From a purely historical perspective, the Apocrypha has been part of the Bible in the church longer than it has not been a part of it. Please note that I make a distinction here between being canonical and being a part of the Bible. The Apocrypha was functionally canonical for much of the church for about 1300 years, though even when it ceased to function as canonical for Protestants, it remained within printed copies of the Bible. The historical reality of the usage of the Apocrypha raises potential questions and challenges for evangelical Protestants: Is it right to reject the Apocrypha? Did Protestants really remove books from the canon? How is rejecting the Apocrypha consistent with the principle of sola scriptura—that Scripture alone is the highest authority? This final question is perhaps the most significant and most potentially problematic for Protestants. But before we begin to answer that question, some historical perspective is in order.

The Apocrypha During and After the Reformation

During the Reformation, Protestants rejected the authority of the Apocrypha, holding it to not be of the same authority as the canonical books. At the Leipzig Disputation in 1519, Martin Luther came up against the issue of offering prayers for the dead during his dispute with Johann von Eck. As Scriptural support, Eck put forward 2 Maccabees 12:43–45, to which Luther made the same distinction as Jerome had done centuries earlier: Second Maccabees belonged to a collection of books that could not be used for establishing doctrine.¹ Basing doctrine on Scripture alone was thus not violated, for 2 Maccabees could not rightly be considered Scripture, and thus had no bearing in doctrinal disputes. Protestants have almost universally followed Luther’s lead in giving no authority to the Apocrypha.

The Protestant position and that of some Roman Catholic scholars were initially not that far off and were not inherently at odds with each other. It was the Council of Trent that solidified the break between Protestants and Roman Catholics in their views of the extent of the Old Testament canon. The Council officially included the books of the Apocrypha alongside those of the Hebrew canon and declared an anathema upon any who would not receive these books:

If anyone does not accept as sacred and canonical the aforesaid books in their entirety and with all their parts, as they have been accustomed to be read in the Catholic Church and as they are contained in the old Latin Vulgate Edition, and knowingly and deliberately rejects the aforesaid traditions, let him be anathema.²

This decree effectively made any reconciliation or discussion between Roman Catholics and Protestants over the extent of the Scriptures impossible. Given this strong statement, it may perhaps be surprising to hear that certain figures just prior to the Reformation and even after its outbreak followed Jerome’s distinction between the authority of the canonical books and the Apocrypha. As Metzger has commented, “Subsequent to Jerome’s time and down to the period of the Reformation, a continuous succession of the more learned fathers and theologians in the West maintained the distinctive and unique authority of the books of the Hebrew canon.”³ Among these may be counted Cardinal Francisco Ximénes de Cisneros (1436 – 1517), who in a prologue to his Complutensian Polyglot (which we will see again in Chapter 14), spoke of the Apocrypha as “books outside the canon, which the church accepts more for the edification of the people than for the sanctioned authority of church doctrine.”⁴ Cardinal Thomas Cajetan (1469 – 1534), one of Luther’s theological opponents, had written in 1532 a commentary upon the books of the Old Testament, though he did not comment upon the Apocrypha. He explained his reasons for this as follows:

Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed amongst the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, as is plain from the Prologus Galeatus. Nor be disturbed, like a raw scholar, if you shoulde find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the Bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the Bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction you may see you way clearly through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage.⁵

Trent settled the matter as far as the Roman Catholic Church was concerned, and it would seem that Luther had settled it for Protestants, but the Apocrypha continued to live on in Protestant circles with varying degrees of approval. While Luther plainly rejected the authority of the Apocrypha, he included them in his translation of the Bible into German. In his introduction to the Apocrypha, he wrote, “These are books that, though not equal to the Holy Scriptures, are still both useful and good to read.”⁶ The Geneva Bible’s (1560) introduction to the Apocrypha declares that they do not “serve to prove any point of Christian religion,” but “as books proceeding from godly men, were received to be read for the advancement and furtherance of the knowledge of the history, and for the instruction of godly manners.” The Belgic Confession (1561) allowed for the church to read and learn from the Apocrypha so far as they agreed with the canonical books, but did not allow for them any authority in doctrinal matters (Article 6). The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church (1571) also permitted the usage of the Apocrypha: “And the other Books (as Jerome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine” (Article 6). Not all concessions are quite so positive, as not everyone approved of the usage of the Apocrypha in church. Puritans in England especially objected to their usage. We see this reflected in the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647): “The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of the Scripture; and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings” (1.3). It is this general opinion found in the Westminster Confession of Faith which has held more long-term sway in the English-speaking world.

Today, we would not expect to find the Apocrypha included in our Bibles. We might actually be hard-pressed to find a Bible with the Apocrypha if we even wanted to find one. This was not the case with printed Protestant Bibles for about three hundred years. In his German translation of the Bible, Luther included the Apocrypha, though he set them in a separate category. Almost all other Protestant translations followed suit and placed the Apocrypha in between the Old and New Testament, to include the 1560 Geneva Bible and the 1611 King James Version. It was completely normal for Bibles to include the Apocrypha until the early 1800s, though disputes about the propriety of including it were not uncommon before then. When the British Bible Society adopted the policy that they would no longer circulate the Bible with the Apocrypha in 1826, a turning point was reached.⁷ Not only did this decision fit with the theological ideals of those who rejected the Apocrypha, but it was also more economical for printers. This period established the norm that we now know and have come to expect: the Apocrypha has no part in the vast majority of printed English Bibles

The Theological Challenge of Rejection of the Apocrypha

It has sometimes been argued that we can tell what the Old Testament canon was simply by appealing to what the New Testament quotes. Since the New Testament never authoritatively quotes any books of the Apocrypha, then they were not considered to be canonical by the apostles. This reasoning, however, would leave us in something of a ditch when it comes to the canon of the Old Testament. As Metzger points out, “it is also true that nowhere in the NT is there a direct quotation from the canonical books of Joshua, Judges, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Obadiah, Zephaniah and Nahum; and New Testament allusions to them are few in number.”⁸ While we want to make our appeal to the New Testament, this is one manner of reasoning that is not sound, for it would lead us to have a much diminished Old Testament.

Protestants hold to the 39 books of the Jewish canon, which has never held the books of the Apocrypha to be authoritative. Yet we must also set some theological parameters to understand why we Protestants are not standing as an authority over Scripture in making judgments concerning the Apocrypha. In the historical record, the opinions of the church concerning the authority of the Apocrypha are somewhat mixed, though it plainly played a part in the life of the church and, to some extent, in the development of doctrine during the Middle Ages. To appeal to historical vicissitudes alone constitutes an appeal to one traditional authority against another; some criteria must be used for assessing the validity of one over the other. To Scripture we then appeal.

It is in the text of Scripture that we find our authoritative principle by which we may assess whether Protestants have rightly or wrongly rejected the canonical status of the Apocrypha. In 2 Timothy 3:16, Paul asserts that “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” While this text has been applied to the New Testament, what Paul refers to as “God-breathed” are the Scriptures of the Old Testament. Our standard for the Old Testament canon is thus what Paul had in mind when he refers to God-breathed Scriptures. What collection of books did Paul mean when he spoke of these Scriptures?

James White has argued that some of the Protestant difficulties concerning the principle of sola scriptura and determining the extent of the canon stem from canon being viewed separately from Scripture. He insists instead that, rather than separating them, we should see that the “canon is a function of Scripture, or, to be more specific, it is a result of the inspiration of Scripture itself. It is not an object of revelation separate from Scripture, but is revealed and defined by God’s action of inspiration.”⁹ He bases this on the principle found in 2 Timothy 3:16 that all Scripture is breathed out by God:

The canon is not just a listing of books; it is a statement about what is inspired. The canon flows from the work of the Author of Scripture, God himself. To speak of canon outside of speaking of what is “God-breathed” is to speak nonsense. Canon is not made by man. Canon is made by God. It is the result of the action of His divine inspiration. That which is “God-breathed” is canon; that which is not “God-breathed” is not canon. It’s just that simple.¹⁰

This is where Kruger’s distinction between a functional and an ontological canon is helpful in theologically assessing the authority of the Apocrypha. What is God-breathed is ontologically canonical; what is not God-breathed is not ontologically canonical, though it may function as canonical. The Apocrypha certainly was functionally canonical for long swathes of the history of the church, but the real question is whether it is ontologically canonical. If it is shown that the Apocrypha is God-breathed, then all believers holding Scripture as the highest authority must unhesitatingly accept these writings; yet if they are not God-breathed, then they cannot be placed on the level of Scripture.

Protestants follow the Jewish canon of the Old Testament, rather than accepting the authority of the additional books that entered church usage through the LXX. What is the reason that we prefer the smaller Jewish canon? Because it is the Jews who were “entrusted with the oracles of God” (Rom. 3:2). In other words, they were given the Word of God, what we would commonly refer to as the Old Testament. The theological significance for the canon is such that, if what is God-breathed is canonical, and if the Jews were entrusted with God’s words, then what they were entrusted with is what is canonical. The concern is not with what the church later adopted, but with what the Jews were entrusted with, with what Paul had in mind when he referred to the oracles of God, with what he said was God-breathed, and with what Jesus had in mind when he said, “Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44). If our understanding of the Hebrew canon is correct, then we are on solid theological and Scriptural ground in affirming only those 39 books as God-breathed and authoritative.

What Do We Do With the Apocrypha?

So if the Apocrypha is not authoritative, what then should we do with it? It would not be unwise to recognize that it has played a role in the devotional life of the church and that it would not be wrong for it to continue to do so. We Protestants have treated certain books in much the same way as the Apocrypha was treated in the past. Most notable is probably John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and I would contend that we have done something similar in more recent memory with books by C. S. Lewis, such as his Mere Christianity or The Weight of Glory. We treat these books as almost a second canon of devotional literature and gain great insights into the Christian life from them.

An anecdote from the life of John Bunyan may help bring the Apocrypha into perspective. In his spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, Bunyan recounts how, at a spiritual low point, this passage suddenly came upon his mind: “Look at the generations of old, and see; did ever any trust in God, and were confounded?” These words greatly encouraged him, and he thus set about to read through from the whole of Genesis to Revelation to see if these words rang true. He also desired to find this passage, as he was certain that it must be found somewhere in the pages of Scripture. Yet, for a whole year, he could not find it anywhere, until at last he looked in the Apocrypha and found the words there in Sirach 2:10. I will let Bunyan finish the story in his own words:

This at the first did somewhat daunt me, but because by this time I had more experience of the love and kindness of God, it troubled me less, especially when I considered that though it was not in those texts that we call holy and canonical, yet as much as this sentence was the sum and substance of many of the promises, it was my duty to take comfort in it. I bless God for that word, for it was of good to me. That word does still many times shine before my face.¹¹

The words were not Scripture, but they were in accord with Scripture and brought comfort to his soul. Rather than being suspicious of these books and only viewing them as supporting Roman Catholic doctrine, perhaps Bunyan’s perspective would be more helpful. While they may not be wholly doctrinally sound in all points, we rarely bat an eye if we find something useful or that stirs the imagination in Lewis’s works like The Great Divorce or The Chronicles of Narnia, even though they are not perfect theologically. Perhaps that is the best way to view the Apocrypha today. Perhaps we would also do well to follow the old examples of Jerome and Athanasius and consider them useful for moral instruction, much as we do a book like Pilgrim’s Progress.

Adapted from “The Apocrypha” in God Spoke: The Story of How We Came to Have the Bible as We Know It Today.

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Notes          

1. F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1988), 101. ↩︎
2. Council of Trent, Session 4, “Concerning the Edition and Use of the Sacred Books, 8 April, 1546,” in Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent: Original Text with English Translation, trans. H. J. Schroeder (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1960), 18. ↩︎
3. Bruce M. Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), 180. ↩︎
4. Cited in John D. Meade and Peter J. Gurry, Scribes and Scripture: The Amazing Story of How We Got the Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 134. ↩︎
5. Cited in William Whitaker, A Disputation on Holy Scripture, Against the Papists, Especially Bellarmine and Stapleton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849), 48. Translation lightly modernized. ↩︎
6. In German, he introduced the Apocrypha with the simple sentence, Das sind Bücher, so nicht der heiligen Schrift gleich gehalten, und doch nützlich und gut zu lesen sind. ↩︎
7. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture, 112. ↩︎
8. Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha, 171. ↩︎
9. James R. White, The Roman Catholic Controversy: Catholics & Protestants—Do the Differences Still Matter? (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1996), 93. ↩︎
10. White, The Roman Catholic Controversy, 93. ↩︎
11. John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners; or, A Brief Relation of the Exceeding Mercy of God in Christ to His Poor Servant (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 1993), 36. ↩︎