Apocrypha

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dominikus28

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When was the Apocrypha accepted in the church? Can I get some historical proof? I am writing to an anti-catholic and he wants proof.

Thank you
 
HI Dominikus,

From the beginning, the “Christian Bible” was the Greek translation called the Septuagint. It contained the Deuterocanonical books, sometimes called apocrypha. (These were taken out by Martin Luther, who went by the Jewish canon, which accepted only the books written in Hebrew.

For a good article on the subject see

ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/DEUTEROS.HTM

Verbum
 
When was the Apocrypha accepted in the church?
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Keep in mind that the Church never “added” the Deutero-canonical. It was Martin Luther that took them out. If the Church did add any books to the bible, you can say it added the NT.

In Any case… basically, here is why this “myth” has been so popular that the CC added books.

in 390, a series of three councils were held to determine the
appropriate Cannon. These were the Council of Rome, Carthage and Hippo. Before these councils, despite many claims, there was NO agreement between various church elders, or lay people, what books were valid. Some thought the Protoevangelium of James was valid, other thought Revelations was Bunk. Point is, there was no accepted list. Each of these three councils however came up with the same list. This list included the 7 books NOT in the Protestant Cannon. Within a very few number of years, there was little debate over which books were valid, and no one really complained till Martin Luther.

Fast Forward to Martin Luther.

He felt for what ever reason that these books (as well as James and some others in the NT) did not belong in the bible, so, he threw them…

Where then does the myth of the church “adding” these books come from then?

(correct me if my understanding was wrong)
Simple. The first three councils were local councils that ended up having church wide effect. As a result, they were not “infaliable” per say. No one questioned the list and everyone agreed. It was sorta like it looked like a duck, smelled like a duck, Quacked like a duck… Its a duck… However, because there was no official stamp, thats where the Council of Trent came in. The council of Trent simply said… dude… it looks like a duck, smells like a duck, Quacks like a duck, its a duck… and since you want to be picky, Ill even make it an official statement that yes, its a duck.

And there in lies the crux of the myth. despite it being the accepted cannon for nearly 1100 years, because there was no ‘official’ stamp, many protestants took that to mean that they were ‘added’

If they were ‘added’ at the council of Trent as is so often proclaimed, why then do we find bibles centuries prior to Trent that have the 7 books in them.

If the 7 books were added at Trent, why then are there no bibles with those books removed prior to Martin Luther.

Martin Luther removed the books. The Catholic Church didn’t add them. Funny how the sin of one person is turned in to truth, and the truth of another is turned into sin.

In Christ
 
Verbum said:
HI Dominikus,

From the beginning, the “Christian Bible” was the Greek translation called the Septuagint. It contained the Deuterocanonical books, sometimes called apocrypha. (These were taken out by Martin Luther, who went by the Jewish canon, which accepted only the books written in Hebrew.
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If the basis for including the books was that they were in the Septuagint, why were 3rd Macabbes, 4th Maccabes, 3rd Esdras, Psalm 151 and the Prayer of Mannaseh excluded? They were in the Septuagint and are accepted by the Orthodox Curch.
 
SyCarl said:
If the basis for including the books was that they were in the Septuagint, why were 3rd Macabbes, 4th Maccabes, 3rd Esdras, Psalm 151 and the Prayer of Mannaseh excluded? They were in the Septuagint and are accepted by the Orthodox Curch.
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Good point, but obviously that does not make it the basis for being in the Catholic Canon, for all of these books were considered and some were rejected, for various reason.

Be that as it may, there has not been any canons accepted by the Church, or any of it’s local councils that did not include the Deuterocanonicals (what our separated brethren lump into the Apochrypha).

To be more precise, the Deuterocanonicals were added to the OT Canon at the same council that added the 4 Gospels to the NT Canon.
 
Just a note of clarification when writing to your anti-catholic correspondant; Martin Luther did not in fact remove the dueterocanonical books from his Bible. Luther included these works in a separate section of his Bible with a note that he did not consider them inspired…but he never actually took them out of his Bible. That happened later.
 
one complication … there was no single canon of the LXX.

Remember, at the time everything was on scrolls (or in short pamphlets with a single book in it) and not every synagogue or church had the same set of scrolls. it took several hundred years for the church to sort through all the competing texts. it was a slow process not someone saying early on, “We’ll go with the LXX, next question!”
 
Hi Sycarl,

You are right of course when you state that inclusion in the Septuagint is not the reason a book is part of the Canon. Those books are in the Canon which the Church received as inspired from apostolic tradition. All I meant to say was that this was the Church’s source for the Bible books.

The Canon of the Catholic Church has never varied from the early centuries to the Council of Trent. It was assumed that those books that the Church received as inspired were part of the “original” Septuagint. But other Greek translations may have crept in over the centuries.

You are surely aware that, in those days, it was almost one’s life’s work to collect all the handcopied scrolls or other forms of manuscripts, to make sure of their quality and their authenticity. Different people may have had different “collections”. When the Church decided on certain ones, it was because there was a consensus on those and not on others.

This article by an Orthodox author gives you the whole Orthodox point of view. Two books are mentioned as being in the Orthodox Bible and not in the Catholic Bible : 1Esdras amd 3Macchabees.
I am not sure that there is a general agreement among all Orthodox Churches. In particular, the Orthodox Ethiopian Church has its own canon. All these people would of course say that the books they accepted were part of the original Septuagint.

You will note that the Orthodox are very close to us on this question. I don’t think this particular subject is a great bone of contention.

Verbum
 
DallasCatholic said:
Just a note of clarification when writing to your anti-catholic correspondant; Martin Luther did not in fact remove the dueterocanonical books from his Bible. Luther included these works in a separate section of his Bible with a note that he did not consider them inspired…but he never actually took them out of his Bible. That happened later.
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And in the segregation of German Protestant Bibles, Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation were categorized as Apocrypha for about 100 years. A few early English Protestant versions as well.
 
dominikus28 said:
When was the Apocrypha accepted in the church? Can I get some historical proof? I am writing to an anti-catholic and he wants proof.

Thank you
Click to expand...
As so many others have pointed out, the Septuagint was written in the 2nd and 3rd Century BC and has all the dueterocanicals fully intact. This is the OT that Christ referred to as well as the Apostles and all the Jewish leaders of the time of Christ.

With the rise of Christianity citing from the Scriptures and peeling away Jewish converts, coupled with the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD leaving so much of the Hebrew Scriptures missing, Jewish leaders called for a council in Jamnia between AD 90-100 to discuss closing the canon. A key ingredient in this process was complete copies of all the texts in Hebrew. With the fall of Jerusalem, this was extremely difficult to accomplish so the Deuterocanicals were conveniently left out and the Jews had a canon that was different from Christendom from that point forward by having less books.

Luther, in losing a debate on Purgatory for a lack of being able to handle Macabees, decided to drop the Septuagint and avoid the argument all together. So Protestants now use a canon that was formulated partially out of a reaction to Christian evangelization and partly due to a lack of Hebrew documentation.

With the finding of the dead Sea scrolls and these wonderful Deuterocanical books in Hebrew predating Christ even, does this make that whole council an embarrassment?

In Christ

bill
 
billinjackson said:
As so many others have pointed out, the Septuagint was written in the 2nd and 3rd Century BC and has all the dueterocanicals fully intact. This is the OT that Christ referred to as well as the Apostles and all the Jewish leaders of the time of Christ.

With the rise of Christianity citing from the Scriptures and peeling away Jewish converts, coupled with the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD leaving so much of the Hebrew Scriptures missing, Jewish leaders called for a council in Jamnia between AD 90-100 to discuss closing the canon. A key ingredient in this process was complete copies of all the texts in Hebrew. With the fall of Jerusalem, this was extremely difficult to accomplish so the Deuterocanicals were conveniently left out and the Jews had a canon that was different from Christendom from that point forward by having less books.

Luther, in losing a debate on Purgatory for a lack of being able to handle Macabees, decided to drop the Septuagint and avoid the argument all together. So Protestants now use a canon that was formulated partially out of a reaction to Christian evangelization and partly due to a lack of Hebrew documentation.

With the finding of the dead Sea scrolls and these wonderful Deuterocanical books in Hebrew predating Christ even, does this make that whole council an embarrassment?

In Christ

bill
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Bill,
As I mentioned earlier, Luther did not in fact exclude any of the dueterocanonicals from his Bible…he simply moved them into their own section with a note that he did not feel they were inspired. The books were still in the Bible. Also, regarding the Council of Jamnia please see this article:
catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0409fea4.asp
 
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