The roman catholic church compared

There is at the outset this difliculty, that Chris- tians are not at the present day agreed, at least technically, as to the extent of the Canon. In the Western Church we meet with this broad dis- tinction, that, while all Reformed Churches accept as strictly canonical only the books found in our ordinary ἘΒΡΌΒᾺ Bibles, the Roman Catholic Church includes in its Canon those also which are commonly known as the Apoeryphal Books.

Not only so, but at the Council of Trent she laid special stress on the fact that all the canonical books, as she considered them, were equally inspired: ‘Sac- rosancta Oecumenica et Generalis Tridentina Synodus . . orthodoxorum Patrum exempla secuta, omnes libros tam veteris quam novi Tes- tamenti, cum utriusque unus Deus sit auctor... pari pietatis affectu ac reverentia suscipit ac veneratur.

’ Then follows a list of books, includ- ing the Apocrypha of OT, and, finally, an anathema levelled against those who refuse to accept all those books in their integrity as they were con- tained in the Vulgate (Conci. Trident. Sess. iv. Decr. 8). The Roman Catholic writers of the day did, however, recognize some sort of difference in fact between Apocryphal and other books, and sometimes called the former deutero-canonical.

But this term has been understood as intended to express the fact that the canonicity of these books was fully accepted at a later time than the proto- canonical in spite of some doubt and hesitation about them, not to imply a smaller degree of authority or inspiration (see authorities quoted in Sanday, Jnspiration, v. note B).

The English Church, in common with other of the Reformed Churches, gives a sort of formal but limited sanction to the Apocrypha, ‘and the other bookes (as Hierome sayth) the Churehe doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not appy. them to establish any doc- trine’ (Art. vi.)

he Belgie Confession makes a somewhat similar statement: ‘ Differentiam porro constituimus inter libros istos sacros et eos OLD TESTAMENT CANON 605 quos Apocryphos vocant: utpote quod Apocryphi legi quidem in Ecclesif possint, et fas sit ex illis eatenus etiam sumere documenta, quatenus cum libris canonicis consonant; at nequaquam ea est ipsorum auctoritas et firmitas ut ex illorum testi- monio aliquod dogma de fide et religione Christiana certo constitui possit’ [Art. vi.

, quoted in Harold Browne, Expos. Artt., Art. vi. sec. iii. ; see also, on the relation of the Reformed Churches to the Apocrypha, Buhl, pp. 69, 70]. On the other hand, the Westminster Confession, (i. 3) would have none of the Apocrypha, but declared emphatically that they were ‘of no authority to the Church of God, nor to be otherwise proved or made use of than any other human writings.

’ he grounds upon which the Reformed Churches differed from the Roman Catholic Church in the value attached to the Apocrypha, were partl historical and literary and partly ἜΣ ΞΕ tt seemed right to limit the 5 of the OT to those which had been accepted by the Jews and formed part of the Hebrew Bible, and had also been accepted by some of the greatest of the Fathers, notably Origen, Athanasius, and Jerome; whereas the Apocrypha had been clearly distinguished by them from the Canon, and placed upon a lower level.

The Reformers were also influenced un- doubtedly by the fact that quotations from the Apocrypha were frequently used by Roman Catholic writers in support of the peculiar doc- trines of their Church, such as Purgatory (Wis 35: δ), and the meritorious value of good works (To 410. 129) Sir’ 3 294s 1): We have, then, to take account of what may be called a larger and a smaller Canon.

The larger included most of those books which were comprised in the Greek LXX and afterwards the Latin Vul- gate, and became the Bible of the Medizval Church; the latter was confined to the Books of the Hebrew Bible, and was equivalent to our Old Testament. It is with the latter that we have directly most to do. iv. JEWISH ORIGIN OF OT CANON.—The earl Christians derived their OT from the pee Church.

By this is not meant that when the first Christians broke off from Judaism they took with them a well-defined Bible, but that questions of canonicity were referred, as a matter of course, to Jewish opinion. So little idea had the early Christian Church of deciding for itself what books were or were not canonical, that we actually find a bishop (Melito of Sardis, c. 170 A.D.)

Sannin to specify the contents of the OT until he had travelled to the country where the sacred books had originated, and there made special inquiries (see Euseb. HE iv. 26). Even so his list is not absolutely complete, as it omits Esther. Whether this is merely a slip on his own or his informer’s part, or is intentional, it is difficult to say. It is not, of course, to be supposed that Melito was un- acquainted with the OT books which he enumerates.

They were all to be found in the LXX, and Melito gives them their familiar Greek names as found in that version. The important fact is, that among the Bible books, in this wider sense of the Bible, he considered those to be of special value, or as we should say canonical, which he ascertained to be received among the Jews. That the early Chris- tian Church fully recognized that their OT Canon was thus derived, is shown even more explicitly by the language of Origen nearly a century later, c.

250, in which he speaks of ‘the Books of the Covenant, as the Hebrews have handed them down’ (ras ἐνδιαθήκους βίβλους ὡς ᾿Εβραῖοι παραδιδό- ασιν); and after giving the Canon, only accidentally incomplete, speaks of ‘the Maccabees’ as outside The omission of the Minor Prophets is inconceivable on any other hypothesis, and is, in fact, required to make up the given number of 22 OLD TESTAMENT CANON 606 of them (ἔξω δὲ τούτων ἐστὶ τὰ Μακκαβαϊκὰ ἅπερ ἐπιγέ- yparra: Σαρβὴθ Σαβαναιέλ, Euseb. HE vi.

25). That the Maccabees’ are, like the other books, given their Hebrew title, meaning probably ‘ Prince of the House of the Sons of God,’ is important as showing that the first book at least was still extant in Hebrew, and that Origen did not accept as canonical all sacred books in that language. The word ἐνδιαθήκους suggests that διαθήκη, ‘ cove- nant’ (our ‘Testament’), was already beginning to be applied technically to the OT collection.

This testimony is all the more remarkable be- cause Origen not only made use of the ‘external books’ himself, but defended the Greek additions to Daniel against Julius Africanus, Similarly Jerome speaks of the books recognized among the Hebrews (apud Hebreos) and of those outside as having their proper place among the Apocrypha: ‘Ut scire valeamus quicquid extra hos est, inter ἀπόκρυφα esse Safest (Prafat. in libr. Sam. et Mal., quoted by Ryle, Canon, Exc. D. xiii. etc.) y.

Divisions OF HEBREW BIBLE—THEIR SIGNI-