Good evening. The resolution that I am to defend to night is “the deuterocanon [which Protestants call ‘the apocrypha’] is Scripture.” These books are Judith, Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, 1st and 2nd Maccabees, Baruch as well as sections of Esther and Daniel.
A word that you’ll likely hear a lot tonight is the word “canon,” which is not a weapon that shoots ballistic missiles.The word “canon,” as it will be used here tonight, is a technical theological term for an authoritative list of the books of Scripture. Like all technical terms, it meaning can change with time and people can draw up erroneous lists of books. Therefore, I will focus on the biblical definition of Scripture given by St. Paul “All Scripture is inspired by God” that is it is theopneustos – God-breathed. If the deuterocanonals are inspired then they are Scripture. If they are not inspired then they are not Scripture - regardless if someone attaches the word “canonical” to them or not.
In addition to demonstrating the inspired status of the deuterocanonical books, there is also a negative aspect I must address. If these books are inspired Scripture then there cannot be a authoritative, closed, fixed and universally accepted collection of sacred books prior to Christ that would exclude these books.
Tonight’s topic is quite complex and I’m sure that we will not be able to even scratch the surface of even the most important items. So, by way of summary, I would like to offer you a chronological view of the issue of the canon and since some Protestant apologists claim that the OT canon was closed, fixed and universally accepted some one hundred or even two hundred years before Christ, we will begin there.
Around 200 BC, the Hebrew book of Sirach (which is one of the deuterocanonical books) was written in Palestine. And what do we find in the book of Sirach? Well, we don’t find any awareness that the canon of Scripture had just been authoritatively closed. It gives no list of sacred books. It gives no number of sacred books nor does it speak of any subdivisions within Scripture so as to suggest that its contents was fixed; such as the later rabbinical division of the “Law, the Prophets and the Writings.” Instead, Sirach presents itself as passing on the Wisdom of God, which is strange claim indeed if OT canon had already been authoritatively closed so as to exclude Sirach’s writing.
Maybe, it took a while before news of a closed, fixed canon became known. Fifty years later, around 150 BC, the Hebrew book of Sirach was translated into Greek and a Greek preface was attached to this translation. What do we find in this Greek preface?
There is no awareness that the canon of Scripture had been closed fifty years before. It provides no list of books and no enumeration of books. Instead, it speaks of Scripture as: “the law, the Prophets and the others that have followed them…” and “the law the prophets and the others that were delivered to us by our Ancestors” and “the law, the prophets and the rest of the books.” In three attempts, the translator of Sirach was unable to provide a name for the third category of Scripture, indicating that the canon was Scripture was still undefined and quite open.
Maybe fifty years wasn’t long enough for this closed canon to become known and universally accepted. Let’s move another fifty years into the future to 100 BC with the books of Maccabees. What do Maccabees tell us? Again, there is no indication of a closed, fixed canon one hundred years before; there is no list of books, no enumeration of books and the only subdivision used in Maccabees is the two-fold division of the “Law and the Prophets.”
There is no concrete evidence, prior to Christ, of a closed, fixed and universally accepted canon whose contents are identical to Protestant bibles today. On the contrary, we find that not only the deuterocanonical books but also the pseudopigrapha works presenting themselves as divine Scripture indicating that the limits of the Old Testament canon had yet to be defined.
Perhaps at the time of Christ we will find evidence of a closed, fixed and universally accepted canon? If we turn our attention to Philo – a Jewish philosopher in Alexandria and contemporary of Christ, we find that there is no mention of a closed canon. Philo does not provide us with a list of Scripture, any enumeration of Scripture or any clear-cut three-fold division of Scripture. Some point to a passage in his Contemplative Life, but as Earl Ellis and other Protestant scholars note, we can make out between a two and a five-fold division of Scripture in this passage.
The New Testament likewise does not produce a list of books nor does it provide the fixed number of books that was accepted. There is no mention of “the Law, the Prophets and the Writings.” The closest it comes to this three-fold division is in Luke 22:24 when Our Lord speaks of “the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms.” But as Julio Trebolle-Barrera points out in the most recent scholarly treatments on this passage, the word “Psalms” here undoubtedly refers to the “book of Psalms” and not the third division of what later rabbinical Judaism called “the Writings.”
Some Protestant apologists claim that Our Lord’s reference to the “blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah” in Luke 11:51 proves that he rejected the deuterocanon. But the premises of this argument are so tenuous and the conclusion so ambiguous that this argument is not taken seriously even among modern Protestant scholars who specialize on this topic.
In terms usage, The New Testament does provide us with positive evidence for the inclusion of the deuterocanonical books. Although no quotations from the deuterocanonicals are ever prefaced with the words, “the Scripture says,” they are, nevertheless, used in an authoritative manner. For the sake of time, I will provide only two examples here.
If you have a Bible, please turn to the Book of Hebrews. Chapter 11 verse 2 reads, “For by it [i.e. Faith] the men of old gained approval.” The last part of this verse literally reads, “…were testified of” (JFB). Who were these “men of old” whose faith was “testified”? Hebrews lists Abel, Abraham, Enoch and others. The chapter quickens its pace by only mentioning names (e.g. “… Gideon, Sampson, Barak, Jepthahah…”). The chapter concludes by presenting their exploits. In verse 35, Hebrews mentions, “…others were tortured, not accepting their release, so that they might obtain a better resurrection.” Nowhere in the Protestant Old Testament do you find anyone who was tortured and refused release explicitly for a better resurrection. However, you will find exactly with the martyrs presented in Second Maccabees. Moreover, the word translated “tortured” is a rare word found in the Greek Bible only here and in Second Maccabees in the context of the Maccabean martyrs. For this reason, Protestant and Catholic scholars agree that this is undoubtedly a reference to Second Maccabees.
I would like to draw two very narrow conclusions from this usage. First, the inspired writer of Hebrews does not terminate sacred history at the time of Ezra or Artexerxes, but rather extends it down to the time of the Maccabees. Second, it is significant that the Maccabean martyrs are the only characters introduced in this chapter that are not found within the shorter canon.
My second example comes from Matthew 27.43 where the chief priests, the scribes and the elders are mocking Our Lord on the cross. They state, quoting Psalm 22, “"HE TRUSTS IN GOD; LET GOD RESCUE Him now, IF HE DELIGHTS IN HIM; for He said, `I am the Son of God.'" The postpositive “gar” indicates that the chief priest, scribes and elders predicated their expectation for God’s rescue upon the fact the Jesus claimed to be the “Son of God.” This expectation could not be based on experience since the prophets were the “sons of God” they were not rescued from their foes. Yet, in Wisdom 2.18 we find the following prophecy: “For if the just one be the Son of God, he will defend him and deliver him from the hand of his foes.” This conflation of Psalm 22 and Wisdom 2 indicates that these Jewish leaders understood both texts to be messianic and they expected their hearers accept them as such. Moreover, Matthew saw their words as significant and expected the reader do likewise since he includes it in his Gospels. .
Note that both Second Maccabees and Wisdom are the only two deuterocanonical books written in originally in Greek. Also note that the Book of Hebrews and the Gospel of Matthew were written specifically to a Hebrew-Christian audience. In case there is anyone here who thinks that employment of these two texts is the product of an overactive Catholic imagination, realize that both these texts (and others as well) were cross-referenced in the New Testament in the Protestant 1611 edition of the King James Bible acknowledging, what many Protestant fear to today, that these books were being referenced and employed by the inspired writers of the New Testament.
Further confirmation that Jesus and his inspired apostles accepted the deuteros can be found in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. The Apostolic Fathers were men who personally knew the apostles, were taught by the apostles, and the apostles placed many of them over a particular church to be “ministers of the word.”
I now refer you to a doctorial dissertation written by R. J. Brabban on “The Use of the Apocrypha and Pseudopigrapha in the Writings of the Apostolic Fathers.” After a long and exhaustive study of the texts, Brabban concludes, “… [T]he apocrypha and pseudopigrapha were indeed known and used [in a manner] identical to their use of books now recognized as canonical, or scripture. It is logical, then, to assume that these books were recognized andconsidered scripture in at least some orthodox Christian circles, and by some prominent Church Fathers… The canon at this time was expanded to include Wisdom, Sirach, Judith, Esther (expanded version) Tobit, 4 Esdras, (1) Enoch, an expanded Jeremiah, and perhaps others as well.”
Brabban further notes: “It is significant that no passage from the apocrypha or pseudopigrapha isever refuted in the Apostolic Fathers. They are never produced as inferior sources, nor are they dismissed as inaccurate. They are never treated as less than Scripture.”
This is true through the primitive Christian Church With the possible exception of Origen and Julius Africanus, every early Christian writer who used the deuterocanonical books (from the time of the New Testament until Jerome in the late fourth century) did so in a manner commensurate with Sacred Scripture.
The divinity of all of the deuterocanonical books is attested in this period, many of them several times over, and often in a very explicit fashion. For example, They are called “Holy Scripture” (sacra Scriptura), “Divine Scripture” (divina Scripture / Theios Graphos) and "priestly writings.” Origen calls Wisdom the "divine words," which the Protestant exegete Edward Ruess notes underscores "not only the intrinsic value of the passage quoted, but ought certainly to remind us of its supernatural origin.” Their passages are introduced with words like, "the divine oracles say," "the prophet says," "the Holy Spirit shows and predicts," "Divine Wisdom says," and "the word of God says.” Athanasius states that the pre-incarnate Word is “teaching and speaking” in a passage in the Book of Wisdom. The authors of the deuterocanonical books are introduced as being "inspired by the Holy Spirit," and "established in the Holy Spirit," Passages from both Wisdom and Baruch are often quoted as prophesies about Christ especially Wisdom 2 quoted earlier. The deuterocanonical books are counted among, "our Christian authorities" and among "the divine volumes." And the use of the solemn formula "It is written" is used so frequently that it is impossible to present all of them here tonight.
If the deuteros were not explicitly rejected from the canon 200 years before Christ, when did this rejection occur? In terms of explicit evidence, we must place the date of the shorter canon just prior to the Bar Kokba revolt in 132 AD. Forty years after the Resurrection, the Jews staged a revolt against pagan Rome. This First Revolt failed largely because of the factualism that existed in first century Judaism. The Second Revolt was different. In the Second Revolt, all would be united under one leader named Bar Kokba and Rabbi Akiba, the head rabbi of Jamnia, declared Bar Kokba to be the Messiah prophesied in Numbers 24:17. It was thought that Bar Kokba would defeat the Romans, rebuilt the JerusalemTemple, and rule as Prince in Jerusalem. While large numbers of Jews, including Samaritans and even pagans, formed ranks under this false Messiah, but one heretical Jewish sect would not. That sect was the Christians. Because of their unwillingness to repudiating Christ and follow Bar Kokba, Christians became more than heretics. They were considered traitors as well.
It was Rabbi Akiba who officially repudiated all things Christian beginning with the Gospels, the other books of the New Testament, the Book of Sirach and all the books written after Sirach. Akiba also rejected the Greek translation of the Septuagint that had served as a common text for Christians and Jews. As the prominent Hebrew scholar George Moore notes, “Before any list of OT appears in Jewish literature the gospels are repudiated by name.”
Akiba’s action is a watershed moment in our chronology. It is only after the Bar Kokba Revolt that we find the reoccurring accusation by Christians that the Jews had altered or “deleted” texts from Scripture (beginning with Justin Martyr, who was a contemporary of the Revolt). It is only after the Bar Kokba Revolt that we find Christians attempting to ascertain which books were accepted by the Jews of their day beginning with Melito of Sardis around 170 AD. It is only after the Bar Kokba Revolt that one finds the idea of a “cessation of prophecy” appearing in the datable texts in rabbinic literature in an attempt to link the authority of rabbinical Sages to the prophetic tradition. It is also around the time that the Hebrew Massoretic text was adopted as the standard text in rabbinical Judaism.
It is not until Jerome that one finds a Christian who dared to deny the divinity of the deuterocanon. Based on an erroneous understanding of the textual tradition of the OT, Jerome and his small group of followers (i.e., Rufinius, Gregory of Nazenzius, Epiphanius and others) broke with the consensus of the ancient Christian Church. By doing so, as Bruce M. Metzger notes, “Jerome, standing in this respect almost alone in the West…” And as the Protestant scholar H. H. Howorth explains “…[Jerome’s] theory on the Canon, whatever its merits, was not that of the primitive Church” - a fact that Howorth considers to be “of common and elementary knowledge” Jerome, knowing that his innovative views ran counter to the Christian Church, wrote a series of prefaces to various books of his Latin translation as a pre-emptive strike against his critics calling, for the first time in Christian history, the deuterocanonical books “apocrypha” – that is “mere human writings.”
Jerome’s new views were met with a series of decrees from the local African of Hippo (393), Carthage I (397), Carthage III (416), Carthage IV (419) that re-affirmed the inspired status of the deuterocanon. As F. F. Bruce notes: [These council] “…did not impose any innovation on the churches; they simply endorsed what had become the general consensus of the churches of the west and of the greater part of the east.” Even ardent followers of Jerome were troubled by their master’s radical opinion on the canon. For example, Bishop Exuperius, apparently troubled by Jerome’s opinion in this matter enquired to Pope Innocent I in 405 AD as to the contents of Sacred Scripture. Innocent I replied by repeating the list of the African Council that included the deuteros. The common Christian Bible from this point on to the middle ages included the deuteros intermixed with the other books without qualification or distinction. Scriptures with the deuteros became so widespread that Pope Nicholas I, in 846 AD, declared Innocent I’s list to be, “part of the universal law of the Church.”
As Jerome’s Latin Vulgate grew in circulation and popularity, so did Jerome’s prestige as a master in biblical studies. It is not unusual to find writers, in the Middle Ages, sometimes parroting the words of Jerome’s critical prefaces still accepting the deuterocanon as an inspired part of the Christian Scripture. For example, John Wickliffe, who is sometimes called “the morning star of the Reformation” adopts Jerome’s critical remarks in his translation, but uses Sirach, Wisdom, Baruch and Maccabees as Scripture capable of confirming doctrine against his opponents.