See also my post Book of Judith: God Saves Through a Woman and Susanna: Legendary Woman on the Family. See also The Apocrypha: Reading Between the Testaments.
At the outset let it be stated that some will read this post and wish I had not written it. They will scratch their heads and perhaps wring their hands in frustration. Yet frustration at misinformation (perpetuated often for polemical reasons) and candor moves me to share a few things for the sake of truth. The above quote appears on the masthead of Alexander Campbell's Millennial Harbinger and did so for years. It is a direct quote from the book known as 1 Esdras 4.35 in the King James Version, "therefore great is the truth, and stronger than all things." Interestingly AC never identifies it as such but I have no doubt he knew where it was from.
Using a bad argument ultimately undermines truth. Using it often does more harm than good, branding one as ignorant or as dishonest. I was referred to a Protestant apologist's speech on YouTube and did my own head shaking. Not because I necessarily agree with Roman Catholicism (and I don't) but because the information was distorted and incomplete at best. We as Christians are Children of Truth. As 1 Esdras correctly declares "Great is the truth and stronger than all things" (NRSV). A myth can be a great legendary and edifying story like the Gilgamesh Epic or a myth can be nothing short of the perpetuation of prejudicial lies when some one is more interested in winning an argument than in the pursuit of Truth. Sometimes truth, real Truth, is more complex than what debaters imagine it to be. Here are a few major Protestant Apocryphal Myths ...
1) That these are Roman Catholic books. It is almost to obvious to state but sometimes we must. These books were not written by an Roman Catholic all were written by Jews prior to the advent of Christianity (the possible exception to this is 2 Esdras). Click on the Apocrypha Time Line above to see how the dates of Apocryphal books overlap with the last books of the canonical Hebrew Bible. It should also be understood that the early Church did not add these books so much as inherit them.
2) The Apocrypha was not written in Hebrew. There is simply no basis for this charge. In fact all of the Apocryphal books were written either in Hebrew or Aramaic except Wisdom of Solomon and 2 Maccabees. And language does not prove or disprove anything here. Both Ezra and Daniel have Aramaic rather than Hebrew portions (with Daniel significant portions). Sirach for example since the 1890s has been found in Hebrew in Cairo, among the Dead Sea Scrolls and at Masada. Indeed Sirach 51.13-30, a poem to wisdom, is included in the Psalm Scroll. Its presence at Masada indicates that it was widely known and valued among Palestinian Jews in the time of Jesus. Tobit and the Epistle of Jeremiah are also among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
3) Jesus and NT writers do not ever refer to or quote from the Apocryphal books. Now assuming this is true (its not) this is a dangerous sword that cuts both ways. Does Jesus or the NT ever quote from the Song of Songs? Obadiah? Ecclesiastes? Zephaniah? Nahum? Ezra? Esther? Does the absence of a quotation from these writings imply that they were not valued by Jesus or the NT writers? But there are few NT scholars today that would argue the NT never refers to any of the Apocryphal books. Indeed the apologist I watched quoted Roger Beckwith as saying:
"the undeniable truth is that the New Testament, by contrast with the early Fathers, and by contrast with its own practice in relation to the books of the Hebrew Bible, never actually quotes from, or ascribes authority to any of the Apocrypha."
Though not identified as such by our apologist this quote comes from The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church page 387. Note that Beckwith does state something significant about the Church Fathers in the above quote. What our apologist did not tell his readers is that Beckwith greatly nuances this statement. He says,
"As regards the earliest Christians, we saw evidence in the New Testament of a knowledge, by different writers, of Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus {Sirach}, 2 Maccabees, the Assumption of Moses and 1 Enoch, and in other Christian literature up to the end of the first century evidence of a knowledge, not only of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, but also of Tobit and Judith" (p. 407)
Most scholarship today sees Paul (for example) often drawing on this literature in the same way he often does the traditional Hebrew Bible through allusions, vocabulary, and arguments. Paul's description of the gentile world in Romans for example sounds an awful lot like Wisdom and his description of the "panoplia of God" in Ephesians 6 sounds a lot like Wisdom 5.
But Beckwith complicates matters even further because he suggests at the very beginning of his work that the word "canon" is used in at least two senses. First the Apocryphal books were regarded as "canonical" because they "were generally read in the Church for purposes of edification, and in this sense the canon would always include more or less the Apocrypha" (p. 2). He suggests that "from the other point of view, the canon, the narrow one, consisting simply of the books of the Jewish Bible which scholars like Melito ... Athanasius ... Jerome took the trouble to distinguish from the rest as alone acknowledged ..."(ibid). So Beckwith actually suggests that canon is messier than what the debaters want to admit. Later Beckwith states "Whether or not we should regard the books just listed {the Apocrypha} as Scripture, there is no doubt that we should value them highly ... Some of the Apocrypha, moreover, have further claims to our attention. It is no accident that the church has traditionally given them some place in its lectionary" (p. 343).
When one reads Beckwith one comes to wonder if the debater also did or simply found a nice quote that had no context. The situation seems, upon actually reading Beckwith, is more muddy and complex. And you know what ... it is!
4) The Protestant apologist stated that "Philo and Josephus rejected the Apocrypha." I'm not a Philo expert but most of his writings focus on the Torah. I know a little more about Josephus. Josephus does give us a list of works that look a lot like the Hebrew Bible today. Yet that is not the end of the story. In his telling of the Antiquities of the Jews he draws on material that is found only in Apocryphal historical works. In telling the story of Ezra and Nehemiah Josephus draws on 1 Esdras and not Ezra-Nehemiah in Protestant Bibles and in telling the story of Esther the historian draws what are known as Additions B through E of the Greek Esther. So it seems that Josephus did in fact accept these parts of the Apocrypha.
The fact of the matter is, whether we like it or not, the limits of the canon of the "Old Testament" in the early church was not clearly delineated. As the very conservative church historian, Everett Ferguson, notes even such scholars as Athanasius where full of ambiguity on the issue ...
"Athansius's intermediate approach was typical of many. He listed as 'included in the canon' the books accepted by the Jews (except that he too omits Esther), but commended other books as useful for those who 'wish to be instructed in the word of true religion': Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Esther, Judith, and Tobit. In practice he quoted these books, especially the Wisdom of Solomon, without distinction from the canonical books." (Church History, Vol 1: From Christ to Pre-Reformation, p. 113)
Ferguson's statement that "No common agreement was reached on which of these books to count as canonical, and indeed it was not until the age of the Reformation ..."
Now my point in this has not been to be an apologist for Catholicism but to show that some arguments simply do not hold water. The Apocryphal books are not dangerous books and that is why Luther himself went through the trouble (and anyone who has translated an entire book from one language to another knows it is indeed trouble!) to translate all the Apocryphal books into German and kept them in his Bible. The Apocryphal books do not even teach Roman Catholic doctrine (even purgatory!) ...
When debating, if you choose to do it, don't use cheesy arguments. If the matters under debate are really worthy of debate recognize that the real truth of the matter just may be far more complex than the niceties of a syllogism! Remember "great is the truth and stronger than all things." Even if that is from the Apocrypha ... it is still true!
Blessings,
Bobby Valentine
P.S. Quick handy dandy resources: David deSilva's Introducing the Apocrypha (Baker Academic) is the best book available as a general introduction to these writings. Charlesworth's article "Old Testament Apocrypha" in Anchor Bible Dictionary vol 1, pp 292-294 is like a cliff notes version of current info. For the stout of heart Albert Sundberg's "The Protestant Old Testament Canon: Should it be Re-Examined?" in CBQ 28 (2001): 194-203 is worth digesting just to have a realistic look at the issue. Finally S. Meurer (ed.) The Apocrypha in Ecumenical Perspective is a most helpful resource.
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