The Peshitta is the standard version of the Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition. Most of the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament are found in the Syriac, and the Wisdom of Sirach is held to have been translated from the Hebrew and not from the Septuagint.[39] This New Testament, originally excluding certain disputed books (2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, Revelation), had become a standard by the early 5th century. The five excluded books were added in the Harklean Version (616 AD) of Thomas of Harqel.[40]
Canonicity;: A collection of early testimonies to the canonical books of the New Testament
Anabaptists use the Luther Bible, which contains the intertestamental books; Amish wedding ceremonies include "the retelling of the marriage of Tobias and Sarah in the Apocrypha".[62] The fathers of Anabaptism, such as Menno Simons, quoted "them [the Apocrypha] with the same authority and nearly the same frequency as books of the Hebrew Bible" and the texts regarding the martyrdoms under Antiochus IV in 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees are held in high esteem by the Anabaptists, who historically faced persecution.[63]
The Didache,[note 5] The Shepherd of Hermas,[note 6] and other writings attributed to the Apostolic Fathers, were once considered scriptural by various early Church fathers. They are still being honored in some traditions, though they are no longer considered to be canonical. However, certain canonical books within the Orthodox Tewahedo traditions find their origin in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers as well as the Ancient Church Orders. The Orthodox Tewahedo churches recognize these eight additional New Testament books in its broader canon. They are as follows: the four books of Sinodos, the two books of the Covenant, Ethiopic Clement, and the Ethiopic Didascalia.[97]
The scope of an article on the sacred Canon may now be seen to be properly limited to an examination of (1) what may be ascertained regarding the process of the collection of the sacred writings into bodies or groups which from their very inception were the objects of a greater or less degree of veneration; (2) the circumstances and manner in which these collections were definitely canonized, or adjudged to have a uniquely Divine and authoritative quality; (3) the vicissitudes which certain compositions underwent in the opinions of individuals and localities before their Scriptural character was universally established. It is thus seen that canonicity is a correlative of inspiration, being the extrinsic dignity belonging to writings which have been officially declared as of sacred origin and authority. It is antecedently very probable that according as a book was written early or late it entered into a sacred collection and attained a canonical standing. Hence the views of traditionalist and critic (not implying that the tradionalist may not also be critical) on the Canon parallel, and are largely influenced by, their respective hypotheses on the origin of its component members.
Since the traditionalists infer the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch from other sources, they can rely for proof of an early collection of these books chiefly on Deuteronomy, xxxi, 9-13, 24-26, where there is question of a book of the law, delivered by Moses to the priests with the command to keep it in the ark and read it to the people on the feast of Tabernacles. But the effort to identify this book with the entire Pentateuch is not convincing to the opponents of Mosaic authorship.
The N. T. in its canonical aspect has little history between the first years of the fifth and the early part of the sixteenth century. As was natural m ages when ecclesiastical authority had not reached its modern centralization, there were sporadic divergences from the common teaching and tradition. There was no diffused contestation of any book, but here and there attempts by individuals to add something to the received collection. In several ancient Latin MSS. the spurious Epistle to the Laodiceans is found among the canonical letters, and, in a few instances, the apocryphal III Corinthians. The last trace of any Western contradiction within the Church to the Canon of the N. T. reveals a curious transplantation of Oriental doubts concerning the Apocalypse. An act of the Synod of Toledo, held in 633, states that many contest the authority of that book, and orders it to be read in the churches under pain of excommunication. This opposition in all probability came from the Visigoths, who had recently been converted from Arianism. The Gothic Bible had been made under Oriental auspices at a time when there was still much hostility to Apocalypse in the East.
Catholics refer to them as the "deuterocanonical" books (since they were disputed by a few early authors and their canonicity was established later than the rest), while the rest are known as the "protocanonical" books (since their canonicity was established first).
The Christian acceptance of the deuterocanonical books was logical because the deuterocanonicals were also included in the Septuagint, the Greek edition of the Old Testament which the apostles used to evangelize the world. Two thirds of the Old Testament quotations in the New are from the Septuagint. Yet the apostles nowhere told their converts to avoid seven books of it. Like the Jews all over the world who used the Septuagint, the early Christians accepted the books they found in it. They knew that the apostles would not mislead them and endanger their souls by putting false scriptures in their hands—especially without warning them against them.
The early acceptance of the deuterocanonicals was carried down through Church history. The Protestant patristics scholar J. N. D. Kelly writes: "It should be observed that the Old Testament thus admitted as authoritative in the Church was somewhat bulkier and more comprehensive than the [Protestant Old Testament] . . . It always included, though with varying degrees of recognition, the so-called Apocrypha or deuterocanonical books. The reason for this is that the Old Testament which passed in the first instance into the hands of Christians was . . . the Greek translation known as the Septuagint. . . . most of the Scriptural quotations found in the New Testament are based upon it rather than the Hebrew.. . . In the first two centuries . . . the Church seems to have accept all, or most of, these additional books as inspired and to have treated them without question as Scripture.
To justify this rejection of books that had been in the Bible since before the days of the apostles (for the Septuagint was written before the apostles), the early Protestants cited as their chief reason the fact that the Jews of their day did not honor these books, going back to the council of Javneh in A.D. 90. But the Reformers were aware of only European Jews; they were unaware of African Jews, such as the Ethiopian Jews who accept the deuterocanonicals as part of their Bible. They glossed over the references to the deuterocanonicals in the New Testament, as well as its use of the Septuagint. They ignored the fact that there were multiple canons of the Jewish Scriptures circulating in first century, appealing to a post-Christian Jewish council which has no authority over Christians as evidence that "The Jews don't except these books." In short, they went to enormous lengths to rationalize their rejection of these books of the Bible.
In later years they even began to propagate the myth that the Catholic Church "added" these seven books to the Bible at the Council of Trent! Protestants also try to distort the patristic evidence in favor of the deuterocanonicals. Some flatly state that the early Church Fathers did not accept them, while others make the more moderate claim that certain important Fathers, such as Jerome, did not accept them.
It is ironic that Protestants reject the inclusion of the deuterocanonicals at councils such as Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), because these are the very same early Church councils that Protestants appeal to for the canon of the New Testament. Prior to the councils of the late 300s, there was a wide range of disagreement over exactly what books belonged in the New Testament.
Disagreement on which books are inspired already existed among the early Jews; the Palestinian Jews accepted a shorter list than did the Alexandrian Jews. In the first Christian centuries those books that were recognized by all were called homologoúmenoi, the books "agreed upon"; those not accepted by all were called antilegómenoi, "contradicted" or amphiballómenoi, "doubtful." Since the 16th century the terms introduced by Sixtus of Siena have superseded the old terms, so that the homologoúmenoi are now called protocanonical, and the antilegómenoi are called deuterocanonical. Catholics today accept both protocanonical and deuterocanonical books as inspired and part of the canon. Protestants generally reject the deuterocanonical books and call them apocryphal. Catholics reserve the term apocryphal for books other than the deuterocanonical books, e.g., the Gospel of James. This latter category of books, which Catholics call apocryphal, are called pseudepigraphical ("falsely titled") by Protestants. See BIBLE, III (CANON), 4, 5.
More recent Protestant attempts have sought a more objective criterion. T. Zahn tried to explain the origin of the canon by saying that the early Christians used the present canonical books in public worship and eventually came to revere them as sacred. The liturgical reading of the words and acts of Jesus strengthened the religious life of the Assembly. To this one may object: why was canonical acceptance not given to works like the Shepherd of Hermas, or to the first Epistle of Clement (which also was read at public worship)? A. von Harnack suggested that all the men of the first generation had charisma, and so all that they wrote was considered inspired. The Roman Church, to defend itself against Montanists and other dissidents, in A.D. 180 drew up a closed list of inspired works. Against von Harnack's view is the objection that the Church never put charismatic utterances on the same plane as apostolic teaching. R. H. Grutzmacher tries to find a middle way between the historical and authoritative approach. According to him, historical criticism chooses a number of books, as early as possible in origin, from which each Christian by an inner light chooses those on which to found his faith. The Church aids this choice, having worked on the canon for centuries and having settled on those books that experience shows useful for salvation. Another Protestant, G. B. Smith, concludes that only when one admits a divine authority in the Church can there be an infallible canon. Liberal Protestants, because of a loose concept of inspiration, show little concern with the problem of the criterion of the canon. 2ff7e9595c
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