THE HEBREW SACRED BOOKS—THE OLD TESTAMENT.

SPECIAL TEXT: "He that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat, saith the Lord?"—JEREMIAH.

NOTES.

1. The Apocrypha. "The collection of books to which this term is popularly applied includes the following. The order given is that in which they stand in the English version. I. Esdras. II. Esdras. Tobit. Judith. The rest of the chapters of the Book of Esther, which are found neither in the Hebrew nor in the Chaldee. The Wisdom of Solomon. The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus. Baruch. The Song of the Three Holy Children. The History of Susanna. The History of the Destruction of Bel and the Dragon. The Prayer of Manasseh, King of Judah. I. Maccabees. II. Maccabees."^[3]

A brief treatise on each of the foregoing books of the Apocrypha will be found in the Seventy's Bible Dictionary, Art. Apocrypha, also in "Bible Treasury," pp. 351, 353; Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, I and II Macabees will be found in the Roman Catholic English version, known as the Douay Bible, the Roman Church regarding them as of equal authority with other books of the Old Testament.

2. Definition of Apocrypha: "The word Apocrypha means "secret" or "hidden," and is applied to a class of writings which have been definitely rejected from the books of the Old and New Testaments; but the reason why they were called secret books, rather than private or secondary books, is not clear. * * * * Probably every attempt to define the limits of canonical or inspired books will result in the distinction of three classes of books: (1) the Canonical Scriptures, about which every one is agreed; (2) the disputed books, about which there is no general agreement; (3) the books which are universally rejected. It is to the third class that the term Apocrypha properly applies, the intermediate class being more correctly known as Antilegomena, or disputed books. * * * * * It is commonly stated that the reason for the rejection of the books referred to from the Old Testament [the Apocrypha] was that they were not found current in Hebrew, but only in Greek. It is quite possible that in some cases the reason why the books were not extant in Hebrew was that they had been previously judged uncanonical. A book soon disappears when it has been condemned. Even the Greek text of some parts of the Apocrypha has perished—(e. g. II Esdras). We must not be surprised, therefore, if some of the apocryphal books should turn out to have been at one time extant in Hebrew." (Bible Treasury, p. 351.)

3. Attitude of the Roman Catholic Church Respecting the Apocrypha: Some Catholic theologians previous to the Council of Trent, 1545-1563, were in doubt as to the inspiration of some of the books of the Apocrypha admitted into the Catholic Canon; but Dr. Smith, in his Bible Dictionary, says: "The Council of Trent closed the question which had been left open, and deprived its theologians of the liberty they had hitherto enjoyed—extending the Canon of Scripture so as to include all the hitherto doubtful or deutero-canonical books, with the exception of the two books of Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh, the evidence against which seemed too strong to be resisted (Sess. IV. de Can. Script). In accordance with this decree, the editions of the Vulgate, published by authority, contained the books which the Council had pronounced canonical, as standing on the same footing as those which had never been questioned, while the three which had been rejected were printed commonly in smaller type and stood after the New Testament." (Dictionary p, 122.)

Catholics, however, insisted that the list of canonical books agreeing "in substance with the list of divinely inspired books, held by Catholics to the present day," was authorized by the twenty-sixth statute of the Council of Hippo, held in Africa in the year 393, and the third Council of Carthage 397, A.. D., and the sixth Council of Carthage 419, A. D., give the same list or canon of books as the Council of Hippo. "Although the inspiration of some of these books was held to be doubtful by a few of the Fathers, previous to these two Councils, the same Fathers ceased to have any doubt upon it after the decision of these Councils; so that, while some of the Apocrypha have been considered uninspired, as the third and fourth of Esdras, and third and fourth of Macabees, some other of these books have been recognized as inspired, and are called by Catholics Deutero-canonical. These have, therefore, the very same sanction and authority that all the books of the New Testament have, in addition to the long-standing veneration of the Jewish Church for them." (Catholic Belief, Bruno, pp. 13-14.)

Catholics will be compelled, however, to admit that several books of the Apocrypha now accepted by them and published in the Douay Bible, are not in the list given by the three Councils above mentioned. Moreover, in the list of General Councils published in Bruno's work, in enumerating the achievement of the Council of Trent, he says: "The Catholic doctrine regarding the Holy Scripture, Tradition, Original Sin, Justification, and the Seven Sacraments, was clearly explained." (Catholic Belief, Bruno, p. 130.) So that it was not until the Council of Trent, 1545-1563, that the final word respecting the Catholic canon was spoken.

4. The Protestant Attitude Toward the Apocrypha: "The Reformers of Germany and England * * * influenced in part by the revival of the study of Hebrew and the consequent recognition of the authority of the Hebrew canon, and subsequently by the reaction against this stretch of authority, [exercised by the Council of Trent], maintained the opinion of Jerome and pushed it to its legitimate results [which led to the rejection of the books of the Apocrypha as scripture]. "Luther spoke of individual books among those in question with a freedom as great as that of Jerome, judging each on its own merits, praising Tobit as a "pleasant comedy" and the Prayer of Manasseh as a "good model for penitents," and rejecting the two books of Esdras as containing worthless fables. The example of collecting the doubtful books in a separate group had been set in the Strasburg edition of the Septuagint, 1526. In Luther's complete edition of the German Bible * * * (1534) the books (Judith, Wisdom, Tobias, Sirach, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Additions to Esther and Daniel, and the Prayer of Manasseh) were grouped together under the general title of "Apocrypha, i. e. 'Books which are not of like worth with Holy Scripture,' yet are good and useful to be read. In the history of the English Church, Wicliffe showed himself in this as in other points the forerunner of the Reformation, and applied the term 'Apocrypha' to all but the 'twenty-five' Canonical books of the Old Testament. The judgment of Jerome was formally asserted in the sixth Article. The disputed books were collected and described in the same way in the printed English Bible of 1539 (Cranmer's), and since then there has been no fluctuation as to the application of the word. The books to which the term is ascribed are in popular speech not merely apocryphal, but the Apocrypha."

6. Attitude of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the Apocrypha: See Doctrine and Covenants, sec. xci.

7. Definition of the Term Canon: "The word Canon in classical Greek signifies properly a straight rod, as a carpenter's rule; and hence is applied metaphorically to a testing rule in ethics or in art, or in language (e. g. the canons of Grammar.) As applied to Scripture, the word indicates the rule by which the contents of the Bible must be determined, and thus, secondarily, an index of the constituent books. The canon of Scripture may be generally described as "the collection of books which forms the original and authoritative written rule of the faith and practice of the Church." (Dr. Smith's Old Testament History, p. 645.)

8. Arrangement of the Canon Ascribed to Ezra: "Among the achievements ascribed to Ezra is the collection, editing, and arrangement of the whole Jewish Scriptures in one canon, under the threefold division of the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa. In performing this work, he is assumed to have added those passages which can not have been written by the authors whose names the books bear; such as the allusion to kings of Israel in Gen. xxxvi: 31; the account of the death and burial of Moses in the last chapter of Deuteronomy; and the many references to the state of 'things at this day.' * * * * * But the main question is, whether the present canon of the Old Testament was, in substance, the work of Ezra. It must be remembered that such a work involved much more than the collection into one volume of books already existing in a separate form; it included the selection from the whole number of those which bore, and were to bear forever, the stamp of divine authority: for no one imagines that the Scriptures of the Old Testament form a complete collection of the ancient Hebrew literature. That such a work, having such authority, had been completed before the Christian era, is clear from the allusions to the Holy Scriptures in the New Testament; and it was most probably accomplished during the Persian domination, which ended B. C. 323. There is every reason for its having been performed at as early a period as possible. Ezra's care to make the people well acquainted with the word of God is as conspicuous as his own knowledge of it. No man could be more qualified, as no time could be more fit, for a work which was most needful to establish the people in their faith. That the work must have been performed by an inspired man, is an axiom lying at the foundation of the whole question, unless we believe, on the one hand, that the Church is endowed in every age with power to decide what Scriptures are canonical, or unless, on the other hand, we give up a canon, in the proper sense of the word, and reduce the authority of Scripture to that which literary criticism can establish for its separate books. On this ground, none but Ezra can be the author of the canon; for no one has ever thought of ascribing the work to Nehemiah, the civil governor and man of action; and the only claim made for Malachi is the addition of his own prophecy to the canon already framed by Ezra, and even this supposition we have seen to be unnecessary, as Ezra may have been the survivor. The attempt to ascribe the work to some unknown inspired person later than Malachi is an example of the argumentum ab ignorantia, which has no weight against the evidence of what is known." (Dr. Smith's Old Testament History, pp. 645-646.)

9. The Authorized Version: The treatise on the Authorized Version in Smith's Bible Dictionary is full, and perhaps the best one extant; and while praising highly the work of the English translators of the A. V., exhibits quite clearly some of its defects, and points out the necessity for a new version. How far the "Revised Version" of 1870-1885 corrected the defects of the A. V. may be known only to Hebrew and Greek scholars; but the fact that the work was undertaken and carried to a conclusion at the expense of so much time, and scholarly effort, justifies the qualified acceptance of our English Bible set forth in one of our Articles of Faith, viz., "We believe the Bible to be the word of God, as far as it is translated correctly."

Footnotes

1. It has already been suggested in our Introduction to these lessons that excuses for non-preparation should not be tolerated; and we again call attention of the quorums to this necessary attitude respecting thorough preparation of lessons; and now emphasize our suggestions by applying them to these lectures. Those who are assigned to deliver the lectures can receive their appointment two or three weeks before they are called upon to deliver them, and it should be a matter of pride with those so appointed to come to their tasks thoroughly prepared. The lecturer is supposed to occupy about thirty minutes, and the assignments should be made with due regard to the difficulties of the subject.2. No better mental exercise exists than that of writing. It leads to very definite thinking, and to exactness of expression, and is an art that should be cultivated by the Seventies. It is suggested, therefore, that at least one of the lectures, when the quorum session is devoted to such exercises, should be given in the form of a paper, a written treatise. The subject for the paper will be indicated as above.3. Smith's Bible Dictionary.