Protestant bibles and the apocrypha

[Vulpe]

Are Protestant bibles roughly the same in all languages and regions?

I know there are lots of different English translations to make them more readable for modern people but do they all have the include and exclude the same books ?

I think it will vary depending on the edition. Some "Protestant" Bibles such as the NRSV will include the Old Testament apocryphal books (Tobit, Maccabees etc)

Why were those books excluded by some Reformation theologians? I know they're written in Greek unlike the rest of the Old testament.

But the New Testament is all in Greek and they obviously keep that?

I think there are a few reasons, the apocrypha is not part of the Jewish canon of scripture they do not consider it part of the Hebrew Bible (old testament as referred to by christians) Josephus doesn't mention them as part of Jewish scriptures ( jewish scriptures generally don't divide like we divide old testament, the 12 minor prophets count as one book and they don't have I and II Samuel Kings and Chronicles as separate books). it is never quoted in the New testament either by Jesus or the apostles, it's doctrine doesn't always match the doctrine of the rest of Bible, there is no evidence that the apocrypha was in the septuagint at the time of Christ, the earliest lists of the canon from 170AD do not mention any of the apocryphal books

Interestingly, the first full translation of the Bible into English (Coverdale's 1535 edition) did include the Apocrypha, as it was part of the Latin Vulgate. I think the reason the Apocrypha was excluded was down to the Reformation's focus on scripture. Once you say that all doctrine/belief/practice should be strictly based on scripture, then it becomes very important to define what is scripture. And as the Apocrypha have never been considered strictly canonical, it was straightforward to exclude them from later Bible editions.

Also worth noting that there is New Testament Apocrypha as well. Writings like the Gospel of Thomas or the Shepherd of Hermas that were considered canonical by some of the early church fathers but were excluded when the canon was defined in 4th century AD.

Some people in the 16th century deciding God made a mistake in making the Incarnation happen at a time when Greek was the language of discussion and debate in Israel, leading to slight struggle in trying to access the mindsets of John or Paul without Wisdom.

Not sure why Judith and Tobit got left out - women and the ordinary classes being uppity?

Just like with Christians, there were several canons of the Jewish scriptures. The Septuagant was a Greek version of the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament), including the Deutorocanonical (Apocrypha) books, made for Greek-speaking Jews in Egypt in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC and adopted by the early Christian Churches.

Just to note... not all books of the Protestant Old Testament are quoted by Jesus or the disciples. I believe 12 books are not quoted. Also, some of the Deuteroanonical were found in Hebrew as part of the Dead See Scrolls. I believe not being in Hebrew was another reason that Protestants rejected the books from the Septuagant Greek text Ols Testament.

There were several lists of books being used by members of the Catholic Church and that is the reason the cannon was decided... at the Council of Rome in 382AD. That remained the cannon until after the Reformation 1200 years later.

From Wikipedia...

The Septuagint was the authoritative Jewish scriptures of the Second Temple Judaism from which the early Christians emerged from, hence the Christian Bible contained these deuterocanonical books until Martin Luther, assuming the Masoretic text to be the original, removed them to match this new Jewish canon.

There are in all 283 direct quotations from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) in the New Testament.[1] In about 90 instances, the Septuagint is quoted literally. In around 80 further instances, the quote is altered in some way. For example, at Matthew 21:42 Jesus says "Did ye never read in the scriptures that the stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner?", a reference to Psalm 118:22. Likewise, Mark 12:10. The Epistle of Jude quotes the pseudepigraphal Book of Enoch (1 Enoch 1:9) and the Assumption of Moses. Other quotations are sometimes made directly from the Hebrew text (e.g. Matthew 4:15–16, John 19:37, 1 Corinthians 15:54).

Enoch is an interesting one as it is regarded as important and canonical by Ethiopian Jews and Christians, communities as ancient as any of the Mediterranean ones.