The
Apocrypha1!Deuterocanonical
Books:
An
Evangelical
View
D. A. CARSON
Evangelicalism
is
on many points
so
diverse a movement that it would
be
presumptuous
to
speak of the
evangelical view of the Apocrypha.
Two
axes of evangelical diversity are particularly important
for
the
subject at hand. First, while many evangelicals belong
to
independent and/or congregational churches,
many others belong
to
movements within national
or
mainline churches.
(If
we
include charismatics
among evangelicals-an alignment with which most charismatics would
concur-then
in
the world-
wide movement independent
or
congregational evangelicals make up the overwhelming majority of
evangelicals.)
These
independent evangelical groups often reflect, as
we
shall
see,
rather different
per-
spectives on the Apocrypha
from
those of evangelicals
in
mainline
or
national churches. Second,
more
than many religious movements, evangelicalism embraces an extraordinary range
of
intellectual train-
ing and awareness. Thus not a
few
evangelical leaders at the lower end of the educational spectrum
will
scarcely have heard
of
the Apocrypha, much less read
it;
if they have heard of
it,
it
will
only
be
as some-
thing bad connected somehow with
Catholics and their view of revelation and tradition. But at the upper
end of the educational spectrum, though the Apocrypha
will
not
be
accepted as Scripture, it
is
known,
sometimes studied, and universally recognized
to
form
part of the matrix of the world
in
which the
New
Testament came
to
birth.
Evangelicals of
all
stripes adopt the classic Protestant view that the Apocrypha should not
be
con-
sidered part of the canon
of
Scripture. What Mallau says
of
Baptists could
be
said of
all
evangelicals:
they
"took over the essential theological decisions of
the
Reformation
...
[and]
said
no
more
than other
Protestants about deuterocanonical writings."l
This
means, of course, that they think of these books as
"apocryphal" and not as "deuterocanonical."
The
latter term was coined
by
Sixtus of Sienna
in
1566
to
distinguish
two
groups of books.
On
this
view,
the "protocanonical" books are the books of Scripture
received
as
inspired
by
the entire
Church
from
the
beginning, while "deuterocanonical" refers
to
those
books and parts of books whose authority and inspiration
came
to
be
recognized a little later, after the
matter had been debated
by
certain Fathers. Thus
for
Roman Catholics, "deuterocanonical" does not
carry overtones of
"less than canonical"
or
"second tier of canonicity," still less "apocryphal";
for
Protestants, "Apocrypha" seems still
to
be
the best designation.
The
list of canonical
Old
Testament
books accepted
by
the
Council
of Trent
in
1546 includes
all
those fourteen
or
fifteen books normally
referred
to
collectively as the Apocrypha, minus the Prayer of Manasseh and 1 and 2 Esdras.
Traditionally,
Protestants have restricted themselves,
so
far as
the
Old
Testament
is
concerned,
to
the
books of the
Hebrew
canon.
(The
nomenclature
is
problematic, because some of
the
Apocrypha almost
certainly sprang
from
Semitic
originals. But
it
is
clear enough what
is
meant.)
Objections to Canonicity
Because most of the fifteen books of the Apocrypha are found
in
the Greek translation of the
Old
Testament known as the Septuagint
(LXX),
and
it
was the
Greek
form
of
the
Old
Testament that
circu-
1.
Hans:Harold Mallau,
"The
Attitude of the Baptists
to
the Deuterocanonical Writings,"
The
Apocrypha
in
Ecumenical
Perspective,
UBS
Monograph Series
6,
ed.
Siegried Meurer,
tr.
Paul Ellingworth (Reading:
UBS,
1992)
129.
XIV
lated widely
in
the Hellenistic church, many have argued that
(a)
the Septuagint represents an
Alexandrian
(as
opposed
to
a Palestinian) canon, and that
(b)
the
early church, using a
Greek
Bible,
there-
fore
clearly bought into this alternative canon.
In
any case,
(c)
the
Hebrew
canon was not "closed" until
Jamnia (around
85
C.E.),
so
the earliest Christians could not have thought
in
terms
of
a closed
Hebrew
canon.
"It
seems therefore that the Protestant position must
be
judged a failure on historical grounds."2
But
serious objections are raised
by
traditional Protestants, including evangelicals, against these
points.
(a)
Although the
LXX
translations
were
undertaken before
Christ,
the
LXX
evidence that has
come
down
to
us
is
both late and
mixed.
An
important early manuscript
like
Codex
Vaticanus (4th cent.)
includes all the Apocrypha except 1 and
2 Maccabees;
Codex
Sinaiticus (4th cent.) has
Tobit,
Judith,
1 and
2 Maccabees,
Wisdom,
and Ecclesiasticus; another,
Codex
Alexandrinus (5th cent.) boasts all the
apocryphal books plus 3 and 4 Maccabees and the
Psalms
of
Solomon.
In
other words, there
is
no
evi-
dence
here
for
a well-delineated set
of
additional canonical books.
(b)
More
importantly, as the
LXX
has
come
down
to
us,
it
is
a Christian collection that has undergone the
move
from
scrolls
to
codices
(i.e.
books
bound
like
ours, with many "books" within the one volume). This meant that
for
the first
time
things
were
being bound together that had never been bound together before.
As
Metzger
puts
it:
Books
which heretofore had never been regarded
by
the
Jews
as having any
more
than a
certain edifying significance
were
now placed
by
Christian scribes
in
one
codex side
by
side with the acknowledged books of the
Hebrew
canon. Thus it would happen that what
was first a matter
of
convenience
in
making such books of secondary status available
among
Christians
became
a factor
in
giving the impression that all
of
the books within
such a codex were
to
be
regarded as authoritative.
3
(c)
Ancient sources yield very little evidence supporting the view that Alexandria produced its own
canon, and the notion that diaspora Judaism went its own way
in
this respect
faces
some extraordinari-
ly
difficult historical criticism.
4
(d)
Two
Alexandrian church Fathers,
Origen
and Athanasius,
give
lists of
Old
Testament books that differ but little
from
the traditional Jewish reckoning.
5
(e)
The
Council
of
Jamnia may have discussed the status of one
or
two
books (as Luther
did
a millennium and a halflater);
there
is
no
convincing evidence that Jamnia actually "closed" the
Hebrew
canon.
6
(f)
Despite arguments
to
the contrary,? the
New
Testament writers rarely allude
to
books
of
the Apocrypha, and
do
not
cite
them as Scripture,
the
way they
do
with
Old
Testament books.
2.
Marvin
E.
Tate,
"Old
Testament Apocalyptic and the
Old
Testament Canon," Review and Expositor
65
(1968) 353.
Cf.
also
A.
C.
Sundberg,
Jr.,
"The
Protestant
Old
Testament Canon: Should
It
Be
Re-Examined?"
Catholic
Biblical
Quarterly
28 (1966)
199.
3.
Bruce
M.
Metzger,
An
Introduction
to
the Apocrypha
(New
York:
Oxford
University Press, 1957) 178.
4.
Albert
C.
Sundberg,
Jr.,
The
Old
Testament
if
the
Early
Church
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964) 52, passim.
5.
For
Origen,
see
Euseb.
H.E.
4.26; Athanasius,
Ep.
List.
39.
6.
See,
for
example,
Sid
Z.
Leiman,
The
Canonizat(on
if
the
Hebrew
Scn'ptures (Hamden: Archon, 1976) 121-124;
Jack
P.
Lewis,
"What
Do
We
Mean by Jabneh?" Journal
if
Bible
and
Religion
32 (1964) 132; Robert
C.
Newman,
"The
Council
of
Jamnia and the
Old
Testament Canon," Westminster
Theological
Journal 38 (1976) 319-349; Gyuunter Sternberger,
"Die
soge-
nannte
'Synode von Jabne' und das fr)iuuhe Christentum," Journal
if
Biblical
Literature 29 (1977) 14-21;
D.
E.
Aune,
"On
the
Origins of the 'Council of Javneh' Myth," Journal
if
Biblical
Literature 110 (1991) 491-493; Roger
T.
Beckwith,
The
old
Testament
Canon
and the
New
Testament
Church
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985) 275;
cf.
David
Kraemer,
"The
Formation of
Rabbinic
Canon: Authority and Boundaries," Journal
if
Biblical
Literature 110 (1991) 613-630.
7.
A not uncommon example
is
found
in
Peter Stuhlmacher,
"The
Significance of the
Old
Testament Apocrypha and
Pseudepigrapha
for
the Understanding of Jesus and Christology,"
in
The
Apocrypha
in
Ecumenical
Perspective,
op.
cit.
2.
He
says that the "most important evidence" that the
NT
cites the Apocrypha as Scripture
is:
Mk.
10.19, quoting
Ex.
20.12-16
and
Deut.
5.16-20, and then
Sir.
4.1; 2
Tim.
2.19, quoting
Num.
16.5, but also
Sir.
17.26 (Stuhlmacher offers
two
more cases
of
"quoting" pseudepigraphical sources, which need not concern us here). These
two
instances,
the
"most important
evi-
dence," are not convincing.
Even
if the words "do not defraud"
(Mk.
10.19) are drawn
from
Sir.
4.1
(and I am uncertain that
this
is
the case,
for
certainly the entire phrase
in
Sirach
is
not cited), the primary reference
to
the decalogue
(Ex.
20 and Deut.
5)
is
unambiguous; the additional words may
be
part of common halakhic expansion.
The
second quotation
in
2
Tim.
2.19
is
not at
all
close
to
Sir.
17.26. Many commentators think it
is
a generalized summary of the exhortation
in
Num.
16.26, using
language found elsewhere
in
the
OT;
the first part of
it
is
reminiscent of the
LXX
of
Joel
3.5.
AN
eVANGELICAL
VIEW
XlVI
During the first
two
centuries
or
so,
most
Greek
and Latin church fathers, including Irenaeus,
Tertullian,
Clement
of Alexandria, and
Cyprian
(none of whom knew
Hebrew)
quote passages
from
the
Apocrypha as
"Scripture": undoubtedly these books
were
circulating, and
in
some cases
were
revered.
Only
a
few
fathers at this stage
were
interested
in
the limits of the Palestinian Jewish canon
(e.g.
Melito
of Sardis)
or
the differences between, say, the
Hebrew
text
of
Daniel and the additional story of Susanna
in
the
Greek
version
(e.g.
Africanus).
The
turning point
came
with
Jerome,
who
in
his Latin translation
followed
the order
of
the
Hebrew
canon and
by
means of prefaces drew attention
to
the separate catego-
ry.
of the apocryphal books. Later copyists of the Latin Vulgate
did
not always preserve these prefaces,
wIth the result that during the medieval period the Western church customarily regarded these addition-
al
books as part of Scripture.
.
F~r
ev~ngelicals,
these disputes cannot
be
dismissed as arcane bits of obscure history. Because of
their
hIgh
VIew
as
to
the nature of Scripture, the delineation of the boundaries of Scripture
is
of funda-
mental importance.
It
is
not simply that
the
prophetic "Thus says the
LORD,"
ubiquitous
in
many strands
of the
Old
Testament,
is
conspicuous
by
its absence
from
the Apocrypha;
it
is
something more.
Since
evangelicals strongly insist that their beliefs and doctrine
be
grounded
in
Scripture,
to
exclude the
Apocrypha
is
to
unseat, say, the doctrine of purgatory, which finds precious little support outside the
Apocrypha.
The
Value
of
the
Apocrypha
Yet
despite these negative judgments about the Apocrypha, informed evangelicals have important
rea-
sons
for
knowing these books
well.
These may
be
grouped into three categories, though the latter
two
overlap.
First, those who belong
to
Protestant national
or
mainline traditions
are
aware that within their
traditions the books of
the
Apocrypha are designated with some such encomium as "useful
to
be
read
in
the churches"
or
the like.
The
Anglican
Book
of
Common
Prayer,
for
example,
from
1549 onwards
included prescribed lessons
from
the Apocrypha. Those who wished
to
forbid the practice, on
th~
grounds that the sufficiency
of
Scripture might
be
jeopardized,
were
told
by
the Bishops of the Savoy
Conference
(1661) that the same objection could
be
raised against sermons.
The
comment was both
astute
a~d
disingenuous: astute, because the sufficiency
of
Scripture was never designed
to
shut down
the readmg
~f
all
other material, and disingenuous, because the real issue was not
the
mere
reading of
other matenal, but the reading of
it
in
a context
in
which confusion between canonical and extra-
canonical authority might prevail.
In
any case, these branches of Evangelicalism have certain historical
an~
d~nominational
reasons
for
knowing the Apocrypha, indeed
for
knowing
it
well
enough
to
distin-
gUish
It
from
Scripture.
All
of this must
be
contrasted with Trent, which pronounced its anathema
on
an~one
who "does not accept as sacred and canonical the aforesaid books
in
their entirety and with all
theIr parts, as they have been accustomed
to
be
read
in
the
Catholic
Church
and as they
are
contained
in
the
old
Latin Vulgate Edition."
For
accuracy's sake,
one
should note that "the aforesaid books" excluded
1 and 2 Esdras and the
Prayer
of
Manasseh even though they had been included
in
some
manuscripts of
the Vulgate.
In
the official Vulgate edition of 1592, these are printed as an appendix after the
New
Testament, "lest they should perish altogether."
The
phrase "in their entirety and with
all
their parts"
~efers
to
.the
Letter of Jeremiah, read as
ch.
6 of Baruch, the Additions of Esther with Esther, and the var-
IOUS
addItions
to
Daniel-Song
of
the
Three
Young
Men,
Susanna,
Bel
and the Dragon-with Daniel.
Second, precisely because of their high
view
of Scripture, evangelicals are perennially interested
in
t~e
dimensions of texts that purport
to
provide historical information and perspectives relating
to
the
times and places embraced
by
Scripture. Although,
like
all
good readers, evangelicals
are
interested
in
different literary genres, not
for
them an approach
to,
say, narrative, that treats a purportedly historical
tr
xlVll
narrative text as
if
it
can
be
properly interpreted
by
studying only its narrative properties while ignoring
its extra-textual referents.
While
acknowledging the cultural "locatedness" of any interpreter, not
for
them
the
unqualified open-endedness
of
some postmodern readers.
This
means that sources, not least
the
Apocrypha,
that help
fill
in the large holes in our knowledge of
Second
Temple
Judaism-the
history,
culture, social structures, and beliefs of what used
to
be
more
commonly called the intertestamental
period-will
be
treasured.
The
issue
is
not simply the sequence
of
events that bring us
from
the Persian period
to
first-century
Palestine under the Roman superpower, but how outlooks, values, and structures of thought and of
society
changed. Thus devotional literature
like
the Prayer of Manasseh
is
as important as historical
lit-
erature
like
1 Maccabees and 1 Esdras; the liturgical cast of the Prayer
of
Azariah and the Song
of
the
Three
Young
Men
is
of
as great interest as the legendary material
in
Bel
and the Dragon; the
view
of
women
in
Judith and Susanna
is
as compelling as the fiery rhetoric and exaggerated numbers in
2
Maccabees:
a didactic narrative
like
Tobit,
with its indebtedness not only
to
the
Old
Testament but
to
sources
like
the Story
of
Ahikar, the
fable
of the Grateful
Dead
and a tractate
of
the
god
Khons,
is
as
informative as the quite different didactic books
of
wisdom literature, Ecclesiasticus and the
Wisdom
of
Solomon.
It
has even been suggested that the Letter
of
Jeremiah provided later writers with a
model
of
how
letters-that
most common
form
of
communication
in
the ancient
world-might
be
used
for
reli-
gious
purposes, a point
of
no
small interest
to
readers
of
the letters
of
the
New
Testament.
Third,
allied with the interest
of
evangelicals
in
the historical dimensions
of
the biblical texts (and
therefore of extrabiblical texts that clarify that dimension)
is
their interest
in
the theological dimension.
Evangelicals are invariably interested
in
how things hold together, not merely
in
atomistic exegesis.
Moreover,
they hold
to
the notion that revelation
is
normally mediated through the language and experi-
ence
of
particular people
in
particular times and places. That means that
if
from
the perspective of
canonical authority they exclude the Apocrypha,
from
the perspective
of
understanding the language
and categories of the
New
Testament writers they cannot afford
to
do
so.
The
Apocrypha constitutes an
important part of the historical and theological matrix
in
which the
New
Testament
came
to
birth, along
with,
of
course, material such as the
Dead
Sea Scrolls, philo and
JosephUS,
the
pseudepigrapha, the ear-
lier
strands
of
the rabbinic corpus, the vast Graeco-Roman corpus, and
more.
This
reality prompts many important questions that have a critical bearing
on
biblical interpreta-
tion,
and thus on theological structures.
To
what extent
do
the accounts
of
the Maccabean martyrs
pro-
vide a model
for
vicarious suffering?
How
do
linguistic usage and common beliefs help shape
Christological
titles
in
the
New
Testament?
To
what extent does the propensity
of
this literature (not
least
the
Apocrypha)
to
elevate
God
and emphasize his transcendence, sometimes at
the
expense
of
his
personal engagement, open
up
more
space
for
angels and other mediators?
To
what extent
do
the three
so-called
traditional acts
of
piety-almsgiving, fasting, and prayer-come
to
fruition
in
this literature,
and
what
is
their relation
to,
say, the Sermon
on
the Mount?
However
strongly evangelicals, as part
of
the larger Protestant tradition,
reject
the Apocrypha
as
Scripture, they can
no
more
dismiss this corpus
from
all
consideration than they can write off the world
and culture into which
the
Christ was born, and
in
which the
New
Testament was written.
