“1) They were included in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament from the third century B.C.), which was the “Bible” of the Apostles. They usually quoted the Old Testament scriptures (in the text of the New Testament) from the Septuagint.”
This is false. There is no evidence for the LXX including the apocrypha prior to the time of Jesus. In fact, we don’t even know when the Old Testament was translated into Greek. We only know that the Books of Moses were translated, some of them more than once, with the rest being translated at some later date, by unknown people. And as the article confesses for itself:
“These books and chapters were found in Bible manuscripts in Greek only, and were not part of the Hebrew Canon of the Old Testament, as determined by the Jews.”
Therefore, if the Jews did not regard these books as canonical, neither should we.
“2) Almost all of the Church Fathers regarded the Septuagint as the standard form of the Old Testament. The deuterocanonical books were in no way differentiated from the other books in the Septuagint, and were generally regarded as canonical. St. Augustine thought the Septuagint was apostolically-sanctioned and inspired, and this was the consensus in the early Church.”
He says “almost all,” admitting that there was not a universal consensus of the fathers. But even that is still false, because the consensus was that these books were to be used for edification, but not for doctrine.
Athanasius on the apocrypha:
“But for the sake of greater exactness I add this also, writing under obligation, as it were. There are other books besides these, indeed not received as canonical but having been appointed by our fathers to be read to those just approaching and wishing to be instructed in the word of godliness: Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit, and that which is called the Teaching of the Apostles, and the Shepherd. But the former [standard new and old testament canon], my brethren, are included in the Canon, the latter being merely read.” (Thirty-Ninth Festal Epistle, A.D. 367.)
Rufinus on the Apocrypha:
“But it should be known that there are also other books which our fathers call not ‘Canonical’ but ‘Ecclesiastical:’ that is to say, Wisdom, called the Wisdom of Solomon, and another Wisdom, called the Wisdom of the Son of Syrach, which last-mentioned the Latins called by the general title Ecclesiasticus, designating not the author of the book, but the character of the writing. To the same class belong the Book of Tobit, and the Book of Judith, and the Books of the Maccabees. In the New Testament the little book which is called the Book of the Pastor of Hermas (and that) which is called the Two Ways, or the Judgment of Peter; all of which they would have read in the Churches, but not appealed to for the confirmation of doctrine. The other writings they have named ‘Apocrypha.’ These they would not have read in the Churches. These are the traditions which the Fathers have handed down to us, which, as I said, I have thought it opportune to set forth in this place, for the instruction of those who are being taught the first elements of the Church and of the Faith, that they may know from what fountains of the Word of God their draughts must be taken” (Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953), Rufinus, Commentary on the Apostles’ Creed 36, p. 557-558.).
Jerome on the Apocrypha
“These instances have been just touched upon by me (the limits of a letter forbid a more discursive treatment of them) to convince you that in the holy scriptures you can make no progress unless you have a guide to shew you the way...Genesis ... Exodus ... Leviticus ... Numbers ... Deuteronomy ... Job ... Jesus the son of Nave ... Judges ... Ruth ... Samuel ... The third and fourth books of Kings ... The twelve prophets whose writings are compressed within the narrow limits of a single volume: Hosea ... Joel ... Amos ... Obadiah ... Jonah ... Micah ... Nahum ... Habakkuk ... Zephaniah ... Haggai ... Zechariah ... Malachi ... Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel ... Jeremiah also goes four times through the alphabet in different metres (Lamentations)... David...sings of Christ to his lyre; and on a psaltry with ten strings (Psalms) ... Solomon, a lover of peace and of the Lord, corrects morals, teaches nature (Proverbs and Ecclesiastes), unites Christ and the church, and sings a sweet marriage song to celebrate that holy bridal (Song of Songs) ... Esther ... Ezra and Nehemiah.
You see how, carried away by my love of the scriptures, I have exceeded the limits of a letter...The New Testament I will briefly deal with. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John ... The apostle Paul writes to seven churches (for the eighth epistle - that to the Hebrews - is not generally counted in with the others) ... The Acts of the Apostles ... The apostles James, Peter, John and Jude have published seven epistles ... The apocalypse of John ...I beg of you, my dear brother, to live among these books, to meditate upon them, to know nothing else, to seek nothing else (Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953, Volume VI, St. Jerome, Letter LIII.6-10).
As, then, the Church reads Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees, but does not admit them among the canonical Scriptures, so let it also read these two volumes (Wisdom of Solomon and Eccesiasticus) for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of the Church...I say this to show you how hard it is to master the book of Daniel, which in Hebrew contains neither the history of Susanna, nor the hymn of the three youths, nor the fables of Bel and the Dragon...(Ibid., Volume VI, Jerome, Prefaces to Jerome’s Works, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs; Daniel, pp. 492-493).
Let her treasures be not silks or gems but manuscripts of the holy scriptures...Let her begin by learning the psalter, and then let her gather rules of life out of the proverbs of Solomon...Let her follow the example set in Job of virtue and patience. Then let her pass on to the gospels...the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles...let her commit to memory the prophets, the heptateuch, the books of Kings and of Chronicles, the rolls also of Ezra and Esther. When she has done all these she may safely read the Song of Songs...Let her avoid all apocryphal writings, and if she is led to read such not by the truth of the doctrines which they contain but out of respect for the miracles contained in them; let her understand that they are not really written by those to whom they are ascribed, that many faulty elements have been introduced into them, and that it requires infinite discretion to look for gold in the midst of dirt (Ibid., Letter CVII.12).
What the Savior declares was written down was certainly written down. Where is it written down? The Septuagint does not have it, and the Church does not recognize the Apocrypha. Therefore we must go back to the book of the Hebrews, which is the source of the statements quoted by the Lord, as well as the examples cited by the disciples...But he who brings charges against me for relating the objections that the Hebrews are wont to raise against the story of Susanna, the Song of the Three Children, and the story of Bel and the Dragon, which are not found in the Hebrew volume, proves that he is just a foolish sycophant...The apostolic men use the Hebrew Scripture. It is clear that the apostles themselves and the evangelists did likewise. The Lord and Savior, whenever He refers to ancient Scripture, quotes examples from the Hebrew volumes...We do not say this because we wish to rebuke the Septuagint translators, but because the authority of the apostles and of Christ is greater...”(The Fathers of the Church (Washington: Catholic University, 1965), Volume 53, Saint Jerome, Against Rufinus, Book II.27, 33, pp. 151, 158-160).
Cardinal Cajetan calls them not “canonical for the confirmation of the faith,” but “canonical” only in a certain sense for the “edification of the faithful.”
“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 Ecciesiasticus, as is plain from the Protogus 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.” (Cardinal Cajetan, “Commentary on all the Authentic Historical Books of the Old Testament,” cited by William Whitaker in “A Disputation on Holy Scripture,” Cambridge: Parker Society (1849), p. 424)
Official prefaces to Latin translations of the scripture making the same distinction:
“At the dawn of the Reformation the great Romanist scholars remained faithful to the judgment of the Canon which Jerome had followed in his translation. And Cardinal Ximenes in the preface to his magnificent Polyglott Biblia Complutensia-the lasting monument of the University which he founded at Complutum or Alcala, and the great glory of the Spanish press-separates the Apocrypha from the Canonical books. The books, he writes, which are without the Canon, which the Church receives rather for the edification of the people than for the establishment of doctrine, are given only in Greek, but with a double translation.” ( B.F. Westcott, A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament (Cambridge: MacMillan, 1889), pp. 470-471.)
“4) The Church Councils at Hippo (393) and Carthage (397, 419), influenced heavily by St. Augustine, listed the deuterocanonical books as Scripture, which was simply an endorsement of what had become the general consensus of the Church in the west and most of the east.”
This is false. The Councils of Hippo and Carthage were regional councils. The consensus in the west was, as Cardinal Catejan expressed, that of Jerome’s.
“5) Since these Councils also finalized the 66 canonical books which all Christians accept, it is quite arbitrary for Protestants to selectively delete seven books from this authoritative Canon. This is all the more curious when the complicated, controversial history of the New Testament Canon is understood.”
This is false. Keeping them out of the inspired canon is keeping with historical norms. And secondly, many of these books are known to have serious historical and geographical errors, as admitted by Rome itself. For example,
Here are RCC sources on the faux history of Judith:
From the Vatican website introduction to Judith:
“Any attempt to read the book directly against the backdrop of Jewish history in relation to the empires of the ancient world is bound to fail. The story was written as a pious reflection on the meaning of the yearly Passover observance. It draws its inspiration from the Exodus narrative (especially Exodus 14:31) and from the texts of Isaiah and the Psalms portraying the special intervention of God for the preservation of Jerusalem. The theme of God’s hand as the agent of this providential activity, reflected of old in the hand of Moses and now in the hand of Judith, is again exemplified at a later time in Jewish synagogue art. God’s hand reaching down from heaven appears as part of the scene at Dura-Europos (before A.D. 256) in paintings of the Exodus, of the sacrifice of Isaac (Gen 22), and of Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones (Eze 37).”
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__PCP.HTM
And another, also official Catholic source:
“Judith is a dramatic fictional narrative...” “Because Judith is fiction replete with historical and geographical inaccuracies, it is difficult to date its composition.” (New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Nihil Obstat: Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm., Imprimatur: Reverend William J. Kane, Vicar General, Diocese of Washington)
If even Rome does not believe in them, why should Protestants be badgered to accept them into the canon?
“9) Protestantism, following Martin Luther, removed the deuterocanonical books from their Bibles due to their clear teaching of doctrines which had been recently repudiated by Protestants, such as prayers for the dead (Tobit 12:12, 2 Maccabees 12:39-45 ff.; cf. 1 Corinthians 15:29), intercession of dead saints (2 Maccabees 15:14; cf. Revelation 6:9-10), and intermediary intercession of angels (Tobit 12:12,15; cf. Revelation 5:8, 8:3-4). We know this from plain statements of Luther and other Reformers.”
This is a boastful charge, but it doesn’t appear that the Papists can prove even these doctrines from the apocrypha, even if they were entered into the canon. They’re free to try, though.
Nice letter, Catholics must hate it
This would be a pitiful place to find oneself in. Without the Apocrypha, half of Catholicism’s beliefs and doctrines would vanish. So they MUST hold on to them, no matter how outrageous and full of deceit they hold. Pull themselves up by their bootstraps and hike further into the darkness.
rebuttal on the Fathers: http://matt1618.freeyellow.com/deut.html
If Athanasius is saying that these are not part of scripture, but shall be taught to those seeking instruction in the ways of Godliness, what is he saying? Is he directly contradicting the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura? Moreover, his list is utterly confuses as to what constitutes scripture and what doesn’t; it shows the need for the Church to identify what is scripture and what isn’t, ebacuse Athanasius certainly cannot tell: he falsely asserts that Esther is not canon at all, and includes the Didache (teaching of the 12) and the Shepherd of Hermes as part of the New Testament. Why would you cite him as expert?
You also cite Rufinus, the heretic denounced by Jerome, and leap all the way forward 1,000 years to include Cardinal Cajetan, who met Luther half way, being convinced by Luther of Luther’s canon, but obviously breaking from the Catholic Church. Why?
As for Jerome, I can only repeat that so many times in one thread.
Of course, if you are looking for scandal, it is in the quotes from the New American Bible, which sadly had to be contradicted by encyclicals by Pope John Paul II and Pope Bendict XVI, affirming the historicity of the bible. The first edition had frequent denials of the historicity of several books, including a bizarre illustration of the supposed biblical view of the structre of the Earth in Genesis 1. The Second edition included John Paul II’s encylical, as if contradicting itself. FInally, the third edition removed the worst offenses, while retain John Paul II’s encyclical.
So there is nothing unique about the objections raised in the New American Bible in regards to Judith, that is not raised in reference to Genesis 1-11, and many other passages wherein the New American Bible followed the history of secularists over that of the Word of God.
Don’t spam me, bro. Kindly remove me from your multiple-user response lists in future and address me personally if you have something to say to me. Thanks.
How dare you!