The so-called Apocrypha aren’t a book or a section in the bible, as in the Protestant canon, but a number of books (Tobit, Judith, 1 & 2 Maccabees, The Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach [also called Ecclesiasticus], Baruch, and additions to Daniel and Esther) scattered appropriately throughout the Old Testament. These books are called by Catholics and Orthodox “deuterocanonical” books rather than “apocrypha” because they are scripture took longer than some others to be recognised (e.g. the Pentateuch – which is therefore known as “protocanonical”) as such. It seems that Jerome was the first to label them as “apocrypha” (hidden), and Martin Luther and all Protestants since have followed him. However in the early Church the books that were regarded as apocryphal were the spurious and forged gospels, acts and epistles, written fraudulently by Gnostics under the names of apostles; they never regarded our Apocrypha as heretical or spurious; far from it – they regarded them as scripture.
The canonicity of other OT books, such as Esther and Ecclesiastes, was disputed by the Jews until the 4th century AD, so these too can be said to be deuterocanonical. And in the NT there are also some books classed as deuterocanonical (DC) because they took longer than the protocanonical books (e.g. the Four Gospels) to be recognised. Specifically, Revelation was recognised in the West but took longer in the East; Hebrews was not accepted by the West initially but was recognised in the East; and James, 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, Jude and Revelation took a while to be accepted.
The version that the Jews initially used was the Septuagint (or LXX), a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Christian Old Testament); this version was used by Jews all over the world and was regarded as authoritative scripture; an important translation into Latin known as the Itala or Old Latin, was made from it at a very early period. It was also the version that the early Church used. The large majority of the NT quotes from the OT come from the LXX. The LXX is what we know as the Alexandrian canon and is exemplified in the Codices Vaticanus (the best example), Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus. It is still the version used by Ethiopian Jews as their holy scriptures and by the Orthodox churches as their Old Testament.
In the beginning of the Church there was no New Testament as we know it today, yet Paul tells us the Church was built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets (Eph 2:20); and that the Church is the “pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Tim 3:15 NABRE). So what did they have as authority? The NT gospels, epistles, Acts, and Apocalypse appeared very soon after Jesus’ ascension to heaven, but in the meantime there was the Rule of Faith or Apostolic Tradition (1 Thess; 2:13; 2 Thess 2:1; 1 Cor 15:3-11) which is the embodiment of apostolic teaching; of which the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds are examples. And the books that made it into the NT canon were those which reflected the teaching of the Tradition. As well as all the NT writings, most of which were recognised as scripture from the beginning, there were other books which were circulating amongst the churches, such as The Shepherd of Hermas, The Didache, letters of Clement, letters of Ignatius, Gospel of Thomas, and many others; but the Holy Spirit guided the Church into recognising and accepting only the 27 books we now have in our New Testament. The Holy Spirit also guided the Church into accepting not only the 39 books of the Palestinian or Protestant Old Testament but also the 7 deuterocanonical books we call “The Apocrypha”, all contained in the Septuagint. The book which Catholics and Orthodox today call The Holy Bible was first defined formally at the Council of Rome in 383, the Council of Hippo in 393 and the Council of Carthage in 397.
So why aren’t the Apocrypha in our Bibles Today?
It wasn’t until the Reformation in the 16th century that the canon was challenged. Martin Luther was the first to do so, and when he translated his version of the bible he placed the OT deuterocanonical books in the back of the Bible; while other bible translators or publishers placed them between the two Testaments, and the other Reformers followed suit, and some went even further. They reached a point where they couldn’t agree on which books constituted the canon of scripture and eventually had to go back to the decisions of the Councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage in the 3rd and 4th centuries; thus the New Testament canon was preserved in Protestant bibles, but the Reformers rejected the Old Testament deuterocanonicals because they were not accepted by the Palestinian Jews, and called them “apocrypha”, a term first coined by Jerome.
Also, the Palestinian Jews had previously accepted the Alexandrian canon of the LXX which was in general use amongst the Jews worldwide but later opted for a shorter canon which excluded the apocrypha because the Christians were using it; this is now known as the Palestinian canon. They dumped the LXX in favour of a clumsy and uber-literal Greek translation by Aquila of the school of the Pharisees; a “translation” undertaken in order to remove all messianic passages from the OT which the Christians had been using so effectively to prove that Jesus is the Messiah; consequently, the Christians didn’t like it.
It is likely that Aquila’s version became the version that the Masoretes used as the basis of their own new, previously unknown, Masoretic text. It would have to have been translated back into Hebrew from Greek by the Masoretes in order to be used as such. This 2nd hand corrupted Masoretic text, regarded now as the “gold standard”, is the same one we use as the basis for our Old Testament today in the Western Church, both Protestant and Catholic. The Orthodox Churches still retain the LXX as their Old Testament scriptures, and have published The Orthodox Study Bible, an English version of their Greek scriptures, which uses the LXX as the OT rather than the Masoretic Text.
The Old Testament Apocrypha in the New Testament
The crucifixion
There are some striking passages in the Apocrypha which can only be described as being inspired by God. For example there is a passage in “Wisdom of Solomon” (2:12-20) which has a remarkable prophetic fulfilling in Matthew 27:39-43 of Christ’s agony and death on the cross. It says, in part, “….he calls the last end of the righteous happy, and boasts that God is his father. Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life; for if the righteous man is God’s son, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. Let us test him with insult and torture, that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance. Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for according to what he says, he will be protected” (RSV-CE).
How could any unbiased person deny that this is a prophecy of Jesus on the cross while the Jews were mocking him?
The Seven Angels
In Tobit 12:15 the angel Raphael announces “I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand ready and enter before the glory of the Lord” (RSV-CE). It is surely no coincidence that in Revelation 8:2 John says “And I saw the seven angels who stand before God….” (RSV-CE). Raphael, in a book regarded by Protestants as not being scripture, and in a passage almost word for word with Revelation, reveals that there are seven angels that stand before the throne of God – it is the only passage in the whole bible, apart from Revelation, that says there are seven such angels. How would an uninspired writer know this?
And again, Raphael says “And so, when you and your daughter-in-law Sarah prayed, I brought a reminder of your prayer before the Holy One….” (Tobit 12:12 RSV-CE). Compare this with Rev 8:3-4 “And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne….” (RSV-CE). Once again, there is no other passage that I’m aware of which refers to angels offering the prayers of the saints to God outside of Revelation, except for this one in Tobit. So, if Tobit is not inspired, how can this be?
Whose will she be in heaven?
In Matthew 22:23-33 the Sadducees came to Jesus and tried to confound him with the problem of resurrection for the woman who had seven husbands, each of which died while she still lived. This story obviously comes from the book of Tobit (3:7-17), in which a godly young virgin had married seven times but each time the new husband was slain by the demon Asmodeus (hence the need to banish Asmodeus before she could marry Tobias). Although the Sadducees only recognised the Pentateuch as canonical, they would certainly be familiar with the other books; hence their ability to use this account against Jesus. He replied “You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God” (Matt 22:29 RSV-CE) – did Jesus just endorse Tobit as scripture?
Forgive and be forgiven
In yet another passage which has no parallel in the Old Testament, Sirach 28:2 says “Forgive your neighbour the wrong he has done, and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray” (RSV-CE). Could Jesus have had this verse in mind when he said “Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses” (Mark 11:25 RSV-CE); and thus endorses Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) as Scripture?
Incarnation of God in Christ
In the Latin variant of Baruch 3:36 -38 it says “This is our God, and there shall no other be accounted of in comparison of him. He found out all the way of knowledge, and gave it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved. Afterwards he was seen upon earth, and conversed with men” (DRB). Is this not a prophecy of the incarnation of Jesus Christ (Jn 1:14)?
This verse is not in the Greek, only the Old Latin, which was highly regarded in the early Church. However it is well documented in the Church Fathers (e.g. Justin Martyr) that the Jews removed several passages of the LXX which prophesied of Jesus. And there were several variants of the Hebrew text in circulation at the time, just as there were variants of the Septuagint in circulation. Even today with our Greek New Testament there are variants, as our English versions which are based on them demonstrate. This would explain why the passage in Baruch is not in all variants.
Martyrdom
The writer of Hebrews lists among the heroes of the Faith some people who come from the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. The verse says “Women received their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they might rise again to a better life” (Heb 11:35 RSV-CE). The first part of this verse refers to a woman who had seven sons, each of whom was tortured and killed by the Greek king to try and make them renounce their faith (2 Macc 7:1-42); the second part to an aged priest who also was tortured to death after refusing to accept release by eating swine’s flesh (2 Macc 6:18-31).
Of course, including these references in the epistle to Hebrews doesn’t have to mean the whole book of 2 Maccabees becomes scripture (e.g. Enoch is mentioned in Jude yet the whole of Enoch is not scripture) but it does mean that those who deny them as being scripture can’t use the argument that they’re not mentioned in the New Testament.
The Book of Life
The Book of Life is mentioned repeatedly in the NT; e.g. Phil 4:3; Rev 3:5; 13:8, 17:8; 20:12, 15; 21:27; 22:19. The only specific reference to the book of life in the OT is found in the Latin variant of Sirach: “All these things are the book of life, and the covenant of the Most High, and the knowledge of truth” (Sir 24:32 DRB).
There are two other references in the OT to a “book of God” which might be interpreted as the book of life, namely, when Moses interceded for Israel: “But now, if thou wilt forgive their sin – and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written” (Exodus 32:32 RSV-CE); and when the Psalmist prayed “Thou hast kept count of my tossings; put thou my tears in thy bottle! Are they not in thy book?” (Psalm 56:8 RSV-CE).
Whether these two passages refer to the book of life or not is disputable, I suppose, but it doesn’t really matter because Sirach specifically calls it “the book of life” and no other OT reference does so. This title is carried over into the NT where the “book of life” is referred to 7 times! But this is not surprising because the apostles used the LXX with Apocrypha as their OT bible version – this is an inescapable fact. And they used the title “book of life” unapologetically, even though, according to Protestants, it comes from a non-canonical source.
“Unscriptural” passages in the Deuterocanonicals
Prayer for the dead
Protestants reject the Apocrypha as being scripture because there are “unscriptural” doctrines and practices in them. For example there is a passage (2 Maccabees 12:38-45) in which Judas Maccabeus prays for his soldiers who had been killed in battle against the Greek oppressors. We’re told that he took up a collection from the rest of the soldiers so they could offer a sin offering to God because the fallen soldiers were all found to have idols hidden under their tunics. And the passage commends him for his faith and piety in doing so because he looked to the resurrection and to the “splendid reward that is laid up for those who fall asleep in godliness”. The passage ends with: “Therefore he made atonement for the dead, so that they might be delivered from their sin”(2 Macc 12:45 RSV-CE).
As Catholic and Orthodox Christians regard the Apocrypha as scripture, they are simply following scriptural practice and acknowledging that prayer for departed believers is effectual. Prayer for the dead was an integral part of the liturgy in the early church, and in the catacombs there are prayers scratched on the walls addressed to departed loved ones to pray for the writer. And they saw no conflict between this passage of 2 Maccabees and the finished work of Christ on the cross.
Even if Protestants don’t accept this passage as scripture they still can’t accuse Catholics of inventing any unbiblical ideas, because this practice was pre-Christian.
And even if the Apocrypha aren’t scripture, the passage still shows that the OT Jews did pray for their righteous dead because they looked forward to the Resurrection.
Intercession of the saints
Another doctrine that Protestants regard as unscriptural is that of the intercession of saints; i.e. redeemed sinners who had lived exemplary Christian lives who had died and, in heaven, pray for Christians still living on earth.
Again, Catholics and Orthodox are simply following their scripture when they ask a saint in heaven to pray for them. Their biblical source for this practice is found in 2 Maccabees 15:6-19, in which Judas Maccabaeus is rousing his troops before a battle with the Greeks. During his speech he told them of a vision he’d had, in which Onias, a godly High Priest of the Jews who had earlier been murdered, was praying for the Jews for the coming battle. During his prayer Jeremiah the prophet (long since dead) also came to pray for the Jews. Onias told Judas that Jeremiah prayed much for the Jews and Jerusalem. Jeremiah handed Judah a golden sword, a gift to Judah from God, to strike down the Greek army.
Catholics and Orthodox understand from this passage that not only do departed believers pray for those still on earth, but that Christians on earth can request saints in heaven to pray for them, just as they would request a believer on earth; that there is no difference between them except for their location; that whether we are in heaven or on earth we are still part of the Church; and that asking a saint in heaven to pray is not the same as necromancy, an occult practice forbidden in scripture.
Again, whether one believes in the practice or not, the fact is that it was written in a pre-New Testament Jewish writing and is therefore not something that the Catholics have invented.
But doesn’t the NT reject praying to departed saints, because Paul states categorically that Jesus is the only mediator between God and humans (1 Tim 2:5)? The early Christians (including St. Augustine who wrote about it) didn’t have a problem with this, regarding both Jesus’ substitutionary sacrifice and an intermediate place as essential for salvation.
It should also be observed that the practices of praying for the dead and the intercession of saints are regarded by Protestants as unbiblical only because they’ve removed from scripture the passages that teach them. It’s easy to prove a thing is unbiblical if you first remove all reference to it from the bible!
Conclusion
These are some reasons why the Apocrypha should be accepted as Scripture. As for me, it’s not for me to decide whether or not the Apocrypha are scripture – the Church has already done that, and this is perhaps the single most important reason. Surely my/our obligation is to accept them as such. In the words of St Augustine, “We receive the New and the Old Testament in that number of books which the authority of the Holy Catholic Church determines”. It should be noted that at that time the Christian Church was called the Catholic Church which means universal or all-embracing. That with which Protestants have objections is the Roman Catholic Church, which is a narrower and more specific title. Even so, the early Church unofficially regarded Rome as the supreme Church, the first church among equals (see Ignatius’ letter to the Church at Rome).
But, at the least, if we still have a problem with regarding the Apocrypha as canonical and inspired scripture, we ought to see them as edifying and profitable to read. As Article VI of the Church of England Prayer Book says “….the Church doth read (the books of the Apocrypha) for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet it doth not apply them to establish any doctrine”
References
“New Testament, Copyright 1946; Old Testament, Copyright 1952; The Apocrypha, Copyright 1957. The Catholic Edition of the complete Bible incorporating Old Testament, New testament and Apocrypha copyright 1966 by Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America”. Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition published by Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd.
Aquila | Jewish, Greek & Translator | Britannica
IBSS – The Bible – Old Testament: Septuagint (bibleandscience.com)