Old Testament Canon

[Seeker]

In the interest of sparking discussion, I'm posting an apologetics questions regarding the Old Testament canon and the differences between Catholic and Protestant Bibles.

Catholic and Protestant bibles are different in the books contained in the Old Testament canon.  At the Council of Trent the Catholic Church defined for the entire church that the Old Testament canon contains those books that Protestants call apocryphal.  At the Council of Carthage in 397 the bishops of Africa defined the Old Testament canon and it contained the same books that were made "offical" at Trent in the 16th century.

Since the Old Testament canon was never "official" for the entire Catholic Church until the Council of Trent, does this undermine arguments made by Catholic apologists that the canon of the Bible was decided by the Church?

Was there ever really a need to even define the Old Testament canon until it was brought into doubt?

Does the Catholic Church accepting the same books that were listed in 397 undermine the argument made by some Protestant apologists that the Church just "rubber-stamped" those books that were already in use?  To be consistent, wouldn't Protestants then accept the deuterocanonical books that they label apocryphal?

[Melody]

Great questions Seeker.

Rather than answer them just now, I'll post two more points that Protestants use (besides the common "The Council of Trent added the 7 deuterocanonical books to the Bible only in 1546") to defend their point for not using the Deuterocanonical books:

1. The Jews themselves only have 39 books in their Old Testament, that is, they do not have the deuterocanonical books.

2. Jesus never quoted from the deuterocanonical books, so they aren't inspired.

[Seeker]

The argument can be made that the Council at Carthage in 397, even though it was a local synod, was binding on the whole Church.  This is because Pope Damasus approved the list (the deuterocanonicals) with the intent that the whole church use the Old Testament canon as listed by this African synod.  Up until this time, the deuterocanonicals were under discussion in the church.

[Melody]

David, what are your views on this?

[DavidFilmer]

We really need to first understand what makes the "Apocrypha" different from the rest of the OT, and why these differences have NO significance to a Christian.

Unlike the New Testament, which was written within a single generation, the OT was written over a number of centuries, and thus the Jews were comfortable with the idea that new material would be added to their Scriptures every so often.

After the Dispersion (Diaspora), many Jews began to live among the pagans. They remained in close touch with their Faith and their home country, but they spoke the language (usually Greek) of their adopted land. According to Philo, there were more than a million Jews living in the Greek city of Alexandria (probably an exaggeration, but he made it clear that there were a LOT of Greek-speaking Jews - and, in fact, the Greek speaking Jews outnumbered their Hebrew-speaking counterparts).

A number of Sacred Writings (Macabees, Tobit, etc) were written during the time of the Dispersion, and they were originally written in Greek, not Hebrew.

Ptolemy Philadelpus commissioned a Greek translation of the entire Hebrew OT for the great Library at Alexandria. This was called the Septuagint (or "LXX") and it included the additional Greek-only sacred writings. The Septuagint became the “official” version of Scripture for Greek-speaking Jews (who represented the majority of the Jews).

OK, fast-forward a few centuries. Forty years after Christ’s death (in 70 AD), the great Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed. The Jews felt utterly abandoned by God (again). In the year 90 AD, the Jews held a council (at Jamnia) and asked themselves, “what went wrong?”  They decided that too many outside influences had crept in and vowed to return to a more traditional view of their faith. The Greek scriptures gradually began to fall out of favor with this more traditional-minded viewpoint (although it would be several centuries before the Greek Scriptures were essentially purged from the Jewish writings).

What does this have to do with Christians?  Not much.  The Jews (60 years after Christ’s death) sought to purge Greek influences from their faith.  Christians are NOT interested in purging Greek influences – nearly ALL of the New Testament Scriptures were originally written in Greek (only the Gospel of Matthew was not), and the early Christian Church was predominately Greek speaking (and populated by Gentiles).

Does the NT ever quote from one of the deuterocanonical books? No (but neither does it quote from a number of non-deuterocanonical books either, so that proves nothing.) But does the NT ever quote from the Septuagint? YES!  In fact, MOST of the NT writers reproduce the Greek text of the Septuagint whenever they quote OT passages. For example, the well-known Immanuel prophecy (Mt 1:23) is taken almost word-for-word from the Septuagint version of Is. 7:14 (and this actually has theological significance, since it inherits the rather precise Septuagint word “Virgin” instead of the more ambiguous Hebrew word which means only “young woman of marriageable age”).

Almost all the Early Church Fathers regarded the LXX as the standard form of the OT, and seldom referred to the Hebrew.  Jerome, however, based much of his Latin Vulgate on the Hebrew Scriptures, which did much to bolster the acceptance of the Hebrew texts among Christians (this influence continues today).

But, regardless of whether Christians favored the LXX or the Hebrew texts, every single Christian regarded the deuterocanonical books to be a divinely inspired part of Scripture.

Until, of course, Martin Luther came along.

The nature of the deuterocanonical books was never in question prior to Martin Luther, so it was never necessary for the Church to dogmatically define the Canon of Scripture until the Sixteenth Century.

It’s funny – Catholics are sometimes accused of “adding” the deuterocanonical  books to Scripture. In fact, they were ALWAYS part of the Christian Scriptures – Catholics didn’t “add them in,” protestants threw them out!

The Catholic Church, as always, defends the Word of God from these attacks.

[Rev. Eric]

Just to add a little to the great material that has been posted here...

David mentioned the Jewish Council of Jamnia, during which the Jews established the criteria for discerning divinely inspired Scripture.  They decided that for Scripture to truly be inspired, it had to have its origins in the Hebrew language, which, of course, ruled out the Deuterocanonical books.  Apparently Martin Luther agreed that Christians should accept the Jewish criteria from the Council of Jamnia.

Certainly, I respect how Jews determine Sacred Scripture among themselves, but as a Christian I do not embrace it as the rule that I am to follow.  When deciding what books should go into the Bible, I am not interested in what the Jews or other people say, but what the Holy Spirit says.  Through the process of ecumenical councils, the Church received a guaranteed guidance of the Holy Spirit in accepting the Deuterocanonicals as divinely inspired Scripture.

God bless,
-Rev. Eric

[DavidFilmer]

... the Jewish Council of Jamnia, during which the Jews established the criteria for discerning divinely inspired Scripture.

[snapback]1326[/snapback]

In 1892, a learned and respected English scholar, Herbert Edward Ryle (1856-1925) published a book called The Cannon of the OT in which he advanced the notion that the Jews somehow established a "Canon" of the OT at Jamnia (or, more specifically, that they had determined criteria for canonical inclusion - including a "Hebrew Only" policy). Actually, there is no evidence whatsoever to substantiate this claim, but (owing largly to Prof. Ryle's lofty credentials) the idea was accepted at face value for many years and still enjoys wide circulation. Nobody knows where Ryle came up with this idea. All we know for certain is that the topic of Greek Scriptures was discussed - we have no record of any decisions (and the Greek Scriptures continued to be used by Jewish scholars for centuries).

Actually, the Jewish church has NEVER (and still does not) have any sort of formal mechanism for determining the criteria of canonization.  Their notion of a "canon" of Scripture was really a "tradition of popular consensus" of rabbis.   During the time of Christ, the Sanhedrin enjoyed considerable influence (and prehaps could have claimed the authority to define the Jewish Canon, though they did not), but the Council at Jamnia lacked the representative character and national authority of the Sanhedrin (and thus was significantly less influential).  It would not be correct to equate (in any meaningful way) the Jewish Council at Jamnia with a Catholic Ecumenical Council - at best, it might be considered a local pastoral synod.

[Rev. Eric]

After reading your last post, David, I decided to do some further research into what the Council of Jamnia did and did not say.  I admit that I did not find any complete concrete historical records pertaining to what was discussed by these 1st Century Jews, but rather a lot of ambiguity.

I came across an article by Robert C. Newman which seems to be worth reading in light of the discussion at hand (I admit that at this time I have only scanned through it, but it seems to have been well researched).  In this article, the evidence for the existence of the Council of Jamnia and its alleged decisions is examined in light of the Talmud.  

The Council of Jamnia and the Old Testament Canon

The abstract of this document states:

It is concluded that there is no real evidence for such a council nor for any binding canonical decisions at that time.

- Robert Newman (Copyright ©1983 by Robert C. Newman)

God bless,
-Rev. Eric