Canon

• Canon of the Old Testament
• Canon of the New Testament

Development of the Canon

• No book of the Bible lists the books of the Bible.
• The determination of which writings to treat as inspired, Sacred Scripture and which writings to treat as not intended by God to become part of the Bible is an extra-Biblical decision. This is one of the ways in which the Protestant dogma that truth is to be sought "sola scriptura" falls apart.
• "Canon of the OT and the NT."

The misuse of Scripture

• Jesus left a Body, not a book.
• No verse in the Bible says "Every teaching of the Church must be backed up by a verse in the Bible." This is an extra-Biblical decision. It is an act of hypocrisy or ignorance. The people who set this as the standard for deciding what may and may not be taught violate the standard in the very act of stating it.
• The doctrine of "sola Scriptura" is not found in the Scriptures. "Sola scriptura" is a slogan invented by Martin Luther in the 16th century.

Canon-within-a-canon

This is an error that is common among many Protestants. They select some books from the canon of the OT or the NT and neglect others.

Rejection of Seven Old Testament books

The proper name of the Hebrew Scriptures is "TNK," which stands for:

• "Torah," the Hebrew word for "Law."
• "Nebi'im," the Hebrew word for "Prophets."
• "Kethub'im," the Hebrew word for "Writings."

After Persia was conquered by Alexander the Great (356–323 BC), Jewish children growing up in cities outside of the Holy Land tended to speak Greek as their first and most natural language. In the third century BC, probably in Alexandria, Egypt, TNK was translated into Greek by Jewish rabbis on behalf of Greek-speaking Jews. A legend sprang up that 70 rabbis independently translated TNK into Greek in one month's time and found that their translations matched letter-for-letter. The meaning of the legend is clear: those who could only read the Scriptures in Greek were reading an edition that was just as good as the Hebrew. Because of the legend of the 70 rabbinic translators, the Greek translation of TNK was called the "Septuagint" (the Greek word for "70"). "Septuagint" then came to be abbreviated as "LXX," using the Roman numerals for "70."

The Septuagint did not just translate TNK. Seven new books composed in Greek or else whose Hebrew original has been lost were added to the canon.

Catholics accept these books as inspired by God:

• 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees
• Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)
• Wisdom
• Baruch
• Tobit
• Judith

Martin Luther judged that these books were not inspired by the Holy Spirit. He also tried, but failed, to eliminate Esther from the OT canon. Those Protestants who follow Luther's teachings accept only the 39 books found in TNK as inspired by God and set aside these 7 books from LXX as "apocryphal" or "deuterocanonical."

"Of the approximately 300 Old Testament quotes in the New Testament, approximately 2/3 of them came from the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) which included the deuterocanonical books that the Protestants later removed. This is additional evidence that Jesus and the apostles viewed the deuterocanonical books as part of canon of the Old Testament."<ref>"Septuagint Quotations in the New Testament."

No book of the Bible resolves the question of exactly which scriptures from the time of the Old Testament were inspired by God. The question can only be decided on extra-Biblical considerations.

Attempt to Discard New Testament books

Luther treated four books of the New Testament as apocryphal (not inspired by God):

• Hebrews
• James
• Jude
• Revelation

These books were placed at the end of the New Testament, lacked page numbers, and did not appear in the index.