Apocrypha

[girlygirl09]

Hey ICaine you there?

 

[BeforeTheFoundation]

Historically a lot of churches (including the Church of England in its 39 articles) at the reformation said that these books should be read for personal learning, but not used for forming doctrine. That seems an entirely reasonable basis on which to take them. Some of them offer little beyond insights into the culture that wrote them - but even that is worth having as it is only sightly earlier than the culture that Jesus worked in.

I'm confused. Are you disagreeing with me?

but more recently it has turned out that some of them were originally written in aramaic.

Really? hmmm... I was not aware of that, what are your sources? I would really be interested in reading more on that.

 

[ebia]

I'm confused. Are you disagreeing with me?

Not really.

Really? hmmm... I was not aware of that, what are your sources? I would really be interested in reading more on that.

Sorry - it's been a while since I read up on them in detail from that perspective and I can't recall the sources.

 

[winsome]

Well, it's really a story of Bibles. You have strong support in the early church for the 22 book Old Testament Canon. There were other books that were read, but were not considered authoritative on matters of doctrine.

Some of those books ended up eventually in the Septuagint, the Greek Bible and eventually the Vulgate, the Latin.

We can see even though they were in the Bible though that the learned did not consider them of the same authority. So we see Athanasius, the Bishop of Constantinople, clearly lay out that there was a 22 book canon of the Old Testament that was scripture (he made one mistake in his list, having one Apocryphal book instead of Esther). We also see Jerome, who translated the Vulgate, in the prefaces of the Vulgate lay out again that there were the books of fully authoritative scripture and the apocryphal books. Apocrypha was even a word he used for them.

Well over time, people look to their bible and they just accept it. Not everyone is a scholar. So we see the Orthodox church and people think the Septuagint was always the way they have it now and they think in that exact form Jesus and the Apostles quoted from it and so they accept it in it's entirety. They don't really make the distinction between the books of scripture and those that are useful but not scripture.

And we see the same thing in the Roman church. In addition to the prefaces of the Vulgate, we see people through the ages who understand that the extra books are useful for reading and study but not to be a source of doctrinal authority, people like Pope Gregory the Great, is just one. And we see the very books the Roman Catholic Church used make the same distinction.

For instance the Glossa ordianaria, the ordinary or common gloss which was the standard commentary used by the Roman Catholic Church. It both laid out in the prefaces that the Apocryphal books were not scripture but in order to make sure one did not miss that, each Apocryphal book or portion of a book was started with a note saying they were not a part of the canon.

In any case we don't see a lot. Because a lot was lost, there weren't that many that wrote and it's a little like those other things that people just know, they write about areas of dispute, not areas of agreement.

Anyway we see some individuals who wrote but we don't see a lot not in what you could necessarily call officially approved publications but then comes the printing press and things change.

The Biblia Complutensia, produced by Cardinal Ximenes, the Archbishop of Toledo, dedicated to Pope Leo X, and published with his full authority and consent in 1517, spells out that the Apocryphal books are not canonical scripture and so not to be used for confirmation of doctrine.

A couple Latin Bibles were also in agreement.


Even Cardinal Cajetan, who was a great opponent of Luther published his commentary on the Old Testament in 1532 and voiced complete agreement with Luther on the canon. Luther's full translation was published in 1534.

So the position of the Western church was really quite clear, but really only known by scholars, it probably wasnt' a topic of many sermons because there was no fight over it.

So you have the Old Testament canon, the New Testament canon and the Apocryphal book deemed useful for study but not authoritative in doctrine.

You often hear it stated that Luther somehow was the first to make the distinction but he's really in complete agreement with his contemporaries. As shown by those references I mentioned. And it should be noted that at least two of the works he used in making his translation, the Vulgate and the Glossa ordianria make the clear distinction. Luther probably would have liked to actually remove some books, he complained about them, but in the end, every book is right there in his translations. (the only exception was 3 and 4 Esdras which were in an appendix in the Vulgate, and ignored by Trent, later they returned to the Protestant Apocrypha as 1 and 2 Esdras)

Then came the Reformation and Trent. Trent is called an eucumenical council by the Roman Catholic church but it's really more a regional council. Just ask the Orthodox. In any case it is there that they declared the Catholic canon. And what they did was declare every book in the Vulgate (except the three in an appendix which they didn't mention) as fully authoritative scripture. Now even the vote gives insight 24 aye, 15 nay, 16 abstaining. You often hear that they were just affirming the long standing canon accepted universally by the church, but the vote certainly doesn't support that theory. And the politics of the day need to be understood. Trent was not the learned of the church. It was more a gathering of the political opponents of the Reformation. And it should be noted that the way you got appointments to land and such was to please the Pope. So I can but see the vote as little more than some political hacks who wanted to say what they thought the Pope wanted them to say. Or possibly people who without understanding simply took the Vulgate, the only authority they appealed to as scripture.

It's really much like a child growing up and seeing the pastor wave a KJV repeatedly saying behold the Word of God and the child grows up to become a KJO proponent. He literally take the KJV as perfect because that's how he understood it as a child. He simply took a statement he heard on faith and didn't necessarily understand everything behind the statement.

There are of course through the years people and such that can be used to support Trent, but the most learned and even indeed the publications used by the church show that there was that distinction between scripture and apocrypha, the difference between being written by a prophet and a historian.

There really isn't as much difference as it seems sometimes. Catholics still often make a distinction between the protocanoncial (Jewish canon) and the deuterocanonical (Apocryphal) books. And they really don't use them for doctrine. Oh you hear people use them to try and support purgatory, but the story doesn't support purgatory unless idolatry is a venial sin and the Catholics sure don't teach that. And I would criticize many Protestants today for being so negative on the Apocrypha, it seems to me to be an overeaction to Rome. There are things to be learned there and the Apocryphal books do give insight into the New Testament.

Hope that's helpful. Many of course would not agree with my rendition of history. But I believe it's basically accurate.

Marv

I wouldn't agree 100% with BigNorsk. I think he does not give enough importance to the stamp of approval on the full set of books by Rome. From the time of the list of Pope Damasus I (382) there was only one set officially approved even if scholars were less enthusiatic.

Also St. Jerome was not so dismissive of the "aprocrypha" as it would appear.

"What sin have I committed if I follow the judgment of the churches? But he who brings charges against me for relating [in my preface to the book of Daniel] the objections that the Hebrews are wont to raise against the story of Susannah [Dan. 13], the Song of the Three Children [Dan. 3:29–68, RSV-CE], and the story of Bel and the Dragon [Dan. 14], which are not found in the Hebrew volume, proves that he is just a foolish sycophant. I was not relating my own personal views, but rather the remarks that they are wont to make against us. If I did not reply to their views in my preface, in the interest of brevity, lest it seem that I was composing not a preface, but a book, I believe I added promptly the remark, for I said, ‘This is not the time to discuss such matters’" (Against Rufinius 11:33 [A.D. 401]).

There is an excellent article with a lot of depth discussing this here http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03267a.htm

 

[BigNorsk]

I hope I didn't sound dimissive. The books we call the Apochrypha were treated as important and were read in the churches, but they weren't used for doctrine. So just like there were so many different senses of words used, they were scripture in the sense of being profitable to read, but they weren't scripture in the sense of being authoritative for doctrine.

Cardinal Cajetan gave a rosetta stone type of statement in his Commentary on All the Authentic Historical Books of the Old Testament in 1532. (Luther's complete Bible was published in 1534)

He says:

“Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed amongst the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, as is plain from the Prologus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the Bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the Bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clearly through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage.”

Translation from William Webster's The Church of Rome at the Bar of History

And in case anyone is wondering, it's really not just my observation you can read similar statement whereBruce Metzger points out,

“Subsequent to Jerome's time and down to the period of the reformation a continuous succession of the more learned Fathers and theologians in the West maintained the distinctive and unique authority of the books of the Hebrew canon. Such a judgment, for example, was reiterated on the very eve of the Reformation by Cardinal Ximenes in the preface of the magnificent Complutensian Polyglot edition of the Bible which he edited (1514-17)...Even Cardinal Cajetan, Luther's opponent at Augsburg in 1518, gave an unhesitating approval to the Hebrew canon in his Commentary on All the Authentic Historical Books of the Old Testament, which he dedicated in 1532 to pope Clement VII. He expressly called attention to Jerome's separation of the canonical from the uncanonical books, and maintained that the latter must not be relied upon to establish points of faith, but used only for the edification of the faithful” (Bruce Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha (New York: Oxford, 1957), p. 180).

I think those who throw away the Apocrypha entirely go too far and are not in agreement with the historic church. Those who turn them into sources of doctrine also go too far. I am in agreement with those who would use terms like ecclesiastical canon to describe them.

Marv

 

[BeforeTheFoundation]

Sorry - it's been a while since I read up on them in detail from that perspective and I can't recall the sources.

Alright, well if you think of it PM them to me or something.

 

[winsome]

I hope I didn't sound dimissive. The books we call the Apochrypha were treated as important and were read in the churches, but they weren't used for doctrine. So just like there were so many different senses of words used, they were scripture in the sense of being profitable to read, but they weren't scripture in the sense of being authoritative for doctrine.

Cardinal Cajetan gave a rosetta stone type of statement in his Commentary on All the Authentic Historical Books of the Old Testament in 1532. (Luther's complete Bible was published in 1534)

He says: Translation from William Webster's The Church of Rome at the Bar of History

And in case anyone is wondering, it's really not just my observation you can read similar statement whereBruce Metzger points out,

I think those who throw away the Apocrypha entirely go too far and are not in agreement with the historic church. Those who turn them into sources of doctrine also go too far. I am in agreement with those who would use terms like ecclesiastical canon to describe them.

Marv

Sorry, I didn't mean to give the impression you were dismissive. I think you just a very fair summary, although I'm not really very well up on this topic. I just felt you gave a little too much emphasis to scholars and not to the statements from Rome and councils..

winsome

 

[SummaScriptura]

What if it can be demonstrated that the books perjoritively referred to as Apocrypha were in use as scripture from the earliest days of the Church?

If you read the roll-call of the faithful from Hebrews chapter 11, there is an underlying reliance and familiarity by the writer with the Greek Old Testament (the LXX), in preference to the Hebrew Old Testament:

Per Hebrews 11, subsequent to the universe being created by God's word, there were created things which came from things "not visible"; Genesis 1:3, in the LXX, has the formless earth as "invisible". In Hebrews 11, Enoch is said to have "pleased God" and then he "was not found"; Genesis 5:24-25 in the LXX substitutes the familiar "Enoch walked with God" with Enoch being pleasing to God, and further changes "he was not" to "he was not found". In Hebrews 11, Jacob is said to have "worshipped on his staff"; the last verse of Genesis 47 in the LXX has Jacob doing obeisance on his staff, not his bedpost, etc.

Continuing on with the chapter we are confronted with a veritable who's who of the Old Testament as the writer applauds the faith of the forefathers in a loosely chronological order.

Then the chapter leaves behind the familiar territory of the Hebrew Old Testament stories and progresses to describe events that do not fit very well into the books of the Hebrew Old Testament, "Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— of whom the world was not worthy— wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth."

Ah, but if one is using the Greek O.T. instead of the Hebrew O.T., suddenly, most of these references fit right in! The loose chronology of O.T. history outlined in Hebrews 11 continues right along with the history we find in those "extra" books.

So,

1. The oldest extant copies of the LXX have the books perjoritively called "Apocrypha" included
2. The writer of Hebrews draws upon the Greek Old Testament not the Hebrew in chapter 11
3. The writer then refers to events which are not found in the Hebrew Old Testament but which ARE found in our oldest Septuagint text

It is my conclusion therefore, during the 1st century the Septuagint already included the books referred to by modern detractors as "Apocrypha". So we conclude those books were used as scripture by the Church from the time of the Apostles.

Helpful resources:
NETS- New English Translation of the Septuagint
ESV- English Standard Version Bible with Apocrypha