Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger (25 page)

Continental Protestantism

While Luther’s Protestant contemporaries quickly adopted his
bold attitude toward the Deuterocanon, they soon abandoned his shaky
rationalization for doing so. Indeed, sixteenth century justifications for the
demotion varied widely (though the appeal to the “infallible” authority of
Jerome was seldom neglected).

Joseias Osiander, a Lutheran evangelist, finished a new
edition of Jerome’s
Vulgate
in Latin with certain corrections from the
Hebrew. It was published in December 1522, the same month that Luther’s New
Testament appeared. Osiander strictly follows Jerome and adopts his canon. He
makes, however, makes a curious admission concerning the book of Maccabees,
which Luther flatly rejected as uncanonical. He comments that “Maccabees,
although not in the Hebrew Canon
, were classed by the Church among divine
histories
.”
[656]

Swiss Bibles

Like Luther, Oecolampadius (1482-1531), a representative of
the German churches in Switzerland, placed the Deuterocanon on a level below that
of Scripture. He shared Luther’s view on the degrees of canonicity. In his
Letter
to the Waldenses
, Oecolampadius writes:

We do not the despise
Judith, Tobit, Baruch
,
the last two books of
Esdras
, the three books of
Maccabees
, the
last two chapters of
Daniel
, and we do not allow them Divine authority,
equal with those others [of the Hebrew canon].
[657]
In the
New Testament
we receive four
Gospels
,
with the
Acts of the Apostles,
and fourteen Epistles of St. Paul, and seven
Catholic Epistles, together with the
Apocalypse
; although we do not
compare the Apocalypse, the Epistles of
James
, and
Jude,
and 2
Peter
and 2, 3,
John
with the rest.
[658]

The Alsatian Zwinglite, Leo Jud, produced a translation of
Scripture known as the
Zurich Bible
(1531). The Deuterocanon is included
in an appendix titled “Apocryphi.” Jud justifies his inclusion of the appendix
so that those who read them and like them will not complain about their
absence. He claims to have followed the Fathers in that they did not include
the Deuterocanon among the Holy Scripture. However, Jud states,

…[Y]et they [the Deuterocanon] contain much which in
no way contradicts the biblical writings, faith and love, and some things which
are founded in God’s word.
[659]

Completed in 1531, three years before the publication of
Luther’s bible, the
Zurich Bible
matches Luther’s translation in
contents and order.
[660]
Another preface of the
Zurich Bible,
commonly ascribed to Zwingli,
states that the Apocrypha is not highly esteemed, being less clear and accurate
that the Protocanon, although the books contain much that is true and useful.
Zwingli leaves it up to the reader to divide the good from the bad. Like Jud’s
preface, Zwingli states that the Apocrypha has been included in the
Zurich
Bible
“so that no one may complain of lacking anything, and each may find
what is to his taste.”
[661]
 
Just as Luther could not “hear the gospel preached” in the books of the
Deuterocanon, Zwingli did not find their contents to be altogether clear.
Doubtless, these distorted or blurred passages of Zwingli’s correspond to those
texts supporting Catholic doctrine. For example, when Catholics cited Baruch
3:4 to confirm the doctrine of Purgatory, Zwingli, in the work
Concluding
Discourses
(1523), retorted that Baruch contains legends and is not
canonical. Yet in spite of such appeals by his opponents, Zwingli did not feel
compelled to remove the Deuterocanon entirely from the Bible; to him they were
Old Testament apocrypha—
like
the Protos, in some sense, but without the
same “clarity of Scripture” (
claritas scripturae
).

In the 1543 edition of the Latin
Zurich Bible
, the
title of the
Apocryphi
appendix was changed to “Church Books” (
Ecclesiastici
Libri
). The preface states:

Church Books which the Church
always held
to be holy books
, worthy for the pious to read. Yet they were not given
equal authority with the canonical writings. Our forefathers wanted them to be
read in the churches, but not drawn on to confirm the authority of faith
(articles of faith). So they were called apocrypha, a word which is not in
every respect appropriate or suitable for them. They had no validity among the
Hebrews, but were brought to light again among the Greeks.
[662]

The title Ecclesiastical Books or Church Books no doubt
comes from Rufinus. Jerome’s opinion is still retained, albeit with reservations
concerning Jerome’s use of the term
apocrypha
. It is significant that
the authors of this Preface admits that the Fathers wanted the Deuteros read in
church, yet they still feel the need to add the old (and incoherent) caveat
about using them to confirm doctrine.
[663]

John Calvin

Another key figure in the early Protestant Reformation is
John Calvin (1509–1564). Before we examine Calvin’s view of the canon, however,
we need first to examine the work of his cousin Olivetan who produced the
famous
Olivetan
Bible
(1535).
[664]
Because Olivetan was not a Greek scholar,
his translation had to undergo numerous revisions and corrections. Following
Luther’s and the
Zurich Bible,
Olivetan placed the Deuterocanon into an
appendix marked
Apocrypha
. This edition contradicted the
Zurich Bible
by stating that the Deuterocanon (apocrypha) is
not
to be publicly read
in church, but only privately and apart (
en secret et a pari
). They have
been segregated at the rear of the book to “make it clear which books give
binding testimony, and which do not.”
[665]
The preface specifically appeals to Jerome and Hebrew Verity
as justification for their omission.

The 1540 edition of the
Geneva Bible
replaced
Olivetan’s preface to the Apocrypha with one from John Calvin. Here is what
Calvin wrote regarding the disputed books:

These books, called Apocrypha, have always been
distinguished from the writings which were without difficulty called Holy
Scripture. For the Church Fathers (Anciens) wished to avoid the danger of
mixing profane books with those which were certainly (pour certain) brought
forth by the Holy Spirit. That is why they made a list, which they called a
canon. The word means that everything which belongs to it was a firm rule
(reigle certaine) to which one should hold…It is true that the Apocrypha is not
to be despised,
insofar
as it contains good and useful teaching. Yet
there is good reason for what was given us by the Holy Spirit to have
precedence over what has come from human beings. Thus all Christians, following
what St. Jerome said, read the Apocrypha, and take from it teaching ‘for
edification’ [Eph 4:12]. But in order to remind them that these writings cannot
provide full assurance
(pleine asseurance)
of their faith, it is to be
noted that they do not contain any satisfying testimony.

None of these books was in any way accepted by the
Hebrews, and their original texts are not in Hebrew, but in Greek. It is
correct that today, a great part of them are found in Hebrew. But it may be
that they were [back] translated from the Greek. The safest thing is therefore
to hold to what is extant in the language in which they are usually found...
[666]

Calvin’s preface suffers from numerous overstatements and
blunders. For example, he states that the books of the “Apocrypha” have always
been distinguished from Scripture “without difficulty”. Anyone who has followed
the historical overview presented so far knows that this is simply not the
case. For every Jerome or Amphilochius who entertained doubts there are three
Augustines or Chrysostoms; and even many of the writers who do seem to speak
against the Deuteros are often found quoting them as Scripture elsewhere! 
Even Jerome bends his own usage to that of his day. Furthermore, the same
writers who doubted the Deuteros often doubted Protocanonical books as well;
the holy, God-breathed book of Esther fares especially poorly in this regard.
So what does Calvin mean by “without difficulty?”  As seen in previous
chapters, religious literature has not always been divided into canonical
(sacred) and apocrypha (profane). Many times, a three-fold division was used,
and space was made for non-canonical, yet non-apocryphal works. Calvin also
insinuates that the early Fathers called the Deuterocanon Apocrypha. This is
true only from the fifth century on. Before Jerome, the Deuterocanon was
never
called Apocrypha and was often explicitly distinguished from it.

Calvin then denies that the Deuterocanon is inspired,
stating that the Hebrews never, in any way, accepted the Deuterocanon. Again, a
review of the material contained in the early chapters of the present work
ought easily to dispel this wholly erroneous belief. He goes on to insist that
all of the Deuterocanon was originally written in Greek and not Hebrew. Not
even Jerome and his sympathizers made this error; even without the benefit of
more recent discoveries they knew very well that the book of Sirach was
originally composed in Hebrew.
[667]
Today, scholars admit that all of the Deuterocanon—with the
exception of Wisdom and 2 Maccabees—was originally composed in Hebrew.

Calvin’s views on the Deuterocanon are further explicated in
a polemical tract titled, “
Antidote to the Council of Trent.
”  In
his critique of the Fourth Session of Trent, Calvin warns that if the decree on
the canon and Sacred Tradition were allowed to stand, it would spell the defeat
of Protestantism.
[668]
Therefore, he sarcastically calls this session the “…victorious and now, as it
were, triumphal Session…”
[669]
Instead of refuting Council’s decree point by point, however, Calvin only
vaguely and sporadically focuses his attention on the subject of the canon,
preferring, instead, to spend most of his time attacking the deficiencies of
the
Latin Vulgate
. In his first pass on the canon, Calvin writes the
following:

Add to this, that they [the Fathers at Trent] provide
themselves with
new supports
when they give full authority to the
Apocryphal books. Out of the second of the Maccabees they will prove Purgatory
and the worship of saints; out of Tobit satisfactions, exorcisms, and what not.
From Ecclesiasticus they will borrow not a little. For from whence could they
better draw their dregs?
I am not one of those, however, who would entirely
disapprove the reading of those books; but in giving them an authority which
they never before possessed, what end was sought but just to have the use of
spurious paint in colouring their errors?
[670]

The author’s reference to the Church providing “new supports”
is surely more of a sneer than a statement of fact—and Calvin must have known
it to be so. Catholic apologists (e.g. Herbon, Clichtovius, De Castro,
Bellermine, et al.) had always appealed to these books in defense of the
doctrines in question, beginning with Johann Eck’s appeal to 2 Maccabees at the
Liepsic Disputation of 1519. Moreover, Luther and Wycliffe themselves had both,
at one time, used the Deuterocanon to confirm doctrine. Later in the same
tract, Calvin revisits the topic of the canon in a more detailed fashion:

Of their admitting all the Books promiscuously into
the Canon, I say nothing more than it goes against the consent of the primitive
Church. It is well known that Jerome states
as the common opinion of
earlier times.
And Rufinus, speaking of the matter as not at all
controverted, declares with Jerome, that Ecclesiasticus, the Wisdom of Solomon,
Tobit, Judith, and the history of the Maccabees, were called by the Fathers not
canonical but ecclesiastical books, which might indeed be read to the people,
but were not entitled to establish doctrine.
I am not, however, unaware
that the same view on which the Fathers of Trent now insist was held in the
council of Carthage
. The same, too, was followed by Augustine in his
Treatise on Christian Doctrine; but as he testifies that all of his age did not
take the same view
, let us assume that the point was then undecided
. But
if it were to be decided by arguments drawn from the case itself, many things
beside the phraseology would shew that those Books which the Fathers of Trent
raise so high must sink to a lower place. Not to mention other things, whoever
it was that wrote the history of Maccabees expresses a wish, at the end, that
he may have written well and congruously; but if not, he asks pardon. How very
alien this acknowledgment from the majesty of the Holy Spirit!
[671]

These statements are almost the mirror image of what we have
seen in our survey. Calvin holds Jerome’s outlook to be the “common opinion of
earlier times.”
[672]
Jerome himself, who introduced Hebrew Verity with a triumphant air worthy of
Galileo, knew that the truth was otherwise. The word of Augustine, in conceding
that doubts had been raised, is presented by Calvin as justification for
assuming “that the point was then undecided.”
[673]
  In reality, Augustine’s whole case for
retaining the Deuteros is based on the
clear consensus of the early Church
,
especially those churches with an apostolic origin!
[674]
Nevertheless, Calvin
is
forced to
concede that the Council of Trent had followed the decrees of the Council of
Carthage and the writings of Augustine. Sensing, perhaps, that his conclusion
is not sufficient to overturn the decree of Trent, Calvin switches tactics from
a historically based argument to one concerning the literary quality of
Maccabees.
[675]