Lesson 13: Septuagint, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and Other Big Words Part 1

Preservation of God’s Word and the Purpose of the Lesson

All right, let's begin with a word of prayer. Father, we want to give our time and attention here today to the subject matter of how You have preserved Your Word for us. We thank You for what we have learned so far, and we thank You for how You have worked in history.

And it boggles our mind, it makes us to marvel and to rejoice in Your goodness in providing such a rich treasure for us in Your Word. And we pray that You would help us today to see how that is true and how that was done.

And as we talk about the Apocrypha and other things related to Your Word, we pray that You would help us to think through these issues clearly and to learn much today. We give You this time, and we pray that You would help us to give You our attention as well for the glory of Christ our Lord, in whose name we pray.

Amen.

Canonicity and the Septuagint

All right, so we have looked at canonicity and certain criteria or certain marks or qualities of canonical books, those books which are included in the canon. And so today we're going to begin to talk about things that are related to canonicity, and we're kind of in the closing, the closing lessons on this series of God Wrote a Book.

Today we're in lesson 13, titled The Subtugent, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and other big words. We're going to learn about those, lesson 13. So without asking you to respond to this, I'm just going to ask for a show of hands.

So I'm not asking anybody to say anything, I'm not going to put anybody on the spot. But I do want to just sort of take an informal poll here, of those who are with us this morning. How many of you have heard the word, subtugent?

How many of you think you would be confident enough in what that means to explain to me what the subtugent is? One, two, three, maybe four, okay. I appreciate the honesty. And I'm not going to ask those four who raised their hand.

How many of you have heard the word, apocrypha? Apart from when I just prayed it in the prayer at the beginning of this, or mentioned the title of the thing. Before this morning, how many of you have heard the word, apocrypha?

Okay, how many of you could tell me what the word means, what the word refers to? Okay, quite a few more. And how many of you heard the word, before this morning, pseudepigrapha? Last week? Last week.

Okay, before you heard me within the last month say the word, pseudepigrapha, how many of you have heard that word?

A few?

How many of you know what that means?

Okay, a couple. All right, very good.

Those are the three things that we're going to look at starting today. We're going to, I think, cover, probably get through the subtugent and the apocrypha today. We're going to describe what those are and the significance of those.

And today we're going to be looking at whether or not the apocrypha is canonical, and who views it as canonical, and why it is viewed by some as canonical. So let's begin with the subtugent. That's number one there, the subtugent.

And that often goes by the abbreviation LXX, which is the Roman numeral for 70, right? Super Bowl 50 is Super Bowl L, or large. Super Bowl LX is large extra. And Super Bowl LXX is large extra extra, instead of extra extra large.

So LXX means 70, and you'll see why that is significant here in a moment. Let me talk for a moment about the origins of the subtugent. To do that, we have to go back almost four centuries BC to talk about the origin of the.

Subtugent.

Almost four centuries BC. Alexander the Great had conquered all of the then known world, so we're almost at 400 BC right now. We're talking about that. Alexander the Great had conquered all of the then known world, and he established centers of learning throughout the empire.

And Greek had become the established language, and the people had abandoned the use of other languages including Hebrew and Aramaic. Now the Old Testament is written in Hebrew and Aramaic. Almost all of it is Hebrew.

There are about 12 chapters of Aramaic in the Old Testament. And so those were Semitic languages, or what you would call Semitic is not the word. Aramaic is almost like a Semitic language. So those languages were popular in the area around the land of Israel.

Of course, the Jews spoke Hebrew. But by 400 BC, Greek had become sort of the language of the realm, or the common language that everybody spoke. It was quickly becoming the commercial language. And as Alexander the Great had conquered all of that region, including Israel and Northern Africa and up into parts of Europe and Eastern Europe, as his empire had grown, the language that the Greeks had spoken became the language that almost everybody spoke.

Alexander died in 323 BC, and the empire was divided up into several dynasties by his generals. And the Ptolemies had gained control over the Egypt, and the Ptolemies is spelled P-T-O-L-E-M-I-E-S.

The Ptolemies had gained control over the northern part of Africa and over the land.

Of Egypt.

And the Jews had received a certain…under the rule of the Ptolemies, the Jews had received certain religious and political privileges. Orissonoa, a Ptolemaic ruler, started an educational program at Alexandria, which included not only the founding of a museum, but also the translation of great works of art and great works of literature into Greek in order to store them in the museum.

He wanted Alexandria to become sort of a fountainhead of learning and education there, and so part of that was establishing these centers of learning around Alexandria, as well as establishing a museum there.

And he wanted…he asked and requested that there be a Greek translation of the Hebrew, the Jewish Old Testament. So as the Greek language became more and more the common tongue, and with the Jews spread all over the world, including all the way throughout the entire kingdom or dynasty of Alexander the Great and what was once the Greek dynasty, there was a need to have the Hebrew Scriptures in the common language, which was Greek.

So during the reign of King Ptolemy Philadelphus, and he reigned from 285 to 246 BC, that king asked for the Jewish Scriptures to be sent to Alexandria, accompanied by scholars who would translate those Scriptures into Greek so that they could be added to the museum.

So he wanted a Greek translation of the Old Testament Scriptures to be added to that museum so everybody would have access to it and they could read the Hebrew Old Testament in their mother tongue, the Greek language.

So the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem complied with his request and sent a copy of the Old Testament with 72 learned men to do the translation. Now there were supposedly, according to tradition or legend, six from each of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Supposedly the copy that they sent was written in gold letters, that's tradition and legend. Some of this has obviously been gilded up a little bit to make it sound good. The Jews, they like legends, ancient people like legends.

So supposedly there were six from each of the twelve tribes and supposedly the copy they sent was written in gold letters. The meaning of Septuagint means, the word means, according to the 70. And it's just shorthand for reference to those 72 men who were sent to Alexandria to translate the Old Testament.

Supposedly these 72 men translated that Old Testament in 72 days. Now you recognize that that's quite a feat, isn't it? Now if anything of what I've just said, other than the golden letters, if anything that I've just said sounds like legend, that sounds like legend.

But according to tradition, legend, the 72 men did it in 72 days, which would be perfect because it would be six from each of the twelve tribes and 72 would be divisible by twelve by the twelve tribes, and so it's just kind of that number stuff that some people are fascinated with and love.

So when was it finished? Well, it started as a Greek translation of the Pentateuch and later it became the rest of the Old Testament as it was completed. The word Septuagint came to be used of the entire Greek translation of the Old Testament.

So the Septuagint is, according to the 70, the Greek translation of the entire Old Testament. That's how it came to be used. We know that it was started during the reign of Ptolemy of Philadelphia, and again, 285 to 246 B .C.

We don't really know for certain when it was completed, but we do know that it was finished by 150 B .C., 150 years before Jesus. We know that it was finished by 150 B .C. since it was discussed in a letter from Aristeas to Philocrates in 130 to 100 B .C.

So they had discussed what was at that time they referred to as the Septuagint. So the latest that it was finished was 150 B .C., started somewhere around 250 B .C., supposedly translated in 72 days. That's what they say.

All right.

Any questions on that before we move on? That's sort of the background, the historical nature of how the Septuagint came to be.

Yeah, Rick?

So the question is, Alexander, as he conquered different regions, different nations and cities, the people in those cities would have learned Greek. Why wouldn't they? They just stuck with their own language.

Well, if all of the people who are responsible for entertainment and culture and politics and the economy, if they all speak one language, it's in your best interest to learn that language, at least become fluent in it.

And so that's how, if that's the official language of the nation, then that's what that empire is going to speak, and everybody around you would be speaking it, the troops, the military, and everybody else.

So there would be an incentive for people in those various regions to be able to speak.

Greek.

What happens over the course of...when you go to a region where you have to learn another language or something happens where suddenly you have to learn a second language, it doesn't take but one or two generations for your mother tongue that you spoke to be lost entirely to your descendants.

So my wife's parents, for instance, speak fluent Low German, High German?

Both.

So they're fluent in both Germans. I didn't know there was more than one German, but no, there's not. No, Angelica says, nope, that's fake news. So they speak both High and Low German. They're fluent in both of those, which I understand is a dialect, it's a part of German.

Deidre can hear and understand a little bit of German because she heard her parents speaking it and her grandparents spoke it. But my kids don't understand anything of German, because we just haven't passed that on to.

Them.

And Deidre's parents really didn't pass that on to her kids very much at all. Or sorry, yeah, Deidre's parents didn't pass that on to her kids. So it only took two generations for that language to be lost in that family.

And it would happen the same way with Alexander the Great. Conquered a city, it wouldn't take long before, well, everybody's speaking this, so why pass this on to our kids? Our kids are going to need to speak this, and so they learn the new language and then before long everybody just speaks it.

That's how that would happen. All right, any other questions about that, the historical origins of the Septuagint? So we talked about the Septuagint, what we're talking about is the Greek translation of the Old Testament completed at least 150 years before the time of Jesus and the Apostles, as a result of Alexander the Great conquering the then known world.

Now there's a benefit to that happening, by the way. You can see how God had worked in Providence. Alexander the Great had conquered the then known world and brought all these people under one language.

But what does that do for the knowledge of God under the Old Testament? Do you think more people spoke Greek or more people spoke Hebrew? More people would speak Greek. So the motivation to translate the Old Testament into the Greek language, of course, makes the light of the Old Testament and the Scriptures then available to more people, to more easily read and people began to learn that.

So that is a huge benefit of what happened there with Alexander the Great. All right, let us see the Septuagint's significance. There are a number of things here. First, it was the Bible of Jesus and the Apostles.

It was used in all the synagogues of the first century. So Jesus would have spoken Greek, Jesus would have spoken Hebrew and probably Aramaic. Most people in Palestine would have spoken Hebrew if they were able to read the Old Testament.

Scriptures.

But the language or the Bible that they would have used would have been the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. So what Bible did Jesus and the Apostles read? It wasn't the King James Translation, right?

We can't say if it was good enough for Jesus and the Apostles, good enough for me. It wasn't the King James Translation that Jesus and the Apostles read or the Old Testament. It was the Septuagint. That was the Bible that was in the…that was the Scriptures that was in the common language of the day, which was the Koine Greek or the common Greek of the time.

So they would have been reading from the Septuagint. And you see the Apostles in the New Testament quoting sometimes…quoting from the Septuagint in their writings and speeches. And sometimes we notice that the quotation is different.

So we've seen this in the book of Hebrews. We're going through Hebrews. We see here is the author of Hebrews. He quotes this passage from the Old Testament, and yet you go and compare that passage that he is quoting as we read it in Hebrews with the passage that he is quoting from, and you will notice slight wording changes, differences, slight word order differences.

Sometimes the passage moved around a little bit. What accounts for that? What accounts for that is that two things. Sometimes the authors of the New Testament are quoting loosely from that Old Testament.

Like when I sometimes quote from Scripture, I will kind of give the sense of it, and it might not be the exact phrasing that the Scriptures would use in any given translation. And since I grew up reading the King James, and now I preach out of the NASB, and I really like the ESB, and I'm looking forward to the Legacy Standard Bible, it's like five translations that are all kind of getting ready to roll around in my head.

So then I get ready to quote a verse, and guess what happens? Yeah, there's language from the King James, there's language from the New King James, and the NASB that works itself in there, as well as if I've checked a translation during the week, sometimes that language works its way in there.

Well, the apostles did the same thing when quoting from the Septuagint. Sometimes it was a little bit of a loose paraphrase of the Septuagint, or sometimes they quoted it or referenced it and referred to it in such a way as to emphasize a certain part of what it was that they were quoting.

Sometimes they would leave a phrase out of their quotation from the Septuagint. So that accounts for the differences. Now when we read our Old Testament, what we're reading is an English translation of the Masoretic.

Text.

So we're reading an English translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. Not the Old Testament text that the Septuagint was translated from, but the Masoretic text, the Hebrew Old Testament. So we have an English translation of the Hebrew Old Testament.

When we read our New Testament, we have an English translation of a Greek text. That Greek text quotes the Septuagint, which is a Greek translation of the Old Testament. So when the New Testament authors are quoting from the Septuagint, or quoting from the Old Testament, they're quoting a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament.

And when we read it, we're reading an English translation of the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Does that make sense? So sometimes there is a little bit of variation there. So we need to make, when we read the New Testament, we're reading a quotation from the Old Testament, we just need to keep in mind, yeah, there are some language differences there.

There might even be some word order differences or a different word that is used there because we're dealing with, really, two different translations of the Old Testament. The meaning does not change, the meaning has not changed, they're not adding things and subtracting things.

It's not like things are lost in translation, it just accounts for the word differences, the translation differences. There's another significance for the Septuagint, and it is this, that we can use it to give us a good understanding of certain Hebrew words or phrases.

This is one of the benefits of the Septuagint. We are able to take the, we are able to look at the Septuagint because we know Greek, okay? Hebrews are further removed, ancient Hebrews are further removed language from us than is ancient Greek.

We're able sometimes to read the Septuagint, I shouldn't say we, scholars are able to read the Septuagint and they are able to see how it is that somebody in 150 BC would have understood the meaning of a Hebrew word in the Old Testament.

So there are places in the Old Testament where our understanding of that language, that phrasing, that meaning is a little bit shrouded because of history to us, the distance, and we are able to go back and look at how did somebody who lived 2200 years ago translate that passage from the Old Testament?

And that gives us an understanding of how Hebrew-speaking people would have viewed the meaning of that passage from the Old Testament 2200 years ago. There's a scholarly benefit to the Septuagint because it helps us to go back in time and see how did they understand that passage back then and therefore how did they translate it into Greek?

And there's a benefit to that. Alright, any questions on that? The Septuagint? Everybody understand what it is?

Okay.

The Apocrypha and Why It Is Rejected as Canonical

Number two, the Apocrypha. What is the Apocrypha? The word means hidden or concealed or secretive. As Protestants, we use that word, the word Apocrypha, as the normal designation for those extra books that are held to be canonical by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and there's another branch of the Orthodox Church that also embraces the Apocrypha.

As well.

So it's not just Roman Catholics that embrace the Apocrypha as canonical. Roman Catholics would use two different terms when describing the canon of Scripture. They would use the term proto-canonical, which means first or original canon, and then they would use the term deuterocanonical, which means a secondary canon.

So they even recognize in their description of the canon of Scripture that you have a primary canon, that which came first, the Old Testament and the New Testament texts, and then you have a deuterocanonical books, which are what they embrace as canonical in the Apocrypha.

They are made up of 14 or 15 books, depending on how we number them, and I'm going to explain that here in just a moment. These books were written between the book of Malachi and Matthew, between the end of our Old Testament and the beginning of our New Testament.

There was about 400 years' time period there. You had a lot going on, the conquering of the land by Alexander the Great, you had the Maccabean Revolt, you had a lot of history happening there during those 400 years, but we have no prophets in the Old Testament, nobody spoke from God.

We refer to those as the 400 silent years, when God was silent, He was giving no new revelation. And the book of Malachi ends our Old Testament, the era that ends the Old Testament, during which Malachi would have prophesied, is the book of Ezra, the book of Nehemiah, and what's.

The other one I'm thinking of?

You get to the end of 2 Chronicles and you almost get to the end of your Old Testament time span, and then you have prophets, all the prophets who spoke during that period of time spoke all the way up to the end of the book of 2 Chronicles.

So we can take all of our major and minor prophets and we can put them back into the historical books. There are a few of them that spoke after the time period of the post-exilic prophets spoke after the time period of 2 Chronicles.

But the Old Testament timeline ends with basically 2 Chronicles, Nehemiah, and Ezra. Those are the books that sort of polish up that 400-year, the beginning of that 400-year time. Those are the books that stand there as the end of Old Testament revelation.

And then you have, living during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, are Malachi and Haggai. Those are prophets who prophesied during the…not during the lifetime, but right around the lifetime of Ezra and Nehemiah.

I think Nehemiah and Malachi were both contemporaries. They both ministered in Jerusalem at the same time, and Malachi was probably the prophet who prophesied during Nehemiah's work there on the wall.

So between the end of the book of Malachi, that last book of the Old Testament, or the end of 2 Chronicles, the time period of the Old Testament, and the coming of Jesus, the arrival of John the Baptist, and the book of Matthew, we have about 400 years there.

These are the books of the Apocrypha. Did I have a list of these in your notes? Is there a list of them there? The book of the two…the first book of Esther is also known as 3rd Esther, the second book of Esther is…okay?

Tobit, Juth, the additions to the book of Esther, the wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, the wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach, Baruch, the letter of Jeremiah. This letter is sometimes incorporated as the last chapter of Baruch.

So that's why when that is done, the number of books is 14 instead of 15 because sometimes the letter of Jeremiah and Baruch are combined together. The prayer of Azariah and the song of the three young men, Susannah, Don't You Cry for Me.

No, that was something different. Bell and the Dragon, the prayer of Manasseh, the first book of Maccabees, and the second book of Maccabees. Those are the books of the Apocrypha. Now, to be fair, I've read some of these sections from these books, but I've never read all of these books or…and certainly not any of these books all the way through.

Let me give you the history of the Apocrypha. It has always been surrounded by controversy, these books. They've always been surrounded by controversy. Some Christians acknowledged the benefit early on even.

Some Christians acknowledged the benefit of reading from them. Others used them but didn't consider them as equal with the Old Testament text. This even predates, this even goes back into the early years of Christianity that these books were surrounded by controversy.

In 405 A .D., Pope Innocent I endorsed the Apocrypha, though at that time it was still widely rejected by Christians. In 600 A .D., another pope excluded it. So, here's the popes speaking authoritatively, right?

This is Scripture. No, it's not. Back and forth we go. Finally, at the Council of Trent in 1546, the Roman Catholic Church made up its mind and placed a curse upon all who would reject these books as canonical.

And the action of the Catholic Church was, in some sense, polemical. It was a reaction to Luther and the Reformation. In their book, From God to Us, Geisler and Nix write this, quote, in debates with Luther, the Roman Catholic Church had quoted the Maccabees in support of prayer for the dead.

Luther and the Protestants following him challenged the canonicity of that book, citing the New Testament, the early church fathers, and the Jewish teachers for support. The Council of Trent responded to Luther by canonizing the Apocrypha, close quote.

So in the discussion of should we be offering prayers for the dead, in the debates with Luther, the Catholics would cite the books of Maccabees and say, see, these teach that we should be praying for the dead.

And Luther would say, those are not canonical books. Those should be rejected. Those are not Scripture. The authority is Scripture. And so he would point to Scripture, and the Roman Catholic Church responded by saying, well, we will declare them to be canonical, therefore they are Scripture, and therefore we win the debate, right?

That's how they would think that that worked. But what did we talk about several weeks ago? The church does not confer canonicity upon books, do they? We discover which books are canonical. We don't determine which books are canonical.

So the fact that Roman Catholic could say that those books are canonical, does that make them canonical? Does that make them authoritative?

Not at all.

The early church fathers, among the early church fathers, there were some few who accepted the Apocrypha as canonical. Some of them rejected it, like Origen, Athanasius, and Melito, and some quoted from it, but they never do view it as Scripture.

And so the question we should ask then is, why do we reject these books as canonical? Why do we not include them in the canon? And I'm going to give you 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 kind of arguments as to why we do not regard the Apocrypha as canonical.

First, neither Jesus nor any New Testament writer ever quoted from the Apocrypha. Are these 8 listed in your thing?

Okay.

Neither Jesus nor any New Testament writer ever quoted from the Apocrypha, though they constantly quoted from the Old Testament, don't they?

Yeah, Rick?

No, the Apocrypha would not be part of the Old Testament. Yeah, that's right. According to the Catholic, they would lump that in with the Old Testament books, and would consider that as part of that Old Testament.

All right, so neither Jesus nor any New Testament writer ever quoted from the Apocrypha, though they constantly quoted from the Old Testament, and this is significant. Jesus quoted from even obscure passages from the Old Testament.

They quoted from minor prophets. The New Testament writers referenced almost every book of the Old Testament. And they constantly quoted from the Old Testament, and both Jesus and the apostles had access to the Apocryphal books.

Jesus and the apostles had access. They knew they existed. So the fact that they did not quote it is significant, because it's not as if those books were not known to exist at the time. But it is significant that neither Jesus nor any of His apostles ever quoted from those books as if they were authoritative.

And there are a number of expressions in the New Testament which are also found in the Apocrypha, but just sharing a similarity of language or having similar expressions is not the same thing as quoting from the Apocrypha.

For instance, the phrase, I gathered you together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, that is also found in the Apocrypha, or language similar to that. The phrase that we find in Hebrews 12, too, the innumerable multitude of angels, the phrase we find in Revelation 1, 15, there was a voice that spoke and the sound was like the sound of many waters.

There's similar language in Apocryphal books. But even though the apostles, and this is significant, use language that was similar to books that they would have been familiar with, they'd never use that language as if quoting from the Old Testament.

When Jesus and the apostles quote from the Old Testament, there was a phrase that they would often use. Is it not written? Have you not read? The Word of the Lord said? Or Scripture says? Or God has spoken?

That was the language that they would use. But even when using language similar to Apocryphal books, Jesus and the apostles never quoted it in an authoritative sense, though they might have shared similar language, they never quoted it in an authoritative sense, and they never referred to it as Scripture.

They never once hinted, in those uses of those phrases, Jesus and the apostles never even once hinted at the Apocrypha being their source for that language. They never once attribute to the Apocrypha any of the thus saith the Lord, or it is written kind of statements that they would use when quoting Old Testament books.

And they would often name the source when quoting the Old Testament, too. They would quote, for instance, the book of Moses. They would say Moses said, or Jeremiah said, or Isaiah said, or David wrote, and they would quote the source of those quotations.

But when they used language that the Apocrypha also used, they never even referenced it as the source, indicating that what they were doing in their mind was not quoting an Old Testament text. They were not quoting an authoritative text because their way of even sharing language in those few very rare instances of language that we find in Apocryphal books, even their way of doing so indicated that they did not view it as Scripture.

So that's the first argument, neither Jesus nor any Old, sorry, neither Jesus nor any New Testament writer ever quoted from the Apocrypha. Second, oh, I should point out before I go on to the second one, what book of the New Testament relies most heavily upon quotations from the Old Testament?

Any idea which one it is? You'll be really disappointed if you don't get this. The Hebrews, yeah. Sorry, I had to give you that hint, right? It's the book of Hebrews, and yet the book of Hebrews does not quote the Apocrypha, indicating that the author of Hebrews did not view it as Scripture.

So number two, Josephus and the Talmud are quite clear that the books of the Apocrypha form no part of the Old Testament. Josephus shows us that the Jews of Jesus' day did not consider the Apocrypha to be Scripture.

They recognized the same 39 books of the Bible that we recognize. So you ask the Jews, the ones to whom Old Testament revelation was given, which books did they view as inspired and canonical, and they would give you the same list of 39 that we have today.

They did not view the Apocrypha. The Jews of Jesus' day, they did not view the Apocrypha as Scripture. Number three, the community who copied the Dead Sea Scrolls never referred to the Apocryphal books with the phrases, it is written, or God says, and therefore even those who lived after the time of Jesus and the apostles who were responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls, they clearly did not accept the Apocrypha as part of the Old Testament Scriptures.

Number four, Philo, the Jewish philosopher, writing from Alexandria in 40 AD, he quotes from or refers to all but five of the Old Testament books, and he never once mentions the Apocrypha. So what we're seeing is a pattern that those who lived after the time of Jesus and the apostles and during the time of Jesus and the apostles, they knew that the Apocrypha existed.

They were familiar with its content, but they never once quoted it or treated it as Scripture, not viewing it at all as canonical. Number five, none of the books of the Apocrypha ever claims divine inspiration or to be of divine origin.

The Jews did not recognize them as authoritative. First Maccabees 9 .27 says, there was not a prophet in Israel at that time. Now, if you're writing what you consider to be an inspired book, and in that inspired book you say, there was not a prophet in Israel at the time that I'm writing, what are you saying?

It's contradictory, isn't it?

Right?

So even Maccabees, the author of the book of Maccabees says in his writing that while he was writing, no prophet existed in the land of Israel at that time, meaning that even the person who wrote that did not view his writing as authoritative or Scripture.

And yet we see the opposite pattern with New Testament books, don't we? Claims to divine authorship, claims of divine origin, claims of divine inspiration, we've seen that over and over again. So, and also the writers of the Apocrypha seem to avoid any language that would cause their books to be regarded as Scripture.

Number six, some parts of the Apocrypha contain historical errors and even contradict the teaching of the Old Testament. This is significant. Some parts of the Apocrypha contradict the Old Testament and they contain historical.

Errors.

For instance, the prayer of Manasseh includes this statement, quote, you therefore, O Lord, who is the God of the just, have not appointed repentance to the just, to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, which have not sinned against you, close quote.

Okay, so does that make sense that that would be Scripture, a book which says Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had not sinned against God, that they are just and therefore they did not need to repent? That's a direct contradiction to other Old Testament texts.

The opening verses of Judith states that Nebuchadnezzar was the king in Nineveh instead of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar was not the king of Nineveh, Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Babylon. Second Maccabees 12 claims the right and value of praying for the dead.

This is what the Roman Catholics would cite where it uses the phrase that they might be delivered from sin, they pray for the dead so that they might be delivered from sin. That is a thought that is contrary to the Old Testament text and to Scripture.

The Roman Catholic Church needed to justify the practice of praying for the dead, so of course it was just easier to canonize those books than it was to defeat Luther on the terms of his argument from Scripture.

And some of the books have historical value, but they also include stories that are fables with little historical value. Okay, so that's all under number six, that some parts of the Apocrypha contain historical errors and even contradict the teaching of the Old Testament.

Number seven, nothing in the Apocrypha adds anything to our knowledge of Messianic truth. Nothing in the Apocrypha adds anything to our knowledge of Messianic truth. There is no Messianic value to the Apocryphal books.

And this is something that is quite different than all of the other Old Testament texts, isn't it? The Minor Prophets, the Major Prophets, the Historical Section, the Lineage of David, all of that all looks forward to the Messiah, but the Apocrypha, it is devoid of any kind of Messianic truth, making it something of an entirely different nature than all the rest of the Old Testament books.