Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger (29 page)

It is against the will of God that there be circulated
for the Word of God, ‘the doctrines and commandments of men,’ The Papists do
circulate the Apocrypha as the word of God,
and we are their agents,
in fact, if we furnish them with the means of doing so
. By contributing,
therefore, ‘we become partakers of other men’s sins.’
[739]

In the face of all such sophistry we recur again to
the obligation under which we lie to do nothing against the truth, and
everything for the truth, and to the unassailable position that
the
Apocrypha
…impiously pretends to be a portion of God’s holy word,
and is
employed by the Church of Rome
to support the delusions of him ‘who opposeth
and exalteth himself above all that is called God.’
[740]

…and it is well that they have been so frankly avowed,
because it makes us aware of the danger, and enables us to lift the voice of
warning ere it be too late, for rescuing the Bible Society from that Apocryphal
contamination which has so long and so inveterately cleaved to it, and which
threatens to render it, while its present management continues,
not
an instrument of Protestant benevolence
,
but an engine of Popish error
and superstition
.
[741]

Despite repeated attempts by others to inform the Edinburgh
Society of how radical and unhistorical their demands were, Edinburgh would not
budge. Edinburgh believed its actions fulfilled the Protestant Reformers’
wishes, i.e., the complete removal of the Deuterocanon from the Bible.

But we could call the attention of our readers, in a
particular manner,
to the fine opportunity afforded by the British
and Foreign Bible Society
, constituted as it is, for introducing a more
exclusive, and decided, and general attachment to the pure Canon of Scripture
.
It was a great step when the Apocrypha books were taken out of the
Bible, and placed by themselves
, with the Apocryphal title.
But is was
only a step;
and it still remained a desideratum to get quit of them,
altogether, and to keep the pure word of God detached in every respect from
their contaminating fellowship. This we believe to have been an object of
anxious desire with many good and enlightened men at the time of the
Reformation,
though circumstances discouraged them from attempting to
accomplish it
.
[742]

Did the Catholic Church add books to the Bible, or did
Protestants remove them?  According to the Committee Statements of the
Edinburgh
Bible Society,
the Reformers would have removed the Deuterocanon themselves
had they dared to do so. What were these circumstances that did not allow for
such a removal? What was it that cowed the man who is said to have bravely
cried, “Here I stand; I can do no other”? After all, by the time Luther
published his
German Bible
he could not have been in any hotter water
than he already was, as far as the Catholic authorities were concerned. Is it
not clear that what he and the others actually feared was a backlash among
Protestants
?
Plainly, this
was
what they feared; a misstep, the slip-up of going “too
far, too fast.” As Ruess notes, the retention of the Deuterocanon (Apocrypha)
in Protestant bibles after its canonicity was denied, “was a concession to
ecclesiastical usage, the habits of the people, the opinion of the Early Fathers
,
and the fear of the storm which an innovation might cause
.’”
[743]
Yet if this is the
case, what of the common Protestant contention that the Deuteros were already
known to stand on shaky footing during the Middle Ages, that even the common
folk knew that they should not really be considered Scripture? Had this truly
been the case, the outright removal of these books would have been of little
account. The truth is that the removal of the Deuterocanon would have been far too
radical and obvious a departure to go unnoticed. The earliest Protestant
followers would not have accepted it.
[744]

Edinburgh acknowledged that Luther’s new format of Scripture
was only a half-measure. Even at the Synod of Dort, the fathers of the Synod
were afraid that outright removal of the Deuterocanon would give “occasion of
offense and calumny.” The Edinburgh Society saw the
British and Foreign
Bible Society
as a most fitting instrument to carry out the unstated wishes
of these early Protestants because it could unite all of Protestantism under
the same abridged Bible text.
[745]

So in response to continued Scottish threats to separate
from the British Society permanently and to continue a campaign against them,
the
British and Foreign Bible Society
capitulated on the matter. In
1827, it adopted a resolution that no aid, financial or otherwise, would be
given to any Bible society that produced bibles containing the so-called Apocrypha.
This would seem to have been the end of the matter; but the aftermath is worth
recording as well.

Evangelical accounts of this controversy are often written
in a manner which suggests all Protestants received the decision with relief;
the “other shoe” had finally been dropped and a bit of unfinished Reformation
business had been quietly checked off the list. F. F. Bruce, for instance,
tells the story this way:

When the British and Foreign Bible Society began to
distribute exclusively editions lacking the Apocrypha,
the
Bible-buying public seemed quite content with such editions.
That being
so, other Bible publishers saw no reason why they should continue producing
Bibles with the Apocrypha
.
[746]

Similarly, Bruce M. Metzger summarizes the end of the
Apocrypha Controversy with:

…Several other Bible Societies, including the American
Bible Society, which was founded at New York in 1816, followed the decision and
practice of the London Society. As a consequence it was not long before
commercial publishers, for obvious reasons of economy, likewise ceased
including the Apocryphal books in their editions of the Bible, and it soon
became difficult to obtain ordinary editions of the Bible with the Apocrypha.

In reality, the decision of the
British and Foreign Bible
Society
was quite divisive and widened the existing rift between British
and Continental Protestantism. Many European Bible Societies (including those
of Germany, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark) broke
with the British over this Puritan-led coup and refused to distribute
Protestant bibles without the Deuterocanon.
[747]
They were grateful for London’s help in the
past, but willing to go it alone if it meant keeping these books in the Bible.
Howorth notes:

The Lutheran authorities decided that they could have
no part in such a movement [BFBS’s policy], and refused to countenance the
issuing of mutilated bibles or to depart from Luther’s example in such a critical
matter, and they have since remained staunch to that decision.
[748]

Nor did the decision succeed in mollifying the Scots for
long; despite the
British and Foreign Bible Society’s
acquiescence to
their demands, the Scottish Societies eventually broke off and went their own
ways.

The story of the removal of the Deuteros by the
British
and Foreign Bible Society
is rarely told, yet there are many interesting
lessons to be learned from it; not least, that a Deutero-free Bible was still
seen to be, as late as 1827, a departure from traditional Christian
practice—even as practiced by Protestants.

The Protestant Crusade In America

In America, the
American Bible Society
was more than
willing to adopt the
British and Foreign Bible Society’s
decision on the
Deuterocanon. American Protestantism is deeply rooted in English Puritanism;
therefore, bibles with the Apocrypha were not part of the Protestant American
heritage. Likely, the Lutherans and the Catholics were the only sizable group
of Christians in America who used bibles containing the Deuterocanon.

In 1816, The
American Bible Society
was formed along
the same lines as the
British and Foreign Bible Society.
It attempted to
bypass sectarian prejudices by producing copies of the Bible without note or
comment. With America Protestantism in the midst of the
Second Great
Awakening,
religious fervor ran high when the British Society ruled against
the Apocrypha. Unfortunately, this great religious revival also carried with it
a strong undertow of anti-Catholic sentiment. The combination of Protestant
anti-Catholic sentiments and the propagation of bibles minus the Deuterocanon
led to some sad misunderstandings.

When Protestants offered copies of their bibles to
Catholics, the Catholics predictably refused them; not only because the
translation itself (invariably the King James) contained anti-Catholic bias,
but also because of the absence of the Deuteros. This refusal was
misinterpreted by Protestant missionaries as hostility to the Bible itself. As
the American historian, Ray Allen Billington records:

A clash developed as soon as the American Bible
Society attempted to spread the Protestant version of the Bible among
Catholics. The indignation of the Catholic hierarchy, and papal letters
denouncing the society all were interpreted by Protestants as an attack on the
Bible rather than on one version of the Bible. Thus the illusion was created
that Papists were hostile to the Scriptures and that their church rested not on
divine but on man-made authority. These beliefs bore particular weight with a
populace under the fundamentalistic influence of the New Measure. This supposed
Catholic attack on the Bible interested the church in the No-Popery crusade and
led them to take their first exploratory steps against Catholicism.
[749]

The expulsion of the Deuterocanon from Protestant bibles
came at great cost. For the
British and Foreign Bible Society
, it meant
the loss of many of its auxiliaries, including the Scottish societies; the
damage took years to repair. The establishment of the
American Bible Society
and the propagation of bibles without the Deuterocanon fanned the flames of
persecution for Catholics in America by providing fodder for the fledgling
“No-Popery” and later the Nativistic movements in the United States.
[750]
In the end,
everyone suffered.

Books In Exile

The time has come when all real Protestants should
demand from the Bible societies the whole Bible. The day was, and it was not
long ago, when every true Protestant had as the motto on his banner, ‘The Bible
and the Bible only; our rule of faith and practice.’ Therefore the true
Protestants should now make a fight for the restoration of the Bible. One of the
greatest libraries of sacred Writings is contained in what is known as ‘The
Apocrypha’… [I]t is the fault of Bible Societies that this wonderful part of
Holy Writ has been stolen from the Bible. If these Bible societies were truly
Protestant they would not commit such a grievous theft. They would not keep the
Bible from the common people. What we need-to-day is either a reform or the
retirement of the so-called Bible Societies. If they are permitted to go on, I
fear that they will continue more seriously to hinder the use of the Holy
Scriptures. What we need is a new Luther to arouse us and to lead a new
Reformation for the freedom of the Bible. He will find its most powerful enemy
not at Rome, but in the ‘Bible Houses’ of the United States and England. (From
a sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Milo H. Gates on Bible Sunday, December 6,
1915).
[751]

Even at the beginning of the twentieth century, voices (such
as the quote above demanding the restoration of Protestant bibles) persisted,
but they cried in vain. Much of Protestantism preferred to forget the so-called
Apocrypha and the controversy it stirred in the Protestant faith for so many
years. Anti-Catholicism in both America and England had sapped the will of
non-Catholics to preserve the Bible as the Reformers had left it. The Apocrypha
had disappeared from the Protestant landscape. So thorough was this expulsion
that the Deuterocanon was even removed from a Protestant reproduction of the
Codex Vaticanus.
[752]
The few Protestant bibles that still included the Deuteros relied on old and
antiquated translations. For example, a considerable part of the Deuterocanon in
the 1895
English Revised Version
was translated from the Latin
Coverdale
Bible
of 1535. Likewise, the two-volume work
The Apocrypha and
Pseudepigrapha
(1913), edited by R. H. Charles, provided more than half of
the books with new translations. A minority of the books were copied from the
English
Revised Version
.
[753]

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls takes the story of
smaller Protestant bibles in a new direction. The finding of these ancient
Scrolls renewed interest in intertestamental studies, and it spawned several
new Protestant translations which included the Deuterocanon. Despite this
renewed interest, however, the anti-Catholic winds of the last
century-and-a-half have eradicated the place these books formerly held in
Protestant devotion. Today, practically no one (Protestant or Catholic) is
aware that an Apocrypha controversy existed in Protestantism, much less that
these books were once part of the Protestant Bible.

Problems with the Protestant Position

There is no doubt that the Protestant canon was the canon of
late rabbinical Judaism. By the third or fourth Christian century, this
rejection became nearly universal among the Jewish community. However, what
legitimacy does this rabbinical canon have for Christians? Indeed, the earliest
Jewish rejection of the Deuterocanon
en bloc
also rejected the Christian
gospels as well.
[754]
The earliest Christians knew that the rabbis did not accept all of their Old
Testament books, and they choose not to follow them. Hundreds of years later,
Jerome also rejected the Deuterocanon out of an erroneous understanding of the
textual transmission of the Old Testament, but the Dead Sea Scrolls have
destroyed Jerome’s assumption. From the beginning of the Reformation, Jerome
(and those who subsequently adopted his views) provided Protestant leaders with
practically their sole basis for rejecting the Deuterocanon.  Without
Jerome, as A. C. Sundberg notes, the historic Protestant case collapses: