Valerie wrote:Bootstrap wrote:The Hebrew Bible used by the Jews does not contain the Apocrypha. Various Greek translations of the Old Testament did, but the books they included varied.
Whether or not they are inspired, you get important history from books like 1 Maccabees. I don't think the Christian faith changes much if you accept these books as inspired. Those churches that accept the Apocrypha accept different sets of books, so there's no one thing called the Apocrypha.
What about Maccabees 2 & 3?
Well, that already starts to get a little complicated. The Greek Maccabees 2&3 or the Ethiopic Maccabees 2 & 3? There are churches that go with each and churches that acknowledge neither. I haven't actually spent any time with any of these books, I mentioned 1 Maccabees because I know it. I'm not ready to have an opinion about Maccabees 2 &3.
And then there's 4th Maccabees.
This table is useful:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon#Table
For the most part, I don't think it changes our faith much to include or omit these books, they do enrich our understanding of history, I'm not sure that I accept them all as free of error. But some Christians do. I don't see this as something worth dividing over. I feel safest with the books that all Christians accept as Scripture.
Valerie wrote:Wonder why Jews would omit certain books?
I don't think the "omitted" these books. Most of these books were written after the Jewish canon, and written in Greek rather than Hebrew. The Christian Church did not "omit" Origen's writings from the Bible, they were never in our Bible.
Valerie wrote:You are speaking of today's Jews, correct? Jews in Jesus 'earthly' time would have used the Septuagint as He quoted from it?
Jews in the time of Jesus used both, and Jesus quoted from both. I'm just guessing, but I would expect them to use only the Hebrew in the Jewish Temple, and to use the Greek translation in places where you did not have to be quite as formal. Hebrew was the original language, and I assume it was also the language of their national and religious identity.
For instance, Matthew 4:15–16, John 19:37 are from the Hebrew text, not from the Septuagint. You can compare in this table:
Table of Old Testament quotes in the New Testament, in English translation
The following is a table of New Testament (NT) quotations of the Old Testament (OT). The left column carries the NT citations, the middle the Septuagint (LXX) and the last column the Masoretic (MT). !!! SNIP !!!
This chart allows anyone without Greek to easily see, at a glance, the major differences that exist between the various versions.
The chart has no scholarly value. Anyone who wants to understand precisely the differences should begin to learn Greek, and to read the secondary literature on the subject. A good starting place is Natalio Fernández Marcos, "The Septuagint and the New Testament," chapter 21 in The Septuagint in Context: Introduction to the Greek Version of the Bible, trans. Wilfred G. E. Watson (Leiden: Brill, 2000) ||. Marcos's judgment on the matter is "that most of the the Old Testament quotations in the New follow the text of the LXX in one of its known forms." (265) Thus, in some instances where the NT and LXX do not match, the NT may reflect an earlier or alternate version of the LXX.
But some of the quotes really do seem to be from the Hebrew text. And it's often hard to be sure. For the most part, the Hebrew we use is the Masoretic text, which is really quite late. It's possible that the Hebrew text in the time of Jesus was more similar to the Septuagint's Greek text.
Is it biblical? Is it Christlike? Is it loving? Is it true? How can I find out?
