Postby Technomancer » Sun Jun 22, 2003 4:29 am
The books of the so-called "Apocrypha" (or Deuterocanon if you're Catholic) were removed by Martin Luther during the Reformation. This was due to 1)Theological differences- the seemed to support some doctrines that he did not agree with, and 2)Translation Issues- There were no original Hebrew manuscripts of these books. The oldest available were in Greek (This incidently, was also St. Jerome's quibble). However, it should be noted that Hebrew manuscripts of some of these books were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
*note: Some fundamentalists also try to insist that these books were added to the Catholic Bible by the Council of Trent (the Catholic Church's response to the Protestant Reformation), however this is unequivocably false. The deliberations that decided the contents of the Bible (OT and NT) took place in the late 5th century AD at the Councils of Hippo and Carthage (and one other that I've forgotten), and were also confirmed by the pope at the time.
The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in corrrecting its mistakes. Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry—is not even a "subject"—but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning.
Neil Postman
(The End of Education)
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge
Isaac Aasimov