3. You Can Trust the Books

But how much is to be included in the "all"?

When a Protestant offers this reply, he is thinking of the sixty-six books in his favorite version of the English Bible.

When a Roman Catholic uses the same text, he is thinking of the sixty-six plus a number of additional books commonly known as the Apocrypha.

The Old Testament accepted by Protestants and Jews ends with the book of Malachi. The Catholic Old Testament ends with Second Maccabees.

In the Jewish and Protestant Old Testament, Daniel has only twelve chapters. In the Catholic Old Testament there are fourteen.

Which is correct? After so many centuries, is there perhaps a serious question as to the authenticity of the Biblical documents?

Jesus always seemed to express confidence in the Bible that he used. One day after His resurrection He told His disciples that "everything written about Me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled." Luke 24:44, R.S.V.

In these words Jesus endorsed the books of the Old Testament as they were customarily arranged in those days. Through the years, as the books of the Old Testament were written, they were gradually arranged into three groups or divisions.

The first five books of the Bible made up the division of "the Law" or "the Law of Moses."

Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekial, and the twelve minor prophets made up the division of "the Prophets."

The remaining books of the Old Testament formed the third division, "the Writings."

The thirty-nine books in these three divisions made up the Old Testament canon. "Canon" means "measure" or "rule." A "canonical" book is one that measures up to a certain standard.

In the early years of the Christian church, twenty-seven more documents came to be regarded as measuring up to the standard and were eventually arranged into the canon of the New Testament.

But the canonical sixty-six were not by any means the only religious books in circulation that had an appearance of being Biblical. In fact, there were far more books that were judged uncanonical than were accepted as authoritative.

Many of these were written during the period between the Testaments and bore considerable resemblance to books already in the canon. They carried such titles as "The Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, The Letter of Jeremiah, Judith, Tobit, Bel and the Dragon, First and Second Maccabees, the books of Adam and Eve, the Martyrdom of Isaiah, First and Second Enoch.

About a dozen of these came to be regarded by Jews living outside Palestine as of sufficient importance to merit inclusion with the other books of the Old Testament. Eventually they became an integral part of the Greek translation of the Old Testament that had been prepared during the third and second centuries before Christ for the Greek-speaking Jews in Egypt. This version of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, became the widely used Bible of the early Christian church.

Some who still have special regard for these extra books are happy to point out that Timothy was a Greek (Acts 16:1). Naturally, then, he used the Septuagint, and the Septuagint contained the extra books. Consequently, when Paul wrote, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God," he was including the extra Old Testament books as equally canonical!

It is significant therefore, to notice that the Greek of 2 Timothy 3:16 may be interpreted, as in the New English Bible and others, "Every inspired Scripture has its use."

This suggests rather that the apostle was reminding Timothy that, though there were many scriptures in circulation, only that scripture which is inspired of God is profitable.

More conservative Jews, particularly those who were most closely involved in the preservation of the Hebrew Old Testament, never accepted the extra books as canonical. They regarded them rather as "apocryphal," or "hidden away," probably implying that they deserved to be withdrawn from circulation as spurious or heretical.

When the Catholic scholar Jerome was learning Hebrew in preparation for the Latin Bible, he came to agree with the judgment that the extra Old Testament books not included in the Hebrew canon should be recognized as apocryphal.

Through the centuries many other learned Catholic theologians and church leaders have taken the same position as Jerome. Even Cardinal Cajetan, Luther's opponent at Augsburg in 1518, stated his agreement with the Hebrew canon and urged that the books recognized by Jerome as apocryphal not be relied upon for points of doctrine.

In spite of this, the Apocrypha has retained its traditional position in the Latin Vulgate and in English translations of the Old Testament taken from the Latin rather than from the original Hebrew and Aramaic. The 1382 Bible of John Wycliffe was one of these.

In his 1534 German Bible, Luther gathered the apocryphal books into a section between the Testaments and added this identification: "APOCRYPHA–that is books which are not held equal to the Holy Scriptures and yet are profitable and good to read."

In reaction to Protestant criticism, the Council of Trent, on April 8, 1546, pronounced that with three exceptions the apocryphal books were to be accepted as sacred and fully canonical.

All of the Protestant English Bibles of the sixteenth century contained the Apocrypha at the end of the Old Testament. In fact, the disputed books were regularly included in English Bibles until an 1827 decision by the British and Foreign Bible Society that the fundamental law of the society forbade its circulating the Apocrypha. The American Bible Society came to the same conclusion.

How can a man decide for himself which books are worthy of his trust? What about all the other books judged uncanonical by Jews, Protestants, and Catholics alike? By what standard can a book be recognized as "measuring up"?

The history of the origin of the extra books provides some clues. The opinions of centuries of believers should not be overlooked. But in the last analysis, nothing is so convincing as the actual reading of the books themselves. It is also a highly interesting and sometimes entertaining experience.

The easiest decision can be made about the apocryphal writings patterned after the books of the New Testament. These include apocryphal gospels, acts, epistles, and revelations.

In the Gospel of Thomas a story is told that the Boy Jesus made a little pond and formed sparrows out of the moist clay. When His father objected to His doing this on the Sabbath, Jesus cried, "Go! And the sparrows took their flight and went away chirping."

On another occasion, says this apocryphal book, a boy hit Jesus' shoulder. Jesus cursed the boy, and he died.

The Acts of John records an extraordinary experience of John and the bedbugs. The translation is taken from the indispensable edition of the Apocryphal New Testament by M. R. James:

"Now on the first day we arrived at a deserted inn and when we were at a loss for a bed for John, we saw a droll matter. There was one bedstead lying somewhere there without coverings, whereupon we spread the cloaks which we were wearing and we prayed him to lie down upon it and rest, while the rest of us slept upon the floor. But he when he lay down was troubled by the bugs, and as they continued to become more troublesome to him, when it was now about the middle of the night, in the hearing of us all he said to them: I say unto you, O bugs, behave yourselves, one and all, and leave your abode for the night and remain quiet in one place, and keep your distance from the servants of God. And as we laughed, and went on talking for some time, John addressed himself to sleep; and we, talking low, gave him no disturbance....

"But when the day was now dawning I arose first, and with me Verus and Andronicus, and we saw at the door of the house which we had taken a great number of bugs standing and while we wondered at the great sight of them, and all the brethren were roused up because of them, John continued sleeping. and when he was awaked we declared to him what we had seen. And he sat upon the bed and looked at them and said: Since ye have well behaved yourselves in hearkening to my rebuke, come into your place. And when he had said this, and risen from the bed, the bugs running from the door hasted to the bed and climbed up the legs thereof and disappeared into the joints. And John said again: This creature hearkened unto the voice of a man, and abode by itself and was quiet and trespassed not; but we which hear the voice and commandments of God disobey and are light-minded: and for how long?"

The Acts of Peter tells how Simon the sorcerer amazed the multitudes by flying over the city of Rome! Another fragment called The Acts of Andrew and Peter records how Peter won a thousand souls by causing a camel to pass through the eye of a needle under most extraordinary and amusing circumstances.

A few early Christian groups accepted some of the apocryphal books of the New Testament as authoritative, but it has been the almost unanimous judgment of the entire Christian church that the extra New Testament books simply do not measure up to the dignity and good sense of the ones already adjudged canonical.

The apocryphal books of the Old Testament that have been rejected by Catholics, Protestants and Jews alike have been called "pseudepigrapha," meaning "falsely entitled." Many of them contain material that is obviously inferior and unworthy of a place among the writings of the great Hebrew prophets.

When one comes to the apocryphal books admitted to the Catholic canon, the decision requires more careful consideration.

Some of the material, such as the stories of Bel and the Dragon, seem no more serious than anecdotes in the New Testament Apocrypha. But the book of First Maccabees contains valuable history. Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon include many wise and pious sayings.

Luther objected to the Apocrypha on the ground that it taught ideas contrary to the books of the Hebrew canon. Among these were the doctrine of purgatory and the efficacy of prayers for dead (2 Maccabees 12:43-45). He also observed the considerable emphasis upon the earning of merit by good works (Tobit 12:9; Ecclesiasticus 3:33; 2 Esdras 8:33, et cetera).

For my own satisfaction I have more than once read the entire collection of Biblical documents as far as possible at once sitting. It takes only a long weekend, and is well worth the effort.

When I arrived at the last book of the New Testament Apocrypha, I still had fresh recollections of Genesis and Malachi, First Esdras and Second Maccabees, the Book of Jubilees and the Story of Ahikar, Matthew and Revelation, the Gospel According to the Hebrews, and the Revelation of Saint Peter.

Within that total setting, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testament canons assumed a special place.

It is not that the books of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha are without their value. Even the most inferior tell us something of the beliefs and practices of that time.

But among the sixty-six there is a measure of coherence and consistency that one would expect and demand of documents purporting to tell the truth about God.

This is the ultimate standard of canonicity. And through the centuries, the books that have met this requirement have been recognized as "measuring up."

As far as the New Testament is concerned, Catholics and Protestants agree that the canonical books are the traditional twenty-seven.

As for the Old Testament, there would seem to be good reason to follow Catholic Jerome, Protestant Luther, and the interdenominational Bible societies, in recognizing the thirty-nine books of the Hebrew canon as the ones most worthy of our trust.