Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger (24 page)

This decree of the First Vatican Council is certainly
helpful in clearing up a few misconceptions. It had long been an anti-Catholic
bugaboo, for example, that the  Catholic Church believes itself to have
made
or
created
the canon of Scripture; a misrepresentation that has been
circulating within Protestantism since the beginning of the Reformation.
[628]
It is true that the
Church preserved these books and promulgated them as a canon, but Vatican I
rejects the idea that they are
made
canonical by being declared such by
the Church. The Catholic Church teaches that the canonical books are canonical
because they were written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and, in God’s
providential care, were entrusted to the Church. The Holy Spirit inspired a
certain number of books. Christ and his inspired apostles handed those books on
to the Church. Whenever doubters and innovators try to alter this sacred
deposit, the Church promulgates a catalogue of those books which have always
been accepted as inspired. The Church is not somehow above the Scripture.
Instead the Church is Scripture’s duly authorized custodian.

If the Catholic Church did not add books to the Bible,
why is it that most Protestant bibles today omit these books?
It is a
little known fact that things have not always been as they are today. Before
1599, nearly all Protestant bibles included the Deuterocanonical books; between
the years 1526 to 1631, Protestant bibles with the Deuterocanon were the rule
and not the exception.
[629]
It was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that the tide began to
turn toward smaller bibles for Protestants. By 1831, the books of the
Deuterocanon, along with their cross-references, were almost entirely expunged
from Protestant translations. This eradication has been so complete that few
Protestants today are aware that such editions of Scripture ever existed. This
process of eradicating the Deuterocanon began with Martin Luther.

Luther’s Innovation

Catholic apologists sometimes claim that Martin Luther
removed
the Deuterocanonical books from Scripture. This assertion is not entirely true.
Luther’s
German Translation
of the Scriptures included
all
of the
Deuterocanon. In fact, the completion of Luther’s
German Bible
was
delayed because illness prevented him from completing the section containing
those books!  And since Luther’s bible (with its Deuteros) became a
paradigm for subsequent Protestant translations, most of these bibles also
included them as well. It is, therefore, incorrect to say that Luther removed
the Deuterocanon. He did, however, did introduce certain innovations into his
translation that led eventually to smaller Protestant bibles; innovations which
were the culmination of a process of development within Luther’s theology, a
process that gained impetus from the Humanist movement of the day.

During the first half of the Middle Ages, Christian scholars
were largely ignorant of the Greek and Hebrew languages. The considerable
knowledge these scholars had gained, of the teachings of the Greek Fathers and
so forth, had been acquired mainly through Latin translations of their works;
and knowledge of Hebrew was practically non-existent.
[630]
The Humanist movement sought to remedy this
situation by emphasizing the importance of a return to the original languages.
In Germany, one scholar in particular was
the
pioneer of Greek and
Hebrew studies in the Renaissance; his name was Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522).
Reuchlin had already won fame for his work promoting the teaching of Greek when
he became fascinated with a mystical Hebrew document called the
Cabbala
.
Believing that the
Cabbala
might provide a new avenue for the
reconciliation of faith and science, Reuchlin focused his brilliant linguistic
skills on mastering the Hebrew language. In 1506, he published a Hebrew grammar
and dictionary called
Rudimenta Hebraica
, which later became a standard
manual for learning Hebrew for all students north of the Alps.
[631]
Reuchlin befriended
Johann Staupitz who at that time was the prior of the cloistered Augustinian
monks at Erfurt. In 1502, both of these men played an active role in the
founding of the new University of Wittenberg.
[632]
Reuchlin’s teachings, which espoused
Jerome’s view of Hebrew Verity
,
no doubt influenced the views of several
of the early Reformers such as Johann Staupitz, Martin Luther (who became the
friend of Staupitz in Erfurt), Andrew Bodenstein (also known as Karlstadt),
[633]
and perhaps Philip
Melancthon.
[634]

This emphasis of the Humanists upon the importance of
reading Scripture in the original languages produced in scholars a tendency to
downplay the Deuterocanonical books, because some of them were available at
that time only in Greek or Latin. Jerome’s prestige, on the other hand, hit new
heights in the Middle Ages precisely because he had learned Hebrew. It was
within this atmosphere then, that Luther began to develop his new theology.

From early on, it appears that Luther did not always consider
the Deuterocanon to be mere apocrypha. In at least one of his early
controversies, he appears to have used the Deuterocanon as Scripture in its
fullest sense. The Protestant scholar, Sir Henry Howorth, notes that Luther
appears to have used the Deuterocanon as authoritative canonical writings in
his conflict with the Church:

The Dominicans, the great champions of Papal claims,
continued to attack Luther, and especially did they do this at Rome, where one of
them, Silvester Maccolini surnamed Prierias, the official censor made an
especial assault upon him…. Luther answered [Prierias] in the words of
Augustine that the only authority he could accept in the matter was the
Canonical Scriptures. What Luther actually meant at this time by the phrase “
eis
libris, qui Canonici appellantur
” is not quite clear, for we now find him in
the Resolutions commenting on the Thesis published in 1518 quoting Sirach
(Luther’s Works, Weimar, Ed. I. 603) while in his answer to Pierias he quotes
Tobias (667) in each case apparently as authoritative.
[635]

In 1518, Luther freely quoted Sirach and Tobit against his
Catholic detractors; but by the following year, Luther’s view of the
Deuterocanon had taken a decidedly negative turn.

The Liepsic Disputation

If there was one person who was not afraid to go toe-to-toe
with the fiery Luther in public debate it was Johann Eck. In 1519, Eck agreed
to a series of debates with Karlstadt and Luther in the Electoral Palace in
Liepsic. The most famous of these Disputations took place on July 4 of that
year, when Luther denied the infallibility of councils and popes and asserted
that ultimate authority of Scripture alone.
[636]
The Second Disputation was on the subject of
Purgatory. Eck appealed to 2 Maccabees 12:46 as a clear and incontestable proof
from Scripture that Purgatory exists. Second Maccabees 12:46 reads:

And making a gathering, he collected twelve thousand
drachms of silver to Jerusalem for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the
dead, thinking well and religiously concerning the resurrection, (For if he had
not hoped that they that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed
superfluous and vain to pray for the dead,) And because he considered that
those who had fallen asleep with godliness, had great grace laid up for them.
It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they
may be loosed from sins.
[637]

On July 8, 1519, Luther refused to allow Maccabees into the
argument, stating:

There is no proof of Purgatory in any portion of
sacred Scripture, which can enter into the argument, and serve as a proof; for
the book of Maccabees not being in the Canon, is of weight with the faithful,
but avails nothing with the obstinate.
[638]

Luther’s response is sometimes overstated. Luther did not
deny that Maccabees had authority. It had (authoritative?) weight
with the
faithful
, but, according to Luther, it lacked sufficient weight to move him
from his convictions. This denial of canonical status was something new. As
Howorth notes:

This was undoubtedly a very important
new
departure
. It is quite true that the book in question was not in the Jewish
Canon, and that consequently St. Jerome excluded it from
his
Canon, but
there could be no doubt about
its continuous acceptance by the Church
Catholic as canonical from the earliest times, nor that it was expressly
included in the lists of Canonical books issued by the three African Councils
of Hippo in 393 and of Carthage in 397 and 419,
which were under the
immediate influence of Augustine, and which constitute the earliest corporate
pronouncement on the subject made by the Western Church.
[639]

Luther’s appeal to the rabbinical Jewish canon opened the
field for Eck to advance. He immediately countered by insisting that 1
Maccabees had always been a part of the Christian canon, though the Jews had,
admittedly, rejected it.
[640]
At this point, Luther had no other option but to appeal to the authority of
Jerome.
[641]
As
Howorth comments:

Luther, however, clearly seems to have thought that
this disingenuous special pleading a way not a sufficient support to his case,
for it in effect meant setting up Jerome as an infallible Pope to revise the
decision of the Church upon such a critical matter as the legitimate canonicity
of the two Maccabean books, upon which it had corporately always held the same
view… He therefore goes on to affirm another reason that shows at how early a
period in his career he had really broken with the Church as the ultimate rule
of faith and set up a pontifical authority of his own. He says he knows that
the Church had accepted this book, but the Church could not give a greater
authority and strength to a book than it already possessed by its own virtue.
[642]

Sensing perhaps that he had cornered Luther, Eck appealed to
Augustine’s statements in
The City of God
18.36 in which he asserts that
the Christian Church does not follow the Jewish canon. Luther reiterated that a
council couldn’t give to a book something that it does not possess by its
nature.
[643]
His
statement is, of course, true—and it later became a formal doctrine of the
Catholic Church. The Church does not invest a book with any special power;
rather, it affirms and promulgates that which it had received as divine
Scriptures from the Apostles.
[644]
But Luther was skipping a step: by what process is one to
learn which books possess this authority by nature and which do not?

Luther’s comments in the Second Disputation reflect a unique
perspective that he held on canonicity. As already noted, he did not deny that
Maccabees had
weight
, but only that it had sufficient weight to prevail
over and against his convictions. For Luther, the canon represented a spectrum
of authority instead of a group in which all its members enjoyed equal
authority. According to Luther, each book can be more or less canonical,
depending on its degree of
apostolicity
. What is
apostolicity
for
Luther? As Luther understood the term,
apostolicity
was the degree to
which a book preached the gospel as Luther understood it.
[645]
Put another way, a book was considered
apostolic
only to the degree that Luther heard his theology clearly confirmed in it.
[646]
The apostolicity or
canonicity of several books (e.g. Esther, 2 Maccabees, James, Jude and
Revelation) was thus called into question. This denial of canonicity did not
exclude a book from the Bible. Instead, it was a canon within a canon.
Otherwise, Luther would have tested the other Jewish apocrypha (e.g. The Book
of Enoch, Jubilees, et al.) for apostolicity/canonicity.
[647]

Like the Marcionites, Ebionites, and Gnostics before him,
Luther’s theological convictions determined what constituted the canonical
Scriptures. Consequently, Maccabees could never be allowed full canonical
authority because it contradicts Luther’s theology. Therefore, the canon and
canonicity had to be radically re-conceptualized by Luther to support his
gospel.
[648]
From that
moment on, Protestantism began to deny the inspiration of the Deuterocanon.

Luther’s German Translation

Luther’s
German Translation
introduced more than one
radical innovation. With rare exceptions, Christian bibles before Luther had
not only included the Deuterocanon, but had intermixed by them category among
the Protocanon of the Old Testament.
[649]
  Even John Wycliffe, considered by Protestants as the
great role-model of bible translators, followed this practice. It was Luther’s
bible which broke with this traditional practice in favor of a new chronological
or near chronological order. This new arrangement may have proved advantageous
for those readers who wished to peruse the Bible cover to cover, but the new
order removed the Deuterocanonical books from their former place in the story
of salvation. Luther’s new order inevitably led those who read his bible (and
the translations that followed his) to view the Deuterocanon as something
extraneous to the word of God.
[650]
Luther’s second novelty was the gathering of the
Deuterocanonical books into an appendix at the end of the Old Testament and
marking them
Apocrypha
.
[651]

The title page of this new appendix is prefaced by the
following explanatory remark:

Apocrypha–that is, books which are not held equal to
the Holy Scriptures, and yet are profitable and good to read.
[652]

We must not read too much into this title
Apocrypha
;
as has been seen, the meaning of the term had become quite fluid and confused
by Luther’s time. Some writers used it to mean “spurious writings of merely
human origin;” others had no difficulty using it for books they themselves
considered canonical Scripture!
[653]
What did Luther mean by it?

Luther certainly did not believe, nor could he believe, that
the Deuterocanon was equal to the Protocanon; but the fact that these books
were still, in some sense, a part of the Old Testament is evidenced by the
colophon he places after his “Apocrypha” in the appendix: “The end of the books
of the Old Testament.”
[654]
 
Although segregated and devalued, the Deuterocanon still remained part of
Luther’s Old Testament corpus.

Luther’s own use of the Deuterocanon ought to speak against
the later notion that Catholics somehow foisted strange, alien books into the
Bible where they never belonged. After all, if no one had ever really
considered these books Scripture, why bother to qualify them as not being equal
to Scripture? Why not simply publish a bible without them and let it stand, as
Trent had published its canon without comment? Luther hesitated to do so
because such a move would have been too radical even for his followers. No such
bible had ever been published in the history of Christendom—not even by
Jerome.  Instead, Luther reformatted the Scriptures. The resulting edition
was still unlike any bible ever seen before, but at least the changes could be
justified as reflecting certain doubts entertained by some venerable doctors.
Luther, in other words, moved slowly with his original German bible—but the
move undoubtedly paved the way for more radical changes to come.
[655]