Apocrypha and the "intertestimental gap" between OT and NT

The possibilities of the 22 book saying,

Today's 24-book Jewish Canon is mostly from early rabbis. However Josephus the Pharisee said that Scripture has 22 books. We all know that there is no discrepancy on Law and the Prophets. It's pretty safe to assume that all Jews back in Jesus' days had a consensus on the books of Law and Prophets.

The Writings however may not be fully canonized or reckoned in a sense. In that case, the rabbis' 24-book Bible may have exactly the same content as the 22-book Pharisee version mentioned by Josephus. The 24-book rabbi version may be so arranged for the purpose of education. This is one possibility.

Another possibility is that 2 books are newly added to the Canon but not reckoned with and agreed upon by Josephus the Pharisee. He only reckoned 22 books. More likely the other two books are Daniel and Ezra. They are written in Aramaic instead of ancient Hebrew, as a result of Aramaic becoming more common after Ezra (i.e., after the Second Temple was built). All books written in ancient Hebrew which shall be added have already been added by Ezra. All left is the two books written after him and in Aramaic instead of ancient Hebrew. Around Jesus' days or even later the two books are added but not reckoned with and agreed upon by Josephus the Pharisee. This is another possibility.

Septuagint included early Jewish canon with some other books deemed useful. So it may include Daniel and Ezra as well even before they are formally added to the Canon by the Pharisees (in terms of enforcement, the Sadduccees only care about the first 5 books), along with other books we today refer to as the Apocrypha.

The rabbis in re-picking up Judaism in the third century or even later reckoned the 24-book Canon. Protestants thought that it made more sense to adopt the Jewish Canon than the one made from Septuagint which apparently is a Jewish Canon plus other books.

BobRyan said:

More to the point - he could actually read Hebrew and knew that the Apocrypha was never a part of the Hebrew Bible.

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Even if Josephus presumed to “know” what was “in” the Hebrew Bible, which assumes the writings were a ketuvim , which seems extremely unlikely, you cannot separate Josephus from his own biases. This in general is the problem with most historians, which is why I chose to use the versions of the Old Testament which are predominantly quoted in the New, because of the very religious assertions you make about Josephus. He appears to have known about our Lord but not to have been a Christian; if he was certainly a Christian, his history of the Jews would be much easier to accept as authoritative. After the birth of Christ, my view is that we have to begin to recognize an emergent disparity whose existence was I think implied by St. Symeon in the Nunc Dimitis (the third canticle or song in the Nativity of the Gospel According to Luke), and then more clearly referenced by St. John the Baptist, and then asserted by our Lord.

In the absence of Origen’s Hexapla and certain other invaluable works by early Christians which have been lost, we lack the information needed to make an unbiased assessment of St. Jerome, but we do know that both the Eastern and Western churches did not accept some of his conclusions until the 16th century, and we also know that he was conscientious enough to translate documents he had concerns about.

Thus ironically I find myself supporting the open canon Lutheranism has that we have discussed with our friends @MarkRohfrietsch and @ViaCrucis on a certain level, even though I personally regard anything accepted by any of the ancient churches of Nicene orthodox Catholicity on the grounds of being unable to disagree. For example, the Ethiopians, who are among the most devout Christians in the world and also among the most devout Jews think 1 Enoch canonical, and since like any book mere canonicity does not mean a literal-historical interpretation is required (since for some books like The Song of Songs this is impossible), and since its quoted in St. Jude, I can’t personally reject it. But because of its peculiarity, I cannot blame others for choosing to reject it.

Nor can I condemn the traditional 39 book form of Anglicanism taught by my friend @Paidiske wherein some of these books can be read for moral instruction but not doctrine, and are thus included in the KJV as apocrypha, even though I don’t personally agree with it.

Actually when it comes to this literature, the only two questions I am curious about are why John Calvin accepted Baruch as protocanon, and only Baruch (perhaps @hedrick might know) and why St. Athanasius apparently had a higher opinion of Judith than of Esther.

Hawkins said:

The possibilities of the 22 book saying,

Today's 24-book Jewish Canon is mostly from early rabbis. However Josephus the Pharisee said that Scripture has 22 books. We all know that there is no discrepancy on Law and the Prophets. It's pretty safe to assume that all Jews back in Jesus' days had a consensus on the books of Law and Prophets.

The Writings however may not be fully canonized or reckoned in a sense. In that case, the rabbis' 24-book Bible may have exactly the same content as the 22-book Pharisee version mentioned by Josephus. The 24-book rabbi version may be so arranged for the purpose of education. This is one possibility.

Another possibility is that 2 books are newly added to the Canon but not reckoned with and agreed upon by Josephus the Pharisee. He only reckoned 22 books. More likely the other two books are Daniel and Ezra. They are written in Aramaic instead of ancient Hebrew, as a result of Aramaic becoming more common after Ezra (i.e., after the Second Temple was built). All books written in ancient Hebrew which shall be added have already been added by Ezra. All left is the two books written after him and in Aramaic instead of ancient Hebrew. Around Jesus' days or even later the two books are added but not reckoned with and agreed upon by Josephus the Pharisee. This is another possibility.

Septuagint included early Jewish canon with some other books deemed useful. So it may include Daniel and Ezra as well even before they are formally added to the Canon by the Pharisees (in terms of enforcement, the Sadduccees only care about the first 5 books), along with other books we today refer to as the Apocrypha.

The rabbis in re-picking up Judaism in the third century or even later reckoned the 24-book Canon. Protestants thought that it made more sense to adopt the Jewish Canon than the one made from Septuagint which apparently is a Jewish Canon plus other books.

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Thank you for this informative post! How did the 24 book canon differ from the ancient 22 book canon, the modern 22 book canon, and the deterocanon we find in the KJV or Douai Rheims or other editions?

BobRyan said:

So it does not "just so happen" that all the Jews and the non-Catholic Christians are pretty much on the same page with the same observation that Josephus makes when it comes to the content of the Hebrew Bible.

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What is your definition of “non-Catholic Christians”?

BobRyan said:

His argument was about what Jews regarded as the unchanged Hebrew canon.

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Which again, was untrue in his time, because the Sadducees had a view similiar to the Samaritan position, and the Essences accepted more, as did the Hellenic Jews and the Ethiopians. So Josephus when he speaks of Judaism is clearly speaking of an idealized form of Judaism based on his doctrine, which appears to identify him as a Pharisee or proto-Rabinnic Jew, and these Jews appear to have been the most problematic in their interpretation according to the words of our Lord.

BobRyan said:

"Protestants" were in actuality "protesting Catholics" -- that is to say "Catholics protesting something". They were not trying to invent a new Bible or come up with a Bible. They thought they had one.

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This is a problematic answer, which I will return to, but at first, I feel we must first establish that your statement is in many respects correct:

The majority of Protestants, then and now, owing to the Nicene Creed, do not seek to deny their Catholicity, because Catholicity and Orthodoxy are essentially synonymous (indeed, what most people think Orthodox means, correct faith, is more akin to what Catholic means, the phrase Catholic Church being literally translatable, via the Hellenic intermediary ecclesia Catholica, as the entire Church with the entire Christian faith (Catholic meaning “according to the whole” which is commonly mistranslated as Universal). Orthodoxy in turn means “Correct Worship.”*

Indeed, the primary doctrinal disputes between any two denominations can be considered as differences over what constitutes Catholicism and Orthopraxis (including Orthodoxy).

Now, your statement is problematic for among other reasons** because it appears to deny the Catholicism of some Protestant denominations which at one time or another erroneously misunderstood the definition of Catholicism and therefore denied having it. Fortunately, Orthodoxy is less commonly denied.

But of these groups, a great many had no interest in changing one. As we have seen already in the course of the discussion, a hardline position against the books you appear to deny are Scripture for whatever reason was really specific to the Baptist movement and to a lesser extent the Reformed (but even here, the dispute was not that simple, insofar as John Calvin recognized Baruch as being Scriptural).

Really, what seems to have cemented opinion against some of these books is that a few of them appear if interpreted in a literal manner to either contradict common, but not universal, Protestant doctrinal positions, for example, Tobit and 2 Maccabees, or else are unusual compared to other books and were thought lost, for example, 1 Enoch, but 1 Enoch was quoted by St. Jude. The widespread omission of these books really started with the commercial Bible publishers as a cost-saving measure which used the example of the Geneva Bible as an attempt at historical justification.

However, the Geneva Bible cannot be divorced from its English Reformed Calvinist heritage, as the marginalia of it is very specific; it and the Challoner Douai Rheims I would argue represent the earliest examples of Study Bibles, by virtue of their in-line commentary, are now best understood as rival Study Bibles each of which advocates doctrinal views which a majority of Protestants at the time and at present did not agree with, for example, certain views of the Roman church and the Calvinist doctrines most specifically associated with them. They are incompatible with Anglican, Methodist, Evangelical, pre-Millenial Dispensationalist, General Baptist also known as non-Calvinist Baptists (both being represented in the Southern Baptist Convention, which permits a fair amount of doctrinal discretion), Lutheran and Sabbatarian doctrine. Hence, different denominations, including the above and others, such as the Eastern Orthodox, now have their own Study Bible

And this is not a bad thing: personally, I own several, the most important being my Orthodox and Lutheran Study Bibles and my somewhat misnamed KJV Study Bible, which uses the text of part of the KJV but unifies its Evangelical and Calvinist theologians with a pre-millenial dispensationalism in line with the views of John Nelson Darby.

I myself wish there was an Oriental Orthodox study Bible which would include commentary on the doctrines of every OO church, including the interpretation of books only used by the Ethiopian church in both a local and pan-Oriental context , and also as the Anglophone membership in the Assyrian diaspora increases, an Assyrian Study Bible which would include their interpretation, based on Mar Theodore the Interpreter (Theodore of Mopsuestia) who used a historical-literal method of exegesis closest in method, if not deduction, to many Protestants.

In contrast, the KJV along with its official predecessors, is not constructed around a particular doctrine. I am of the view that for any Protestant, only a few of the books in the Apocrypha could be considered doctrinally problematic, namely Tobit and 2 Maccabees, or else perhaps of less importance, so far as I am aware, and also certain books only accepted by the Ethiopians. Indeed, some apocrypha is in offensive and makes for some very good hymnody, for example, Psalms 152-155, which were at one time used among some Syriac Christians, and the canticle Benedicite, Omni Opera.

With regards therefore to the bulk of the books removed from the KJV by publishers which were historically included, I feel their justification for removing them is wholly inadequete, and the position of Josephus on these books is irrelevant: to cite him could construe an appeal to authority fallacy, whereas to reject him outright could constitute an argumentum ad hominem fallacy. We have no reason to accuse Josephus of intentional dishonesty, but we also conversely have no reason to trust him on interpreting issues outside of the understanding of then Judaism he practiced.

Thus, I feel that these books should be at a minimum included on something like Anglican article 39 grounds. Protestants should work out by themselves whether or not they are Scripture. And in the case of many of these books, I am unaware of any reason why they might offend anyone, for example, the books of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), 1 Maccabees, Baruch and Wisdom (especially the beautiful prophecy of the passion of our Lord in Wisdom ch. 2.).

*Perhaps the confusion stems from the Slavonic translation of Orthodoxy, Pravoslavie, which means something like “True Faith.”

** Unless you thought I meant “Protestants who acknowledge their Catholicism”, such as Lutherans and Anglicans, and only those Protestants, it also appears to omit the various ancient denominations, including the Eastern and Oriental churches, the churches in communion with the Pope in Rome, and the Assyrians. Of these churches, most do not accept the authority of the Pope, although conversely, the Roman Catholic Church remains the largest in the world.

The Liturgist said:

based on Mar Theodore the Interpreter (Theodore of Mopsuestia) who used a historical-literal method of exegesis

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Are Theodore's commentaries on the NT available online? I couldn't find any.

BobRyan said:

I can't separate Josephus from his own century or you from your century. He is speaking and observing 2000 years earlier than you or I - when he tells his readers what they are looking at in the first century A.D.

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But here is YOUR problem, outside the Torah, which one can assume are the 5 books of Moses, all you have is numbers from Josephus. Prophets consist of 13 books, and the Writings another 4 books. He does not claim what the names of those books are, or what writings were composed in those books. So, it is a leap and a huge leap to assume that the 22 books that Josephus references the exact same canon that the Jews now accept. Especially considering that their modern canon is composed of Torah (5 books), Prophets (21 books), Writings (13), i.e. 39 books total.

BobRyan said:

So it does not "just so happen" that all the Jews and the non-Catholic Christians are pretty much on the same page with the same observation that Josephus makes when it comes to the content of the Hebrew Bible.

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It just do happens that the decision of Protestants to accept the same canon as the Jews occurred in the 16th century or later, and not the 1st century. So this is not an argument for your case.

BobRyan said:

Quote any other text you like. Josephus was not saying that the Septuagint (LXX) did not exist or that no one read it. His argument was about what Jews regarded as the unchanged Hebrew canon. There are a great many books in the world today - but the 39 books of the OT that Christians use are not in the Apocrypha and the Apocrypha is not in those 39 books. And those 39 are what the Jews have today (only grouped differently) as their Hebrew Bible.

It does not "just so happen" to fit Josephus' statement -- rather it is entirely logically consistent.

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So with this argument, you are claiming that the Jews (after the birth of Christianity) has greater authority than the leadership of Christianity to determine the accepted canon for the Bible of the Christian Church? Well then, you need to get rid of your New Testament since the Jews reject those writings as Scripture.

BobRyan said:

This is an important point considering the language that Luke uses for Christ's teaching.

Luke 24:
” 25 And then He said to them, “You foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to come into His glory?” 27 Then beginning with Moses and with all the Prophets, He explained to them the things written about Himself in all the Scriptures."

"
44 Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.” 45 And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures."

Luke is using terms like "in all the scriptures" as if his readers knew what Christ would be teaching from as a Hebrew Rabbi speaking to His disciples.

There is the same certainty that they all knew what this meant - the Josephus himself asserts to be the case for first century Jews.

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Well then, Law of Moses (5 books), the Prophets (according to Josephus 13 books) and the Psalms (1 book). Now you are down to 19 books. Your canon is getting smaller isn't it?

BobRyan said:

"Protestants" were in actuality "protesting Catholics" -- that is to say "Catholics protesting something". They were not trying to invent a new Bible or come up with a Bible. They thought they had one.

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Which due to the era of Rationalism, they rejected i.e. the Vulgate and went back to "original languages" i.e. Hebrew for OT and Greek for NT. The problem with their decision during those times was "original languages" and "original sources" were not the same thing. The Masoretic Text is a revised version of the OT completed around the 10th century AD and the Greek NT that they used originally was Erasmus' Novum Instrumentum omne various versions, which Erasmus used some 12th century manuscripts to create. So the confusion by the original Revolters, which stuck and became the Protestant Bible's foundation.

Oddly enough, with Sola Scriptura and now Solo Scriptura kind of muddies the water doesn't it? What version to use? As far as I know, no modern Protestant Bible uses Erasmus' Greek NT as it basis for the NT, and since there are some variations between the various manuscript traditions that creates IMO quite the pickle for especially Solo Scriptura believers. This of course is the primary reason for the rise of KJV only Protestants, because they know deep down there is an issue here.

Erose said:

Which due to the era of Rationalism, they rejected i.e. the Vulgate and went back to "original languages" i.e. Hebrew for OT and Greek for NT. The problem with their decision during those times was "original languages" and "original sources" were not the same thing. The Masoretic Text is a revised version of the OT completed around the 10th century AD and the Greek NT that they used originally was Erasmus' Novum Instrumentum omne various versions, which Erasmus used some 12th century manuscripts to create. So the confusion by the original Revolters, which stuck and became the Protestant Bible's foundation.

Oddly enough, with Sola Scriptura and now Solo Scriptura kind of muddies the water doesn't it? What version to use? As far as I know, no modern Protestant Bible uses Erasmus' Greek NT as it basis for the NT, and since there are some variations between the various manuscript traditions that creates IMO quite the pickle for especially Solo Scriptura believers. This of course is the primary reason for the rise of KJV only Protestants, because they know deep down there is an issue here.

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Curiously, even Jerome, who translated the Vulgate, had his own issues with the canon. He initially did not include the additional books in his canon, but later relented.

BobRyan said:

again - not true. Josephus is very specific in his criteria as his text shows. His criteria was stated as the unchanged Hebrew canon that was kept in the temple and had not been changed in over 300 years.

The same that they still have unchanged today in the Hebrew Bible.

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Again, you have zero evidence for this assertion. And you have given zero evidence to support this claim.

BobRyan said:

You keep responding with "This or that sect of Jews had other preferences" but you never get to the point of Josephus' criteria which is that canon of scripture that had been preserved in the Temple. This is not about a personal preference/history where Josephus himself is the curator of the temple in Jerusalem keeping his own version of the Bible, while others in rooms next to him have their own individual compilation.

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Bob, the ugly truth of the matter is that these Jewish sects existed. We have archeological and historic proof that they existed. We know from the Dead Sea Scrolls that the Essenes' canon of Scripture was much larger than the Pharisees. We have proof, including modern proof, that the Samaritans only accepted the Torah, which they still only accept the Torah today. We have proof that the Ethiopian Jews had a differing canon then and they still have the same canon today. There is quite a bit of evidence that the Sadducees only accepted the Torah. We also have evidence that the Pharisees, who latter evolved into Rabbinical school of Judaism, did not have their OT canon fixed completely until maybe the 5th century. This is shown in the Talmud writings.

Then you throw in the very fact that the modern Jews don't have a closed canon, and many view the writings of Talmud and Misnah among others, just as authoritative as the OT canon, your argument falls apart.

BobRyan said:

You are carefully avoiding the very objective irrefutable standard of criteria that Josephus specified and I don't know how you expect us "not to notice" or do you have a historian claiming that any of the other variants you propose "WERE ALSO" preserved in the Temple in Jerusalem as if they had an entire LIBRARY of variant canons being "preserved" in the Temple.???

Why keep avoiding the point in your "again was untrue" assertions?

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bbbbbbb said:

Curiously, even Jerome, who translated the Vulgate, had his own issues with the canon. He initially did not include the additional books in his canon, but later relented.

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The problem with the historical view of St. Jerome, is that modern apologist (on both sides) want to give St. Jerome far more authority than what he had. St. Jerome was a priest and a monk. He was not a bishop. What St. Jerome had going for him and what made him the perfect choice to initially revise the Old Latin Bible, which is what he was originally called to do to the Gospels and most probably to the whole NT, and later his new translation of most of the writings of the OT, was his unique skillset of being of one of the very few men if not the only man, who knew Latin, Greek and Hebrew fluently.

When St. Jerome became a monk, he moved to Palestine, and from his obvious strong relationships with local Jews, was moved to respect and honor the Hebrew Scriptures more than the Greek. They moved him so much that he eventually resisted to translate any more of the OT writings if he could not find the writing in Hebrew, Aramaic or one the offshoots of this language. For example the only reason why he translated Tobit into Latin was because he found a manuscript of Tobit in Chaldean.

Anyway it is obvious that St. Jerome was heavily influenced by his Jewish friends, which is his prerogative.

BobRyan said:

only if we imagine the grouping to be defined by the way we group them today.

The Jews used that same terminology as we see Luke using and it covered the entire Hebrew Bible - which we still have today.

The point remains.

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No your point does not remain. A) You have no idea what was included in those scrolls. You don't period. There is no historical evidence outside this one paragraph of Josephus, which does not name the books in question. So you have to guess and that is what you are doing guessing.

The fact remains that there is no listing of these 22 books offered by other authors in the first 3 centuries of AD, that match perfectly the modern accepted canon of the Jews or Protestants. It just doesn't exist. Look it up, you want find a single canon listing that matches.