What's with these "extra" books in the Bible

Deuterocanonical Books - (The Apocrypha)

During Jesus' time there were two Old Testament's in use. There was the Palestinian canon (written in Hebrew) , which is identical to the Protestant Old Testament, and there was the Alexandrian canon (written in Greek) also known as the Septuagint, which is identical to the Catholic Old Testament. Comparisons of the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls indicates that an accurate "eyewitness" exists to the Septuagint. Jesus quotes the Septuagint in 80% of his Old Testament references. The Septuagint was the Scripture of Jesus' time. It has the order of Bible books that we find in modern Bibles, the Palestinian canon has a completely different order. The NIV Bible use the Septuagint's order of books, yet it leaves out some of the books (Deuterocanonical books) that we find there.

The Alexandrian and Palestinian canons were almost identical except the Septuagint contained the seven Deuterocanonical books, which Protestants call the Apocrypha. ("Canon" means the list of books) The Apostles and the early Church including the early Church fathers used the Septuagint. The African Synod's of Hippo (393 AD) and Carthage (397 AD) also approved it.

Evangelicals favour the Palestinian canon because it is the one that the Jews ratified in 90 AD at the Jewish (non-Christian) Council of Jamnia. Catholics feel that this Jewish council was not binding by God because God's authority was passed over to Christians at the Pentecost (Acts 2:1) sixty years earlier. Some people question if an actual council occurred at Jamnia but that does not change the premise. The Jews decided reviewed their canon books after the resurrection of our Lord, and those decisions are not at all binding on Christians.

I got an email that said:

Plus Jerome never included them [apocrypha] in the canon of the Vulgate, but kept them separate from the inspired scripture. The Catholic Church never officially declared this books inspired until 1546. The Church may have considered them in the canon, but never Officially declared them as scripture.

Here is a snip from Columbia University (Secular institution)

"As to the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament, Jerome made hasty translations of Tobit, Judith, and the additions to Daniel and Esther; the rest he did not touch, hence the Vulgate includes Old Latin versions of them." http://www.answers.com/topic/vulgate

The Vulgate *always* included the Deuteros. Four were translated by Jerome and the rest of them used the old Latin. In other words the Church *always* accepted them.

The Deuterocanonical books were not added to the Bible at the council of Trent like many opponents to them say. Christians always considered them part of the Bible. The Latin Vulgate which was written in 400 A.D. by Jerome, included the Deuterocanonical books. Their formal acceptance happened at Trent as a response to the Reform. This was the first time the Deuterocanonical books were called into serious question. Here's some heady academic stuff from my friend Art Sippo describing the ins and outs of the Catholic relationship to the Deuterocanonical books.

I've heard some Evangelicals say the Deuterocanonical books don't belong in the Bible because they are unbiblical. To me that is a circular argument. Martin Luther removed them from his version, (he also wanted to pull the Books of James and Revelation) Now, based on this new canon, Evangelicals are saying the Deuteros are unbiblical. If the Deuteros were in the Bible from the beginning, which is what history reveals, then I would say they are biblical by their very definition.

What those who hold that they are unbiblical are really saying is that they have rejected them because they Deuteros support the Catholic position on Purgatory and praying for the souls there.

I asked Dr. Art Sippo to explain a bit of the history of the Septuagint which is the Greek Old Testament that Jesus quotes from most often.

There is no single text corpus called The Septuagint (LXX). There are actually several families and the vast majority of them are Christian in origin well after the 1st Century. We know that they [Deuterocanonical books] were in virtually all of the Christian collections of the time. That is the point that counts. When Christians collected the OT in the first 3 centuries AD, they INVARIABLY used the LXX and included some if not all of the deuteros and sometimes included other works that we consider apocryphal. We know this because we have several codices (i.e., bound books) from the early Church which appear to have been created by Imperial edict right after the Council of Nicea in 325. We also have lists of books from the 2nd Century (e.g., the Muratorian Fragment) and the testimony of several Fathers to that effect starting with Justin Martyr in150 AD. The Fathers also extensively quoted from the Deuteros from the late 1st Century onwards. Until the mid 4th Century, no one seriously challenged the long OT Canon.

I went to a lecture by Peter Flint, the author of the only existing English translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls (published in 1999, www.deadseascrolls.org). His book on the scrolls was declared book of the year 2003 by the Institute of Biblical Archeology in Washington DC.  He made it plain that the Deuterocanonical Books (Apocrypha) were included with the other books of the Old Testament in the scrolls. They were found together. This helps to confirm that the Deuterocanonical books.

Professor Flint, who is not a Catholic made a powerful statement. He said "you cannot have a Bible without the Church." When I asked him about it during the book signing after the lecture he said to me "Without the Church you have a bunch of books. With the Church you have a Bible." (Lecture Feb. 13, 2004, Ottawa, Canada)

To me as a convert to the Catholicism, this is a very important statement from a scholar like Mr. Flint because of its implications. Particularly because he is not a Catholic.

If the Bible requires the Church for its Canon (list of Books to include), I would think that the decision process to decide on the Canon would have to be "inspired" by God. I think the same kind of Grace would be required to decide on what books to include in the Bible Canon as was required to write the books in the first place. To me there are 4 possibilities.

1. God did not inspire the decision on the Canon.
2. God gave the Jews that Grace in the 2^nd century A.D. when they chose the Masoretic Canon (after they rejected his son, the Messiah)
3. God gave the Reformation that Grace in 1546
4. God give the Catholic Church that Grace at Carthage in 397 A.D.

I can't imagine God being OK with there being two Canons floating around so I would rule out #1. I can't imagine God waiting 1550 years until the Reformation to inspire a decision on the Canon. So I also would rule out #3. That leaves me with the option that either the Jews were given that Grace in the 2^nd century A.D. or the Catholic Church was given that Grace at Carthage. I have difficulty believing God would give more grace to the Jews after they rejected his Son the Messiah than they would give the early Christians who used the Deuteros. So I believe that Grace was given to the early Christians who used the Dueteros and ratified their inclusion in the Canon in 397 A.D. at Carthage.

So that's the Catholic reasoning for including those books. I've pulled a tremendous amount inspiration from them. I was particularly struck by books of Tobit, Suzanne, Wisdom, and Judith. If you haven't read them, please give them a spin and judge for yourself. Martin Luther was totally into Tobit. It formed part of Luther's Bible.

Timeline of the decisions on the books of the Bible (Canon)

AD 51-125: The New Testament books are written.

AD 140:  Marcion, a businessman in Rome, taught that there were two Gods:
Yahweh, the cruel God of the Old Testament, and Abba, the kind father of the New Testament. Marcion eliminated the Old Testament as Scriptures and, since he was anti-Semitic, kept from the New Testament only 10 letters of Paul and 2/3 of Luke's gospel (he deleted references to Jesus's Jewishness). Marcion's "New Testament", the first to be compiled, forced the mainstream Church to decide on a core canon: the four Gospels and Letters of Paul.

AD 200: The periphery of the canon is not yet determined. According to one list, compiled at Rome c. AD 200 (the Muratorian Canon), the NT consists of the 4 gospels; Acts; 13 letters of Paul (Hebrews is not included); 3 of the 7 General Epistles (1-2 John and Jude); and also the Apocalypse of Peter.

AD 367: The earliest extant list of the books of the NT, in exactly the number and order in which we presently have them, is written by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, in his Festal letter # 39 of 367 A.D..

382 --Council of Rome (whereby Pope Damasus started the ball rolling for the defining of a universal canon for all city-churches). Listed the New Testament books in their present number and order. 

393 A.D. --the Council of Hippo,  which began "arguing it out." Canon proposed by Bishop Athanasius.

AD 397: The Council of Carthage, which refined the canon for the Western Church, sending it back to Pope Innocent for ratification. In the East, the canonical process was hampered by a number of schisms (esp. within the Church of Antioch). However, this changed by ...

787 A.D. The Ecumenical Council of Nicaea II, which adopted the canon of Carthage. At this point, both the Latin West and the Greek / Byzantine East had the same canon. However, ... The non-Greek, Monophysite and Nestorian Churches of the East (the Copts, the Ethiopians, the Syrians, the Armenians, the Syro-Malankars, the Chaldeans, and the Malabars) were still left out. But these Churches came together in agreement, in 1442A.D., in Florence.

AD 1442: At the Council of Florence, the entire Church recognized the 27 books. This council confirmed the Roman Catholic Canon of the Bible which Pope Damasus I had published a thousand years earlier. So, by 1439, all orthodox branches of the Church were legally bound to the same canon.  This is 100 years before the Reformation.

AD 1536:  In his translation of the Bible from Greek into German, Luther removed 4 N.T. books (Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation) and placed them in an appendix saying they were less than canonical.

AD 1546:  At the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church reaffirmed once and for all the full list of 27 books. The council also confirmed the inclusion of the Deuterocanonical books which had been a part of the Bible canon since the early Church and was confirmed at the councils of 393 AD, 373, 787 and 1442 AD. At Trent Rome actually dogmatized the canon, making it more than a matter of canon law, which had been the case up to that point, closing it for good.

The timeline section is by Mark Bonocore & Bob Stanley

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