Why apocryphal books

I do not accept the Apocrypha as part of the inspired Word of God. The first five reasons given in the previous paragraph provide good historical reasons for rejecting the Apocrypha as part of Holy Scripture: these books were not quoted directly by New Testament writers, and no general church council endorsed them until A.

Nevertheless, I do not think one is required to see false doctrine in these books. It is really a matter of how one interprets these passages.

For example, does 2 Maccabees —46 teach prayer for the dead? Certainly not as a regular habit. Judas Maccabeus and his Jewish soldiers discovered that some of their comrades had died in battle because they had taken from their slain enemies what was forbidden to them.

They had an animal sacrifice offered on behalf of their dead fellow-soldiers and prayed that God would not hold this sin against them. They did this because of their belief in a future resurrection.

It is their belief in the resurrection that is commended in this passage. Referring to the original Hebrew in translation was highly against common practice at the time and even discouraged. In the translation process, St. Jerome doubted that the apocryphal books were divinely inspired.

Jerome said they were not books of the canon but rather books of the church. He believed they could be helpful to people, but he clearly stated his belief that they were not divinely authoritative.

His assessment of the Apocrypha was ignored. Despite doubts, the Council of Rome affirmed the apocryphal books as canonical. The Geneva Bible followed this example in The King James Bible also printed the Apocrypha, but it was removed in Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Doctrine and Covenants , 4—5. Further Reading Jared W. Printable PDF YouTube Link. Tags Apocrypha. The fourth or fifth century Greek manuscripts, in which the Apocrypha appears, have no consistency with the number of books or their order.

It has been argued that the canon of the Alexandrian Jews was larger than the present Hebrew Old Testament. However, there is no evidence that the Jews in Alexandria, Egypt had a wider canon than the Jews living in Israel. Philo of Alexandria, who lived in the first century A. He acknowledged the Jews believed in the divine authority of the Hebrew canon. However, he gave no indication that there was a wider canon used by the Jews living in Egypt.

From Philo we find that the canon in Alexandria, Egypt was the same as in Palestine. He knows the threefold division of the Old Testament as ascribes divine inspiration to many of the books. In addition, he says nothing about the Apocrypha. Consequently there is no evidence anywhere that the Alexandrian Jews accepted the Apocrypha as Holy Scripture.

It must be remembered that it was not the Jews in Egypt but rather some of the Greek-speaking Christians who gave some measure of authoritative status to certain of these books translated with the Septuagint plus.

To the Jews, these books were never considered divinely inspired Scripture. In the early years of the church it drew up various lists of the books it considered to be Old Testament Scripture. The books of the Apocrypha do not appear on any list until late in the fourth century.

This demonstrates the acceptance of these writings was not immediate. The earliest existing list of the Old Testament canon comes from a man named Melito, a bishop of Sardis. In approximately A. When I came to the east and reached the place where these things were preached and done, and learned accurately the books of the Old Testament, I set down the facts and sent them to you.

This list of Melito is highly instructive. He includes all the books of the present canon except Esther. The reference to the four books of the kingdom would be 1,2 Samuel and 1,2 Kings. Ezra was the common way to refer to Ezra-Nehemiah. Wisdom was merely a fuller description of the Book of Proverbs - not the Apocryphal book by that name. Among ancient writers Proverbs was often called Wisdom. While including all of the books of the present Old Testament canon except Esther Melito nowhere mentions any of the books of the Apocrypha.

While a few of the early leaders of the church accepted some of the books of Apocrypha as Scripture, most of the great church leaders did not-Athanasius, Origen, and Jerome, to name a few. Many great church leaders spoke out against the Apocrypha. Those who do cite the Apocrypha as Scripture were few in number. It is also worth noting that none of the church fathers that quoted the Apocrypha as Scripture knew any Hebrew. In this letter he affirmed all the books of the present Old Testament canon except Esther as well as all the books of the present New Testament canon.

He also mentioned some of the books of the Apocrypha. Of those he said. This is another ancient and powerful testimony that the books of the Apocrypha were not considered to be Holy Scripture. The Church Fathers do not restrict themselves to the books that now make up the Apocrypha.

Irenaeus cited the Book of Wisdom as being divinely inspired. Therefore appeal to the church fathers cannot settle the matter, seeing that they give conflicting evidence. The fact that some of the books from the Apocrypha are found in early Greek manuscripts of the Bible is not decisive.

These manuscripts also contain other written works that are neither part of the Scripture nor part of the Apocrypha - everyone rejects them as having any divine authority. For example, 3 and 4 Maccabees and the Psalms of Solomon are found in these early Greek manuscripts along with the Greek Old Testament and the Apocrypha. If someone points to the inclusion of the Apocrypha among these early manuscripts as proof of their divine authority, then what do they do with these other works?

Should they also be added to the Old Testament? In the three most important Greek manuscripts the order and the contents of the books are different. One of the main problems with accepting the Apocrypha as Scripture is that it is not a well-defined unit. If the books in the Septuagint plus should be made part of the Old Testament then why are these three books omitted?

First and Second Esdras are found in most Latin manuscripts of Scripture. In addition, they are placed with the Apocrypha when the full King James Version is printed.

However the Roman Catholic Church does not call these three books Scripture. Sometimes these three books are printed as an appendix to Roman Catholic Bibles after the New Testament. Sometimes they are omitted entirely. In addition, not every church Father, which accepted the Apocrypha as canonical, had exactly the same list of books in mind.

This adds to the problem as to the exact content of the Apocrypha. The fact that the councils of Hippo and Carthage accepted the canonical status of the Apocrypha is not decisive.

First, they were not larger more representative councils. In addition, these councils had no qualified Hebrew scholar in attendance. Basically the Apocrypha was canonized at these councils because of the influence of one person - Saint Augustine.

It is often argued that the great scholar, St. Augustine, accepted the books of the Apocrypha as authoritative. However, Augustine seemed to have changed his mind about the authority of the Apocrypha. At one point he implied that the Apocrypha did not have the same status as Holy Scripture City of God At best his testimony is ambiguous. Moreover Augustine's testimony, while important, is certainly not the last word on the matter.

Augustine mistakenly accepted the miraculous account of the origin of the Septuagint. While this was a popular thing to do at his time, no one today takes the story seriously. Jerome rejected the Apocrypha as Holy Scripture in the strongest of terms. He refused to place it in his translation of the Old Testament.

It was only after the death of Jerome that the Apocrypha was placed in the Vulgate - the official translation of the Roman Catholic Church. His expert testimony was rejected. The fact that stories from the Apocrypha were depicted in early Christian art only shows that they were considered valuable in some sense by believers. However the divine authority of any work is not determined by whether it is included or missing in art collections by Christians. Even the Roman Catholic Church made a distinction between the Apocrypha and the other books of the Bible prior to the Protestant Reformation.

An example of this is Cardinal Cajetan. He is the man who opposed Martin Luther at Augsburg. His commentary, however, did not include the Apocrypha. Cardinal Ximenes made a distinction between the Apocrypha and the Old Testament in his work called the Complutensian Polyglot Thus there was no unanimity of opinion among Roman Catholic scholars that these books should be considered Scripture.

Consequently, before the Protestant Reformation these books were not considered canonical by all of the church authorities. While councils at Hippo and Carthage listed the Apocrypha as canonical, this was not the stated view of the entire church. As we have seen there were Roman Catholic works at the time of the Protestant Reformation that did not include the Apocrypha with the Old Testament. It is only since the Council of Trent that the Apocrypha has had an authoritative status.

The first official council of the Roman Catholic Church to ratify these books was at the Council of Trent in There is no official record of the acceptance of the writings as authoritative Scripture before this time. In addition, the decision at Trent has many problems.

Rather than accepting the entire fourteen or fifteen books of the Septuagint plus as Holy Scripture they rejected First and Second Esdras which they call Third and Fourth Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh.

It is interesting to note that Second Esdras, or Fourth Esdras in Roman Catholic reckoning, contains a strong objection against prayers for the dead - one of the important doctrines practiced by the Roman Catholic Church at that time. Second Esdras also limits the Old Testament canon to twenty-four books. This of course, would exclude the Apocrypha.

It must also be noted that at the Council of Trent there seems to have been no Hebrew scholars and only a few good Greek scholars.

Most scholars believe that the people who lived at the place near the Dead Sea, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, were the Essenes. Although they were rivals of mainstream Judaism they accepted the same books as Holy Scripture.

While it is true that the books of the Apocrypha were found among the scrolls left by this group, they not the only non-canonical books that were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.