Most Bible-believing Christians accept the Hebrew Old Testament canon that contains the familiar thirty-nine books found in the English Bible. In the Hebrew Old Testament some books are combined, giving twenty-two in number. The Roman Catholic Church and some others believe that more books belong in the Old Canon. These other books are found in the Greek Old Testament translation, i.e. the Septuagint. This name is the Greek word for seventy, and the book is so named because Aristea wrote in a letter that it was made by 72 translators in 72 days. This translation was made at Alexandria about 250 B.C., and at that time it consisted only of the books found in the Hebrew Scriptures. As Alfred Edersheim wrote, "The Canon of the Old Testament was then practically fixed in Palestine. That Canon was accepted by the Alexandrian translators, although the more loose views of the Hellenists on 'inspiration,' and the absence of that close watchfulness exercised over the text in Palestine, led to additions and alterations, and ultimately even to the admission of the Apocrypha into the Greek Bible." (Alfred Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiahapocrypha, meaning "hidden."
Protestants in general have rejected these books, while the Roman Catholic Church accepted eleven of them as Scripture since the Council of Trent held in 1546. In the Catholic Douay Old Testament, there are only seven of these books because the others are combined with some of the thirty-nine familiar books.
Why have these aprocryphal books been accepted by some and rejected by others? There are several reasons they are rejected:
1. There is no evidence that either the Lord Jesus Christ or any of the apostles quoted or taught from the Apocrypha. Their lack of use of these books is a strong indication they rejected them as being a part of the canon. If these books had been accepted as part of the Old Testament, surely the New Testament would contain clear quotations from them since it frequently quoted the Old Testament books. Also, if Jesus would have accepted these books, He surely would have spoken out against the Jews' rejection of them. We know that Jesus accepted "the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms" (The Proverbs are included in the Psalms section) as Scripture (Luke 24:44).
Furthermore, even if Jesus and the apostles had used or made allusions to the Septuagint, this would not prove they accepted the Apocrypha books as Scripture unless they were preceded by the authoritative formula "it is written," "the scripture says," etc.
2. There is no proof that the apocryphal books were a part of the first-century Septuagint used by the Lord and His apostles. The Jews did not accept the Apocrypha as part of the Hebrew canon. Flavius Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, wrote, "We have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing and contradicting one another, but only twenty-two books; which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine; and of them five belong to Moses. . . . From the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets, who wrote after Moses, wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life." These twenty-two books are the same as our thirty-nine Old Testament books. The Jewish canon combined several together to give twenty-two, the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet.
The earliest Septuagint containing the Apocrypha dates from the fourth century. Presumably the first-century Greek translation did not contain these books since most of the apocryphal books were written after the Septuagint translation was made in about 250 B.C. The earliest record of these books being a part of the Septuagint is from the fourth century, some six hundred years after the Septuagint was made.
The apocryphal books were post-Biblical, having been written roughly between 200 B.C. and A.D. 100. The Jews recognized this, as Josephus wrote: "It is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former of our fathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time . . . no one has been so bold as either to add anything to them, to take anything from them, or to make change in them; but it has become natural to all Jews immediately, and from their birth, to esteem these books to contain Divine doctrines, and to persist in them" (Against Apion, 1:8).
Eusebius, by quoting Josephus' view of "only twenty-two books," lends his support to this Jewish view (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1966, p. 97). Eusebius also quotes Origen (185-254), an early Christian scholar, who said that "it should be observed that the collective books, as handed down by the Hebrews, are twenty-two, according to the number of letters in their alphabet" (Ibid, p. 244). Origen, in his commentary on The Song of Songs, comments that "the churches of God have adopted three books from Solomon's pen," and gives them as Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. Origen does quote from the Book of Wisdom, but this book "is not included among the Solomonic writings--here limited to three--accepted into the Canon" (Origen, The Songs of Songs, Ancient Christian Writers, New York: Newman Press, p. 39, note 65 on p. 317).
3. As Josephus said, there was no "succession of prophets" since Artaxerxes, and the Apocrypha shows this by the absence of "Thus saith the Lord" statements. The apocryphal books also admit this was the case: "There was great distress in Israel, such as had not been since the time that prophets ceased to appear among them" (I Maccabees 9:27; cf. 4:46; 14:41). Malachi was the last prophet of the Old Testament, and he ended his prophecy with the pronouncement, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse" (Malachi 4:5, 6).
4. "Elijah" did come; John the Baptist came to prepare man for the Messiah. Many of the apocryphal books were written just before and after the time when Jesus Christ's ministry of "grace and truth" occurred (John 1:17; cf. Heb. 7:22; 8:1, 7; 9:15; 12:24). It is unlikely that a new Old Covenant revelation would occur at such a time, especially when that period closed with the promise that Elijah would come, and when so much of its message related to Jewish nationalism and patriotism when Jesus was establishing a new "kingdom . . . not of this world" (John 18:36; cf. 6:15; Luke 17:21; 16:16; et al.).
5. The apocryphal books teach erroneous doctrine, such as salvation by works ("For almsgiving delivers from death, and it will purge away every sin," Tobit 12:9; cf. 4:10; 14:10, 11; Sirach 3:30), prayers for the dead ("to pray for the dead. . . . he made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sins," II Maccabees 12:44, 45), that the dead pray ("hear now the prayer of the dead of Israel," Baruch 3:4), and angel intercession ("I brought a reminder of your prayer before the Holy One," Tobit 12:12).
6. The apocryphal books contain errors. For example, "On the third day thou didst command the waters to be gathered together in the seventh part of the earth; six parts thou didst dry up and keep so that some of them might be planted and cultivated and be of service before thee" (II Esdras 6:42 RSV). The Book of Judith (1:1) states that "the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, who ruled over the Assyrians in the great city of Nineveh." Nebuchadnezzar was not king of Nineveh but of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (Edersheim, op. cit, 1:126). Wisdom of Solomon (11:17) states that God "created the world out of formless matter." Tobit and Judith contain many historical, chronological, and geographical errors.
7. There are some clearly fanciful and immoral stories found in the Apocrypha, such as Judith deceiving King Nebuchadnezzar's general, Holofernes, and murdering him. She claimed God aided her (Judith 9:10-13; 13:8). These books encouraged and inflamed the Jewish people to revolt.
In summary, the apocryphal books are not considered a part of the Old Testament because (1) of Jesus Christ and His apostles' attitude toward them, (2) they were not a part of the Hebrew Old Testament, (3) they contain no claim to being prophetic, and (4) their messages seem foreign to the time when the Messiah was appearing.
Several of the reasons some give for accepting these books are listed below, along with answers to the reasons.
1. The Old Testament Septuagint was the Bible of the New Testament writers, and it contained the Apocrypha.
Answer: As mentioned earlier, there is no clear evidence that either the Lord Jesus Christ or any of the apostles quoted or taught from the Apocrypha, showing they rejected these books as being a part of the canon. Jesus and the apostles' use of the Septuagint does not prove they accepted the apocryphal books.
2. The New Testament contains quotations and allusions from the Apocrypha.
Answer: There are no clear quotations from these books in the New Testament. The alleged quotations may be little more than verbal coincidences. None of the so-called quotations are preceded with an authoritative "it is written" or "the scripture says." Even if there were quotations, they would not prove the apostles treated the books as Scripture. There are quotations from the heathen poets, such as Aratus in Acts 17:28, Menander in I Corinthians 15:33, and Epimenides in Titus 1:12; but their writings were not considered Scripture.As Eusebius wrote, when New Testament authors made such use of other uninspired writings, their quotations were correct since they selectively quoted from them only to illustrate God's truth. They did not use the quotations to establish truth.
3. Some of the early church leaders used and accepted the Apocrypha.
Answer: Many early church leaders opposed these books. Jerome firmly put them in a class of writings separate from the Scripture.
4. The Catacombs have scenes based on the apocryphal books.
Answer: These scenes in all probability were of a later origin, and they only prove the artists accepted the historical fact of the events and does not indicate they accepted the books as part of the Old Testament.
5. The older Greek manuscripts, Aleph, A, and B, contain these books.
Answer: This does not prove these books were part of the first-century Scriptures. These Alexandrian manuscripts may not be representative of the original Biblical manuscripts, which, of course, originated in Jerusalem.
6. The Syriac church accepted these books in the fourth century.
Answer: The Syrian Peshitta Bible of the second century did not include these books.
7. Augustine and the councils he presided over (Hippo in 393 and Carthage in 397) accepted these books.
Answer: Augustine accepted them only as a "secondary canon." He did not know Hebrew or was not a Hebrew scholar and therefore may not have understood the Jewish position on these books. We can see he shifted in his assessments of the Hebrew Old Testament. At first he opposed Jerome's use of the Hebrew Old Testament for the Latin Vulgate translation, but later he accepted Jerome's Hebrew text as being the best.
8. The Greek Church accepted these books.
Answer: The Greek Church first accepted these books as part of the canon in 1638.
9. The Roman Catholic Church proclaimed these as part of the canon at the Council of Trent in 1547.
Answer: The Roman Catholic Church claimed these books as canonical at the Council of Trent in part because of their support for "salvation by works" (Tobit 12:9) and "prayers for the dead" (II Maccabees 12:44, 45).
10. They were found in some Protestant Bibles up until the nineteenth century.
Answer: The Protestant Bible placed these books in a separate section. The first English Bible to exclude them was the Wycliffe Bible (1382) and the Geneva Bible (1599 publication). The British and Foreign Bible Societies 1827 decision to suspend their circulation was not a new action but was based on earlier similar actions.
11. Some of these books are found among the Dead Sea scrolls.
Answer: Other noncanonical books are found among the Dead Sea scrolls, so finding some of these books proves nothing.
The above show there is no case for acceptance of the apocryphal books because they are inspired, yet these books do have some value. The Westminster confession of faith states: "The Books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are not part of the canon of the Scripture; and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings" (Elwell, Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988, 1:129). These books do have value because they help us understand the first-century climate in which Jesus, the apostles, and the early church worked.
Although these books have value, they should not be placed in the Bible. The Bible should contain only the inspired Scriptures. The words of men they should not be placed alongside the inspired Word.
from Authority of Scripture, © copyright 2000 by Leland M. Haines, Northville, MI.
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