It is excluded from the canon by the Israelite church and the early Christian church.
It is excluded from the canon by the Israelite church and the early Christian church.
§ 203. [V] The Israelite and early Christian churches exclude it from the canon. About the Israelite church we can have no doubt. Among the early teachers of the Christian Church, Jerome stands out. In his preface to Esther he removes these last seven chapters from the canon. Bellarmine says that Melito, Athanasius, and Gregory Nazianzen set the whole Book of Esther outside the canon (De verbo Dei, bk. 1, c. 7). But because Melito and Athanasius followed the Hebrew canon, as Melchior Canus acknowledges (Loc. comm., bk. 11, c. 10)—which must also be stated about Nazianzen—and yet Esther is in the Hebrew canon, therefore it is not likely that Melito, Athanasius, and Nazianzen placed the whole Book of Esther outside the canon. Rather, we must take this to mean only the last seven chapters. You see, though they make no explicit mention of the Book of Esther in listing the canonical books of the Old Testament, they could have referred it to another canonical book, perhaps to Ezra, by whom the Book of Esther is judged to have been written, as Isidore and others relate. This guess is confirmed by the fact that though Athanasius listed the canonical books in his Synopsis and omitted the Book of Esther, he does expressly write that the Book of Esther is related to some other canonical volume. He says, “Some of the ancients have said that among the Hebrews Esther was canonized too: that, on the one hand, Ruth along with Judges following it were counted as one book and, on the other hand, that Esther was counted in another book.” In this controversy, Sixtus Senensis grants us the support of Origen, and Bellarmine has dared to quote Sixtus on behalf of his own opinion. Lyra also removes that supplement from the canon, for at the end of his comments on Esther, he writes: “I do not intend to explain the rest that follows because they are not in Hebrew nor do they belong to canonical Scripture. Rather, they appear to have been made up and inserted later into the Vulgate edition by Josephus and other writers.”