The Canon and the Deuterocanonical Books

The canon is the list of the books that the Church recognises as Scripture inspired by God. The Catholic Old Testament numbers forty-six books: seven more than the Protestant Bible, which keeps thirty-nine, and a few fewer than the Bibles of the Eastern Churches, broader still. These seven books, excluded by Protestant Bibles, are the deuterocanonicals. To know who recognised them, and when, touches the very root of faith in Scripture itself.

The canon and the deuterocanonicals

The word “canon” comes from the Greek kanōn (κανών), the rule, the reed used for measuring; it denotes the ruled list of the books held to be inspired. These seven books are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, and the two books of Maccabees. To these are added deuterocanonical passages in the book of Daniel and the book of Esther. They are called deuterocanonical, from the Greek deuteros (δεύτερος), “second”: not that they are of second rank, but because their entry into the canon was discussed at certain times, where the others, called protocanonical, never were. They are fully inspired. A trap of vocabulary slips in here: what Catholics call deuterocanonical, Protestants call “apocryphal”; and what Catholics call apocryphal, from the Greek apokryphos (ἀπόκρυφος), “hidden”, the uninspired writings such as the false gospels, Protestants call “pseudepigrapha”.

The Septuagint, Bible of the Church

In the time of Christ, the Jewish Scriptures circulated in two forms: the Hebrew texts, and their Greek translation, the Septuagint, begun at Alexandria three centuries before him. The Septuagint carried the deuterocanonical books. The Church of the apostles, which spoke Greek, received the Septuagint as her Old Testament, and the New Testament quotes it on every page. The deuterocanonical books themselves leave their mark on it: the letter to the Hebrews salutes martyrs who are those of the second book of Maccabees, “Some were tortured, refusing release in order to obtain a better resurrection.” Hebrews 11:35 and the feast of the Dedication, which Christ keeps at Jerusalem, comes from the history these same books recount, “At that time the feast of the Dedication was being celebrated in Jerusalem.” John 10:22 The Fathers used them, and the councils of the first centuries drew up the complete list, the seven included. For more than a thousand years, the Bible of the Church carried these books; she reads them still, Sirach even in the feasts of the Virgin.

It is objected further that the New Testament never cites these books as Scripture, by the formula “it is written.” The criterion proves too much: several books the Protestants receive are likewise never so cited, nor even mentioned, such as Esther, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, Ezra and Nehemiah. The absence of citation therefore does not decide the canon.

Who cut away, and when

Toward the end of the first century, Judaism settled its own list on the books kept in Hebrew alone, leaving aside the seven. In the fourth century, translating the Bible from the Hebrew, Jerome noted this difference and marked a reservation; but the Church kept the books, following Augustine and the councils, and Jerome translated them himself. They remained in the Christian Bible until the Reformation. In the sixteenth century, the reformers cut the seven from the Old Testament and set them apart, under the name of “Apocrypha”: Luther judged them useful to read, not equal to Scripture. The stakes of doctrine were not foreign to this, for some of these books support truths they rejected, such as prayer for the dead: “he had this sacrifice of atonement offered for the dead, so that they might be freed from their sin.” 2 Maccabees 12:46 In response, the Council of Trent, in 1546, solemnly defined the canon of the forty-six books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven of the New. Later, judging these books uninspired and their printing costly, the Protestant Bible societies of the nineteenth century ceased to print them, so as to circulate only the writings held to be Scripture; there remained but thirty-nine books.

The canon or canons of the Orthodox

The word “Orthodox” does not cover a single Church, but several families separated from Rome at different dates, and their canons do not coincide. The most numerous are the Orthodox Churches of the Byzantine tradition, Greek and Slavonic, in communion among themselves: the Greek Church, the Russian Church, and the others. All have kept the Septuagint, and their canon is broader than the Catholic canon. Besides the seven books, they receive the first book of Esdras (a Greek form of Ezra, distinct from the book Rome receives), the Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151 and the third book of Maccabees; the fourth book of Maccabees often stands in an appendix. They call these read books the anagignoskomena (ἀναγινωσκόμενα), “those that are read”. The Greek tradition and the Slavonic tradition vary a little, the latter carrying in addition one more Esdras, of apocalyptic character. This East has never fixed its list with the closed rigour of the Council of Trent: its synods received these books without settling the count in so clear-cut a way.

Alongside them, other Churches, called Oriental Orthodox, had separated earlier still and form a communion apart: the Copts of Egypt, the Armenians, the Syriacs, and the Ethiopian Church. This last holds the broadest canon of all Christendom, going so far as to receive the book of Enoch and the book of Jubilees, which neither Rome nor the Byzantine Orthodox hold to be inspired. The Catholic Church receives none of these supernumerary books: in the Latin Bible, the third and fourth book of Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh were relegated to an appendix, kept without being held for Scripture. The lists nest thus: the thirty-nine Protestant books fit within the forty-six Catholic ones, which fit within the canon of the Byzantine Orthodox, itself contained within the Ethiopian canon.

Why the Catholic canon

It remains to understand why this canon. The list of the inspired books belongs to the discernment of the Church: it is she who, under the guidance of the Spirit, recognized and received each book as inspired. A book is Scripture because she held it for inspired and read it as such, without interruption, since the apostles. The seven books answer to this measure: read from the apostolic age in the Septuagint that the nascent Church spoke, they were inscribed by the councils of Rome, of Hippo and of Carthage in a list already identical, line for line, to that of the Catholic Bible. The Council of Florence said it again, a century before the Reformation: in 1442 its decree for the Copts lists one by one the inspired books, Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and the two books of Maccabees included. When Trent defined the canon, it fixed nothing new: it sealed the list the Church had constantly received and already enumerated in council.

This principle sheds light on the two other counts. The shorter list comes from a withdrawal: the Protestant Reformation set apart what the Church had always read, to follow the briefer canon that rabbinic Judaism had kept for itself. The broader canons of the East come from the contrary movement: the East kept everything without ever settling its list, its Greek and Slavonic traditions not counting the same books, for want of an authority able to close the canon for the whole Church. For a canon is closed only where such an authority exists. The Catholic Church holds it from Peter, and at the Council of Trent she fixed the list once for all: the list that Tradition had constantly received, sealed by the one who had the power to do it.