When the Protestant reformers sought to reform the Christian faith and restore it to what they saw as forgotten fundamental truths, in other words, to the authentic mind of Christ, they turned, rightly, to Holy Scripture. The clarion call of Evangelical churches everywhere is, quite sensibly, “We believe in the Bible,” or “We are Bible-based.” Thanks be to God, for that is one absolutely fundamental thing which Evangelicals and Catholics have in common. And here, by the grace of God, lies the hope of our reconciliation.
This fact has come as a surprise to some of my Evangelical friends, for they have sometimes thought that in some sense Catholics are less “Bible-believing” than Evangelicals. One of the main concerns voiced by some of my Evangelical friends when I told them that I had started to attend a Catholic church was that I would stop reading the Bible, or even worse, stop believing it. They were genuinely worried that Catholic churches wouldn’t teach the Scriptures – and if they did, “well, they have a different Bible, don’t they?” Their solicitude was well-meant, but ultimately wide of the mark.
One reason for my friends’ concern, perhaps, is that often Evangelicals
have a commendably righteous sense of “ownership” over the Holy Scriptures, and
sometimes feel obliged to defend their Bible-believing faith against the
attacks of so-c
Another understandable reason to distrust Catholics’ attitude to Scripture is the fact that many individual Catholics seem, to this day, not to read their Bible half as much, or know their Bible half as well, as most Evangelicals do. This criticism is undoubtedly justified, and though there are many historical reasons for this sorry state of affairs, we Catholics would do well to learn from the example of our Evangelical brothers and sisters on this.
However, I would like to suggest two reasons why we should not be too hasty to condemn the biblical credentials of Catholicism:
First, everything in the Bible is held by the Catholic
Church to be the truth, and nothing but the truth. And everything the Catholic
Church believes and teaches is rooted in and based upon the testimony of
Scripture. Indeed, the official Catholic document on the subject of the Word of
God states unequivoc
Second, there are many ways in which Catholics are routinely guided and taught by the Bible in their everyday lives, and in their worship. Whilst many Catholics may not consciously study the Bible as much as their Evangelical brothers, they spend a great deal of time listening to the Bible, praying the Bible, and placing their lives under the scrutiny of the Word of God.
We will deal with these two issues in greater depth later, but first we must begin to address what is perhaps the main reason for some Evangelicals’ unease with Catholicism, which is that in some matters the Catholic Church seems to “go beyond” the Bible, and adopt beliefs which appear to some Evangelicals to have no, or at least only a tenuous, scriptural basis. Yes, it is undoubtedly the case that the Catholic faith “goes beyond” the Bible – but this is something for which the Catholic Church makes no apology, because we believe that Scripture testifies that it is God’s command that we should do so, and God’s promise that He will guide us even as we do so. It is one of the main subjects of Part One of this book to explain why and how.
Books, Bibles, interpretations and heresies
We must remember that in the time of Christ, there was no such
thing as “the Bible”. There were books: lots of books. There were the scrolls
of the Torah which were read in the synagogues and studied by the rabbis
There was little unanimity at this time about exactly which books were to be accepted as “Scripture”. For example, the Sadducees accepted only the five books of the Torah as authoritative. Whilst they were happy to read the Prophets and the “wisdom books”, it was only the Pharisees who accepted these as having the same authority as the books of Moses. And in all these categories many Jews included books with which some Christians may not be familiar: the prophet Baruch, the Wisdom books of Solomon and Jesus Ben Sira, the histories of the Maccabean revolt of the second century B.C., and stories about great and holy people such as Tobit and Judith. There were also some interpolations added to more ancient texts, such as the books of Daniel and Esther. As Baptist theologians Robert Sloan and Carey Newman explain, “the boundary between holy, inspired revelation and a work based on Scripture was sometimes a very fuzzy one.” [2]
Nor was there unanimity about how these books should be
interpreted. Throughout Jewish history there have been a variety of schools of
religious thought, often originating from different rabbis,
This was the world into which Jesus was born, and into which He apparently threw himself with gusto from an early age (e.g. Lk. 2:46-47). And after He ascended into Heaven, his disciples continued in like manner, debating amongst themselves exactly who this Jesus was, writing letters of encouragement and admonition to each other, penning down their thoughts and visions, and of course recording the things they had witnessed, or the stories they had been told about Jesus and his followers.
The Jews living in Palestine had had the advantage of living in relatively close proximity to each other in the Holy Land and its environs. And they had had a couple of millennia, both at home and in exile, to develop their understanding of God, who He was, and what He was like – and the understanding they had developed was quite unlike that of any neighbouring nation. So, despite the flexibility of the body of writings they had to draw upon, and despite the multiplicity of interpretations to which those writings were subjected, their religion remained largely unified and distinctive.
For the early Christians, however, things were more
complicated, for two reasons. First, the coming of Christ had blown the Jewish
faith wide open: many of the ancient presumptions about the nature of God, and
of His promised Messiah, now had to be looked at in a new light. And because
Christians were now claiming divine origin for a man, Jesus, it was quite
possible for newcomers to look at the new Christian faith and to think that it
resembled any number of pagan cults which worshipped semi-human deities. It
would be a ch
Second, the Good News had now to be spread “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8), and maintaining unity of vision and purpose in such a diaspora was not so easy. We can see this in the New Testament epistles, many of which are clearly aimed at bringing wayward factions back to the truth of Christ. Paul criticises the “circumcision group” (Gal. 2:12, Tit. 1:10-16) and various “false apostles” (2 Cor. 11:13-15). Peter also has it in for “false teachers” (2 Pet. 2). And in his Revelation John rails against, amongst others, “the Nicolaitans” (Rev. 2:6, 2:15) – named, probably unfairly, after Nicolas (Acts 6:4), one of the seven deacons appointed by the apostles in Acts 6. [4]
As the years passed, Christianity developed many variations
and offshoots. Some of these were merely local variations, entirely in line with
what we now recognise as the central Christian revelation; others were not, and
were, rightly, deemed by the Church to be heretical. The list of pseudo-Christian
heresies is lengthy and bewildering: Gnostics, Ebionites, Cerinthians, Marcionites,
Apollonians, Manichaeans, Montanists, Valentinians etc. However, some of them are worth taking a brief look at here,
because their teachings ch
The Docetists, for example, claimed that Jesus was not fully Man: He was only a spirit in human form. This was one of earliest heresies to arise: the apostle John criticises it in his second letter:
Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. (2 Jn. 1:7)
The Arians, on the other hand, believed that Jesus was not
fully God, but was a divine being created by God. It was the ch
one Lord Jesus
Christ,
the Son of
God,
begotten from
the Father…
of one substance
with the Father. [5]
Among the most dangerous of heresies was Pelagianism, which
flourished in the fifth century A.D., but whose effects have been felt ever
since. In its extreme form, this movement claimed that divine grace was
unnecessary for salvation, and that man has the capability, entirely of his own
free will, to perfect himself mor
Throughout the early centuries of the Christian faith,
despite the ch
It was inevitable and necessary, therefore, that in the
early centuries of the Church, lists needed to be made of which Christian
writings were authentic
The New Testament
The basic problem is this: the Bible does not say what books are in the Bible. The early Christians faced, therefore, a difficult and controversial task, and came up with a variety of opinions on the subject. Possibly the earliest list to include the same 27 New Testament books with which we are familiar today (and no others) is to be found in a document known as the Gelasian Decretal, which dates from a church council held in Rome in 382 A.D. under the leadership of Pope Damasus. This list confirmed
the order of the Scriptures of the New Testament which the holy and Catholic Roman Church upholds and venerates:
four books of the Gospels
(according to
Matthew, one book;
according to
Mark, one book;
according to
Luke, one book;
according to
John, one book);
likewise the Acts
of the Apostles, one book;
the letters of
the apostle Paul, in number fourteen
(to the Romans,
one letter;
to the Corinthians,
two letters;
to the
Ephesians, one letter;
to the
Thessalonians, two letters;
to the
Galatians, one letter;
to the
Philippians, one letter;
to the
Colossians, one letter;
to Timothy, two
letters;
to Titus, one
letter;
to Philemon, one
letter;
to the
Hebrews, one letter);
likewise the Apocalypse of John, one
book;
likewise the canonical letters,
in number seven
(of the
apostle Peter, two letters;
of the apostle
James, one letter;
of the apostle
John, one letter;
of the other
John, the elder, two letters;
of the apostle
Judas the Zealot, one letter). [7]
At the instigation of the great Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.), this canon was confirmed by the Synod of Hippo in 393 A.D., and by church councils at Carthage in 397 and 419; acceptance of this list spread rapidly from there.
So how did these groups of Christian leaders, meeting
together, arrive at this consensus? And why do
There is only one possible motive
why the Church formed a Canon of Scripture, accepting the four Gospels and
rejecting the others, agreeing to the Apocalypse of John and refusing that of
Peter. That motive can be no other than the common experience of its members:
the Word spoke to them when they read or listened to some writings. He kept
silent when others were read. The power of the Word imposed itself on the
Christians. [8]
As Damasus, Augustine and their colleagues debated these issues, they will surely have considered carefully what the apostle John had written about how he compiled his Gospel:
Jesus did many other miraculous
signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book.
But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (Jn. 20:30-31)
Let us look carefully at what John is telling us here about the Gospel he has written. He makes it clear that he has chosen what to put in his Gospel not in order to create an objective, balanced historical account of Jesus, but in order that we may believe. The Gospel of John is biased, and it is proud to be biased. It has a purpose: to persuade us to believe in Jesus as the incarnate Word of God.
The evangelist continues:
Jesus did many other things as
well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole
world would not have room for the books that would be written. (Jn. 21:25)
Here John tells us that, whatever we may think, his account of Jesus is not comprehensive. There is much more that can be said about Jesus than any book could ever contain. The Gospel of John is not a complete revelation of Christ.
When the early leaders of the Church set out to define the canon of the New Testament, these two biblical principles clearly guided them. John’s Gospel was not written as a complete revelation of Christ; nor, therefore, was the New Testament compiled as a complete revelation of Christ. I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written about Jesus. The New Testament could never be anything other than part of a revelation: the most important part of the revelation to be sure, and one with absolute authority – but not necessarily the whole thing. And just as John wrote his Gospel in a biased manner, that we may believe, so too did the early Christian leaders compile the New Testament. The books of the New Testament were not chosen for objective scholastic reasons, but for faith reasons: they were chosen in order to persuade non-Christians of, and to confirm to Christians, the truth of the Christian faith.
And which Christian faith? During these early years of the
Church, there was no genuine Christianity other than the faith of the worldwide
(katholikos) Church. The only types of
Christianity outside the Catholic faith were heresies, many of which denied or
compromised either Jesus’s humanity (e.g.
Docetism), or His divinity (e.g.
Arianism), or the necessity or efficacy of His saving sacrifice (e.g. Pelagianism). Therefore the fixing
of the New Testament canon was an essential part of the process whereby the Church
defined the true and authentic Christian faith, as distinct from the worthless
imitations proclaimed by the heretics. Without the Church in those early centuries
standing up for those essential Christian truths, none of the modern Christian
denominations which accept the authority of the New Testament would have a faith
to c
The Old Testament
What then of the Old Testament? For centuries, the Jews had
seen no need to form
The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. led to
another Jewish diaspora, potenti
Let there be no hope for
slanderers,
and let all wickedness perish in
an instant.
May all your enemies quickly be
cut down,
and may you soon in our day
uproot, crush, cast down
and humble the dominion of
arrogance. [9]
With blessings like that, who needs curses?! The point is clear, though: henceforth, doctrinally suspect tendencies such as Hellenism and Christianity were not to be tolerated in Judaism.
Second, to help to clarify the distinction between “true” (Hebrew) Judaism and the minim, the rabbis of Jamnia also, for the first time in the history of Israel, authoritatively defined a corpus of Jewish Scripture, which they called Tanakh (from the initial letters of: Torah – the Law, Nevi’im – the Prophets, and Kethuvim – “Writings”). This body of writings was to include holy books written in Hebrew up to Ezra and the restoration of the Temple – but no further. Thus the rabbis of Jamnia were able to retrospectively define what they saw as authentic Judaism, rejecting the narrow Torah-only focus of the Sadducees, but also rejecting many of the books written or promoted by Hellenised Jews (or Jewish Christians), and affirming what they believed to be the primacy of the Hebrew language and tradition in matters of religion.
The return from Babylon had marked the beginning of a “crunch”
time for the Jews. The destruction of the old kingdoms of Judah and Israel had
sparked a massive Jewish diaspora. While some Jews had returned to rebuild
Jerusalem, many others had remained in Babylon, or scattered around the known
world. Under the rule of Alexander the Great and his successors, many of these Jews
had retained their Jewish faith but had adopted the Greek language, as well as
many Greek customs and ways of thinking. They had even translated their Hebrew Scriptures
into Greek, and had continued to write new holy books, some of them in Aramaic or
Greek. Their popular and highly influential Greek-language Bible, c
In the early years of
Christianity, some mavericks, such as the heretic Marcion (c. 100-165 A.D.), took the view that the Christian faith should define
itself entirely on its own terms (princip
Christians did not of course look at history the same way
the rabbis of Jamnia did. For Christians, the rebuilding of the Temple in
Jerusalem had been a preparation for its destruction in 70 A.D. and its replacement
by Christ, the true and eternal Temple (Rev. 21:22). Therefore the period
between the return from exile and the coming of Jesus was of fundamental
importance to the Christian revelation. The early Christians saw in many of the
Greek- and Aramaic-language Jewish writings of this time essential
foreshadowings and prophecies of Christ, and the seeds of many essential Christian
truths. It was understandable that the rabbis of Jamnia, who did not accept
Christ, and who, further, wanted to purify the Jewish faith of non-Hebrew
influences, might not accept these writings. But Christians had no reason to
accept the authority of Gamaliel II and his colleagues, who had, after
The precise level of authority to be accorded to the books written
between Ezra/Nehemiah and the New Testament was, to be sure, a matter of some
debate amongst both Christians and Hellenistic Jews. And the different
Christian churches have never entirely agreed upon exactly which books belong in this category, and precisely how much authority to accord
them. However, as the great Anglican church historian J. N. D. Kelly points out,
“in the first two centuries at any rate the Church seems to have accepted all,
or most of, these additional books as inspired and to have treated them without
question as Scripture.” [10] It is not
my purpose here to try to convince you that you should necessarily do so too. However,
it remains the fact that these “inter-testamental” books feature prominently in
Many of the greatest of early Christians regarded the
deuterocanonical books as having great spiritual value. The writer to the
Hebrews, in his long list of the faithful of Israel, specifically refers to the
tortures willingly endured by the Jews under Antiochus Epiphanes (described in
the second book of Maccabees) “so that they might gain a better resurrection”
(Heb. 11:35, cf. 2 Macc. 7). And when,
in the synoptic Gospels, the Sadducees challenge Jesus about the case of the woman
who had seven husbands (Matt. 22:23-27, Mk. 12:18-23, Lk. 20:27-33), they are
alluding to the character of Sarah from the book of Tobit (3:7-23). [11] Clement,
fellow-worker of the apostle Paul (Phil. 4:3), in his letter to the church at Corinth, recounts stories from the
books of both Judith and Esther as if they belong together. [12] Polycarp, disciple of the apostle John, [13] writing to the Christians at
From the beginning, then, these books vied seriously for inclusion in the Bible. To call them “intertestamental” makes some sense; to call them anagignoskomena (“things which are read”) as the Greek Orthodox do is also logical. But to call them “apocrypha”, as if they belonged in the same category as the heretical texts rejected by Christianity, is deeply misleading. These books were never “hidden” by anyone, for the first 1500 years of the Christian faith at least.
This fluid approach to the canon of Scripture continued through the first three and a half centuries of Christendom, until finally the Councils of Rome, Hippo and Carthage, which defined the New Testament canon as we know it, also confirmed the canon of the Christian Old Testament, and included the deuterocanonicals alongside the books of the Tanakh. The Council of Rome (382 A.D.) listed them thus:
Now indeed the issue of the
divine scriptures must be discussed, which the universal Catholic Church
receives…:
1. This is the order of the Old
Testament:
Genesis, one
book;
Exodus, one book;
Leviticus, one
book;
Numbers, one
book;
Deuteronomy, one
book;
Joshua, one
book;
Judges, one
book;
Ruth, one book;
Kings, four
books [i.e. 1&2 Sam., 1&2
Kgs.];
Chronicles, two
books;
150 Psalms, one
book;
three books of
Solomon
(Proverbs, one
book;
Ecclesiastes, one
book;
Song of Songs,
one book);
likewise, Wisdom, one book;
Ecclesiasticus, one book;
2. Likewise the order of the
Prophets:
Isaiah, one
book;
Jeremiah, one
book;
with Cinoth, i.e. his Lamentations;
Ezekiel, one
book;
Daniel, one
book;
Hosea, one
book;
Amos, one book;
Micah, one
book;
Joel, one book;
Obadiah, one
book;
Jonah, one book;
Nahum, one
book;
Habakkuk, one
book;
Zephaniah, one
book;
Haggai, one
book;
Zechariah, one
book;
Malachi, one
book;
3. Likewise the order of the
Histories:
Job, one book;
Tobit, one book;
Esdras, two
books [i.e. Ezra & Neh.];
Esther, one
book;
Judith, one book;
Maccabees, two books;
4. Likewise the order of the Scriptures of the New Testament … [etc., see above] [19]
Note that this list did not separate the deuterocanonicals out from the rest of the Old Testament writings to put them in a category of their own, but left them mixed in with the rest of the Old Testament, as equals. If we accept the wisdom of these early councils in their definition of the New Testament canon, then it is only sensible of us to consider seriously their definition of the Old Testament canon as well. These were not two separate decisions, taken by different bunches of Christians at different times. Both the New Testament and the Christian Old Testament were discussed together, and the judgment as to which books should constitute them was taken at the same councils, by the same people, and announced in the same documents. [20]
To this day the list of books given above remains (with some
variations) integral to
The Catholic Church included the deuterocanonical books in
the Bible, and continues to study and preach from these books, for the same
reason that it chose and compiled the New Testament books, and for the same
reason that it welcomed the Hebrew Scriptures into the Bible in the first place:
because they are books of faith, entirely consonant with the Law and the
Prophets, deeply prophetic of Christ, and which teach us to “believe that Jesus
is the Christ, the Son of God, and… by believing… have life in his name” (Jn.
20:31). To remove these books entirely from our consciousness is to play into
the hands of those who would erase from Jewish history
However, we have seen in the previous chapter how, to the Jews, God’s self-revelation to His people is a process, rather than a product. It is on-going, and it never reaches a final conclusion, because each new event in the history of the Jews adds to, develops and enriches the Jewish understanding of who they are and what God is like. Therefore it should not surprise us if God’s revelation, which began at the creation and went through many stages leading up to the return from Babylon, should continue, by gentle stages, after that. Whatever your opinions may be about which books belong in the Bible and which don’t, none of us can escape the fact that understanding the theology of the “inter-testamental” period is essential if we want to understand how God has revealed Himself to His people throughout history, and if we want to understand all the influences which went to make up Jesus’s mindset. Let us now look at some of the more important aspects of this revelation.
Wisdom and Word
Since Solomon, the Jews had written about Wisdom (Hokhmah), speaking of her not just as an attribute of God, but imparting to her a gender and an active character of her own:
Blessed is
the man who finds wisdom [hokhmah],
the man who
gains understanding,
for she is
more profitable than silver
and yields
better returns than gold… (Prov. 3:13-14)
Does not
understanding raise her voice?...
“My mouth
speaks what is true,
for my lips
detest wickedness… (Prov. 8:1-2)
Wisdom, the Jews said, had been there with God from the beginning, even helping Him to create the world:
“I was
there when he set the heavens in place,
when he
marked out the horizon on the face of the deep…
Then I was
the craftsman at his side.” (Prov. 8: 27-30)
The deuterocanonical writers developed this idea to a new, proto-Christian, level. Wisdom, they said,
pure emanation
of the glory of the Almighty…
For she is a
reflection of the eternal light,
untarnished
mirror of God’s active power,
and image
of his goodness…
She renews
the world,
and,
generation after generation, passing into holy souls,
she makes
them into God’s friends… (Wis. 7:25-27, NJB)
and people
have been taught what pleases you,
and have
been saved, by Wisdom. (Wis. 9:18, NJB)
Wisdom thus came to be recognised as that aspect of God which reaches out to people, which guides them and implants herself in their consciousness, renewing and saving the world, and reconciling us to God. This was the beginning of the idea that God of Israel, though one, might have different “persons” (prosopa) which reach out to men in different ways.
Jesus Ben Sira’s imagery went even further in the Christian direction, in an almost prophetic manner:
“I came
forth from the mouth of the Most High,
and I covered
the earth like mist.
I had my
tent in the heights,
and my
throne was a pillar of cloud…
Then the Creator
of all things instructed me…
He said,
‘Pitch your tent in Jacob,
make Israel
your inheritance.’” (Sir. 24:3-4,8, NJB)
The Greeks, meanwhile, were developing their own ideas about
the universe. The Stoic school of philosophy set great store by the concept of Logos, which can be liter
It was a Greek-speaking Jew c
Philo described this Word/Wisdom/Son of God in striking, almost Christian terms, so much so that one feels sure that had Philo lived a couple of decades later he might well have recognised in Jesus the things he had envisaged:
This same Word is continually a suppliant to the immortal God on behalf of the mortal race;… and is also the ambassador, sent by the Ruler of all, to the subject race,… neither being uncreate as God, nor yet created as you. [24]
For it was indispensable that…
man… should have as a paraclete, his son, the being most perfect in all virtue,
to procure forgiveness of sins. [25]
Thus, the Word, the Son of God was, according to Philo,
“most perfect in
For Moses speaks to the Israelites of God, “Who led ye then through that great and terrible wilderness?... who brought forth for thee out of the hard rock a fountain of water…?” [cf. Deut. 8:15-16] The abrupt rock is the wisdom of God, which being both sublime and the first of things he quarried out of his own powers, and of it he gives drink to the souls that love God. [26]
Moses, in another place, using a
synonymous expression, c
[God] nourishes us with his own
word, which is the most universal of
Philo thus identified the Word with manna (with which God “nourishes us”), and Wisdom with the water from the rock (“the first of things”) – just Paul was to do some decades later (1 Cor. 10:4). And he recognised both to be “the Son of God”!
After the death and resurrection of Christ, Jesus’s apostles
had the insight to go a step further than Philo, realising that not only was
the Greek concept of Word a reflection of the Jewish concept of Wisdom, but
that this self-same Word, this Wisdom, this Son of God, had, as prophesied by
Ben Sira, quite liter
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… The Word was made flesh, and dwelt
among us. (Jn. 1:1,14, KJV) [29]
Without the insights of the “inter-testamental” writers, therefore, the whole notion of the Incarnation can appear to burst upon the scene unexpectedly, a bellicose New Testament challenge to the Jewish concept of monotheism. But by reading the books of Wisdom and Ben Sira, and the interpretations of theologians like Philo, we can see that the faith of the apostles and evangelists grew out of a slowly developing revelation, of the faith of Israel opening up to the influence of Greek thought: in Paul’s words, “to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:23-24). The deuterocanonical books show the Christian revelation to be an authentic continuation of, not a rival to, the Jewish faith. Indeed, the early Jewish Christians loved the writing of Ben Sira so much, and read his words so often in church, that his book became known as “the church book”, and so is called Ecclesiasticus to this day.
Heaven and Hell
We can also thank the inter-testamental writers for the development of the Christian concept of the afterlife. Early Judaism had no concept of Heaven or Hell. The only mention was of Sheol, a sort of shadowy underworld, rather like the ancient Greek Hades:
The
cords of death encompassed me,
the
torrents of perdition assailed me;
the cords
of Sheol entangled me,
the snares
of death confronted me.
In my
distress I called upon the LORD. (Ps. 18:4-6, RSV)
The concept of the bodily resurrection at the end of time developed later – possibly during the Babylonian exile, and, as we know (Lk. 20:27), was still controversial in Jesus’s day:
But your
dead will live;
their
bodies will rise.
You who
dwell in the dust,
wake up and
shout for joy. (Is. 26:19)
“‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live.’” (Ezek. 37:12-14)
“Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens.” (Dan. 12:2)
The deuterocanonical writers made this belief in the resurrection more explicit. In one of the most inspiring tales ever, told in the books of the Maccabees, seven brothers are martyred, tortured to death for refusing to submit to the pagan ruler Antiochus Epiphanes. As they die, they counter:
“You may discharge us from this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up, since we die for his laws, to live again forever.” (2 Macc. 7:9, NJB)
“Ours is the better choice, to meet death at men’s hands, yet relying on God’s promise that we shall be raised up by him; whereas for you there can be no resurrection to new life.” (2 Macc. 7:14, NJB)
But the most wondrous concept which we Christians owe to the deuterocanonical writers is that of Heaven, a place outside time where the righteous, freed from their earthly bodies, could look forward to living with God for eternity:
They are misled…
They do not know the hidden
things of God,
they do not hope for the reward
of holiness,
they do not believe in a reward
for blameless souls.
For God created human beings to
be immortal (Wis. 2:21-23, NJB)
Those who trust in him will
understand the truth,
those who are faithful will live
with him in love (Wis. 3:9, NJB)
This is the mindset of the world into which Jesus was born. Through prophets, kings and teachers, God had prepared the nation of Israel, patiently, over many centuries, for His revelation that in Christ He was going to reconcile not just Israel, but all the world, to Himself, and that as a result of this reconciliation we would all be offered the chance to live with God forever. The deuterocanonical books form an essential stage in that revelation. By them our faith is enriched.
A personal reflection
Finally, amongst the deuterocanonical literature are some of the most beautiful and uplifting religious texts ever written by Jew or Christian. I have two personal favourites. One is the book of Tobit, a tale of fidelity, religious virtue and marital love, which has inspired Christian couples for the past two millennia. Its high point is the prayer which Tobias and his wife Sarah (she who had had seven husbands) pray on their wedding night:
“You are blessed, O God of our
fathers;
blessed too
is your name
for ever
and ever.
Let the
heavens bless you
and all the
things you have made
for evermore.
You it was
who created Adam,
you who created
Eve his wife
to be his
help and support…
And so I
take my sister
not for any
lustful motive,
but I do it
in singleness of heart.
Be kind
enough to have pity on her and on me
and bring
us to old age together.”
And
together they said, “Amen, amen,” and lay down for the night. (Tob. 8:5-9, NJB)
Notice how Tobias links authentic marital love with the praise of God – one of the many things which make Tobit a worthy successor to Genesis 2:21-25 and to the Song of Solomon, and a good tutor for any Christian, married or otherwise, who wishes to better understand God’s plan for human love, for marriage, for the family, and therefore for society as a whole.
My other favourite bit of deuterocanon is an interpolation into the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from the book of Daniel. When thrown into the burning fiery furnace they sing a hymn of praise to God, one of the greatest prayers I know. Here is a brief part of it:
May you be
blessed, Lord, God of our ancestors,
be praised
and extolled for ever.
Blessed be
your glorious and holy name,
praised and
extolled for ever.
May you be
blessed in the Temple of your sacred glory,
exalted and
glorified above all for ever:
blessed on
the throne of your kingdom,
exalted
above all, glorified for ever:
blessed are
you who fathom the abyss, enthroned on the winged creatures,
praised and
exalted above all for ever:
blessed in
the expanse of the heavens,
exalted and
glorified for ever.
Bless the
Lord, all the Lord’s creation:
praise and glorify
him for ever!
Bless the
Lord, angels of the Lord,
praise and
glorify him for ever!
Bless the
Lord, heavens,
praise and
glorify him for ever!
Bless the Lord,
all the waters above the heavens,
praise and
glorify him for ever!
Bless the
Lord, powers of the Lord,
praise and
glorify him for ever!
Bless the
Lord, sun and moon,
praise and
glorify him for ever!
Bless the
Lord, stars of heaven,
praise and glorify
him for ever!...
Hananiah,
Azariah and Mishael [i.e. Shadrach,
Abednego and Meshach], bless the Lord,
praise and
glorify him for ever! –
For he has
rescued us from the Underworld,
he has
saved us from the land of Death,
he has
snatched us from the burning fiery furnace,
he has
drawn us from the heart of the flame!
Give thanks
to the Lord, for he is good,
for his
love is everlasting.
Bless the
Lord, the God of gods, all who fear him,
give praise
and thanks to him,
for his love
is everlasting! (Dan. 3:52-63,88-90, NJB)
This is Psalm 148 writ large, a paean to the Lord from the whole of God’s creation. And the whole story of the rescue of these three young men is a glorious foreshadowing of the resurrection of Christ. This is one of the reasons why the Catholic Church, from the beginning, has loved this prayer with a deep and abiding passion. It is prayed every Sunday at “lauds”, the official morning prayer of the Church. This should be our prayer too, for all of us who know Christ can rejoice that our Lord has “saved us from the land of Death…, snatched us from the burning fiery furnace…, drawn us from the heart of the flame!”
Give thanks to the
Lord, for he is good, for his love is everlasting.
BIBLICAL SUMMARY of
Chapter Two
early Church
divisions and heresies
2 Cor. 11:13-15, Gal. 2:12, Tit. 1:10-16, 2 Pet. 2, 2 Jn.
1:7, Rev. 2:6,15
What’s in the Bible?
Jn. 20:30-31, 21:25
the importance of the “intertestamental” literature
some correspondences between New Testament and deuterocanonical books
Heb. 11:35 ↔ 2 Macc. 7
Matt. 22:23-27, Mk. 12:18-23, Lk.
20:27-33 ↔ Tob. 3:7-23
Eph. 6:14 & 1 Thess. 5:8 ↔
Wis. 5:17-20
Ja. 1:19 ↔ Sir. 5:11
Matt. 7:12 ↔ Tob. 4:15
Wisdom in the Old Testament and deuterocanonical books
Prov. 1-4, 8-9; Wis. 6:1-9:18;
Sir. 24
The Son of God prefigured in Wisdom and in the Word
Jn. 1:1-14; 1 Cor. 1:23-24, 10:1-6
Resurrection, Heaven and Hell
Is. 26:19, Ezek. 37:1-14, Dan. 12,
2 Macc. 7; Wis. 2:21-23, 3:9; Lk. 20:27-38
my favourite bits of
deuterocanon
Tob. 8:4-9, Dan. 3:24-90
[1] Dei Verbum III:11, in Vatican
II: The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents, ed. Austin Flannery
(Dominican, Dublin, 1992)
[2] Robert B. Sloan Jr. & Carey C.
Newman, “Ancient Jewish Hermeneutics”, in Biblical
Hermeneutics: A Comprehensive Introduction to Interpreting Scripture, ed.
Bruce Corley, Steve W. Lemke & Grant I. Lovejoy (Broadman & Holman,
Nashville, 2002), p. 57
[3] The word occurs in Scripture at 2
Chr. 13:22 & 24:27 – often translated as “annotations”.
[4] Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.XXVI.3, in Ante-Nicene
Fathers, vol. 1, ed. Phillip Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org
[5] from J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (Longmans,
London, 1967), p. 215
[6] Eusebius, The History of the Church III.25 (Penguin, London, 1989)
[7] Gelasian Decretal II.4, at www.tertullian.org
[8] George H. Tavard, Holy Writ or Holy Church (Burns & Oates,
London, 1959), p. 5
[9] Amidah 12, trans. David Bivin, on www.cbn.com. One early version of
this Birkat specifically says: “Let
the noẓerim [“Nazarenes”, i.e.
Christians] and the minim be destroyed in a moment.” [see “Birkat
ha-Minim” on www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org].
[10] J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (A. & C.
Black, London, 1965), p.54
[11] Some other examples: Eph. 6:14
& 1 Thess. 5:8 paraphrase Wis. 5:17-20; Ja. 1:19 echoes Sir. 5:11; Matt. 7:12
echoes Tob. 4:15
[12] Clement, The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians 55, in Early Christian Writings, ed. Maxwell
Staniforth (Penguin, 1988)
[13] Irenaeus, To Florinus, on Sole Sovereignty, or God Is Not the Author of Evil,
quoted in Eusebius, The History of the
Church V.20 (Penguin, London, 1989); Tertullian, The Prescription Against Heretics XXXII, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, ed. Phillip Schaff (T&T Clark,
Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org
[14] Polycarp, The Epistle of Polycarp to the
[15] The Didache 4, in Early
Christian Writings, ed. Maxwell Staniforth (Penguin, 1988)
[16] Irenaeus, To Florinus, on Sole Sovereignty, or God Is Not the Author of Evil,
quoted in Eusebius, The History of the
Church V.20 (Penguin, London, 1989)
[17] Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV:XXVI:3, in Ante-Nicene
Fathers, vol. 1, ed. Phillip Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on
www.ccel.org
[18] Irenaeus, Against Heresies V:XXXV:1, in Ante-Nicene
Fathers, vol. 1, ed. Phillip Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on
www.ccel.org
[19] Gelasian Decretal II.1-3, at www.tertullian.org [my emphasis]
[20] For comparison, here is how the
Council of Carthage (419 A.D.) listed the books of the Bible: “The
Canonical Scriptures are as follows: Genesis; Exodus; Leviticus; Numbers;
Deuteronomy; Joshua the Son of Nun; the Judges; Ruth; the Kings, 4 books; The
Chronicles, 2 books; Job; The Psalter;
the Five books of Solomon; the Twelve
books of the Prophets; Isaiah; Jeremiah; Ezechiel; Daniel; Tobit; Judith; Esther;
Ezra, 2 books; Macchabees, 2 books;
The New Testament: the Gospels, 4 books; the Acts of the Apostles, 1 book; the
Epistles of Paul, 14; the Epistles of Peter, the Apostle, 2; the Epistles of
John the Apostle, 3; the Epistles of James the Apostle, 1; the Epistle of Jude
the Apostle, 1; the Revelation of John, 1 book.” [Canon XXIV, from “The Canons
of the CCXVII Blessed Fathers who Assembled at Carthage”, in The Seven Ecumenical Councils, ed.
[21] “nützlich und gut zu lesen”: see Apocrypha title page, from Martin
Luther, The Complete German Bible 1534, on www.lstc.edu
[22] Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 378, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt, on penelope.uchicago.edu
[23] Philo, On the Confusion of Tongues 63, in Charles Duke Yonge, The Works of Philo Judaeus (H. G. Bohn,
London), on www.earlychristianwritings.com
[24] Philo, Who is the Heir of Divine Things? 205-6, in Charles Duke Yonge, The Works of Philo Judaeus (H. G. Bohn, London),
on www.earlychristianwritings.com
[25] Philo, On the Life of Moses II.134, in Charles Duke Yonge, The Works of Philo Judaeus (H. G. Bohn,
London), on www.earlychristianwritings.com
[26] Philo, Allegorical Interpretation II.84-86, in Charles Duke Yonge, The Works of Philo Judaeus (H. G. Bohn,
London), on www.earlychristianwritings.com
[27] Philo, That the Worse is Wont to Attack the Better 118, in Charles Duke
Yonge, The Works of Philo Judaeus (H.
G. Bohn, London), on www.earlychristianwritings.com
[28] Philo, Allegorical Interpretation III.175, in Charles Duke Yonge, The Works of Philo Judaeus (H. G. Bohn,
London), on www.earlychristianwritings.com
[29] The word Ben Sira uses for “pitch
your tent” (Sir. 24:8) is kataskenoson.
The word John uses for “dwelt” (Jn. 1:14) is eskenosen. Both come from the Greek root skene, “tent”.
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