Is the The Apocrypha to be Included in Scripture?

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It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

The Debate That Fell Through and the Need to Address the Apocrypha Anyway

Well, good evening and welcome to The Dividing Line. As we had announced before, we were intending to have a debate this evening. 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.

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.

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 Apocrypha, the canon of the Old Testament, the assertion that Martin Luther removed seven books from the Old Testament.

I have heard not only from Roman Catholics but even heard 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 Apocrypha, etc., etc., etc.

What we are going to do this evening is I am going to invite you to take out a pad of paper and to come along with me as we consider the issue of the 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 Roman Catholic Church's claim in regards to canonical certainty is a charade.

There is no canonical certainty for the Roman Catholic. It is an example of sola ecclesia and that in fact the 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 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 Roman Catholic Church and 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 God has given to us in his holy words. What I would like to do is, this is a subject, let's face it, most Christians don't know a lot about the history of the canon of scripture and some of the things I am 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.

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 Jewish people prior to the coming of Christ? Remember Romans chapter 3 says, to them was committed the oracles of God.

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. Even the dispute between the Sadducees and Pharisees points this direction as the Lord told the Sadducees that they erred not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God.

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 spirit after death and they of course held only to the Pentateuch, the first five books of Moses.

So once we determine the Jewish view, then secondly we need to determine what is the New Testament view of the Apocrypha. I mean the Apocrypha was written primarily, referring to the ones that have been canonized by the 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. How did the New Testament writers view it?

Thirdly, what was the early church's view of the Apocrypha? 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.

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 Old Testament, including the Apocryphal books, as dogmatic belief for the Roman Catholic people.

That's April of 1546. So first, first issue on the board this evening, the Jewish canon. We read in the Talmud at Baba Bathra, the rabbins taught the order of the prophets is Joshua and Judges, and it goes through a number of the books.

And this particular listing found in the Talmud is what's called a Baraita, an ancient tradition. It lists 19 books exclusive of the Pentateuch, 19 plus 5 would be 24 books. Most of the Jewish sources, well all the Jewish sources, refer to either 24 or 22.

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. The 22 just simply puts them together. And so this number of 22 or 24, the 22 is preferred for the fact that there is 22 letters in the 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. So we have in the Jewish writings an ancient tradition listing 24 books for the Jewish canon here in Baba Bathra.

As Ludwig Blau points out, the absence of disputes about the Apocrypha in the rabbinical literature is an eloquent fact. Assuming the Jews removed the Apocrypha, that would obviously be something that would engender a tremendous amount of discussion.

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.

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 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.

There is no discussion of this. There is no historical record left of any kind of discussion of these things. There is discussion of some of the canonical books, whether they were in fact canonical, but there is no discussion whatsoever of the 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. One of the things that separates much of the Apocrypha from the Old Testament is the fact that it was not written in a Semitic language initially.

Some of the books, such as 2nd -4th Maccabees, if not all of Wisdom, did not have 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 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.

One thing that's very important is Josephus, who of course is one of the great important sources of our information concerning the Jewish people at the time of Christ. Josephus refers in his work on antiquities to the practice of laying up scriptures in the temple.

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 Jewish people, and laying up copies of them in the temple precincts.

And this was such an important thing to the 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.

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. What books were laid up? Well, the 22 books of the Hebrew canon that Protestants use today.

The 22 books of the Hebrew canon, remembering that the minor prophets, the 12, were put into one, etc. etc. When you put that all together, that adds up to the 22 books of the Hebrew canon, the 39 books of the 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 Council of Jamnia. This comes out a lot when you're talking with Roman Catholic apologists.

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 Council of Jamnia, about 70 AD or beyond that, to have decided the canon.

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, and in fact, the issue at Jamnia, what never had anything to do with any apocryphal books.

Anyone who cites Jamnia in reference to the idea of canonizing the apocrypha does not know what they're talking about. 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.

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. 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, and the issue was, should we continue to consider these canonical?

In other words, they were already considered canonical. 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,.

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 Jamnia, and that the decisions that were reached, and we don't even know when this, this would have been a session of Jewish elders at Jamnia, somewhere between about 80 and 130 or so, so 110, somewhere around that, around the turn of the century.

We don't even know what decade it actually took place in, and not only that, it didn't decide anything. There were still differences of opinions amongst rabbis in the generations that followed, 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.

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 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 Jewish canon was open after the time of Christ, and that is very important when it comes to the issue of Jesus' view and the view of the disciples as well, which we'll get to here in just a moment.

Now in Josephus, in another one of his works, against Appian 1 .7 and following, he gives the number of books as 22. He specifically rejects those books written after Malachi, and that is the apocryphal books.

There is no reason to believe that Josephus' canon is recent, that he was just making it up, he just found out about this. In other words, there's no reason to disbelieve that what he is giving to us is an already established understanding of the Jewish people.

That is, as most people believe today, he is referring to a canon that had been in place for about 300 years. He's writing about 100 years afterwards, so after Christ, so we're talking about 200 years before Christ.

About 200 years passed after the last of the inspired works are given, Malachi, 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.

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 MP3 and listen to it a little bit slower in the future?

Our rabbis taught, since the death of the last prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, the Holy Spirit of prophetic inspiration departed from Israel, yet they were still able to avail themselves of bath coal, and so they recognized that the Holy Spirit of prophetic inspiration had left Israel at this time.

In Seder Olam Rabbah 30, quoting 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 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 Spirit giving scripture to now looking to those already established scriptures. In another reference here from, just looking, it's a long reference here, this is in Roger Beckwith's work, page 370, I'm not going to try to give you the whole reference, he wouldn't.

Write it down anyways.

Rab Samuel Bar-Iniyah said, in the name of Rab Ahab, the second temple lacked five things which the first temple possessed, and the second temple would be the temple after it was rebuilt after the Babylonian captivity, namely, the fire, the ark, the Urim and Thummim, the oil of anointing, and the Holy Spirit of prophecy.

Notice the five things, fire, ark, Urim and Thummim, the oil of anointing, and the Holy Spirit of prophecy. Another direct Jewish reference to the fact that the Holy Spirit was no longer functioning in the nation of Israel the way that it once had.

The Claim of an Alexandrian Canon and the Septuagint

Now it is very common that you will hear individuals say, well, you need to understand, there were two canons. There was the canon Palestine, and there was the Alexandrian canon. You know, I was taught that very thing in seminary, I even repeated it after I graduated in seminary.

It is so common to continue to hear this. It's found in standard works, it sort of gets reprinted over and over and over again. However, modern research contradicts that common assertion. The idea is, well, down in Alexandria, Egypt, you had this very large concentration of Jewish individuals, they're very scholarly, there's much literature that's produced there, and down in Alexandria, they had a wider canon.

They accepted the apocryphal books. The problem is, there's no evidence of that. Philo, for example, influential Jewish writer, philosopher, who lived in Alexandria around the time of Christ, pretty much contemporary, 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.

And C. F. Herneman, who also makes such a list, speaks of the profound silence of Philo about all the apocryphal books, and points out that he quotes far more distinctly from the Greek philosophers than from any of the Apocrypha.

Any hypothesis about Alexandrian Jewry, to which the writings of Philo lend absolutely no support, can hardly be regarded as tenable. 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 apocryphal books as being a part of the canon.

So when those people assert that Hellenistic Judaism, the Judaism that existed outside of Palestine, had a wider canon, there are some things to point out. 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 Temple, of course, made a connection between those who were in the diaspora and the dispersion, and those who were still in Palestine itself.

Hellenistic Jews shared the idea that all the biblical books were prophetic, hence, why would they accept 1 Maccabees, when it asserts that prophecy had already ceased when.

It was written?

That's 1 Maccabees 4 .46, 9 .27, and 14 .41. Here you have a book that internally says prophecy has ended. 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 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 Jewish canon. How then can it be a part of the Jewish canon, if the Jewish canon already existed before.

It was written?

Another one of the many questions that needs to be addressed at that particular point in.

Time.

Jesus’ Words About Abel to Zechariah and the Closed Canon

Now, let me move on, since I can't believe how fast the clock is moving. 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 Lord Jesus in Matthew 23 .35.

Matthew 23 .35, 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 Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

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 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 Hebrew canon is quite different than the English canon. That is, if you were to pick up a Hebrew Old Testament, if you were to pick up a Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, for example, the currently scholarly used Hebrew text of the Old Testament, you would discover that while it starts with Genesis anyways, it ends with 2 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 English canon. Ours ends with Malachi, theirs ended with 2 Chronicles, Malachi would have come before that in the order of the canon.

And so, when we keep that in mind, then we look at this passage when it says, from the blood of righteous Abel, Abel was killed, of course, in the early chapters of the book of Genesis, and then you have Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

Well, Zechariah was murdered between the temple and the altar, and that story is related to us in 2 Chronicles, and so it would be similar to someone saying, from Genesis to Revelation. If we said from Genesis to Revelation, everybody would understand what it is we were talking about, that we were specifically making reference to the concept of the entirety of the canon as we understood it.

Well, here, Jesus pronounces upon the Jewish leaders the guilt of all the righteous blood that is recorded in all of inspired scripture. That would not include, of course, the Apocrypha. There were people who died, martyrs who died, within the context of the Apocrypha, but they are not referred to by the 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. 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 Apocrypha at that particular point as well.

We have a quote here from Roger Beckwith, where he says, "...but 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 Hebrew Bible, never actually quotes from, or ascribes authority to, any of the Apocrypha.".

Now, before someone has a cow and says, oh wait a minute, in the back of the United Bible Society, the Nessian 27th edition, there's this list of all these allusions. You'll hear people, so many people, they get themselves into subjects they really shouldn't be addressing, and I've heard many Roman Catholic apologists say, well, what's really going on is we have all these quotes from the 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. Verbal parallels. And if you actually examine the listing that's 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 New Testament that are to be found in these other books.

It will prove to you the truth of what Beckwith said in the quote I just gave you, that the New Testament never actually quotes from or ascribes authority to any of the 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 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 Protestant does not know much about the New Testament itself.

There are two basic arguments. First, they will argue that the New Testament does not have to call the Apocryphal books scripture for them to be scripture, since the 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 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.

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 New Testament if we are to take the claim of their inspiration seriously.

The second argument proffered is based upon the hope that the Protestant thinks that the New Testament authors did not ever read or even know about the existence of the Apocryphal.

Books.

I've seen, 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. And that is, I've had people say, well, you're saying that the New Testament writers didn't even know about the Apocryphal books, and surely there's allusions here and parallels here, they will appeal to the fact that one can create an entire list of allusions to the Apocryphal books and New Testament writings.

But this again is no meaningful argument. No one denies the New Testament writers fully knew of the existence of the Apocryphal books. I am sure that the Apostle Paul was fully aware of all of them. Don't have any question about that whatsoever.

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.

The issue is, of course, did the New Testament writers view them as scripture? I mean, we know that the Apostle Paul quotes from pagan poets. He obviously read something other than just the Old Testament scriptures.

He was a widely read man. But did he identify them as scripture? The clear answer is an unambiguous no. They never used the key phrases, it is written, gegrepti, the Lord says, scripture says, etc., with reference to the Apocryphal books.

In point of fact, I'd like to point out, this argument backfires if the Protestant is prepared and thinking clearly. For in reality, the fact that one can prove that the 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.

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 Apocryphal.

The Early Church, the Septuagint, and the Rise of Confusion

Well, we've got two of the four done. The next one's going to take a little bit longer. It's the early church. 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.

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. We'll be right back.

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But again, unless they use for the scripture states, it has been written. The mere adoption of some kind of linguistic parallel does not indicate that the person believed that that book was in and of itself canonical.

In fact, he continues by saying, when one examines the passages in the early fathers which are supposed to establish the canonicity of the 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.

Let me stop there, because not everyone is aware of what that means. There were, in the Greek translations of Daniel, Jeremiah, there were additions that appeared as part of the text that are not a part of the Hebrew text.

That's what they're referring to there when they talk about additions or appendices to Daniel, Jeremiah, or some other canonical book, which are not really relevant. In other words, if they are quoting from something that they may or may not even know was a freestanding book, Athanasius, for example, the Bishop of Alexandria in the middle of the 4th century, the great defender of the deity of Christ, the versions of those books that he received had those additions in them.

He was not aware that those appendices were not a part of the original Hebrew text itself. So he accepted those, unaware that they did not exist in the corresponding Hebrew books themselves. To find out if someone actually accepted the Apocryphal books as canonical, you'd have to find them citing from those books which were freestanding.

First Maccabees, or something along those lines, that's what he's saying here. Picking up on the quotation again, that others of them are not quotations from the Apocrypha at all, and that of those which are, many do not give any indication the book quoted is regarded as Scripture.

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 Greek Septuagint. Some people pronounce that Septuagint.

I pronounce it Septuagint. You'll see it abbreviated as LXX. This is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. And in the Septuagint, we find the key understanding, the key element, concerning the New Testament's, or the early church's view of the Apocryphal books.

Why? Well, the LXX, the Septuagint, was the Bible of the early Christian church. The vast majority of converts to the Christian faith outside of Palestine could not read Hebrew. Therefore, they would have to access the Old Testament writings, because the New Testament in the first number of decades is still being written, through the Greek Septuagint.

Many of those early Christians, even after the time of the Apostles, who had no knowledge of the Hebrew background of the Old Testament, were dependent upon what they found in the Septuagint. The Septuagint contained, more or less, Apocryphal and other works.

You'll very frequently hear it said that the Septuagint contained the Apocrypha. That's a little bit of an overblown statement. The Septuagint manuscripts that we have contain Apocryphal works, but they don't contain all the same ones, and most of them contain books outside of the 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, you just didn't run down to the ancient equivalent of Kinko's, and run a copy off for 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.

A modern example of this would be, if we were in the same situation, we would have our Bibles, and we might also have Pilgrim's Progress included in there. Maybe we'd have some sermons of Jonathan Edwards.

I'm referring to primarily Reformed folks at this point. But the point is, these are books which we do not consider canon Scripture. However, I think most of the folks listening to me right now, unless you're listening on PalTalk or something like that, or 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 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 Interpreter's House.

This is from Pilgrim's Progress. This is something that anyone who's read those books would understand. 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 Greek Septuagint, we have Codex Vaticanus. It did not contain any of the books of the Maccabees. Sinaiticus had 1st and 4th Maccabees, but not 2nd and 3rd.