Islam - The Summit of Religious Evolution — Page 146
146 This question of the “Apocrypha” is the one big problem left and needs to be carefully considered when discussing the possibility of a common Bible. The books known as the Apocrypha are: 1 and 2 Esdras (3 and 4 Esdras) Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch with the Letter of Jeremiah, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Additions to Daniel and Esther, the prayer of Manasseh. Since the time of the Reformation these books have been regarded as non-canonical by Protestants and either grouped at the end of the Old Testament or left out altogether. Roman Catholics, on the other hand, have continued to regard them as inspired and canonical, with the following exceptions. There are three items in the Apocrypha which are not included in the deuterocanonical books, namely 1 and 2 Esdras (3 and 4 Esdras) and the Prayer of Manasseh, and which in consequence are not printed in this Bible. The other books are given in the translation of the Revised Standard Version. A word must be said here about the origin of these books. In the days of Jesus Christ, the Jews had no precisely defined (in the sense of officially closed) Canon of the Scriptures. Besides the books of the Hebrew Canon as we now know it, there were others of more recent origin (mostly of the first and second centuries B. C. ) which were held in great esteem but whose exact status had not been finally determined. Though many of them had been written in Hebrew or Aramaic they seem to have circulated mainly outside Palestine, in a Greek translation or text, among the Greek-speaking Jews of the Dispersion, especially in Egypt. The books were less acceptable to the Jews of the Pharisaic tradition in Jerusalem, but many fragments of them in Hebrew and Aramaic have been found at Qumran where there was a religious community distinct from the Pharisees. The first Christians were Aramaic-speaking Jews of Palestine and they used the Hebrew Scriptures. Very soon the Greek-speaking Jewish and Gentile converts outnumbered those of Aramaic speech; and consequently the Bible they used, namely the Greek Septuagint translation which included the books referred to above, came into general use. The books thus came to be implicitly accepted by the Christians of the first centuries, though no attempt was made to issue an official decree defining the limits of the Old Testament Canon. With the virtual disappearance of the priestly class as a force in Judaism after the destruction of the Temple in A. D. 70, and the rise of the Pharisees to a position of dominance as champions of the national heritage, the Jews set about the task of consolidating their tradition and defining the limits of their sacred writings. Towards the end of the first century A. D. at Jamnia, they decided that their Bible consisted only of books written up to the time of Ezra, when prophecy was deemed to have ceased; and this criterion, though not applied uniformly, excluded the books of more recent origin which were on the whole less in accord with the Pharisaic outlook. The need for a decision was forced upon the Jews because of the growing controversies with Christians; and besides delimiting the Canon of Scripture they also not long afterwards condemned the Greek Septuagint translation as inaccurate. Though the decision about the Canon was not of course binding upon the Christians, it did have some influence on them in the course of centuries and various writers expressed doubts about the extra books of the Greek Bible which had come into general use. This was especially so in the fourth century A. D. when, for example, St Jerome regarded them as non-canonical. Eventually official decrees confirming the longer Canon were issued towards the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth centuries in the West at the Hippo and Carthage and in the East during the eighth and ninth centuries at Nicaea and Constantinople. But doubts and adverse opinions continued to be expressed in various quarters and by prominent writers. In the sixteenth century the Reformers rejected the extra books, partly, perhaps, because some of the teaching contained in them seemed to favour Roman doctrine, but chiefly because they were not in the Hebrew Canon. Finally, the Council of Trent issued its decree on the Canon of Scripture in 1546 declaring that all the books which it had been the custom to read in the Catholic Church and which were contained in the ancient Latin Vulgate Bible must be accepted as sacred and canonical. The decree gave a list of the books in question which in fact coincided with the lists issued by earlier Councils in the West. It is interesting to note that though 3 and 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh were excluded from the list they were printed at the end of many subsequent Latin Bibles “ne prorsus interirent” – “lest they altogether perish. ” The positions taken up in the sixteenth century with regard to the Old Testament Canon are substantially the same as those held today. The aim of this edition is to show that there is more common ground for the practical purpose of Bible reading than perhaps may appear at first sight. Thus, there is an increasing tendency on the part of Protestants to include the “Apocrypha” in their Bibles without necessarily admitting their inspired and canonical character. On the other hand, Roman Catholics do not today attach the same significance to the traditional order of books in the Old Testament as they once did. There seems room for some accommodation here. This is an important development and it must be taken in conjunction with another equally important, namely, the steadily diminishing number of textual differences, as may be seen in the present edition. To turn now to the text of the “Apocrypha. ” There is in the first place a striking contrast between the uniformity imposed on the Hebrew text by the rabbis and the lack of it in the Greek text of the Christian Bible. The