Please help me answer my hubby!

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Photini

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Dear Catholic Answers Forum Friends,

My husband, Tim, has asked me some questions regarding what Protestants regard as the “Apocryphal” books (e.g., Sirach, Macabees, Tobit, Wisdom, etc., etc.), and I am at a total loss. HELP! 🙂 He’s somewhat familiar with this board-- only because every time he walks by the computer it seems to be up! 😉 So I told him I’d post these to my knowledgeable friends over at Catholic Answers:
  1. Do we Catholics consider these “Apocryphal” books to hold as much weight as all other books of the Bible, say, the Gospels or the Epistles? Do we consider these books actual Sacred Scripture; or more like extra, helpful books-- but not actual Scripture?
  2. When, exactly, were these books written? He thought he’d heard somewhere that they were written during “the time between the Testaments”-- is that true? If not, then when?
  3. Is it true that the Jews themselves did not accept these books as Scripture? If so, then why do we accept them as Sacred Scripture? If not, then which Jews did accept these books as Sacred (e.g., Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots-- who???) Tim thought he’d read somewhere that only the Sadducees accepted them-- who do not even believe in the resurrection of the dead…?
I am clueless about this stuff! :confused: Please help!

Tim and I will sit down and read the responses together. By the way, be gentle-- trust me in that Tim is NOT your average “Bible Christian”! 😃 When he attends Mass with me, he even goes up to receive a blessing at Communion! 👍

Happy New Year!!!

In Him,
Photini ><>

P.S.
Today’s Tim’s birthday! (and his brother’s the Fourth of July!)

My conversion story thus far (it’s a doosey!):

Discovering the True God
 
The Septaguint, which was used by Jesus Himself is what the “Apocryphal” books are. There were true Apocryphals which the Church did not include in the Bible such as “Gospel of Thomas” ect.

As for the Septaguint, yes Catholics consider them to hold as much weight as the “rest” of the bible.

In the first century, the Jews couldn’t make up their minds as to what constituted scripture, and they wanted to discourage this “new” religion called Christianity. They even said that some of the Gospels were not God inspired so we can’t go by what the Jews determine as inspired as well as the septaguint which was used by Jesus. Actually any jewish council after Christ’s coming is of no importance to us since it just doesn’t apply and personally, I’d call it suspect. We can’t just throw away 7 books that were used by Jesus and the Apostles!
 
Here are some links that your husband might find helpful.

Refuting an attack on the deuterocanonicals.
And from certain St. Francis de Sales pamphlets (which he wrote back around 1600), “The Protestant Violation of Holy Scripture.”

If not, then which Jews did accept these books as Sacred (e.g., Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots-- who???) Tim thought he’d read somewhere that only the Sadducees accepted them-- who do not even believe in the resurrection of the dead…?

Well, you see, the first link I provided says this:
In fact, at the time of Jesus there were several factions within Judaism that had different understandings of what was inspired Scripture. For example, the Sadducees only accepted the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. The Alexandrian Jews, had the Septuagint, which included the Deuterocanonical books. In fact many within that tradition thought that even the translation of all the books was inspired. And of course the Pharisaic tradition is the one that has the canon that Protestants now accept. Essene Jews had a different canon. Ethiopian Jews had and have a different canon.

So you can see, the Sadducees accepted merely five books as canon. Would he want to take their advice on canon? The Alexandrian Jews use the Septuagint. The Pharisees ended up accepting the canon Protestants used (at the council of Jamnia, circa 90AD, they decided to not use them), or rather, the Protestants ended up accepting the canon the Pharisees used.

And here’s a lovely quote from Wisdom, which is deuterocanonical (counted by Protestants as apocrypha), from Wisdom 2:
18 for** if the righteous man is God’s son, he will help him, and will deliver him **
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(See Mt. 27:43) from the hand of his adversaries. 19 Let us test him with insult and torture, that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance. 20** Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected."**

Anyway, have fun.
 
That Envoy article is a good overview. A key point to remember is that every time a Church council pronounced on the canon, the deuterocanonicals were included. Some argue that the deuteros were only added dogmatically at Trent in 1546. The problem with this argument is that, by the very same argument, then all of the bible was added in 1546. So not only the deuteros, but the gospels and epistles were all “added” in 1546. That is, there is no earlier council that adds the gospels and epistles, but not the deuteros.

Oh yeah, and if the deuteros were only added in 1546, then why are they included in the Orthodox canon when the Orthodox and Catholics split 500 years before?
 
  1. Depends on what you call the Apocriphal. The books that are included in every catholic bible and are excluded in protestant bibles are actually called the Deuterocanonical and are indeed Sacred Scripture in the fullest sense. As catholics we do not give a hierarchy of authority to the various books in scripture because we see the Sacred Scriptures as the Word of God and thus they have an internal unity. For us the Apocriphal are such books as “The Book of Enoch” the “Protoevangelion of James” and other writtings of the early Church. And yes we cosider most of them to be beneficial unless they come in conflict with Sacred Scripture or Tradition.
  2. No. These books were written at different times but they all have the character of either not being originally written in Hebrew or they were writted during the Dyasporah and thus not written in Palestine (Isreal/Judah).
  3. No it is not correct. In the time of Jesus there were two canons of scripture. The first of these was the Septuagent - named because it is traditionally written by 70 men - and was the dominant form of Scripture used in the Synagogues. The second was the Palestinian canon and was primarily used in the Temple and in many Synogogues in Palestine. However, as I stated the Alexandrian canon (Septuagent) was the dominant usage and is actualy the canon that Christ himself quotes from when he quotes scripture.
Today Jews only use the Palestinian canon because in about the year 100 AD, after the distruction of the temple and exile that followed the Jews called the Council of Jamnia where the Christians were formally excommunicated from the Synagogue and the Rabinical movemenat began. They also rejected the Alexandrian canon because it was in that canon that Chrsitians found great proof of prophecy for Christ being the Messiah. Thus the Council decreed that only those things written origianlly in Hebrew and in the geographical location of Palestine could be considered Scripture.

Note: I find it ironic that to reject the Christians the Jews denied the Alexandrian canon and then 1500 years later Martin Luther denies the Alexandrian canon to reject the Church.
 
Here is a website showing some quotes in the new testament from the “Aporpha” and some Early Chruch Fathers . scripturecatholic.com/deuterocanon.html
Here is some more Early Church Fathers. catholic.com/library/Old_Testament_Canon.asp
The quotes are useful in saying, “Hey, Jesus, Paul and others beilved in it.” And the early Church Fathers Beilved in it and I doubt that someone who would die horrid deaths before betraying one aspect of their faith would change standard books given to them by the apostles, which some of them were taught diricatly by them or one of their pupils, so unless the apostles and one would asume that Jesus learned his fiath from the same things were wrong.

Edit: another note, they were all proboly very orthadox jews before converting so I think that the Jews (at least some of them) beleived in them.
 
Hi Photini! 👋

Lemme see if I can get you some decent answers here.
BTW the books we are discussiong are known as the Deuterocanonicals. Apocrypha is a non-Catholic perjorative.
  1. Yes.
  2. Partially Correct. (at least in the case of Maccabees) But the book of Esther is from the same time period as is Daniel. There is a LONG article in the Catholic Encyclopedia on New Advent. Canon of the Old Testament
  3. Many non-Catholics point to the Jewish “council of Jamnia” and say that the DCs were rejected by them. The facts is that it was nothing more than a local Sanhedrin and they had no authority to decide that at all…and in fact the canon for the Jews is still very much debated.
However, the vast majority of the Jews lived outside of Israel and they spoke Greek and Hebrew was almost as dead a language at the time of Christ as Latin is for us today. As a result, the Septuagint version was the OT that they used and if you check it out you’ll find that even non-Catholic scholars like Chirigno & Archer write that out of the 373 OT qoutes in the NT 340 of them (90%) come from the Septuagint, which tell you that that is the version that they used.

JanesFrances has linked you to one of the best articles you’ll find on this.

See also The Old Testament Canon and Defense of the DCs and Counting the Canon and The Council That Wasn’t. all of that is certainly relevent to your hubby’s question.

http://bestsmileys.com/birthday1/9.gif TIM!

God bless you both!
 
And of course, Church Militant is here to tell all. You know we should really give him his own section on the website (he’s that good) or at least a show on EWTN. What do you think CM?
 
Montie Claunch:
And of course, Church Militant is here to tell all. You know we should really give him his own section on the website (he’s that good) or at least a show on EWTN. What do you think CM?
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Shuddup Montie! (J/K) :rotfl:

2nd Timothy 2:15 Carefully study to present thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

Luke 17:10 So should it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded, say, 'We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.

Pax tecum,
 
Hey CM. Have you ever thought about putting down your vast knowledge of theology down on paper? I think it would be a very usefull book for…just about everyone.
 
Montie Claunch:
Hey CM. Have you ever thought about putting down your vast knowledge of theology down on paper? I think it would be a very usefull book for…just about everyone.
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Naw… better writers than me have already done all the hard work. Like Karl Keating , Jimmy Akins and all the other folks like Catholic Home Study Service, the San Juan Catholic Seminars folks, and of course Michelle Arnold, Fr. Vincent Serpa, and the other staff apologists here at CA.

I may write something some day, but if I do I promise I will track you down and send you a signed copy of it. Just don’t hold your breath, okay? :rotfl:
A blessed New Year to you and all the folks here on CAF!
Mike
 
WOW! I ran to the market for a cake mix and came back to all these wonderful replies! Thank you so much, bruthas and sistahs!

I can’t WAIT to share all this with Tim!!!

Oh, by the way, sorry for using the word “Apocryphal” wrong-- I had NO IDEA that was considered a pejorative (told ya I was clueless! 😃 ) Now I just have to learn how to spell deuterocanonical! 👍

Thanks also for the sweet birthday greetings-- that will really make Tim smile-- because nobody remembers his birthday!

Anyhow, I’m sure hubby will have more questions… We’ll keep checking back in.

Thanks again-- you guys ROCK!!! Blessings to you!!! 🙂

In Him,
Photini ><>

Discovering the True God
 
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Photini:
Dear Catholic Answers Forum Friends,
  1. Do we Catholics consider these “Apocryphal” books to hold as much weight as all other books of the Bible, say, the Gospels or the Epistles? Do we consider these books actual Sacred Scripture; or more like extra, helpful books-- but not actual Scripture?
  2. When, exactly, were these books written? He thought he’d heard somewhere that they were written during “the time between the Testaments”-- is that true? If not, then when?
  3. Is it true that the Jews themselves did not accept these books as Scripture? If so, then why do we accept them as Sacred Scripture? If not, then which Jews did accept these books as Sacred (e.g., Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots-- who???) Tim thought he’d read somewhere that only the Sadducees accepted them-- who do not even believe in the resurrection of the dead…?
The Catholic Church determined which books were truly inspired and part of Scripture, and they did this in the 300’s at Councils of Hippo and Carthage. The list they declared included the deutero-canonical books. See the actual text from the Councils at the link below. Note the Catholic Church has always used these same books since and also reconfirmed these same books at Councils of Florence and Trent many centuries later and has continued to use the same books to this day. The Catholic Church at the time, the true Christian Church, had guidance from the Holy Ghost and also the authority to declare which books were obviously inspired. Because the Jews rejected the deutero-canonical books is really irrelevant. If the true Church of Christ determined it, and we must belong to that Church to be saved, then we accept their ruling and accept the books as they confirmed it, and the decisions of Jews, Protestants and whoever else does not matter.

The link to the text of Councils listing the canonical books of Scripture in the 300’s:

newadvent.org/fathers/3816.htm

Thanks,
BH
www.protestanterrors.com
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