What is The “Apocrypha” and Why Do Protestants Reject It?

Here, I will be talking about the deuterocanonical books in the Bible, and why the Catholic Church (which has the authority to canonize divinely inspired books), considers them Sacred Scripture.

In the midst of the Catholic objection to the Sola Scriptura argument, and the problem with Luther’s removal of 7 books from the Catholic Bible, includes the debate over the deuterocanonical books, otherwise known as the “Apocrypha” amongst Protestant circles to delegitimize it. The deuterocanonical books are a series of books in the Bible in the Old Testament which Catholics accept as divinely inspired, but Protestants do not. Protestant objections to the deuterocanonical books include claims that “it is not divinely inspired, the Jews didn’t accept it as part of their canon, it has unknown authorship, it is contradictory to other parts of The Bible, and was used only as response to reformation, and therefore shouldn’t be included as part of the Scriptures.” We will go into these claims, but we must understand first the historical background of why Protestants first objected to it, and where these books came from. I, as other Catholics do, should be prepared to offer a response to the reason Protestants wrongly reject these as part of the biblical canon of Scripture.

But what do we know about the deuterocanonical books and the canon of Old Testament Scripture more broadly? By the 1st century A.D., there were two canons of Old Testament books: Palestinian Canon (books written in Hebrew) and Alexandrian Canon  (books in Hebrew or Aramaic and Greek). Pious tradition said the entire Old Testament as translated into Greek by 70 or 72 inspired Jews at Alexandria in 72 days. What we do know, though, is that the Deuterocanonical books were composed late in the Old Testament period, that is, in the 1st or 2nd century B.C. At the Council of Jamnia around 90 A.D., and the Jews definitively adopted the Palestinian Canon. By the 4th century, Christians officially  accepted the Alexandrian Canon. While authorship is unknown, all books are recognized as divinely inspired by the Catholic Church. A number of New and Old Testament books do not have clear authors we know of- however, these do not diminish their respective divinely inspired credibility.

A book I was reading about Catholicism, called: With One Accord: Affirming Catholic Teachings Using Protestant Principles, addressed this area. It reads: “however, some refer to this collection as the Apocrypha, which means ‘hidden.’ calling these books hidden is frankly unjustifiable, given that these writings are found in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament that the New Testament Writers cited more often than the Hebrew) and Codex siinticus (the earliest Bible we have), as well as early Greek manuscripts such as Aleph, A, and B. Further, the Dead sea Scrolls at Qumran (and Masada as well) include nearly seventy fragments from Tobit, several chapters from Sirach, and a small piece of the Epistle of Jeremiah (included in Baruch in the Catholic canon). One argument, though, against regarding the deuterocanonicals as Scripture is the Protestant claim to follow the ‘Jewish canon’, which excludes them. There are a few problems with this claim. First, the idea of a single Jewish canon is something of an anachronism. We see from the New Testament itself that at the time of Christ there were competing canons: the Sadducees accepted only the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) whereas the Pharisees followed the modern Jewish canon, and Jews outside Israel often followed the Septuagint. And of course, the Jewish people left another twenty-seven books out of the biblical canon- namely the entire New Testament!). Another popular argument against including the deuterocanonicals is that they are never quoted or mentioned in the New Testament. Although this might sound concerning, there are serious problems with this criterion. First, deuterocanonical material is referenced in the New Testament. In fact, the 1611 King James Version Bible (the most popular Protestant Bible of all time) contains over a hundred references to them in the Old Testament and eleven in the New Testament.”

Let us now look at the role Martin Luther played in the removal and disregard of these books in Protestant circles. It is well known that Martin Luther changed things up in Christianity- one of them being his removal of 7 books from The Bible. Protestant Bible versions are 7 books shorter than Catholic Bible versions, missing 1 and 2 Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, Sirach, Wisdom, and Baruch. Luther also tried to remove Hebrews, James (didn’t fit Luther’s view on faith vs. works), Jude, and the Revelation from The Bible, but ultimately left them at the end of the New Testament when he published his translation. It should be noted: a peasant revolt in 1525 used Luther’s teachings to justify their revolt, so in order to protect his reputation: he put out false, harsh statements to quell them. And, which I will address in the next slide: removed several Bible books to quell the revolts, and advance his biblical perspective against the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church canonized the New Testament and was the ultimate authority in deciding which written works would be considered a part of The Bible as Sacred Scripture, or what was other useful, written contexts of the Apostles, early church figures, and other products of Catholic dogma in general. It should be noted Catholics also believe in apocryphal books, just not that the deuterocanonical books are amongst those worth considering “apocryphal,” or not divinely inspired but useful, such as The Gospel of Thomas.

The first objection to the deuterocanonical books being divinely inspired is that they’re “contradictory in teaching to the rest of the Bible.” But why do protestants agree that apparent errors amongst the human authors for the rest of the New Testament do not delegitimize the divine inspiration of the gospel itself in these respective books, but that this can be said for the deuterocanonical books? Protestants who say genuine theological contradictions can be found in Tobit such as the teaching of almsgiving can atone for sin (Sirach 3:3, Tobit 4:11) ignore the fact Proverbs 16:6 also teaches “by loyalty and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for,” and 1 Peter 4:8 says “love covers a multitude of sins” or Acts 10:4 similarly; such things of the Old Testament all included these teachings. In this time, it had not been revealed to them Christ is what saves in the New Covenant rather than works of the law; this would require all Old Testament books to be disqualified. Such claims of “contractions” are easy to rebuke, and from this, we can understand the truths of these books. Those who say praying for the dead as demonstrated in Maccabees is contradictory to Scripture relies on the interpretation and starting point that purgatory- purification after judgement day before going to heaven- is not real. Protestants also say the deuterocanonical books teach things not taught elsewhere like the praying for the dead in what we know as purgatory, but ignore the fact the Trinitarian baptismal command is only found in Matthew. Though Protestants are eager to jump on these individual books of the deuterocanonical set, have yet to justify that I’ve heard arguments against the individual others, which would be needed to be done to removal individual books of a set, rather than the set entirely.

The second claim about the deuterocanonical books by Protestants which I hinted at with a book quote before is that “The Jewish people who adhered to the Old Testament didn’t recognize it as part of their canon. It’s not in the Hebrew Bible.” This is an easy point to respond to. Catholiceducation.org says: “Consider the Sadducees. They only regarded the first five books of the Old Testament as inspired and canonical. The rest of the Old Testament was regarded by them in much the same way the deuterocanon is regarded by Protestant Christians today: nice, but not the inspired Word of God.” They rightly point out the definitions for canons of Scripture varied amongst these groups of Jews back then. Continuing, the article says: “[The Jews] fixed their canon at the rabbinical gathering, known as the ‘Council of Javneh’ (sometimes called ‘Jamnia’), about A.D. 90. Prior to this point in time there had never been any formal effort among the Jews to ‘define the canon’ of Scripture. In fact, Scripture nowhere indicates that the Jews even had a conscious idea that the canon should be closed at some point. The canon arrived at by the rabbis at Javneh was essentially the mid-sized canon of the Palestinian Pharisees, not the shorter one used by the Sadducees, who had been practically annihilated during the Jewish war with Rome. Nor was this new canon consistent with the Greek Septuagint version, which the rabbis regarded rather xenophobically as ‘too Gentile-tainted.’ Remember, these Palestinian rabbis were not in much of a mood for multiculturalism after the catastrophe they had suffered at the hands of Rome. Their people had been slaughtered by foreign invaders, the Temple defiled and destroyed, and the Jewish religion in Palestine was in shambles. So for these rabbis, the Greek Septuagint went by the board and the mid-sized Pharisaic canon was adopted. Eventually this version was adopted by the vast majority of Jews — though not all. Even today Ethiopian Jews still use the Septuagint version, not the shorter Palestinian canon settled upon by the rabbis at Javneh. In other words, the Old Testament canon recognized by Ethiopian Jews is identical to the Catholic Old Testament, including the seven deuterocanonical books.”

The next point of argument by Protestants about the deuterocanonical books is that Jesus never made reference to them. But this is also easily refutable. The great Trent Horn at Catholic Answers on this subject writes: “For example, Hebrews 11:35 describes people in the Old Testament who ‘were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they may rise again to a better life.’ These people are only described in 2 Maccabees 7, which describes brothers who accept torture instead of eating pork and violating Jewish law. Since the context of Hebrews 11 includes ‘the men of old [who] received divine approval’ (v. 2), this means the books describing the Maccabean martyrs were part of the Old Testament that was used by the author of the Letter to the Hebrews.” He continued to note: “The idea that the early Church viewed the deuterocanonical books as Scripture is even more evident in the writings of early Church fathers like Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Methodius, Cyprian, and Origen. Moreover, these fathers cited these books as ‘Scripture’ or ‘holy Scripture,’ and none of the pre-Nicene Church fathers ever declares the deuterocanonical books to be uninspired or non-canonical. St. Jerome even tells us that at the Council of Nicaea the deuterocanonical work of Judith was considered to be a part of the canon of Scriptures.”

Catholiceducation.org notes: “Similarly, St. Paul alludes clearly to Wisdom chapters 12 and 13 in Romans 1:19-25. Hebrews 11:35 refers unmistakably to 2 Maccabees 7. And more than once, Christ Himself drew on the text of Sirach 27:6, which reads: ‘The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had; so too does a man's speech disclose the bent of his mind.’ Notice too that the Lord and His Apostles observed the Jewish feast of Hanukkah (cf. John 10:22-36). But the divine establishment of this key feast day is recorded only in the deuterocanonical books of 1 and 2 Maccabees. It is nowhere discussed in any other book of the Old Testament.”

The last point we should address is Protestants who say these books added at The Council of Trent (held between 1545 and 1563) to push back against the Protestant Reformation (which started around 1517 with Luther publishing his “95 Theses). The simple answer is to this is no, these books were not randomly added at Trent; they were thought to be divinely inspired and worthy of being part of the Old Testament canon by the Church throughout its history. And the overwhelming number of popes and church fathers affirmed these books as Scripture. Catholiceducation.org says: “overwhelming majority of Church Fathers and other early Christian writers regarded the deuterocanonical books as having exactly the same inspired, scriptural status as the other Old Testament books. Just a few examples of this acceptance can be found in the Didache, The Epistle of Barnabas, the Council of Rome, the Council of Hippo, the Third Council of Carthage, the African Code, the Apostolic Constitutions, and the writings of Pope St. Clement I (Epistle to the Corinthians), St. Polycarp of Smyrna, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Hippolytus, St. Cyprian of Carthage, Pope St. Damasus I, St. Augustine, and Pope St. Innocent I.” They continue, writing: “St. Jerome did indeed accept the Deuterocanonical books of the Bible. In fact, he wound up strenuously defending their status as inspired Scripture, writing, ‘What sin have I committed if I followed the judgment of the churches? But he who brings charges against me for relating the objections that the Hebrews are wont to raise against the story of Susanna, the Son of the Three Children, and the story of Bel and the Dragon, which are not found in the Hebrew volume (ie. canon), proves that he is just a foolish sycophant. For I wasn't relating my own personal views, but rather the remarks that they [the Jews] are wont to make against us’ (against Rufinus 11:33 [A.D. 402]). In earlier correspondence with Pope Damasus, Jerome did not call the deuterocanonical books unscriptural, he simply said that Jews he knew did not regard them as canonical. But for himself, he acknowledged the authority of the Church in defining the canon. When Pope Damasus and the Councils of Carthage and Hippo included the deuterocanon in Scripture, that was good enough for St. Jerome. He ‘followed the judgment of the churches.’”

We’re these books were added or not by the Catholic Church to push back against the reformation? An article by catholiceducation.org writes: “The fact of the matter is that neither the Council of Trent nor the Council of Florence added a thing to the Old Testament canon. Rather, they simply accepted and formally ratified the ancient practice of the Apostles and early Christians by dogmatically defining a collection of Old Testament Scripture (including the deuterocanon) that had been there since before the time of Christ, used by our Lord and his apostles, inherited and assumed by the Fathers, formulated and reiterated by various councils and popes for centuries and read in the liturgy and prayer for 1500 years. When certain people decided to snip some of this canon out in order to suit their theological opinions, the Church moved to prevent it by defining (both at Florence and Trent) that this very same canon was, in fact, the canon of the Church's Old Testament and always had been.” This makes perfect sense when we think about other doctrines were affirmed at later dates officially when the Church decided to do so, like the Immaculate Conception, but just because this dogma didn’t exist from the beginning, doesn’t mean the vast majority of Catholic figures and hierarchy who shared those beliefs can’t affirm this pre-noted conclusion. The same goes for the view by the Church the deuterocanonical books are  considered apart of The Old Testament Canon of Scripture. These writings were affirmed as being canonical at the Council of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) and later at the Second Nicea (787), Florence (1442) and Trent (1546). Protestants must tell us the standard they use to identify what should or shouldn’t be apart of the Old Testament cannon. And: as you can tell, Catholics can rest assured the deuterocanonical books are not worthy of the title “apocrypha” and all protestant objections to their biblical canonization can be rebuked quite easily.

“I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church.” - St. Augustine

Video Form Of This:

Sources:

Trent Horn at Council of Trent Youtube: 5 REASONS Why the Apocrypha is NOT INSPIRED (REBUTTED)

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/debunking-a-protestant-case-against-the-deuterocanon

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/answering-the-most-common-objection-to-the-deuterocanonical-books

https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and-philosophy/apologetics/5-myths-about-7-books.html