The Divergent Views of Catholicism and Protestantism on the Old Testament Apocrypha

However, of this one-third, or 680,000,000, about 475,000,000 are members of the Roman and Greek Catholic Churches, and about 205,000,000 belong to Protestantism. Now it becomes evident that the above-mentioned theme is a study of great importance, when it is stated that even in Christianity there is a difference of opinion, there are divergent views, as to what constitutes the Bible, the Word of God. In the Roman Catholic Bible are found certain books that are not found 1n the Protestant Bible. This fact has often given offence to that two-third non-Christian population, and also to that one-third in the Christian Church. Why , they ask, should we become Christians, when you who profess to be Christians aren\u27t even agreed among yourselves as to your source of teaching and doctrine? You Christians aren’t even agreed as to what the Word of God is. A Christian might say, Are we right after all? Is the Bible so divine a book as we have always believed? Is there not, perhaps, something to the claims of Comparative Religionists, that the Bible is not the absolute truth, but only relative, on the same order as sacred books of other religions? This divergent view causes confusion. Men will say that if the Bible is such a book of which one cannot be sure, it is no better than a human book. For these reasons this study is of importance, that we may gain a clear conception of these divergent views, and the reasons underlying them, also how we ought to judge of the matter