Question

Dear Gramps,

Why do we not accept all of the canonized books of the Vulgate bible?  Do we actually use a protestant version of the bible?  Why did we exclude some of the books the Catholic church accepts?

Rebecca

Answer

Dear Rebecca,

The parts of the Latin Vulgate (or the Douay-Rheims Version, which is the English translation of the Latin Vulgate) which are not accepted by the Mormon Church, and many other Christian denominations, are called the Apocrypha. The word, apocrypha, means writings or statements of dubious authenticity. The etymology of the word relates to ‘things hidden away,’ which implies secret or esoteric literature.

In some Protestant Bibles, the apocryphal books are placed between the New and Old Testaments. In the Roman Catholic Bibles they are interspersed with the rest of the text.

Jerome, in 450 AD, rejected the Apocrypha when he was translating the Bible into Latin This was because no Hebrew version of these texts could be found, even though they were present in the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint). However, they eventually were accepted by the Catholic Church, and most of them remained part of Catholic Bible.

Protestants rejected the Apocrypha during the Reformation as lacking divine authority. They either excised them completely or placed them in a third section of the Bible. The Roman Catholic Council of Trent, on the other hand, declared in 1546 that the Apocrypha were indeed divine.

When the Prophet Joseph Smith was translating the Bible in 1833 he received a revelation from the Lord, now included in the Mormon Scripture, the Doctrine and Covenants, as Section 91, in which he was told—

Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you concerning the Apocrypha–There are many things contained therein that are true, and it is mostly translated correctly;

 

There are many things contained therein that are not true, which are interpolations by the hands of men.

 

Verily, I say unto you, that it is not needful that the Apocrypha should be translated (D&C 91:1-3).

The versions of the Bible that are used by the Mormon Church depend on which language is spoken. In English, the accepted version of the Bible is the King James Version, and the Mormon Church accepts it, and all other versions, only insofar as they are translated correctly.

Gramps