The beauty of a complete, perfect Bible!

73 books inspired by God
 
Catholic Bibles are bigger because this is the will of God and the Church has reaffirmed this throughout the centuries. Some might ask, “What guided the magisterium toward this conclusion?” “What is the background to this decision?” In this column, my goal is to share some basic responses to these questions.
 
First, it is important to acknowledge that ancient Judaism, before the Christian era, was a multilingual and multicultural faith community, just like they are today.
 
Here is a key quote from the Holy Scriptures: Acts 6:1 is an example of two main groups within Judaism: “At that time, as the number of disciples continued to grow, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.” The footnote to this verse in the NABRE, New American Bible – Revised Edition, is very informative on this verse. Here is part of that footnote, “The Hellenists … the Hebrews: the Hellenists were not necessarily Jews from the diaspora but were more probably Palestinian Jews who spoke only Greek. The Hebrews were Palestinian Jews who spoke Hebrew or Aramaic and who may also have spoken Greek. Both groups belong to the Jerusalem Jewish Christian community.”
 
Some Jews were literate in Hebrew, some were literate in Greek and some were literate in Aramaic. Many were multilingual and spoke combinations of these languages.
 
The charge against Jesus, which was written on a placard and place over the head of Jesus on the cross, was an example of the multilingual/multicultural environment in Jerusalem at the time. John 19:20-21, “Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, ‘Jesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews.’ Now many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, Latin and Greek.”
 
These details are important because we must rid ourselves of the lie that Jews only spoke Hebrew or that God only spoke Hebrew to them. God, the great communicator, always has spoken in all languages and to all cultures. The age-old, and futile struggle, for monolingualism and monoculturalism is an intent to fit reality into “our own” personal, comfortable and limited “world” that only, and those like “us,” can control.
 
The Holy Scriptures do not cease to be God’s Word because they were faithfully translated to another language. We cannot limit God from communicating and inspiring truth to our favorite language.
 
While the majority of the Old Testament was inspired by God and written by Jews in Hebrew, it didn’t stop there. When the politics within Judaism led them to divide and split God did not take sides and leave with one group and abandon the other. As one group continued with Hebrew as their primary language the other group took on Greek as their language and their new experiences with God were inspired by God and written by men in Greek.
 
As time went on, we ended up with two Old Testaments. The Hebrew one had fewer books than the Greek one, but this was not a problem for them. If you went to Hebrew services in the synagogue you used the shorter version and if you went to the more common Greek services, you used the longer version of Holy Scriptures.
Now, the key question is, “What did Jesus and the apostles use?” The simple answer is they used both, although they used one a lot more than the other.
 
According to “Old Testament Quotations in the New Testament: A Complete Survey,” out of 340 quotations from the Old Testament that are found in the Gospels and the rest of the books of the New Testament, they found that 307 of them are from the Greek Septuagint translation and only 33 quotations that are clearly from the Hebrew Masoretic Text. Thank You David Bercot for bringing these statistics to my attention!
 
So, the rest is simple. Jesus and the Apostles used the larger Greek Old Testament, and this is what was used when they were inspired by God to write the Greek New Testament. The Church recognized this as the will of God for us and has been celebrating since the 4 ^th century 46 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament. We celebrate 73 books as inspired by God. These books lead us to God’s greatest revelation, his son and our savior, Jesus Christ.
 
An easy way to remember that our bibles have 73 books is by remembering that both the number seven and the number three represent in the Holy Scriptures the idea of completeness and perfection. Our big Bible is a beautiful gift of God.