The Apocrypha. Why don't protestants use it, and how authentic is it?

[seg4527]

I've been wondering why protestants and Jews don't use the Apocrypha, why catholics do, and what scholars have to say about it?

I've done some googling, and basically have just found catholic websites saying that protestants and Jews don't use it because they it disagrees with their theology, and they don't want to use it because of that, and protestant websites saying that the catholics made it up and it's a fraud.

So what are some good scholarly websites about it, or what are some people's personal opinions on it?


Thanks


edit: turned Septuiqant to Apocrypha

[blackcat77]

1. It's a part of the original canon of the bible

But the protestants removed it after the reformation because some of the stuff in it conflicted with the doctrines they were advocating.

[seg4527]

2. i'm not sure if that's entirely true, though.

the jews don't use it. i'm in a ancient israel prophecy class at the U of Minnesota, and we haven't even talked about it yet.

if it was part of the orginal bible, wouldn't it make quite a bit of sense that the jewish bible would have it?

and if what you said is true, why do the jews not use it?

[derby378]

3. This site could serve as a starting point for research

http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ110.HTM

[seg4527]

7. thanks, that was a great site.

[Freedom_from_Chains]

4. I'm not sure I understand your question

The Septuagint by definition is simply the Greek translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew. The word refers to the legend of the seventy, actually 73, which translated it and is sometimes referred to as LXX.

Unless you are referring to the Apocrypha, which the Protestants generally rejected, although some of the early versions of the KJV still used some of them.

[seg4527]

5. sorry, that's what i mean.

like i said, i've only been interested in it recently. i've known it existed for years. it's funny, 18 years going to protestant churches, and a semester in a class about the bible, and i don't even know what it's called. :-P

[Freedom_from_Chains]

9. That’s ok, when one first starts studying this stuff

It can be real confusing. I have been studying it for some years and it is still confusing.

At any rate, I am from the old school of thought so with this kind of stuff I usually like to obtain a good copy of the book from the bookstore. Although it seems to me they don’t carry it as much as they use too. I think it might be because the Catholics have even shied away from using it as much as they use too. I usually like to have a copy from one of the scholarly presses such as Oxford that will have a good introduction and usually commentaries throughout. Not to mention the fact that when the word Apocrypha is used it doesn’t necessarily mean the same collection of books in all versions.

The Apocrypha is an outgrowth of the Gnostic gospels, so you might want to find a good book on that subject while you are at it. You might also want to consider getting a bible dictionary too. I currently use Erdmann’s but I think there are better ones available, that is if you have the money to spend.

As for sources on the net, I for the most part have not been real impressed with some of the resources I have found so you just have to search around. Here are a couple I have found useful in the past, but I have lost most of my good links over the years.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com
http://www.treefort.org/~rgrogan/web/ce.htm

[tjwmason]

15. The Authorised Version (alias K.J.V.) has it

The A.V. was prepared for use in the Church of England, the C.ofE. does use the 'apocrypha' but less so than Catholics and Orthodox; the books were not printed in the standard order, but had the 'apocrypha' put separately between the Old and New Testaments.

The first use of the A.V. without these books was simply to save money (fewer pages...); and as the protestant churches (especially in America) started to get obsessive about the A.V. they obviously didn't want them in.

[SerpentX]

6. The Septuagint was a Greek translation of Hebrew texts.

It was the basis for the old testament portion of the Latin Vulgate, the only bible in the west for over a thousand years. After the Reformation, Protestants went back to the ancient sources and created their own translations, most based on texts maintained by European Jews (the Masoretic Texts). There was a certain amount of anti-Roman sentiment involved, but the fact is that the Septuagint was never a very good translation to begin with. Not only were there discrepancies with the texts maintained by the scribes in Judea, there were inconsistancies between versions of the Septuagint maintained in the various geographical locations it was used.

The reason why Jews don't use it today is that there is simply no need for a translation. Better Hebrew texts are available and the language has survived thanks to rigid rabbinic traditions.

Its a complicated topic and I'm neither a scholar or a historian, but I think thats the jist of it. To fully grasp the subject really requires some knowledge of the Diaspora (the scattering of the Jews after the Babylonian Conquest) and the reasons why the Septuagint came into existence in the first place, which is way out of my depth.

[SerpentX]

8. Okay, that's actually a bit simpler.

The fact is that up until the Twentieth Century, those books were included in protestant bibles. However, they were never considered canonical by protestants, and contained some inconsistancies that even fundamentalists could not resolve. So they've quietly disappeared over the years as biblical infallibility has become the favorite club with which to bash non-fundamentalists.

As for the Jews, what christians call the Apocrypha is simply part of a larger body of non-canonical texts written during the Second Temple era (roughly 350 BCE through 70 CE). While they may be of historic interest, they're probably either theologically redundant or wildly heterodox in nature (see The Book of Enoch for example). However, I'm not Jewish, so you should definitely take this with a grain of salt.

On Edit: Got the dates wrong.

[T_i_B]

10. Well I'm a Methodist, and I use the Apocrypha!

I think it's because it's not part of the Jewish scripture, although the early Christian writers were certainly aware of them.

Personally, I use a Catholic "Jerusalem" Bible with Apocrypha at home and I have to say that whilst I wouldn't give the Apocrypha the same authority as the rest of the Old Testament I do find those books very useful and instructive.

In case anyone is interested here are The Apocrypha!

http://wesley.nnu.edu/biblical_studies/noncanon/apocrypha.htm

[dryan]

11. If I remember....

my Church History....The Apocrypha's basis could not be determined to go back to either the magisterium -- that means out of the beliefs of the people before the Bible was codified or from the Patrinistic Fathers ....Jerome, etc. When the scholars came together to codify the King James version they used these two methods as a litmus test of what should or should not be in the Canon of the new English Bible.

[Brianboru]

13. The early Church Fathers all used the deuterocanonical books

http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1998/9807frs.asp

[Brianboru]

12. Good site for research

During the Reformation, for largely doctrinal reasons, Protestants removed seven books from the Old Testament (1 and 2 Maccabees, Sirach, Wisdom, Baruch, Tobit, and Judith) and parts of two others (Daniel and Esther), even though these books had been regarded as canonical since the beginning of Church history.

http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0409fea4.asp

[Igel]

14. Well ... here's my 2 cents.

The way I understood it, once upon a time, was that the Apocrypha were not blessed by Rabbinic/Jewish. Their authorship was suspect.

The Catholic Church, from time immemorial, accepted them as part of the canon, by default; but they were for "inspiration and edification", not for the setting of doctrine. These are rather different matters. In any event, the Catholic Church was big on tradition. The Septuagint was a quirky translation, in any event, and some NT quotes from it are problematic.

Protestants came along, and not all Protestants rejected the Apocrypha. I suspect the Anglicans didn't chuck them, at least not for a long time, but this is no more than a suspicion based at least in part on some English quasi-liturgical music I like that uses Apocryphal texts. "Sola Biblia" occurred when an acknowledgement of rabbinic tradition, bolstered by the NT "entrusted to the Jews" statement, was burgeoning, and the Hebraic studies were lurking in the wings. Rabbis rejected the apocrypha as part of the Torah, so no good support for them was seen in the OT canon. They're clearly pre-Christian, so there's no claim they're from the apostles. So they were demoted even further by many Protestant sects when suitable-for-doctrine texts quibbled with the formerly suitable-for-inspiration texts.

The rest is Catholic/Protestant wrangling.

[progressoid]

16. I have a vague inkling that Lutherans still reference it

or at least my Mother-in-law does. FWIW.

[Odin2005]

17. I grew up in a Lutheran household,

and our bible's never had the Apocrypha.

[TechBear_Seattle]

18. You can thank St. Jerome

Way back in very early Christianity, a monk named Jerome created the first "official" translation of Christian scriptures in to Latin. Previously, Greek was the most common language, drawing on the Septuagent (a Greek translation and compilation of various Jewish scriptures) and the fact that Paul and other early Christian writers wrote in Greek.

In compiling his Bible, Jerome separated out parts of Daniel, Esther and other books found in the Septuagent but not in the Hebrew scriptures and collected them at the end. He also pulled out entire books found in the Septuagent which were not widely considered "sacred scriptures" by the Jews, such as the Wisdom of Ben Sirach, Esdras (Ezra) 3 & 4, Tobit, Judith, and a few others. This appendix was eventually adopted as deuterocanon (from Latin, roughly meaning "not quite official.") One of the Great Council of the early church declared that these books were worthy of being included as Scripture and should be read as part of Christian study, but were nonetheless unsuited for use in establishing doctrine. This is the position still held by the many Orthodox sects, by the Anglican Communion and, to a lesser extent, by the Catholic church (the notion of Purgatory, for example, is derived from a passage in Tobit.)

The Protestant reformation was ultimately based on the idea of disposing of intermediate layers between the individual and God, that a person needed only the Word of God and divine guidance to discover The Truth, The Whole Truth and nothing but The Truth (as expressed in Martin Luther's belief in sola scriptura.) The question then came up: what was Scripture? Since the Deuterocanon was not to be used for doctrine or theology, it did not fit the Protestant definition of Scripture and so was ejected from the Protestant canon.