Bible Study - Church Division

This Friday we will begin looking into issues that divided the Church leading up to the Great Schism. There is no reading to be done in advance but, if you'd like, look at the cool chart and read "Which books are in the Bible" below.

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First off, the one thing everyone agrees on is that the books of the Old Testament as contained by the Hebrew Masoretic Text are Scriptural. After that, it gets confusing and a bit ridonculous.

Disagreements:

1) The books of the Old Testament contained in the Septuagint (Greek) but not in the Masoretic Text (Hebrew) commonly called the Apocrypha are accepted by the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox as Scriptural. These books are: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men, I Maccabees, II Maccabees, and additions to Esther and Daniel. We Anglicans read these books but view them with some suspicion and view them as “lesser” than the rest of the Old Testament.

2) Other books canonized by the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox that the Roman Catholic Church did not are: III Maccabees, Prayer of Manasseh, I Esdras, Psalm 151 (IV Maccabees is included, but in the Appendix of the Greek Orthodox Bible.)

3) Within the Eastern Orthodox there is some further disagreement: The Slavonic Bible approved by the Russian Orthodox Church also includes: II Esdras while the rest of the Orthodox Bibles do not.

4) Within the Oriental Orthodox there is even more disagreement. In general, they all accept the books mentioned above but there are some Churches that have more. The Armenian Church also includes III Corinthians. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church does not include III Corinthians but does include: Jubilees, I Enoch, Shepherd of Hermas, I Clement, Acts of Paul, and other Ethiopian books. No Synod has met within this body to sort this out.

5) Lastly, The Syriac Orthodox Church (Oriental Orthodox) uses as its Bible the Peshitta (Syriac/Aramaic) which excludes II John, III John, II Peter, Jude, and Revelation. They read these epistles but view them as “lesser.”
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Hope this all makes sense :)