Comment by skissane | Hacker News Reader

Comment by skissane | Hacker News Reader

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> The word "Bible" means different things to different people.

Not completely different things, the majority of books all major Christian churches agree on (all of the NT and the majority of the OT). The dispute is really about different views on the boundaries of the same thing - the Christian Bible - as opposed to distinct things

> Just like the word "Deuterocanon" means different things to Catholics vs Eastern Orthodox.

Again, not two completely different things - Catholics and Eastern Orthodox agree on the majority of the Deuterocanon, there are only a few books which Eastern Orthodox have which Catholics lack (3 Maccabees, Psalm 151, Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh; Georgian Orthodox have 4 Maccabees too). And, the Catholic Church has never condemned the Orthodox for accepting these extra books - the Council of Trent condemned Protestants for accepting less, but (quite intentionally) did not condemn the Orthodox for accepting more. So one might say that their status in Catholicism is ambiguous.

> The two English translations provided by the API are not approved by the Catholic church.

I’m not sure how significant that is given that there are a number of Bible translations which do include these books yet which haven’t been approved by the Catholic Church; including one of the translations this site does have (the KJV) - this site’s copy of the KJV is incomplete

> When I search Google for "Bible", the top two results, bible.com and biblegateway also don't include those additional books.

You are mistaken, they both have them:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Maccabees%2...

https://www.bible.com/bible/69/2MA.2.GNTD

The crux of the issue is that the Bible provided by this API is the modern protestant Bible.

If you are Catholic or Orthodox or are looking for a historical version, you may see it as incomplete.

You know, if they called it “Protestant Bible API” instead, I would not have complained.

Part of the problem here is that many Protestants are ignorant of the fact that the majority of Christians have a bigger Bible than they do. Relatedly, many Protestants are ignorant of the fact that Protestants are a minority of Christians.

> Part of the problem here is that many Protestants are ignorant of the fact that the majority of Christians have a bigger Bible than they do. Relatedly, many Protestants are ignorant of the fact that Protestants are a minority of Christians.

Do you have a citation for this claim? Most protestant Christians I've met are aware of the apocrypha, they just do not consider them canonical, in the same way they do not consider the various Islamic additions to the Judeo-Christian tradition to be part of their religion. From my anecdotal experience, I do not think it is any more common for a protestant to be unaware that certain extra books are included in Catholic/Eastern Orthodox Bibles than it is for a catholic/eastern orthodox to be unaware that protestants exclude those same books.

Squabble was spot on – "The Bible" is different things to different people. When you buy a bible in a book store and it does not include Deuterocanonical books, it is not usually referred to specifically as "The Protestant Bible" – it is just called "The Bible". So it does not seem necessary for this API to do that either lest it incur your complaints.

> Do you have a citation for this claim? Most protestant Christians I've met are aware of the apocrypha

I'm not aware of any formal studies on this question, I can only speak from personal experience. And, of course, different people have different personal experiences. Mine include hearing – on multiple occasions – Protestants say things along the lines of "Catholics aren't Christian". (To be fair, only a minority of Protestants say stuff like that, but in my experience it is a significant minority.)

> they just do not consider them canonical, in the same way they do not consider the various Islamic additions to the Judeo-Christian tradition to be part of their religion

That's not a good analogy, because prior to the 19th century the vast majority of Protestant Bibles included these books, and some of them still do – by contrast, no Protestant Bible has ever included the Quran. Protestantism originated as a reform movement within the Catholic Church, and one of the aspects of Catholicism which they thought needed reform was the widespread acceptance within it of these books as being equal in authority to the rest of the Bible. So these books play an important role in the history of Protestantism; by contrast, the Quran has no more of a role in the history of Protestantism than the Vedas or the Tripitaka do.

> Squabble was spot on – "The Bible" is different things to different people

I think, before anyone launches a website called "Free Bible API", they should be aware that different branches of Christianity have different ideas about what belongs in "the Bible", and they should be clear about how they are going to relate to those differences: Are they trying to be ecumenical and inclusive? Or are they building something for one specific branch of Christianity only, such as Protestantism?–in which case, state that limited scope clearly and up-front. This website shows no signs of having thought through any of that.

> Protestants say things along the lines of "Catholics aren't Christian"

Not really sure what this has to do with the topic at hand. Sure, some people say that. You can define "Christianity" however you want, and through that definition exclude certain practitioners.

> That's not a good analogy

It was not intended as an analogy, it was just another example of not considering something to be part of your religion even though another group thinks it should be.

> they should be aware that different branches of Christianity have different ideas about what belongs in "the Bible"

How do you know Jake Cyr is not aware of these things? As you pointed out yourself, this API only includes two translations at the moment. Contrary to what you have said, however, the KJV does not normally include the apocrypha in the present day. From wikipedia:

> ...this version of the Bible became the most widely printed book in history, almost all such printings presenting the standard text of 1769 extensively re-edited by Benjamin Blayney at Oxford, and nearly always omitting the books of the Apocrypha. Today the unqualified title "King James Version" usually indicates this Oxford standard text.

So it makes sense, given that neither of these translations typically include the deuterocanon, that those books are not accessible via this API. I think listing the translations is sufficient explanation of what content will be included and that there is no reason for this to be explicitly called "The Free Protestant Bible API" or any such thing. Your complaint would have much more merit if Jake Cyr was specifically excluding certain books that normally would be found in the included translations, but that is not what is happening here.

> Not really sure what this has to do with the topic at hand. Sure, some people say that. You can define "Christianity" however you want, and through that definition exclude certain practitioners.

I said that some Protestants appear to believe that they are the majority of Christians. From a neutral point of view, that's a factually incorrect belief. But if you choose to define "Christianity" narrowly to just include your own group, then of course your group turns out to be the majority of Christians, even 100% of them. I've also heard from some Protestants the related claim that "most Catholics aren't Christians" but an ill-defined minority of them who have "saving faith" are–an idea which if accepted might be taken by some to make Christianity majority Protestant but not 100% so. And in my mind it is relevant to the topic at hand – if one starts with the (incorrect, most would say) assumption that most Christians are Protestants, it is straightforward to arrive at the (just as incorrect) conclusion that most Christians reject these books as part of the Bible.

> It was not intended as an analogy, it was just another example of not considering something to be part of your religion even though another group thinks it should be.

Well, given that historically the majority of Protestants accepted these books as part of the Bible – albeit with lower authority than the rest of it – and some Protestant Bibles still contain them – I don't see how it actually counts as "not considering something to be part of your religion even though another group thinks it should be". Even if we just narrowly define their religion as "Protestantism"–as opposed to Christianity as a whole–it is an important part of the history of Protestantism, and still part of it for many Protestants today. Indeed, some Protestants even still use these books liturgically – to give just one example, Anglican and Methodist marriage services both include (as a permitted option) a reading from the book of Tobit, an element also found in Amish wedding services. So, comparing it to a text from a completely different religion, and which one's own religion has no history of using in any way, and which one's own religion doesn't use today, it isn't a sensible comparison. It isn't "just another example" because it isn't the same thing at all.

> How do you know Jake Cyr is not aware of these things? As you pointed out yourself, this API only includes two translations at the moment.

Jake Cyr is welcome to give an account of what was going through his head, and if he chooses to do that I will be all ears. Unless and until he does, I can only guess–but that's all you can do either.

I always feel like the counts for Christian branches provide an extremely skewed view. Since it's faily common for people to count themselves as Catholic or Orthodox simply due to their upbringing (even when they don't believe there is a God) on the other hand people who consider themselves Protestant almost exclusively don't just believe in God and the authority of the Bible but usually wont consider themselves Protestant without having made a formal choice to follow Jesus and join a church (whatever that means from within their denomination).

I think that if you only count Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants who believe in God, the authority of the Bible Protestants suddenly become a majority possibly a very large majority.

I might be wrong in this; I grew up in the Netherlands where officially we have 20% Catholics and 15% Protestants but although I live in one of the most "Catholic" places of the country I havent encountered a single Catholic that goes to church exept for on eastern and chrismas (and then they usually do it to please family, and yes I thought for a while if it is really not a single one). On the other hand everyone I encountered who calls himself a Protestant meets that more strict definition I talked about above. And Ive heard similar stories from international students in my university.

But again I might be very wrong and am definitely open to data that proves me otherwise.

It is complicated. Some people who come from a Catholic or Orthodox background still want to identify with that background as a cultural identity (e.g. "cultural Catholic") even if they no longer believe in its doctrines or follow its practices. The same happens sometimes for Protestants too, but seems to be somewhat less common among them–a Protestant who stops believing is more likely to just be a "none" than to call themselves "culturally Protestant".

One can point to some examples of "cultural Protestantism" though. Northern Ireland: in the 2011 census†, over 40% of its population identified as "Protestant", but for many of them it is primarily a cultural identity rather than a religious one. The outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins has repeatedly called himself a "cultural Anglican", and I'm sure he'd not be the only person to say that (although Anglicans disagree among themselves about whether Anglicanism is Protestant, so a "cultural Anglican" may not necessarily consider themselves a "cultural Protestant")

> but usually wont consider themselves Protestant without having made a formal choice to follow Jesus and join a church (whatever that means from within their denomination).

That's a biased criterion because the criterion itself is based on Protestant cultural assumptions, which in turn are based on Protestant theological assumptions. Many Protestants believe one becomes a Christian by making "a formal choice to follow Jesus". Catholics and Orthodox believe one becomes a Christian by baptism, and infants who are incapable of making such a choice are regularly baptised. It is not that Catholics and Orthodox do not care about personal faith, they do, but they do not make it the central focus in the way that many Protestants do.

And that (in part) explains why there are more cultural Catholics than cultural Protestants – to Catholics, the Church is first and foremost a community, and once you are in, you are in for life – maybe you no longer attend, don't believe, don't want to have anything to do with it – but if you ever change your mind, you'll be welcome back with a minimum of fuss, as if you'd been there all along. So Catholic theology encourages the "cultural Catholic" phenomenon in a way that Protestant theology does not.

† The 2021 census results are due out next year, which will give us a more current picture of Northern Ireland's religious demographics

Not just incomplete but badly translated. Such as the warning against "vain repetition" in prayer in KJV Mt 6:7, targeting ancient Christian prayer practices like e.g. petition prayers and the Rosary (which are in direct continuation of old Jewish litanies, such as Psalm 136, and sanctioned by Heaven itself: "Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus"). "Battalogein" should refer to "babbling": using lots of grand words to impress God and other people, as opposed to the simple but dignified petition of a humble soul.

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