No 12

(The Catholic Bible)

As we all know, the Bible has been translated into hundreds of languages and there are almost as many different versions; the Catholic Bible is amongst them.  They can be recognized by the words “Nihil Obstat” and “Imprimatur” that are always written in the front or rear cover.   Although very similar to the Protestant Bible, the Catholic Bible has certain books called “The Apocrypha” in the Old Testament that have not been considered divinely inspired by the early church fathers.   They are not in the Protestant Bible or the Jewish Old Testament either.  These books are also called the “deuterocanonical” books and some of them are: Tobit, Judith, 1 & 2 Maccabbees, Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch and extra chapters in Esther and Daniel.  The numbers varies from one version to another but these are the main ones.  It is in these books that the Catholics find their beliefs of praying for the dead (2 Machabees 12 : 46) and intercession of dead saints (2 Machabbees 15 : 14). Of course, there are different versions of the Catholic Bible also; some are: The New Jerusalem, TOB (The Oecumenical Bible), New American, Ignatius, Douay, Pierre de Beaumont and the list goes on.  Can a person be saved by reading a Catholic Bible?  Absolutely!!  Salvation depends only on what Jesus Christ, the Son of God did on the cross; only that!   If a Roman Catholic believes that unequivocally, that person is saved. “Jesus saith to him, I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh to the Father but by Me” (John 14 : 6).  “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10 : 13).  These verses are in our bibles; they are also in the Catholic bibles.