Alexander McClure, The Translators Revived, pp. 185-186: Quote:
The sixth and last company of King James's Bible-translators met at Cambridge. To this company was assigned all the Apocryphal books, which, in those times, were more read and accounted of than now, though by no means placed on a level with the canonical books of Scripture.*
*The reasons assigned for not admitting the apocryphal books into the canon or list of inspired Scriptures are briefly the following. 1. Not one of them is in the Hebrew language, which was alone used by the inspired historians and poets of tile Old Testament. 2. Not one of the writers lays any claim to inspiration, t. These books were never acknowledged as sacred Scriptures bv the lewish Church, and therefore were never semctioned by our Lord. 4. They were not allowed a place among the sacred books, during the first four centuries of tile Christian Church. 5. They contain fabulous statements which contradict not only the canonical Scriptures, but themselves; as when, in tile two Books of Maccabees, Antiochus Epiphanes is made to die three different deaths in as many different places. 6. It inculcates doctrines at variance with the Bible, such as prayers for the dead and sinless perfection. 7. It teaches immoral practices, such as lying, suicide, assassination and magical incantation. For these and other reasons, the Apocryphal books, which are all in Greek, except one which is extant only in Latin, are valuable only as ancient documents, illustrative of the mmmers, language, opinions and history of the East.)
Still this party of the Translators had as much to do as either of the others, in the repeated revision of the version of the canonical books.
| Edward F. Hills, The King James Version Defended, pp. 95-98: Quote:
(d) The Latin Old Testament (Vulgate)—The Apocrypha
The earliest Latin version of the Old Testament was a translation of the Septuagint. Scholars think that this translating was probably done at Carthage during the 2nd century. Many other such translations were made during the years that followed. In the fourth century Augustine reported that there was "an infinite variety of Latin translations,"[7] and Jerome that there were as many texts of this version as there were manuscripts.[8] Jerome at first attempted to revise the Latin Old Testament, but in AD 390 he undertook the labor of producing a new translation directly from the Hebrew. This version, which Jerome completed in AD 405, later became known as the Latin Vulgate and is the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church, having been so proclaimed at the Council of Trent (AD 1546).
In his prologue to his translation of the Old Testament Jerome gave an account of the canonical Scriptures of the Hebrew Bible and enumerated them exactly. Then he added: "This prologue to the Scriptures may suit as a helmed preface to all the books which we have rendered from Hebrew into Latin, that we may know that whatever book is beyond these must be reckoned among the Apocrypha."[9] Thus Jerome was one of the first to use the term Apocrypha (non-canonical) to designate certain books which were included in the Septuagint and the Latin Old Testament versions but had never been part of the Hebrew Scriptures. The names of these apocryphal books are as follows: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, First and Second Maccabees, certain additions to the books of Esther and Daniel, First and Second Esdras, and the Prayer of Manasses. These books were written by Jewish authors between BC 200 and AD 100 Some of them were written in Hebrew or Aramaic and then translated into Greek. Others were written in Greek originally.
The Roman Catholic Church rejects First and Second Esdras and the Prayer of Manasses. Hence in the printed Latin Vulgate they are placed after the New Testament as an appendix and in small type. The other apocryphal books are mentioned by name in the decrees of the Council of Trent, where they are declared sacred and canonical and a solemn curse is pronounced against all those who will not receive them as such. Accordingly, in the printed Latin Vulgate they are interspersed without distinction among the other books of the Latin Old Testament.
Protestants have always opposed this attempt of the Roman Catholic Church to canonize the Apocrypha for several reasons. In the first place, it is contrary to the example of Christ and His Apostles. Never in the New Testament is any passage from the Apocrypha quoted as Scripture or referred to as such. This is admitted by all students of this subject, including present-day scholars such as B. M. Metzger (AD 1957).[10] This fact is decisive for all those who acknowledge the divine authority and infallible inspiration of the New Testament writers. And all the more is this so if it be true, as Metzger and many other scholars have contended, that Paul was familiar with Wisdom, James with Ecclesiasticus, John with Tobit, and the author of Hebrews (who may have been Paul) with 2 Maccabees.[11] For if these Apostles knew these apocryphal books this well and still refrained from quoting or mentioning them as Scripture, then it is doubly certain that they did not accord these books a place in the Old Testament canon. According to C. C. Torrey (AD 1945), however, only in the Epistle to the Hebrews is there clear evidence of a literary allusion to the Apocrypha.[12]
A second reason why the books of the Apocrypha cannot be regarded as canonical is that the Jews, the divinely appointed guardians of the Old Testament Scriptures, never esteemed them such. This fact is freely admitted by contemporary scholars. According to Torrey, the Jews not only rejected the Apocrypha, but after the overthrow of Jerusalem in AD 70, they went so far as to "destroy, systematically and thoroughly, the Semitic originals of all extra-canonical literature," including the Apocrypha. "The feeling of the leaders at that time," Torrey tells us, "is echoed in a later Palestinian writing (Midrash Qoheleth, 12,12): 'Whosoever brings together in his house more than twenty-four books (the canonical scriptures) brings confusion.'"[13] And additional evidence that the Jews did not recognize the Apocrypha as canonical is supplied by the Talmudic tract Baba Bathra (2nd century) and by the famous Jewish historian Josephus (circa AD 93) in his treatise Against Apion. Neither of these sources make any mention of the Apocrypha in the lists which they give of the Old Testament books. For, as Torrey observes, the Jews had but one standard, acknowledged everywhere. Only such books as were believed to have been composed in either Hebrew or Aramaic before the end of the Persian period were received into the Old Testament canon.[14]
There is reason to believe, however, that the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria were not so strict as the Palestinian rabbis about the duty of shunning apocryphal books. Although these Alexandrian Jews did not recognize the Apocrypha as Scripture in the highest sense, nevertheless they read these books in Greek translation and included them in their Septuagint. And it was in this expanded form that the Septuagint was transmitted to the early gentile Christians. It is not surprising therefore that those early Church Fathers especially who were ignorant of Hebrew would be misled into placing these apocryphal books on the same plane with the other books of the Septuagint, regarding them all as Scripture. Schuerer (AD 1908) mentions Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Cyprian, and others as having made this mistake.[15] And later investigators, such as Torrey,[16] Metzger,[17] and Brockington (AD 1961),[18] have pointed out another factor which may have led numerous Christians into this error of regarding the Apocrypha as part of the Old Testament. This was the practice which Christians had, and are believed to have initiated, of writing their literature in codex (book) form rather than on rolls. A codex of the Septuagint would contain the Apocrypha bound together indiscriminately with the canonical Old Testament books, and this would induce many gentile Christians to put them all on the same level. Such at least appears to have been the popular tendency in the early and medieval Church.
But whenever early Christians set themselves seriously to consider what books belonged to the Old Testament and what did not, the answer was always in favor of the Hebrew Old Testament.[19] This was the case with Melito (? AD 172), Julius Africanus (AD 160-240), Origen (AD 182-251), Eusebius (AD 275-340), Athanasius (AD 293-373) and many later Fathers of the Greek Church. In the Latin Church greater favor was shown toward the Apocrypha, but even here, as we have seen, the Apocrypha were rejected by Jerome (AD 340-420). And in his preface to the books of Solomon Jerome further defined his position. "As the Church reads the books of Judith and Tobit and Maccabees but does not receive them among the canonical Scriptures, so also it reads Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus for the edification of the people, not for the authoritative confirmation of doctrine."[20] Augustine (AD 354-430) at first defended the canonicity of the Apocrypha but later came to a position not much different from Jerome's. There should be a distinction, he came to feel, between the books of the Hebrew canon and the "deutero-canonical" books accepted and read by the churches. Pope Gregory the Great (AD 540-604) also adopted Jerome's position in regard to the Apocrypha, and so did Cardinal Ximenes and Cardinal Cajetan at the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.[21] Hence, the decree of the Council of Trent canonizing the Apocrypha is contrary to the informed conviction of the early and medieval Church. And this is the third reason why Protestants reject it.
But although all Protestants rejected the Apocrypha as canonical Old Testament Scripture, there was still considerable disagreement among them as to what to do with these controversial books. Luther rejected 1 and 2 Esdras, and placed the other apocryphal books in an appendix at the close of the Old Testament, prefacing it with the statement: "Apocrypha—that is, books which are not regarded as equal to the holy Scriptures, and yet are profitable and good to read."[22] The early English Bibles, including finally the King James Version, placed the Apocrypha in the same location, and in addition the Church of England retained the custom of reading from the Apocrypha in its public worship services during certain seasons of the year. In opposition to this practice Puritans and Presbyterians agitated for the complete removal of the Apocrypha from the Bible. In AD 1825 the British and Foreign Bible Society agreed to this, and since this time the Apocrypha has been eliminated almost entirely from English Bibles (except pulpit Bibles).
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Andrew Myers
Husband of Jessica, Father of Jackson, Katie and Samuel
Member, Presbyterian Reformed Church of Northern Virginia
Warrenton, VA USA
Editor, The Matthew Poole Project
"Let your Morning Thoughts, and your last Evening Thoughts, be what shall become of you to all Eternity." -- Matthew Poole
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