Canon of the Old Testament

The word canon as applied to the Scriptures has long had a special
and consecrated meaning. In its fullest comprehension it signifies
the authoritative list or closed number of the writings composed
under Divine inspiration, and destined for the well-being of the
Church, using the latter word in the wide sense of the theocratic
society which began with God's revelation of Himself to the people
of Israel, and which finds its ripe development and completion in
the Catholic organism. The whole Biblical Canon therefore consists
of the canons of the Old and New Testaments. The Greek kanon means
primarily a reed, or measuring-rod: by a natural figure it was
employed by ancient writers both profane and religious to denote a
rule or standard. We find the substantive first applied to the
Sacred Scriptures in the fourth century, by St. Athanasius; for
its derivatives, the Council of Laodicea of the same period speaks
of the kanonika biblia and Athanasius of the biblia kanonizomena.
The latter phrase proves that the passive sense of canon -- that
of a regulated and defined collection -- was already in use, and
this has remained the prevailing connotation of the word in
ecclesiastical literature.

The terms protocanonical and deuterocanonical, of frequent usage
among Catholic theologians and exegetes, require a word of
caution. They are not felicitous, and it would be wrong to infer
from them that the Church successively possessed two distinct
Biblical Canons. Only in a partial and restricted way may we speak
of a first and second Canon. Protocanonical (protos, "first") is a
conventional word denoting those sacred writings which have been
always received by Christendom without dispute. The protocanonical
books of the Old Testament correspond with those of the Bible of
the Hebrews, and the Old Testament as received by Protestants. The
deuterocanonical (deuteros, "second") are those whose Scriptural
character was contested in some quarters, but which long ago
gained a secure footing in the Bible of the Catholic Church,
though those of the Old Testament are classed by Protestants as
the "Apocrypha". These consist of seven books: Tobias, Judith,
Baruch, Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, First and Second Machabees; also
certain additions to Esther and Daniel.

It should be noted that protocanonical and deuterocanonical are
modern terms, not having been used before the sixteenth century.
As they are of cumbersome length, the latter (being frequently
used in this article) will be often found in the abbreviated form
deutero.

The scope of an article on the sacred Canon may now be seen to be
properly limited regarding the process of

�  what may be ascertained regarding the process of the collection
of the sacred writings into bodies or groups which from their very
inception were the objects of a greater or less degree of
veneration;

�  the circumstances and manner in which these collections were
definitely canonized, or adjudged to have a uniquely Divine and
authoritative quality;

�  the vicissitudes which certain compositions underwent in the
opinions of individuals and localities before their Scriptural
character was universally established.

It is thus seen that canonicity is a correlative of inspiration,
being the extrinsic dignity belonging to writings which have been
officially declared as of sacred origin and authority. It is
antecedently very probable that according as a book was written
early or late it entered into a sacred collection and attained a
canonical standing. Hence the views of traditionalist and critic
(not implying that the traditionalist may not also be critical) on
the Canon parallel, and are largely influenced by, their
respective hypotheses on the origin of its component members.

A. THE CANON AMONG THE PALESTINIAN JEWS (PROTOCANONICAL BOOKS)

It has already been intimated that there is a smaller, or
incomplete, and larger, or complete, Old Testament. Both of these
were handed down by the Jews; the former by the Palestinian, the
latter by the Alexandrian, Hellenist, Jews.

The Jewish Bible of today is composed of three divisions, whose
titles combined from the current Hebrew name for the complete
Scriptures of Judaism: Hat-Torah, Nebiim, wa-Kethubim, i.e. The
Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. This triplication is ancient;
it is supposed as long-established in the Mishnah, the Jewish code
of unwritten sacred laws, reduced to writing, c. A.D. 200. A
grouping closely akin to it occurs in the New Testament in
Christ's own words, Luke, xxiv, 44: "All things must needs be
fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and in the
prophets, and in the psalms concerning me". Going back to the
prologue of Ecclesiasticus, prefixed to it about 132 B.C., we find
mentioned "the Law, and the Prophets, and others that have
followed them". The Torah, or Law, consists of the five Mosaic
books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. The
Prophets were subdivided by the Jews into the Former Prophets
[i.e. the prophetico-historical books: Josue, Judges, Samuel, (I
and II Kings), and Kings (III and IV Kings)] and the Latter
Prophets (Isaias, Jeremias, Ezechiel, and the twelve minor
Prophets, counted by the Hebrews as one book). The Writings, more
generally known by a title borrowed from the Greek Fathers,
Hagiographa (holy writings), embrace all the remaining books of
the Hebrew Bible. Named in the order in which they stand in the
current Hebrew text, these are: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Canticle of
Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel,
Esdras, Nehemias, or II Esdras, Paralipomenon.

1. Traditional view of the Canon of the Palestinian Jews

Proto-Canon

In opposition to scholars of more recent views, conservatives do
not admit that the Prophets and the Hagiographa represent two
successive stages in the formation of the Palestinian Canon.
According to this older school, the principle which dictated the
separation between the Prophets and the Hagiographa was not of a
chronological kind, but one found in the very nature of the
respective sacred compositions. That literature was grouped under
the Ke-thubim, or Hagiographa, which neither was the direct
product of the prophetical order, namely, that comprised in the
Latter Prophets, nor contained the history of Israel as
interpreted by the same prophetic teachers--narratives classed as
the Former Prophets. The Book of Daniel was relegated to the
Hagiographa as a work of the prophetic gift indeed, but not of the
permanent prophetic office. These same conservative students of
the Canon--now scarcely represented outside the Church--maintain,
for the reception of the documents composing these groups into the
sacred literature of the Israelites, dates which are in general
much earlier than those admitted by critics. They place the
practical, if not formal, completion of the Palestinian Canon in
the era of Esdras (Ezra) and Nehemias, about the middle of the
fifth century B.C., while true to their adhesion to a Mosaic
authorship of the Pentateuch, they insist that the canonization of
the five books followed soon after their composition.

Since the traditionalists infer the Mosaic authorship of the
Pentateuch from other sources, they can rely for proof of an early
collection of these books chiefly on Deuteronomy, xxxi, 9-13, 24-
26, where there is question of a books of the law, delivered by
Moses to the priests with the command to keep it in the ark and
read it to the people on the feast of Tabernacles. But the effort
to identify this book with the entire Pentateuch is not convincing
to the opponents of Mosaic authorship.

The Remainder of the Palestinian-Jewish Canon

Without being positive on the subject, the advocates of the older
views regard it as highly probable that several additions were
made to the sacred repertory between the canonization of the
Mosaic Torah above described and the Exile (598 B.C.). They cite
especially Isaias, xxxiv, 16; II Paralipomenon, xxix, 30;
Proverbs, xxv, 1; Daniel, ix, 2. For the period following the
Babylonian Exile the conservative argument takes a more confident
tone. This was an era of construction, a turning-point in the
history of Israel. The completion of the Jewish Canon, by the
addition of the Prophets and Hagiographa as bodies to the Law, is
attributed by conservatives to Esdras, the priest-scribe and
religious leader of the period, abetted by Nehemias, the civil
governor; or at least to a school of scribes founded by the
former. (Cf. II Esdras, viii-x; II Machabees, ii, 13, in the Greek
original.) Far more arresting in favour of an Esdrine formulation
of the Hebrew Bible is a the much discussed passage from Josephus,
"Contra Apionem", I, viii, in which the Jewish historian, writing
about A.D. 100, registers his conviction and that of his
coreligionists--a conviction presumably based on tradition--that
the Scriptures of the Palestinian Hebrews formed a closed and
sacred collection from the days of the Persian king, Artaxerxes
Longiamanus (465-25 B.C.), a contemporary of Esdras. Josephus is
the earliest writer who numbers the books of the Jewish Bible. In
its present arrangement this contains 40; Josephus arrived at 22
artificially, in order to match the number of letters in the
Hebrew alphabet, by means of collocations and combinations
borrowed in part from the Septuagint. The conservative exegetes
find a confirmatory argument in a statement of the apocryphas
Fourth Book of Esdras (xiv, 18-47), under whose legendary envelope
they see an historical truth, and a further one in a reference in
the Baba Bathra tract of the Babylonian Talmud to hagiographic
activity on the part of "the men of the Great Synagogue", and
Esdras and Nehemias.

But the Catholic Scripturists who admit an Esdrine Canon are far
from allowing that Esdras and his colleagues intended to so close
up the sacred library as to bar any possible future accessions.
The Spirit of God might and did breathe into later writings, and
the presence of the deuterocanonical books in the Church's Canon
at once forestalls and answers those Protestant theologians of a
preceding generation who claimed that Esdras was a Divine agent
for an inviolable fixing and sealing of the Old Testament To this
extent at least, Catholic writers on the subject dissent from the
drift of the Josephus testimony. And while there is what may be
called a consensus of Catholic exegetes of the conservative type
on an Esdrine or quasi-Esdrine formulation of the canon so far as
the existing material permitted it, this agreement is not
absolute; Kaulen and Danko, favouring a later completion, are the
notable exceptions among the above-mentioned scholars.

2. Critical views of the formation of the Palestinian Canon

Its three constituent bodies, the Law, Prophets, and Hagiographa,
represent a growth and correspond to three periods more or less
extended. The reason for the isolation of the Hagiographa from the
Prophets was therefore mainly chronological. The only division
marked off clearly by intrinsic features is the legal element of
the Old Testament, viz., the Pentateuch.

The Torah, or Law

Until the reign of King Josias, and the epoch-making discovery of
"the book of the law" in the Temple (621 B.C.), say the critical
exegetes, there was in Israel no written code of laws, or other
work, universally acknowledged as of supreme and Divine authority.
This "book of the law" was practically identical with Deuteronomy,
and its recognition or canonization consisted in the solemn pact
entered into by Josias and the people of Juda, described in IV
Kings, xxiii. That a written sacred Torah was previously unknown
among the Israelites, is demonstrated by the negative evidence of
the earlier prophets, by the absence of any such factor from the
religious reform undertaken by Ezechias (Hezekiah), while it was
the mainspring of that carried out by Josias, and lastly by the
plain surprise and consternation of the latter ruler at the
finding of such a work. This argument, in fact, is the pivot of
the current system of Pentateuchal criticism, and will be
developed more at length in the article on the Pentateuch, as also
the thesis attacking the Mosaic authorship and promulgation of the
latter as a whole. The actual publication of the entire Mosaic
code, according to the dominant hypothesis, did not occur until
the days of Esdras, and is narrated in chapters viii-x of the
second book bearing that name. In this connection must be
mentioned the argument from the Samaritan Pentateuch to establish
that the Esdrine Canon took in nothing beyond the Hexateuch, i.e.
the Pentateuch plus Josue. (See PENTATEUCH; SAMARITANS.) The
Nebiim, or Prophets

There is no direct light upon the time or manner in which the
second stratum of the Hebrew Canon was finished. The creation of
the above-mentioned Samaritan Canon (c. 432 B.C.) may furnish a
terminus a quo; perhaps a better one is the date of the expiration
of prophecy about the close of the fifth century before Christ.
For the other terminus the lowest possible date is that of the
prologue to Ecclesiasticus (c. 132 B.C.), which speaks of "the
Law", and the Prophets, and the others that have followed them".
But compare Ecclesiasticus itself, chapters xlvi-xlix, for an
earlier one.

The Kethubim, or Hagiographa Completes of the Jewish Canon

Critical opinion as to date ranged from c. 165 B.C. to the middle
of the second century of our era (Wildeboer). The Catholic
scholars Jahn, Movers, Nickes, Danko, Haneberg, Aicher, without
sharing all the views of the advanced exegetes, regard the Hebrew
Hagiographa as not definitely settled till after Christ. It is an
incontestable fact that the sacredness of certain parts of the
Palestinian Bible (Esther, Ecclesiastes, Canticle of Canticles)
was disputed by some rabbis as late as the second century of the
Christian Era (Mishna, Yadaim, III, 5; Babylonian Talmud, Megilla,
fol. 7). However differing as to dates, the critics are assured
that the distinction between the Hagiographa and the Prophetic
Canon was one essentially chronological. It was because the
Prophets already formed a sealed collection that Ruth,
Lamentations, and Daniel, though naturally belonging to it, could
not gain entrance, but had to take their place with the last-
formed division, the Kethubim.

3. The Protocanonical Books and the New Testament

The absence of any citations from Esther, Ecclesiastes, and
Canticles may be reasonably explained by their unsuitability for
New Testament purposes, and is further discounted by the non-
citation of the two books of Esdras. Abdias, Nahum, and Sophonias,
while not directly honoured, are included in the quotations from
the other minor Prophets by virtue of the traditional unity of
that collection. On the other hand, such frequent terms as "the
Scripture", the "Scriptures", "the holy Scriptures", applied in
the New Testament to the other sacred writings, would lead us to
believe that the latter already formed a definite fixed
collection; but, on the other, the reference in St. Luke to "the
Law and the Prophets and the Psalms", while demonstrating the
fixity of the Torah and the Prophets as sacred groups, does not
warrant us in ascribing the same fixity to the third division, the
Palestinian-Jewish Hagiographa. If, as seems certain, the exact
content of the broader catalogue of the Old Testament Scriptures
(that comprising the deutero books) cannot be established from the
New Testament, a fortiori there is no reason to expect that it
should reflect the precise extension of the narrower and Judaistic
Canon. We are sure, of course, that all the Hagiographa were
eventually, before the death of the last Apostle, divinely
committed to the Church as Holy Scriptures, but we known this as a
truth of faith, and by theological deduction, not from documentary
evidence in the New Testament The latter fact has a bearing
against the Protestant claim that Jesus approved and transmitted
en bloc an already defined Bible of the Palestinian Synagogue.

4. Authors and Standards of Canonicity among the Jews

Though the Old Testament reveals no formal notion of inspiration,
the later Jews at least must have possessed the idea (cf. II
Timothy, iii, 16; II Peter, i, 21). There is an instance of a
Talmudic doctor distinguishing between a composition "given by the
wisdom of the Holy Spirit" and one supposed to be the product of
merely human wisdom. But as to our distinct concept of canonicity,
it is a modern idea, and even the Talmud gives no evidence of it.
To characterize a book which held no acknowledged place in the
divine library, the rabbis spoke of it as "defiling the hands", a
curious technical expression due probably to the desire to prevent
any profane touching of the sacred roll. But though the formal
idea of canonicity was wanting among the Jews the fact existed.
Regarding the sources of canonicity among the Hebrew ancients, we
are left to surmise an analogy. There are both psychological and
historical reasons against the supposition that the Old Testament
Canon grew spontaneously by a kind of instinctive public
recognition of inspired books. True, it is quite reasonable to
assume that the prophetic office in Israel carried its own
credentials, which in a large measure extended to its written
compositions. But there were many pseduo-prophets in the nation,
and so some authority was necessary to draw the line between the
true and the false prophetical writings. And an ultimate tribunal
was also needed to set its seal upon the miscellaneous and in some
cases mystifying literature embraced in the Hagiographa. Jewish
tradition, as illustrated by the already cited Josephus, Baba
Bathra, and pseudo-Esdras data, points to authority as the final
arbiter of what was Scriptural and what not. The so-called Council
of Jamnia (c. A.D. 90) has reasonably been taken as having
terminated the disputes between rival rabbinic schools concerning
the canonicity of Canticles. So while the intuitive sense and
increasingly reverent consciousness of the faithful element of
Israel could, and presumably did, give a general impulse and
direction to authority, we must conclude that it was the word of
official authority which actually fixed the limits of the Hebrew
Canon, and here, broadly speaking, the advanced and conservative
exegetes meet on common ground. However the case may have been for
the Prophets, the preponderance of evidence favours a late period
as that in which the Hagiographa were closed, a period when the
general body of Scribes dominated Judaism, sitting "in the chair
of Moses", and alone having the authority and prestige for such
action. The term general body of Scribes has been used advisedly;
contemporary scholars gravely suspect, when they do not entirely
reject, the "Great Synagogue" of rabbinic tradition, and the
matter lay outside the jurisdiction of the Sanhedrim.

As a touchstone by which uncanonical and canonical works were
discriminated, an important influence was that of the Pentateuchal
Law. This was always the Canon par excellence of the Israelites.
To the Jews of the Middle Ages the Torah was the inner sanctuary,
or Holy of Holies, while the Prophets were the Holy Place, and the
Kethubim only the outer court of the Biblical temple, and this
medieval conception finds ample basis in the pre-eminence allowed
to the Law by the rabbis of the Talmudic age. Indeed, from Esdras
downwards the Law, as the oldest portion of the Canon, and the
formal expression of God's commands, received the highest
reverence. The Cabbalists of the second century after Christ, and
later schools, regarded the other section of the Old Testament as
merely the expansion and interpretation of the Pentateuch. We may
be sure, then, that the chief test of canonicity, at least for the
Hagiographa, was conformity with the Canon par excellence, the
Pentateuch. It is evident, in addition, that no book was admitted
which had not been composed in Hebrew, and did not possess the
antiquity and prestige of a classic age, or name at least. These
criteria are negative and exclusive rather than directive. The
impulse of religious feeling or liturgical usage must have been
the prevailing positive factors in the decision. But the negative
tests were in part arbitrary, and an intuitive sense cannot give
the assurance of Divine certification. Only later was the
infallible Voice to come, and then it was to declare that the
Canon of the Synagogue, though unadulterated indeed, was
incomplete.

B. THE CANON AMONG THE ALEXANDRIAN JEWS (DEUTEROCANONICAL BOOKS)

The most striking difference between the Catholic and Protestant
Bibles is the presence in the former of a number of writings which
are wanting in the latter and also in the Hebrew Bible, which
became the Old Testament of Protestantism. These number seven
books: Tobias (Tobit), Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, I
and II Machabees, and three documents added to protocanonical
books, viz., the supplement to Esther, from x, 4, to the end, the
Canticle of the Three Youths (Song of the Three Children) in
Daniel, iii, and the stories of Susanna and the Elders and Bel and
the Dragon, forming the closing chapters of the Catholic version
of that book. Of these works, Tobias and Judith were written
originally in Aramaic, perhaps in Hebrew; Baruch and I Machabees
in Hebrew, while Wisdom and II Machabees were certainly composed
in Greek. The probabilities favour Hebrew as the original language
of the addition to Esther, and Greek for the enlargements of
Daniel.

The ancient Greek Old Testament known as the Septuagint was the
vehicle which conveyed these additional Scriptures into the
Catholic Church. The Septuagint version was the Bible of the
Greek-speaking, or Hellenist, Jews, whose intellectual and
literary centre was Alexandria (see SEPTUAGINT). The oldest extant
copies date from the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, and
were therefore made by Christian hands; nevertheless scholars
generally admit that these faithfully represent the Old Testament
as it was current among the Hellenist or Alexandrian Jews in the
age immediately preceding Christ. These venerable manuscripts of
the Septuagint vary somewhat in their content outside the
Palestinian Canon, showing that in Alexandrian-Jewish circles the
number of admissible extra books was not sharply determined either
by tradition or by authority. However, aside from the absence of
Machabees from the Codex Vaticanus (the very oldest copy of the
Greek Old Testament), all the entire manuscripts contain all the
deutero writings; where the manuscript Septuagints differ from one
another, with the exception noted, it is in a certain excess above
the deuterocanonical books. It is a significant fact that in all
these Alexandrian Bibles the traditional Hebrew order is broken up
by the interspersion of the additional literature among the other
books, outside the law, thus asserting for the extra writings a
substantial equality of rank and privilege.

It is pertinent to ask the motives which impelled the Hellenist
Jews to thus, virtually at least, canonize this considerable
section of literature, some of it very recent, and depart so
radically from the Palestinian tradition. Some would have it that
not the Alexandrian, but the Palestinian, Jews departed from the
Biblical tradition. The Catholic writers Nickes, Movers, Danko,
and more recently Kaulen and Mullen, have advocated the view that
originally the Palestinian Canon must have included all the
deuterocanonicals, and so stood down to the time of the Apostles
(Kaulen, c. 100 B.C.), when, moved by the fact that the Septuagint
had become the Old Testament of the Church, it was put under ban
by the Jerusalem Scribes, who were actuated moreover (thus
especially Kaulen) by hostility to the Hellenistic largeness of
spirit and Greek composition of our deuterocanonical books. These
exegetes place much reliance on St. Justin Martyr's statement that
the Jews had mutilated Holy Writ, a statement that rests on no
positive evidence. They adduce the fact that certain deutero books
were quoted with veneration, and even in a few cases as
Scriptures, by Palestinian or Babylonian doctors; but the private
utterances of a few rabbis cannot outweigh the consistent Hebrew
tradition of the canon, attested by Josephus--although he himself
was inclined to Hellenism--and even by the Alexandrian-Jewish
author of IV Esdras. We are therefore forced to admit that the
leaders of Alexandrian Judaism showed a notable independence of
Jerusalem tradition and authority in permitting the sacred
boundaries of the Canon, which certainly had been fixed for the
Prophets, to be broken by the insertion of an enlarged Daniel and
the Epistle of Baruch. On the assumption that the limits of the
Palestinian Hagiographa remained undefined until a relatively late
date, there was less bold innovation in the addition of the other
books, but the wiping out of the lines of the triple division
reveals that the Hellenists were ready to extend the Hebrew Canon,
if not establish a new official one of their own.

On their human side these innovations are to be accounted for by
the free spirit of the Hellenist Jews. Under the influence of
Greek thought they had conceived a broader view of Divine
inspiration than that of their Palestinian brethren, and refused
to restrict the literary manifestations of the Holy Ghost to a
certain terminus of time and the Hebrew form of language. The Book
of Wisdom, emphatically Hellenist in character, presents to us
Divine wisdom as flowing on from generation to generation and
making holy souls and prophets (vii, 27, in the Greek). Philo, a
typical Alexandrian-Jewish thinker, has even an exaggerated notion
of the diffusion of inspiration (Quis rerum divinarum h�res, 52;
ed. Lips., iii, 57; De migratione Abrah�, 11,299; ed. Lips. ii,
334). But even Philo, while indicating acquaintance with the
deutero literature, nowhere cites it in his voluminous writings.
True, he does not employ several books of the Hebrew Canon; but
there is a natural presumption that if he had regarded the
additional works as being quite on the same plane as the others,
he would not have failed to quote so stimulating and congenial a
production as the Book of Wisdom. Moreover, as has been pointed
out by several authorities, the independent spirit of the
Hellenists could not have gone so far as to setup a different
official Canon from that of Jerusalem, without having left
historical traces of such a rupture. So, from the available data
we may justly infer that, while the deuterocanonicals were
admitted as sacred by the Alexandrian Jews, they possessed a lower
degree of sanctity and authority than the longer accepted books,
i.e., the Palestinian Hagiographa and the Prophets, themselves
inferior to the Law.

II. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

The most explicit definition of the Catholic Canon is that given
by the Council of Trent, Session IV, 1546. For the Old Testament
its catalogue reads as follows:

The five books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,
Deuteronomy), Josue, Judges, Ruth, the four books of Kings, two of
Paralipomenon, the first and second of Esdras (which latter is
called Nehemias), Tobias, Judith, Esther, Job, the Davidic Psalter
(in number one hundred and fifty Psalms), Proverbs, Ecclesiastes,
the Canticle of Canticles, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Isaias,
Jeremias, with Baruch, Ezechiel, Daniel, the twelve minor Prophets
(Osee, Joel, Amos, Abdias, Jonas, Micheas, Nahum, Habacue,
Sophonias, Aggeus, Zacharias, Malachias), two books of Machabees,
the first and second.

The order of books copies that of the Council of Florence, 1442,
and in its general plan is that of the Septuagint. The divergence
of titles from those found in the Protestant versions is due to
the fact that the official Latin Vulgate retained the forms of the
Septuagint.

A. THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON (INCLUDING THE DEUTEROS) IN THE NEW
TESTAMENT

The Tridentine decrees from which the above list is extracted was
the first infallible and effectually promulgated pronouncement on
the Canon, addressed to the Church Universal. Being dogmatic in
its purport, it implies that the Apostles bequeathed the same
Canon to the Church, as a part of the depositum fedei. But this
was not done by way of any formal decision; we should search the
pages of the New Testament in vain for any trace of such action.
The larger Canon of the Old Testament passed through the Apostles'
hands to the church tacitly, by way of their usage and whole
attitude toward its components; an attitude which, for most of the
sacred writings of the Old Testament, reveals itself in the New,
and for the rest, must have exhibited itself in oral utterances,
or at least in tacit approval of the special reverence of the
faithful. Reasoning backward from the status in which we find the
deutero books in the earliest ages of post-Apostolic Christianity,
we rightly affirm that such a status points of Apostolic sanction,
which in turn must have rested on revelation either by Christ or
the Holy Spirit. For the deuterocanonicals at least, we needs must
have recourse to this legitimate prescriptive argument, owing to
the complexity and inadequacy of the New Testament data.

All the books of the Hebrew Old Testament are cited in the New
except those which have been aptly called the Antilegomena of the
Old Testament, viz., Esther, Ecclesiastes, and Canticles; moreover
Esdras and Nehemias are not employed. The admitted absence of any
explicit citation of the deutero writings does not therefore prove
that they were regarded as inferior to the above-mentioned works
in the eyes of New Testament personages and authors. The deutero
literature was in general unsuited to their purposes, and some
consideration should be given to the fact that even at its
Alexandrian home it was not quoted by Jewish writers, as we saw in
the case of Philo. The negative argument drawn from the non-
citation of the deuterocanonicals in the New Testament is
especially minimized by the indirect use made of them by the same
Testament. This takes the form of allusions and reminiscences, and
shows unquestionably that the Apostles and Evangelists were
acquainted with the Alexandrian increment, regarded its books as
at least respectable sources, and wrote more or less under its
influence. A comparison of Hebrews, xi and II Machabees, vi and
vii reveals unmistakable references in the former to the heroism
of the martyrs glorified in the latter. There are close affinities
of thought, and in some cases also of language, between I Peter,
i, 6, 7, and Wisdom, iii, 5, 6; Hebrews, i, 3, and Wisdom, vii,
26, 27; I Corinthians, x, 9, 10, and Judith, viii, 24-25; I
Corinthians, vi, 13, and Ecclesiasticus, xxxvi, 20.

Yet the force of the direct and indirect employment of Old
Testament writings by the New is slightly impaired by the
disconcerting truth that at least one of the New Testament
authors, St. Jude, quotes explicitly from the "Book of Henoch",
long universally recognized as apocryphal, see verse 14, while in
verse 9 he borrows from another apocryphal narrative, the
"Assumption of Moses". The New Testament quotations from the Old
are in general characterized by a freedom and elasticity regarding
manner and source which further ten to diminish their weight as
proofs of canonicity. But so far as concerns the great majority of
the Palestinian Hagiographa--a fortiori, the Pentateuch and
Prophets--whatever want of conclusiveness there may be in the New
Testament, evidence of their canonical standing is abundantly
supplemented from Jewish sources alone, in the series of witnesses
beginning with the Mishnah and running back through Josephus and
Philo to the translation of the above books for the Hellenist
Greeks. But for the deuterocanonical literature, only the last
testimony speaks as a Jewish confirmation. However, there are
signs that the Greek version was not deemed by its readers as a
closed Bible of definite sacredness in all its parts, but that its
somewhat variable contents shaded off in the eyes of the
Hellenists from the eminently sacred Law down to works of
questionable divinity, such as III Machabees.

This factor should be considered in weighing a certain argument. A
large number of Catholic authorities see a canonization of the
deuteros in a supposed wholesale adoption and approval, by the
Apostles, of the Greek, and therefore larger, Old Testament The
argument is not without a certain force; the New Testament
undoubtedly shows a preference for the Septuagint; out of the 350
texts from the Old Testament, 300 favour the language of the Greek
version rather than that of the Hebrew. But there are
considerations which bid us hesitate to admit an Apostolic
adoption of the Septuagint en bloc. As remarked above, there are
cogent reasons for believing that it was not a fixed quantity at
the the time. The existing oldest representative manuscripts are
not entirely identical in the books they contain. Moreover, it
should be remembered that at the beginning of our era, and for
some time later, complete sets of any such voluminous collection
as the Septuagint in manuscript would be extremely rare; the
version must have been current in separate books or groups of
books, a condition favourable to a certain variability of compass.
So neither a fluctuating Septuagint nor an inexplicit New
Testament conveys to us the exact extension of the pre-Christian
Bible transmitted by the Apostles to the Primitive Church. It is
more tenable to conclude to a selective process under the guidance
of the Holy Ghost, and a process completed so late in Apostolic
times that the New Testament fails to reflect its mature result
regarding either the number or note of sanctity of the extra-
Palestinian books admitted. To historically learn the Apostolic
Canon of the Old Testament we must interrogate less sacred but
later documents, expressing more explicitly the belief of the
first ages of Christianity.

B. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST THREE
CENTURIES

The sub-Apostolic writings of Clement, Polycarp, the author of the
Epistle of Barnabas, of the pseudo-Clementine homilies, and the
"Shepherd" of Hermas, contain implicit quotations from or
allusions to all the deuterocanonicals except Baruch (which
anciently was often united with Jeremias) and I Machabess and the
additions to David. No unfavourable argument can be drawn from the
loose, implicit character of these citations, since these
Apostolic Fathers quote the protocanonical Scriptures in precisely
the same manner.

Coming down to the next age, that of the apologists, we find
Baruch cited by Athenagoras as a prophet. St. Justin Martyr is the
first to note that the Church has a set of Old Testament
Scriptures different from the Jews', and also the earliest to
intimate the principle proclaimed by later writers, namely, the
self-sufficiency of the Church in establishing the Canon; its
independence of the Synagogue in this respect. The full
realization of this truth came slowly, at least in the Orient,
where there are indications that in certain quarters the spell of
Palestinian-Jewish tradition was not fully cast off for some time.
St. Melito, Bishop of Sardis (c. 170), first drew up a list of the
canonical books of the Old Testament While maintaining the
familiar arrangement of the Septuagint, he says that he verified
his catalogue by inquiry among Jews; Jewry by that time had
everywhere discarded the Alexandrian books, and Melito's Canon
consists exclusively of the protocanonicals minus Esther. It
should be noticed, however, that the document to which this
catalogue was prefixed is capable of being understood as having an
anti-Jewish polemical purpose, in which case Melito's restricted
canon is explicable on another ground. St. Iren�us, always a
witness of the first rank, on account of his broad acquaintance
with ecclesiastical tradition, vouches that Baruch was deemed on
the same footing as Jeremias, and that the narratives of Susanna
and Bel and the Dragon were ascribed to Daniel. The Alexandrian
tradition is represented by the weighty authority of Origen.
Influenced, doubtless, by the Alexandrian-Jewish usage of
acknowledging in practice the extra writings as sacred while
theoretically holding to the narrower Canon of Palestine, his
catalogue of the Old Testament Scriptures contains only the
protocanonical books, though it follows the order of the
Septuagint. Nevertheless Origen employs all the deuterocanonicals
as Divine Scriptures, and in his letter of Julius Africanus
defends the sacredness of Tobias, Judith, and the fragments of
Daniel, at the same time implicitly asserting the autonomy of the
Church in fixing the Canon (see references in Cornely). In his
Hexaplar edition of the Old Testament all the deuteros find a
place. The sixth-century Biblical manuscript known as the "Codex
Claromontanus" contains a catalogue to which both Harnack and Zahn
assign an Alexandrian origin, about contemporary with Origen. At
any rate it dates from the period under examination and comprises
all the deuterocanonical books, with IV Machabees besides. St.
Hippolytus (d. 236) may fairly be considered as representing the
primitive Roman tradition. He comments on the Susanna chapter,
often quotes Wisdom as the work of Solomon, and employs as Sacred
Scripture Baruch and the Machabees. For the West African Church
the larger canon has two strong witnesses in Tertullian and St.
Cyprian. All the deuteros except Tobias, Judith, and the addition
to Esther, are Biblically used in the works of these Fathers.
(With regard to the employment of apocryphal writings in this age
see under APOCRYPHA.)

C. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT DURING THE FOURTH, AND FIRST
HALF OF THE FIFTH, CENTURY

In this period the position of the deuterocanonical literature is
no longer as secure as in the primitive age. The doubts which
arose should be attributed largely to a reaction against the
apocryphal or pseudo-Biblical writings with which the East
especially had been flooded by heretical and other writers.
Negatively, the situation became possible through the absence of
any Apostolic or ecclesiastical definition of the Canon. The
definite and inalterable determination of the sacred sources, like
that of all Catholic doctrines, was in the Divine economy left to
gradually work itself out under the stimulus of questions and
opposition. Alexandria, with its elastic Scriptures, had from the
beginning been a congenial field for apocryphal literature, and
St. Athanasius, the vigilant pastor of that flock, to protect it
against the pernicious influence, drew up a catalogue of books
with the values to be attached to each. First, the strict canon
and authoritative source of truth is the Jewish Old Testament,
Esther excepted. Besides, there are certain books which the
Fathers had appointed to be read to catechumens for edification
and instruction; these are the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of
Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Esther, Judith, Tobias, the Didache, or
Doctrine of the Apostles, the Shepherd of Hermas. All others are
apocrypha and the inventions of heretics (Festal Epistle for 367).
Following the precedent of Origen and the Alexandrian tradition,
the saintly doctor recognized no other formal canon of the Old
Testament than the Hebrew one; but also, faithful to the same
tradition, he practically admitted the deutero books to a
Scriptural dignity, as is evident from his general usage. At
Jerusalem there was a renascence, perhaps a survival, of Jewish
ideas, the tendency there being distinctly unfavourable to the
deuteros. St. Cyril of that see, while vindicating for the Church
the right to fix the Canon, places them among the apocrypha and
forbids all books to be read privately which are not read in the
churches. In Antioch and Syria the attitude was more favourable.
St. Epiphanius shows hesitation about the rank of the deuteros; he
esteemed them, but they had not the same place as the Hebrew books
in his regard. The historian Eusebius attests the widespread
doubts in his time; he classes them as antilegomena, or disputed
writings, and, like Athanasius, places them in a class
intermediate between the books received by all and the apocrypha.
The 59th (or 60th) canon of the provincial Council of Laodicea
(the authenticity of which however is contested) gives a catalogue
of the Scriptures entirely in accord with the ideas of St. Cyril
of Jerusalem. On the other hand, the Oriental versions and Greek
manuscripts of the period are more liberal; the extant ones have
all the deuterocanonicals and, in some cases, certain apocrypha.

The influence of Origen's and Athanasius's restricted canon
naturally spread to the West. St. Hilary of Poitiers and Rufinus
followed their footsteps, excluding the deuteros from canonical
rank in theory, but admitting them in practice. The latter styles
them "ecclesiastical" books, but in authority unequal to the other
Scriptures. St. Jerome cast his weighty suffrage on the side
unfavourable to the disputed books. In appreciating his attitude
we must remember that Jerome lived long in Palestine, in an
environment where everything outside the Jewish Canon was suspect,
and that, moreover, he had an excessive veneration for the Hebrew
text, the Hebraica veritas as he called it. In his famous
"Prologus Galeatus", or Preface to his translation of Samuel and
Kings, he declares that everything not Hebrew should be classed
with the apocrypha, and explicitly says that Wisdom,
Ecclesiasticus, Tobias, and Judith are not on the Canon. These
books, he adds, are read in the churches for the edification of
the people, and not for the confirmation of revealed doctrine. An
analysis of Jerome's expressions on the deuterocanonicals, in
various letters and prefaces, yields the following results: first,
he strongly doubted their inspiration; secondly, the fact that he
occasionally quotes them, and translated some of them as a
concession to ecclesiastical tradition, is an involuntary
testimony on his part to the high standing these writings enjoyed
in the Church at large, and to the strength of the practical
tradition which prescribed their readings in public worship.
Obviously, the inferior rank to which the deuteros were relegated
by authorities like Origen, Athanasius, and Jerome, was due to too
rigid a conception of canonicity, one demanding that a book, to be
entitled to this supreme dignity, must be received by all, must
have the sanction of Jewish antiquity, and must moreover be
adapted not only to edification, but also to the "confirmation of
the doctrine of the Church", to borrow Jerome's phrase.

But while eminent scholars and theorists were thus depreciating
the additional writings, the official attitude of the Latin
Church, always favourable to them, kept the majestic tenor of its
way. Two documents of capital importance in the history of the
canon constitute the first formal utterance of papal authority on
the subject. The first is the so-called "Decretal of Gelasius", de
recipiendis et non recipiendis libris, the essential part of which
is now generally attributed to a synod convoked by Pope Damasus in
the year 382. The other is the Canon of Innocent I, sent in 405 to
a Gallican bishop in answer to an inquiry. Both contain all the
deuterocanonicals, without any distinction, and are identical with
the catalogue of Trent. The African Church, always a staunch
supporter of the contested books, found itself in entire accord
with Rome on this question. Its ancient version, the Vetus Latina
(less correctly the Itala), had admitted all the Old Testament
Scriptures. St. Augustine seems to theoretically recognize degrees
of inspiration; in practice he employs protos and deuteros without
any discrimination whatsoever. Moreover in his "De Doctrin�
Christian�" he enumerates the components of the complete Old
Testament The Synod of Hippo (393) and the three of Carthage (393,
397, and 419), in which, doubtless, Augustine was the leading
spirit, found it necessary to deal explicitly with the question of
the Canon, and drew up identical lists from which no sacred books
are excluded. These councils base their canon on tradition and
liturgical usage. For the Spanish Church valuable testimony is
found in the work of the heretic Priscillian, "Liber de Fide et
Apocryphis"; it supposes a sharp line existing between canonical
and uncanonical works, and that the Canon takes in all the
deuteros.

D. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE FIFTH TO
THE CLOSE OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY

This period exhibits a curious exchange of opinions between the
West and the East, while ecclesiastical usage remained unchanged,
at least in the Latin Church. During this intermediate age the use
of St. Jerome's new version of the Old Testament (the Vulgate)
became widespread in the Occident. With its text went Jerome's
prefaces disparaging the deuterocanonicals, and under the
influence of his authority the West began to distrust these and to
show the first symptoms of a current hostile to their canonicity.
On the other hand, the Oriental Church imported a Western
authority which had canonized the disputed books, viz., the decree
of Carthage, and from this time there is an increasing tendency
among the Greeks to place the deuteros on the same level with the
others--a tendency, however, due more to forgetfulness of the old
distinction than to deference to the Council of Carthage.

E. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT DURING THE MIDDLE AGES

The Greek Church

The result of this tendency among the Greeks was that about the
beginning of the twelfth century they possessed a canon identical
with that of the Latins, except that it took in the apocryphal III
Machabees. That all the deuteros were liturgically recognized in
the Greek Church at the era of the schism in the ninth century, is
indicated by the "Syntagma Canonum" of Photius.

The Latin Church

In the Latin Church, all through the Middle Ages we find evidence
of hesitation about the character of the deuterocanonicals. There
is a current friendly to them, another one distinctly unfavourable
to their authority and sacredness, while wavering between the two
are a number of writers whose veneration for these books is
tempered by some perplexity as to their exact standing, and among
those we note St. Thomas Aquinas. Few are found to unequivocally
acknowledge their canonicity. The prevailing attitude of Western
medieval authors is substantially that of the Greek Fathers. The
chief cause of this phenomenon in the West is to be sought in the
influence, direct and indirect, of St. Jerome's depreciating
Prologus. The compilatory "Glossa Ordinaria" was widely read and
highly esteemed as a treasury of sacred learning during the Middle
Ages; it embodied the prefaces in which the Doctor of Bethlehem
had written in terms derogatory to the deuteros, and thus
perpetuated and diffused his unfriendly opinion. And yet these
doubts must be regarded as more or less academic. The countless
manuscript copies of the Vulgate produced by these ages, with a
slight, probably accidental, exception, uniformly embrace the
complete Old Testament Ecclesiastical usage and Roman tradition
held firmly to the canonical equality of all parts of the Old
Testament There is no lack of evidence that during this long
period the deuteros were read in the churches of Western
Christendom. As to Roman authority, the catalogue of Innocent I
appears in the collection of ecclesiastical canons sent by Pope
Adrian I to Charlemagne, and adopted in 802 as the law of the
Church in the Frankish Empire; Nicholas I, writing in 865 to the
bishops of France, appeals to the same decree of Innocent as the
ground on which all the sacred books are to be received.

F. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE GENERAL COUNCILS

The Council of Florence (1442)

In 1442, during the life, and with the approval, of this Council,
Eugenius IV issued several Bulls, or decrees, with a view to
restore the Oriental schismatic bodies to communion with Rome, and
according to the common teaching of theologians these documents
are infallible states of doctrine. The "Decretum pro Jacobitis"
contains a complete list of the books received by the Church as
inspired, but omits, perhaps advisedly, the terms canon and
canonical. The Council of Florence therefore taught the
inspiration of all the Scriptures, but did not formally pass on
their canonicity.

The Council of Trent's Definition of the Canon (1546)

It was the exigencies of controversy that first led Luther to draw
a sharp line between the books of the Hebrew Canon and the
Alexandrian writings. In his disputation with Eck at Leipzig, in
1519, when his opponent urged the well-known text from II
Machabees in proof of the doctrine of purgatory, Luther replied
that the passage had no binding authority since the books was
outside the Canon. In the first edition of Luther's Bible, 1534,
the deuteros were relegated, as apocrypha, to a separate place
between the two Testaments. To meet this radical departure of the
Protestants, and as well define clearly the inspired sources from
which the Catholic Faith draws its defence, the Council of Trent
among its first acts solemnly declared as "sacred and canonical"
all the books of the Old and New Testaments "with all their parts
as they have been used to be read in the churches, and as found in
the ancient vulgate edition". During the deliberations of the
Council there never was any real question as to the reception of
all the traditional Scripture. Neither--and this is remarkable--in
the proceedings is there manifest any serious doubt of the
canonicity of the disputed writings. In the mind of the Tridentine
Fathers they had been virtually canonized, by the same decree of
Florence, and the same Fathers felt especially bound by the action
of the preceding ecumenical synod. The Council of Trent did not
enter into an examination of the fluctuations in the history of
the Canon. Neither did it trouble itself about questions of
authorship or character of contents. True to the practical genius
of the Latin Church, it based its decision on immemorial tradition
as manifested in the decrees of previous councils and popes, and
liturgical reading, relying on traditional teaching and usage to
determine a question of tradition. The Tridentine catalogue has
been given above.

The First Vatican Council (1870)

The great constructive Synod of Trent had put the sacredness and
canonicity of the whole traditional Bible forever beyond the
permissibility of doubt on the part of Catholics. By implication
it had defined that Bible's plenary inspiration also. The First
Vatican Council took occasion of a recent error on inspiration to
remove any lingering shadow of uncertainty on this head; it
formally ratified the action of Trent and explicitly defined the
Divine inspiration of all the books with their parts.

III. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT OUTSIDE THE CHURCH

A. AMONG THE EASTERN ORTHODOX

The Greek Orthodox Church preserved its ancient Canon in practice
as well as theory until recent times, when, under the dominant
influence of its Russian offshoot, it is shifting its attitude
towards the deuterocanonical Scriptures. The rejection of these
books by the Russian theologians and authorities is a lapse which
began early in the eighteenth century. The Monophysites,
Nestorians, Jacobites, Armenians, and Copts, while concerning
themselves little with the Canon, admit the complete catalogue and
several apocrypha besides.

B. AMONG PROTESTANTS

The Protestant Churches have continued to exclude the deutero
writings from their canons, classifying them as "Apocrypha".
Presbyterians and Calvinists in general, especially since the
Westminster Synod of 1648, have been the most uncompromising
enemies of any recognition, and owing to their influence the
British and Foreign Bible Society decided in 1826 to refuse to
distribute Bibles containing the Apocrypha. Since that time the
publication of the deuterocanonicals as an appendix to Protestant
Bibles has almost entirely ceased in English-speaking countries.
The books still supply lessons for the liturgy of the Church of
England, but the number has been lessened by the hostile
agitation. There is an Apocrypha appendix to the British Revised
Version, in a separate volume. The deuteros are still appended to
the German Bibles printed under the auspices of the orthodox
Lutherans.

GEORGE J. REID

Transcribed by Ernie Stefanik

http://www.knight.org/advent

From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc.

Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).

This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an
effort aimed at placing the  entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913
edition on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to
contribute to this  worthwhile project, you can contact him by e-
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