Is the The Apocrypha to be Included in Scripture?

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is the dividing line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.
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Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the
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Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr.
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White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll -free across the
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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3702. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Well, good evening and welcome to The Dividing Line. As we had announced before, we were intending to have a debate this evening.
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I was doing everything I could to get hold of my Roman Catholic opponent and eventually went into the control channel for the network that we are on and asked them to contact him because he owns a channel in that network.
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That email got me a response email last evening. He apologized sincerely, says that he has had a family tragedy and that he will not be available and hopes to do it again sometime, or to do it sometime in the future.
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So he would not be able to be here this evening to debate the subject of the Apocrypha with me, but since there are still lots of folks who do debate that subject, and in fact you will constantly hear references to the subject of the
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Apocrypha, the canon of the Old Testament, the assertion that Martin Luther removed seven books from the
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Old Testament. I have heard, not only from Roman Catholics, but even heard
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Eastern Orthodox on the radio here in the Phoenix area making the claim that all the early church fathers accepted and believed in the books of the
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Apocrypha, etc., etc., etc. What we're going to do this evening is I'm going to invite you to take out a pad of paper and to come along with me as we consider the issue of the
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Apocrypha and how to respond to those who say that the Apocrypha is canonical scripture, to give you some background, some understanding, some facts to consider, and I do believe that when we get to the end of all this, we will be able to examine something very very important, and that is the fact that fundamentally the
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Roman Catholic Church's claim in regards to canonical certainty is a charade.
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There is no canonical certainty for the Roman Catholic. It is an example of sola ecclesia, and that in fact the
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Roman Catholic who accepts the position of the Council of Trent is accepting the decision of barely 60 prelates, none of whom were known for their learning in ancient studies, who did not deal with almost any of the information that I will even be presenting this evening, and yet because of an acceptance of the ultimate authority of the
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Roman See, these individuals are forced to take what was in reality the minority view of the church through the ages, and in fact the less scholarly view of the church through the ages now has been enshrined as an infallible proclamation of the
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Roman Catholic Church in something you must believe because it has been defined de fide. This illustrates for us the importance of sola scriptura and the rejection of the erection of traditions and ecclesiastical structures outside of what
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God has given to us in his holy words. What I'd like to do is, this is a subject, let's face it, most
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Christians don't know a lot about the history of the canon of scripture, and some of the things
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I'm going to need to discuss with you are not exactly the most scintillating things until you are talking to someone who is being sucked into a group that says, well, you need to have infallible certainty of the canon, we can give it to you, but you need to believe this, this, and this.
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Then all of a sudden all these other things become important. What's the plan of attack? Well, first of all, what was the canon of the
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Jewish people prior to the coming of Christ? Remember, Romans chapter 3 says, to them was committed the oracles of God.
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Given that there are no arguments recorded in the New Testament regarding the canon, the viewpoint of the Jews at the time of Christ would be highly relevant.
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Even the dispute between the Sadducees and Pharisees points this direction as the Lord told the Sadducees they erred, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.
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I refer there, of course, to the fact that the Sadducees had a very limited canon, an almost non -supernatural canon in some ways, in that they denied the existence of the
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Spirit after death, and they, of course, held only to the Pentateuch, the first five books of Moses.
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So once we determine the Jewish view, then secondly, we need to determine what is the New Testament view of the
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Apocrypha? I mean, the Apocrypha was written primarily, we're referring to the ones that have been canonized by the
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Roman Catholic Church, is written prior to the New Testament. The New Testament writers knew about the Apocrypha. There's no question that they were familiar with these things, the history of their people for the past 400 years.
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How did the New Testament writers view it? Thirdly, what was the early church's view of the Apocrypha?
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And right here, of course, we encounter all sorts of different views. There's not just one view, as is so very often asserted by Roman Catholic apologists, in error, of course, but there are those who make that assertion.
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And then what other evidence can we glean from the years up to the Council of Trent, April of 1546, for those of you who like dates, is the date of the promulgation of the decree that established the broader canon of the
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Old Testament, including the Apocryphal books, as dogmatic belief for the
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Roman Catholic people. That's April of 1546. So first, first issue on the board this evening, the
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Jewish canon. We read in the Talmud at Baba Bathra, the rabbins taught the order of the prophets is
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Joshua and Judges, and it goes through a number of the of the books. And this particular listing found in the
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Talmud is what's called a Baraita, an ancient tradition. It lists 19 books exclusive of the
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Pentateuch. 19 plus 5 would be 24 books. Most of the Jewish sources, well all the Jewish sources, refer to either 24 or 22.
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There isn't a difference between those two, because in general, those who are talking about the 24 books are separating out two small books from others.
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The 22 just simply put them together. And so this number of 22 or 24, the 22 is preferred for the fact that there is 22 letters in the
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Hebrew alphabet. And so it was easier to remember, and it made sense to remember along those lines, but some used the number 24 as well.
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So we have in the Jewish writings an ancient tradition listing 24 books for the
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Jewish canon here in Baba Bathra. As Ludwig Blau points out, the absence of disputes about the
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Apocrypha in the rabbinical literature is an eloquent fact. Assuming the Jews remove the
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Apocrypha, that would obviously be something that would engender a tremendous amount of discussion.
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But there was no discussion about it at all. Yet not a trace of such events has been left in all the voluminous records of rabbinical tradition, and it is hard to resist the inference that no such events can possibly have occurred.
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In other words, this is a quote from Roger Beckwith's work on page 381, if in point of fact there had ever been a time when the
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Apocryphal books were considered canonical by the Jewish people, and they had somehow been removed for some reason, there would have been discussion of this.
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There is no discussion of this. There is no historical record left of any kind of discussion of these things.
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There is discussion of some of the canonical books, whether they were in fact canonical, but there is no discussion whatsoever of the
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Apocryphal books being considered as a part of the Jewish canon. There's also the issue of what languages in which these books were originally written.
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One of the things that separates much of the Apocrypha from the Old Testament is the fact that it was not written in a
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Semitic language initially. Some of the books, such as 2nd through 4th Maccabees, if not all of Wisdom, did not have
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Semitic originals at all. They were composed in Greek. The fact of the matter is that these books are in their very nature very different from the canonical
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Hebrew Old Testament books themselves, both in their origination, their dating, their composition, and if we have time later we'll talk about some of, for example, some of the major errors that are found in these particular books.
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Now one thing that's very important is Josephus, who of course is one of the great important sources of our information concerning Jewish people at the time of Christ.
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Josephus refers in his work on antiquities to the practice of laying up scriptures in the temple.
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Now what does this refer to? There is a practice of taking the scriptural books, the books that were considered to be authoritative on the part of the
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Jewish people, and laying up copies of them in the temple precincts. And this was such an important thing to the
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Jewish individuals at the time that in just a matter of generations it was no longer allowed to either lay up new books or even make new copies of the ones that were there.
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What does this do? Well it obviously gives us a very early picture, at least 200 years before Christ, of the canon that existed at the time of Christ.
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What books were laid up? Well the 22 books of the Hebrew canon that Protestants use today.
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The 22 books of the Hebrew canon, remembering that the minor prophets, the 12, were put into one, etc.
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etc. Though when you put that all together that adds up to the 22 books of the Hebrew canon, the 39 books of the
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Protestant Old Testament canon. These are the same books that are laid up in the temple, and as we'll see in a moment, some of you have heard about what's called the
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Council of Jamnia. This comes out a lot when you're talking with Roman Catholic apologists.
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They'll say, well, there couldn't have been a canon at the time of Jesus. If there had been a canon at the time of Jesus, there would have been no reason for the
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Council of Jamnia about 70 AD or beyond that to have decided the canon.
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Well, that's a misunderstanding of what happened at Jamnia, and it's also an ignorance of the fact that there was this laying up of these canonical books in the temple.
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In fact, the issue at Jamnia, what never had anything to do with any apocryphal books.
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Anyone who cites Jamnia in reference to the idea of canonizing the apocrypha does not know what they're talking about.
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They're probably just quoting something they got out of this rock someplace, and they've never taken the time to do much reading beyond that.
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The fact of the matter is that Jamnia was talking about some of the canonical books, such as Esther, and whether it made the hands unclean.
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That is, to touch a canonical book made your hands unclean. There were certain cleansing washings that you were to go through in regards to touching something that was holy.
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And the issue was, should we continue to consider these canonical? In other words, they were already considered canonical.
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The question was, should we continue to do so? Now, I'm going to go ahead and skip the Jamnia here, and when I get to it later in my notes,
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I'll skip over it. Just doing this off the top of my head, that also tells us something important as well. It tells us that the canon did pre -exist
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Jamnia, and that the decisions that were reached, and we don't even know when this this was, this would have been a session of Jewish elders at Jamnia, somewhere between about 80 and 130 or so, 110, somewhere around that, around the turn of the century.
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We don't even know what decade it actually took place in. And not only that, it didn't decide anything.
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There were still differences of opinions amongst rabbis in the generations that followed.
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So, all the Council, I mean, even calling it the Council of Jamnia is not wise, because that brings up all sorts of ideas and thoughts that were coming together to consider this type of thing.
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That wasn't the case at all. There was just simply a discussion at this academy at one point, somewhere around the turn of the century, concerning Esther and some of the other books of the
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Old Testament, whether they made your hands unclean. That's all it was. It does not indicate, in any way, shape, or form, that the
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Jewish canon was open after the time of Christ. And that is very important when it comes to the issue of Jesus's view, and the view of the disciples as well, which we'll get to here in just a moment.
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Now, in Josephus, in another one of his works, against Appian 1 .7
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and following, he gives the number of books as 22. He specifically rejects those books written after Malachi, and that is the apocryphal books.
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There is no reason to believe that Josephus's canon is recent, that he was just making it up, he just found out about this.
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In other words, there's no reason to disbelieve that what he is giving to us is a already established understanding of the
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Jewish people. That is, as most people believe today, he is referring to a canon that had been in place for about 300 years.
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He's writing about 100 years afterwards, after Christ, so we're talking about about 200 years before Christ.
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About 200 years passed after the last of the inspired works are given, Malachi.
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And it's during this period of time, it's very important to recognize the Jewish people recognized that the voice of God, in essence, had ceased to speak during this period of time.
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They recognized that prophecy had ceased in Israel. For example, in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, Order Nezachim 346, aren't you glad you can download some
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MP3 and listen to it a little bit slower in the future? Our rabbis taught, since the death of the last prophets,
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Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, the Holy Spirit of prophetic inspiration departed from Israel.
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Yet, they were still able to avail themselves of bath coal. And so, they recognized that the
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Holy Spirit of prophetic inspiration had left Israel this time. In Seder Ulam Rabbah 30, quoting
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Proverbs 22, 17, we read, until then, the coming of Alexander and the end of the empire of the Persians, the prophets prophesied through the
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Holy Spirit. From then on, incline thy ear and hear the words of the wise. In other words, there was a shift, a change, from a continuing presence of the
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Spirit giving scripture to now looking to those already established scriptures. In another reference here from just looking at, that's a long reference here, this is in Roger Beckwith's work, page 370.
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I'm not going to try to give you the whole reference, he wouldn't write it down anyways. Rabbi Samuel Bar -Inya said, in the name of Rabbi Ahab, the second temple lacked five things which the first temple possessed.
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The second temple would be the temple after it was rebuilt after the Babylonian captivity. Namely, the fire, the ark, the
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Urim and Thummim, the oil of anointing, and the Holy Spirit of prophecy. Notice the five things.
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Fire, ark, Urim and Thummim, the oil of anointing, and the Holy Spirit of prophecy.
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Another direct Jewish reference to the fact that the
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Holy Spirit was no longer functioning in the nation of Israel the way that it once had.
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Now, it is very common that you will hear individuals say, well you need to understand, there were two canons.
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There was the canon Palestine, and there was the Alexandrian canon. I was taught that very thing in seminary.
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I even repeated it after I graduated from seminary. It is so common to continue to hear this.
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It's found in standard works, it sort of gets reprinted over and over and over again. However, modern research contradicts that common assertion.
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The idea is, well, down in Alexandria, Egypt, you had this very large concentration of Jewish individuals.
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They're very scholarly. There's much literature that's produced there. And down in Alexandria, they had a wider canon.
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They accepted the Apocryphal books. The problem is, there's no evidence of that.
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Philo, for example, influential Jewish writer, philosopher, who lived in Alexandria around the time of Christ, pretty much contemporary.
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H .E. Ryle, who lists the resemblances in Philo to passages of the Apocrypha, quoting from Beckwith here, remarks that there is no appearance, in any of them, of definite quotation.
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And C .F. Herneman, who also makes such a list, speaks of the profound silence of Philo about all the
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Apocryphal books, and points out that he quotes far more distinctly from the Greek philosophers than from any of the
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Apocrypha. Any hypothesis about Alexandrian Jewry, to which the writings of Philo lend absolutely no support, can hardly be regarded as tenable.
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So here you have the leading example of Jewish writing at the time of Christ in Alexandria, Egypt, and there is no evidence from his writings that he viewed the
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Apocryphal books as being a part of the canon. So when those people assert that Hellenistic Judaism, that Judaism existed outside of Palestine, had a wider canon, there are some things to point out.
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Hellenistic Judaism was not independent of Palestine. The very fact that many of them would make trips into Jerusalem for the feasts and things like that, up until the destruction of the
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Temple, of course, made a connection between those who were in the
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Diaspora and the dispersion, and those who were still in the Palestine itself. Hellenistic Jews shared the idea that all the
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Biblical books were prophetic, hence why would they accept 1 Maccabees when it asserts that prophecy had already ceased when it was written?
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That's 1 Maccabees 4 .46, 9 .27, and 14 .41. Here you have a book that internally says prophecy has ended.
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How then can it be scriptural? It doesn't make any sense. Thirdly, the Prologue of Ecclesiasticus makes no less than three references to the three divisions of the already existing
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Jewish canon. What would that be? The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. So here you have a book that already recognizes the pre -existence of the
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Jewish canon. How then can it be a part of the Jewish canon if the Jewish canon already existed before it was written?
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Another one of the many questions that needs to be addressed at that particular point in time.
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Now, let me move on since I can't believe how fast the clock is moving.
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How does the New Testament view this subject? We won't have time tonight, but I would recommend to your consideration the words of the
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Lord Jesus. In Matthew 23 .35, Matthew 23 .35,
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the Lord Jesus, in speaking to the Jews, says, "...that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous
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Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar."
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Now this passage is considered by many, and I think there's good argumentation for it, to be the clearest example of a listing of the canon on the part of the
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Lord Jesus. You might say, well, why would that be? Well, first of all, you need to recognize that the order of the books in the
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Hebrew canon is quite different than the English canon. That is, if you were to pick up a
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Hebrew Old Testament, if you were to pick up a Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, for example, the currently scholarly used
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Hebrew text of the Old Testament, you would discover that, while it starts with Genesis anyways, it ends with 2
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Chronicles. It doesn't cut off everything after 2 Chronicles in the English canon. It's just that the books are placed into the book, and in a different order than we have in the
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English canon. Ours ends with Malachi, theirs ended with 2 Chronicles. Malachi would have come before that in the order of the canon.
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And so, when we keep that in mind, then we look at this passage when it says, from the blood of righteous
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Abel. Abel was killed, of course, in the early chapters of the book of Genesis.
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And then you have Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.
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Well, Zechariah was murdered between the temple and the altar, and that story is related to us in 2
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Chronicles. It would be similar to someone saying, from Genesis to Revelation.
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If we said, from Genesis to Revelation, everybody would understand what it is we were talking about.
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That we were specifically making reference to the concept of the entirety of the canon as we understood it.
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Well, here Jesus pronounces upon the Jewish leaders the guilt of all the righteous blood that is recorded in all of inspired scripture.
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That would not include, of course, the Apocrypha. There were people who died, martyrs who died, within the context of the
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Apocrypha, but they are not referred to by the
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Lord Jesus. Why? I think it fits with the fact that the Jews recognized that the spirit of prophecy had left the people of Israel, and that there were no more prophets during that period of time.
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And hence we have a reference to the established canon that existed for 200 years before Christ, and then we also have a negative assessment of the
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Apocrypha at that particular point as well. We have a quote here from Roger Beckwith, where he says, "...but
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the undeniable truth is that the New Testament, by contrast with the early fathers, and by contrast with its own practice in relation to the books of the
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Hebrew Bible, never actually quotes from or ascribes authority to any of the
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Apocrypha." Now, before someone has a cow and says, oh wait a minute, in the back of the
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United Bible Society, the Nestle All in 27th edition, there's this list of all these allusions.
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And you'll hear people, so many people, they get themselves into subjects they really shouldn't be addressing, and I've heard many a
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Roman Catholic apologist say, well, what's really going on is we have all these quotes from the
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Apocrypha, and it's right here, and I can show it to you. Well, what they don't realize is, what this is, is verbal parallels.
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Verbal parallels. And if you actually examine the listings given there, it would actually confirm for you the fact that what you have in those verbal parallels is just places where maybe a unique word or two words together are used in the
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New Testament that are to be found in these other books. It will prove to you this truth of what
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Beckwith said in the quote I just gave you, that the New Testament never actually quotes from or ascribes authority to any of the
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Apocrypha. That's what it'll prove to you if you'll take a look at it. Now, the common arguments of Roman apologists regarding the utter lack of foundation in the
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New Testament for belief in the inspiration of the Apocrypha break down quickly upon examination. They are generally based either upon very shallow logic or the hope that the
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Protestant does not know much about the New Testament itself. There are two basic arguments. First, they will argue that the
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New Testament does not have to call the Apocryphal books Scripture for them to be Scripture, since the
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New Testament does not call the book of Esther or the Song of Solomon Scripture either. But this misses the point, for those books were included in the
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Jewish canon, were laid up in the temple, noted by Josephus and other Jewish sources, and hence can be assumed in such passages as Matthew 23 -35.
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Such is not the case with the Apocryphal books at all. They are excluded from these lists, in some cases deny that they themselves are inspired, and hence must have some testimony from the
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New Testament if we are to take the claim of their inspiration seriously. The second argument proffered is based upon the hope that the
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Protestant thinks the New Testament authors did not ever read or even know about the existence of the
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Apocryphal books. I've had people try to pull this one on me, it doesn't work very well, and hopefully all of you listening right now will not let it work on you in the future either.
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And that is, I've had people say, you're saying that the New Testament writers didn't even know about the
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Apocryphal books, and surely there's illusions here and parallels here. They will appeal to the fact that one can create an entire list of allusions to the
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Apocryphal books and New Testament writings. But this again is no meaningful argument. No one denies New Testament writers fully knew of the existence of the
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Apocryphal books. I am sure that the Apostle Paul was fully aware of all of them. I don't have any question about that whatsoever.
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It was probable that men like Paul were thoroughly familiar with the content of these writings. Nor is there any weight in pointing out that they may well have borrowed language, metaphors, examples from these works.
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The issue is of course, did the New Testament writers view them as scripture? I mean, we know the
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Apostle Paul quotes from pagan poets. He obviously read something other than just the Old Testament scriptures.
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He was a widely read man. But did he identify them as scripture? The clear answer is an unambiguous no.
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They never used the key phrases it is written, gegreptide, the Lord says, scripture says, etc.
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with reference to the Apocryphal books. In point of fact, I'd like to point out this argument backfires if the
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Protestant is prepared and thinking clearly. For in reality the fact that one can prove that the
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Apocryphal books were known to the Apostles and even referred to by them and yet they never appealed to them as scripture when there were many opportunities to do so is strong evidence against their canonicity.
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The very fact that they did know them and chose not to cite them as scripture when there would have been many opportunities, when they could have done so, and to their benefit by quoting from them and they didn't shows their view of the subject of the
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Apocryphal. Well, we've got two of the four done. The next one is going to take a little bit longer. It's the early church.
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What was the view of the early church in regards to these issues? And we will try to see if we can sneak some calls in toward the end.
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Not sure. I'm not sure exactly how long it's going to take, but we'll do our best. We're moving along at a good pace. So you might want to call at 877 -753 -3341.
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We'll be right back. Answering those who claim that only the
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King James Version is the Word of God, James White in his book, The King James Only Controversy, examines allegations that modern translators conspired to corrupt scripture and lead believers away from true
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Christian faith. In a readable and responsible style, author James White traces the development of Bible translations old and new and investigates the differences between new versions and the authorized version of 1611.
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You can order your copy of James White's book, The King James Only Controversy, by going to our website at www .aomin
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.org. What is Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book, Chosen But Free?
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A New Cult? Secularism? False Prophecy Scenarios? No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called
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Calvinism. He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient, and morally repugnant.
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In his book, The Potter's Freedom, James White replies to Dr. Geisler, but The Potter's Freedom is much more than just a reply.
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It is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded. Indeed, it is a defense of the very gospel itself.
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In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so -called extreme
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Calvinism, defines what the Reformed faith actually is, and concludes that the gospel preached by the
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Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture. The Potter's Freedom, a defense of the
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Reformation and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen But Free. You'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at www .aomin
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.org. This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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And welcome back to Dividing Line. My name is James White. We did not have our debate this evening so I'm just getting the whole time to make my opening presentation.
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I don't know. We never got around to even arranging how the debate was supposed to go because nobody showed.
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So anyways, we're talking about the subject of the Apocrypha. We're now to the early church.
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I'm not saying Apocrypha by the way. I'm just saying it so quickly it sounds that way. Apocrypha. The deutero -canonicals for those who would like to go that direction.
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Anyways, at least not singing this week on the Dividing Line. That's a very good thing. I think most of you probably agree with that.
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I was just singing with Steve Camp, but I always keep it low enough that you really can't tell. Anyways, we're talking about the early church's view and Roger Beckwith sort of summarizes things by saying, "...a
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uniquely ample and one imagines almost complete collection of the parallels between the
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Apocrypha and the writings of the early fathers has now been produced in the successive volumes of Biblia Patristica, but the great majority of them show simply a familiarity of thought which may or may not indicate dependence, but the mere adoption of the language of a book without the use of one of those standard formulas for quoting
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Scripture which the fathers inherited from the New Testament should not be taken as implying that the book was canonical."
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In other words, you can look at all of the allusions that the early church fathers make to these books, but again, unless they use for the
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Scripture states, it has been written, the mere adoption of some kind of parallel, linguistic parallel, does not indicate that the person believed that that book was in and of itself canonical.
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In fact, he continues by saying, "...when one examines the passages in the early fathers which are supposed to establish the canonicity of the
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Apocrypha, one finds that some of them are taken from the alternative Greek text of Ezra, called First Esdras, or from additions or appendices to Daniel, Jeremiah, or some other canonical book."
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Let me stop there, because not everyone is aware of what that means. There were in the
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Greek translations of Daniel, Jeremiah, there were additions that appeared as part of the text, that are not a part of the
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Hebrew text. That's what they're referring to there when they talk about additions or appendices to Daniel, Jeremiah, some other canonical book, which are not really relevant.
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In other words, if they are quoting from something that they may or may not even know was a freestanding book,
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Athanasius for example, the Bishop of Alexandria in the middle of the fourth century, the great defender of the deity of Christ, the versions of those books that he received had those additions in them.
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He was not aware that those appendices were not a part of the original
34:36
Hebrew text itself. So he accepted those unaware that they did not exist in the corresponding
34:42
Hebrew books themselves. To find out if someone actually accepted the
34:48
Apocryphal books as canonical, you'd have to find them citing from those books which were freestanding.
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First Maccabees or something along those lines. That's what he's saying here. Picking up with the quotation again, that others of them are not quotations from the
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Apocrypha at all, and that of those which are, many do not give any indication the book quoted is regarded as scripture.
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These were books that were indeed read widely, but the question is were they canonical? Now, it's very, very important for you to understand the role of the
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Greek Septuagint. Some people pronounce that Septuagint. I pronounce it Septuagint. You'll see it abbreviated as LXX.
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This is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament.
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And in the Septuagint, we find the key understanding, the key element concerning the
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New Testament, or the early church's view of the Apocryphal books. Why? Well, the
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LXX, the Septuagint, was the Bible of the early Christian Church. The vast majority of converts to the
35:56
Christian faith outside of Palestine could not read Hebrew. Therefore, they would have to access the
36:02
Old Testament writings, because the New Testament in the first number of decades is still being written, through the
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Greek Septuagint. Many of those early Christians, even after the time of the Apostles, who had no knowledge of the
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Hebrew background of the Old Testament, were dependent upon what they found in the Septuagint.
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The Septuagint contained, more or less, Apocryphal and other works. You'll very frequently hear it said that the
36:29
Septuagint contained the Apocrypha. That's a little bit of an overblown statement. The Septuagint manuscripts that we have contain
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Apocryphal works, but they don't contain all the same ones, and most of them contain books outside of the
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Apocrypha. The reason being, when you had a book made back then, if you were already putting the money out for a certain amount of leather, because the books were made with vellum and things like that, which come from animals, and they were not cheaply made.
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You just didn't run down to the ancient equivalent of Kinko's and run a copy off yourself. When you had these books made, especially now using, as Christians did, the book form rather than the scroll form, you included in them not only the books of Scripture, but also other books that were considered to be good to read for edification.
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A modern example of this would be if we were in the same situation. We would have our
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Bibles, and we might also have Pilgrim's Progress included in there. Maybe we'd have some sermons of Jonathan Edwards.
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I'm referring to primarily Reformed folks at this point, but the point is these are our books which we do not consider canon
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Scripture. However, I think most of the folks listening to me right now, unless you're listening on PalTalk or something like that, and are throwing things at your monitor, most of the folks who are listening to me right now would understand if I were to, for example, start talking about the
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Interpreter's House, and I were to start talking about the example of the fire and the oil being poured through the wall of the fire there in the
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Interpreter's House. This is from Pilgrim's Progress. This is something that anyone who's read those books would understand.
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It's part of our culture. It's part of our shared heritage. Well, these books would be included. And so, for example, when we look at early manuscripts of the
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Greek Septuagint, we have Codex Vaticanus. It did not contain any of the books of the Maccabees.
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Sinaiticus had first and fourth Maccabees, but not second and third. Alexandrinus contains all four books of the
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Maccabees, plus the Psalms of Solomon, something even outside of the Apocrypha, as far as its genre goes.
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And so here you have the three biggest ancient manuscripts, codices, of both the
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New Testament and then the Greek Septuagint, and they don't contain the same books.
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There was no absolute listing somewhere that indicated exactly what was supposed to be in there, and just because they're there does not indicate that the person who created it thought that all of those that he was adding to it were themselves canon scripture.
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Now, another thing is very important to remember. It's vital to remember that around A .D. 130, somewhere around in there, think about what was going on.
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You've got Jewish mission... not Jewish mission... Christian missionaries going out and preaching
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Jesus to Jews all over the Roman Empire, and we know what happened in the
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New Testament. The Jews didn't like that. And what version of the Bible did
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Christians cite from? They cited from the Greek Septuagint. I mean, the vast majority of citations in the
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New Testament from the Old Testament are drawn from the Greek Septuagint. And so the
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Jews forbade the use of the Septuagint. They denied the Septuagint. They rejected it around A .D.
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130. As a result, there's this huge split, and not only are the two sides using a different text, but the result is when you have two sides and they come at each other in debate and fighting, shall we say, and they're using a different text, a different translation, they will sort of expand the claims for their translation.
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So what happened is that by the time of Augustine, for example, in the late 4th century, beginning of the 5th century, many
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Christians believe the Greek Septuagint to be inspired. They believed, over time, and we can actually sort of follow this story along, over time this story developed, and it started a little bit more believably.
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About 70 or 72 Hebrew scholars who translated the Old Testament into Greek, and maybe it just started with the first five books of Moses, then it expanded out, but eventually the story that most
40:56
Christians believed was that 70 or 72 Jewish scholars went into these caves, separated from one another, and in 70 days they came out and they had all translated the
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Old Testament word for word identical, and it was the Greek Septuagint. Now, the problem was there weren't two manuscripts of the
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Septuagint that read word for word, but that was the idea. Many people believe the
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Septuagint to be inspired, and part of the reason that brought that about was the fact that the
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Jews rejected it, adopted their own translation in Greek from Aquila, and there was this debate, this conflict.
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Then you join the great rift that has developed between the
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Church and Judaism. You join the resultant ignorance of Old Testament backgrounds.
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You join the fact that many, very, very, very few Christians had any contact with Jewish people to even know what their canon was, to even know anything about the
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Hebrew scriptures at all. Join that with the rise of Origen's allegorical interpretation, his methodology in the midst of the third century, which basically rips the heart out of the interpretation of the
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Old Testament as a whole, and the result was a tremendous amount of ignorance and misinformation, and the vast majority of those early fathers cited by Roman Catholic apologists are individuals who fall into this camp, that did not have knowledge of the
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Old Testament backgrounds in Hebrew and the language. Look at the great conflict that existed between Jerome and Augustine.
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Augustine accepted the Septuagint and the stories about its inspiration, and as such, the Apocryphal Books.
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Now he thought, interestingly enough, that the Apocryphal Books were part of the Hebrew canon. He was wrong. Jerome, on the other hand, moves to Bethlehem.
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He recognizes the problems in the Septuagint, and he begins to translate the Latin Vulgate. He learns
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Hebrew. He is one of the very few early Christian writers who knew Hebrew at all. Augustine did not.
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Augustine knew no Hebrew, had hardly any knowledge of Greek, and was primarily limited to Latin.
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And so they butt heads on the subject of the canon, and Jerome is the one who can derive from the
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Jewish sources a more accurate knowledge of what was actually the
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Jewish canon, and what was actually part of the Old Testament canon itself. It's very, very interesting.
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Now Melito Sardis, fascinating fellow, I have a pop -up I play in channel once in a while of a section
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I translated from his Passover sermon, Deity of Christ. Just incredible stuff. I just want to stand up and yell
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Amen at the end of it. Melito Sardis inquired of the church in Palestine concerning the Old Testament canon around AD 175.
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So about 80 -85 years after John, Melito Sardis, he inquires, he's a smart guy, he inquires of Palestine concerning the
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Old Testament canon. Where else, where better to ask? And he discovered that the canon did not include the Apocryphal Books.
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Now how can it be that he would inquire in Palestine if in fact the canon of the Old Testament, including the Apocrypha, was a matter of quote, apostolic tradition, end quote, as Trent claimed.
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It was not, in fact, an apostolic tradition at all, and hence as a result
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Melito Sardis rejected the Apocryphal Books. In fact, if you look to the second century, just the second century,
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Roger Beckwith gives a sort of a breakdown in the second century of the Christian era. There are a number of writers in this period, even some whose writings are extensive, contain many quotations in the
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Old Testament, such as Justin Martyr and Theophilus of Antioch, who never refer to any of the books of the
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Apocrypha at all. It's like they didn't even know they existed. There are two books of the Greek Apocrypha, 3rd and 4th
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Maccabees, which are never referred to by anybody. I mean they had been beamed off the planet.
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Three of the books, Judith and the first two books of Maccabees, are little used and only used as historical sources, without any suggestion that they are scripture.
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Even in the early 3rd century, the learned Hippolytus never refers to Judith, though he uses both 1st and 2nd
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Maccabees as historical sources. Two of the books, Tobit and Ecclesiasticus, are used only in the
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East. The first Western writer to refer to Tobit is Hippolytus, though he never refers to Ecclesiasticus.
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Origen twice refers to doubts about the most popular book, Wisdom, in his own writings.
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He was well aware of the fact that those particular books were questioned by the
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Jewish people themselves, and he concludes by saying, until the final years of the second century there is only one isolated example of any of the
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Apocryphal books being treated as scripture, which is Polycarp's use of Tobit. In the earliest Christian Septuagint manuscripts, which are extant, the
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Papyri, up until the Peace of the Church in A .D. 313, the only books of the Apocrypha to occur are
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Tobit, Ecclesiasticus, and Wisdom. Now, there is a...
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I'm looking at the clock here, I haven't seen anybody call anyway, so you're all sitting there with bated breath, just fascinated.
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Actually, I think you're all asleep. But, the next thing that you hear, and this is fascinating to me, the next thing that you hear from Roman Catholic apologists is, well, but you see, the
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Church has to determine these things, and the councils of Carthage and Hippo, 393, 397, they decided these things, and that's what we need to look to.
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Now, your sharper Catholic apologists will only go one of two ways. Your sharper apologists will either go, well, actually the real dogmatic definition of the canon was at the
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Council of Trent in April of 1546, or what they'll say is, well,
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Carthage and Hippo were not ecumenical councils, and they were not infallible in what they were teaching.
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However, their canons were picked up by the Council of Trullo, and that council, their canons are considered to have come from the 6th
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Ecumenical Council by the 7th Ecumenical Council, and so the 7th Ecumenical Council repeats them, and therefore
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Carthage and Hippo's canons become infallible because they are repeated in that way.
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If you followed all that, you're a very, very, very smart internet listener. No two ways about it.
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The problem with all of that is this. Without going into a lot of detail that's sort of difficult to do in the context of an
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IRC room, or pal talk, or on the webcast, the canon defined at Carthage and Hippo in regards to the
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Old Testament differs in one important point from that of Trent.
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Remember I mentioned before that there was less than 60 men at Trent. I believe the number was 53 if I recall correctly.
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I can double -check that. About 53 or so individuals that were a part of the the
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Council of Trent, and these individuals Let me see here.
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Looking for things. Ah, there we go. Yeah, 53 prelates. This is according to B .F. Westcott. Let me just read his comments here since I've got it open to it right now.
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Westcott said regarding Trent, How far in the doctrinal equalization of the disputed and acknowledged books of the
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Old Testament was at variance with the traditional opinion of the West How absolutely unprecedented was the conversion of an ecclesiastical usage into an article of belief will be seen from the evidence which has already been deduced, most of which we've some of which we've already talked about.
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The issue here is the Council of Trent is a counter -reformation council.
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It is responding to the Reformation. And the viewpoint of rejecting the apocryphal books adopted by the
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Reformers was in fact the best view of the medieval church.
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I mean, I just note very quickly, Gregory the Great, Bishop of Rome, in his book,
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Morals on the Book of Job, Volume 2, Parts 3 and 4, Book 19 .34,
50:10
found in the library of the Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, page 424, said, quote, with reference to which particular we are not acting irregularly if from the books though not canonical yet brought out for the edification of the church we bring forward testimony thus
50:26
Eleazar in the battle smote and brought down an elephant but fell under the very beast that he killed that is a citation from 1st
50:33
Maccabees 646. Now 1st Maccabees is considered canonical by the
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Council of Trent. Here you have Gregory the Great and he wrote this both before and during his papacy.
50:44
This is Pope Gregory the Great writing around the year 600 or so. He is very clear in denying, and this is after Carthage and Hippo, in denying the canonicity of a book that is unquestionably a part of the
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Apocrypha. He rejected it. Somehow he didn't know about this apostolic tradition.
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The New Catholic Encyclopedia confirms that Pope Gregory did not accept canonical status for the Apocrypha. Volume 2, page 390.
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John Cawson in his book, A Scholastic History of the Canon, 52 major ecclesiastical writers and theologians from the 8th to the 16th centuries are documented who held the view of Jerome and Jerome rejected the
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Deuterocanonicals. Even as we get close to the time of the Reformation, the best thinkers in Western Christendom reject the
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Apocrypha. It's fascinating that Cardinal Cajetan, and Cajetan was one of the leading lights of the
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Roman Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation. He was a great opponent of Luther. He interviewed Luther very shortly after the posting of the
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Theses. This guy, he represented the Pope at the Council of Pisa.
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I mean, he was well -known. And in his commentary on the Old Testament, he wrote these words,
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Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament, for the rest, that is, Judith, Tobit, and the
52:16
Books of Maccabees, are counted by St. Jerome out of the canonical books and are placed among the Apocrypha along with the
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Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, as is plain from the Prologus Galiatis. 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 canonical.
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For the words, as well as of councils and of doctors, are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment in the
52:44
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.
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Yet they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorized in the canon of the
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Bible for that purpose. Now, that two -fold canon, the idea that they're secondary, they're put on, long, long history of this, all the way up to the time of the
53:11
Reformation itself. And then he concludes by saying, By the help of this distinction thou mayest see the way clear through that which
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Augustine says and what is written in the Provincial Council of Carthage. And so, here you have
53:24
Cayetan, and it's interesting, those of you who are familiar, I'm never going to make it, those of you who are familiar with the issue of the
53:35
Death of Darius Erasmus and the publication of his New Testament, we've talked about that on The Dividing Line many times in the past number of years.
53:42
You may recall that Erasmus was rushing to get his version into print and publication.
53:49
Why? Because Cardinal Gimenez had already printed, but had not yet published the
53:55
Completentian Polygoth, this tremendous work that Gimenez had been working on, beautifully printed, and it was, it could not yet be published.
54:05
It had been printed, but could not be published because you had to wait for papal approval. And the Vatican wasn't moving very fast, and so it had been printed.
54:14
Erasmus, you may recall, sort of jumped the gun, he took a big risk, and he got his out before him.
54:21
He didn't get papal approval, but he dedicated the volumes to Pope Leo X, who excommunicated
54:26
Luther, and it worked. So he got his into print and publication first. Interestingly enough,
54:31
Gimenez's was also dedicated to Pope Leo X, who excommunicated Luther. Now, why is this significant?
54:38
Because Gimenez, in his introduction to the Completentian Polygoth, also takes
54:46
Jerome's view and rejects the Apocryphal Books. This is in an introduction to a work that the papacy accepted for publication.
54:57
So all of this makes it very, very clear that in the just a few decades prior, at the time of the
55:04
Reformation and afterwards, there was no dogmatic, apostolic tradition that made the
55:12
Apocryphal Books canonical. None! Zip, zero, nada! And so when you go back and discover that the
55:20
Council of Trent, there's no examination of this stuff, there's no Gimenez there, there's no Cayetan there, there's no one who has the, there's no one who's going to stand up and say, wait a minute, we've got a problem here.
55:30
It's just rubber stamp party. And then when you find out that the canon of Carthage and Hippo follows the
55:39
Septuagint ordering of the books of Ezra, the first, second, third, and fourth Esdras, and the
55:45
Council of Trent did not understand the order of the canon, and so they ended up actually canonizing a different book.
55:54
They actually ended up removing one of the books that was canonized, and the Council of Carthage and Hippo had, in essence, put
56:01
Ezra and Nehemiah together as one, and they had another one. That was split out, and so the Council of Trent's dogmatic decree does not canonize the same list as Carthage and Hippo.
56:12
So those who try to say that Carthage and Hippo actually do represent the Universal Church through the sixth and seventh ecumenical councils, now you have two ecumenical councils contradicting each other.
56:22
The point in all of this is that there was no, when you hear a
56:28
Roman Catholic say to you, there was everybody, Luther kicked those seven books out.
56:33
Well, did Cayetan kick those seven books out? Did Jimenez, did Pope Leo X, who kicked
56:38
Luther out, kick those seven books out? Of course not, and so here's the application.
56:45
Why? Please someone tell me why? I should be bound by the words of the
56:53
Council of Trent and 53 prelates who had no knowledge of the issues they were addressing.
57:01
They were simply giving me a knee -jerk reaction to the Protestant Reformation.
57:07
See what happens when you give authority to an organization that God does not give it?
57:14
You are stuck. You are stuck. A faithful Roman Catholic, let's face it, you can look at all this information, you can examine
57:24
Jimenez, you can examine Cayetan, you can go through the 52 major writers, and you can examine
57:30
Gregory, and you can look at Athanasius and the canon that he gave in 369, where he rejects the freestanding apocryphal books.
57:37
You can look at all of these things and come to the conclusion, you know what? There is no reason to believe the apocryphal books are canon scripture.
57:46
But as long as you give infallible, unquestioned authority to the Bishop of Rome, it doesn't matter.
57:55
Because you see, it's not based on truth. It's not based on the history. It's not based on reality.
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It is simply based upon the authority of Rome.
58:08
Sola ecclesia, the church, and the church alone as the final and ultimate authority in all things.
58:18
And doesn't that become circular? It most certainly does. Well, didn't get to everything
58:23
I wanted to say, but got to enough of it that hopefully the next time you hear a Roman Catholic apologist blithely say, well,
58:30
Luther kicked those books out of the Bible. No, he didn't. And here's some reasons you might want to reconsider what you just said.
58:37
I hope that's been useful to you. I wish we had been able to have a debate instead, but maybe sometime in the future.
58:43
We're supposed to, next Thursday evening, have someone from PalTalk, a fellow by the name of Jade Miner, has agreed to be with us to talk about John 6, 37 through 45.
58:53
Hope you'll be with us then, here on The Dividing Line. See you Tuesday morning, 11 a .m., Mountain Standard Time.
01:00:01
85069. You can also find us on the World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's a -o -m -i -n -dot -o -r -g, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.