Protecting God’s Word From “Bible Christians”

“Stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught,
either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours.”
~ St. Paul to the Thessalonians

A former student of mine is thinking of becoming a Catholic, and she had a question for me. “I don’t understand the deuterocanonical books,” she ventured. “If the Catholic faith is supposed to be a fulfillment of the Jewish faith, why do Catholics accept those books and the Jews don’t?” She’d done her homework, and was troubled that the seven books and other writings of the deuterocanon had been preserved only in Greek instead of Hebrew like the rest of the Jewish scriptures—which is part of the reason why they were classified, even by Catholics, as a “second” (deutero) canon.

My student went on. “I’m just struggling because there are a lot of references to those books in Church doctrine, but they aren’t considered inspired Scripture. Why did Luther feel those books needed to be taken out?” she asked. “And why are Protestants so against them?”

The short answer sounds petty and mean, but it’s true nonetheless: Luther jettisoned those “extra” Old Testament books—Tobit, Sirach, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and the like—because they were inconvenient. The Apocrypha (or, “false writings”), as they came to be known, supported pesky Catholic doctrines that Luther and other reformers wanted to suppress—praying for the dead, for instance, and the intercession of the saints. Here’s John Calvin on the subject:

Add to this, that they provide themselves with new supports when they give full authority to the Apocryphal books. Out of the second of the Maccabees they will prove Purgatory and the worship of saints; out of Tobit satisfactions, exorcisms, and what not. From Ecclesiasticus they will borrow not a little. For from whence could they better draw their dregs?

However, the deuterocanonical literature was (and is) prominent in the liturgy and very familiar to that first generation of Protestant converts, so Luther and company couldn’t very well ignore it altogether. Consequently, those seven “apocryphal” books, along with the Greek portions of Esther and Daniel, were relegated to an appendix in early Protestant translations of the Bible.

Eventually, in the nineteenth century sometime, many Protestant Bible publishers starting dropping the appendix altogether, and the modern translations used by most evangelicals today don’t even reference the Apocrypha at all. Thus, the myth is perpetuated that nefarious popes and bishops have gotten away with brazenly foisting a bunch of bogus scripture on the ignorant Catholic masses.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

To begin with, it was Luther and Calvin and the other reformers who did all the foisting. The Old Testament that Christians had been using for 1,500 years had always included the so-called Apocrypha, and there was never a question as to its canonicity. Thus, by selectively editing and streamlining their own versions of the Bible according to their sectarian biases (including, in Luther’s case, both Testaments, Old and New), the reformers engaged in a theological con game. To make matters worse, they covered their tracks by pointing fingers at the Catholic Church for “adding” phony texts to the closed canon of Hebrew Sacred Writ.

In this sense, the reformers were anticipating what I call the Twain-Jefferson approach to canonical revisionism. It involves two simple steps.

Step one: Identify the parts of Scripture that you find especially onerous or troublesome. Generally, these will be straightforward biblical references that don’t quite square with the doctrine one is championing or the practices one has already embraced. Mark Twain is the modern herald of this half of creative textual reconstruction: “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me,” Twain wrote, “it is the parts that I do understand.”

Step two: Yank the vexing parts out. It’s what Thomas Jefferson literally did when he took his own Bible and cut out the passages he found offensive—a kind of “scripture by subtraction” in the words of religion professor Stephen Prothero.

The reformers justified their Twain-Jefferson humbug by pointing to the canon of scriptures in use by European Jews during that time, and it did not include those extra Catholic books—case closed! Still unconvinced? Today’s defenders of the reformers’ biblical reshaping will then proceed to throw around historical precedent and references to the first-century Council of Jamnia, but it’s all really smoke and mirrors.

The fact is that the first-century Jewish canon was pretty mutable and there was no universal definitive list of sacred texts. On the other hand, it is indisputable that the version being used by Jesus and the Apostles during that time was the Septuagint—the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures that included Luther’s rejected apocryphal books. SCORE: Deuterocanon – 1; Twain-Jefferson Revisionism – 0.

But this is all beside the point. It’s like an argument about creationism vs. evolution that gets funneled in the direction of whether dinosaurs could’ve been on board Noah’s Ark. Once you’re arguing about that, you’re no longer arguing about the bigger issue of the historicity of those early chapters in Genesis. The parallel red herring here is arguing over the content of the Christian Old Testament canon instead of considering the nature of authority itself and how it’s supposed to work in the Church, especially with regards to the Bible.

I mean, even if we can settle what the canon should include, we don’t have the autographs (original documents) from any biblical books anyway. While we affirm the Church’s teaching that all Scripture is inspired and teaches “solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings” (DV 11), there are no absolutes when it comes to the precise content of the Bible.

Can there be any doubt that this is by God’s design? Without the autographs, we are much less tempted to worship a static book instead of the One it reveals to us. Even so, it’s true that we are still encouraged to venerate the Scriptures, but we worship the incarnate Word—and we ought not confuse the two. John the Baptist said as much when he painstakingly distinguished between himself, the announcer, and the actual Christ he was announcing. The Catechism, quoting St. Bernard, offers a further helpful distinction:

The Christian faith is not a “religion of the book.” Christianity is the religion of the “Word” of God, a word which is “not a written and mute word, but the Word is incarnate and living.”

Anyway, with regards to authority and the canon of Scripture, Mark Shea couldn’t have put it more succinctly than his recent response to a request for a summary of why the deuterocanon should be included in the Bible:

Because the Church in union with Peter, the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15) granted authority by Christ to loose and bind (Matthew 16:19), says they should be.

Right. The Church says so, and that’s good enough.

For it’s the Church who gives us the Scriptures. It’s the Church who preserves the Scriptures and tells us to turn to them. It’s the Church who bathes us in the Scriptures with the liturgy, day in and day out, constantly watering our souls with God’s Word. Isn’t it a bit bizarre to be challenging the Church with regards to which Scriptures she’s feeding us with? “No, mother,” the infant cries, “not breast milk! I want Ovaltine! Better yet, how about some Sprite!”

Think of it this way. My daughter Margaret and I share an intense devotion to Betty Smith’s remarkable novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. It’s a bittersweet family tale of impoverishment, tragedy, and perseverance, and we often remark how curious it is that Smith’s epic story receives so little attention.

I was rooting around the sale shelf at the public library one day, and I happened upon a paperback with the name “Betty Smith” on the spine. I took a closer look: Joy in the Morning, a 1963 novel of romance and the struggles of newlyweds, and it was indeed by the same Smith of Tree fame. I snatched it up for Meg.

The other day, Meg thanked me for the book, and asked me to be on the lookout for others by Smith. “It wasn’t nearly as good as Tree,” she said, “and I don’t expect any of her others to be as good. But I want to read everything she wrote because Tree was so wonderful.”

See, she wants to get to know Betty Smith because of what she encountered in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. And all we have are her books and other writings; Betty Smith herself is gone.

But Jesus isn’t like that. We have the book, yes, but we have more. We still have the Word himself.

Koine is imaginary.

No Greek ever used it. It is the result of using the Septuagint as a “Rosetta stone” to effect the translation of Hebrew into Greek. It exists only in texts translated from Hebrew to Greek by using the phrases taken from the Septuagint. Koine’s grammar is Hebrew

There is so much wrong here. First, the information on Koine (Common) Greek being "imaginary" is an old misconception that has long been discarded:

For a long time Koine Greek confused many scholars. It was significantly different from Classical Greek. Some hypothesized that it was a combination of Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Others attempted to explain it as a "Holy Ghost language," meaning that God created a special language just for the Bible. But studies of Greek papyri found in Egypt over the past one hundred years have shown that this language was the language of the everyday people used in the writings of wills, private letters, receipts, shopping lists, etc.

See Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar, Chapter 1.

Second, if the Septuagint is a Rosetta Stone for anyone, it's us moderns, because it was constructed by scholars who knew both Hebrew and Greek. It was NOT a Rosetta Stone to them, as in a key to translating Hebrew into Greek. Again, they already knew both, and that's why it has value to us. For example, when we see 223 instances of Iesous as transliterations for Yehoshua and Yeshua, we get that Iesous is a completely acceptable way to translate Jesus' name from Hebrew to Greek.

Third, where you got the idea that Koine's sole existence is in extractions from the Septuagint I have no idea. I would actually love to see your source on that, because it is as wrong as it can be. As Mounce points out in the quote above, Koine/Common Greek was .. wait for it .. common! It shows up everywhere, not in the ivory towers of classical Greek scholarship, but in the ordinary business of everyday life in the Mediterranean world and beyond. Granted, that wasn't always known. But now it is, so there's no excuse for getting that wrong anymore.

Fourth, to say that "Koine's grammar is Hebrew" is completely wrong. I have studied both languages in earnest, to the point of tears at times. I would have loved it if they had the same grammar. I can handle Greek much better than I can handle Hebrew grammar. They are worlds apart. Greek feels a lot more familiar than Hebrew. It is well equipped for handling long chains of complex, abstract thought, whereas Hebrew is more concrete. The inflection patterns and the word order patterns are significantly different as well. Koine, on it's own, does NOT reflect Hebrew grammar per se.

That is not to say a Hebrew writer writing in Greek wouldn't tip his hand by using Hebrew idioms. Certainly that would happen. But idioms are not grammar, and even idioms must fit into the grammatical mold of the target language, in this case the Common (Koine) Greek, just to be understood by the target language's readers. So again the idea that Koine was fabricated out of the Septuagint Hebrew with a Hebrew grammar is completely wrong, idiomatic usage notwithstanding. Such beliefs are necessarily the product of imagination and not fact.

Peace,

SR

It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.

Too bad that Jesus knew not of this verse...

Luke 16:19-31 (NIV)

¹⁹“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. ²⁰At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores ²¹and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.
²²“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. ²³In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. ²⁴So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’
²⁵“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. ²⁶And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’
²⁷“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, ²⁸for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’
²⁹“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’
³⁰“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’
³¹“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

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