The Apocrypha.

well I am open to your research that you've carried out single handedly. I try to keep an open mind..If I offended you, Forgive me. I apologize

I was not offended.

If you are not interested in polemics I am interested in dialoging with you.

Let me ask you this, if I were to poke a hole in any single point the "researchers" have made, would that be sufficient motive for you to revisit the subject of whether the Church in the West was right in disposing with any of these books?

Have you shriveled away that quickly?

No wonder. There are few who wish to think things through.

"Wisdom found no place to dwell."

lol.
I just wanted an honest opinon about "apocrypha" from and avid reader of it, such as yourself. but ok.

I am formulating what I hope will be a good answer for you.

Please let me know from which website the copy/pasted part of your post was taken.

Nevermind. I found the website to which you referred. It is a website called the "Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry". The page you accept on face value without researching for yourself is here:

Errors in the Apocrypha | Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry

I find your faith assumptions to be two:
1. "I do not believe the Apocrypha is from God"
2. "I accept what is said on the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry website"

I am unsure how serious you are about this subject. You may only have a trifling interest. So, until I know otherwise I will only tackle one of their points for now... This one:

2 King said:

The Apocrypha also teaches that forgiveness of sins is by human effort.

Salvation by works:
Tobias 4:11, "For alms deliver from all sin, and from death, and will not suffer the soul to go into darkness."

Tobias 12:9, "For alms delivereth from death, and the same is that which purgeth away sins, and maketh to find mercy and life everlasting."
​

We know from Scripture that alms (money or food, given to the poor or needy as charity) does not purge our sins. The blood of Christ is what cleanses us, not money or food given to poor people. "but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin," (1 John 1:7).

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The CARM website is all caught up in the "me Protestant - you Catholic" dialectic which is a problem. The subject of what books are included in the Bible should not be pursued as an "us vs. them" question. You'll notice the passage quoted above is from a page on their website in the "Roman Catholicism" section. The fact there are Greek Old Testament books which not all accept as scripture, has nothing to do with Roman Catholicism in the slightest. One's systematic theology should never be reactionary. We should be able to look at a subject dispassionatly from all sides in order to arrive at a conclusion that is balanced; any theology developed in an attitude of defiance, runs the risk of making an equally bad error in opposing another error. That is what CARM has done, I beleive.

The first rule of polemics is "paint your opponent in the worst light possible". So the passages quoted from Tobit above, by CARM are all taken from the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible, although you would not know that from CARM's website since they do not reveal their sources; the second rule of polemics: "don't reveal your sources, especially if you are trying to skew the terms of discourse". The reason they do not reveal their sources is because they want to so construe the Book of Tobit as so utterly Roman Catholic in character as to solicit distaste from Protestant readership. I ain't buying it!

Though the Douay-Rheims Bible is a servicable translation in some ways, it has its liabilities. For instance, the Douay-Rheims Tobit is a translation of an abridged paraphrase. The Douay-Rheims is a translation of the Latin Vulgate; Tobit in the Latin Vulgate is a paraphrase of an abridged Tobit. That is a lose-lose proposition. Further, though the Douay-Rheims is fine in many parts, when it comes to sections in which a Roman Catholic doctrine may be enhanced, it will slant the passage to do so. Such is the case for both quotes from Tobit.

Here is the transmission path for the Douay-Rheims Tobit:

Hebrew original > Greek translation > Greek Abridgement > Latin Vulgate paraphrase > English Douay-Rheims

I will re-quote Tobit from a more reliable source:

Tobit 4:10-11, For charity delivers from death and keeps you from entering the darkness; and for all who practice it charity is an excellent offering in the presence of the Most High. (English Standard Version -ESV)

Tobit 12:9-10, For almsgiving delivers from death, and it will purge away every sin. Those who perform deeds of charity and of righteousness will have fulness of life; but those who commit sin are the enemies of their own lives. (English Standard Version -ESV)

Immediately the soteriological aspects (related to salvation) of the passages are toned down by referring to a more literal translation of the Greek. About the "delivering from death" part, I see nothing different in that than passages in Proverbs which tell us God rewards the wise person with length of days and the like, do you? None of this has to have a relationship to earning salvation. However, I admit the part in 12:9 about "purging away every sin", that still needs to be explained.

It seems to me this passage too can be seen in a purely temporal sense and does not need to be viewed in a soteriogical frame. First, lets notice what the passage DOES NOT say. It does not say "Almsgiving will forgive sins," or "Almsgiving will take away sin", rather it says it will "purge away every sin". This can be viewed in terms of the day-to-day struggle against sin we all encounter and which Jews in the era Tobit was written did. We are saved by grace through faith, however, there are certain things we can do to help extricate ourselves from besetting sins. Almsgiving does help in this regard so says Tobit. The next part of the verse gives an indication of the writer's meaning, it says, "Those who perform deeds of charity and of righteousness will have fulness of life; but those who commit sin are the enemies of their own lives." It is surely with the temporal side of things with which Tobit here is dealing. Do you want to have a victorious life of faith and fullness of life? Giving to the needy is a critical component to making that a reality.

It seems to me CARM has failed in one of their claims to fame, research. They could drop the "R" on their website.

elduderrino said:

Hey guys. I'm a new member here, and i've got to ask yous something. Now this has been bothering me for quite some time: How reliable is the Apocrypha? Why was it removed? And what's up with all these other texts that have been found? (Dead Sea Scrolls, DSS, Latin Vulgate, and the Septuagent) What is up with these texts? Is it okay to read them? Should i read them? I understand that the catholic bible (KJVA) has the apocrypha, i'm not catholic. Please, help me out guys. Thank you.

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The "Apocrypha," if you mean the Deuterocanon (which based on the subsequent debate you are), is fully reliable as Scripture and therefore useful for doctrine and faith as well as practice and mores.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of books accepted as canonical by a group called the Essenes, which were a theological school of thought within Judaism during the centuries before and after Christ's life on Earth. Some of the books come right out of the Bible, whereas others are part of the psuedopigrypha.

I think by DSS you mean the LXX, which is known as the Septuagint. This is not a recent discover but has been around, in its OT-alone context, since the OT was translated into Greek. In fact, that is exactly what it is, the OT in Greek.

The Latin Vulgate is simply the translation of the Bible, written in Latin, by the great Saint Jerome.

The KJV is not a Vatican Catholic ("Roman" Catholic if you insist) translation but actually an Anglican one. And yes, it does include the Deuterocanon.

BereanTodd said:

The apocrypha can actually be good to read, just do not put it on the same level as Scripture. It was not removed, it was never originally considered Scripture.

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It was removed and yes, it was originally considered Scripture, even by the Jews; particularly those in Alexandria.

The early church did not include them in the cannon of Scripture. They were added much later to the official cannon.

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Historically false. Many of the Patristic and Pre-Nicene Fathers quoted them out of support of belief and doctrine. In addition, there were three councils, two local but one patriarchal, that declared them canonical.

woden said:

When you read the Holy Scriptures and then you read the Apocrypha the difference is plain. The Scriptures are a product of holy spirit and that spirit can be felt throughout the Bible.

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So only if it "feels" right then it is Scriptural?

I can feel like stealing, but is that how I should logically act?

E.C. said:

They were for political, actually. Just not by those during the Reformation.

When the Church was spreading about, they used the Greek Septuagint for what we now call the Old Testament. That was because A) it has everything before Christ and thus points His direction and B) Greek was the common language at the time.

Because the Christians were using the Septuagint, the Hellenized Jews, who also used the Septuagint, were beginning to look for a way to distance themselves form the Christians. Later on, I can not recall the specifics exactly, the Jews removed the books and now we see the Masoretic Text (spelling?) enter into existence.

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Valid history. The Jews didn't settle their canon until the end of the 1st century. And since Judaism by then was no longer the true faith, what they thought as the final canon of Scripture is of no merit to us.

Luther did not choose to use the Greek Septuagint and instead chose the MT for some strange reason. It seems quite odd to me that he would prefer a text that was changed and tampered after Christ rather than the one that was in use both before Him and after Him.

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Well let us be fair; the Hebrew books found as a part of the Dead Sea Scrolls agreed more with the Septuagint than they do with the Masoretic Text that is commonly used today. And truly, there shouldn't be any serious harm in going to the Hebrew at least for the OT that contains Hebrew.

Do they still completely agree? No, and that is why we still should rely primarily on the Septuagint, but the Hebrew in the Biblical books found in the DSS do agree more often with the Greek than the MT.

LittleLambofJesus said:

1. The church whether Jewish or Christian has no "authority" over scripture but is the servant and minister of scripture. God is the cause of scripture and the church is the mode of scripture. The Jewish church nor the Christian church caused the scriptures to be written since neither can claim to be bigger that its cause.

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The Church also, guided by the Spirit, chose to use the Septuagint as Scripture. A few of the Church Fathers even declared it an inspired translation. Judging by the universal use or near-universal use of the Septuagint by the earliest Fathers, that's very, very telling, especially since, as I pointed out above, councils declared whole "disputed" Deuterocanonical books to be Canon.

2. The Jewish "church" relegated the written scripture to being co-authority to oral Torah which caused its demise.

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Huh?

3. The books of the Apocrypha (Old Testament) were rejected by the Jews as being infallible. Likewise, most of the early ECF's like Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, etc. did not support them as canonical.

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Individuals can be wrong; counciliarism however was the mainstay. Councils said "yes" to the Deuterocanon. That is why it is considered Scripture.

4. The first council to accept the apocrypha as canonical was the council of Rome in 382ad. This was not an ecumenical council. The only other councils to accept the apocripha during the early church were only local councils with no ecumenical force. Basically, no canonical list or council pf the Christian church accepted the apocrypha as inspired for most of the first four centuries.

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Rome wasn't just a local council; it was a Patriarchical council. You forget that Rome was one of the five original patriarchies of the Early Church. You also forget that, while she would later turn to the Latin Vulgate, the other four patriarchies kept with the Greek Septuagint.

You also forget that no non-Scriptural book could be used in liturgy. The East has been using the Deuterocanon for a darn LONG time.

It would seem then, although there was no Eastern councils, there was truly no need for them to occur. Councils usually occur when incorrect belief or practice becomes such a problem that a definitive norm must be settled. That is probably why there were local and the patriarchal councils in the West but not the East; it was a problem there but not in the other four patriarchies.

5. Several of the Church fathers spoke against it like the ones that I have already mentioned. Later on Jerome also spoke against it.

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Again, individuals alone doesn't mean anything.

6. None of the apocrypal books claim to be written by a prophet including 1 Macabees which even denies it (1 Mac. 9:27).

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A great deal of the Bible wasn't written by the prophets they are ascribed to. Are they any less canonical?

7. None of the apocryphal books contain suprenatural confirmation like it is with the prophets that wrote the canonical books.

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There are plenty of places in the NT where the Deuterocanon is either quoted, near-quoted, or alluded to unquestionably.

8. There is no predictive prophesy in any of the apocryphal books like there is in the canonical books.

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There isn't really any in the Hebrew Esther. Is that book canonical?

9. Neither Jesus nor the new testament writters quoted from them even though they were aware of them and alluded to them (like Heb. 11:35 alludes to 2 Mac. 7 although it may be a reference to 1 Kings 17:22).

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One example given above; how about the rest?

Deuterocanon has always been Scripture. A lot of even the current NT books were questioned and even denied by several great Church Fathers:

Catholic Epistle of St. James
Catholic Epistles of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd St. John
Revelation
Catholic Epistle of Hebrews

We have direct quotes from those Fathers who outright denied them.

SummaScriptura said:

Nevermind. I found the website to which you referred. It is a website called the "Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry". The page you accept on face value without researching for yourself is here:

Errors in the Apocrypha | Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry

I find your faith assumptions to be two:
1. "I do not believe the Apocrypha is from God"
2. "I accept what is said on the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry website"

I am unsure how serious you are about this subject. You may only have a trifling interest. So, until I know otherwise I will only tackle one of their points for now... This one:



The CARM website is all caught up in the "me Protestant - you Catholic" dialectic which is a problem. The subject of what books are included in the Bible should not be pursued as an "us vs. them" question. You'll notice the passage quoted above is from a page on their website in the "Roman Catholicism" section. The fact there are Greek Old Testament books which not all accept as scripture, has nothing to do with Roman Catholicism in the slightest. One's systematic theology should never be reactionary. We should be able to look at a subject dispassionatly from all sides in order to arrive at a conclusion that is balanced; any theology developed in an attitude of defiance, runs the risk of making an equally bad error in opposing another error. That is what CARM has done, I beleive.

The first rule of polemics is "paint your opponent in the worst light possible". So the passages quoted from Tobit above, by CARM are all taken from the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible, although you would not know that from CARM's website since they do not reveal their sources; the second rule of polemics: don't reveal your sources, especially if you are trying to skew the terms of discourse. The reason they do not reveal their sources is because they want to so construe the Book of Tobit as so utterly Roman Catholic in character as to solicit distaste from Protestant readership. I ain't buying it!

Though the Douay-Rheims Bible is a servicable translation in some ways, it has its liabilities. For instance, the Douay-Rheims Tobit is a translation of an abridged paraphrase. The Douay-Rheims is a translation of the Latin Vulgate; Tobit in the Latin Vulgate is a paraphrase of an abridged Tobit. That is a lose-lose proposition. Further, though the Douay-Rheims is fine in many parts, when it comes to sections in which a Roman Catholic doctrine may be enhanced, it will slant the passage to do so. Such is the case for both quotes from Tobit.

Here is the transmission path for the Douay-Rheims Tobit:

Hebrew original > Greek translation > Greek Abridgement > Latin Vulgate paraphrase > English Douay-Rheims

I will re-quote Tobit from more reliable sources.

Tobit 4:10-11, For charity delivers from death and keeps you from entering the darkness; and for all who practice it charity is an excellent offering in the presence of the Most High. (English Standard Version -ESV)

Tobit 12:9-10, For almsgiving delivers from death, and it will purge away every sin. Those who perform deeds of charity and of righteousness will have fulness of life; but those who commit sin are the enemies of their own lives. (English Standard Version -ESV)

Immediately the soteriological (related to salvation) aspects of the passages are toned down by referring to a more literal translation of the Greek. About the "delivering from death" part, I see nothing different in that than passages in Proverbs which tell us God rewards the wise person with length of days and the like, do you? None of this has to have a relationship to earning salvation. However, I admit the part in 12:9 about "purging away every sin", that still needs to be explained.

It seems to me this passage too can be seen in a purely temporal sense and does not need to be viewed in a soteriogical frame. First, lets notice what the passage DOES NOT say. It does not say "Almsgiving will forgive sins," or "Almsgiving will take away sin", rather it says it will "purge away every sin". This can be viewed in terms of the day-to-day struggle against sin we all encounter and which Jews in the era Tobit was written did. We are saved by faith, however, there are certain things we can do to help extricate ourselves from besetting sins. Almsgiving does help in this regard so says Tobit. The next part of the verse gives an indication of the writer's meaning, it says, "Those who perform deeds of charity and of righteousness will have fulness of life; but those who commit sin are the enemies of their own lives." It is surely with the temporal side of things with which Tobit here is dealing. Do you want to have a victorious life of faith and fullness of life? Giving to the needy is a critical component to making that a reality.

It seems to me CARM has failed in one of their claims to fame, research. They could drop the "R" on their website. ;-)

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Thanks!, That made perfect sense to me. I completely agree.
I completely change my mind about the Apocrypha.

I really needed this thanks.

2 King said:

Thanks!, That made perfect sense to me. I completely agree.
I completely change my mind about the Apocrypha.

I really needed this thanks.

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Well, that was nice to read! Thank you too. If you have further interest I can write up some answers to the other arguments posed on CARM's site.

Take care.

Bob Burns
San Francisco

There is another point one should consider when trying to determine whether the disputed books of the Greek Old Testament should rightly be considered scripture.

Consider this...

From very early times as the Church expanded in the world, there arose distinct texts of the scriptures in the various languages of the Church. From ancient times there developed a Syriac text tradition (the Peshitta), there arose a Ethiopian text tradition and there also arose an Armenian text tradition. These traditions without exception accept all of the books which later came to be disputed in the West because of the influence of Jerome in the 5th century and much later, Protestantism.

The evidence is there. A variegated and diverse Church in the world was nevertheless united on this point. There was no contention that certain books of the Old Testament should be dropped or considered on a lesser status of credibility.

For those who wish to point to the Latin Bible as some kind of indicator as to which books are biblical, I'm sorry, that tradition diverted from Apostolic tradition when Jerome decided to toss out the Septuagint as a basis for the Old Testament.

To my Protestant brethren, you can get sucked into the "I Protestant - you Catholic" dialectic all day long if you wish. The RCC tradition as to what is scripture contains novelties. The oldest indicators of what the Church considered scripture come down to us from Orthodoxy.

2 King said:

Thanks!, That made perfect sense to me. I completely agree.
I completely change my mind about the Apocrypha.

I really needed this thanks.

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Just remember that when you read that suicide is a good thing that no one follows that passage as authoritative doctrine or dogma.

Oh, and no one takes unrepented idolatry as a sin that doesn't cause death either.


Marv

Jesus never quoted from the Apocrypha, the apostles never quoted from the Apocrypha etc.

Moreover..The Jews never conisdered the Apocrypha inspired.

PT Calvinist said:

Jesus never quoted from the Apocrypha,

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Jesus didn't quote from all the non-disputed OT books either!

the apostles never quoted from the Apocrypha etc.

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But their disciples did!

And actually, there are some Deuterocanonical references to be found in the NT.

Moreover..The Jews never conisdered the Apocrypha inspired.

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Why would I, as a Christian, care whether Jews considered the Deuterocanon inspired or not? They didn't have a final formalization of their canon until after Christ's resurrection, so whatever they thought at the time is of no consequence.

Furthermore, you're dead wrong. The Jews did consider the Deuterocanon for several hundred years to be Scripture.

PaladinValer said:

Jesus didn't quote from all the non-disputed OT books either!

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Right, But we always knew that they were inspired and the jews never considered the Apocrypha inspried


397.... The Cathage...which authenticated finally what the real cannon really was And the Apocrypha wasn't in it.

PT Calvinist said:

Right, But we always knew that they were inspired and the jews never considered the Apocrypha inspried

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Incorrect on both accounts.

397.... The Cathage...which authenticated finally what the real cannon really was And the Apocrypha wasn't in it.

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Um, yes it was. Recheck your sources.

PaladinValer said:

Um, yes it was. Recheck your sources.

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As being inspired?

PT Calvinist said:

As being inspired?

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Well, they listed it as canonical, so yes; inspired.

I find this topic fascinating. If only we had the full copies of the gospels. The fact of the matter is, most of the non canonical gospels were written (or at least, our copies) long after the cononical gospels. Furthermore, many of them perpetuate heretical ideas (Jesus had a wife and sexual relations with Mary Magdelene? The Church must've despaired!) that lack the basic structure of a gospel, lack the fulfillment of prophesy and are very different from the canonical gospels. In the Infancy Gospel of St Thomas, Jesus is an apparant homicidal super human who demands fear from everyone. Interesting.

Supreme, we're talking about the OT Deuterocanon, not the NT Apocrypha, which no Christian group accepts.

Someone cites a council.

That's supposed to end all discussion?

What if a council was called and rulings were made but no one abided by their rullings?

Do we:
A. Follow the tradition of the Church in practice?
B. Follow the rulings of the council despite those rulings having been disregarded?

In practice, the Bible of the Church has had differences in its contents.

The major text traditions of the O.T. are:
1. Hebrew
2. Greek
3. Syriac
4. Ethiopian
5. Armenian

(I pass over Latin and Slavonic here as not being early enough.)

Each of those text traditions have expressed differences from one another. Personally, I trust that each of those traditions preserve ancient ways of putting together the Bible. When reading the books which do not or did not have universal usage, they nevertheless are thoroughly like the rest of the Bible in spirit and teaching.

You were wrong to cite Carthage, there are some books in that list you seem to want to toss out, (as if Carthage didn't already toss out enough books for you!) Keep looking though, you may in fact be able to find a council that is more to your liking and you can then rest and let inquiry into this subject die for you.

Fact 1: There never has been, nor is there now a single list of canonical books which the entire Church accepted and abided by.

Fact 2: The Church never published a canonical list of books consisting of the same list as the 39 books of the Protestant O.T.

Fact 3: The very first canonical list of books ever published, The TaNaKh (the 39 books of the Jewish Bible and the Protestant O.T.) was published and enforced by people who rejected the books of the Apostles; how does that set with you?