Chapter Seven
CHAPTER SEVEN
BEFORE AND AFTER THE REFORMATION
JEROME OF THE REFORMATION
Jerome’s Latin Bible made its way slowly but surely in the western church, gradually ousting the Old Latin version. If even an enlightened reader like Augustine was a little disconcerted by what seemed to be Jerome’s ruthless rejection of the Septuagint as a basis for the Old Testament translator, it may well be imagined what resistance was offered by the rank and file to Jerome’s innovations. They were not at all impressed by the argument that the new translation was much more accurate than the old: then, as now, accuracy was a matter of concern only to a minority. Nevertheless, the sheer merit of Jerome’s version won the day, until it came to be known as the ‘Vulgate’ or ‘common’ edition—a designation previously used of the version that Jerome’s work superseded.
So far as the Old Testament canon was concerned, this too was a matter of interest only to a minority. For purposes of devotion or edification, why make any distinction between Esther and Judith, or between Proverbs and Wisdom?
It became customary to add to copies of the Latin Bible a few books which Jerome had not even included among those which were to be read ‘for the edification of the people’, notably 3 and 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh. Of these, 3 Esdras (or the ‘Greek Ezra’) is the 1 Esdras of the Septuagint (and of the common English Apocrypha); 4 Esdras (the ‘Apocalypse of Ezra’), frequently referred to as 4 Ezra, is the 2 Esdras of the common English Apocrypha (it had never been included in the Septuagint); the Prayer of Manasseh, composed to give substance to the allusion to that king’s prayer in 2 Chron. 33:12f., 18f., may belong to the first or second century bc but first appears in extant literature in a manual of church order called the Doctrine of the Apostles (early 4th century ad). It is a beautiful prayer of penitence (but, like 4 Esdras, had never belonged to the Septuagint).
Throughout the following centuries most users of the Bible made no distinction between the apocryphal books and the others; all alike were handed down as part of the Vulgate. But the vast majority of western European Christians, clerical as well as lay, in those centuries could not be described as ‘users’ of the Bible. They were familiar with certain parts of the Bible which were repeated in church services, and with the well-known Bible stories, but the idea of well defined limits to the sacred books was something that would not have occurred to them. Even among the most literate Christians a lack of concern on such matters sometimes manifests itself. Thus, of some of the Old English translators of the Bible it has been pointed out that, while ‘Bede, Aldhelm, Aelfric all protest against the widespread popular use’ of some completely uncanonical writings, ‘all three themselves use others’ of the same kind.
With the revival of serious biblical study in the early Middle Ages, fresh attention was paid to questions of canonicity. Nowhere was this revival more marked than in the Abbey of St Victor at Paris in the twelfth century. In the school attached to the abbey Hebrew sources were explored and a new emphasis was placed on the literal sense of scripture. Hugh of St Victor, who was prior of the abbey and director of its school from 1133 until his death in 1141, enumerates the books of the Hebrew Bible in a chapter ‘On the number of books in holy writ’ and goes on to say: ‘There are also in the Old Testament certain other books which are indeed read [in church] but are not inscribed in the body of the text or in the canon of authority: such are the books of Tobit, Judith and the Maccabees, the so-called Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus.’ Here, of course, the influence of Jerome can be discerned: for mediaeval students of the Bible in the Latin church there was no master to be compared with him.
For those who were more concerned with the spiritual than with the literal sense the distinction between first and second grades of canonicity was unimportant: the apocryphal books could be allegorized as easily as those which were stamped with ‘Hebrew verity’ and could be made to yield the same meaning.
There is evidence of some reaction on the part of mediaeval Jewish scholars to the Christian treatment of the Old Testament canon. E. I. J. Rosenthal has shown how Isaac Abravanel (1437–1509) applied Aristotelian categories to prove that the Jewish division of the sacred books into Law, Prophets and Writings was superior to the fourfold Christian division into legal, historical, poetical with wisdom, and prophetical books. On the other hand, it has been shown that more than two centuries earlier Moses Nachmanides (1194–c1270) read the book of Wisdom in an Aramaic text.
The two Wycliffite versions of the complete Bible in English (1384, 1395) included the apocryphal books as a matter of course; they were part of the Vulgate, on which those versions were based. The ‘General Prologue’ to the second version (John Purvey’s) contains a strong commendation of ‘the book of Tobias’ (Tobit) because of the encouragement it provides to those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, teaching them ‘to be true to God in prosperity and adversity, and … to be patient in tribulation; and go never away from the dread and love of God’. There is a recognition of the distinction drawn by Jerome between those books which might be used for the confirmation of doctrine and those which were profitable for their ethical lessons: ‘Though, the book of Tobias is not of belief, it is a full devout story, and profitable to the simple people, to make them keep patience and God’s hests’ (i.e. behests).
THE REFORMERS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON
With the sixteenth-century Reformation the issue came more sharply to the fore. When Luther, in his controversy with Johann Maier von Eck, maintained the authority of scripture alone (sola scriptura) over against that of the church, this quickly raised the question of what precisely constituted ‘scripture alone’. It was Luther’s protest against the abuse of the indulgence system (especially in the hands of Johann Tetzel) that led him ultimately to break with Rome. But the indulgence system was bound up with belief in purgatory and the practice of prayers for the dead, and these too were given up by Luther. When Luther was challenged to abide by his principle of ‘scripture alone’ and concede that scriptural authority for praying for the dead was found in 2 Macc. 12:45f. (where praying for the dead, ‘that they might be delivered from their sin’, is said to be ‘a holy and pious thought’), he found a ready reply in Jerome’s ruling that 2 Maccabees did not belong to the books to be used ‘for establishing the authority of ecclesiastical dogmas’.
(It may have been for this reason that Luther manifested a special animus against 2 Maccabees: he is reported as saying, ‘I hate Esther and 2 Maccabees so much that I wish they did not exist; they contain too much Judaism and no little heathen vice.’ It is noteworthy that he shows his exercise of private judgement here by including Esther under the same condemnation as 2 Maccabees: Esther is one of the books which Jerome acknowledged as acceptable for the establishing of doctrine—though to be sure it is difficult to imagine what doctrine of Jewish or Christian faith could be established by the book of Esther.)
Luther showed his acceptance of Jerome’s distinction between the two categories of Old Testament books by gathering the Apocrypha together in his German Bible as a sort of appendix to the Old Testament (1534), instead of leaving them as they stood in the Vulgate. They were largely translated by various helpers, while he himself composed the prefaces. The section containing them was entitled: ‘The Apocrypha: Books which are not to be held equal to holy scripture, but are useful and good to read.’ In Zwingli’s Zürich Bible (1524–29) the apocryphal books had already been separated from the rest of the Old Testament and published as a volume by itself. Luther’s friend George Spalatin had translated the Prayer of Manasseh into German in 1519; another translation was included in the complete German Bible of 1534. As for 3 and 4 Esdras and 3 Maccabees, they were not included in Luther’s Bible; they were added to later editions from about 1570 onward.
Luther had little regard for the Apocrypha in general, but his guidance in matters of the canon was derived not from tradition but from the gospel. In both Testaments ‘what preaches Christ’ was for him the dominant principle; in the Old Testament Genesis, Psalms and Isaiah preached Christ with special clarity, he found.
Erasmus took a humanist rather than an evangelical attitude to such questions. In his treatise on The Freedom of the Will, for example, he based an argument on Ben Sira’s wisdom book (Ecclesiasticus): ‘I cannot see’, he said, ‘why the Hebrews left this book out when they included Solomon’s Parables and the amatory Canticles’. The Erasmian attitude was expressed also by Calvin’s convert Sebastian Castellio (1515–63), translator of the Bible into both Latin and French, whom the Reformed authorities in Geneva refused to ordain because he would not spiritualize the Song of Songs but held it to be a poem in celebration of human love.
Tyndale did not live to complete the translation of the Old Testament; had he done so, he would probably have followed Luther’s precedent (as he did in other respects) by segregating the apocryphal books in a section of their own. In an appendix to his 1534 revision of the New Testament he translated those Old Testament passages which were prescribed to be read in church as Epistles on certain days according to the use of Sarum. A few of these are from the Apocrypha; they appear, naturally, in their liturgical sequence.
Coverdale’s English Bible of 1535 followed the example of its continental predecessors by separating the apocryphal books (and parts of books) from the rest of the Old Testament and placing them after Malachi, with a separate title-page: ‘Apocripha: the bokes and treatises which amonge the fathers of old are not rekened to be of like authorite with the other bokes of the byble, nether are they founde in the Canon of Hebrue.’ Then come their titles, beginning with 3 and 4 Esdras. But one apocryphal work was left in situ, as a note at the foot of the title-page explains: ‘Vnto these also belongeth Baruc, whom we haue set amonge the prophetes next vnto Jeremy, because he was his scrybe, and in his tyme.’ (In a 1537 edition of Coverdale, however, Baruch was removed from its position among the protocanonical books and placed after Tobit.) The next page has an introduction indicating the inferior authority of these books.
Thomas Matthew’s Bible of 1537 (actually edited by John Rogers) reproduced Coverdale’s Apocrypha, but added the Prayer of Manasseh. This was the first appearance of the Prayer of Manasseh in English; for Matthew’s Bible it was translated from the French version in Olivétan’s Bible (1535). Richard Taverner’s Bible of 1539, a revision of Matthew’s Bible, omits the introduction to the Apocrypha found in Coverdale and Matthew. Taverner’s Bible was revised in turn by Edmund Becke (1549–51); Becke added a translation of 3 Maccabees, which now appeared for the first time in an English dress. He also provided a completely new translation of 1 Esdras, Tobit and Judith, and in an introduction of his own to the apocryphal books justified their separation from the protocanonical works but commended their reading ‘for example of life’.
The Great Bible, first published in 1539, was edited by Coverdale but used Matthew’s Bible as its basis (and that meant Tyndale’s Bible, so far as Tyndale’s work extended). The first edition reproduced Coverdale’s introduction to the Apocrypha but called the books Hagiographa, not Apocrypha. (Hagiographa, ‘holy writings’, was originally the Greek equivalent of Hebrew Keṯûḇîm, the ‘Writings’, the third division of the Hebrew Bible.) The fifth edition of the Great Bible (1541) omitted the introduction and supplied a new title-page in which the list of apocryphal books was preceded by the words: ‘The fourth part of the Bible, containing these bokes.’ This form of words was plainly calculated to play down the distinction between the Apocrypha and the protocanonical books.
THE COUNCIL OF TRENT
Meanwhile the Counter-Reformation concerned itself with the canon of scripture as well as with many other issues which the Reformers had put in question. The Council of Trent, convened in 1545, had to consider the relation of scripture and unwritten tradition in the transmission of Christian doctrine; it made pronouncements, among other things, on the text, interpretation and canon of scripture. These subjects were dealt with during the fourth session (April, 1546): it was decreed that among various forms of the biblical text it was to the ‘ancient and vulgate edition’ that ultimate appeal should be made, and that this edition comprised what we call the protocanonical and deuterocanonical books without distinction. It was decided not to enter into the question of difference in status between one group of books and another. Thus Jerome’s distinction between the books certified by the ‘Hebrew verity’ and the books which were to be read only ‘for the edification of the people’ was in effect set aside.
This was probably the first occasion on which a ruling on the canon of scripture was given by a general (or ecumenical) council of the church, as opposed to a local or provincial council. A similar list had indeed been promulgated by the Council of Florence over a hundred years before, but there was some doubt whether this particular Florentine decree carried full conciliar authority. The decree of Trent (like its companion decrees) was fortified by an anathema pronounced against all dissentients.
The ruling that the ‘ancient and vulgate edition’ (the Latin Vulgate) be treated as the authoritative text of holy scripture required the provision of an accurate edition of this text. After the abortive attempt to make this provision in the Sixtine edition of 1590, the need was adequately met (for the next three centuries, at least) by the Clementine Vulgate of 1592. In this edition 3 and 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh were added as an appendix: they formed no part of the canon of Trent and were not included in the Sixtine Vulgate. It was the Clementine edition of the Old Testament that formed the basis of the English Douay version of 1609–10.
The decree of Trent was repromulgated by the first Vatican Council of 1869–70, which explained further that the biblical books were not acknowledged as canonical because they had first been produced by human intelligence and then canonized by the church’s authority, but rather because they had God for their author, being inspired by the Holy Spirit and then entrusted to the church. As for the status of the books which Jerome called apocryphal, there is general agreement among Roman Catholic scholars today (as among their colleagues of other Christian traditions) to call them ‘deuterocanonical’ (a term first used, it appears, in the sixteenth century); Jerome’s distinction is thus maintained in practice, even if it does not enjoy conciliar support.
THE ELIZABETHAN SETTLEMENT
The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, which have been (in theory at least) authoritative for the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England since 1562/63, were in essence a repromulgation of the Forty-Two Articles of 1553 (issued seven weeks before the death of Edward VI). The doctrine of scripture is dealt with in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine, which corresponds to Article V of the Forty-Two. Unlike the earlier Article, however, which simply affirmed the sufficiency of the scriptures for ‘all things necessary to Salvation’, Article VI includes a precise statement of the contents of the Old Testament scriptures. Headed ‘Of the sufficiency of the holy Scriptures for salvation’, it proceeds:
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the holy Scripture we do understand those Canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.
Of the Names and Number of the Canonical Books
Genesis; Exodus; Leviticus; Numbers; Deuteronomy; Joshua; Judges; Ruth; The First Book of Samuel; The Second Book of Samuel; the First Book of Kings; The Second Book of Kings; the First Book of Chronicles; The Second Book of Chronicles; The First Book of Esdras; The Second Book of Esdras; The Book of Esther; The Book of Job; The Psalms; The Proverbs; Ecclesiastes, or Preacher; Cantica, or Songs of Solomon; Four Prophets the greater; Twelve Prophets the less.
And the other Books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine; such are these following:
The Third Book of Esdras; The Fourth Book of Esdras; The Book of Tobias; The Book of Judith; The rest of the Book of Esther; The Book of Wisdom; Jesus the Son of Sirach; Baruch the Prophet; The Song of the Three Children; The Story of Susanna; Of Bel and the Dragon; The Prayer of Manasses; The First Book of Maccabees; The Second Book of Maccabees…’
A certain naïveté may be noted in the remark about books ‘of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church’. The First and Second Books of Esdras, as in the Vulgate, are the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. The book of Lamentations has not been lost: it is tacitly included, as an appendix to Jeremiah, in ‘Four Prophets the greater’.
The distinction made by ‘Hierome’ (Jerome) between the books belonging to the Hebrew Bible and the others is reaffirmed. The Third and Fourth Books of Esdras and the Prayer of Manasses (Manasseh) are placed on the same level of deuterocanonicity as the Apocrypha in general.
In accordance with the recognition of the apocryphal books as profitable ‘for example of life and instruction of manners’, readings from them are included in the Anglican lectionary, especially among the ‘lessons proper for holy-days’ (e.g. on All Saints’ Day, Wisdom 3:1–10 is the Old Testament lesson for Mattins and Wisdom 5:1–17 for Evensong). In the Book of Homilies, the reading of which is commended in Article XXXV, the apocryphal books are frequently quoted, and are even referred to as the Word of God.
Two distinct tendencies in English Protestantism in the Elizabethan age are represented by the two new versions of the English Bible published under Elizabeth—the Geneva Bible (1560) and the Bishops’ Bible (1568). The Geneva Bible was produced by English Protestants who sought refuge at Geneva during the reign of Mary Tudor (1553–58); it was issued with a dedication to Elizabeth. It included the apocryphal books in a section following the Old Testament (except that the Prayer of Manasseh is printed as an appendix to 2 Chronicles); they are introduced by this ‘argument’:
These bokes that follow in order after the Prophetes vnto the New testament, are called Apocrypha, that is bokes, which were not receiued by a commune consent to be red and expounded publikely in the Church, nether yet serued to proue any point of Christian religion, saue in asmuche as they had the consent of the other Scriptures called Canonical to confirme the same, or rather whereon they were grounded: but as bokes proceding from godlie men, were receiued to be red for the aduancement and furtherance of the knowledge of the historie, and for the instruction of godlie maners: which bokes declare that at all times God had an especial care of his Church and left them not vtterly destitute of teachers and meanes to confirme them in the hope of the promised Messiah, and also witnesse that those calamities that God sent to his Church, were according to his prouidence, who had bothe so threatened by his Prophetes, and so broght it to passe for the destruction of their enemies, and for the tryal of his children.’
Coming from the Geneva of Calvin and Beza, this is a moderate and reasonable repetition and expansion of Jerome’s position: the apocryphal books are not to be used for the confirmation of doctrine (except in so far as they are based on the teaching of the canonical books) but serve ‘for the instruction of godly manners’. It is added that they provide valuable source-material for the history of the intertestamental period, and illustrate the principles of God’s providential dealings with his people, as he prepared them for the fulfilment of his promise in the coming of Christ. The heirs of the Geneva Reformers would have been well advised had they maintained this balanced attitude to the Apocrypha.
Some of the users of the Geneva Bible, however, had little time for the Apocrypha. To cater for them, some copies of this version printed in 1599, both on the Continent and in London, were bound up without the section containing the Apocrypha. The omission of the section is obvious because the page-numbering ran consecutively throughout the volume, and there is a hiatus in the numbering between the two Testaments; moreover, the apocryphal books are listed in the preliminary table of contents. An edition of the Geneva Bible published at Amsterdam in 1640 omitted the Apocrypha as a matter of policy: a defence of the omission was printed between the Testaments.
The Bishops’ Bible, first published at London in 1568, was the work of men committed to the Elizabethan settlement: in it the section containing the Apocrypha was equipped with a special title but nothing was said to indicate any distinction in status between its contents and the other books.
SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
The Authorized (King James) Version of 1611 was formally a revision of the last (1602) edition of the Bishops’ Bible; it included a version of the Apocrypha as a matter of course. Four years later, the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot, a firm Calvinist in theology, forbade the binding or selling of Bibles without the Apocrypha on penalty of a year’s imprisonment. This measure seemed to be necessary because of the increasingly vocal Puritan objection to the inclusion of the Apocrypha among the canonical books. In 1589 an attack on their inclusion by John Penry (‘Martin Marprelate’) had called forth a spirited reply from an earlier Archbishop, John Whitgift. Now, despite the penalty enacted by Archbishop Abbot, copies of the / without the Apocrypha began to be produced in the years from 1626 onward.
The tide was running in the Puritan favour in those years: in 1644 the Long Parliament ordained that the Apocrypha should cease to be read in services of the Church of England. Three years later the Assembly of Divines at Westminster introduced their historic Confession of Faith with a chapter ‘Of the Holy Scripture’. In order to make it plain precisely which books were comprised in the holy scripture, the second paragraph of this chapter ran:
II. Under the name of the Holy Scripture, or the Word of God written, are now contained all the Books of the Old and New Testaments, which are these:
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
Genesis
Exodus
Leviticus
Numbers
Deuteronomy
Joshua
Judges
Ruth
I. Samuel
II. Samuel
I. Kings
II. Kings
I. Chronicles
II. Chronicles
Ezra
Nehemiah
Esther
Job
Psalms
Proverbs
Ecclesiastes
The Song of Songs
Isaiah
Jeremiah
Lamentations
Ezekiel
Daniel
Hosea
Joel
Amos
Obadiah
Jonah
Micah
Nahum
Habakkuk
Zephaniah
Haggai
Zechariah
Malachi
OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
The Gospels according to Matthew
Mark
Luke
John
The Acts of the Apostles
Paul’s Epistles to the Romans
Corinthians I
Corinthians II
Galatians
Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
Thessalonians I
Thessalonians II
To Timothy I
To Timothy II
To Titus
To Philemon
The Epistle to the Hebrews
The Epistle of James
The first and second Epistles of Peter
The first, second and third Epistles of John
The Epistle of Jude
The Revelation
All of which are given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life.
The third paragraph follows with the uncompromising declaration:
III. The Books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of the scripture; and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings.
This went considerably beyond the position approved by the translators of the Geneva Bible. Naturally churches which adopted the Westminster Confession as their chief subordinate standard—notably the Church of Scotland and other Presbyterian churches—preferred to use copies of the Bible which did not include the Apocrypha.
An interesting sidelight on the general Puritan attitude in England under the Commonwealth is provided by a piece of spiritual autobiography by John Bunyan in Grace Abounding. About 1652, he relates, during a time of deep depression, he found comfort in a text which came to his mind: ‘Look at the generations of old, and see: did ever any trust in the Lord and was confounded?’ He could not remember where it came from, could not find it in his Bible, and received no help from others whom he asked for guidance in his quest. Then, after the lapse of a year, he writes:
casting my eye upon the Apocrypha books, I found it in Ecclesiasticus, chap. 2:10. This at first did somewhat daunt me, because it was not in those texts that we call holy and canonical; yet as this sentence was the sum and substance of many of the promises, it was my duty to take the comfort of it. And I bless God for that word, for it was of good to me. That word doth still oft-times shine before my face’.
Bunyan shows his robust commonsense here: despite being initially somewhat ‘daunted’ by the realization that he had found divine comfort in an apocryphal text, he appropriated it as a genuine word of God because it summarized so many biblical promises of God’s faithfulness to his people.
After the Restoration of 1660 the readings from the Apocrypha reappeared in the Anglican lectionary. The exclusion of these books, however, became increasingly popular in English nonconformity. It may be indicative of the Puritan or nonconformist influence in American Christianity that the first edition of the English Bible to be printed in America (Philadelphia, 1782) lacked the Apocrypha. (The first edition of the Bible in any European language to be printed in America was a German Bible of 1743; it did include the Apocrypha.)
BIBLE SOCIETIES AND COMMON BIBLE
Early in the nineteenth century the canon of the Old Testament excited more widespread interest both in Britain and on the Continent than is usual for such a question. In 1804 the British and Foreign Bible Society was formed to promote the production and circulation of the scriptures, together with their translation into languages in which they were not available. Its committee consisted of laymen, drawn in equal numbers from the Church of England and the free Churches. Later in the same year a German Bible Society was formed, followed in 1812 by the Russian Bible Society and in 1816 by the American Bible Society.
In view of the interdenominational character of the British Society, it was provided from the outset that editions of the Bible which it sponsored should have neither note nor comment. But before long it was realized that some editions handled by the Society contained something more objectionable in the eyes of many of its supporters than any note or comment could be—the apocryphal books, which (according to the Westminster Confession), ‘not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of the scripture’. To begin with, the Society had taken little thought for the Apocrypha, one way or the other: one of its most famous relics, the ‘Mary Jones Bible’, included the Welsh version of those books and actually shows Mary’s signature at the end of Maccabees.
The Free Churchmen on the committee, and most of the Anglicans (in view of their evangelical orientation), had no interest in circulating the Apocrypha. But the Society supported similar groups on the European Continent which did circulate editions containing the Apocrypha, especially for areas in which Bibles without the Apocrypha would not have been acceptable. In the 1820s objections were voiced to such support, and a dispute broke out which lasted for five years. The Society’s Scottish Auxiliaries in particular opposed the use of the Society’s money, however indirectly, for the distribution of Bibles containing the Apocrypha. The protagonist on the Scottish side was Robert Haldane, an able lay theologian (best known otherwise as the author of a distinguished commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans). The Society in 1826 adopted the policy of neither circulating itself, nor aiding others in circulating, Bibles containing the Apocrypha—but not before the Scottish Auxiliaries withdrew, to unite in 1861 in the newly created National Bible Society of Scotland. The formation of this new Society, however, expanded rather than hindered the work of Bible distribution (and the same can be said of the Trinitarian Bible Society, which began its separate existence on another issue in 1831).
When the British and Foreign Bible Society began to distribute exclusively editions lacking the Apocrypha, the Bible-buying public seemed quite content with such editions. That being so, other Bible publishers saw no reason why they should continue producing Bibles with the Apocrypha. For a century and a half now it has been practically impossible to buy over the counter in any ordinary book-shop in Britain or America a copy of the Authorized (King James) Version containing the Apocrypha. Or, in the words of Principal John Macleod, a wholehearted subscriber to the Westminster Confession, ‘the issue of the long and painful conflict was that the English-speaking world was furnished with the unadulterated Protestant Canon of Scripture as its everyday possession, a thing that was by no means universally the case before; and for over a century it is with such a Canon that it is familiar.’
When the British and Foreign Bible Society undertook to provide the copy of the Bible for presentation to King Edward VII at his coronation in 1902, the Archbishop of Canterbury (Frederick Temple) ruled that a ‘mutilated Bible’ (one lacking the Apocrypha) was unacceptable for the purpose, and as the Society was prevented by its constitution from providing an ‘unmutilated’ edition, a suitable copy had to be procured at short notice from another source.
A controversy broke out in Germany later in the nineteenth century over suggestions that the apocryphal books, because of their theological defects, should no longer be printed as part of the Bible. The case for retaining them was persuasively argued by some of the leading conservatives among Protestant theologians, and the controversy stimulated more intensive critical study of these books and of the arguments for excluding or retaining them.
The British Revised Version of the Bible included a revision of the Apocrypha, published in 1895 (the New Testament had been issued in 1881, the complete Bible, apart from the Apocrypha, in 1885). The parallel American revision, the American Standard Version of 1901, never included the Apocrypha. The Apocrypha did, however, appear in the Revised Standard Version (in 1957, five years after the rest of the work). They also appeared as part of the New English Bible when the complete work was published together in 1970.
Roman Catholic versions of the Bible, like the Jerusalem Bible of 1966 (and the New Jerusalem Bible of 1985) and the New American Bible of 1970 included the Apocrypha as an integral part of the Old Testament. But an ecumenical milestone was reached in 1973 with the appearance of the Common Bible, an edition of the with the Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical Books printed between the Testaments in a form which received the blessing not only of Catholic and Protestant church leaders but also of the Archbishop of Thyateira and Great Britain, the leader of the Greek Orthodox community in Britain. This does not mean that there is now universal agreement on the Old Testament canon. There are some Protestants who still regard the Apocrypha as a perquisite of the Church of Rome, like a reviewer who greeted the New English Bible with the words: ‘The Apocrypha part of the Bible! This is certainly a New Bible indeed. Rome can rightly rejoice that at last her view of the canon of Scripture has displaced that of the Apostolic Church.’ Again, we shall not see the New International Version of 1978 (a most praiseworthy enterprise) expanded by the inclusion of the Apocrypha. But the greater availability of these books means that there is a better appreciation of their character, and of the issues involved in delimiting the canon of the Old Testament.
On the Esdras literature see also pp. 47 with n. 11, 85 with n. 11.
G. Shepherd, in ‘English Versions of the Scriptures before Wyclif’, CHB II, p. 364.
Hugh of St Victor, On the Sacraments, I, Prologue, 7 (PL 176, cols. 185–186D). ‘A continuous succession of the more learned Fathers in the West maintained the distinctive authority of the Hebrew Canon up to the period of the Reformation’ (B. F. Westcott, ‘Canon of Scripture, The’, Smith’s DB I, p. 507; he gives a list from Primasius to Cardinal Cajetan). See more generally B. Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 21952).
CHB II, p. 273 (‘The Study of the Bible in Medieval Judaism’).
A. Marx, ‘An Aramaic Fragment of the Wisdom of Solomon’, JBL 40 (1921), pp. 57–69.
M. Deanesly, The Lollard Bible (Cambridge, [1920] 1960), p. 256.
Luther’s Wittenberg colleague A. R. Bodenstein von Karlstadt defended Jerome’s position in De canonicis scripturis libellus (1520), but within the Apocrypha he gave a higher status to Wisdom, Ben Sira, Judith, Tobit, and 1 and 2 Maccabees than to the other books.
Tischreden (Weimar edition 1, p. 208): too much weight should not be laid on many of the obiter dicta in Luther’s collected Table Talk.
It might be said that Esther bears witness to the operation of divine providence, but that is not a distinctively Jewish or Christian doctrine (it was a central feature of Stoic belief). A powerful imagination can see what is otherwise invisible, as when W. Vischer could see the cross of Christ in Haman’s gallows (‘The Book of Esther’, EQ 11 [1939], pp. 3–21, especially pp. 11–17). One still comes across allegorizations of the story in which Esther corresponds to the church (the bride of Christ), Mordecai to the Holy Spirit, and King Ahasuerus (believe it or not) to Christ.
Erasmus, The Freedom of the Will (1524), quoted by R. H. Bainton, CHB III, p. 6.
See B. Hall, CHB III, pp. 71f. (‘Biblical Scholarship: Editions and Commentaries’).
See p. 246.
E.g. Sir. 15:1–6 for St John the Evangelist’s Day (December 27), Wisdom 5:1–5 for St Philip and St James’ Day (May 1).
Of the Old Testament books in English Tyndale published only the Pentateuch and Jonah, but he left in manuscript the translation of the historical books from Joshua to 2 Chronicles; this was published in Matthew’s Bible.
Sessio IV: Decretum de canonicis scripturis. See F. J. Crehan, CHB III, pp. 199–202 (‘The Bible in the Roman Catholic Church from Trent to the Present Day’).
Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, ch. 2 (‘Of Revelation’).
According to F. J. Crehan (CHB III, p. 206), the word ‘deuterocanonical’ was first used in this way by a converted Jew, Sixtus of Siena (1520–1569).
All thirty-nine were approved by Convocation at that time, but Article 29 (‘Of the Wicked which eat not the Body of Christ in the use of the Lord’s Supper’) was held over (probably at Queen Elizabeth’s instance) and did not receive legal ratification until 1571.
In the Second Book of Homilies (1563), homily 10 (‘Of the reverend estimation of God’s Word’), the book of Wisdom is commended as the ‘infallible and undeceivable word of God’.
In the Geneva Bible list of apocryphal books 3 and 4 Esdras, as they are called in the Vulgate, appear as 1 and 2 Esdras and have so been called in the ‘Protestant’ Apocrypha ever since. (When the two canonical ‘Esdras’ books are called Ezra and Nehemiah, as in the Geneva Bible, the risk of confusion is avoided.)
But the Prayer of Manasseh, being appended to 2 Chronicles, was retained.
In those days the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury was reinforced by sanctions: in 1631 the King’s Printers were fined £300 by Archbishop Laud for their negligence in omitting the vital word ‘not’ from the commandment ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ (a misprint which secured for that edition the sobriquet of ‘The Wicked Bible’).
Authorized
King James Version (1611)
Grace Abounding, 62–65. It is implied that his Bible contained the ‘Apocrypha books’ but that he did not habitually read them as he read the rest of the volume, having been taught that they were not ‘holy and canonical’.
Before the Declaration of Independence American Christians were debarred by British copyright regulations from printing the English Bible. The first Bible printed in America was John Eliot’s Algonquin version (NT 1661, OT 1663).
It included the seventy verses 2 Esdras (4 Ezra) 7:36–105, which were missing from the av/kjv Apocrypha.
E. Fenn, CHB III, p. 391 (‘The Bible and the Missionary’).
The English edition of this commentary (Edinburgh, 1835–39), the expansion of an earlier French work, was reprinted by the Banner of Truth Trust (London, 1958). More germane to the Apocrypha controversy was his The Books of the Old and New Testaments proved to be Canonical (Edinburgh, 1845, 71877).
More recently the British and Foreign Bible Society has been able to surmount the problem which it faced in the 1820s.
J. Macleod, Scottish Theology (Edinburgh, 1943), pp. 226f.
See B. M. Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha (Oxford, 1957), pp. 202f.
Revised Standard Version (1952, 1971)
The commendation of the Greek Orthodox Archbishop is the more telling because the OT part of the work is not based on the Septuagint, which is the authoritative text for the Orthodox Church (see p. 82).
I. R. K. Paisley, The New English Bible: Version or Perversion? (Belfast, 1961), p. 3. The reviewer cannot have been unaware that the Apocrypha were included in every major Protestant version of the English Bible from Coverdale to the Revised Standard Version.
The New International Version was sponsored by the New York International Bible Society, a more conservative body than the American Bible Society. On the other hand, while the Good News Bible of 1979, sponsored by the American Bible Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society, was first published without the Apocrypha, the 1979 edition completed it with a translation of these books into ‘today’s English’.