Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger (32 page)

^[1]
Some argue that the Deuterocanon
should be rejected because the Jews only accepted works written in Hebrew. This
is false. Portions of the Protocanon were written in Aramaic, not Hebrew, and
only two books of the Deutrocanon were originally written in Greek (Ws and 2
Mc). The remaining books were composed in Hebrew. For example, fragments of the
Hebrew Sirach (2Q18 (2QSir)
2QBenSira
^ß
) were found among the
Dead Sea Scrolls as well as five fragments of the Book of Tobit (4Q196-4Q200),
four fragments were in Aramaic and one in Hebrew. Also, the so-called
Ben
Sira Scroll
dating from the first century before Christ was discovered in
Masada contains Sir 39:27-44:17 in Hebrew. In a storage room (genizah) in an
ancient synagogue in Cairo, Hebrew manuscripts of Sirach were discovered (A, B,
C and D). Even the books of Wisdom and 2 Maccabees were eventually translated,
by the Jews, into Hebrew or Aramaic. Origen was able to produce the Hebrew name
for Maccabees (Eusebius’
Church History
, 6,25), and Moses be Nahman
(Nachmanides, c. 1194-1270) possessed an Aramaic copy of the Book of Wisdom
(Albert C. Sundberg, Jr., “The Old Testament: A Christian Canon,”
CBQ
30
(1968): 152.).

^[2]
The fact that Sirach’s grandson felt
it necessary to translate Sirach into Greek (as was done with the other books
of Scripture in his day) indicates that it was well received by the Jews in
Egypt. This acceptance could only happen if it were first accepted in
Palestine. See John E. Steinmuller
, The Companion to Scripture Studies;
General Introduction
(London: B. Herder, 1950), 63; Also see Pfeiffer,
IBD
,
1:499.

^[3]
Sir Preface 1:1, “The Law, the Prophets,
and
the other writers succeeding them
”; Sir Preface 1:7, “My grandfather
Jesus, having long devoted himself to the reading of the Law, the Prophets
and
other books of the Fathers
.” Sir Preface 1:24-25, “…[T]he Law itself, the
Prophets
and the other books....
”

^[4]
See Lee M. McDonald,
The Formation
of the Christian Biblical Canon: Revised an Expanded Edition
(Massachusetts:
Hendrickson Publishers, 1996), 36; W. O. E. Oesterley,
An Introduction to
the Books of the Apocrypha
(London: SPCK, 1958), 121, et al.

^[5]
The claim that only those publicly
known as prophets can write Scripture is contestable and will be addressed in
this chapter’s discussion of the writings of Josephus.

^[6]
Emphasis added.

^[7]
 Lam
2:9.
Emphasis added.

^[8]
R. Meyers, “
kruptw
–Supplement on the Canon and the Apocrypha,”
TDNT
3:980 FN 64.

^[9]
 Paul Johnson,
History of
Christianity
(New York: MacMillan, 1976), 15.

^[10]
Mt 7:29, Mk 1:22.

^[11]
2 Mc 15:9

^[12]
 
Contemplative Life
,
25-26. Emphasis added. Anywhere from a three-fold to a five-fold division of
writings can be discerned in this passage.

^[13]
 And surely “Psalms” is a very
strange descriptor for books like Ezra, Esther, and the Chronicles—none of
which is poetic and none of which was authored by David. Some apologists have
tried to make such a descriptor more plausible by appealing to one of the Dead
Sea Scrolls, a fragment called
Miqsat Ma’asch Torah
or 4QMMT. As
currently edited, the fragment reads: “For on account of [these things] we have
[written] for you that you may perceive in the book of Moses [and in the words
of the Prophets and in David and in the words of the Days (i.e., Chronicles)]
from generation to generation.” The hope here is that the reference to David is
a reference to his Psalms (plausible enough) and that the further reference to
the Chronicles (which, after all, tell the story of David) demonstrates a link
between the two. Then, with one additional step, the other books which came
later to accompany the Chronicles in the collection known as “the Writings” may
be included with them here by association. Were we certain that every link in
this elaborate chain of guesswork were sound, this Dead Sea fragment might very
well impact our understanding of Lk 24:44. Even in that unlikely event,
however, other factors would seriously diminish its value; its dating, for
instance, is very uncertain (it may even have been composed
after
Luke’s
Gospel!) and as McDonald notes (44): “There are several important letters and
words missing, making all conclusions about it arbitrary…” 

^[14]
 The use of “the Law, the
Prophets and the Psalms” also mirrors the way that the New Testament itself
uses Scripture, since nearly 60% of all the direct citations from the Old
Testament in the New Testament are taken from Deuteronomy (the Law), Isaiah
(the Prophets) and the Book of Psalms. See Martin Hangel,
Septuagint in
Prehistory and the Problem of the Canon
, Trans. Mark E. Biddle (Edinburgh:
T and T, 2004), 106-107. Jesus’ words in Lk 24:44, if taken in their plainest
sense, mirror the New Testament usage. See “Canon,”
ABD
, 1:839.

^[15]
 Edward W. Reuss,
History of
the Canon of the Holy Scriptures in the Christian Church
. Trans. David
Hunter (Edinburgh: R. W. Hunter, 1891), 10.

^[16]
 
Baba Kamma
92b as quoted
in Sid Z. Lieman,
The Canonization of the Hebrew Scripture: Talmudic and
Midrastic Evidence
(Hamden, Connecticut: Archon, 1976), 97. Emphasis added.
Hagiographa means “Holy Writings.”

^[17]
 
Preface to the Book of
Psalms
, quoted in Eusebius’
Church History
6.25.

^[18]
 See
Prologue to the Psalms
,
15. Athanasius of Alexandria also includes Baruch in his list of the Jewish
canon.

^[19]
 A. E. Breen,
A General and Critical
Introduction to the Holy Scripture
, (Rochester, New York: John P. Smith
Printing House, 1897), 55.

^[20]
 Cf. Zec 1:1

^[21]
 Gleason L. Archer, ed.
Encyclopedia
of Bible Difficulties 
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House,
1982), 337-38. Zechariah son of Barachiah is the preferred reading in modern
critical editions of the Greek New Testament. The chance of it being a textual
variant is remote.

^[22]
 The
Aleppo Codex
[also
known as the Keter Aram Tsova] was copied around AD 935. Before the Qumran
discoveries, it was one of the oldest copies of the Hebrew Old Testament. This
placement of the Chronicles is also found in numerous later Hebrew manuscripts
as well. See.
ABD
1.840.

^[23]
 McDonald,
Biblical Canon
,
47.

^[24]
 Josephus is generally recognized
as the earliest Jewish writer to address the “canon” of the Old Testament. He
wrote near the end of the first Christian century. Although many appeal to
Josephus as proof that the canon had already been closed by the end of the
first Christian century, there is no consensus as to exactly when this occurred
and who might have closed it. Remember, too, that for Christians, no canon
which excludes the New Testament can be considered complete; and any canon
subject to possible reopening at a future date is really no canon at all, for
the very word “canon” means a collection fixed and unalterable.

^[25]
 Mt 27:43, Ws 2:17-18 and Ps
22:8 (LXX) all use the same Greek word for “rescue.”

^[26]
This connection seems all the more
certain when one compares the use of the postpositive “gar” (translated “for”)
in Mt 27:42-43 [Gk. “…eipen gar hoti theou eimi huios] and the conditional
clause found in Ws 2:17-18 [Gk. “Ei gar estin ho dikaios huios theou”].
Emphasis added.

^[27]
 Emphasis added.

^[28]
 Paul, without referencing Ws
2:17-18, says as much in
Rom 1:4.

^[29]
 For example, Barnabas,
Epistle
of Barnabas
6:7; Hippolytus of Rome,
Against the Jews,
8-9; Cyprian
of Carthage,
Against the Jews
, 2.14.1; Hilary of Poitiers,
Tract. in
Psalm 41.12
; Jerome (without mention of prophecy)
Commentary on Isaiah
,
Book 2, 3:1; Gregory the Great
, Commentary on Job
9.89; Nicephorus,
Apologeticus
Pro Sacris Imaginibus
,
PG
100:751-752 et al.

^[30]
 The Protestant Anglican scholar
W.H. Daubney believes these cross-references were “improperly expunged” and quotes
the famed biblical scholar F.H.A. Scrivener who calls this action “an
unwarrantable license.” (William Heaford Daubney,
The Use of the Apocrypha
in the Christian Church
(London: C.J. Clay and Sons, 1900), 21 quoting
The
Cambridge Paragraph Bible of the Authorized English Version, with the text
revised by a collation of its early and other principal editions, the use of
the italic type made uniform, the marginal references remodeled, and a critical
introduction prefixed
, F.H.A. Scrivener, ed., (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1873), lvi.

^[31]
 See Bruce Vawter, John (
JBC
;
NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968), 63:119, 445. Also Jn 9:5.

^[32]
  Jn 1:9

^[33]
 Is 29:16, 45:9, 64:8 and Jer
18:6

^[34]
 Compare Rom 9:21 and Ws 15:7.
Bruce M. Metzger,
Introduction to the Apocrypha
(Oxford University
Press, 1957), 161.

^[35]
 Metzger,
Introduction
,
161.

^[36]
 See Ws 7:22 and Prv 8:30.

^[37]
 W. J. Deane, in his commentary
on the Book of Wisdom, states that “The similarity here is too close to be
accidental” (W. J. Deane,
The Book of Wisdom
, (Oxford, 1881), 36.

^[38]
Heb 11:1-2 (literally “were attested
of”). Certainly, God attests to these men’s supernatural faith, but is this
divine attestation recorded? Their faith is attested in Scripture.

^[39]
 2 Mc 7:9 states, “…Thou indeed,
O most wicked man, destroyest us out of this present life: but the King of the
world will raise us up, who die for his laws, in the resurrection of eternal
life.” Likewise, the fourth son in 2 Mc 7:14 says, “… It is better, being put
to death by men, to look for hope from God, to be raised up again by him: for,
as to thee thou shalt have no resurrection unto life.”

^[40]
 William Heaford Daubney,
The
Use of the Apocrypha in the Christian Church
(London: C.J. Clay and Sons,
1900), 22. Also Metzger, 163-164.

^[41]
 The reference to the
noncanonical book,
The Ascension of Isaiah,
in Heb 11:37 does not negate
my point. It is not my contention that Heb 11 used only information supplied by
Scripture, but that it uses only
biblical figures
to illustrate
supernatural Faith. This is clear from the preceding context. The reference to
those who were “sawn in two” is an expansion on
the biblical figure of
the prophet Isaiah. One can find numerous expansions of biblical figures in the
New Testament (e.g. 2 Tm 3:8, Jude 14, et al.) from apocryphal sources, but
none
introduces new biblical characters
.

^[42]
 J. B. Lightfoot,
Notes on
the Epistles of St. Paul
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), 252.
Emphasis added.

^[43]
 Metzger,
Introduction
,
163.

^[44]
 From Bishop Ellicott’s
Commentary
for English Readers
, as quoted in Daubney,
Use of the Apocrypha
, 19.

^[45]
 Both accuse God of being the
origin of evil acts.

^[46]
 See Edersheim,
Speaker’s
Commentary
, 22 as quoted in Daubney,
Use of the Apocrypha
, 24 FN 1.

^[47]
  Also see Daubney,
Use of
the Apocrypha,
24.

^[48]
 Emphasis added.

^[49]
 Especially, Mt 27:43, Jn 3:12,
Jas 1, 3, 5, Heb 1:3 et al. Quotations from pagan philosophers do not weaken
this point. Pagan sources are quoted, not as Scripture, but as authoritative
figures for pagan audiences. The Deuterocanon passages are directed toward a
Christian and/or Jewish audience.