Elesha Coffman, “Why are Protestant and Catholic Bibles different?” at Christianity Today = http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/2008/august/why-are-protestant-and-catholic-bibles-different.html?share=9iiOSaVXTxNgBdOZ8ejGPNqOxiKDkaK3. This grabbed my attention because it is an issue which interests me. And because Hebrew Bible was part of my graduate studies and have taught Biblical Hebrew including an introduction to transmission of the Old Testament and textual criticism. Coffman emphasizes the Councils of Jamnia in 90 and 118. Well okay. And does mention the Septuagint. And how during the Reformation Protestants decided to go with the Hebrew Bible. I have no quarrel with Coffman. I am not sure how well the short article answers the question. It represents a start. There is brief mention of how early church fathers quoted the deuterocanonical books and their status was debated during the Middle Ages. And then suddenly Protestants go with Hebrew Bible and Catholics go with Greek canon at Council of Trent. As far as I can tell the Greek canon was the Bible of the early Christian church and remained the Bible of the Christian church until the Protestant Reformation. One can argue that these extra books were not added by the Catholic and Orthodox churches so much as taken out by the Protestant reformers. After they had been taken out by the Jewish community – more precisely the Jewish community decided to focus on a Hebrew (Masoretic?) canon and not the Greek canon. And no I am not using the term “canon” quite correctly here but you get the idea. What I have yet to figure out is quite why the Protestant reformers decided to switch from Greek to Hebrew canon. Something about Martin Luther decided. But how and why? I am sure there are answers. I admit not being an expert on this. My graduate studies did not include much about transmission of the Old Testament or textual criticism. My studies were primarily ancient languages and history with some archaeology plus some Arabic and a seminar on early Islam. I have since studied it some largely as part of my effort to teach classical Hebrew to university undergraduates and give them an introduction to transmission and textual criticism. Comments to the article are a bit frustrating to read. One is from an Orthodox subdeacon that is not wrong so much as overstated. I have bumped heads with Orthodox Christians over how the Septuagint is more original and so superior to the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible. I am willing to grant it often is more “original” and arguably therefore superior to the Hebrew Bible. Although so far as I can tell it is not that simple. Plus I think there is an understandable “hey Orthodoxy got the true original Old Testament” edge to this discussion. The Dead Sea Scrolls show that there was not simply one true and original Hebrew Bible. There were… three? or more. Sorry dear fellow Protestants but that is how the evidence looks. And the Old Testament represented by the Septuagint was indeed one of them. That is not quite the same as demonstrating the Septuagint is more original or that the Jewish community “heavily revised” the Hebrew Bible partly as a reaction to how Christians were using the Greek Old Testament. I no longer keep up with or participate with scholarly discussions about change and variety in classical Hebrew but am aware that a group of scholars do emphasize the importance of textual criticism. That relying on the Masoretic Text alone can produce a distorted picture of variety and change in classical Hebrew and in the text of the Hebrew Bible. I appreciate Christianity Today trying to address this. I do think the article could have gone into a bit more depth. To be blunt it does not really answer the question. And some of the comments seem to contain a mixture of knowledge along with confusion or at least mild exaggeration.
Early church fathers, who relied on the Septuagint (they could read Greek, but not Hebrew), sometimes quoted these books as Scripture. The status of the books continued to be debated throughout the Middle Ages.
At the time of the Reformation, Protestants decided that, because the additional books weren’t in the Hebrew Bible, they shouldn’t be in the Christian Bible, either (though they were included in early editions of the King James Bible). Catholics, at the Council of Trent (1546), decided to keep the “deutero-canonical” books.
My understanding is that the Septuagint was the Old Testament of the Christian church up until the Protestant Reformation. Although I have come across hints that it was not quite that simple. Why before the Reformation did some scholars and theologians learn Hebrew? I once asked an Orthodox Christian priest why bother learning Hebrew and studying the Hebrew Bible? Did I waste several years of my life learning all that stuff? (Possibly but that is another topic for another conversation.) His reply was not wrong but it seemed weak.
Introduction to Textual Criticism – Combined (DOCX)
Introduction to Textual Criticism – Combined (PDF)
(Take these with a grain of salt. I am not an expert but have attempted to study the subject enough to give undergraduates a basic introduction.)
Andrew Wilson, “The gospel in straw-men on chairs” at Think Theology = http://thinktheology.co.uk/blog/article/the_gospel_in_straw_men_in_chairs. Wilson is a pastor and doctoral student in theology in London. Apparently there is a video of Brian Zahnd doing a presentation on “the gospel in chairs” in which he “contrasts the modern, Western, legal, juridicial [sic] picture of the gospel (boo, hiss) with the ancient, Eastern, restorative picture (hooray), and does so using two chairs as visual aids”. Wilson argues that Zahnd presents a caricature of penal substitutionary atonement. He is not being fair to a view which he does not like. In other words he beats up a straw man version of penal substitutionary atonement which differs from the best patristic presentations of the atonement. What is my point? I have a few. (1) I have never been a fan of penal substitutionary atonement theory but (2) am beginning to wonder if (2a) I do not understand it according to the best presentations thereof and (2b) it is not wrong or more precisely it is one among several different images or understandings of the atonement in Scripture and in early Christian theology and (3) I was introduced to Zahnd by a dear colleague who no longer serves with this parish and frankly I am not sure what to make of Zahnd. I sometimes run across tweets and posts by him that strike me as… self-righteous? Hard to find quite the right words. It is a stance that I sense sometimes when listening to progressive Christians and that is difficult to describe.
[I have before mentioned] the danger of unfair comparisons based on theological preferences. The classic example is that Roman Catholics risk comparing Thomas Aquinas with Joel Osteen, while Protestants risk comparing John Calvin with Father Paddy O’Flannery O’Reardon, and both then sit back convinced that their team is better. There needs to be a “pick on someone your own size” commitment when theological concepts are being appraised like this, especially when they concern central doctrines like the atonement. And my read of what Brian Zahnd says here, notwithstanding the fact that he’s adapting the illustration from someone else, is that he simply isn’t very charitable in his portrayal of the view he doesn’t like—so while he ends up convincing me that the straw-man he’s knocking down is wrong, he doesn’t convince me that the more mature, reflective, theologically cogent doctrine behind it is wrong. …
[I]f we are talking about the straw-man version (which I hate), and ifwe were then to contrast it with the best patristic expositions of the atonement (which I love), then of course we should prefer the latter over the former. But there is of course a third option, which is the one I think we should take: preach the whole biblical gospel, using all the richness of imagery and human example and symbol and doctrine there is available, and avoid playing one off against the other. (My own book on the gospel, GodStories, has 56 chapters, of which only two focus on propitiation or penal substitution.) So yes, by all means oppose the straw-man version of penal substitution—but make sure you replace it with a better and richer one, one that does justice to Isaiah 53 and the like.
What Wilson describe is an understandable habit I observe. I see new atheists going after Christianity in its weakest forms. Creationism is wrong and evolution is true therefore atheism! Uh… no. I see people criticize a point of view with which they disagree partly by not engaging the best and strongest expressions of that view. Congratulations you argued some sweet pious lay person into silence on that controversial issue because does not have a graduate degree or two and has not read the latest hot books by hip popular scholar. What would happen if you tried to discuss this with a competent scholar? It is like people latch onto views they like and look for opportunities to defeat or convert weaker opponents in order to… something. That might not be what they consciously think but the patterns of behavior lead me to suspect this.
Mangy Dog 
Interesting analogy. Thanks for the comment.