Canon of the Old Testament

The word canon as applied to the Scriptures has long had a special and

consecrated meaning. In its fullest comprehension it signifies the authoritative list

or closed number of the writings composed under Divine inspiration, and destined

for the well-being of the Church, using the latter word in the wide sense of the

theocratic society which began with God's revelation of Himself to the people of

Israel, and which finds its ripe development and completion in the Catholic

organism. The whole Biblical Canon therefore consists of the canons of the Old

and New Testaments. The Greek kanon means primarily a reed, or

measuring-rod: by a natural figure it was employed by ancient writers both

profane and religious to denote a rule or standard. We find the substantive first

applied to the Sacred Scriptures in the fourth century, by St. Athanasius; for its

derivatives, the Council of Laodicea of the same period speaks of the kanonika

biblia and Athanasius of the biblia kanonizomena. The latter phrase proves that

the passive sense of canon -- that of a regulated and defined collection -- was

already in use, and this has remained the prevailing connotation of the word in

ecclesiastical literature.

The terms protocanonical and deuterocanonical, of frequent usage among

Catholic theologians and exegetes, require a word of caution. They are not

felicitous, and it would be wrong to infer from them that the Church successively

possessed two distinct Biblical Canons. Only in a partial and restricted way may

we speak of a first and second Canon. Protocanonical (protos, "first") is a

conventional word denoting those sacred writings which have been always

received by Christendom without dispute. The protocanonical books of the Old

Testament correspond with those of the Bible of the Hebrews, and the Old

Testament as received by Protestants. The deuterocanonical (deuteros,

"second") are those whose Scriptural character was contested in some quarters,

but which long ago gained a secure footing in the Bible of the Catholic Church,

though those of the Old Testament are classed by Protestants as the

"Apocrypha". These consist of seven books: Tobias, Judith, Baruch,

Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, First and Second Machabees; also certain additions to

Esther and Daniel.

It should be noted that protocanonical and deuterocanonical are modern terms,

not having been used before the sixteenth century. As they are of cumbersome

length, the latter (being frequently used in this article) will be often found in the

abbreviated form deutero.

The scope of an article on the sacred Canon may now be seen to be properly

limited regarding the process of

what may be ascertained regarding the process of the collection of the

sacred writings into bodies or groups which from their very inception were

the objects of a greater or less degree of veneration;

the circumstances and manner in which these collections were definitely

canonized, or adjudged to have a uniquely Divine and authoritative quality;

the vicissitudes which certain compositions underwent in the opinions of

individuals and localities before their Scriptural character was universally

established.

It is thus seen that canonicity is a correlative of inspiration, being the extrinsic

dignity belonging to writings which have been officially declared as of sacred

origin and authority. It is antecedently very probable that according as a book

was written early or late it entered into a sacred collection and attained a

canonical standing. Hence the views of traditionalist and critic (not implying that

the traditionalist may not also be critical) on the Canon parallel, and are largely

influenced by, their respective hypotheses on the origin of its component

members.

A. THE CANON AMONG THE PALESTINIAN JEWS (PROTOCANONICAL

BOOKS)

It has already been intimated that there is a smaller, or incomplete, and larger, or

complete, Old Testament. Both of these were handed down by the Jews; the

former by the Palestinian, the latter by the Alexandrian, Hellenist, Jews.

The Jewish Bible of today is composed of three divisions, whose titles combined

from the current Hebrew name for the complete Scriptures of Judaism:

Hat-Torah, Nebiim, wa-Kéthubim, i.e. The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings.

This triplication is ancient; it is supposed as long-established in the Mishnah, the

Jewish code of unwritten sacred laws, reduced to writing, c. A.D. 200. A grouping

closely akin to it occurs in the New Testament in Christ's own words, Luke, xxiv,

44: "All things must needs be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and

in the prophets, and in the psalms concerning me". Going back to the prologue

of Ecclesiasticus, prefixed to it about 132 B.C., we find mentioned "the Law, and

the Prophets, and others that have followed them". The Torah, or Law, consists

of the five Mosaic books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

The Prophets were subdivided by the Jews into the Former Prophets [i.e. the

prophetico-historical books: Josue, Judges, Samuel, (I and II Kings), and Kings

(III and IV Kings)] and the Latter Prophets (Isaias, Jeremias, Ezechiel, and the

twelve minor Prophets, counted by the Hebrews as one book). The Writings,

more generally known by a title borrowed from the Greek Fathers, Hagiographa

(holy writings), embrace all the remaining books of the Hebrew Bible. Named in

the order in which they stand in the current Hebrew text, these are: Psalms,

Proverbs, Job, Canticle of Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther,

Daniel, Esdras, Nehemias, or II Esdras, Paralipomenon.

1. Traditional view of the Canon of the Palestinian Jews

Proto-Canon

In opposition to scholars of more recent views, conservatives do not admit that

the Prophets and the Hagiographa represent two successive stages in the

formation of the Palestinian Canon. According to this older school, the principle

which dictated the separation between the Prophets and the Hagiographa was

not of a chronological kind, but one found in the very nature of the respective

sacred compositions. That literature was grouped under the Ké-thubim, or

Hagiographa, which neither was the direct product of the prophetical order,

namely, that comprised in the Latter Prophets, nor contained the history of Israel

as interpreted by the same prophetic teachers--narratives classed as the Former

Prophets. The Book of Daniel was relegated to the Hagiographa as a work of the

prophetic gift indeed, but not of the permanent prophetic office. These same

conservative students of the Canon--now scarcely represented outside the

Church--maintain, for the reception of the documents composing these groups

into the sacred literature of the Israelites, dates which are in general much earlier

than those admitted by critics. They place the practical, if not formal, completion

of the Palestinian Canon in the era of Esdras (Ezra) and Nehemias, about the

middle of the fifth century B.C., while true to their adhesion to a Mosaic

authorship of the Pentateuch, they insist that the canonization of the five books

followed soon after their composition.

Since the traditionalists infer the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch from other

sources, they can rely for proof of an early collection of these books chiefly on

Deuteronomy, xxxi, 9-13, 24-26, where there is question of a books of the law,

delivered by Moses to the priests with the command to keep it in the ark and

read it to the people on the feast of Tabernacles. But the effort to identify this

book with the entire Pentateuch is not convincing to the opponents of Mosaic

authorship.

The Remainder of the Palestinian-Jewish Canon

Without being positive on the subject, the advocates of the older views regard it

as highly probable that several additions were made to the sacred repertory

between the canonization of the Mosaic Torah above described and the Exile

(598 B.C.). They cite especially Isaias, xxxiv, 16; II Paralipomenon, xxix, 30;

Proverbs, xxv, 1; Daniel, ix, 2. For the period following the Babylonian Exile the

conservative argument takes a more confident tone. This was an era of

construction, a turning-point in the history of Israel. The completion of the Jewish

Canon, by the addition of the Prophets and Hagiographa as bodies to the Law, is

attributed by conservatives to Esdras, the priest-scribe and religious leader of the

period, abetted by Nehemias, the civil governor; or at least to a school of scribes

founded by the former. (Cf. II Esdras, viii-x; II Machabees, ii, 13, in the Greek

original.) Far more arresting in favour of an Esdrine formulation of the Hebrew

Bible is a the much discussed passage from Josephus, "Contra Apionem", I, viii,

in which the Jewish historian, writing about A.D. 100, registers his conviction and

that of his coreligionists--a conviction presumably based on tradition--that the

Scriptures of the Palestinian Hebrews formed a closed and sacred collection

from the days of the Persian king, Artaxerxes Longiamanus (465-425 B.C.), a

contemporary of Esdras. Josephus is the earliest writer who numbers the books

of the Jewish Bible. In its present arrangement this contains 40; Josephus arrived

at 22 artificially, in order to match the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet,

by means of collocations and combinations borrowed in part from the Septuagint.

The conservative exegetes find a confirmatory argument in a statement of the

apocryphas Fourth Book of Esdras (xiv, 18-47), under whose legendary envelope

they see an historical truth, and a further one in a reference in the Baba Bathra

tract of the Babylonian Talmud to hagiographic activity on the part of "the men of

the Great Synagogue", and Esdras and Nehemias.

But the Catholic Scripturists who admit an Esdrine Canon are far from allowing

that Esdras and his colleagues intended to so close up the sacred library as to

bar any possible future accessions. The Spirit of God might and did breathe into

later writings, and the presence of the deuterocanonical books in the Church's

Canon at once forestalls and answers those Protestant theologians of a

preceding generation who claimed that Esdras was a Divine agent for an

inviolable fixing and sealing of the Old Testament To this extent at least, Catholic

writers on the subject dissent from the drift of the Josephus testimony. And while

there is what may be called a consensus of Catholic exegetes of the

conservative type on an Esdrine or quasi-Esdrine formulation of the canon so far

as the existing material permitted it, this agreement is not absolute; Kaulen and

Danko, favouring a later completion, are the notable exceptions among the

above-mentioned scholars.

2. Critical views of the formation of the Palestinian Canon

Its three constituent bodies, the Law, Prophets, and Hagiographa, represent a

growth and correspond to three periods more or less extended. The reason for

the isolation of the Hagiographa from the Prophets was therefore mainly

chronological. The only division marked off clearly by intrinsic features is the

legal element of the Old Testament, viz., the Pentateuch.

The Torah, or Law

Until the reign of King Josias, and the epoch-making discovery of "the book of the

law" in the Temple (621 B.C.), say the critical exegetes, there was in Israel no

written code of laws, or other work, universally acknowledged as of supreme and

Divine authority. This "book of the law" was practically identical with

Deuteronomy, and its recognition or canonization consisted in the solemn pact

entered into by Josias and the people of Juda, described in IV Kings, xxiii. That a

written sacred Torah was previously unknown among the Israelites, is

demonstrated by the negative evidence of the earlier prophets, by the absence of

any such factor from the religious reform undertaken by Ezechias (Hezekiah),

while it was the mainspring of that carried out by Josias, and lastly by the plain

surprise and consternation of the latter ruler at the finding of such a work. This

argument, in fact, is the pivot of the current system of Pentateuchal criticism,

and will be developed more at length in the article on the Pentateuch, as also the

thesis attacking the Mosaic authorship and promulgation of the latter as a whole.

The actual publication of the entire Mosaic code, according to the dominant

hypothesis, did not occur until the days of Esdras, and is narrated in chapters

viii-x of the second book bearing that name. In this connection must be

mentioned the argument from the Samaritan Pentateuch to establish that the

Esdrine Canon took in nothing beyond the Hexateuch, i.e. the Pentateuch plus

Josue. (See PENTATEUCH; SAMARITANS.) The Nebiim, or Prophets

There is no direct light upon the time or manner in which the second stratum of

the Hebrew Canon was finished. The creation of the above-mentioned Samaritan

Canon (c. 432 B.C.) may furnish a terminus a quo; perhaps a better one is the

date of the expiration of prophecy about the close of the fifth century before

Christ. For the other terminus the lowest possible date is that of the prologue to

Ecclesiasticus (c. 132 B.C.), which speaks of "the Law", and the Prophets, and

the others that have followed them". But compare Ecclesiasticus itself, chapters

xlvi-xlix, for an earlier one.

The Kéthubim, or Hagiographa Completes of the Jewish Canon

Critical opinion as to date ranged from c. 165 B.C. to the middle of the second

century of our era (Wildeboer). The Catholic scholars Jahn, Movers, Nickes,

Danko, Haneberg, Aicher, without sharing all the views of the advanced

exegetes, regard the Hebrew Hagiographa as not definitely settled till after Christ.

It is an incontestable fact that the sacredness of certain parts of the Palestinian

Bible (Esther, Ecclesiastes, Canticle of Canticles) was disputed by some rabbis

as late as the second century of the Christian Era (Mishna, Yadaim, III, 5;

Babylonian Talmud, Megilla, fol. 7). However differing as to dates, the critics are

assured that the distinction between the Hagiographa and the Prophetic Canon

was one essentially chronological. It was because the Prophets already formed a

sealed collection that Ruth, Lamentations, and Daniel, though naturally belonging

to it, could not gain entrance, but had to take their place with the last-formed

division, the Kéthubim.

3. The Protocanonical Books and the New Testament

The absence of any citations from Esther, Ecclesiastes, and Canticles may be

reasonably explained by their unsuitability for New Testament purposes, and is

further discounted by the non-citation of the two books of Esdras. Abdias,

Nahum, and Sophonias, while not directly honoured, are included in the

quotations from the other minor Prophets by virtue of the traditional unity of that

collection. On the other hand, such frequent terms as "the Scripture", the

"Scriptures", "the holy Scriptures", applied in the New Testament to the other

sacred writings, would lead us to believe that the latter already formed a definite

fixed collection; but, on the other, the reference in St. Luke to "the Law and the

Prophets and the Psalms", while demonstrating the fixity of the Torah and the

Prophets as sacred groups, does not warrant us in ascribing the same fixity to

the third division, the Palestinian-Jewish Hagiographa. If, as seems certain, the

exact content of the broader catalogue of the Old Testament Scriptures (that

comprising the deutero books) cannot be established from the New Testament, a

fortiori there is no reason to expect that it should reflect the precise extension of

the narrower and Judaistic Canon. We are sure, of course, that all the

Hagiographa were eventually, before the death of the last Apostle, divinely

committed to the Church as Holy Scriptures, but we known this as a truth of

faith, and by theological deduction, not from documentary evidence in the New

Testament The latter fact has a bearing against the Protestant claim that Jesus

approved and transmitted en bloc an already defined Bible of the Palestinian

Synagogue.

4. Authors and Standards of Canonicity among the Jews

Though the Old Testament reveals no formal notion of inspiration, the later Jews

at least must have possessed the idea (cf. II Timothy, iii, 16; II Peter, i, 21).

There is an instance of a Talmudic doctor distinguishing between a composition

"given by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit" and one supposed to be the product of

merely human wisdom. But as to our distinct concept of canonicity, it is a

modern idea, and even the Talmud gives no evidence of it. To characterize a book

which held no acknowledged place in the divine library, the rabbis spoke of it as

"defiling the hands", a curious technical expression due probably to the desire to

prevent any profane touching of the sacred roll. But though the formal idea of

canonicity was wanting among the Jews the fact existed. Regarding the sources

of canonicity among the Hebrew ancients, we are left to surmise an analogy.

There are both psychological and historical reasons against the supposition that

the Old Testament Canon grew spontaneously by a kind of instinctive public

recognition of inspired books. True, it is quite reasonable to assume that the

prophetic office in Israel carried its own credentials, which in a large measure

extended to its written compositions. But there were many pseduo-prophets in

the nation, and so some authority was necessary to draw the line between the

true and the false prophetical writings. And an ultimate tribunal was also needed

to set its seal upon the miscellaneous and in some cases mystifying literature

embraced in the Hagiographa. Jewish tradition, as illustrated by the already cited

Josephus, Baba Bathra, and pseudo-Esdras data, points to authority as the final

arbiter of what was Scriptural and what not. The so-called Council of Jamnia (c.

A.D. 90) has reasonably been taken as having terminated the disputes between

rival rabbinic schools concerning the canonicity of Canticles. So while the

intuitive sense and increasingly reverent consciousness of the faithful element of

Israel could, and presumably did, give a general impulse and direction to

authority, we must conclude that it was the word of official authority which

actually fixed the limits of the Hebrew Canon, and here, broadly speaking, the

advanced and conservative exegetes meet on common ground. However the case

may have been for the Prophets, the preponderance of evidence favours a late

period as that in which the Hagiographa were closed, a period when the general

body of Scribes dominated Judaism, sitting "in the chair of Moses", and alone

having the authority and prestige for such action. The term general body of

Scribes has been used advisedly; contemporary scholars gravely suspect, when

they do not entirely reject, the "Great Synagogue" of rabbinic tradition, and the

matter lay outside the jurisdiction of the Sanhedrim.

As a touchstone by which uncanonical and canonical works were discriminated,

an important influence was that of the Pentateuchal Law. This was always the

Canon par excellence of the Israelites. To the Jews of the Middle Ages the Torah

was the inner sanctuary, or Holy of Holies, while the Prophets were the Holy

Place, and the Kéthubim only the outer court of the Biblical temple, and this

medieval conception finds ample basis in the pre-eminence allowed to the Law

by the rabbis of the Talmudic age. Indeed, from Esdras downwards the Law, as

the oldest portion of the Canon, and the formal expression of God's commands,

received the highest reverence. The Cabbalists of the second century after Christ,

and later schools, regarded the other section of the Old Testament as merely the

expansion and interpretation of the Pentateuch. We may be sure, then, that the

chief test of canonicity, at least for the Hagiographa, was conformity with the

Canon par excellence, the Pentateuch. It is evident, in addition, that no book was

admitted which had not been composed in Hebrew, and did not possess the

antiquity and prestige of a classic age, or name at least. These criteria are

negative and exclusive rather than directive. The impulse of religious feeling or

liturgical usage must have been the prevailing positive factors in the decision. But

the negative tests were in part arbitrary, and an intuitive sense cannot give the

assurance of Divine certification. Only later was the infallible Voice to come, and

then it was to declare that the Canon of the Synagogue, though unadulterated

indeed, was incomplete.

B. THE CANON AMONG THE ALEXANDRIAN JEWS (DEUTEROCANONICAL

BOOKS)

The most striking difference between the Catholic and Protestant Bibles is the

presence in the former of a number of writings which are wanting in the latter and

also in the Hebrew Bible, which became the Old Testament of Protestantism.

These number seven books: Tobias (Tobit), Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus,

Baruch, I and II Machabees, and three documents added to protocanonical

books, viz., the supplement to Esther, from x, 4, to the end, the Canticle of the

Three Youths (Song of the Three Children) in Daniel, iii, and the stories of

Susanna and the Elders and Bel and the Dragon, forming the closing chapters of

the Catholic version of that book. Of these works, Tobias and Judith were written

originally in Aramaic, perhaps in Hebrew; Baruch and I Machabees in Hebrew,

while Wisdom and II Machabees were certainly composed in Greek. The

probabilities favour Hebrew as the original language of the addition to Esther, and

Greek for the enlargements of Daniel.

The ancient Greek Old Testament known as the Septuagint was the vehicle

which conveyed these additional Scriptures into the Catholic Church. The

Septuagint version was the Bible of the Greek-speaking, or Hellenist, Jews,

whose intellectual and literary centre was Alexandria (see SEPTUAGINT). The

oldest extant copies date from the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, and were

therefore made by Christian hands; nevertheless scholars generally admit that

these faithfully represent the Old Testament as it was current among the

Hellenist or Alexandrian Jews in the age immediately preceding Christ. These

venerable manuscripts of the Septuagint vary somewhat in their content outside

the Palestinian Canon, showing that in Alexandrian-Jewish circles the number of

admissible extra books was not sharply determined either by tradition or by

authority. However, aside from the absence of Machabees from the Codex

Vaticanus (the very oldest copy of the Greek Old Testament), all the entire

manuscripts contain all the deutero writings; where the manuscript Septuagints

differ from one another, with the exception noted, it is in a certain excess above

the deuterocanonical books. It is a significant fact that in all these Alexandrian

Bibles the traditional Hebrew order is broken up by the interspersion of the

additional literature among the other books, outside the law, thus asserting for

the extra writings a substantial equality of rank and privilege.

It is pertinent to ask the motives which impelled the Hellenist Jews to thus,

virtually at least, canonize this considerable section of literature, some of it very

recent, and depart so radically from the Palestinian tradition. Some would have it

that not the Alexandrian, but the Palestinian, Jews departed from the Biblical

tradition. The Catholic writers Nickes, Movers, Danko, and more recently Kaulen

and Mullen, have advocated the view that originally the Palestinian Canon must

have included all the deuterocanonicals, and so stood down to the time of the

Apostles (Kaulen, c. 100 B.C.), when, moved by the fact that the Septuagint had

become the Old Testament of the Church, it was put under ban by the Jerusalem

Scribes, who were actuated moreover (thus especially Kaulen) by hostility to the

Hellenistic largeness of spirit and Greek composition of our deuterocanonical

books. These exegetes place much reliance on St. Justin Martyr's statement

that the Jews had mutilated Holy Writ, a statement that rests on no positive

evidence. They adduce the fact that certain deutero books were quoted with

veneration, and even in a few cases as Scriptures, by Palestinian or Babylonian

doctors; but the private utterances of a few rabbis cannot outweigh the consistent

Hebrew tradition of the canon, attested by Josephus--although he himself was

inclined to Hellenism--and even by the Alexandrian-Jewish author of IV Esdras.

We are therefore forced to admit that the leaders of Alexandrian Judaism showed

a notable independence of Jerusalem tradition and authority in permitting the

sacred boundaries of the Canon, which certainly had been fixed for the Prophets,

to be broken by the insertion of an enlarged Daniel and the Epistle of Baruch. On

the assumption that the limits of the Palestinian Hagiographa remained undefined

until a relatively late date, there was less bold innovation in the addition of the

other books, but the wiping out of the lines of the triple division reveals that the

Hellenists were ready to extend the Hebrew Canon, if not establish a new official

one of their own.

On their human side these innovations are to be accounted for by the free spirit

of the Hellenist Jews. Under the influence of Greek thought they had conceived a

broader view of Divine inspiration than that of their Palestinian brethren, and

refused to restrict the literary manifestations of the Holy Ghost to a certain

terminus of time and the Hebrew form of language. The Book of Wisdom,

emphatically Hellenist in character, presents to us Divine wisdom as flowing on

from generation to generation and making holy souls and prophets (vii, 27, in the

Greek). Philo, a typical Alexandrian-Jewish thinker, has even an exaggerated

notion of the diffusion of inspiration (Quis rerum divinarum hæres, 52; ed. Lips.,

iii, 57; De migratione Abrahæ, 11,299; ed. Lips. ii, 334). But even Philo, while

indicating acquaintance with the deutero literature, nowhere cites it in his

voluminous writings. True, he does not employ several books of the Hebrew

Canon; but there is a natural presumption that if he had regarded the additional

works as being quite on the same plane as the others, he would not have failed

to quote so stimulating and congenial a production as the Book of Wisdom.

Moreover, as has been pointed out by several authorities, the independent spirit

of the Hellenists could not have gone so far as to setup a different official Canon

from that of Jerusalem, without having left historical traces of such a rupture. So,

from the available data we may justly infer that, while the deuterocanonicals were

admitted as sacred by the Alexandrian Jews, they possessed a lower degree of

sanctity and authority than the longer accepted books, i.e., the Palestinian

Hagiographa and the Prophets, themselves inferior to the Law.

II. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

The most explicit definition of the Catholic Canon is that given by the Council of

Trent, Session IV, 1546. For the Old Testament its catalogue reads as follows:

The five books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,

Deuteronomy), Josue, Judges, Ruth, the four books of Kings, two

of Paralipomenon, the first and second of Esdras (which latter is

called Nehemias), Tobias, Judith, Esther, Job, the Davidic Psalter

(in number one hundred and fifty Psalms), Proverbs, Ecclesiastes,

the Canticle of Canticles, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Isaias,

Jeremias, with Baruch, Ezechiel, Daniel, the twelve minor Prophets

(Osee, Joel, Amos, Abdias, Jonas, Micheas, Nahum, Habacue,

Sophonias, Aggeus, Zacharias, Malachias), two books of

Machabees, the first and second.

The order of books copies that of the Council of Florence, 1442, and in its

general plan is that of the Septuagint. The divergence of titles from those found in

the Protestant versions is due to the fact that the official Latin Vulgate retained

the forms of the Septuagint.

A. THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON (INCLUDING THE DEUTEROS) IN THE

NEW TESTAMENT

The Tridentine decrees from which the above list is extracted was the first

infallible and effectually promulgated pronouncement on the Canon, addressed to

the Church Universal. Being dogmatic in its purport, it implies that the Apostles

bequeathed the same Canon to the Church, as a part of the depositum fedei. But

this was not done by way of any formal decision; we should search the pages of

the New Testament in vain for any trace of such action. The larger Canon of the

Old Testament passed through the Apostles' hands to the church tacitly, by way

of their usage and whole attitude toward its components; an attitude which, for

most of the sacred writings of the Old Testament, reveals itself in the New, and

for the rest, must have exhibited itself in oral utterances, or at least in tacit

approval of the special reverence of the faithful. Reasoning backward from the

status in which we find the deutero books in the earliest ages of post-Apostolic

Christianity, we rightly affirm that such a status points of Apostolic sanction,

which in turn must have rested on revelation either by Christ or the Holy Spirit.

For the deuterocanonicals at least, we needs must have recourse to this

legitimate prescriptive argument, owing to the complexity and inadequacy of the

New Testament data.

All the books of the Hebrew Old Testament are cited in the New except those

which have been aptly called the Antilegomena of the Old Testament, viz.,

Esther, Ecclesiastes, and Canticles; moreover Esdras and Nehemias are not

employed. The admitted absence of any explicit citation of the deutero writings

does not therefore prove that they were regarded as inferior to the

above-mentioned works in the eyes of New Testament personages and authors.

The deutero literature was in general unsuited to their purposes, and some

consideration should be given to the fact that even at its Alexandrian home it was

not quoted by Jewish writers, as we saw in the case of Philo. The negative

argument drawn from the non-citation of the deuterocanonicals in the New

Testament is especially minimized by the indirect use made of them by the

same Testament. This takes the form of allusions and reminiscences, and shows

unquestionably that the Apostles and Evangelists were acquainted with the

Alexandrian increment, regarded its books as at least respectable sources, and

wrote more or less under its influence. A comparison of Hebrews, xi and II

Machabees, vi and vii reveals unmistakable references in the former to the

heroism of the martyrs glorified in the latter. There are close affinities of thought,

and in some cases also of language, between I Peter, i, 6, 7, and Wisdom, iii, 5,

6; Hebrews, i, 3, and Wisdom, vii, 26, 27; I Corinthians, x, 9, 10, and Judith, viii,

24-25; I Corinthians, vi, 13, and Ecclesiasticus, xxxvi, 20.

Yet the force of the direct and indirect employment of Old Testament writings by

the New is slightly impaired by the disconcerting truth that at least one of the

New Testament authors, St. Jude, quotes explicitly from the "Book of Henoch",

long universally recognized as apocryphal, see verse 14, while in verse 9 he

borrows from another apocryphal narrative, the "Assumption of Moses". The New

Testament quotations from the Old are in general characterized by a freedom and

elasticity regarding manner and source which further ten to diminish their weight

as proofs of canonicity. But so far as concerns the great majority of the

Palestinian Hagiographa--a fortiori, the Pentateuch and Prophets--whatever want

of conclusiveness there may be in the New Testament, evidence of their

canonical standing is abundantly supplemented from Jewish sources alone, in

the series of witnesses beginning with the Mishnah and running back through

Josephus and Philo to the translation of the above books for the Hellenist

Greeks. But for the deuterocanonical literature, only the last testimony speaks

as a Jewish confirmation. However, there are signs that the Greek version was

not deemed by its readers as a closed Bible of definite sacredness in all its

parts, but that its somewhat variable contents shaded off in the eyes of the

Hellenists from the eminently sacred Law down to works of questionable divinity,

such as III Machabees.

This factor should be considered in weighing a certain argument. A large number

of Catholic authorities see a canonization of the deuteros in a supposed

wholesale adoption and approval, by the Apostles, of the Greek, and therefore

larger, Old Testament The argument is not without a certain force; the New

Testament undoubtedly shows a preference for the Septuagint; out of the 350

texts from the Old Testament, 300 favour the language of the Greek version

rather than that of the Hebrew. But there are considerations which bid us hesitate

to admit an Apostolic adoption of the Septuagint en bloc. As remarked above,

there are cogent reasons for believing that it was not a fixed quantity at the time.

The existing oldest representative manuscripts are not entirely identical in the

books they contain. Moreover, it should be remembered that at the beginning of

our era, and for some time later, complete sets of any such voluminous

collection as the Septuagint in manuscript would be extremely rare; the version

must have been current in separate books or groups of books, a condition

favourable to a certain variability of compass. So neither a fluctuating Septuagint

nor an inexplicit New Testament conveys to us the exact extension of the

pre-Christian Bible transmitted by the Apostles to the Primitive Church. It is more

tenable to conclude to a selective process under the guidance of the Holy Ghost,

and a process completed so late in Apostolic times that the New Testament fails

to reflect its mature result regarding either the number or note of sanctity of the

extra-Palestinian books admitted. To historically learn the Apostolic Canon of the

Old Testament we must interrogate less sacred but later documents, expressing

more explicitly the belief of the first ages of Christianity.

B. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST

THREE CENTURIES

The sub-Apostolic writings of Clement, Polycarp, the author of the Epistle of

Barnabas, of the pseudo-Clementine homilies, and the "Shepherd" of Hermas,

contain implicit quotations from or allusions to all the deuterocanonicals except

Baruch (which anciently was often united with Jeremias) and I Machabess and

the additions to David. No unfavourable argument can be drawn from the loose,

implicit character of these citations, since these Apostolic Fathers quote the

protocanonical Scriptures in precisely the same manner.

Coming down to the next age, that of the apologists, we find Baruch cited by

Athenagoras as a prophet. St. Justin Martyr is the first to note that the Church

has a set of Old Testament Scriptures different from the Jews', and also the

earliest to intimate the principle proclaimed by later writers, namely, the

self-sufficiency of the Church in establishing the Canon; its independence of the

Synagogue in this respect. The full realization of this truth came slowly, at least

in the Orient, where there are indications that in certain quarters the spell of

Palestinian-Jewish tradition was not fully cast off for some time. St. Melito,

Bishop of Sardis (c. 170), first drew up a list of the canonical books of the Old

Testament While maintaining the familiar arrangement of the Septuagint, he says

that he verified his catalogue by inquiry among Jews; Jewry by that time had

everywhere discarded the Alexandrian books, and Melito's Canon consists

exclusively of the protocanonicals minus Esther. It should be noticed, however,

that the document to which this catalogue was prefixed is capable of being

understood as having an anti-Jewish polemical purpose, in which case Melito's

restricted canon is explicable on another ground. St. Irenæus, always a witness

of the first rank, on account of his broad acquaintance with ecclesiastical

tradition, vouches that Baruch was deemed on the same footing as Jeremias,

and that the narratives of Susanna and Bel and the Dragon were ascribed to

Daniel. The Alexandrian tradition is represented by the weighty authority of

Origen. Influenced, doubtless, by the Alexandrian-Jewish usage of

acknowledging in practice the extra writings as sacred while theoretically holding

to the narrower Canon of Palestine, his catalogue of the Old Testament

Scriptures contains only the protocanonical books, though it follows the order of

the Septuagint. Nevertheless Origen employs all the deuterocanonicals as Divine

Scriptures, and in his letter of Julius Africanus defends the sacredness of Tobias,

Judith, and the fragments of Daniel, at the same time implicitly asserting the

autonomy of the Church in fixing the Canon (see references in Cornely). In his

Hexaplar edition of the Old Testament all the deuteros find a place. The

sixth-century Biblical manuscript known as the "Codex Claromontanus" contains

a catalogue to which both Harnack and Zahn assign an Alexandrian origin, about

contemporary with Origen. At any rate it dates from the period under examination

and comprises all the deuterocanonical books, with IV Machabees besides. St.

Hippolytus (d. 236) may fairly be considered as representing the primitive Roman

tradition. He comments on the Susanna chapter, often quotes Wisdom as the

work of Solomon, and employs as Sacred Scripture Baruch and the Machabees.

For the West African Church the larger canon has two strong witnesses in

Tertullian and St. Cyprian. All the deuteros except Tobias, Judith, and the

addition to Esther, are Biblically used in the works of these Fathers. (With regard

to the employment of apocryphal writings in this age see under APOCRYPHA.)

C. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT DURING THE FOURTH, AND

FIRST HALF OF THE FIFTH, CENTURY

In this period the position of the deuterocanonical literature is no longer as

secure as in the primitive age. The doubts which arose should be attributed

largely to a reaction against the apocryphal or pseudo-Biblical writings with which

the East especially had been flooded by heretical and other writers. Negatively,

the situation became possible through the absence of any Apostolic or

ecclesiastical definition of the Canon. The definite and inalterable determination

of the sacred sources, like that of all Catholic doctrines, was in the Divine

economy left to gradually work itself out under the stimulus of questions and

opposition. Alexandria, with its elastic Scriptures, had from the beginning been a

congenial field for apocryphal literature, and St. Athanasius, the vigilant pastor of

that flock, to protect it against the pernicious influence, drew up a catalogue of

books with the values to be attached to each. First, the strict canon and

authoritative source of truth is the Jewish Old Testament, Esther excepted.

Besides, there are certain books which the Fathers had appointed to be read to

catechumens for edification and instruction; these are the Wisdom of Solomon,

the Wisdom of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Esther, Judith, Tobias, the Didache, or

Doctrine of the Apostles, the Shepherd of Hermas. All others are apocrypha and

the inventions of heretics (Festal Epistle for 367). Following the precedent of

Origen and the Alexandrian tradition, the saintly doctor recognized no other

formal canon of the Old Testament than the Hebrew one; but also, faithful to the

same tradition, he practically admitted the deutero books to a Scriptural dignity,

as is evident from his general usage. At Jerusalem there was a renascence,

perhaps a survival, of Jewish ideas, the tendency there being distinctly

unfavourable to the deuteros. St. Cyril of that see, while vindicating for the Church

the right to fix the Canon, places them among the apocrypha and forbids all

books to be read privately which are not read in the churches. In Antioch and

Syria the attitude was more favourable. St. Epiphanius shows hesitation about

the rank of the deuteros; he esteemed them, but they had not the same place as

the Hebrew books in his regard. The historian Eusebius attests the widespread

doubts in his time; he classes them as antilegomena, or disputed writings, and,

like Athanasius, places them in a class intermediate between the books received

by all and the apocrypha. The 59th (or 60th) canon of the provincial Council of

Laodicea (the authenticity of which however is contested) gives a catalogue of

the Scriptures entirely in accord with the ideas of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. On the

other hand, the Oriental versions and Greek manuscripts of the period are more

liberal; the extant ones have all the deuterocanonicals and, in some cases,

certain apocrypha.

The influence of Origen's and Athanasius's restricted canon naturally spread to

the West. St. Hilary of Poitiers and Rufinus followed their footsteps, excluding

the deuteros from canonical rank in theory, but admitting them in practice. The

latter styles them "ecclesiastical" books, but in authority unequal to the other

Scriptures. St. Jerome cast his weighty suffrage on the side unfavourable to the

disputed books. In appreciating his attitude we must remember that Jerome lived

long in Palestine, in an environment where everything outside the Jewish Canon

was suspect, and that, moreover, he had an excessive veneration for the Hebrew

text, the Hebraica veritas as he called it. In his famous "Prologus Galeatus", or

Preface to his translation of Samuel and Kings, he declares that everything not

Hebrew should be classed with the apocrypha, and explicitly says that Wisdom,

Ecclesiasticus, Tobias, and Judith are not on the Canon. These books, he adds,

are read in the churches for the edification of the people, and not for the

confirmation of revealed doctrine. An analysis of Jerome's expressions on the

deuterocanonicals, in various letters and prefaces, yields the following results:

first, he strongly doubted their inspiration; secondly, the fact that he occasionally

quotes them, and translated some of them as a concession to ecclesiastical

tradition, is an involuntary testimony on his part to the high standing these

writings enjoyed in the Church at large, and to the strength of the practical

tradition which prescribed their readings in public worship. Obviously, the inferior

rank to which the deuteros were relegated by authorities like Origen, Athanasius,

and Jerome, was due to too rigid a conception of canonicity, one demanding that

a book, to be entitled to this supreme dignity, must be received by all, must have

the sanction of Jewish antiquity, and must moreover be adapted not only to

edification, but also to the "confirmation of the doctrine of the Church", to borrow

Jerome's phrase.

But while eminent scholars and theorists were thus depreciating the additional

writings, the official attitude of the Latin Church, always favourable to them, kept

the majestic tenor of its way. Two documents of capital importance in the history

of the canon constitute the first formal utterance of papal authority on the

subject. The first is the so-called "Decretal of Gelasius", de recipiendis et non

recipiendis libris, the essential part of which is now generally attributed to a

synod convoked by Pope Damasus in the year 382. The other is the Canon of

Innocent I, sent in 405 to a Gallican bishop in answer to an inquiry. Both contain

all the deuterocanonicals, without any distinction, and are identical with the

catalogue of Trent. The African Church, always a staunch supporter of the

contested books, found itself in entire accord with Rome on this question. Its

ancient version, the Vetus Latina (less correctly the Itala), had admitted all the

Old Testament Scriptures. St. Augustine seems to theoretically recognize

degrees of inspiration; in practice he employs protos and deuteros without any

discrimination whatsoever. Moreover in his "De Doctrinâ Christianâ" he

enumerates the components of the complete Old Testament. The Synod of Hippo

(393) and the three of Carthage (393, 397, and 419), in which, doubtless,

Augustine was the leading spirit, found it necessary to deal explicitly with the

question of the Canon, and drew up identical lists from which no sacred books

are excluded. These councils base their canon on tradition and liturgical usage.

For the Spanish Church valuable testimony is found in the work of the heretic

Priscillian, "Liber de Fide et Apocryphis"; it supposes a sharp line existing

between canonical and uncanonical works, and that the Canon takes in all the

deuteros.

D. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE

FIFTH TO THE CLOSE OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY

This period exhibits a curious exchange of opinions between the West and the

East, while ecclesiastical usage remained unchanged, at least in the Latin

Church. During this intermediate age the use of St. Jerome's new version of the

Old Testament (the Vulgate) became widespread in the Occident. With its text

went Jerome's prefaces disparaging the deuterocanonicals, and under the

influence of his authority the West began to distrust these and to show the first

symptoms of a current hostile to their canonicity. On the other hand, the Oriental

Church imported a Western authority which had canonized the disputed books,

viz., the decree of Carthage, and from this time there is an increasing tendency

among the Greeks to place the deuteros on the same level with the others--a

tendency, however, due more to forgetfulness of the old distinction than to

deference to the Council of Carthage.

E. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT DURING THE MIDDLE AGES

The Greek Church

The result of this tendency among the Greeks was that about the beginning of

the twelfth century they possessed a canon identical with that of the Latins,

except that it took in the apocryphal III Machabees. That all the deuteros were

liturgically recognized in the Greek Church at the era of the schism in the ninth

century, is indicated by the "Syntagma Canonum" of Photius.

The Latin Church

In the Latin Church, all through the Middle Ages we find evidence of hesitation

about the character of the deuterocanonicals. There is a current friendly to them,

another one distinctly unfavourable to their authority and sacredness, while

wavering between the two are a number of writers whose veneration for these

books is tempered by some perplexity as to their exact standing, and among

those we note St. Thomas Aquinas. Few are found to unequivocally acknowledge

their canonicity. The prevailing attitude of Western medieval authors is

substantially that of the Greek Fathers. The chief cause of this phenomenon in

the West is to be sought in the influence, direct and indirect, of St. Jerome's

depreciating Prologus. The compilatory "Glossa Ordinaria" was widely read and

highly esteemed as a treasury of sacred learning during the Middle Ages; it

embodied the prefaces in which the Doctor of Bethlehem had written in terms

derogatory to the deuteros, and thus perpetuated and diffused his unfriendly

opinion. And yet these doubts must be regarded as more or less academic. The

countless manuscript copies of the Vulgate produced by these ages, with a

slight, probably accidental, exception, uniformly embrace the complete Old

Testament Ecclesiastical usage and Roman tradition held firmly to the canonical

equality of all parts of the Old Testament There is no lack of evidence that during

this long period the deuteros were read in the churches of Western Christendom.

As to Roman authority, the catalogue of Innocent I appears in the collection of

ecclesiastical canons sent by Pope Adrian I to Charlemagne, and adopted in 802

as the law of the Church in the Frankish Empire; Nicholas I, writing in 865 to the

bishops of France, appeals to the same decree of Innocent as the ground on

which all the sacred books are to be received.

F. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE GENERAL COUNCILS

The Council of Florence (1442)

In 1442, during the life, and with the approval, of this Council, Eugenius IV issued

several Bulls, or decrees, with a view to restore the Oriental schismatic bodies to

communion with Rome, and according to the common teaching of theologians

these documents are infallible states of doctrine. The "Decretum pro Jacobitis"

contains a complete list of the books received by the Church as inspired, but

omits, perhaps advisedly, the terms canon and canonical. The Council of

Florence therefore taught the inspiration of all the Scriptures, but did not formally

pass on their canonicity.

The Council of Trent's Definition of the Canon (1546)

It was the exigencies of controversy that first led Luther to draw a sharp line

between the books of the Hebrew Canon and the Alexandrian writings. In his

disputation with Eck at Leipzig, in 1519, when his opponent urged the well-known

text from II Machabees in proof of the doctrine of purgatory, Luther replied that

the passage had no binding authority since the books was outside the Canon. In

the first edition of Luther's Bible, 1534, the deuteros were relegated, as

apocrypha, to a separate place between the two Testaments. To meet this

radical departure of the Protestants, and as well define clearly the inspired

sources from which the Catholic Faith draws its defence, the Council of Trent

among its first acts solemnly declared as "sacred and canonical" all the books of

the Old and New Testaments "with all their parts as they have been used to be

read in the churches, and as found in the ancient vulgate edition". During the

deliberations of the Council there never was any real question as to the reception

of all the traditional Scripture. Neither--and this is remarkable--in the proceedings

is there manifest any serious doubt of the canonicity of the disputed writings. In

the mind of the Tridentine Fathers they had been virtually canonized, by the

same decree of Florence, and the same Fathers felt especially bound by the

action of the preceding ecumenical synod. The Council of Trent did not enter into

an examination of the fluctuations in the history of the Canon. Neither did it

trouble itself about questions of authorship or character of contents. True to the

practical genius of the Latin Church, it based its decision on immemorial tradition

as manifested in the decrees of previous councils and popes, and liturgical

reading, relying on traditional teaching and usage to determine a question of

tradition. The Tridentine catalogue has been given above.

The Vatican Council (1870)

The great constructive Synod of Trent had put the sacredness and canonicity of

the whole traditional Bible forever beyond the permissibility of doubt on the part of

Catholics. By implication it had defined that Bible's plenary inspiration also. The

Vatican Council took occasion of a recent error on inspiration to remove any

lingering shadow of uncertainty on this head; it formally ratified the action of Trent

and explicitly defined the Divine inspiration of all the books with their parts.

III. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT OUTSIDE THE CHURCH

A. AMONG THE EASTERN ORTHODOX

The Greek Orthodox Church preserved its ancient Canon in practice as well as

theory until recent times, when, under the dominant influence of its Russian

offshoot, it is shifting its attitude towards the deuterocanonical Scriptures. The

rejection of these books by the Russian theologians and authorities is a lapse

which began early in the eighteenth century. The Monophysites, Nestorians,

Jacobites, Armenians, and Copts, while concerning themselves little with the

Canon, admit the complete catalogue and several apocrypha besides.

B. AMONG PROTESTANTS

The Protestant Churches have continued to exclude the deutero writings from

their canons, classifying them as "Apocrypha". Presbyterians and Calvinists in

general, especially since the Westminster Synod of 1648, have been the most

uncompromising enemies of any recognition, and owing to their influence the

British and Foreign Bible Society decided in 1826 to refuse to distribute Bibles

containing the Apocrypha. Since that time the publication of the

deuterocanonicals as an appendix to Protestant Bibles has almost entirely

ceased in English-speaking countries. The books still supply lessons for the

liturgy of the Church of England, but the number has been lessened by the

hostile agitation. There is an Apocrypha appendix to the British Revised Version,

in a separate volume. The deuteros are still appended to the German Bibles

printed under the auspices of the orthodox Lutherans.

GEORGE J. REID

Transcribed by Ernie Stefanik

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume III

Nihil Obstat, November 1, 1908. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor

Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

The Catholic Encyclopedia: NewAdvent.org