Where Did the Bible Come From?

Created by God and written by Catholics who were inspired by God, the Holy Bible, consisting of forty-six Old Testament books and twenty-seven New Testament books, was assembled, translated, and preserved by the Catholic Church.  If you accept the Holy Bible as the Word of God, you also accept the Catholic Church as the sole authority of the creation and interpretation of the Holy Bible.

The Old Testament is comprised of four sections: the Pentateuch, the Historical books, the Wisdom books, and the Prophetic books.  The New Testament contains four Gospels, one historical book, one apocalyptic book (symbolic language to convey a spiritual truth), and twenty-one Epistles (letters).

The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew but later translated into Greek.  This Greek translation was known as the Septuagint. Jesus himself quoted from the Septuagint; the New Testament writers quoted extensively from it as well. It was read aloud in the Synagogues.

The New Testament was first established by oral tradition.  It was St. Peter’s preaching on Pentecost Sunday twenty years before the first word of the New Testament was ever written.  St. Peter established the style and manner of how the first Jews and Gentiles were converted to Christianity. Oral tradition was how the world was converted to in the early church. 

The practice of which Old Testament texts were to be read at Mass had been settled – the Septuagint was used.  But the New Testament was a different story.

Most of the New Testament was written between 50-100 A.D. During this time, there were numerous writings all claiming to be authentic and true about Jesus and the early church.  What brought authenticity to New Testament writings were those that were approved to be read at Mass by the local Bishops.

However, there were dozens of canons (collections of writings approved to be read at Mass) created by Bishops. In 150 A.D., St. Irenaeus, a bishop, declared that of the many writings claiming to be “gospels,” only four should be regarded as authentic.  With this declaration, the canon of Sacred Scripture he created consisted of the Septuagint, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the Acts of Apostles (written by Luke) and the Letters by Paul.

The Council of Rome in 382 A.D., approved the first official canon of the Catholic Church: all the Septuagint and twenty-seven books of the New Testament – all written in Greek.  Subsequently, this canon was later confirmed by three other councils.  So, by the fifth century A.D., the canon is complete. There is now a single volume of Catholic Sacred Scripture created under the authority of the  Bishops and the Pope, who themselves were all appointed through apostolic succession (they could trace their appointments all the way back to the Apostles).

At the same time, Pope Damasus, who had presided over the Council of Rome, commissioned St. Jerome to translate this new Canon of Sacred Scripture from Greek to Latin.  St. Jerome produced what is known as the Latin Vulgate, which is subsequently declared as the official bible of the Catholic Church in 1546.

The first significant modern day (at the time) English translation from the Latin Vulgate was the Douay-Rheims Bible (the New Testament was published in 1582; the last part of the Old Testament in 1610) (www.drbo.org). 

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have published a list of approved translations for the Holy Bible. (https://www.usccb.org/offices/new-american-bible/approved-translations-bible). Readings read at Mass are from the New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE) (https://bible.usccb.org/bible).

There are two other significant English translations sold today that are not approved by the Catholic Church.  They are the New International Version (NIV) and the King James Version (KJV).  These bibles are not approved because that have been abridged.  You will not find the following books and passages in these bibles:

From the Old Testament: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and I & II Maccabees; these are called the deuterocanonical books. Any disputes about the authenticity of these books as Sacred Scripture was long settled by the Catholic Church.

• Missing verses from the New Testament: Mt 17:21; Mt 18:11; Jn 5:4; Acts 8:37, 15:34, and 24:7; Rom 16:24
• Most egregiously, Martin Luther added the word “alone” to Rom 3:28:
• “For we account a man to be justified by faith [alone] without the works of the law.”

Luther’s beliefs are summed up by two phrases: solo scriptura (by scripture alone) and solo fide (by faith alone). Under whose authority did Martin Luther add the word “alone?” His and only his. Luther is also responsible for omitting the deuterocanonical books from the Old Testament.  Under whose authority did he do that?  His, and only his. Martin Luther claimed to have the authority to modify the Canon of Sacred Scripture on his own.  No priest nor bishop nor protestant minister nor any person can do that. If you believe that the Holy Bible is the Word of God then you must accept the authority of the Catholic Church to be the sole definer, modifier, and interpreter of it. Neither did other protestant “reformers” - Wycliffe, Tyndale, Calvin, and Zwingli - have the authority to modify Sacred Scripture for their own bibles.

No book can interpret itself.  Only the original author can interpret a book it has written.  Even scripture says itself that it is not self-interpretitive:

“Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch… [s]eated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. The Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go and join up with that chariot.’ Philip ran up and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and said, “Do you understand what you are reading?”

He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone instructs me?’”

- Acts 8:27-31

No church can claim to have the universal mandate to convert the world as does the Catholic Church.  It wasn’t Jesus Christ that created the division we have today within Christianity; His intention certainly wasn’t so.  It was men like Luther, Wycliffe, Tyndale, Calvin, and Zwingli that created this division, claiming to have authority they did not have.  God desires that we know the Truth.  Truth is a single path up Mount Tabor, not many paths that lead to the same destination; all paths are not the same. The Truth, which is the Sacred Deposit of Faith and Scripture and Tradition, subsists solely in the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.