Reasons why the Apocrypha does not belong in the Bible

Catholics and Protestants disagree regarding the exact number of books that belong in the Old Testament Scriptures. The dispute between them is over seven books, part of what is known as the Apocrypha: 1 and 2 Maccabees, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Wisdom (Wisdom of Solomon), Baruch, Tobit, Judith, and additions to Daniel and Esther.1 However, there are a number of reasons why the Old Testament Apocrypha should not be part of the Canon, or standard writings of Scripture.

Rejection by Jesus and the Apostles

1. There are no clear, definite New Testament quotations from the Apocrypha by Jesus or the apostles. While there may be various allusions by the New Testament to the Apocrypha, there are no authoritative statements like "thus says the Lord," "as it is written," or "the Scriptures say." There are references in the New Testament to the pseudepigrapha (literally “false writings”) (Jude 14-15) and even citations from pagan sources (Acts 17:22-34), but none of these are cited as Scripture and are rejected even by Roman Catholics. In contrast, the New Testament writers cite the Old Testament numerous times (Mt. 5; Lk. 24:27; Jn. 10:35) and use phrases such as "thus says the Lord," "as it is written," or "the Scriptures say," indicating their approval of these books as inspired by God.

2. Jesus implicitly rejected the Apocrypha as Scripture by referring to the entire accepted Jewish Canon of Scripture, “From the blood of Abel [Gen. 4:8] to the blood of Zechariah [2 Chron. 24:20], who was killed between the altar and the house of God; yes, I tell you, it shall be charged against this generation (Lk. 11:51; cf. Mt. 23:35).”

Abel was the first martyr in the Old Testament from the book of Genesis, while Zecharias was the last martyr in the book of Chronicles. In the Hebrew Canon, the first book was Genesis and the last book was Chronicles. They contained all of the same books as the standard 39 books accepted by Protestants today, but they were just arranged differently. For example, all of the 12 minor prophets (Hosea through Malachi) were contained in one book. This is why there are only 24 books in the Hebrew Bible today. By Jesus referring to Abel and Zacharias, He was canvassing the entire Canon of the Hebrew Scriptures which included the same 39 books as Protestants accept today. Therefore, Jesus implicitly rejected the Apocrypha as Scripture.

Rejection by the Jewish Community

3. The "oracles of God" were given to the Jews (Rom. 3:2) and they rejected the Old Testament Apocrypha as part of this inspired revelation. Interestingly, Jesus had many disputes with the Jews, but He never disputed with them regarding the extent of the inspired revelation of God.2

4. The Dead Sea scrolls provide no commentary on the Apocrypha, but do provide commentary on some of the Jewish Old Testament books. This probably indicates that the Jewish Essene community did not regard them as highly as the Jewish Old Testament books.

5. Many ancient Jews rejected the Apocrypha as Scripture. Philo never quoted the Apocrypha as Scripture. Josephus explicitly rejected the Apocrypha and listed the Hebrew Canon to be 22 books. 3 In fact, the Jewish Community acknowledged that the prophetic gifts had ceased in Israel before the Apocrypha was written.

Rejection by many in the Catholic Church

6. The Catholic Church has not always accepted the Apocrypha. The Apocrypha was not officially accepted by the Catholic Church at a universal council until 1546 at the Council of Trent. This is over a millennium and a half after the books were written, and was a counter reaction to the Protestant Reformation.4

7. Many church Fathers rejected the Apocrypha as Scripture, and many just used them for devotional purposes. For example, Jerome, the great Biblical scholar and translator of the Latin Vulgate, rejected the Apocrypha as Scripture though, supposedly under pressure, he did make a hurried translation of it. In fact, most of the church fathers in the first four centuries of the Church rejected the Apocrypha as Scripture. Along with Jerome, names include Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Athanasius.

8. The Apocryphal books were placed in Bibles before the Council of Trent and after, but were placed in a separate section because they were not of equal authority. The Apocrypha rightfully has some devotional purposes, but it is not inspired.

False Teachings

Not Prophetic

10. The Apocryphal books do not share many of the chararacteristics of the Canonical books: they are not prophetic, there is no supernatural confirmation of any of the apocryphal writers works, there is no predictive prophecy, there is no new Messianic truth revealed, they are not cited as authoritative by any prophetic book written after them, and they even acknowledge that there were no prophets in Israel at their time (cf. 1 Macc. 9:27; 14:41).

1. See http://www.catholic.com/library/Old_Testament_Canon.asp for a list of the books that the Roman Catholic Church accepts. Also see, Michael D. Coogan, ed., The New Oxford Annotated Apocrypha, third edition, New Revised Standard Version, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 4, for a list of the Apocrypha. Interestingly, Catholics refer to these extra books as the Deuterocanonical books while Protestants refer to them as part of the Apocrypha.

2. Some scholars debate whether the exact Canon of the Old Testament Scriptures was discovered by the Jews until around 100 A.D. so Paul may not be referring to some authoritative list of books. However, the principle of the "oracles of God" still holds. The Jews rejected the Apocrypha as being part of the oracles of God.

3. There are various divisions of the Hebrew canon. The Protestant Old Testament Canon contains 39 books while the Hebrew canon has 22 or 24. These are the exact same books as the Protestants have, but they are just arranged differently and some of the books are combined into one. For example, Kings is one book. There is not 1st Kings and 2nd Kings. Also, all of the 12 minor prophets (Hosea through Malachi) are one book in the Hebrew Canon.

4. It is true that the Catholic Church accepted the Apocryphal books at earlier councils at Rome (A.D. 382), Hippo (A.D. 393), Carthage (A.D. 397), and Florence (A.D. 1442). However, these were not universal Church councils and the earlier councils were influenced heavily by Augustine, who was no Biblical expert, compared to the scholar Jerome, who rejected the Apocrypha as part of the Old Testament Canon. Furthermore, it is doubtful that these local church council's decisions were binding on the Church at large since they were local councils. Sometimes these local councils made errors and had to be corrected by a universal church council.

My post is long but I want to respond to all 4 points of the article that Gamecock posted

Rejections by Jesus and the Apostles:

1). This is poor scholarship by the author as he cleary seems to be stating that “citations of OT books” indicate Canonicity. If that is the Protestant Principle of Canonicity, then the following books should not be in the Protestant OT canon: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lametations, Obadaih, Nahum, and Zephanaih since none of this books are quoted in the New Testament.

The NT does quote from other sources, St. Paul quotes from a Greek poet in Acts and Jude quotes from the Book of Enoch. Cleary those works cited in Acts and Jude are not canonical but obviously the biblical writers saw truths in those works that they wanted to communicate to the Church and those one can’t reject the use of those citations and say it does not have Divine Truths that God wanted the Apostles to communicate to the Early Church and us today.

2) Jesus implicitly rejected the Deuterocanonicals and accepted the Jewish Canon. Well, what was the Jewish Canon at the time of Christ? The author again is done poor research as there was not “ONE” sect of Jews at the Time of Christ. There were at least 5: 1)Saducces, 2)Pharisees, 3) Diaspora Jews [The largest number of Jews], 4) Essennes, and 5) Zealots, and none of them agreed on the meaning of Judaism and none agreed on the OT Canon. It is clear that the Diaspora Jews used the Septuigiant, which contained the Deuterocanoncials and the Essenes, as the archaelogical digs at Qumran have shown us, had Hebrew Translations of most of the Deuterocanonical writings as well and viewed them as Scripture similar to the protocanonical writings.

In addition, Christ and the Apostles did make more than allusions to the Deutercanoncials. For example, in Tobit 12:15 it reads “I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who enter and serve before the Glory of the Lord” which points to Revelations 1:4 and Revelation 8:3-4. It is also clear that the writer in Hebrews 11:35 had in mind 2 Maccabees 7:29.

The clearest place the “Golden Rule” is found in Sacred Scripture is found in Tobit 4:15 which reads “What you hate, do not to Others” which is the converse of what Christ said in Mt 7:12 where the Lord states “Do unto others whatever you would have them do to you.” Christ also celebrated the feast of Dedication in John 10:22 which is found in 1 Macc 4:59.

The Book of Wisdom also has some key Doctrinal implications as well as in Wisdom 2:24 we read “But by the envy of the Devil, death entered the world and they who are in his possession experience it”. Why is this verse important and what Doctrine does it relate to, well it is the only verse in the OT that equates Satan as the cause of the Fall of Adam and Eve, and thus is important theologically for the Doctrine of Original Sin. Just before that verse, we see in Wisdom 2:12-20 the notion of the Suffering Servant which prefigures the dialogue in Mt 27:41-44.

There are many more examples that I can give but to summarize, Many OT books were not cited at all and are not alluded to in the NT [i.e. the Ones that I cited] and the 7 Deuterocanonicals are more than alluded to [Golden Rule citation and Feast of Dedication} and are alluded to throughout the NT. Finally, the largest segment of Jews were the Hellenistic Diaspora Jews who used the Septuigiant (LXX}, which contained the 7 books Luther thru out and it is the LXX version of the OT that the Apostles most often quote from in the NT as 70% of the OT quotes found in the NT come from the LXX source and not the Hebrew sources.

3/4) Rejection by Jewish Community and Many in the Catholic CHurch

Actually, this is factually incorrect. There was no agreement among the major Jewish Sects as to what the Jewish Canon was at the time of Christ. For example, the Sadducees only accepted the Torah, the first 5 books of what we call the OT today. The Pharisees had a longer list, which would be more in line with what modern Jews have today, as Rabbinical Judaism came out of the Pharisee tradition. Both the Law (Torah) and Prophets were accepted, Also, the findings at Qumran (Dead Sea Scrolls), this Community of Jews preserved copies of many books, including works that would later not be included in neither the Christian or Jewish Scritpures (e.g., Enoch). Of all the books that would be eventually included in the Hebrew Bible, only Esther is missing from the Fragments. On the other hand, Sirach, Judith, 1 Maccabees and Tobit were found at Qumran in Hebrew and Aramaic translations. The writings at Qumran reflect Hebrew writing at the time of Christ and agree quite well with the later Masoretic texts done in period between 700 and 1000 A.D., which are the only complete surviving Hebrew texts that have come down to our time. What all the data from above indicates is that there was no Jewish Canon at the time of Christ. Also, the findings of Qumran support both the LXX and the later Masoretic texts.

However, the idea of an Old Testament as we understand it does not become an issue until the second century A.D. After the New Testament period (30 to 50 AD), the Early Church cited scriptures from the Septuagint (LXX). This is evidenced by the fact that the NT itself was written in Greek and the majority of the OT quotes in the NT came from the LXX source (about 70%). In the second century, we see disputes between the Early Church and Judaism as evidenced by St. Justin’s Dialogues with the Jewish Scholars of his day indicating that the Church has a longer set of scriptures than the Jews, which was a debate over the OT from the LXX and the Jewish scholars at Jamnia who drew up a shorter list of books.

In summary, the consensus of biblical scholarship is that the OT Canon was not fixed until the 2nd century when Jewish Rabbi’s gathered at Jamnia to close the canon due to rivalry offered by The Early Church, who had a longer list of Scriptures (i.e. Longer OT as there was no agreed upon NT Canon at this time.) Furthermore, the idea of an OT does not make sense until the Early Church began to debate and determine what the NT Canon was, and this did not become a question of the early Church until the Gnostic Marcion proposed throwing out the OT and adopting a Canon of only St. Luke’s Gospel and certain epistles from St. Paul. Again, Marcion was “Excommunicated” by the Bishop of Rome in 144 AD, and there was nobody that questioned the authority of the Bishop of Rome to do so. Again, see Henry Chadwick, the Anglican Church History Scholar and Professor at Oxford and Cambridge; book The Early Church (Revised Edition, 1993, pp. 38-44) about the formation of the canon, which indicates that Marcion was excommunicated by the Church of Rome in 144 AD. Warren Carroll, (the Catholic Historian) in his work “The Founding of Christendom Vol. 1 p. 460) puts it much more in Catholic terms when he writes “Marcion went away angry and rebellious. In July 144 he established his own church, the first to be set up in defiance of the Pope. There would be many more.”

Again Mr. Turner’s statements are factually incorrect. There are LXX texts that date to before Christ, some 100 to 150 years B.C, from both Palestine and Egypt that fit into the same textual tradition. These texts include portions from Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy and Baruch. In addition, there are extensive remains from the 1st century AD of many of the minor prophets. These early renderings of the LXX were also translated into Latin, Coptic and Ethiopic, which while they may have some differences in idiom and style, are in substantial agreement. Origen, who lived from 185 to around 255 did do a translation to harmonize the various translations of his time, but there were LXX texts before as noted above from the 1st and 2nd century as there were numerous quotes from the CHurch Fathers from tha period, which clearly point to the use of the LXX in the Early Church.

For example, the Didache, dated late 1st century, quotes from Sirach, found in the LXX as it states “You shall not waver with regard to your decision [Sir 1:28]….Do not e someone who stretches out his hand to receive but withdraws them when it comes to giving [Sir 4:31] {See Didache 4:5).

St. Clement of Rome (4th Bishop of Rome) in his Letter to the Corinthian Church in the East written in circa 95AD (i.e. the first example of an exercising the Primacy of the Church of Rome) writes “By the word of his might [God] established all things, and by his word he can overthrow them. Who shall say to him, what have you done? Or who shall resist the power of his strength” [Wisdom 12:12] (See Letter of Corinthian Church 27:5)

St. Polycarp of Smyrna wrote :Stand fast, therefore, in these things, and follow the example of the Lord, being firm and unchangeable in faith, loving the brotherhood [1 Pet 2:7]….When you can do good, defer it not, because alms delivers from death [Tobit 4:10; 12:9] (Letter to the Philadelphians 19 {AD 135}]

St. Irenaues of Lyons, in Against Heresies quotes from the Chapter 13 of Daniel, which is found in the LXX version. He also writes “Look around Jerusalem toward the east and behold the joy which comes to you from God himself. Behold your sons whom you have sent forth shall come: They shall come in a band from the east to the west. God shall go before you in the light of his splendor, with the mercy and righteousness which proceed from him [Baruch 4:36, 5:9].

In addition to the Patristic Consensus, the Codices of the 4th century Church also point to the LXX. The Codex Vaticanus is from the mid 4th century and contains all of the OT books of the LXX, except Gen 1:1-46 is missing, some verses of 2 Samuel are missing, about 30 Psalms are missing and 1 and 2 Macabees are not present. Still, it represents a great witness to the early form of the LXX. The Codex Sinaiticus is another LXX source that is also from the mid 4th century and is close to the same textual style as the Codex Vaticanus.

Mr Turner does correctly point out that St. Jerome did question the inclusion of the 7 Deuterocanonicals when he did a new translation into Latin (Vulgate Translation).
With respect to St. Jerome and the Vulgate translation, he did use extant Hebrew Text of his time to do his OT translation. However, he was called out on the carpet for doing so and his original Translation met much resistance including St. Augustine, who asserted that Jerome’s translation from the Hebrew was “an innovation against the Church’s use of the LXX. In other words, Jerome’s translation was the first to use the Hebrew text as all the Old Latin texts drew from the LXX. While Jerome personally favored the shorter canon (he was in the minority along with Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nazianazus, Rufinius, and Epiphanius who favored the shorter canon) that found its way into the Masoretic texts, which Protestants adopted, Jerome did not rebel against the Church and thus included the 7 Deuterocanonicals in his translation. In fact, later in his life, he actually defended the inclusion of the 7 Deuterocanonicals by writing a treatise against Rufinius, as St. Jerome would write: “What sin have I committed if I follow the judgment of the churches” for including works in his translation that were not in the Hebrew texts.

Again, I will quote the Anglican Patristic Scholar JND Kelly who in his book “Early Christian Doctrines, pp. 53-54” provides solid evidence that the Dueterocanonicals were recognized as the Canonical Old Testament in the early Church. Kelly writes:

“It should be observed that the Old Testament thus admitted as authoritative in the Church was somewhat bulkier and more comprehensive than the [Protestant Old Testament] . . . It always included, though with varying degrees of recognition, the so-called Apocrypha or deutero-canonical books. The reason for this is that the Old Testament which passed in the first instance into the hands of Christians was . . . the Greek translation known as the Septuagint. . . . most of the Scriptural quotations found in the New Testament are based upon it rather than the Hebrew.. . . In the first two centuries . . . the Church seems to have accepted all or most of, these additional books as inspired and to have treated them without question as Scripture.

Quotations from Wisdom, for example, occur in 1 Clement and Barnabas. . . Polycarp cites Tobit, and the Didache [cites] Ecclesiasticus. Irenaeus refers to Wisdom, the History of Susannah, Bel and the Dragon [i.e., the deuterocanonical portions of Daniel], and Baruch. The use made of the Apocrypha by Tertullian, Hippolytus, Cyprian and Clement of Alexandria is too frequent for detailed references to be necessary”

In summary, it was the Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit that debated and determined the Canon of Scripture. So if the Church did not have God given authority to do so, then tell me who in the Church had the authority to determine which books belonged in the New Testament Canon? If nobody had authority, then why don’t you remove or add books to the canon on your own authority?

The Author correctly cites in footnote 4 that the Catholic Church did incolude the 7 Deuterocanoncicals in the Canon based on the Decisions of the Synod in Rome (382 AD) and Councils of Hippo and Carthage (393 and 397 AD) which codified the New Testament., and sent their canons for approval from Rome. The author tries to play some “mental gymnastics” by stating well, these were regional or non-Universal Councils and thus it was only at the Council of Trent in 1563 that the Catholic Church defined the 46 Book OT. This is false as a Regional Council is binding if the Pope in Rome accepts it. If there was a dispute in another part of the Church that rejected the Councils of the late 4th century, then the Pope may have needed to call a Universal council to clarify the disagreements. That never happened until Luther and Calvin raised the issue and the Catholic Church responded by reaffirming the 4th Century Councils.

Here is the more interesting issue, if you Protestants don’t accept the Decisions of those Councils with respect to their decisions on the OT, which included the 7 uterocanonicals that Luther and Calvin rejected, why do you accept the 27 book NT that was defined as many books such as Hebrews, Revelation, 2nd and 3rd John, 2 Peter were questioned until the 4th century as Eusebius in his History of the Church, written between 300 and 325 AD, tells us.

So many falsehoods, so little time. No matter how often they are disproven, they keep being posted again and again!

1. Nearly a third of OT books are not quoted in the NT, but three of the seven dueterocanonicals are.

2. The deuterocanonicals aren’t placed after Zecharaiah, until Jerome who did so because he was translating from Hebrew to Latin, and did not have Hebrew versions of the deuterocanonicals. No way Jesus couldn’ve meant not to include them between.

3. The Jews rejected the deuterocanonicals at the Council of Jamnia, AFTER the Resurrection. At the time of Christ, there’s no evidence of any canon that includes the other books of the Khetuvim, but not the deuterocanonicals.

4. It is well known that the Jews placed the highest priority on the Law. Following that, some Jews believed in the centrality of the Prophets (the Pharisees), but the others did not (such as the Sadducees). Neither group regarded the Khetuvim (the scrolls) as highly. Yet the bible includes the other books of the Khetuvim.

6. In the sense that the Catholic Church only established the Deuterocanonicals as part of the canon in 1546, the Catholic Church had no canon at all until 1546. Which is, of course, ridiculous. The Catholic canon consisted of books which were used in the Catholic mass. The deuterocanonicals were used in mass, just like the rest. When Luther stated that all doctrine had to be based on the bible, and thus removed the portions of the bible which had doctrine he recognized as directly refuting his lies, the Catholic Church affirmed the notion that doctrine had to be biblical, and published a canon of the books which were to be included in the list of books which establish doctrine. (Curiously, the Catholic Church detected no doctrine — or any other unique teaching — in the book of Esdras III (”Greek Ezra”), since it’s a shorter redaction of two other books, Ezra and Nehemiah. So there emerged a slight difference between Catholic and some Orthodox bibles.)

7. Jerome calls anyone who claimed he rejected the canonicity of the Deuterocanonicals, “a fool and a slanderer.” The diabolical practice of referring to the Deuterocanonicals as “apocrypha” (a word otherwise used to represent “hidden books” which were not canonical at all) has led some uneducated or deceitful Protestants to proclaim that various founding fathers rejected the Deuterocanonicals, where they were actually rejecting books such as “The apocalypse of Moses,” and “the Book of Enoch.”

Origen never rejected the deuterocanonicals. The notion he did not was based, again, on the Hexalpa, a comparison of Hebrew to other, then-common languages. Like Jerome, Origen did not have a Hebrew version of the Deuterocanonicals.

8. The most significant time, prior to the Reformation, that the dueterocanonicals were placed in a separate section was by Jerome, who did so solely because he was translating Hebrew into Latin, and didn’t have a Hebrew version of them to work with. In a few other instances, various Church leaders debated the value of using the deuterocanonicals to debate with Jews, since the Jews of their day did not regard the deuterocanonicals to be inspired or even truthful.

9. It’s well known that Protestants reject participatory atonement; denying the authenticity of the deuterocanonicals on that basis, then, constitutes circular logic: Luther: “This can’t be true because it’s not in the bible...” Catholic Church: “Yes it is. Right there.” Luther: “Oh. Well that can’t be part of the bible, then.” Yes, that much abridged conversation did take place.

As for the “magic” of Tobit. Does the image of bronze serpent cure disease? Does a paste of mud and water cure blindness? Does eating a baked turd give prophetic powers? Does washing oneself in the spring tubs of Judaea cure paralysis? Yet these are all commanded of people to receive miracles. None are magic; they are signs of obedience.

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