of the Reformation, Christians had been using the same 73 books in their Bibles (46 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament)--and thus considering them inspired--for more than 1100 years. This practice changed with Martin Luther, who dropped the deuterocanonical books on nothing more than his own say-so. Protestantism as a whole has followed his lead in this regard.

One of the two "pillars" of the Protestant Reformation (sola scriptura or "the Bible alone") in part states that nothing can be added to or taken away from God's Word. History shows therefore that Protestants are guilty of violating their own doctrine.

For further reading - have a look at "Where we got the Bible".

P^3

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