Table Of Content2
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: New Testament Use
Chapter 2: Prophetic Texts
Chapter 3: Akiba’s Rejection and Its Implications
Chapter 4: Septuagint “Plus” is the Septuagint
Chapter 5: Tacit Approval of the Septuagint in the New Testament
Chapter 6: The Otherwise Inexplicable Retention of the Deuterocanon in Rabbinical
Judaism
Chapter 7: “Even Though the Rabbis Withdrew the Book of Ben Sira…”
Chapter 8: Sirach and the Judean Desert Texts
Chapter 9: “Canonical” Use by the Early Christians (Consensus)
Chapter 10: The Findings of the North African Councils (Ubiquity)
Chapter 11: The Findings of the North African Councils (Apostolicity)
Chapter 12: The Persistent Use of the Deuterocanon within the Christian Church
Chapter 13: Illicit Removal by Jerome
Chapter 14: Implausibility of the Contrary
Chapter 15: In Closing
Appendix 1: The Problem with Lists
Appendix 2: Inerrancy and the Problem of Supposed Errors
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank a long time friend, George E. Jay, M.D. for all that he had
contributed to this book. His insights and suggestions helped make my original
manuscript into a book and I will be forever grateful for his kindness and generosity. My
gratitude also goes out to Daniel Egan, David Palm, Arthur Sippo M.D., Robert Corzine,
and Stephen Ray for their expertise, suggestions, encouragement and support. A special
thanks goes to my wife Christine and my children Paulina, Daniel, and Jennifer for their
constant love and support.
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PREFACE
IT IS A rare opportunity to make a contribution in Catholic apologetics and I was blessed
to be able to do so in the area of the Old Testament Deuterocanon. Before my previous
work on the subject, there hadn’t been a Catholic book dedicated to the issue of the
Deuterocanon since A. E. Breen wrote A General Introduction to the Study of Sacred
Scripture back in the 1890s.1 My book, Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger: The Untold
Story of the Lost Books of the Protestant Bible (Grotto Press, 2008) proposed an answer
to the often asked question, “Did the Catholic Church add these books to the Bible or did
Protestants remove them?” The book traced the history of the Deuterocanon from the
days of Sirach (ca. 200 BC) up to the First Vatican Council (1870).
After the release of Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger, I moved on to other projects
such as How to Wolf-proof Your Kids: A Guide for Catholic Parents on How to Keep
Your Kids Catholic (Grotto Press, 2010) and Making Sense of Mary (Grotto Press,
2013), but I never completely escaped the topic of the Deuterocanon. As comprehensive
as my book was for its size, there still remained much unexplored territory from a
Catholic perspective. From time to time I would stumble upon new information about the
Deuterocanon and promptly filed it away for future use. As the file grew, I began to ask
myself, “Am I preparing another book on the Deuterocanon?”
The success of Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger also brought with it some very
good constructive criticism. The subject of the Old Testament canon is enormous,
covering a wide variety of specialized fields. The daunting task of editing, reducing, and
summarizing all this material down to a few hundred pages was difficult. Important topics
received only a few lines of explanation and less vital points were omitted altogether.
Even worse, the winnowing process of editing and re-editing left its share of typos and
versification errors. However, the overall feedback was very positive and it assured me
that, despite its weakness, the book did serve its purpose.
The Case for the Deuterocanon: Evidence and Arguments is more than an attempt
to fill in the lacunas of my previous book. It’s a different animal. Why Catholic Bibles
Are Bigger was a historical overview geared towards answering a single question. The
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current work is an unbridled apologetic work, which builds a positive case to show that
the Deuterocanon is Scripture in its fullest sense.
TAKING THE AFFIRMATIVE?
Anyone familiar with the structure of debate and argument will immediately notice a
problem. The Case for the Deuterocanon takes the affirmative position. Normally, the
innovator, the one who is challenging the status quo, is obligated to shoulder the burden
of proof not the one that defends it. And since Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger
demonstrated that Protestantism, not Catholicism, changed the Christian Bible by
reducing the Deuterocanon to mere apocrypha (i.e., human writing incapable of
confirming doctrine), the burden of proof should fall upon Protestants to justify their
position, not Catholics.
Moreover, assuming the burden of proof is not something to be taken lightly. It’s
called a burden for a reason. Proving something is always harder than poking holes in
another person’s arguments. That is why debaters often try to push the burden of proof
on to their opponents.
Furthermore, it’s a very odd task to take on. How does one objectively prove
something to be Scripture? Scripture isn’t constructed. There is no golden list of pre-
requisites for a document to meet in order to be considered Scripture. How then can one
argue for something being Scripture without appealing to a subjective and arbitrary
criterion? The task is complicated even more given the diversity of opinions within
Protestantism. How can one construct a positive case that would satisfy most fair-
minded non-Catholics?
Why assume the burden of proof and take the affirmative? The answer is
ignorance. We have reached a point in history, at least in the United States, where most
Protestants are unaware of the Deuterocanon and its background. I’m not talking about
its place in ancient Christian history, but even in Protestant history. Many Protestants
have never heard of “the Apocrypha” much less know what it is. They assume that their
current Protestant Bibles, which omit these books, are identical to the historic Christian
Bibles, when in fact it neither matches the Bibles of early Protestantism nor the ancient
pre-Reformation Christian Bible.
Since the prospect of a Protestant re-awakening to the “Apocrypha” doesn’t seem
to be on the horizon, there is every reason to believe that ignorance about the
Deuterocanon (which Protestants call “the Apocrypha”) will remain unless someone
takes on the task of providing a positive case that explains why these books are inspired
Scripture, even if it means assuming the unjustified burden of proof.
PROVING SCRIPTURE
The problem still remains: How does one prove the inspiration of a book? Many
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Protestants (and even some Catholics) have proposed lists of qualities required for a
book to be considered inspired Scripture. These lists, however, are little more than the
product of their authors’ imagination; their criterion is arbitrary and has no real probative
power much less any authority to back them.
For the Christian, the ultimate judge on this issue is Jesus Christ and His inspired
Apostles. Christ and His Apostles certainly knew which books were inspired and they
had divine authority to say so. Moreover, it was the Apostles’ duty to ensure that Christ’s
followers possessed the authentic collection of inspired books as their Scriptures. This
collection of sacred writings was given, like a sacred deposit, to the Church. It is this
collection, not one constructed by some arbitrary set of criteria that will serve as the
touchstone for the authentic Christian Old Testament canon.
If one can demonstrate that Jesus and His inspired Apostles bequeathed the
Deuterocanon to the Church as inspired Scripture, the case is made. There’s no need to
jump through arbitrary hoops or anything like that. For the Christian, the question is
settled. And that is precisely the path that we will follow in this work, namely, to
demonstrate that the Deuterocanon was an authentic member of the original deposit of
Scriptures bequeathed to the Church by Christ and His Apostles.
FINAL WORD
I should also point out something that may be obvious. The case presented in this book is
my own. I have selected these lines of argumentation because I believe they serve to
create a very strong accumulative case for the Deuterocanon. I do not wish to give the
reader the impression that it is the only case that can be made. On the contrary, there are
many others. For me, the case presented here best explains all the evidence. This is my
opinion. I will leave it to others to propose their own cases.
So now, I put forward my case for the reader’s consideration. My hope is that The
Case for the Deuterocanon will spur you, the reader, on to further research and
consideration on this very important topic.
1. Breen, A. E., An Introduction to the Study of Sacred Scripture, (Rochester, New York: John P. Smith Printing
Company, 1890).
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INTRODUCTION
THE THESIS OF this book is to demonstrate that the Deuterocanon is Scripture. But
what do we mean by Deuterocanon and Scripture? It’s best to begin by defining these
key terms.
DEUTEROCANON
The term Deuterocanon came about in the sixteenth century. It literally means, “second
canon.” The “first canon” (or Protocanon) consists of all of the Old Testament books
(and sections of books) that Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox, and most modern Protestant
Bibles share in common. The “second canon” (or Deuterocanon) consists of those books
and sections of books that Catholic and Orthodox Bibles share in common, but are
omitted in Jewish Bibles and most modern Protestant Bibles, namely the book of Sirach
(sometimes called Ecclesiasticus or Ben Sira), Wisdom (sometimes called the Wisdom of
Solomon), Tobit, Judith, Baruch, and First and Second Maccabees. The Deuterocanon
also includes two chapters in the book of Daniel, several Greek sections in the book of
Esther, and the Epistle of Jeremiah.2
SCRIPTURE
The second term to be defined is Scripture. What do we mean by Scripture and how
does Scripture differ from any other religious writing?
The Scripture is comprised of those books that have the Holy Spirit as their
primary author. The New Testament identifies Scripture as being divinely authored (Acts
1:16, Romans 1:1-2, Hebrews 1:1, 3:7, etc.), which distinguishes it from all other
writings. As 2 Peter 1:20-21 says, “…[N]o prophecy [of Scripture] ever came through
human will but rather human beings moved by the Holy Spirit spoke under the influence
of God.” Religious literature is therefore divided into two categories: Inspired Scripture
(“human [authors] moved by the Holy Spirit”) and human writings (authors moved only
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by their own will).
Paul confirms this identification of Scripture with inspiration when he wrote:
“All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be
adequate, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16).
The word translated “inspired” literally means “God-breathed.” When God “breathes
into” (Latin, inspirare) Scripture, He invests it with divine authority and makes it
profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.
Divine inspiration, therefore, is that which sets Scripture apart from all human writings; it
makes a book sacred or holy.
Therefore, when this book argues that the Deuterocanon is Scripture it is arguing
that the Deuterocanon is Scripture in its fullest sense, namely, that it has the Holy Spirit
as its primary author (it is inspired) and being inspired it is capable of confirming doctrine
(“teaching”) and refuting opponents (i.e., “for reproof,” and “for correction”).
In addition to these two key terms, there are a few other terms that need to be
defined as well. One common term is “canon” or “canonicity.”
CANON
The canon, as it is used today, is an authoritative list of the books of Scripture. Since
divine authorship is what makes a writing Scripture, the canon of Scripture is largely seen
as being co-extensive with inspiration. If Holy Spirit inspired a work, it is canonical. If
He did not inspire a work (i.e. the Holy Spirit is not its primary author), it is not
canonical. The modern definition of canon does not permit categories like “uninspired
canonical books” or “inspired non-canonical books.” It’s either inspired (canonical) or it
is not.
This is important to remember because although we today often speak of Scripture
in terms of its inspiration or canonicity, the New Testament speaks of Scripture solely in
terms of its divine authorship, and not its canonicity. Yes, the word “canon” (Greek,
kanon) is used in several places in the New Testament, but it is never applied to a list of
the books of Scripture.3 Instead, the New Testament uses the term to mean a rule or
practice, such as when Paul wrote:
“For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.
And those who will walk by this rule (Greek, kanon), peace and mercy be
upon them, and upon the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:15-16).
Paul is obviously referring to his general rule about the value of circumcision, not the
books of the Bible. It is later in Church history, hundreds of years after the New
Testament, that the word “canon” began to be applied to the contents of Scripture. Since
it is important for our purposes to stay as close to the biblical text as possible, Scripture
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