✟ proxy 🇺🇸

The Protestant response to my post about the Canon captures the historical dilemma facing Protestantism. It's a psychological mechanism driven by a structural necessity. Because their entire theological system rests on Sola Scriptura, any challenge to the history, origin, or contents of the Bible threatens the very foundation of their faith, forcing a defensive retreat into historical revisionism. If the collection of books they rely on is historically proven to be a 16th century subtraction rather than the original apostolic standard, their foundational rule of faith cracks. To prevent that crack, they have no choice but to rely on alternative historical narratives like the "added at Trent" myth or the "Hebrew truth" narrative.. Even when those claims are flatly contradicted by primary historical documents. The Irony of the "Hebrew Superiority" Argument.. Lol. The Hebrew canon they defend was preserved, edited, and finalized centuries after the Resurrection by the Masoretes, rabbis who explicitly rejected Christ. In contrast, the Greek Septuagint was translated by pre-Christian Jews centuries before Christ, meaning its translators had zero anti-Christian bias when translating messianic prophecies, such as Isaiah 7:14 rendering "virgin" instead of just "young woman," or the explicit crucifixion imagery in Wisdom 2. By choosing the post-Christian rabbinical canon, they are unknowingly trusting the textual curation of a community that actively sought to define itself against the early Christian Church. When they mock my view of scripture, call me illiterate, or tell me that I don't know how to read, they are implicitly projecting that onto the baseline of the ancient Church. They are calling St. Athanasius, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, and St. John Damascene illiterate. They are claiming that the Holy Apostles who penned the New Testament in Greek while heavily quoting the Septuagint text did not understand scripture. They are dismissing the Ecumenical Councils that codified the liturgical use of these books. As an Orthodox Christian, I don't have to carry the burden of inventing a novel historical theory to justify my Bible. I simply stand in the shade of an unbroken, 2,000 year old tree. It requires a massive amount of historical gymnastics to bridge the gap between 1st century Jerusalem and 16th century Germany while bypassing everything in between.. It requires zero gymnastics to trace the liturgy of the Orthodox Church straight back to the upper room ☦️🤍

☦️📖 The Unapologetic History of the Biblical Canon.. My final update on this post. Let's look directly at documented history, the historical reality of the Christian Canon is firmly rooted in the ancient Church. Long before Christ was born, the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek in Alexandria (around 250–100 BC). This translation is called the Septuagint. The Septuagint was the Bible of the Early Church. When the Apostles and New Testament writers quoted the Old Testament, roughly 80% of their direct quotes came straight from the Greek Septuagint, not the Hebrew text. The Septuagint included the Deuterocanonical books (such as Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, and Maccabees). These books were never "added" by the Church later, they were inherited directly from the apostolic era. For the first 1,500 years of Christian history, every major historic standard, from the early Church Fathers to the regional Councils of Hippo and Carthage affirmed this larger canon. If the Apostles used the Septuagint, why do Protestant Bibles lack these books today? After the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 AD, the Pharisaic leaders who rejected Jesus Christ began consolidating Rabbinic Judaism. Over the following generations, rabbinic authorities gradually restricted their recognized scriptures exclusively to books originally written in Hebrew, thereby discarding the Greek texts used by the rapidly growing Christian movement. In the 16th century, Martin Luther chose to reject the historic Christian Old Testament canon. Instead of relying on the continuous 1,500 year Tradition of the Church, he altered the Protestant Old Testament to align with the narrower canon of the post-temple Rabbinic Jewish community. When you understand this timeline, it becomes clear why Wisdom 2 reads like a play-by-play of Christ's crucifixion. The text describes wicked men plotting against a righteous man who calls God his Father, testing him with "insult and torture," and condemning him to a "shameful death". When the religious leaders stood at the foot of the Cross and mocked Jesus, they used the exact phrasing found in Wisdom 2:18: "If the righteous man is God's child, he will help him.." The early Church recognized this as a brilliant, divinely inspired messianic prophecy. The community that rejected Christ also rejected the book that explicitly predicted their actions. The "extra" books are NOT EXTRA AT ALL, they are the original Christian Old Testament. Removing them means separating oneself from the historical reality of the Apostolic Church. History does not bend to modern preferences. If you want the Bible of the Apostles, the Martyr Church, and the historic Orthodox Faith, you use the full, uncut Canon.. The seed of truth is planted, do with it what you will.. 🤍☦️

My response to everyone I've angered or upset in any way:

"He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother" - St. Cyprian of Carthage

While Jerome initially hesitated because those books weren't in the Hebrew texts of his day, he ultimately submitted to the Church and translated them into his Vulgate anyway. More importantly, the 'Hebrew truth' Jerome was chasing was the post-Christian text finalized by Jewish rabbis who had already rejected Jesus as the Messiah. The historic Church wasn't going to let a 4th-century Jewish community, which explicitly deleted books to counter Christian teachings, dictate the Christian Old Testament. The Church completely bypassed Jerome's private opinions because we kept the ancient Septuagint, the exact pre-Christian text used, quoted, and authorized by Christ and the Apostles themselves. Luther choosing the text of post-Christian rabbis over the 1,500-year consensus of the Apostolic Church is exactly the problem.