From: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Which is the REAL NT?
Date: 18 Nov 92 12:16:04 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

EXG106@psuvm.psu.edu writes:

>There is a difference between the "protestant" NT and the "catholic" NT.  In th
>e Catholic NT, for example, the last book is called "Revelations" and has many
>verses that the Protestant NT last book, "Revelation", does not have.
>There are other differences.

>Some people have me that the "catholic" NT is the original,  uncut, unedited
>version and that the Protestants have altered the NT.  Others tell me the
>opposite..

As far as I know, this is false (and I think I would know), though
there's some basis for it.  Protestant and Catholic textual
scholarship is largely in common.  Catholics now sit on the committees
doing Protestant translations and (I think) visa versa.  Catholics
have given official approval to Protestant translations for years.  I
don't think there's any specifically Protestant or Catholic position
on matters of textual scholarship.  However it's certainly possible
that your Catholic friend's favorite translation has more of the
disputed verses than your Protestant friend's favorite translation.

It's true that different translations have slightly different
underlying texts.  The differences are typically one word, but there
are differences up to a couple of verses.  In the Gospels, there are
also a couple of large chunks (roughly a paragraph each) that are now
believed not to be part of the original documents, though in at least
one case people tend to regard it as canonical anyway.  The additions
are of various characters.  The large ones consist of (1) the story of
the woman taken in adultery (which may well be authentic, though not
actually from the document it currently appears in), and (2) a couple
of endings to Mark (the earliest gospel), which appears to end more or
less in mid-stream.  (However a statement that appeared here about
this was wrong: the main text of Mark does have the resurrection of
Jesus.  The extra passages describe later appearances to disciples.)
The endings contain pretty much the same material as two of the other
gospels at the corresponding point, so their presence or absence
doesn't have much effect.

Some of the smaller additions are in a way more interesting.  A couple
of them appear to provide extra support for the Trinity, though they
are by no means necessary to justify the doctine.  They can be traced
to centuries after Christ.  (In fact I believe they're generally from
after the period when the Trinity was being formulated, which is why
we know that the doctrine isn't actually based on them.)  Many of
these additions appeared in the "Vulgate", the primary Latin
translation used by Catholics.  At one time, English translations done
for Catholics were supposed to be prepared from the Vulgate, so they
would tend to have these passages.  But they are generally also in the
King James, which is a Protestant translation.  So it's not really a
Protestant/Catholic issue, but just an issue of advances in
scholarship, and which translations use newer results.  The rule that
Catholic translations should be done from the Vulgate somewhat delayed
Catholic adoption of newer results.  But at this point Catholic
translations are done from the original Greek just as Protestant ones
are.

The primary difference between Protestant and Catholic translations is
in the OT.  The Protestant OT has the same books as the Hebrew
Scriptures, though usually they're printed in a different order.  The
Catholic OT has some extra books, which were in the Septuagint, an
early Greek translation of the Scriptures (done by Jews).  The
difference seems to be primarily historical: during its formative
years, a lot of Christian theology was done in Greek, and the church
came to use the standard Greek translation as its Bible.  During the
Reformation, Protestant scholars went to the Hebrew canon (1) because
there are a few Catholic doctrines (e.g. purgatory) that they didn't
like, and whose clearest support is from the additional books, and
(2) because the Reformation was associated with a renewal of Biblical
scholarship.  OT scholarship naturally was based on the Hebrew (and
also involved some cooperative efforts with Jewish scholars).