World's Oldest Bible

The world's oldest Bible is now available online, and it contains the deuterocanonical books.

I wonder if this is the one Candy claims was found in a monastery trashcan? It came from the monastery of St. Catherine at Mt. Sinai.

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

More on Jesuits and the KJV

Susan from Sinner Saved By God left a great comment on my Jesuit post. I'm thought everyone should be able to see the info, so I'm pasting it below. Thanks Susan, for sharing your research!

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I'd like to know how the Jesuits infiltrated the AV translation team and why they didn't do a better job of "corrupting" it.

Apparently the Jesuits were blamed for the Gunpowder Plot so I don't imagine James would have had much liking for them so would have been unlikely to include them in the team. (Incidentally, I was taught at school that the Catholics were driven to the Gunpowder Plot by terrible persecution.)

According to this anti-Catholic site, "William Tyndale translated Erasmus's Greek Text into English. To counter this version, the Jesuit order of the Catholic Church sponsored the 1582 Rheims-Douay version, based on the Vulgate, in order to push Catholic control of the British Isles. In spite of the Spanish Armada and infiltrating Jesuits, English Protestantism stood firm against the wiles of Rome. A more readable English translation appeared in 1611, at the behest of King James. It has been called the most beautiful piece of literature in any language, and for 300 years served as a bulwark against the papacy."

And according to this rather bizarre site, "From the year 1611 the Catholic Jesuits have changed Gods words so that it does not have the same meaning and they have created hundreds of bibles based on Gods words but they are no longer Gods words when they are changed as they are being created to lead people to the Catholic religion which is not a religion but a synagogue of Satan" and "I read only from the Authorized King James Bible 1611 for this reason I have lived what he talks about I have had Catholic after Catholic put into my life and all were grooming me to take part in this war.

If the King James bible has been replaced in your Church by any other but especially the New International Version you very likely have a Jesuit priest and they come in all shapes and sizes but they will eventually lead all back to their Catholic Church ."

After a lot of searching I also managed to find this which claims the following:
"Catholic plants, stationed in the English court leaked news that King James intended to authorize an English Bible based on the inspired manuscript (Textus Receptus). The news electrified the Vatican. Jesuits, skilled in languages, were immediately ordered to join the Anglican church. Certain advisors trusted by King James were deep catholic agents. Puritans suspected that some of these men chosen to assist them were not of God. They complained to King James, but he overrode their objections. The plot was to secretly switch the text containing God’s Word and replace it with their Roman Catholic (Vaticanus) Alexandrian manuscript. God stopped these undercover Jesuits from destroying the Word by having guards posted at their tables to watch their every move. Then they moved to place the Apocrypha into the Old Testament. Their last mission; which was to place the Apocrypha between the Old and New Testaments was temporarily accomplished, until the plot was discovered. The Jesuits believed that once the apocrypha was between the covers of the Protestant Bible, that the Protestants would finally accept it as holy writ, and then turn back to the Vatican as their final authority.

After the King James Bible was printed, the Jesuits swore to destroy the Protestant translators who opposed them. They systematically eliminated both them and their families. Later, two Jesuits were soundly converted and they informed the puritans of the conspiracy against the Protestant movement and the Word of God."

This also begs the question why don't we have the names of these so-called Jesuit infiltrators?

Apocrypha--Not a Jesuit plot

From today's comments:

Jesuits infiltrated the translation team of King James. The KJV translators didn't want to include the apocrypha but the infiltration was causing trouble.

Thus, the translators put the apocrypha BETWEEN the Testaments, and labeled every single page as "apocrypha," so that people would see that that was extra stuff, and not part of the Bible.

These days, many Bibles have dictionary and notes in them. These are not parts of the Bible, but are apocryphal - the words of man, not part of the Bible.

Later printings of the KJV rightly had the apocrypha removed.

First, the proper name for these books are the deuterocanonical books, because apocrypha is a larger term. They are placed between the testaments because that is where they occur chronologically. They were written in the time between the close of the Old Testament and the birth of Jesus. Jesus actually quoted from the deuterocanonical books.

Candy implies that only the 1611 King James Version included the deuterocanonical books, but they were included in all Bibles until 1826, when one Bible Society decided not to include them, and the practice spread from there.

Candy has a link to the preface to the KJV on her webpage. The translators not only quote from the Fathers of the Church frequently, but defend the Septuagint:

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 find it difficult to believe that the translators respected the Church Fathers, defended the Septuagint, yet rejected the deuterocanonical books and only included them because they were forced to do so.

She also seems to define apocryphal as "extra" here, where previously, she defines it as "false." Does she feel that the dictionary and notes are false, or has she finally admitted that her prior claim was false?

You can read our previous entry about the deuterocanonical books in The Catholic Bible.

You can also read an article at Envoy magazine called "5 Myths About 7 Books."

Bible History

Sometime commenter at our blog, Mile Hi Mama unexpectedly dives into some Bible history, when a seemingly innocent homeschooling book promotes the King James Only version of history.

While there is a case to be made for the Majority Text (Masoretic Text), it is also a witness, not the original manuscript of the Hebrew Scriptures, just as the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus texts are witnesses to the Septuagint, and not the original texts.

Dr. Beechick claims to avoid the Vaticanus manuscript because it was written by Origen, but Origen lived in the second and third century AD and the Vaticanus is dated to the fourth century. Scholars believe that the Bible by Origen and the Vaticanus probably come from the same source manuscript.

She claims the Codex Vaticanus/Eusebian bible based on them disappeared until the 1800's, when it was rediscovered. Also not true; it was well known throughout the world that the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus were housed at the Vatican library. It was used to produce a Roman version of the Septuagint in the 16th century.

I think she hates it because it is probably Alexandrian in origin, and contains the Septuagint - the Old Testament canon used at the time of Christ by Greek Jews - and therefore contains the deuterocanonical books.

Dr. Beechick claims the Septuagint was written in the third century (She leaves off the "B.C." part, leaving readers to assume that the Septuagint was a manuscript written while the church leaders were trying to nail down the canon. The Septuagint was written and used by the Jews hundred of years before Christ's birth, a very important point.)

This is a version of the sort of argument Candy posts frequently, so I thought it was relevant.

Savior versus Saviour

Not that it matters to me how Savior is spelled, but I see Candy is selectively utilizing online dictionaries again.

Candy writes:

Savior - noun
1. a person who saves, rescues, or delivers: the savior of the country.
- dictionary.com

Saviour - noun
1. a teacher and prophet born in Bethlehem and active in Nazareth; his life and sermons form the basis for Christianity (circa 4 BC - AD 29)
- WordNet dictionary

From the WordNet dictionary:

Savior - noun
1. a teacher and prophet born in Bethlehem and active in Nazareth; his life and sermons form the basis for Christianity (circa 4 BC - AD 29)
- WordNet dictionary

They list that meaning first, regardless of the spelling.

The dictionary.com listing, American Heritage, and Merriam-Webster all had this meaning listed second, rather than first, as the WordNet dictionary did.

apocryphal = false?

Candy wrote:
Other Cambridge Bibles have the apocrypha in it - apocrypha means "false."

When commentor Cris asked her about that, Candy stated:
From the note under the American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition at dictionary.com, under the definition for 'Apocrypha.'

"false; spurious: He told an apocryphal story about the sword, but the truth was later revealed."

From definition 3 of dictionary.com - Unabridged v 1.1, under the definition of 'apocryphal.'

How ingenious to directly quote "definition 3" from dictionary.com.

If you actually visit the site, you will find the second definition states:

2.Ecclesiastical.

a.	(initial capital letter) of or pertaining to the Apocrypha.

Or the American Heritage, which she mentioned first, states:

1. Apocryphal Bible Of or having to do with the Apocrypha.

As we are using the ecclesiastical and I daresay, biblical definition of Apocrypha, I think it safe to say that we should use those definitions.

But what is the root of apocryphal in the Biblical sense? Cris was correct. The Catholic Encyclopedia states:

Etymologically, the derivation of Apocrypha is very simple, being from the Greek apokryphos, hidden, and corresponding to the neuter plural of the adjective. The use of the singular, "Apocryphon", is both legitimate and convenient, when referring to a single work.

The original King James Bible included the Apocrypha, as you can read here.

The Jews celebrate Hannukah because it is written in the book of Maccabees, which is found in the Apocrypha. If it is considered a feast, then I would guess that Jews do not consider it a false story.

For more information on the books known as the Apocrypha, see this post on The Catholic Bible.

My response (to this) is is here.