Such an expression might suggest that the Catholic Church had arbitrarily and "capriciously" decided about the written divine Word. As a matter of fact, the Church only followed – and does follow- the Tradition handed over to her by the Lord and the Apostles about the Books of the Old Testament, and the Tradition of the Apostles and the Fathers for the New. The details will be dealt with below.
The Written Word of God in the Catholic Church
One would have wished to have only one Bible among Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Churches. Unfortunately, divisions exploded even at this regard. As a result, the "Catholic Bible" has 46 Books of the Old Testament and the Protestant one has 39.
On the other hand, thanks God, unanimity reigns about the twenty seven Books of the New Testament, although Martin Luther, some time in 1522, had omitted the Letters of James (described as a "Strohbrief", a letter of straw), to the Hebrews and Revelation.
Talking now about "the half full bottle", one can rejoice for the publication of "ecumenical Bibles", in several languages, where the "controversial" seven Books are reported, respecting the freedom and diversity of the Faithful who "respectively" and respectfully consider them either as inspired (Catholics) or as spiritually "useful" (Protestants).
The Books acknowledged by the Church as revealed and inspired
The "Scripture(s)" or "the Holy Scripture(s)" are firmly believed to contain God's written Word, a divine "love Letter" from the Heavenly Father to His daughters and sons. They are the "Bible" (from Biblos in Phoenicia-Lebanon), the "Book" par excellence. Jews and Christians are thus "the People of the Book". The Lord and His Disciples inherited from the Synagogue (=Judaism) the "Holy Books" which "defile the hands" (meaning that they are so holy that any lack of respect defiles the hands of the Faithful). The first Christians – like the Apostles- described as "Scripture" the Old Testament Books, then came eventually the New Testament Writings. They did not hesitate to designate them as "endiathekoi", produced by the Covenant and witnesses thereof; and "endiathetoi", "placed in the Covenant", "canonical" (from "canon" meaning "rule, list"). The criterion was roughly the prophetic and the apostolic origin of those writings.
The Old Testament Books throughout History:
From the Synagogue to the Church
A primary remark
An adjustment needs to be done in English (and other languages) as for the word "Testament". Although the latin "Testamentum" means "COVENANT" and "will", it means only "last will" in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese etc. So, an accurate but perhaps utopic suggestion consists in saying "Old Covenant", "New Covenant".
The above mentioned inaccuracy had served as an excellent pretext for some dissident groups, especially pseudo-christians like the Jehowah's Witnesses in order to give different designations – which obviously go in their direction. Thus, the JW refer to the "Old Testament" not as "the Old Covenant" (which we have in Arabic : al-'ahd al-qadeem , al-jadeed) but as "the SACRED Hebrew Scriptures" and the New as "the Greek Christian Scriptures", reserving significantly the adjective "sacred" to the Jewish Writings and abolishing the ESSENTIAL distinction between old and new, disregarding the fundamental text of 2 Corinthians 3 : 14 who literally and explicitly speaks of the "Old Covenant" Books : "The minds (of the Jews) have been made dull, for to this day the veil remains when THE OLD COVENANT is read".
Other groups designate the Old Testament 39 Books as "the Hebrew Bible", according to their trend of rejecting any Greek Writings before Christ (grossly the so-called "deutero-canonical Books" written or found mainly in Greek, like Wisdom, Maccabees, Judith, Baruch, Tobit, Ben Sira(?), Greek parts of Daniel (3 : 24-90; chh. 13 and 14) and Esther (10: 4-16-24). Yet, the designation limps : not only does it cancel the paramount important contrast between "old" and "new" Covenants (stressed on by the Letter to the Hebrews) and inspired Writings of the two Alliances, but also in the sense that one detects no relation between the "Hebrew Bible" and "the New Testament", unless one wants to see there only a difference of language, Greek being that one of the "New Covenant".
The Jewish "canon" (=list) before Christ
The People of the Old Covenant spontaneously accepted the "Writings of Moses", "the Law" (implying mainly the Pentateuch) as God's Word. Later on, it was natural also to consider as such the Books and Booklets of the Prophets, and of the Wise like David (Psalms) and Solomon (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticle). Flavius Josephus, around 93 A.D. ("Against Apio, I, 8) speaks of 22 Holy Books "which are justly believed to be divine". The artificial number- modeled at the letters of the Hebrew-Canaanite Alphabet) actually embraces the 39 Books of the Hebrew Bible. The distribution – which became classical- divided them among "the Law, the Prophets and the Writings" (Hebrew : Thorah, Nebyim, Ketubim, abbreviation "Tanakh"), a division which one finds in some lucan New Testament texts : Lk 24: 44; Ac 13 : 15.
The other seven Jewish Books disowned by Judaism and Protestantism
No clear-cut separation should be done – apparently- among the Palestinian (mainly Hebrew-Aramaic speaking) Jews and the Diaspora (Dispersion) especially Alexandrine one. Many Jews in the Holy Land did know, speak and read Greek (included Christ!). But, one may report two tendencies: that of Palestinian Jews inclined to accept only the 'short list" of 39 Books, written in Hebrew (this implies the Aramaic parts of Daniel and Esdras), and that of the Hellenistic Jews, even dwelling in the Palestine, who accepted the "other" Books as well, due to their familiarity with Greek.
Some authors seem to assert that no such distinction was done and that Jews accepted all those Jewish Writings in the centuries before Christ, and did some of them even after Christ. The controversies- and the eventual rejection of those Books by Judaism- came as a "reaction" against Christians who mainly spoke Greek and used the Greek Septuagint Old Testament.
Concretely it seemsthat Jews started to suspect the Jewish Greek Septuagint Version (where the deutero-canonical Books were also included) SIMPLY because Christians used it! Eventually, they banned the Septuagint, in 13o A.D., excommunicating bluntly the Jews who would read it.
Yet, the Book of Baruch continued to be read in the synagogues in the third century after Christ.
As for now, let us rapidly state that Jews rejected those Books because Christians used them and because they were not written in the "Holy Tongue", i.e. Hebrew (and Aramaic assimilated to Hebrew).
The "deutero-canonical" Books in the Church
We make such a "fuss" about those Books because they constitute the great and regrettable difference between the Catholic and the Protestant Bibles. The denomination – first used by Sixtus of Sienna in 1566- "deutero-canonical" ("second canonical") is quite unfortunate because it gives the impression of two distinct Revelations and of a less important series of Writings, a sort of second class Scripture, in contrast with the proto-canonical 39 Books whose revelation and inspiration had not been contested.
St. Clement of Rome (around 95 A.D.) quotes Judith putting it as a pair with Esther; and also Tobit. Twenty years later, St. Polycarp, disiciple of St. John the Beloved Apostle, quotes Tobit (Polyc. 10,2). The Epistle of Barnabas (not the medieval phony "the gospel of Barnabas") and the Didachè ("Teaching of the Twelve Apostles") quote the Siracide.
St. Justin, around 160 in Rome, quotes Greek Daniel.
The list of Muratori (end of the second century A.D.) puts the "Book of Wisdom" in the list of the Holy Books.
St. Iraeneus (around 180-200), whose testimony is so precious as he constitutes a link between East and West quotes as Scripture the Books of Baruch and Wisdom.
In the Eastern Church : the weight of Judaism!
The Church Fathers of the East were keen on dialogue with the Jews. So, they were inclined, as St. Justin states in his "Dialogue with trypho" (n. 120) that he would quote "ONLY the Books admitted by you", Israelites. The Bishop Melito of Sardis apparently shares the same trend (around 160-170). He writes to his colleague, Onesimus "the list of the Books which are commonly accepted in Palestine", implying : by Jews. He explains such an endeavour by the "apologetical" need, "in the battle for eternal salvation".
Origen of Alexandria (182- 251) experiences a struggle between the short and long lists and bows to the necessity of apologetics (Ad Afr. 5, PG,ll, 60). He does quote as Scripture Esther, Judith, Tobit, Wisdom and Siracide.
The Council "In Trullo" (a hall in the Byzantine's Emperor Palace, in 692) accepted the long list.
Living in Rome, both Rufinus and St. Jerome (Hieronymus, then secretary of Pope Damasus) accepted the LONG list. They apparently applied the saying :"When in Rome, do what Romans do"! But, when St. Jerome came to the Holy Land, he rejected those Books as "apocryphal", most probably of his care for the dialogue with the Jews after having earnestly looked for the original Hebrew texts , the "hebraica veritas". He is the only Western Chuch Father to hold this position. He is "cavalier seul", one would say in French.
A decisive reaction and position in the West, especially the North African Church!
The local Councils of Rome in 382, Hippo in 393 and Carthage between 397-417 acknowledged categorically the long list, a position expressed also in the letter of Pope Innocentius I to Exuperius of Toulouse in 405. The position was confirmed by the Council of Florence in 1441, that of TRENT in 1546 and the First Vatican Council in 1870.
The Orthodox Church rallied to the long list especially the Coptic and the Syriac ones, closely depending on the Septuagint. As for the Byzantine Church, it seems that at the time of the Reformation the Patriarch Cyril Loukaris of Constantinople tended to the shorter list. Suspected by the Faithful, the Sultan had him eventually murdered. Subsequent Orthodox Synods excommunicated him and asserted the longer list.
In 1520, Karlstadt (Andreas Bodenstein) published his treatise "De canone Sacrarum Scripturarum" rejecting the deutero-canonical Books – which Luther had published as an appendix. The Protestant translators, seeking the original Hebrew in the Old Testament Writings, found it only in the 39 proto-canonical Books. So, they rejected the others which – at their time- were not available in that language.
The Jewish reasons or pretexts to reject the deutero-canonical Jewish Books
It becomes always clearer that the main reason or pretext is the Christian use of the Greek Septuagint which at times was serving the Christian interpretation ('the virgin" in Isaiah 7:14 instead of "the young woman" of the Hebrew) and which – the Septuagint- did contain those Books.
The second reason or pretext is that those Books had not been written- so it seemed- in the "sacred Tongue", meaning Hebrew and Aramaic. But History had a great surprise: some of those very Books had been written…in Hebrew or Aramaic and only translated into Greek.
Discoveries: original Hebrew and Aramaic texts of some of the deutero-canonical Books
Ben Sira or the Siracide: Si. Jerome himself did know a Hebrew Siracide (Praef. In Lib. Solom., PL 28, 1307) and so did Saadiah Ga'on in the tenth century A.D.
In the Cairo synagogue ghenizah (cupboard of old manuscripts and books), in 1896 about the two-thirds of Siracide was discovered in Hebrew, and in the following years other parts of the same Book appeared, always in Hebrew (in 1931, 1958, 1960). In Qumran, the second Cave, a fragment of Sir. 6; and in Cave 11 a part of Sir. 51.
In Massada (Dead Sea also) a scroll was discovered by Yig'al Yadin containing the continuous text of five Siracide chapters.
Some rabbinical writings report some Siracide texts in Hebrew.
Roughly speaking, the total of the Ben Sira distichs , recuperated in Hebrew, amount to 1108 out of estimated 1616 distichs.
In Qumran, one finds texts of the following deutero-canonical Books:
Tobit, the Letter of Jeremiah (last part of the Baruch prophecy). Three Tobit manuscripts yield an Aramaic text, the fourth in Hebrew. Milik believes that the Book was written originally in Aramaic.
Probably one of the Books of the Maccabees was written originally in Hebrew.
New Testament quotations of the deutero-canonical Books
This is no criterion of their canonicity . Nevertheless, the fact indicates a certain sacred character. Mt 6 : 14 = Sir 28 : 2; Mt 27 : 39-40 = Wisdom 2 : 12- 15; Rom 1 : 20 ff = Wisdom 13 - 14; Heb 11 : 35 – 39 = 2 Macc 6 : 18 – chapter 7 ; James 1 : 19 = Siracide 5 : 11- 13; 1 Peter 1 : 6 = Wisdom 3 : 3 ff.
Please, see "Faith and Scripture", pp. 16 – 24.
The Bible and the Church
Grossly speaking, the Jews rejected those Books in an anti-christian move, and the Protestants in an anti-catholic move. So, the Protestant attitude joined the Jewish one.
The rejected Books contained doctrines and trends rejected by Judaism (the short life of a righteous person is no curse) and by Protestantism (the prayers for the deceased, in the second Book of the Maccabees).
The Wisdom Book is considerably more sublime than the Book of Proverbs. Yet, Judaism and Protestantism rejected it for the explained reasons. Wisdom is the closest O.T. parallel to the Prologue of St. John.
It is riskier to cancel Books than to "add" any. Rejecting a Book, one undergoes the possibility of eliminating a part of God's Word.
The Protestant objections – this we say in brotherly love- always affect elements of the New Testament. The only time Protestantism rejects anything from the ld Testament occurred when it refused Books acknowledged by the catholic Church. Had she erased those Books, the "Reformers" would have brought them back.
Conclusion
Our knowledge of all these – and other details- should foster love and brotherly dialogue, especially through the ecumenical Bibles. Since the Lord Jesus "has the Word of life", as stated by the first Pope, St. Peter (in John 6), as Jesus is Himself "the Word of Life" (according to 1 John 1 : 1), may His Word, the Word of the Word, be for us too, as He foretold, "spirit and life".
