Jerome and the apocrypha

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Sigh The superpopes are at it again. 🙂

The following Envoy article should help: 5 Myths about 7 Books

It is specifically myth 5 quoted here.
Myth 5:
The early Church Fathers, such as St. Athanasius and St. Jerome (who translated the official Bible of the Catholic Church), rejected the deuterocanonical books as Scripture, and the Catholic Church added these books to the canon at the Council of Trent.
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First, no Church Father is infallible. That charism is reserved uniquely to the pope, in an extraordinary sense and, in an ordinary sense, corporately to all the lawful bishops of the Catholic Church who are in full communion with the pope and are teaching definitively in an ecumenical council. Second, our understanding of doctrine develops. This means that doctrines which may not have been clearly defined sometimes get defined. A classic example of this is the doctrine of the Trinity, which wasn’t defined until A.D. 325 at the Council of Nicaea, nearly 300 years after Christ’s earthly ministry. In the intervening time, we can find a few Fathers writing before Nicaea who, in good faith, expressed theories about the nature of the Godhead that were rendered inadequate after Nicaea’s definition. This doesn’t make them heretics. It just means that Michael Jordan misses layups once in awhile. Likewise, the canon of Scripture, though it more or less assumed its present shape - which included the deuterocanonical books - by about A.D. 380, nonetheless wasn’t dogmatically defined by the Church for another thousand years. In that thousand years, it was quite on the cards for believers to have some flexibility in how they regarded the canon. And this applies to the handful of Church Fathers and theologians who expressed reservations about the deuterocanon. Their private opinions about the deuterocanon were just that: private opinions.
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And finally, this myth begins to disintegrate when you point out that the overwhelming majority of Church Fathers and other early Christian writers regarded the deuterocanonical books as having exactly the same inspired, scriptural status as the other Old Testament books. Just a few examples of this acceptance can be found in the Didache, The Epistle of Barnabas, the Council of Rome, the Council of Hippo, the Third Council of Carthage, the African Code, the Apostolic Constitutions, and the writings of Pope St. Clement I (Epistle to the Corinthians), St. Polycarp of Smyrna, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Hippolytus, St. Cyprian of Carthage, Pope St. Damasus I, St. Augustine, and Pope St. Innocent I.
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But last and most interesting of all in this stellar lineup is a certain Father already mentioned: St. Jerome. In his later years St. Jerome did indeed accept the Deuterocanonical books of the Bible. In fact, he wound up strenuously defending their status as inspired Scripture, writing, “What sin have I committed if I followed the judgment of the churches? But he who brings charges against me for relating the objections that the Hebrews are wont to raise against the story of Susanna, the Son of the Three Children, and the story of Bel and the Dragon, which are not found in the Hebrew volume (ie. canon), proves that he is just a foolish sycophant. For I wasn’t relating my own personal views, but rather the remarks that they [the Jews] are wont to make against us” (Against Rufinus 11:33 [A.D. 402]). In earlier correspondence with Pope Damasus, Jerome did not call the deuterocanonical books unscriptural, he simply said that Jews he knew did not regard them as canonical. But for himself, he acknowledged the authority of the Church in defining the canon. When Pope Damasus and the Councils of Carthage and Hippo included the deuterocanon in Scripture, that was good enough for St. Jerome. He “followed the judgment of the churches.”
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Scott Waddell said:
5 Myths about 7 Books
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It is specifically myth 5 quoted here.

Many thanks for posting that link. I just know it’s going to come in handy. One of the leaders of the church I’ve just been leaving to go catholic seems to take great joy in saying “Even Jerome didn’t see them as scripture”. He’s said it several times to me and I wasn’t even considering conversion then. So, many thanks.

Blessings

Asteroid
 
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Sirach14:
Did jerome say no to the apocrypha, as being part of the canon? Dr. Joe Mizzi says yes.

justforcatholics.org/a108.htm
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Jerome believed this because he spent some time with the Jews and came away with there belief on this issue.

Justin and Ignatius both support the septuagint as the scripture. The Jews did not use the septuagint and it had the deutero canonicals.

the bishops at the council of Carthage said they are canon,

the bishops at the council of Rome said they are canon,

the bishops at the council of Hippo said they are canon,

the bishops at the council of Trullo said they are canon,

the bishops at the council of Flourence said they are canon,

and the bishops at the council of Trent said they are canon.

These councils all had several bishops even hundred in attendance. I would say the opinion of all these bishops over rides the opinion of one bishop Jerome.
 
Scott Waddell:
In his later years St. Jerome did indeed accept the Deuterocanonical books of the Bible. In fact, he wound up strenuously defending their status as inspired Scripture, writing, "What sin have I committed if I followed the judgment of the churches?
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That quote is grossly misleading. Jerome isn’t speaking on the extent of the Canon here, other than the objections of the Jews and what translation of Daniel should be read in churches.

Other Catholic scholars agree with me that Jerome didn’t believe the Apocrypha were inspired. This is a moot point.

“St. Jerome distinguished between canonical books and ecclesiastical books. The latter he judged were circulated by the Church as good spiritual reading but were not recognized as authoritative Scripture.”
–The New Catholic Encyclopedia, The Canon

God bless,
c0ach
 
Oh no not this topic again. The best discussion was near the beginning of the board in this thread

St. Jerome and the Deuteros

St. Jerome did make a distinction between the deuteros and the Hebrew canon, but he also called various deuteros “Scripture” and used them repeatedly along with the Hebrew canon. So there were OT books he considered “inspired” or “Scripture” but not fully canonical. That’s a fair summary of his position.

Phil P
 
I too have been on Dr. Joe Mizzi’s website and my opinion about his website is that it is very misleading. “Justforcatholics” is a misleading name to get Catholics on his site and then try a convince Catholics that their beliefs are wrong.(Very deceiving!!!)

However; I need some help understanding exactly what the apocrypha is. I was told by a Baptist preacher that the 7 books of the Old Testament of a protestant Bible were put in the Apocrypha because it was believed that these books were not inspired for teaching (something like that?!?). Anyways, on the newadvent website under Apocrypha there are many,many books listed such as Assumption of Moses, Apocalypse of Mary. etc…,but were not put in the Bible because they were not considered inspired by God.

In my Bible (The New American Bible 1972) the Epistle of Jude has an introduction in which it says that St. Jerome “acknowledges that some rejected the epistle because of its citation of the apocryphal Book of Enoch, but states that the ancient authority it enjoyed and its use in the churches assured it place in the canon of inspired writings”. In the footnotes of my Bible Jude 14 cites a quotation from the Book of Enoch and Jude 8 talks about the dispute between Michael the archangel and the devil over Mose’s body which is described in the apocryphal Assumption of Moses.

I guess my question is do protestants know that there is an apocrypha with all these writings or do they believe that the apocryha is just the 7 books of the Old Testament that are not in their Bible???

Does any of this make sense???

God Bless All
 
<< I guess my question is do protestants know that there is an apocrypha with all these writings or do they believe that the apocryha is just the 7 books of the Old Testament that are not in their Bible??? >>

Makes sense. The answer is both Catholics and Protestants believe there is an “apocrypha” but Protestants add to their “apocrypha” the 7 deuterocanonical books that Catholic consider fully canonical.

And Catholics consider them canonical for various reasons, most of them listed in the article linked above: they were accepted by the majority of the Church Fathers and Bishops, they were accepted by the same councils that listed the 27-book New Testament canon (Carthage/Hippo), they were read at the Liturgy from the very beginning, there are at least some allusions to the deuteros in the NT, and the Septuagint was most probably the Bible used by Jesus and His apostles, and this Septuagint (at least the copies we have) contain all or most of these deuterocanonical books, etc.

Now Protestants counter with examples of Fathers who they think rejected the deuteros, such as Jerome. Although as I pointed out before, Jerome while making a technical distinction between the deuteros (39 + 7 = 46 books) and the Hebrew canon (39 books), quoted them constantly along with “canonical” OT, and even called these books “Scripture.” So there can be “Scripture” that is not strictly “canonical” is how St. Jerome viewed them.

The online Catholic Encyclopedia article on apocrypha would help.

Phil P
 
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