Why is the Apocrypha not in the Bible?
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
What is the Apocrypha, and why is it not in our Bibles?
By the time of Christ, the canon of the Old Testament was firmly established. Jesus referred to it as the Law, Prophets, and Psalms (Luke 24:44). The Law were the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Prophets were the books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel (1 and 2), Kings (1 and 2), Chronicles (1 and 2), Ezra, Nehemiah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. The “Psalms” were the books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, and Esther. New Testament writers, inspired by God themselves, acknowledged the inspiration of these Old Testament books by authoritatively alluding to them or quoting them directly. This is very helpful because, essentially, the Holy Spirit Himself placed His stamp of approval on the canon of the Old Testament. This alone is sufficient evidence to dismiss any other additions to the canon of the Old Testament. Nevertheless, some additional testimony from non-inspired sources is helpful to underscore the point.
First-century scribes arranged the Old Testament into twenty-two books. (They are grouped differently as thirty-nine books in the English Bible.) In his work, Against Apion, Flavius Josephus (37-100 A.D.) acknowledged this arrangement:
For we [Jews] have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another (as Greeks have), but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine; and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of three thousand years; but as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets, who were after Moses, wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life (Book 1.8, Trans. William Whiston).
Josephus then says, “It is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time” (Book 1.8). He had in mind the history recorded in books associated with the Old Testament that today are known as the Apocrypha. He did not believe them to be divinely inspired because of the lack of prophets to corroborate them. What is the Apocrypha?
In 1957, a committee associated with the Revised Standard Version published a translation of the Apocrypha. They listed the following books in their table of contents: 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Additions to Esther, The Wisdom of Solomon (Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach), Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah, The Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, Prayer of Manasseh, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees. In the preface to the translation, they state:
The Apocrypha here translated are those books and portions of books which appear in the Latin Vulgate, either as part of the Old Testament or as an appendix, but are not in the Hebrew Bible. With the exception of 2 Esdras these books appear in the Greek version of the Old Testament which is known as the Septuagint, but they are not included in the Hebrew Canon of Holy Scripture (The Apocrypha: Revised Standard Version, Thomas Nelson and Sons, iv.).
The Roman Catholic Church, however, took it upon themselves to canonize these books in the Council of Trent (1546 A.D.) because they were included in the Vulgate (a Latin translation of the Bible), and the Catholic Church popularly considered them as scripture. However, these books never had canonical status in the Hebrew Bible. The translator of the Vulgate, Jerome (342-420 A.D.), said that they were not to be considered part of the canon of the Old Testament. He maintained that there were twenty-two books in the Old Testament canon and he listed them in a letter known today as the Prologus Galeatus. He said, “what is not found in our list must be placed amongst the Apocryphal writings,” and they “are not in the canon” (trans. Philip Schaff, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.vii.iii.iv.html). The Catholic Church, however, decided to include them as part of the canon solely on the basis of popular use. What constitutes scripture, however, is not what is popular, but what is inspired of God, and these books were never so regarded by those of the times in which they were written. Neither Jesus, the apostles, the prophets, Josephus, or Jerome saw them as authoritative and inspired of God.