The Septuagint or Alexandrian canon, which was used largely by Jews living in the Dispersion i. The Septuagint contained the dueterocanonical books. It is therefore unreasonable and presumptuous to say that Christ and His Apostles accepted the shorter Old Testament canon, as the clear majority of the time they used an Old Testament version which did contain the seven books in question. Or, take the case of Saint Paul, whose missionary journeys and letters were directed to Hellenistic regions outside of Palestine.
Obviously, Saint Paul was supporting the longer canon of the Old Testament by his routine appeal to the Septuagint. Moreover, it is erroneous to say either that the deutero-canonical books were never quoted by Christ 5 For some examples, compare the following passages: Matt.
According to one list, the deutero-canonical books are cited or alluded to in the New Testament not less than times! In addition, there are Old Testament books, such as Ecclesiastes, Esther and Abdias Obadiah , which are not quoted by Christ or the Apostles, but which are nonetheless included in the Old Testament canon both Catholic and Protestant.
Obviously, then, citation by Christ or the Apostles does not singlehandedly determine canonicity. There were many views both inside and outside of Israel in the first centuries B. Because the Jews who formulated the modern Jewish canon were a not interested in apostolic teaching and, b driven by a very different set of concerns from those motivating the apostolic community. In fact, it wasn't until the very end of the apostolic age that the Jews, seeking a new focal point for their religious practice in the wake of the destruction of the Temple, zeroed in with white hot intensity on Scripture and fixed their canon at the rabbinical gathering, known as the "Council of Javneh" sometimes called "Jamnia" , about A.
Prior to this point in time there had never been any formal effort among the Jews to "define the canon" of Scripture. In fact, Scripture nowhere indicates that the Jews even had a conscious idea that the canon should be closed at some point. The canon arrived at by the rabbis at Javneh was essentially the mid-sized canon of the Palestinian Pharisees, not the shorter one used by the Sadducees, who had been practically annihilated during the Jewish war with Rome.
Nor was this new canon consistent with the Greek Septuagint version, which the rabbis regarded rather xenophobically as "too Gentile-tainted. Their people had been slaughtered by foreign invaders, the Temple defiled and destroyed, and the Jewish religion in Palestine was in shambles.
So for these rabbis, the Greek Septuagint went by the board and the mid-sized Pharisaic canon was adopted. Eventually this version was adopted by the vast majority of Jews — though not all. Even today Ethiopian Jews still use the Septuagint version, not the shorter Palestinian canon settled upon by the rabbis at Javneh.
In other words, the Old Testament canon recognized by Ethiopian Jews is identical to the Catholic Old Testament, including the seven deuterocanonical books cf. Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. But remember that by the time the Jewish council of Javneh rolled around, the Catholic Church had been in existence and using the Septuagint Scriptures in its teaching, preaching, and worship for nearly 60 years, just as the Apostles themselves had done.
So the Church hardly felt the obligation to conform to the wishes of the rabbis in excluding the deuterocanonical books any more than they felt obliged to follow the rabbis in rejecting the New Testament writings. The fact is that after the birth of the Church on the day of Pentecost, the rabbis no longer had authority from God to settle such issues.
That authority, including the authority to define the canon of Scripture, had been given to Christ's Church. Thus, Church and synagogue went their separate ways, not in the Middle Ages or the 16th century, but in the 1st century. The Septuagint, complete with the deuterocanononical books, was first embraced, not by the Council of Trent, but by Jesus of Nazareth and his Apostles. Christ and the Apostles frequently quoted Old Testament Scripture as their authority, but they never quoted from the deuterocanonical books, nor did they even mention them.
Clearly, if these books were part of Scripture, the Lord would have cited them. This myth rests on two fallacies. The first is the "Quotation Equals Canonicity" myth. It assumes that if a book is quoted or alluded to by the Apostles or Christ, it is ipso facto shown to be part of the Old Testament.
Conversely, if a given book is not quoted, it must not be canonical. This argument fails for two reasons. First, numerous non-canonical books are quoted in the New Testament. Jude , the Ascension of Isaiah alluded to in Hebrews , and the writings of the pagan poets Epimenides, Aratus, and Menander quoted by St. Paul in Acts, 1 Corinthians, and Titus.
If quotation equals canonicity, then why aren't these writings in the canon of the Old Testament? Second, if quotation equals canonicity, then there are numerous books of the protocanonical Old Testament which would have to be excluded. The other fallacy behind Myth 2 is that, far from being ignored in the New Testament like Ecclesiastes, Esther, and 1 Chronicles the deuterocanonical books are indeed quoted and alluded to in the New Testament.
For instance, Wisdom , reads in part, "For if the just one be the son of God, he will defend him and deliver him from the hand of his foes. With revilement and torture let us put him to the test that we may have proof of his gentleness and try his patience. Let us condemn him to a shameful death; for according to his own words, God will take care of him.
This passage was clearly in the minds of the Synoptic Gospel writers in their accounts of the Crucifixion: "He saved others; he cannot save himself. So he is the king of Israel! Let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him. He trusted in God; let Him deliver him now if he wants him.
Matthew Similarly, St. Paul alludes clearly to Wisdom chapters 12 and 13 in Romans Hebrews refers unmistakably to 2 Maccabees 7. And more than once, Christ Himself drew on the text of Sirach , which reads: "The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had; so too does a man's speech disclose the bent of his mind.
John But the divine establishment of this key feast day is recorded only in the deuterocanonical books of 1 and 2 Maccabees. It is nowhere discussed in any other book of the Old Testament.
In other words, our Lord made a connection that was unmistakable to His Jewish hearers by treating the Feast of Hanukkah and the account of it in the books of the Maccabees as an image or type of His own consecration by the Father. That is, He treats the Feast of Hanukkah from the so-called "apocryphal" books of 1 and 2 Maccabees exactly as He treats accounts of the manna John ; Exodus , the Bronze Serpent John ; Numbers , and Jacob's Ladder John ; Genesis — as inspired, prophetic, scriptural images of Himself.
We see this pattern throughout the New Testament. There is no distinction made by Christ or the Apostles between the deuterocanonical books and the rest of the Old Testament. The deuterocanonical books contain historical, geographical, and moral errors, so they can't be inspired Scripture.
This myth might be raised when it becomes clear that the allegation that the deuterocanonical books were "added" by the Catholic Church is fallacious. This myth is built on another attempt to distinguish between the deuterocanonical books and "true Scripture. First, from a certain perspective, there are "errors" in the deuterocanonical books. The book of Judith, for example, gets several points of history and geography wrong.
Similarly Judith, that glorious daughter of Israel, lies her head off well, actually, it's wicked King Holofernes' head that comes off. And the Angel Raphael appears under a false name to Tobit. How can Catholics explain that such "divinely inspired" books would endorse lying and get their facts wrong? The same way we deal with other incidents in Scripture where similar incidents of lying or "errors" happen. Let's take the problem of alleged "factual errors" first. The Church teaches that to have an authentic understanding of Scripture we must have in mind what the author was actually trying to assert, the way he was trying to assert it, and what is incidental to that assertion.
For example, when Jesus begins the parable of the Prodigal Son saying, "There was once a man with two sons," He is not shown to be a bad historian when it is proven that the man with two sons He describes didn't actually exist. So too, when the prophet Nathan tells King David the story of the "rich man" who stole a "poor man's" ewe lamb and slaughtered it, Nathan is not a liar if he cannot produce the carcass or identify the two men in his story.
In strict fact, there was no ewe lamb, no theft, and no rich and poor men. These details were used in a metaphor to rebuke King David for his adultery with Bathsheba. We know what Nathan was trying to say and the way he was trying to say it.
Likewise, when the Gospels say the women came to the tomb at sunrise, there is no scientific error here. This is not the assertion of the Ptolemiac theory that the sun revolves around the earth. These and other examples which could be given are not "errors" because they're not truth claims about astronomy or historical events.
Similarly, both Judith and Tobit have a number of historical and geographical errors, not because they're presenting bad history and erroneous geography, but because they're first-rate pious stories that don't pretend to be remotely interested with teaching history or geography, any more than the Resurrection narratives in the Gospels are interested in astronomy. Indeed, the author of Tobit goes out of his way to make clear that his hero is fictional.
Very well then, but what of the moral and theological "errors"? Judith lies. Raphael gives a false name. So they do. In the case of Judith lying to King Holofernes in order to save her people, we must recall that she was acting in light of Jewish understanding as it had developed until that time. This meant that she saw her deception as acceptable, even laudable, because she was eliminating a deadly foe of her people.
By deceiving Holofernes as to her intentions and by asking the Lord to bless this tactic, she was not doing something alien to Jewish Scripture or Old Testament morality. Are there Gospels that were also left out of the bible and if so why and are they true to the word of God or made up as I have read.
Here is what the order of the books in the Bible would be if the books that I discuss in this post, which Protestants call the Apocrypha and Catholics call the deuterocanonical books, were included. The order would be just the same as in Protestant Bibles except that the books of Tobit and Judith would come before Esther, and 1 and 2 Maccabees would come after Esther; Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach would come after the Song of Solomon; and Baruch would come after Lamentations.
So there would be seven additional books, all in the Old Testament. Regarding other gospels, please see this post. You are commenting using your WordPress.
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