A fuzzy-edged Bible (2) - Apocrypha
I’m prompted to make this second post on a fuzzy-edged Bible by the useful posting on the Better Bibles Blog listing all those English versions of the Bible that come with a complete or partial set of apocryphal / deuterocanonical books. The post also has a number of helpful comments.
Saying a “complete or partial set” indicates one part of the problem: different Christian groups differ (and perhaps have always differed) over precisely what the extent of the First Testament Canon is. The actual existence of different Bibles between the denominations / traditions creates a fuzzy edge for the Bible, where the answers to the questions, say, how many books are in the Bible, or how long is the book of Daniel, depends on the Christian tradition of the person answering the question.
The Anglican tradition deals with this fuzzy edge in a particular way. According to article 6 of its 39 articles of religion:
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.
[There follows a listing of the Jewish canon of the First Testament]
And the other Books (as Hierome1 saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine; such are these following:
[There follows a listing of the Apocrypha]
I will leave aside the dubious historical validity of “whose authority was never any doubt in the Church” — suffice it to say that the evidence shows considerable doubt over the first few centuries of the Christian era about several books of the New Testament. What concerns me here is the meaning of “the Church doth read” the other books of the Apocrypha.
The interpretation of those words must be guided, surely, by the lectionaries that accompanied the English Prayer books of 1549, 1552, 1559 and 1662. In that lectionary, to be followed compulsorily, the First Testament is largely read in cycle in the course of a year as the first reading at Morning and Evening Prayer. That cycle of readings in the earliest versions leaves out large chunks of what was regarded as “proper Old Testament” on the basis that they were mainly repetitive of other passages — Deuteronomy is largely preferred to much of Leviticus and some of Numbers, and most of Chronicles is omitted. It also includes the vast bulk of the Apocrypha — the omitted material is essentially the longer version material in Esther and Daniel. In later renditions of the lectionary the amount of material overall, but especially the proportion of Apocrypha, is reduced, but still very obvious.
“The Church doth read” means exactly what it says on the tin. The deuterocanonical writings exercise authority in their telling of the story as a guide to living for the ordinary Christian community. Their disputed status renders them non-authoritative for doctrinal arguments among the learned theologians of the church.
Some Anglicans today live in happy ignorance of all this. The last century’s worth of the Bible publishing industry has been interdenominational and correspondingly many people’s Bible’s don’t contain those books. Others of us think that the overwhelming use of the Septuagint by the early church as their First Testament, (and the many and frequent allusions in the NT texts to verses in these disputed books ) mean that the Reformers were misled by their respect for Jerome’s minority view, and that these books should have been accounted canonical.
Either way, at least for this Anglican, both historical and contemporary fact point to the apocryphal / deuterocanonical books creating yet another fuzzy edge to what we mean by Scripture.
Notes- i.e. St Jerome [↩]