The Scriptures, Part 2

It is interesting and ironic that the Christian faith traditions that hold to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura are the very same ones that use a truncated version of the Bible.

The Bible that Protestants use—and the one I used growing up—excludes seven books from the Old Testament, and parts of two others.

Those books are:

Tobit
Judith
Wisdom of Solomon
Sirach
Baruch
1 & 2 Maccabees

and portions of:

Esther (Vulgate Esther 10:4-16:24), and
Daniel (Vulgate Daniel 3:24-90; Vulgate Daniel 13; Vulgate Daniel 14).

Protestants call these books "Apocrypha" (from the Greek word ἀπόκρυφα, meaning "those having been hidden away"). Orthodox and Roman Catholics call them "Deuterocanon" (from δεύτερος, meaning "second" and κανών, meaning "rule" or "standard," because they were written after the "Protocanon."). When Orthodox and Roman Catholics refer to the apocrypha, what they have in mind are the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, the Revelation of Paul, and other books that were never accepted by the Church.

There was certainly controversy in the past surrounding the books of the Old Testament deuterocanon, because they were written after the Hellenization of the Middle East by Alexander the Great, and were therefore never written in Hebrew, but in Greek. Thus, the Jews rejected these books at the Council of Jamnia in A.D. 90 in an attempt to rid their culture of everything they felt was not entirely Jewish.

For this reason and others, certain members of the early Church (including St. Jerome, who first translated the Bible into Latin) felt that these books should not be included in the Biblical Canon. The Church, however, ultimately decided in favor of these books (as well as certain other controversial books, like Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, Jude, and Revelation).

The deuterocanonical Old Testament books were included in the Septuagint,* which is the version of Scripture that Jesus and the Apostles used and quoted, and have been part of the liturgical life of the Church since the very beginning. They were part of the canon approved by the Council of Rome in 382, the Synod of Hippo in 393, and the Council of Carthage in 397. They were in the fifth-century Latin Vulgate (St Jerome's translation), in the Middle English translation by John Wycliffe in 1382, and in the Bibles that Gutenberg printed in the mid 1400’s.

However, LCMS.org says that "neither Luther nor the Lutheran church has ever regarded these writings as canonical--i.e., as part of the inspired and inerrant Word of God--since they do not meet the criteria discernible from the Scriptures themselves regarding what constitutes those books belonging to the canon of Scripture." I have not yet been able to find where they detail what these criteria are.

If it's true that Christ and the Apostles accepted the Septuagint as Scripture, and that Christians for over a thousand years accepted a canon that was ratified by multiple church councils (and which included the 7 books in question), what “criteria” could possibly exclude these books from the Biblical canon; and why is it that Protestants (specifically Lutherans in this case) "hold to the 66 [rather than 73] books of the Bible that historically authenticated themselves to the church as God's inspired Word" if indeed "all Scripture is God-breathed"? (2 Ti 3:16) Did the Holy Spirit forget to guide the Church in “all truth” (Jn 16.13) for the first fifteen hundred years until the Reformers came along?

Objections to the use of the Deuterocanon:
From the Christian Research Institute (CRI): "They contain teachings that are clearly unbiblical."

Well the thing is, any teaching is unbiblical… if you remove it from the Bible!
Excising chunks of the long-accepted Canon because it doesn't conform with what you think is proper doctrine is no different from removing a few sentences from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and claiming that the virgin birth of Christ is unbiblical! This argument is silly at best, blasphemous at worst. And besides, since when is it the practice of Protestants to tailor the content of the Scriptures to match their beliefs?

Also from CRI: "There have been a number of authoritative testimonies against the acceptance of these books, including those from the Jewish scholars of Jamnia, as well as many of the church fathers and scholars, like Athanasius and Jerome."

1. The scholars of Jamnia also rejected the Gospels. And Christ. And when have Christians ever been subject to the decisions of a post-Christian Jewish council anyway? And why are Protestants using the Old Testament given to them by the Masoretes—medieval Hebrew translators—rather than the one used and handed down by Christ, His Apostles, and His Church?

2. There was also much scholarly objection to the inclusion of Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, Jude, and Revelation, but the Church ultimately accepted them as it accepted the books of the deuterocanon. Why accept this New Testament deuterocanon and reject the Old Testament deuterocanon? There is much we can learn from the Church Fathers, like Sts. Athanasius and Jerome (who, by the way, ultimately did include the deuterocanon in his copy of the Scriptures), but as pious and knowledgeable as they were, they were not the "pillar and foundation of truth"—the Church is.

Also from CRI: "These books were never directly quoted by Jesus or by any of the New Testament writers."

This argument assumes that quotation or citation qualifies a book for canonicity. There are at least two problems with this assertion:

1. Several non-canonical books actually are quoted or cited in the New Testament:

Jude 1:14–15 quotes from the Book of Enoch 1:9.
Hebrews 11:37 alludes to the Ascension of Isaiah 5.1-14
Acts 17:28 quotes Cretica by Epimenides and Phaenomena by Aratus.
Titus 1:12 also quotes Cretica.
1 Corinthians 15:33 quotes Thaïs by Menander.
2 Timothy 3:8 references either the Gospel of Nicodemus, Ch. 5 or the Book of Jashar 79.27.**

If quotation equals canonicity, then why aren't these writings among the canon of Scripture?

2. There are several other Old Testament books—accepted by Protestants—that are also not quoted or cited in the New Testament:

Song of Songs
Ecclesiastes
Esther
Obadiah
Zephaniah
Judges
1 Chronicles
Ezra
Nehemiah
Lamentations and
Nahum

Not one of these Old Testament books is ever quoted or alluded to by Christ or the Apostles in the New Testament. But the fact of the matter is that we really don't know for sure Christ didn't quote from all of the books of the proto- and deuterocanon, because the Gospels don't record everything Jesus said and did (Jn 21.25). He may have quoted from the deuterocanon daily; we just don’t know.

From CRI: "The Catholic church itself didn’t canonize them until the Council of Trent, after the Reformation began."

Let me make something perfectly clear: at no point did either the Roman Catholic or Orthodox Churches add these books to a preexisting canon. The Church had used the deuterocanonical books for many centuries prior to the Council of Trent. It was only in response to the Reformers' rejection of these books and adoption of the Hebrew canon that the Roman Catholic Church reaffirmed their use.

"These books don't claim to be inspired."

Neither do most of the other books of the Bible. However, the Qur’an, the Book of Mormon, the Mahābhārata, and the Watchtower all claim divine inspiration. Does this claim prove anything?

"They contain historical inaccuracies and contradictions. For example, Antiochus Epiphanes is made to die three different deaths in three different places."

In fact, the same is true of the death of King Saul in the Protestant-accepted Old Testament:
Saul killed himself by falling on his sword (1 Sam 31.4-6)
The Philistines killed Saul on Gilboa (2 Sam 21.12)
The Lord put Saul to death (1 Ch 10.13-14)

I have found a list of more than two hundred apparent contradictions and inaccuracies in the same Bible that is accepted by every single Protestant. It is not my intention to demonstrate biblical fallacy, so I won’t post the list here. My point is simply that a case against the inclusion of the books of the Deuterocanon on the grounds of alleged inaccuracy or inconsistency is not to be made by anyone who accepts the rest of the Bible.

"These books teach immoral and ungodly things like lying, suicide, etc."

The deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament do not so much teach these actions as record them. Likewise, the Old Testament accepted by Protestants records—and in some cases actually seems to condone—acts of:
incest (Gn 19.30-36; 2 Sam 13.1-14),
rape (Gn 34.1-2; ),
infanticide (Ex 12.29-30; Nm 31.1-18),
human sacrifice (Jdg 11.29-40),
murder (2 Sam 11.14-17),
adultery (2 Sam 11.2-4), and
slavery (Ex 21.2-6; Lv 25.44-46)

How we are supposed to regard such passages is a subject for someone with much more theological knowledge than I have, but the point is that the recording of immoral acts is not a disqualification for canonicity.

"These books don’t rise to the same level of literary and rhetorical excellence evident in the rest of the Old Testament."

If “inspirational” equaled “inspired,” then the book of Numbers would have been stricken from the Canon millennia ago. However, the Church that determined that the book of Numbers—much of which is as electrifying as its title suggests—was to be included in the Biblical canon is the same Church that has for two thousand years also accepted the books of the deuterocanon.

The suggestion that the books of the deuterocanon lack something of the beauty and eloquence of the rest of the Old Testament is of course highly subjective and one that is likely to be made by someone who has not actually read them. My personal experience has found in the deuterocanon no deficiency whatsoever of the qualities that make the protocanon great.
Here’s a challenge for my readers: Identify which of the following passages is from the deuterocanon? (the answers are below)

1) I will sing a new song to my God;
Great are You, O Lord, and glorious,
Marvelous in power and unsurpassable.
Let all Your creation serve You.
For You spoke, and they were created;
You sent Your Spirit, and He formed them.
There is nothing that can resist Your voice.
For the mountains with the waters shall be shaken at their foundations.
And at Your presence, the rocks shall be melted as beeswax.
And yet You are merciful to those who fear You.

2) My son, accomplish your works with gentleness,
And you will be loved by people the LORD accepts.
The greater you are, the more humble you must be,
And you will find grace before the LORD.

3) So when they had collected their arms and stripped the spoils from their enemy, they kept the Sabbath, greatly blessing and giving thanks to the LORD, who had brought them safely through the day and appointed it for them as a beginning of mercy.

4) Take courage, O Jerusalem, for He who named you will comfort you. Wretched are those who mistreated you and rejoiced at your fall. Wretched are the cities in which your children served as slaves. Wretched is she who took your sons. For just as she took pleasure in your ruin and rejoiced over your fall, so shall she be grieved at her own desolation.

5) Your all-powerful Word leaped from heaven, from the royal throne,
Into the midst of a doomed land,
A relentless warrior carrying the sharp sword
Of Your irrevocable command,
And He stood and filled all things with death
And touched the heaven while standing on the earth.

Bottom Line:
Look, the Church never added the books of the Old Testament Deuterocanon to the Bible as some claim, but has recognized them as part of Sacred Scripture since the beginning; even since before it recognized the New Testament! The Church that compiled the rest of the Bible is the very same Church that has always included these seven books in question. Why accept that the Church was right on the one hand and wrong on the other? If you accept the books of the Protestant Bible as Scripture, then you have no reason not to accept the Deuterocanon; but if you reject the Deuterocanon, then what reason could you possibly have not to reject the rest of the Bible?
Is the Church the “Pillar and Foundation of Truth” or isn’t it?

*You will often see the Septuagint abbreviated as "LXX," which is the Latin numeration for "70." This refers to the number of scholars who transcribed these Scriptures into Greek.
You will also notice that in the early versions of the Bible, some books have different names than you're used to. For example, 1 Samuel is called 1 Kingdoms, and 2 Samuel is called 2 Kingdoms. Also, 1 & 2 Kings are called 3 & 4 Kingdoms respectively. Some modern Roman Catholic and Orthodox Bibles reflect this early naming system. The order of the books in the Septuagint is also different from that of most modern Bibles.

**Several books of the protocanonical Old Testament also cite or quote non-canonical sources:
Joshua 10.13 and 2 Samuel 1.18 both refer to the Book of Jashar.
Numbers 21.14 quotes from Book of the Wars of the Lord.
2 Chronicles 12.14-15 refers to the Book of Shemaiah the Prophet, and of Iddo the Seer.
Exodus 24:7 refers to the Book of the Covenant.
1Kings 11:41 mentions the Acts of Solomon.
1Chronicles 27:24 refers to the Chronicles of King David.
Esther 10:2 mentions the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Media and Persia.

ANSWERS: You knew right away that my quiz was a trick, didn’t you? All five passages are from books that the Protestant world has deleted from their Old Testament canon.
1) Judith 16.13-15
2) Wisdom of Sirach 3.17-18
3) 2 Maccabees 8.27
4) Baruch 4.30-33
5) Wisdom of Solomon 18.15-16
(These passages are taken from the Orthodox Study Bible)