HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE

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ANG BIBLIA: BANAL NA AKLAT NG IGLESIA KATOLIKA!

Sa mga mangangaral ng Iglesia Protestante, Iglesia Ni Cristo® at iba pang mga bagong sulpot lamang na mga iglesia, ang inyong pinanaligan at pinaghuhugutan ng aral ay isang AKLAT ng mga KATOLIKO!

Pope Damasus I was the bishop of Rome from October 366 to his death. He presided over the Council of Rome of 382 that determined the canon or official list of sacred scripture. He spoke out against major heresies in the church and encouraged production of the Vulgate Bible with his support for Jerome.

Council of Rome of 382 and the Biblical canon

One of the important works of Pope Damasus was to preside in the Council of Rome of 382 that determined the canon or official list of Sacred Scripture. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, states: A council probably held at Rome in 382 under Damasus gave a complete list of the canonical books of both the Old Testament and the New Testament (also known as the 'Gelasian Decree' because it was reproduced by Gelasius in 495), which is identical with the list given at Trent. American Catholic priest and historian William Jurgens stated: "The first part of this decree has long been known as the Decree of Damasus, and concerns the Holy Spirit and the seven-fold gifts. The second part of the decree is more familiarly known as the opening part of the Gelasian Decree, in regard to the canon of Scripture: De libris recipiendis vel non recipiendis. It is now commonly held that the part of the Gelasian Decree dealing with the accepted canon of Scripture is an authentic work of the Council of Rome of 382 A.D. and that Gelasius edited it again at the end of the fifth century, adding to it the catalog of the rejected books, the apocrypha. It is now almost universally accepted that these parts one and two of the Decree of Damasus are authentic parts of the Acts of the Council of Rome of 382 A.D." (Jurgens, Faith of the Early Fathers)

Jerome, the Vulgate and the Canon

Pope Damasus appointed Jerome as his confidential secretary. Invited to Rome originally to a synod of 382 convened to end the schism of Antioch, he made himself indispensable to the pope, and took a prominent place in his councils. Jerome spent three years (382–385) in Rome in close intercourse with Pope Damasus and the leading Christians. Writing in 409, Jerome remarked, "A great many years ago when I was helping Damasus, bishop of Rome with his ecclesiastical correspondence, and writing his answers to the questions referred to him by the councils of the east and west..."

In order to put an end to the marked divergences in the western texts of that period, Damasus encouraged the highly respected scholar Jerome to revise the available Old Latin versions of the Bible into a more accurate Latin on the basis of the Greek New Testament and the Septuagint, resulting in the Vulgate. According to Protestant biblical scholar, F.F. Bruce, the commissioning of the Vulgate was a key moment in fixing the biblical canon in the West.

Jerome devoted a very brief notice to Damasus in his De Viris Illustribus, written after Damasus' death: "he had a fine talent for making verses and published many brief works in heroic metre. He died in the reign of the emperor Theodosius at the age of almost eighty". Damasus may be the author of the anonymous Carmen contra paganos (song against the pagans).

[Source: Wikipedia]

Catholic Herald: Protestantism’s biggest problem: on whose authority do we interpret the scriptures?

Source: Catholic Herald

In the end, private interpretation isn't enough

On Saturday I joined a group of Anglican and Methodists in our village to walk around its familiar landmarks offering prayers. We started at the (pre-Reformation) Anglican church, moved on to the war memorial, then to the village school, thence to our popular local pub. A Methodist lady whom I know well told me sotto voce that she wasn’t going to join in praying for the pub to flourish. I remembered that Methodists forswear alcohol. Sotto voce I responded, “But what about Jesus’s first miracle at the marriage feast of Cana?” She replied, half-resigned, half-humorous: “Why do people always bring up Cana!”

Why indeed? It was not only Jesus’s first recorded miracle and a heavenly blessing on matrimony; it was also a sign of God’s lavish generosity and of the complete trust Our Lady had in her Son’s divine powers. The deeper question is: on whose authority do we interpret the Scriptures; John Wesley’s or the Church? To be fair to Wesley and as the Methodist lady and myself agreed, he was condemning the “demon drink” of his day rather than inventing a dogma. Yet at some stage in the spiritual life of a thoughtful Christian the question must arise: “Is private interpretation enough?”

These thoughts are prompted by my reading From Atheism to Catholicism: Nine Converts Explain their Journey Home” published by EWTN with a foreword by Marcus Grodi. I have only read two chapters so far, the first by John L Barger, whose Catholic wife gently nudged him out of his atheistic complacency, and the second by Holly Ordway, an American professor of English literature. Barger admitted that after discovering the Church to be right in so many areas (such as her opposition to abortion) and “seeing the virtues that blossom in those who follow Her teachings, I found it impossible to believe her to be the proud, mendacious caricature presented by Her enemies.”

Ordway, whom I interviewed for a blog I wrote in November 2014 after the publication of her own conversion story, Not God’s Type, explained that her love for the great Christian poets such as John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins and TS Eliot helped to prepare the imaginative ground for her eventual conversion, As she observes here, one might disagree with them (alongside prose writers such as CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien) “but you can’t call them stupid or uneducated!”

Ordway, not unlike Derya Little, who moved from Islam to atheism, then to evangelical Christianity and from there to the Church and whom I blogged about recently, moved from atheism to the Episcopalian Church in the US and thence to Catholicism, over the issue of authority: whom can one trust over a particular interpretation of the Bible?

Walking around our village with my fellow Christians we were all aware that beyond our own denominational disagreements we are in a tiny minority amid a sea of indifference and wholesale rejection of Christianity. In my 2014 interview with Ordway, she told me: “We need to ask: why has atheism become so entrenched in modern culture? What are the false ideas that have taken root in this culture that are bearing such poisoned fruit?” She sees her task as “harnessing the imagination to communicate truth” in a world where “people simply don’t connect with the language of Christianity.”

Kung Ang Biblia ay Hindi Maaaring Magkamali Ganon din ang Santa Iglesia na Siyang Nagtakda nito!

Hindi maikakaila ng lahat ng iglesiang Protestante na kung walang Iglesia Katolika ay wala ring Biblia. At kung tanggap nilang WALANG PAGKAKAMALI ang Biblia, tanggap din nilang WALANG PAGKAKAMALI ang IGLESIANG nagtakda nito sa buong sangka-Kristianuhan!

If The Bible Is Infallible Then So Is The Church

February 6, 2017 by K. Albert Little
Source: Patheos

Photo Credit: Dwight Stone.

A paradigm shift occurs when the number of compelling facts and figures from a competing world view other than your own forces you to concede your position—and adopt another.

It happens like this.

Facts and information enter your radar which you perhaps hadn’t considered before. They challenge your perspective, opinions, and ultimately, your view of the world. As more and more of these new arguments and ideas pile up the lens through which you’ve previously understood much of reality begins to look a bit foggy—the edges aren’t as crisply in focus as they used to be.

And on and on.

Eventually—and this may take a lifetime—the enormous pile of facts in the other, competing worldview appear to be more compelling. They make more sense; offer a more robust explanation of what you understand to be the world and you make a radical leap.

A paradigm shift.

This is what happens when an Evangelical Christian becomes a Catholic.

For me, one of those crucial pieces of information, which began as a question, orbited around the idea of an infallible Bible. Where did we get the Bible? And how did it get put together?

And what made us so sure it was the infallible Word of God?

This began, for me, the fateful journey towards a paradigm shift in my own life.

A journey into the Catholic Church.

In my early twenties, having been “saved” in the Evangelical church at the age of fifteen, I was embarrassed to not have an answer to that first question: Where did we get the Bible?

Sadly, up to that point in my life, it wasn’t even a question I’d considered. But, to be fair, it’d never been put to me either.

In my large Pentecostal church—where I clocked a good amount of Sunday mornings and Friday nights—the historical understanding of the timeline of the Bible ended with the final punctuation mark in the Book of Revelation and began again somewhere in the 1960’s (which was about when the oldest book in our church library would’ve been written).

There was, as there often is in Evangelical circles, a giant gaping hole in the middle of Church history.

As if nothing happened between the last book of the Bible being written and the preacher grasping it in his sweaty palms on a Sunday morning.

So it never occurred to me to ask either where we got it or how it was put together and when it was, finally, asked of me I had not discernable answer.

And that was worrying.

Digging around in familiar Protestant sources failed to make it any more clear.

The Bible, from a Protestant perspective, was hard to square.

Where exactly these books came from was fairly clear. In many cases the author identifies himself and their identity can be linked directly to the apostles and Jesus’s ministry. But why these particular books were included and others, as I learned, were intentionally left out was a complete mystery.

How do we, as Evangelicals, affirm these books to be infallible while declaring others to be not.

How do we know?

I was no closer to an answer, so I kept digging.

I learned that the biblical canon became relatively stable around about 400AD. The Protestant sources I read argued that these books, clearly, were collected together and considered canonical because they were the most read in and, thus, the most respected.

But why were they the most read while others weren’t?

As I dug deeper no satisfying answers emerged and even the best Protestant scholars admitted that the thesis of these particular books standing out of their own merit was weak.

Instead, it was the Church which affirmed these books as worthy to read, copy, and pass around amongst congregations. Congregations under the unequivocal authority of bishops who drew in a successive line tracing back to the apostles.

In other words, it was bishops like Augustine (who affirms a canon in his early writings) who authoritatively declared which books and letters, out of those being circulated, should carry weight.

And, finally, when these same bishops got together to make early pronouncements on the biblical canon in the 400’s it was through the authoritative mechanism of a Church Council. The same mechanism that Peter, Paul, et. al. used to sort out the earliest theological scramblings in Jerusalem (see Acts 15).

As I dug deep into the formation of the biblical canon I was flabbergasted because even the most robust of the Protestant theologians, R.J. Sproul, admits that the unless we afford some authority to the Catholic Church (we he doesn’t) we must admit that the Bible is, ultimately, “an fallible collection of infallible books.”

You can see my difficulties.

Unless we are to admit that the Catholic Church, with its hierarchy of bishops et cetera, held some kind of God-given authority and infallibility to collect up the Bible into its current form then we must be comfortable in admitting that maybe we got it wrong.

How can we trust that?

Because there is no infallible Table of Contents and nothing in the New or Old Testaments gives us a clue as to what should be in there.

Martin Luther, first-leg runner of the Reformation, actually wanted to remove certain pieces (like Hebrews and James) because they didn’t fit with what his interpretation of the salvation looked like. We know from history that these same sorts of disagreements happened in the first 400 years of the Church when there was no fixed canon.

Who’s to say that some letters and books weren’t removed then?

No one.

Unless we trust the Church.

I want to end with this,

In the first 400 years of Christian history, without a fixed canon, it had to have been the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, which maintained unity and helped its people to discern right, wrong, and understand its theology and teachings. Nevermind that most couldn’t read and even with a Bible it wouldn’t be much good; the Holy Spirit guided the authoritative teachers of the Church, first the apostles, and then their successors, in helping to discern important pieces of theology and identity.

It was in the first 400 years, before the serious concretization of the biblical canon, that important pieces of the Christian worldview like our understanding of the Trinity and the Person of Jesus were developed. These were developed and defended passionately by the Church at the time—before the Bible was canonized.

These developments happened within the context of a Church with an authority structure which also made decisions on how we can, and do, pray for the dead, the important place of the Blessed Virgin, the power and necessity of Baptism so save, and the unequivocal Real Presence of Christ in the Communion elements.

If we trust the Bible we have, how can we avoid trusting the Church?

In other words, if the Bible is infallible it can only be because it was put together by an infallible authority which is the Catholic Church.

The same Church which exists today, authoritatively governed by bishops who succeeded the men who collected the Bible, because Christ Himself said nothing would overcome it.

And, truly, if we trust the Bible but throw out everything else that the Church affirmed and taught prior to canonization than we’re doing nothing more than snacking as we please at a theological buffet. Established doctrinal norms like the Trinity and the Personhood of Jesus are not any more “evident in Scripture” than the Eucharist as Real Presence, the necessity of Baptism, and a Catholic understanding of the Communion of the Saints.

Like the canon of the Bible, these doctrines were affirmed by authority and rely, ultimately, on an extra-biblical source.

It was these struggles, as an Evangelical, which amounted merely to more information heaped onto an ever-growing pile of other compelling evidence. Answers without satisfactory questions; and the most I asked and received answers the more another way began to become more appealing.

These questions did have incredibly satisfying answers, I learned, found in the historic Church. A Church which claims continuity and historical pedigree stretching back to Jesus laying hands on a fisherman named Peter. And I’ve found, much to my delight, a spirituality, a historical grounding, and depth of faith and grace in this historic Church beyond anything I could’ve imagined before.

Nasaan po sina Martin Luther, Ellen G. White, Joseph Smith, Felix Manalo, Eli Soriano, Eddie Villanueva, Apollo Quiboloy, Arsenio Ferriol noong ginagawa ang Biblia?

Source: Defend the Catholic Faith

KING JAMES VERSION O FELIX MANALO BIBLE VERSION, KARAPAT-DAPAT BA?

Kung walang kapangyarihan ang isang hari para maglunsad ng sarili niyang Biblia, ano naman ang karapatan ni George Lamsa o ni Felix Manalo para bumuo ng sarili nilang Biblia tulad ng ginawa ng mga Jehovah's Witnesses (New World Translation) at marami pang mga naglipanang "biblia" raw pero maraming napalitang salita sa loob nito?

Full Question

So many Protestants I know use the King James Bible. Who was King James, and what authority did he have to produce a Bible?

Answer

James I reigned as king of England from 1603 to 1625. He was the son of Mary Queen of Scots, and he had been king of Scotland before succeeding to the English throne at the death of Queen Elizabeth I. He was prompted to produce an English Bible because of the poor and tendentious copies being circulated in England. He feared these could be used by seditious religious and political factions.

His authority was one usurped from the Catholic Church, beginning with his predecessor King Henry VIII. Henry had broken with the Catholic Church and made himself the head of the Church in England, which soon enough became the Church of England. You could say James had no more authority in biblical matters than any head of state, basically none. What authority would a “George Bush Bible” have? The true authority and safeguard over Scripture was and has to be the Catholic Church, to which Christ gave his authority. No secular authority has any rightful authority over the Bible.

Sampung Bagay na Paulit-ulit na Ginagamit Laban sa tunay na Iglesia - ang Iglesia Katolika!

Mga paulit-ulit at nakakasawang argumento ng  mga kaaway ng Iglesia. Marami pang iba ngunit itong sampu ang malimit na ginagamit. Bawat Katoliko ay dapat na malaman ang mga dapat na kasagutan sa kanilang mga kababawan!

BY ELIZABETH GIDDENS VALVERDE for CATHOLIC365

POSTED IN 2/19/2015

Photo Credit: Flickr/On Being

1.“Catholics worship statues.”

This stereotype is painful to hear. Not only is this completely false, but it is ludicrous. Despite the fact that there are 801 millions Protestants world-wide, according to the Pew Research Center, my rant will be geared towards our brothers and sisters in the United States. In this country, approximately 51.5% of people are Protestant Christians. Realistically, most of these families have pictures in their home, which is completely normal, right? Right. They have pictures of their loved ones, both living and deceased. Is it not hypocritical then to say that Catholics are idol worshipers, when these families have portraits of their loved ones on the walls? If these Protestant families can have pictures of Uncle Bernie and Mawmaw hanging on the wall, then most certainly the Church can present pictures of our beloved Jesus, his disciples, and the saints.

2.“Catholics pray to Mary instead of God.”

This is a very common misconception throughout the Protestant community, and while I can understand why it is, I am also disheartened that many jump to such a harsh conclusion of the Catholic faith. We don’t pray to Mary, we ask her to pray for us, just as a Protestant asks their deceased grandparent/parent to watch over them.

3. “The saints can’t hear your prayers, because they are dead.”

I beg to differ. Since when is anyone who is in Heaven considered dead? We call it the afterLIFE for a reason. In fact, there is biblical proof that the saints can hear our prays:

-Revelation 5:8 “And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people.”

-Revelation 8:3-4 “Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all God’s people, on the golden altar in front of the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand.”

4. “Mother Mary isn’t important; she’s just like anyone else.”

If our Blessed Mother isn’t important, then every female would have had an immaculate conception. For this reason, that is why the declarative statement above doesn’t make sense. Of course Mother Mary is important, she gave birth to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. What is so amazing about the Catholic faith is the fact that we recognize the importance of Mary, and we honor her accordingly. She is a role model and saint for all Christians to look up to, because she submitted to God completely. Until the day another woman gives birth to Jesus, no one will ever be just like Mary. She is a very special, holy woman.

5. “Catholics made up all their rules.”

Every single tradition we have in the Catholic Church, namely during Mass, has biblical roots. Not to mention the fact that Jesus was the founder of our Church. I don’t know about you, but Jesus doesn’t make mistakes.

6. “God said to confess sins to Him, not a priest.”

This one is a personal favorite of mine. Drum roll please.

-James 5:16 “Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.”

It is true that we pray directly to God, and ask Him to forgiveness, however for sins (mortal) we do as Jesus commands and confess it to one another (our priests). Jesus said this directly to his disciples, so through Him, they were able to forgive sins. This power passed down to every priest, and so on and so forth. That felt good.

7. “Catholicism is a cult.”

Jesus Christ founded this Church more than 2,000 years ago, I would hardly call it a cult.

8. “Catholics aren’t Christians.”

The word Christian is associated with anyone who follows Christ’s teachings, and since the Catholic Church does just that then we are to be called Christians. Not to mention Catholics were actually the first Christians.

9. “Catholics added books to the Holy Bible.”

This one is so hilarious it hurts. For 300 years there was no Bible, only random writings from the prophets like St.Peter etc, until the Catholic monks compiled and canonized what is now known today as the Holy Bible. (That is until the Protestant Reformation occurred, in which one man *Martin Luther* removed 7 books). Ouch.

10. “Catholics believe you can pay your way into Heaven.”

We definitely do not. That is a huge misconception which occurred during the Protestant Reformation.

Despite the many stereotypes that hang over our faith, the important thing to remember is our Church has stood the test of time and remained for more than 2,000 years. Whether you are Catholic or Protestant-- we are all followers of Christ, and He is the ultimate goal.

“The truth is like a lion. You don’t have to defend it, let it loose, and it will defend itself.”

-St. Augustine of Hippo

ANONG SALIN NG BIBLIA BA ANG GAMIT NG INYONG PASTOR O MINISTRO?

Marami sa Iglesia Protestante ang nag-aakalang ang KING JAMES VERSION (KJV) ay siyang pinakamagandang SALIN ng Biblia. Ito ay ginagamit ng mga 'Born Again' fellowships na nagsusulputang parang mga kabuti sa bawat sulok ng mga pamayananan na hindi man sila nagkakaisa sa unawa sa iisang talata ng Biblia.

Ang mga kaanib naman ng INC™ ni Felix Manalo ay WALANG SARILING BIBLIA at nanghihiram lamang sa mga Protestante ang mga Katoliko para sa kanilang Biblia. At sila pa ang nag-aastang magagaling daw sa Biblia.

Narito ang isang artikulo galing sa CatholicSay na nagpapaliwanag kung bakit ang KJV ay HINDI dapat na ituring na 'The Best' sa lahat ng mga salin.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI elevating the Gospel at the Vatican

Which Translation of the Bible is the Best?

Some people mistakenly think the King James Version of the Bible (KJV), with its eloquent thee’s and thou’s, is the original version.[1]But the Bible was not written in seventeenth-century Old English. More than 1,500 years earlier, the New Testament was written in ancient Greek; and long before that the Old Testament was written in ancient Hebrew, along with some Aramaic and Greek (the Old Testament was later translated into the Greek Septuagint).

As time went on, all these texts were translated into Latin, which is the official language of the Church, as well as popular languages like German, French, and English. Today, the entire Bible has been translated into more than 500 languages, and most languages offer several different translations.

It’s important to remember that there is only one version of the Bible, but there are many different translations of it. How can this be? The art of translation is not as simple as taking a word in one language and then using a dictionary to find the equivalent word in another language. Translators have differing opinions about how words and phrases in a text should be reproduced into another language that has different vocabulary, different rules of grammar, and embodies different cultural attitudes than the language of the text their translating.

Formal equivalence translations

One approach they use is called formal equivalence, and it strives to communicate the original words the author used. The most formally equivalent translations of Scripture would be interlinear Bibles that replace the original words in the biblical text with their modern counterparts. Using an interlinear translation, John 3:16, one of the most famous verses in Scripture, sounds like this: “Thus indeed loved God the world that the Son the only begotten he gave that everyone believing in him not should perish but might have life."

As you can see, interlinear translations sound stilted and can be confusing, because they take words that made sense in one language and transfer them into another language without considering that language’s grammar. Most formally equivalent translations change the order and kinds of words that are used in order to help modern audiences understand the author’s original meaning. The Catholic Revised Standard Version (RSV), which tends to be formally equivalent in its translation, renders the passage in this way: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

Dynamic equivalence translations

Another approach to translation is dynamic equivalence, which strives to communicate the original idea the author intended to convey, even if it does not use his original words. Some translators prefer this approach, because the author’s original words may not have the same meaning or not be as recognizable today and so newer words are used to better communicate his original idea. This can be seen in translations that render the Greek word dikaiosis “considered righteous" instead of the traditional term “justified," as in James 2:24: “a man is justified [or in other translations, ‘considered righteous’] by works and not by faith alone."

Ubod ng Kasinungalingang Ministro: Biblia ng Katoliko, sila pa ang maalam?

Ang sabi ng Ministro ng INC™ ang aral nila ay base sa Biblia "no more no less", sabay taas ng kopya ng Biblia.

TANONG: KANINONG BIBLIA BA ANG GINAGAMIT NILA?

Heto ang SAGOT sa tanong na yan! PANOORIN niyo!

"Katoliko ang gumawa ng Biblia mapa-impierno. INC™ nagbabasa lang, mapa-langit? Imposible naman! Common Sense!" -Muslim Ustadz

Ilan nga ba ang AKLAT sa Orihinal na Biblia Bago pa man Lumitaw ang Iglesia Protestante noong ika-16 Siglo?

Halos lahat ng mga Iglesia Protestante, kasama na po diyan INC™ na itinatag ni Felix Manalo noong 1914 ay GUMAGAMIT ng KULANG-KULANG na aklat ng Biblia. Ilan nga ba ang ORIHINAL na BILANG NA AKLAT sa Biblia, 73? O 66?

Narito ang magandang KAALAMAN muna sa CATHOLIC BIBLE 101.

The Bible - 73 or 66 Books?

So why does the Catholic Bible have 73 books, while the Protestant Bible has only 66 books? Some protestants believe that the Catholic Church added 7 books to the Bible at the Council of Trent in response to Luther’s Reformation, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

In about 367 AD, St. Athanasius came up with a list of 73 books for the Bible that he believed to be divinely inspired. This list was finally approved by Pope Damasus I in 382 AD, and was formally approved by the Church Council of Rome in that same year. Later Councils at Hippo (393 AD) and Carthage (397 AD) ratified this list of 73 books. In 405 AD, Pope Innocent I wrote a letter to the Bishop of Toulouse reaffirming this canon of 73 books. In 419 AD, the Council of Carthage reaffirmed this list, which Pope Boniface agreed to. The Council of Trent, in 1546, in response to the Reformation removing 7 books from the canon (canon is a Greek word meaning “standard”), reaffirmed the original St. Athanasius list of 73 books.

So what happened? How come the King James Bible only has 66 books? Well, Martin Luther didn’t like 7 books of the Old Testament that disagreed with his personal view of theology, so he threw them out of his bible in the 16th Century. His reasoning was that the Jewish Council of Jamnia in 90 AD didn’t think they were canonical, so he didn’t either. The Jewish Council of Jamnia was a meeting of the remaining Jews from Palestine who survived the Roman persecution of Jerusalem in 70 AD. It seems that the Jews had never settled on an official canon of OT scripture before this. The Sadducees only believed in the first 5 books of the Bible written by Moses (the Pentateuch), while the Pharisees believed in 34 other books of the Old Testament as well. However, there were other Jews around from the Diaspora, or the dispersion of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, who believed that another 7 books were also divinely inspired. In fact, when Jesus addressed the Diaspora Jews (who spoke Greek) he quoted from the Septuagint version of the scriptures. The Septuagint was a Greek translation by 70 translators of the Hebrew Word. The Septuagint includes the disputed 7 books that Protestants do not recognize as scriptural.

Initially, Luther wanted to kick out some New Testament Books as well, including James, Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation. He actually said that he wanted to “throw Jimmy into the fire”, and that the book of James was “an epistle of straw.” What is strange is that Luther eventually accepted all 27 books of the New Testament that the Catholic Pope Damasus I had approved of in 382 AD, but didn’t accept his Old Testament list, preferring instead to agree with the Jews of 90 AD. Luther really didn’t care much for Jews, and wrote an encyclical advocating the burning of their synagogues, which seems like a dichotomy. Why trust them to come up with an accurate canon of scripture when you hate and distrust them so much? And why trust the Catholic Church which he called “the whore of Babylon” to come up with an accurate New Testament list? Can you imagine the outrage by non-Catholics today if the Pope started throwing books out of the Bible? But strangely, Luther gets a pass on doing that exact same thing.

For the record, Jesus took the Kingdom away from the Jews (Matthew 21:43), and gave it to Peter and His new Church (Matthew 16:18), so the Jewish Council of Jamnia had no Godly authority to decide anything in 90 AD. They used 4 criteria for deciding whether or not certain books were canonical –

1. The books had to conform to the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the Bible- ......Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy);
2. They could not have been written after the time of Ezra (around 400 BC);
3. They had to be written in Hebrew;
4. They had to be written in Palestine.

Kaninong Biblia ba galing ang gamit ng inyong mga pastor o ministro?

Tanging sa Biblia lamang daw po tatalima at susunod ang mga pastor Protestante at mga ministro ng Iglesia ni Manalo. Madalas nating maririnig sa kanila ang mga katagang 'yan. 

Lahat sila ay Biblia raw ang kanilang "authority" pero napapansin niyo ba kung paano sila watak-watak?  Parang lumalabas na Biblia din ang nagwatak-watak sa kanila.  Ngunit alam naman natin na ang Biblia ay NAGBUBUKLOD at hindi sanhi ng pagkakawatak-watak.  Si Satanas lamang ang maaaring nagwawatak-watak. Kaya't ating dalangin na sa pamamagitan ng katotohanang ito ay bumalik na sa tunay na Iglesia ang lahat ng mga Kristiano.

Pero kanino nga ba galing ang Bibliang ginagamit nila at sinasaligan?

Magugulat kayo sa mga mababasa niyo sa ibaba. Asahan na nating hindi sasang-ayon dito ang mga kaanib ng mga Protestante at INC™ ni Manalo.

Ang Biblia po ay hindi po gawa ng mga Protestante. Hindi rin po yan gawa ng mga pastor nila, o ng mga bayarang ministro ng INC™.

Ating alamin kung paano nagkaroon ng Biblia at kung paano nagkaroon ng maraming versions nito!

Salamat sa SVMMA APOLOGIA

HOW DID THE BIBLE COME IN EXISTENCE?

In the one-hundred-year period extending roughly from AD 50 to 150, a number of documents began to circulate among the churches, including epistles, gospels, memoirs, apocalypses, homilies, and collections of teachings. While some of these documents were apostolic in origin, others drew upon the tradition the apostles and ministers of the word had utilized in their individual missions.

For more than 300 years of Christianity, there was no definitive compilation yet into a single book of these ancient documents like what is known to the world at present. From the beginning it was expected that certain of these documents would be read in the public gatherings of the church, though there were disputes and questions over the authenticity of certain documents like the Letter to the Hebrews, Letter of James, Second Letter of Peter, Second and Third Letters of John, Letter of Jude and the Revelation, known as the Antilegomena. At that time, these materials were accepted by some local churches and others did not. However, because of the increase in the amount of documents being circulated (whether authentic or not), the Church found it necessary to discern and choose which of these materials are inspired by the Holy Spirit. How was it done? Below is the timeline of the compilation of the Holy Bible:

• 70 BC: The translation of the Old Testament books from Hebrew to Greek known as Septuagint (LXX) by the 70 Jewish scholars for the Jews in Diaspora in Alexandria. This is the Old Testament version used by the apostles and early Christians.

• 50-150 AD: The writing of the New Testament books and the circulation of other apocryphal documents.

• 96 AD: Some letters of Paul were known to Clement I, bishop of Rome, together with some form of the "words of Jesus"; but while Clement valued these highly, he did not regard them as "Scripture" ("graphe"), a term he reserved for the Septuagint.

• 100 AD: The Council of Jamnia, held in Yavneh, was a Jewish council at which the canon of the Hebrew Bible had been finalized. It excluded the seven books of the Old Testament which are part of its Greek version, the Septuagint. These books are regarded by the Church as inspired and are known as the deuterocanonical.

• 130-140 AD: Marcion of Sinope, a bishop of Asia Minor who went to Rome and was later excommunicated for his views, was the first of record to propose a definitive, exclusive, unique canon of Christian scriptures. He taught that there were two Gods: Yahweh, the cruel God of the Old Testament, and Abba, the kind father of the New Testament. Marcion eliminated the Old Testament as scriptures and, since he was anti-Semitic, kept from the New Testament only 10 letters of Paul and 2/3 of Luke's gospel (he deleted references to Jesus' Jewishness). His gospel is called the Gospel of the Lord.

• 145-163 AD: Justin Martyr, an early Christian apologist, mentioned the "memoirs of the apostles", which Christians called "gospels" and which were regarded as on par with the Old Testament. In his works, distinct references are found to Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians, and possible ones to Philippians, Titus, and 1 Timothy.

• 160 AD: Tatian the Assyrian, an early Christian theologian, composed a single harmonized "Gospel" by weaving the contents of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John together along with events present in none of these texts. The narrative mainly follows the chronology of John. This is called the Diatessaron ["(Harmony) Through Four"] and it became the official Gospel text of the Syriac church, centered in Edessa. He rejected Paul's Letters and Acts of the Apostles

• 185 AD: Irenaeus, bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul, in his Adversus Haereses, denounced various early Christian groups that used only one gospel, such as Marcionism which used only Marcion's version of Luke, or the Ebionites which seem to have used an Aramaic version of Matthew, as well as groups that used more than four gospels, such as the Valentinians (A.H. 1.11). Irenaeus declared that there can't be either more or fewer than four, presenting as logic the analogy of the four corners of the earth and the four winds (3.11.8).

• ca. 200 AD: Origen Adamantius, early Christian theologian, accepted 22 canonical books of the Hebrews plus Maccabees plus the four Gospels but Paul "did not so much as write to all the churches that he taught; and even to those to which he wrote he sent but a few lines."

• ca. 200 AD: The periphery of the canon was not yet determined as of this time. According to one list, the Muratorian Canon (named after Fr. Ludovico Antonio Muratori who discovered it at the Ambrosian Library in Milan in the 18th century), which was compiled at Rome, the New Testament was comprised of the 4 gospels; Acts; 13 letters of Paul (Hebrews is not included); 3 of the 7 General Epistles (1-2 John and Jude); and also the Apocalypse of Peter. Each "city-church" (region) still has its own Canon, which is a list of books approved for reading at Mass (Liturgy).

• ca. 215 AD: Titus Flavius Clemens (Clement of Alexandria), an early Christian theologian, made use of an open canon. In addition to books that did not make it into the final 27-book New Testament but which had local canonicity (Barnabas, Didache, I Clement, Revelation of Peter, the Shepherd, the Gospel according to the Hebrews), he also used the Gospel of the Egyptians, Preaching of Peter, Traditions of Matthias, Sibylline Oracles, and the Oral Gospel. He did, however, prefer the four church gospels to all others, although he supplemented them freely with apocryphal gospels. He was the first to treat non-Pauline letters of the apostles (other than II Peter) as scripture-he accepted I Peter, I and II John, and Jude as scripture.

• ca. 300 AD: The Alogi, an early Christian group, rejected the Gospel of John (and possibly also Revelation and the Epistles of John) as either not apostolic or as written by the Gnostic Cerinthus or as not compatible with the Synoptic Gospels.

• 300 A.D. The Old Syriac was a translation of the New Testament documents from the Greek into Syriac. In the Coptic Versions, Coptic was spoken in four dialects in Egypt and the materials were translated into each of these four dialects.

• ca. 303 AD: The making of what is currently known Codex Claromontanus canon (named after the town of Clermont-en-Beauvaisis in France from where it was procured by the Calvinist scholar Theodore Bezza in the late 16th century), a page found inserted into a copy of the Epistles of Paul and Hebrews, has the Old Testament, plus Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, 1–2,4 Maccabees, and the New Testament, plus 3rd Corinthians, Acts of Paul, Apocalypse of Peter, Barnabas, and Hermas, but missing Philippians, 1–2 Thessalonians, and Hebrews.

• 330 AD: Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, recorded his own New Testament canon which includes the holy quaternion of the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the epistles of Paul, the epistle of John, the epistle of Peter, the Apocalypse of John, the epistle of James and that of Jude, also the second epistle of Peter, and the second and third epistles of John.

• 331 AD: Roman Emperor Constantine I commissioned Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, to deliver fifty compiled Scriptures for the Church of Constantinople. Athanasius (Apostolic Constitution 4) recorded Alexandrian scribes around 340 AD preparing the Canon for Constans. Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are among of these ancient compilations together with the Peshitta and Codex Alexandrinus.

• 350 AD: Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, included in his Catechetical Lectures (4.36) the Gospels (4), Acts, James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude, and Paul's epistles (14), but listed the Gospel of Thomas as pseudepigrapha.

• 360 AD: The making of the so-called Cheltenham/Mommsen Canon (named after German classical scholar Theodor Mommsen who discovered it in 1886 from a 10th-century manuscript belonging to the library of Thomas Phillips at Cheltenham, England), which contains the 24-book Old Testament and 24-book New Testament that provides syllable and line counts but omits Hebrews, Jude and James, and questions the epistles of John and Peter.

• 363 AD: The Synod of Laodicea was one of the first synods that set out to judge which books were to be read aloud in churches. It canonized 22-book Old Testament and 26-book New Testament (excludes Revelation).

• 367 AD: In his Festal letter, Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, gave a list of exactly the same books as what would become the 27-book New Testament canon, and he used the word "canonized" (kanonizomena) in regards to them. He also listed a 22-book Old Testament and 7 books not in the canon but to be read: Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit, Didache, and the Shepherd of Hermas.

• 374-377 AD: Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis, listed the following canon in his Panarion 76.5: Gospels (4), Paul's epistles (13), Acts, James, Peter, 1-3 John, Jude, Revelation, Wisdom, Sirach.

• 380 AD: The redactor of the Apostolic Constitutions attributed a canon to the Twelve Apostles themselves as the 85th of his list of such apostolic decrees: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John; the fourteen Epistles of Paul; two Epistles of Peter; three of John; one of James; one of Jude; two Epistles of Clement; and the Acts of the Apostles.

• 382 AD: The Synod of Rome (presided by Pope Damasus) started the ball rolling for the definition of a universal canon for all city-churches. It listed the New Testament books in their present number and order.

• ca. 382 AD: Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus (Jerome), a Roman presbyter, was commissioned by Damasus I, bishop of Rome, to revise the Vetus Latina ("Old Latin") collection of Biblical texts in Latin then in use by the Church. Once published, it was widely adopted and eventually eclipsed the Vetus Latina and, by the 13th century, was known as the "versio vulgata" (the "version commonly-used") or, more simply, in Latin as vulgata or in Greek as βουλγάτα ("Vulgate").

• 385 AD: Gregory of Nazianzus, bishop of Constantinople, produced a canon in verse which agreed with that of his contemporary Athanasius, other than placing the "Catholic Epistles" after the Pauline Epistles and omitting Revelation. This list was ratified by the Synod of Trullo of 692 AD.

• inter 386-388 AD: John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople, was the first (in his Homilies on Matthew) to use the Greek phrase "ta biblia" (the books) to describe both the Old and New Testaments together.

• 393 AD: The Synod of Hippo Regius in North Africa accepted the present canon of the New Testament.

• 394 AD: Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium, in his poem Iambics for Seleucus, nephew of St. Olympias, discussed debate over the canonical inclusion of a number of books, and almost certainly rejects the later Epistles of Peter and John, Jude, and Revelation.

• 397 AD: The third Synod of Carthage, which refined the canon for the Western Church, sent it to Innocent I, bishop of Rome, for ratification. Its list is similar to the present canon of scriptures. In the East, the canonical process was hampered by a number of schisms.

• ca 405 AD: Innocent I, bishop of Rome, in ratification of the canon defined by the Synod of Carthage, sent the list of the sacred books to Exsuperius, Gallic bishop of Toulouse, which was identical with that of the Ecumenical Council of Trent.

• 419 AD: The fourth Synod of Carthage reaffirmed the canon defined by the previous synod in its present number and order (similar to the Ecumenical Council of Trent).

• 551-62 AD: Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, Roman statesman and writer, in his Institutiones Divinarum et Saecularium Litterarum, omitted 2 Peter, 2-3 John, Jude and Hebrews.

• 787 AD: The Second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, which adopted the canon of Carthage. At this point, both the Latin West and the Greek / Byzantine East had the same canon. However, the non-Greek, Monophysite and Nestorian Churches of the East (the Copts, the Ethiopians, the Syrians, the Armenians, the Syro-Malankars, the Chaldeans, and the Malabars) were still left out. But these Churches came together in agreement, in 1442A.D., in Florence.

• 1199 AD: Innocent III, bishop of Rome, banned unauthorized versions of the Bible as a reaction to the Cathar and Waldensian heresies. The synods of Toulouse and Tarragona (in 1234 AD) outlawed possession of such renderings. But there is evidence of some vernacular translations still being permitted while others were being scrutinized.

• ca. 1245 AD: Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, and Hugo Cardinal de Sancto-Caro, dominican titular bishop of Santa Sabina, developed different schemas for systematic division of the Bible. It was the system of Archbishop Langton on which the modern chapter divisions are based.

• 1380 AD: The first English translation of the Bible was by John Wycliffe, the founder of the anti-Catholic group named Lollardy. He translated the Bible into English from the Latin Vulgate. This was a translation from a translation and not a translation from the original Hebrew and Greek. Wycliffe was forced to translate from the Latin Vulgate because he did not know Hebrew or Greek.

• 1442 AD: AD : At the Ecumenical Council of Florence, the entire Church recognized the 27 books. This council confirmed the Roman Catholic Canon of the Bible which Damasus I, bishop of Rome, had published a thousand years earlier. So, by 1439 AD, all orthodox branches of the Church were legally bound to the same canon. This is 100 years before the Reformation.

• 1448 AD: The Hebrew Old Testament was divided into verses by a French Jewish philosopher and controversialist by the name of Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus (Mordacai Nathan).

• 1456 AD: Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg, a German publisher and inventor of a movable type printing, produced the first printed Bible in Latin. Printing revolutionized the way books were made. From now on books could be published in great numbers and at a lower cost.

• ca. 1500 AD: The first person to divide New Testament chapters into verses was an Italian Dominican biblical scholar Santi Pagnini, but his system was never widely adopted.

• ⚫1514 AD: The Greek New Testament was printed for the first time by Erasmus. He based his Greek New Testament from only five Greek manuscripts, the oldest of which dated only as far back as the twelfth century. With minor revisions, Erasmus' Greek New Testament came to be known as the Textus Receptus or the "received texts."

• ⚫1522 AD: Polyglot Bible, in which group of editors was led by Diego López de Zúñiga and funded by Jiménez Cardinal de Cisneros, was published. The Old Testament was in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin and the New Testament in Latin and Greek. Erasmus used the Polyglot to revise later editions of his New Testament. Tyndale made use of the Polyglot in his translation on the Old Testament into English which he did not complete because he died in 1534 AD.

• ⚫1536 AD: In his translation of the Bible from Greek into German, Martin Luther, a former Catholic monk and priest who became the primary figure of the Protestant Reformation, removed four New Testament books (Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation) and placed them in an appendix treating them as less than canonical as well as the seven Old Testament books (Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, and Baruch plus the additional texts in Esther and Daniel) labelling them as apocryphal.

• ⚫1546 AD: At the Ecumenical Council of Trent, the Catholic Church reaffirmed once and for all the full list of 27 books. The council also confirmed the inclusion of the Deuterocanonical books which had been a part of the Bible canon since the early Church and was confirmed at the councils of 393 AD, 373 AD, 787 AD and 1442 AD. At Trent, the Church of Rome actually dogmatized the canon, making it more than a matter of canon law, which had been the case up to that point, closing it for good.

• ⚫1551 AD: Robert Estienne, a French printer and classical scholar, created an alternate numbering in his edition of the Greek New Testament which was also used in his 1553 publication of the Bible in French. Estienne's system of division was widely adopted, and it is this system which is found in almost all modern Bibles.

• ⚫1566 AD: Sixtus of Siena, a dominican theologian, coined the term "deuterocanonical" to describe the seven Old Testament books that had not been accepted as canonical by the Protestants but which appeared in the Septuagint; and defined for the Roman Catholics of the terms "protocanonical" and the ancient term "apocryphal" in his work Bibliotheca Sancta ex Præcipuis Catholicæ Ecclesiæ Auctoribus Collecta (Venice 1566).

• ⚫16th century to present AD: The HOLY BIBLE composed of 72 canonical books (45 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament) based on the infallible decree of the holy Catholic Church. Thus, the great Tridentine Council declared: "But if any one receive not, as sacred and canonical, the said books entire with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin vulgate edition; and knowingly and deliberately contemn the traditions aforesaid; let him be anathema."

The timeline of the development of the biblical canon is the living proof that the holy Bible was not handed down by Christ to His apostles as it is. The Bible did not even come down from the heavens as what it looks like at present. The truth is:

IT WAS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH WHO CHOSE WHICH BOOKS ARE INSPIRED AND COMPILED THEM INTO A SINGLE BOOK WHICH SHE CALLED THE BIBLE. THUS, IT IS THE BIBLE WHICH CAME FROM THE CHURCH AND NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.

However, despite this historical fact, the holy Church did not claim authorship on those divine scriptures. For her, "God is the author of Sacred Scripture" (CCC 105). And, she added: "To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more" (CCC 106).

Remember, "the Christian faith is not a religion of the book but of the Word of God, a word which is not a written and mute word, but the Word is incarnate and living" (cf. CCC 108).

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Jesus Christ, the Lord, founded a Church and that Church produced the Bible.

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Photo: The Codex Vaticanus is one of the oldest extant manuscripts of the Greek Bible (Old and New Testament), one of the four great uncial codices. It is considered one of the fifty copies of the scriptural canon produced by Eusebius as commissioned by Emperor Constantine I in 331 AD for the church of Constantinople. It is being kept in the Vatican Library since at least the 15th century.