A commenter on a previous post, David Werling of the very beautiful blog, Ars Orandi, pointed out, quite correctly, that the Protestant Bible is a different book from the Catholic one.
The seven Deuterocanonical books present in a Catholic Bible were excised from the Protestant one at the time of the Reformation. And Protestant scholars would refer to the missing seven as "Apocrypha".
Now that, to my mind, is not the only difference; the Protestant version has a different translation of the text which can bend or even change the original meaning and, I am sure that someone will come up with even more distinctions.
What this means is that Catholics may only read their own version (the Douay Bible is generally taken as the foundation for all of the Catholic versions).
Now David's comment took me back a few years when I had to appear in a court of justice. No! no! You've got it all wrong; I was not in the dock I was there because it was my name on the licensed premises operated by my College at the time and I had to be sworn in as licensee.
I had given little thought to the whole exercise until the clerk to the court asked me if I wanted to be sworn in using a Bible. I responded that I would but that it would have to be a Catholic one.
He eyed me up suspiciously and stated that all bibles were the same. I refuted this politely and said that they must surely have a Douay Bible in court. By this time he and his fellow officials were loking a little nervous and looking around for the nearest fire exits.
The clerk went off to rummage in some cupboards and came back looking triumphant: "Look" He said: "I've found a Koran for you!"
He was most disgrntled when I told him that just would not do and I was beginning to regret not shoving our family bible in my case before going to the courtroom.
Eventually, a solution was arrived at. I would utter the atheist affirmation! This, after reading it through was actually quite acceptable as it did not deny God in any way and only vouchsafed that I would tell the truth blah blah.
After this stressful event I pondered on whether I was being pedantic in only being prepared to swear on a Catholic Bible - after all, it was the promise to tell the truth that mattered. But then I decide that I was in the right and that any compromise would have been wrong and the oath, in all probability, invalid as I would have had no belief in the book that I was swearing on. It could have been the Protestant Bible, the Koran or the Bumper Book of Rupert the Bear Stories and it would have been wrong, quite wrong.
The seven Deuterocanonical books present in a Catholic Bible were excised from the Protestant one at the time of the Reformation. And Protestant scholars would refer to the missing seven as "Apocrypha".
Now that, to my mind, is not the only difference; the Protestant version has a different translation of the text which can bend or even change the original meaning and, I am sure that someone will come up with even more distinctions.
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| This is the only book to swear on! |
Now David's comment took me back a few years when I had to appear in a court of justice. No! no! You've got it all wrong; I was not in the dock I was there because it was my name on the licensed premises operated by my College at the time and I had to be sworn in as licensee.
I had given little thought to the whole exercise until the clerk to the court asked me if I wanted to be sworn in using a Bible. I responded that I would but that it would have to be a Catholic one.
He eyed me up suspiciously and stated that all bibles were the same. I refuted this politely and said that they must surely have a Douay Bible in court. By this time he and his fellow officials were loking a little nervous and looking around for the nearest fire exits.
The clerk went off to rummage in some cupboards and came back looking triumphant: "Look" He said: "I've found a Koran for you!"
He was most disgrntled when I told him that just would not do and I was beginning to regret not shoving our family bible in my case before going to the courtroom.
Eventually, a solution was arrived at. I would utter the atheist affirmation! This, after reading it through was actually quite acceptable as it did not deny God in any way and only vouchsafed that I would tell the truth blah blah.
After this stressful event I pondered on whether I was being pedantic in only being prepared to swear on a Catholic Bible - after all, it was the promise to tell the truth that mattered. But then I decide that I was in the right and that any compromise would have been wrong and the oath, in all probability, invalid as I would have had no belief in the book that I was swearing on. It could have been the Protestant Bible, the Koran or the Bumper Book of Rupert the Bear Stories and it would have been wrong, quite wrong.
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