CVII.

"At the Reformation, the reformers, Martin Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon, they decided that — this was, remember, after the Renaissance and the beginnings of the rediscovery of the study of Greek and Latin text in the original documents. They wanted to go back to the Hebrew. So they learned Hebrew. They started reading the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew, not in Greek or Latin translation. They, also, tried to come up with the correct Greek text of the New Testament documents, by doing textual criticism. They were practicing what was burgeoning scholarship of the period, in the sixteenth century, to go back to the original texts, as close as they could get. What these reformers then did, they said, "Wait a minute. Look at all these Greek Jewish books that aren't part of the Hebrew Bible. They don't exist in Hebrew. They only exist in Greek." So they said, "We're not going to accept those as part of the Old Testament." They decided to go back to what the Hebrew texts of the Old Testament, and not accept the Greek Jewish documents. The Roman Catholics decided, "No. We're going to keep these documents, also." Which is why the Roman Catholic Old Testament is larger than the Protestant Old Testament. The Roman Catholic Old Testament has the same books that the Protestant Old Testament has, but they kept these other Greek Jewish documents. We call those the Apocrypha, "the hidden writings," is what it means."

© Dale B. Martin
Yale Lectures on Introduction to the New Testament History and Literature
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