Reformation Era
See also: Protestant ReformationOne of the tenets of the Protestant Reformation (beginning c. 1517) was that translations of scriptures should be based on the original texts (i.e. Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic for the Old Testament and Biblical Greek for the New Testament) rather than upon Jerome's translation into Latin, which at the time was the Bible of the Catholic Church.
Statements were included in the Protestant Bibles indicating that the Apocrypha was not to be placed on the same level as the other documents. Luther's translation (1534) placed the Apocrypha between the Old and New Testaments with this title:
"Apocrypha, that is, books which are not held equal to the Sacred Scriptures, but nevertheless are useful and good to read."
A year later Coverdale's Bible was published with the Apocrypha placed between the two Testaments under this description:
"Apocrypha, the books and treatises which among the fathers of old are not to be reckoned of like authority with other books of the Bible neither are they found in the canon of the Hebrew."
The reformers saw the Apocrypha at variance with the rest of Scripture. In them, the Roman Catholic Church claimed scriptural authority for the doctrine of Purgatory, for prayers and Masses for the dead (2 Macc 12:43-45), and for the efficacy of good works in attaining salvation (Tobit 12:9; Ecclesiasticus 7:33), things that Protestants then and today deem to be blatantly contradicting other parts of the Bible.
Read more about this topic: Development Of The Old Testament Canon
Famous quotes containing the words reformation and/or era:
“Go on then in doing with your pen what in other times was done with the sword; shew that reformation is more practicable by operating on the mind than on the body of man.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Erasmus was the light of his century; others were its strength: he lighted the way; others knew how to walk on it while he himself remained in the shadow as the source of light always does. But he who points the way into a new era is no less worthy of veneration than he who is the first to enter it; those who work invisibly have also accomplished a feat.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)