Thēsauros (Part 1)
A Case for the Value of the Old Testament Apocrypha
A thesaurus used to be a common feature in every American home. I remember as a kid we purchased a new thesaurus when I was in elementary school for my use, and it was a big deal. I recall doing my literature homework and depending on that rich treasure trove of synonyms and antonyms constantly. Now everyone has a phone and a computer, I can’t tell you the last time I used a physical thesaurus. In a way, this is a great tragedy as we tend to not use synonyms and antonyms as much as we used to, and the overall richness of the English language suffers as a result and bits of our language dies over time.
The word thesaurus comes from the Greek word thēsauros, which means “the place in which good and precious things are collected and laid up, a treasury.”1 Language is a treasury, allowing us unparalleled beauty and richness in communication, and is a fitting theme. The Bible is like a language. It depends on our constant usage to pass understanding. The amount we utilize something also reflects the value we place on it. This is certainly true for what we refer to as “the Apocrypha,” a group of writings that have fallen out of use in large swaths of Christendom.
What I am referring to by Apocrypha are the texts that are part of the Septuagint, the Greek translation Hebrew Bible used by Jesus and the early church, which are generally not included in the Protestant canon of Scripture. Some of these writings are included in the Catholic canon of Scripture, and all of them are included in the Eastern Orthodox canon. To be clear, all these writings are Old Testament, there are no additional Gospels in these canons, and none of the apocryphal “gospels” that are sometimes presented as real, such as the Gospel of Thomas, are credible in any scholarly sense.
Three Canons
The Hebrew Bible is the modern canon accepted by Rabbinic Judaism since sometime between the 1st Century BC and the 2nd Century AD (I lean toward it being after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70AD if my opinion matters). The Protestant canon is the same as the Hebrew.
The Septuagint, a.k.a the Greek Old Testament, is a translation composed in the 3rd and 2nd Centuries BC by Jewish scholars. Due to the popularity of the Greek language during the time, most Jews read from the Septuagint, and Jesus likely did. The Apostles and Early Church Fathers quote from the Septuagint when they quote the Old Testament. It was the Bible of the Early Church. The Orthodox canon is the entire Septuagint. In fact, in their Greek liturgies, the untranslated Septuagint is still what they use today.
The Roman Catholic Church also has their own canon that is slightly shorter than the Septuagint/Orthodox canon but includes much of it. I have composed a chart to show the various canons of the Old Testament below (I combined books that are two-parters to save space such as Samuel and Kings).
Watching Our Language
As I alluded to earlier, Scripture is like a language. This is precisely the argument Brent Strawn makes in his book The Old Testament is Dying, which I highly recommend. He says:
Just as a language-preverbal, nonverbal, and verbal-allows us to make sense of the world and ourselves, the Old Testament provides (or can provide) a kind of grammar for constructing, perceiving, and understanding the same.2
Using the analogy of a language, Scripture requires engagement for its survival. This is one of Strawn’s criticisms of “New Testament” churches or movements that emphasize the New Testament over the Old. In some churches, the congregation will never hear a sermon on the Old Testament. There are even New Testament-only Bibles! (But are they really Bibles at that point?) As Christianity has affirmed over the centuries, the Old and New Testaments are both Christian Scripture, inspired by God. One does not and cannot have significance over the other, it is all God’s word.
Hermeneutics, knowledge that helps us interpret the Bible correctly, can be lost if we do not engage the Old Testament as fewer “Christians” will understand how to ‘speak the language.’ Strawn goes on to say “If the Old Testament dies, the New Testament will not be far behind it…”3 He is right, as the Testaments are intrinsically linked. For a valid Christian hermeneutic, one cannot properly operate without the other. The Old contains essential knowledge pertaining to the New.
When a language dies, or in this case our hermeneutic, our ability to understand the Bible, then our very faith is threatened. How long until we collectively fail to understand Jesus is the great reversal of the Garden curse, lose the doctrine of original sin, or forget Jesus is Israel’s Messiah? I agree with Strawn, we must become people of the whole Bible. I believe that the way to guarantee we succeed is instead of going on the defense we must go on the offense. We must go one step further as Protestants and reclaim the usefulness of the Apocrypha, even if we do not adopt it as inspired.
Apocrypha
Why don’t we have the Apocrypha in our (Protestant) Bibles? And why do Roman Catholics have some but not all the Apocryphal books?
Jerome’s Latin translation of the Bible had been the standard in Western Christianity since the late 300’s. While he translated from the earliest Hebrew manuscripts he had, he also recognized the Septuagint contained more books and translated them too, though notated the difference. Various editions were in circulation, but most simply contained all the books he translated from both Hebrew and Greek.
When the Reformation kicked off, Luther and the other Reformers began their own Bible translations into their native languages. Luther, in his 1534 German Bible also translated all the books of both canons but took the opportunity to separate the Greek books and additions. Luther specifically placed them in a section between the Old and New Testaments and called it The Apocrypha, a term borrowed from the church father Cyril of Jerusalem and the Vulgate’s translator, Jerome. It means hidden things.4 Siding with the Jewish scholarship of his day, he excluded these books as inspired canon, but nonetheless included them in his Bible translation saying they are, “books which are not held equal to the sacred Scriptures, and nevertheless are useful and good to read.”5
Most other Reformers followed Luther’s lead, with Myles Coverdale’s Great Bible in 1535 doing the same, as well as the Church of England’s Geneva Bible (1560), Bishop’s Bible (1568), and the famed King James Bible (1611) all placing the Apocrypha in the Bible between the testaments. At the beginning of the Reformation, the consensus was the Apocrypha is, as Luther said, “useful and good to read” even if “not esteemed to be part of the Holy Scriptures.” What changed?
At the fourth session of the Roman Catholic Church’s Council of Trent in 1546, the council codified the Canon of Trent, adopting an earlier list of the Biblical canon from the 4th century. It included some of the Apocrypha, and left on the cutting room floor other parts that had been up to that point in the Vulgate. What they did include they dubbed the Deuterocanon, meaning ‘second canon’ of the Hebrews, and are regarded as inspired Scripture. See the chart for what is included in the Deuterocanon.
As the original Reformers passed the torch to a new generation, Protestants began to disregard the Apocrypha as “Catholic” and unnecessary. Protestants began to print Bibles without the Apocrypha as early as 1640.6
What is in the Apocrypha?
Just like the rest of the Bible, the Apocryphal books contain many genres; historical books, poetry, prayers, a psalm, and wisdom literature, as well as some additions to the prophetic book Daniel and even additions to Esther emphasizing God’s role in that story, and more. Personally, I think these works have varying significance and credibility. Returning to the concept of the Bible as a language, however, these books contain tremendous insights into a proper biblical hermeneutic and biblical theology.
Biblical theology is how we look at Scripture and come to conclusions by looking at the Bible as one complete story from the Garden to the Epistles. The Apocrypha offers tremendous insights into the nation of Israel and the Hebrew people. I will not attempt to get into how each writing in the Apocrypha edifies us but will go over some major highlights.
The Intertestamental Period
Of particular importance in the Apocrypha are the writings that inform us about what is often called ‘the intertestamental period,’ the period between the last Hebrew prophet (Malachi) and Jesus. I’ve heard pastors preach in sermons that there was 400 years of silence where the Hebrews were dominated by various foreign powers. This is somewhat true, but is misleading. There was a lot happening in Israel as recorded in the Books of 1, 2, 3, and 4 Maccabees. The first two books tell a convincing and likely accurate portrayal of the Maccabean revolt, where Israel successfully revolted against the Seleucid Empire and established a brief independent kingdom.
In Daniel 8, Daniel prophesies Alexander’s Macedonian Empire fracturing into four successor states. We learn from history (including the books of the Maccabees) that one of those successor states is the Seleucid Empire, who would dominate Israel.
I saw him approaching the ram, and infuriated with him, he struck the ram, breaking his two horns, and the ram was not strong enough to stand against him. The goat threw him to the ground and trampled him, and there was no one to rescue the ram from his power. Then the male goat acted even more arrogantly, but when he became powerful, the large horn was broken. Four conspicuous horns came up in its place, pointing toward the four winds of heaven. - Daniel 8:7-8 CSB
Again in Daniel 8 and 12, the blasphemous actions of the Seleucid king, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, are prophesied. His actions that desecrated the Temple and banned Yahweh worship and sacrifices led to the Maccabean revolt (Daniel 12:10-11, 1 Maccabees 1:10-15, 20-64). In Zechariah, he prophecies of God stirring up the Hebrews against the Greeks (the Seleucids were Greek).
I will rouse your sons, Zion, against your sons, Greece. - Zechariah 9:13 CSB
After the Maccabees defeated the Seleucids, they commemorated their victory by establishing Hanukkah, which Jesus and his disciples participated in John 10:22-36. Later the Hasmonean dynasty, established by the Maccabees, would become embroiled in a civil war. Can you guess the two factions? That’s right, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Sadducees would invite the famed Roman general Pompey, Julius Caesar’s son-in-law and greatest rival, to use his army in support of their faction, beginning Israel’s era as a Roman client state.
We have made the mistake of letting a piece of the language of the Old Testament die. There is an incredible amount of context in the intertestamental period that lends itself worthy of examination if, for no other reason, so we understand the Bible and Jesus better.
The Other Writings
Though some writings do offer insights into the intertestamental period, others fall outside of it. The value in this portion of the Apocrypha is these other writings still offer insights to the story of Israel and the Hebrew people - how they thought; about the world around them, God, their patriarchs and matriarchs, and other more significant insights. These writings are indispensable in helping us speak their language, which ultimately is the language of the narrative of Scripture. One of my favorite examples is the Prayer of Manasseh, a beautiful prayer of repentance, right up there with Psalm 51 in beauty.
We have a treasury at our disposal in the Apocryphal writings, a true thesaurus that offers deep insights into the faith we hold. Knowing this, where do we go from here are Protestants? I have a few thoughts, but you’ll have to stay tuned for Part 2 next week.
https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g2344/kjv/tr/0-1/
Strawn, B. A. (2017). The Old Testament Is Dying: A Diagnosis and Recommended Treatment. Baker Academic, pp. 8.
Strawn, 18.
Newsom, Carol A. “Introduction to the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books.” The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 5th ed., Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2010, pp. 1379–1385.
Luther, Martin. Retrieved from Maier, Paul L. “Foreword.” In The Apocrypha: The Lutheran Edition with Notes (pp. xviii). Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, MO, 2012, pp. xxiv.
Strawn, 181, n. 76.