The Bible is considered the most important book in human history. Among Catholics, the official version or canon comprises 73 books (46 from the Old Testament and 27 from the New Testament). However, in the Protestant world where Spanish is spoken there is another version, the Reina-Valera.
This denomination is related to its creators: Casiodoro de Reina, who presented his version in 1569, and Cipriano de Valera in 1602, carried out a new revision of the previous text. This version of the Holy Scriptures is identical to the Catholic version of the New Testament, but the Old does not include seven books: Tobias, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Judit, Ecclesiastical, Wisdom and Baruch. In this way, the Protestant Bible contains a total of 66 books.
Jews, Catholics and Protestants do not share the same Bible
The collection of Old Testament sacred books is the basis of Jewish tradition. Christians assumed this legacy, but added to the New Testament the scriptures where Jesus Christ presents himself as the true Messiah (as we know, for the Jewish religion the New Testament is not valid from a theological and doctrinal point of view). Reina-Valera.
In the early centuries of Christian tradition, the Bible was written in Hebrew-Aramaic and later in Greek.
It was later translated into Latin and became known as the Vulgate. This text served all Christians, but in the 16th century Luther’s Reformation occurred and Christianity was divided between Catholics and Protestant doctrines (Lutherans, Calvinists, Methodists, Anglicans, etc.).
In addition to the new theological approaches, for Martin Luther the 73 books of the Old Testament that made up the Christian canon should be reduced and for this reason the seven books already mentioned disappeared (these were written in Greek and not in Hebrew-Aramaic and this circumstance was decisive at the time of eliminating them for the new Protestant canon).
In this way, Protestants began to use a new version of the Bible, more specifically the one that connected with the Jewish-Palestinian tradition and which consisted of 39 books of the Old Testament .
Casiodoro de Reina and Cipriano de Valera were two Spanish religious who converted to Protestantism
The Protestant Reformation created a convulsion on the theological plane. In the 16th century, some religious abandoned the Catholic tradition and joined the group of reformers.
Casiodoro de Reina belonged to the Order of the Jerónimos, but his new theological convictions forced him to flee Spain. First he moved to Geneva and later to England. It was there that he began to translate the version of the Bible that bears his name into Castilian.
Cipriano de Valera also belonged to the Order of Jerónimos and was the one who revised and improved the previous version of the Bible.
