FindMeRaw

Walking past a “read your Bible” message got me thinking. Which Bible? Which translation? And who decided what belonged in it?

I’m Catholic, and I love exploring these questions. But during that conversation, I discovered that some things I’d accepted needed correcting.

You hear something from one person, then somebody else repeats it. Eventually, it feels like established history. Somewhere along the way, “somebody told me” becomes “everybody knows.”

Apparently, my brain accepts forwarded messages too.

One thing I had wrong was the Council of Nicaea. I’d connected it with removing biblical books. There’s no reliable evidence that the council selected the Bible’s books or removed chapters. In AD 325, it primarily addressed disputes about Jesus’ divine nature, along with Easter and church rules.

I also thought the Ethiopian Bible was completely unchanged. Its tradition preserves a broader collection, commonly counted as 81 books, including Enoch and Jubilees. That interests me enormously. But the Ethiopian Orthodox Church’s own historical account describes translation and later biblical revision. “Untouched” goes further than the evidence supports.

Then came the surprise about the King James Bible. Its original 1611 edition included a separate Apocrypha section. Many later editions omit it. Catholic Bibles include seven Old Testament books, plus portions of Esther and Daniel, that most Protestant Bibles don’t recognize as Scripture.

I still want to know who made these decisions and why. Correcting the history gives me better questions to ask.

And I want room to explore without being insulted for being Catholic—or expected to accept something simply because somebody sounds certain.

That standard has to apply to me, too. If I ask other people to question what they’ve been told, I have to examine what I’ve been told.

I had some things wrong. I’m learning.

I can live with that.