In an age marked by an exaggerated ecumenism, there is a tendency to paper over important differences that, once argued and resolved, could readily become a means of true unity. Take for example the question of “how many books there are in the Bible?” This question is not really one of personal faith, but historical fact. Still it tends to be largely ignored because the facts are not really known on either side. For this reason it is instructive for us to examine the history of the canon of Sacred Scripture.
To properly speak of a “canon” of Scripture, there are some necessary distinctions that need to be made. First, the word canon is a theological term that was first used in the Fourth Century AD. Prior to that the term Scriptures was used to distinguish those books that were inspired from those that were not. This is important because, as Vatican I taught, the Church in recognizing the canon, was not bestowing inspiration upon certain books, but acknowledging that those books contained in the canon were inspired. So properly speaking the Church did not “decide” the canon but merely recognized that the books contained in it were inspired and was tasked with preserving and protecting them.
Judaism and the “Canon” of the Old Testament
Second, there was no set canon within Judaism at the time of Our Lord. Judaism was not a monolithic religion and different sects had different beliefs as to which books from the Hebrew Scriptures were inspired. The Sadducees, for example, believed only that the five books of Moses were inspired (which is why Our Lord reprimands them for not knowing the Scriptures when they denied the resurrection in Mt 19). The Pharisees on the other hand included other books, but disputed over the status of Ecclesiastes, Esther and the Song of Solomon. The Essenes, the group from whom the Dead Sea Scrolls have been excavated, accepted even more, including some that are not found in any of the Christian Scriptures.
The point is that there was no accepted central authority within Judaism that could canonize the Scriptures. This is one of the things that they thought the Messiah would do (c.f. John 4:25). This dispute over which books were considered Scriptures lasted well into the second century and beyond. This point is also important to consider because of a popular myth, perpetuated mainly by Protestants (especially Norman Geisler) that there was a Jewish council at Jamnia around the year 100 that closed the Jewish canon. The end result was a canon of 22 books; the same set found in most Protestant Bibles.
If they did not recognize the Messiah whose role it was to discern the Scriptures, then by what authority could they have declared a fixed canon? Furthermore, there is absolutely no historical evidence for such a formal council. It appears that this was made up by H.E. Ryle as a defense of the Protestant subtraction of books from the Christian canon. More on this in a moment.
What the Jews did begin to do, although in nothing like a formal way, was create a wall around their Scriptures in order to fend off the evangelization efforts of the Christians—Greek speaking and Greek Bible-reading Christians specifically. So naturally one of the ways they would do this was to de-emphasize or even accept those books written in Greek. It was for this reason that Christians, starting with St. Athanasius began making distinctions between what he referred to as “canonical” and what he called “other books.” The “other books” were simply those books, that though considered to be inspired by the Christians, were not useful for evangelizing and argumentation with Jews.
How do we know that these books were considered inspired, even though not listed among Athanasius’ canon? Because they were all approved to be used within the liturgy. This is an important point that cannot be overlooked. Books that were used in the liturgy were considered to be sacred and authentically the Word of God; lex orandi, lex credendi—the law of prayer is the law of belief. In an age where literacy was low encounters with the Scriptures happened regularly in the liturgy. Even if they were not able to read, they were still well versed in the Word of God for this reason.
It was the usefulness of the two groups of Scriptures that led St. Jerome to wrongly make the canon-deuterocanon distinction, positing that the latter were not inspired. This conflating of usefulness with inspiration was an error that persisted even into the Middle Ages. There are no degrees of inspiration, it either is or it isn’t. But there are degrees of usefulness. It is clear that Genesis has greater use than Tobit, but that does not mean the latter is not inspired. It was in light of this that the Church spoke definitively as to which books were canonical and could be read in the liturgy at the Council of Carthage in 418. This same list, which included the so-called deuterocanonical books, was reaffirmed throughout the centuries including at the Council of Florence almost 80 years before Luther drove the nail into his 95 theses. The “Counter Reformational” Council of Trent merely reaffirmed the list and declared it to be a belief that was to be definitively held. A solemn declaration had become necessary because for the first time since the third Century someone had challenged the contents.
Luther’s Role
Martin Luther did not actually remove books from the Bible as is commonly thought. To do so would have been far too radical. What he did do though is revive the canon-deuterocanon distinction. His German translation reformatted the Bible so that the books in question appeared in the back of the Old Testament texts. Eventually he labeled them Apocrypha, prefacing them with a note that these were“books which are not held equal to the holy Scriptures and yet are profitable and good to read.” The logical question is why he would have included them in the Bible to begin with unless they were actually in the Bible. Why not remove them altogether? Instead he pulled a little bait and switch by a common heretical trick that remains down to our day—gradualism.
This highlights the difficulty with the “Jewish Council” defense or anything like it. Why would you remove books from the Christian Bible based upon Jewish authority? Given the choice between 1500 years of Christian practice and dubious Jewish authority, why would you choose the latter? For Luther and his progeny that was a red herring. Books, in his view, should be included in the Bible only insofar as they confirm his authority. He is very clear about that. At first he quoted the books of Wisdom and Sirach in his own apology against indulgences. But when those books were shown to reveal other things he didn’t agree with, he did not argue but instead questioned their authority.
Blessed John Henry Newman once quipped that to be steeped in history is to cease to be Protestant. While he meant that once we study the Church Fathers it becomes clear that they were Catholic. But his dictum can be taken in a deeper sense in that once we study the history of the Bible we come to see that the Protestant position regarding the contents of Scripture is wrong. For a group of Christians who believe only in the authority of Scripture this is highly problematic to say the least and Catholics in charity owe it to them to set the record straight.