Jim has raised an important question about the apocrypha in the English
tradition, and I'm not ready to let go of it. He's right, that we haven't
even addressed it.
The status of the apocrypha has been in dispute since at least the time of
Jerome, when questions about canon formation had to be decided by one of
two standards, either the Septuagint or the Hebrew canon. What
distinguishes the apocrypha from canonical literature in these debates is
that the former exist only in Greek texts, whereas the latter exist in
Hebrew texts. Jerome, for example, advocated that the narrower Hebrew
canon be used to judge whether a book was authentic. In the end, the Greek
and Latin churches both adopted the broader Septuagint canon as the
standard, therefore including the apocrypha. The Reformers hashed over the
issue, levelling difficult criticisms at the apocrypha but not coming to a
definite conclusion. The further story of the apocrypha in Continental
Protestantism is a history unto itself. In the United States, Protestants,
adopting the King James Version, adopted the stricter Puritan canon which
had come to prevail on this side of the pond.
A brief but helpful introduction to these issues may be found in the
Introduction to the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books in the New Oxford
Annotated Edition. On the development of the Puritan canon, that text
reads:
"In England, though Protestants were unanimous in declaring that the
apocryphal books were not to be used to establish any doctrine, differences
arose as to the proper use and place of non-canonical books. The milder
view prevailed in the Church of England, and the lectionary attached to the
Book of Common Prayer, from 1549 onward, has always contained prescribed
lessons from the Apocrypha. IN reply to those who urged the discontinuance
of reading lessons from apocryphal books, as being inconsistent with the
sufficiency of Scripture, the bishops at the Savoy Conference, held in
1661, replied [much water having passed under the bridge, I'd add!! -- PJN]
that the same objection could be raised against the preaching of sermons,
adn that it was much to be desired that all sermons should give as useful
instruction as did the chapters selected from the Apocrypha.
"A more strict point of view was taken by the Puritans, who felt uneasy
that there should be any book sincluded within the covers of the Bible
besides those that they regarded as authoritative. In time this aversion
to associting merely human books with those acknowledged as the only sacred
and canonical ones found a natural expression in the publication of
editions of the Bible from which the section devoted to the Apocrypha was
omitted. The earlies copies of the English Bible that excluded the
Apocrypha are certain Geneva Bibles printed in 1599 mainly in the Low
Countries. . . . It would seem that the practice of issuing copies of the
Bible without the Apocrypha continued . . . During subsequent centuries
[after the 1630] the editions of Bibles that lacked the books of teh
Apocrypha came to outnumber by far those that included them, and soon
[when??] it became difficult to obtain ordinary editions of the King James
Version containing the Apocrypha.' [p. AP-viii]
I hope this helps. A much lengthier and more learned account may be found
in volume 3 of the Cambridge History of the Bible.
__________________________________
Patrick J. Nugent
Earlham College
Richmond, Indiana 47374 USA
(765) 983-1413
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