Bible Talk

Candy has posted an extremely long post about her favorite Bible version.

I get a lot of questions about which Bible I would suggest to people to get. I have avoided answering that question in the past, because I was still trying to find the "perfect" one for me.

As she posts King James Only articles at least monthly, I don't see how she's shy about endorsing that version. I suppose she means this specific Nelson version, but I've seen her recommend the Dake Annotated version multiple times before, too. Maybe she meant she has thus far avoided answering that question in December?

My parents had two Bible versions in the house - the King James Version, and the Dewey Rheims Roman Catholic version. I didn't know those were different versions, I just thought that since they were by different publishers, they had different names. However, I never read from the Dewey Rheims; I was always drawn to only read from the KJV. But alas, I didn't understand the Bible until after I got saved, many years later.

I see that she doesn't let a chance go by to get in a dig at the Catholic Church. First, it is named the Douay-Rheims Bible. That particular version is the King James equivalent in the Catholic Church. Usually, if people have a Douay-Rheims version, it is an old family copy, such as the one that I have. We discussed other Catholic versions the last time Candy was recommending the Dake.

Amazing! After I got saved, I could sit down and read the Bible, and I could understand it! Oh, how excited I was, and still am! :-D You see, as the book of Ephesians teaches us, after a person truly gets saved, God's Holy Spirit comes to live within them, and that person is thereby sealed by God's Holy Spirit. With the help of God's Holy Spirit, I was able to read the Bible, and read it with understanding.

Candy usually tells Catholics that if they would only read the Bible, they would see the errors of their Church and truly be able to be born again Christians. This new statement from her makes it seem as if it would be pointless for us to read our Bible until we get saved, because we wouldn't be able to understand it. That also makes the case of the Bereans, who searched the Scriptures to see if Jesus was truly the Christ, not fit her theology.

I refuse to read any Bibles with the Apocrapha in them. The very word "appocrapha" means "hidden, or spurious." How very fitting - especially in the spurious sense. The apocrapha isn't the Word of God. This is why it has always been rejected by Jews and Christians of old. The other, and more common definition, of apocrapha is "hidden." This tells us right there that the apocrapha is false. The Bible tells us that nothing is hidden of God. The Bible is against religious esoteric nonsense.

If it is only the word "apocrypha" that bothers her, that should be easy to fit. The books to which she is referring are actually the deuterocanonical books. The apocrypha refers to books such as the Gospel of James, that were not included in the New Testament.

Second, I would like to point out that these books were not rejected by the Jews. The Jewish festival of Hannukkah comes from the book of Maccabees.

The apocrapha was never included in the 1611 KJV Bible. Because of Jesuit pressure, the translators were forced to put the apocrapha between the Old and New Testaments, but they refused to include it within the Bible text itself. It was considered words of man - and that is why it was put between the Testaments, and not included in them. In later printings, publishers were finally allowed to remove those spurious books from between the Testaments.

I hate to break it to Candy, but if it was between the Old and New Testaments, then it IS within the Bible. We're supposed to believe that these translators were divinely inspired to translate the ONLY valid English translation of the Bible, yet God allowed them to be corrupted just enough to include the deuterocanonical books? Later printings implies that they were only in the 1611 version, but they were not removed from non-Catholic Bibles until the 1800s.

Chronologically, these books were written in the time period between the close of the Old Testament canon, and the writing of the New Testament. The deuterocanonical books were written in Greek, rather than Hebrew, and were included in the Septuagint. They were read in the Synagogues, and Jesus quoted from them.

The translators of the KJV defended the Septuagint in their preface, which Candy has posted previously.

The translation of the Seventy dissenteth from the Original in many places, neither doth it come near it, for perspicuity, gravity, majesty; yet which of the Apostles did condemn it? Condemn it? Nay, they used it, (as it is apparent, and as Saint Jerome and most learned men confess) which they would not have done, nor by their example of using it, so grace and commend it to the Church, if it had been unworthy the appellation and name of the word of God.


I'm also curious as to how she thinks the Valdois had valid Bibles when they included at least some of the deuterocanonical books as well.

Previous entries on this topic:
apocryphal=false?
Apocrypha--Not a Jesuit plot
More on Jesuits and the KJV
Closed Canon