Antithesis.
Antithesis.
§ 238. The Papists and many others place the first and second Books of the Maccabees among the canonical books and follow the authority of the Council of Trent in this matter. In De verbo Dei, bk. 1, c. 15, Bellarmine brings up the statements of the ancients to support the canonical authority of these books: Cyprian (De exhort. ad martyr., c. 11; bk. 1, epistle 3), Nazianzen (Orat. de Maccabaeis), Ambrose (De Jacob., bk. 2, c. 10-12), and Augustine (Contra epist. Gaudent., bk. 2, c. 23) cite these books and call them “sacred and divine Scripture.” Salmeron (tom. 14, disp. 25, p. 218) adds Tertullian (Adv. Jud.), Jerome (Prologus galeatus), and Augustine (De doct. Christ., bk. 2, c. 8), etc. But what should be thought concerning this general argument can be shown from the preceding paragraphs. Neither bare citation nor the general title “Holy Scripture” can obtain canonical authority for these controversial books. (See § 206.) Nazianzen produces a passage not from the Books of the Maccabees, but from a book of Josephus on the Maccabees. (See Billius in his notes on this passage.) In his Prologus galeatus, Jerome, on the other hand, adopts our opinion, which Bellarmine himself acknowledges, etc.
§ 239. To these testimonies of the fathers, Bellarmine, in his first edition, had added an argument taken from the last Canon of the Apostles, just as Salmeron (loc. cit.) argues the canonical authority of these books from the eighty-fourth and last Canon of the Apostles. In his later editions, however, Bellarmine omitted this argument, and this he did quite correctly. You see: (1) Bellarmine himself (De verbo Dei, bk. 1, c. 20, § Quod ad priorem, etc.) admits that that canon had been corrupted. He says:
It seems probable that that Canon 84 is not the work of Clement. For Zephirinus, the fifteenth pope after Peter, in his first epistle, teaches that there were only seventy Canons of the Apostles, just as other codices have sixty. In his book Contra Nicetam, Humbertus acknowledges only fifty, but that one is the eighty-fourth. Surely, Zephirinus knew better than any who came after him how many Canons of the Apostles there were. It is not without reason, therefore, that Gelasius ([Jus canonicum,] dist. 15, c. Sancta Romana) placed the Canons of the Apostles among the apocryphal writings because some of them seem to have been either corrupted or added by heretics.
(2) In that Canon 84, some genuinely canonical books are omitted, such as the Books of Ezra and Revelation. (3) That canon mentions three books that it calls Books of the Maccabees. If, then, by the force of this canon the two Books of the Maccabees are canonical, the third Book of the Maccabees will also be canonical, something that Bellarmine and Salmeron nevertheless deny. (4) In this same canon are listed among the sacred books “the two epistles of Clement and the Apostolic Constitutions of the same Clement.” The Church, however, has never acknowledged these books as canonical. (Cf. Eusebius, Hist., bk. 3, c. 38.) (5) Besides the Books of the Maccabees, no others of the controversial books are placed among the canonical books by this canon. If, then, they want to follow this canon in accepting the Books of the Maccabees, let them also follow it in excluding the rest.
§ 240. Genebrardus writes (Chronol., anno mundi 3983): “Somewhere Josephus says that the account of Eleazar, his seven brothers, and their mother, Anna, is considered by the Hebrews to be among the sacred books.” But why does he not tell where Josephus does this? Why does he not cite the passage of Josephus? Sixtus Senensis (Biblioth., bk. 1, sect. 2, title De libris Maccab.) quotes the book of Josephus, De Maccab., in which he affirms: “The account of Eleazar, the seven children, and their mother is in the Holy Scriptures among the Jews.” We respond. It is the interpreter, not Josephus himself, who declares this, because there is no trace of these words in the Greek version. Josephus asserts in clear language (Contra Apion., bk. 1): “The Hebrews have only twenty-two books to which they give their faith, with good cause. They contain everything from the beginning of the world to the time of Artaxerxes. After that time, individual things were written but not with the same trustworthiness as the prior books, because the certain succession of prophets did not exist.” Eusebius (Hist. eccles., bk. 3, c. 10) acknowledges that these are truly the words of Josephus.
Erasmus was disturbed by the contradiction of these passages and opines (preface to De Maccab.): “Even if the Hebrews do not accept the Books of the Maccabees into the canon, nonetheless they consider them among the sacred books.” He further complains that the Greek text is not at hand. Salmeron (loc. cit.) adduces on behalf of the canonical authority of the Books of the Maccabees the Third Council of Carthage (c. 47), the Councils of Florence and of Trent, Innocent I (Ad Eugubinum et Gelasium in concilio Romano), as well as the practice of the Church, which reads the account of Judas Maccabeus in the sacrifice for the dead. What weight should be given to these insignificant reasons, however, is revealed from what we said earlier about the apocryphal books of the Old Testament in general.
36 Gerhard’s verse references to the Book of Tobit match the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible. In the Vulgate, as in the Douay-Rheims version, Tobit and his son Tobias are both called “Tobias.”
37 Gerhard cites the Book of Judith from the Vulgate. His verse enumeration matches the Douay-Rheims edition of the Bible.
38 Cf. §§ 76, 106.
39 This is actually from Jerome’s note at Esther 11:1 in the Vulgate.
40 Gerhard seems to speak of the distribution of terms differently than modern logicians do. The seventeenth-century philosopher Johannes Micraelius says that “distributive particles” are words such as “none, all, some.” These words tell us what part of a set is being discussed (Micraelius, s.v. Enunciatio). Here, Gerhard is discussing a fallacious argument that moves from what is unspecified to what is specified. When the fathers put the Book of Esther into the canon, he says, they did not specifically mean to say that the appendix was canonical.
41 See Recusationschrifft on p. 595 in the Works Cited.
42 Or, “There is one who.”
43 Gerhard cites the Book of Ecclesiasticus (or Sirach) from the Vulgate. His verse enumeration matches the Douay-Rheims edition of the Bible.