THE APOCRYPHA SHOULD NOT BE IN BIBLE

A religion that is not man-made needs clear scriptures that were written by God in some real way.

When the Catholic Church found that many of her most important doctrines were not in the Bible instead of rejecting them she decided to resort to fraud to force the Bible to teach them. She put books in the Bible that did not belong in it and claimed her famous infallibility backed her up! The books in question comprise what Protestants call the Apocrypha.

The Protestant Bible is shorter than the Roman Catholic one.  Following the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church elevated the dubious books of the Apocrypha to being part of the Bible.  They became known as the deuterocanonical books meaning that their divine inspiration just took longer to recognise than the the books that comprise the Protestant Bible.  Protestantism still argues that the Bible is in fact only 66 books. 

So should the Apocrypha be in the Bible?  Well the Bible should not be in the Bible but anyway let us proceed.

Tobit says that God sent an angel, Raphael, to tell lies. Elsewhere in the Old Testament it is said that God always tells the truth (Numbers 23:19). Rome might say that when the Bible forbids all deception it only means all deception that is immoral. But when God’s motives and schemes are mysteries to us how can we be sure when he is telling the truth? God has to condemn all lies to be believable. God through Paul his prophet forbade all lies in order that Christianity would be credible (Romans 3:7,8).

Tobit says that Tobit was around in 931 BC, the year of the revolt of Jeroboam. Though it says that he lived to be 158 it forgets this and has him still alive during the Assyrian Captivity (722 BC) though there were 209 years between the events!

Tobit contains a recipe for getting rid of a demon by raising a bad stench.  This reeks of magic.  The absurdity of the story and its occultism are both scandalous.

Some Catholic scholars say that Tobit is just a novel written by God. It is not history. But the book nowhere supports this notion. If it is a novel the gospels could be novels too. The fact that two gospels, Luke and John, say they were written so that we may believe would mean nothing for many fiction and semi-fiction works use this device too. To accept Tobit as an inspired fairy-tale is to leave the Christian faith for Christian faith depends on trust in the gospels. The Catholics argue that the books must be infallible for the Church says so and that if it is infallible the absurdities in it were never meant to be taken as true. But then God wrote a book that is not much use. Now could it have a message for anyone when nobody can tell where it is tongue-in-cheek or not? God is not the author of Tobit.

Tobit has different versions - it cannot be the word of God when we don't know which version God wrote!  The book only fuels those who think the Bible has been bastardised.

The Book of Wisdom claims that God did not make death and does not rejoice in the destruction of the living (1:13). His making all things is alleged to prove this. If God makes all things then he made death. But maybe the verse means that death is our fault and not God’s. This is still ridiculous for God does not have to punish that way. Lots of so-called sinners live on. God must like killing when he does it without need.

The Book of Wisdom is believed to suggest that it is not Adam's sin that causes the mess in the world but Cain's.  It is clear that Adam really was the first-formed man according to this book so any suggestion that the Catholic Bible fits science is just a lie.  The Churches used to say that Genesis spoke of Adam's creation as being from the dust and deny it necessarily means dust was turned into Adam there and then.  They argue that Adam could have been made indirectly from dust in the sense that life evolved from the dirt.  They argue that evolution is not definitely contradicted.  But it is obvious that Genesis is full of magic or miracles if you like so when it says Adam was made from dust it means direct making. There is no reason to think the idea of man evolving from animals would even have occurred to its author.

Here is the relevant text from Wisdom “Wisdom protected the first-formed father [Adam] of the world, when he alone had been created; she delivered him from his transgression and gave him strength to rule all things. But when an unrighteous man [Cain] departed from her [Wisdom] in his anger, he perished because in rage he killed his brother [Abel]. When the earth was flooded because of him, Wisdom again saved it, steering the righteous man [Noah] by a paltry piece of wood” (10:1–4). 

It says that Adam's sin was forgiven and fixed and Adam thus was a saint.  This is a denial of the Catholic doctrine that Adam's sin destroyed us and called for a saviour Jesus to redeem us from it.  It is even a denial of the Genesis assertion that far from ruling Adam was thrown out of Paradise.  The text links global evil and suffering to Cain's sin not Adam's.

The Wisdom text might or might not be saying that Adam sinned when there was no Eve around.  It can be read as saying he sinned when he was literally alone or it may mean that Eve was there but he was still the only man.

Trent Horn feels that Matthew 27:43 has the Jewish priests mocking Jesus with a verse that fits Wisdom 2:18 more than Psalm 22:8 which is similar.  The priests use a version mocking Jesus as son of God.  The Wisdom verse mentions Son of God but this is absent from Psalm 22:8.  

The Bible lacks credibility but adding in new books makes it even more absurd.  The Church made some horrendous choices about the books.