One place this becomes evident is in their treatment of the Apocrypha. They, of course, do not believe that the Deuterocanonical books belong in the Bible. They are not even gracious enough to accord them a place as good reading (as for instance the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church does). This article is found at http://www.bible.ca/catholic-apocrypha.htm
Let’s look at their 21 reasons the Apocrypha is not inspired to see what they have to say and if they actually are viable arguments. (By the way, these are fairly typical Protestant arguments concerning the Apocryphal books and thus will serve the purpose of refuting the opinions from many sources.)
Quotes from the website will be in bold type to distinguish it from my answers.
1. The Roman Catholic Church did not officially canonize the Apocrypha until the Council of Trent (1546 AD). This was in part because the Apocrypha contained material which supported certain Catholic doctrines, such as purgatory, praying for the dead, and the treasury of merit.
This is only partially true. The Roman Catholic Church did recognize the Apocrypha at Trent but they recognized something that had been viewed as Scripture since very early in the Church’s existence. Evidence of this was presented in an earlier blog entitled “Apocryphal Appreciation” from which I quote the following:
One indication of the attitude of the Fathers is found in the fact that in the Ante-Nicene Fathers there are “over 300 quotations and references to the deuterocanonical books.” (Bercot, A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs, 207)
And as I also pointed out previously, many of the Fathers specifically refer to Apocryphal books as “Scripture.”
Besides, the “longer” canon was drawn up and officially accepted in 419 at the Council of Carthage. The identical list had been “accepted” in 382 by Pope Damasus.
While there is supporting evidence for some “Catholic” doctrines, many who believe in these books would dispute that they support purgatory or the treasury of merit.
2. Not one of them is in the Hebrew language, which was alone used by the inspired historians and poets of the Old Testament.
There are two problems with this argument. Number one, it is inaccurate. In addition to Hebrew, Aramaic was also used in portions of the Old Testament (in Daniel and Ezra for example). Number two even if all the inspired writers used Hebrew, so what? Does that mean they couldn’t use another language as well. They generally used Hebrew because that was the language they and their audience spoke. When the lingua franca changed, they translated their Hebrew Bibles to Greek. Thus, any new books written would have most naturally been written in Greek since Hebrew was the language of scholars and unintelligible to the average “Jew on the street.”
3. Not one of the writers lays any claim to inspiration.
Neither do many of the writers in the Old Testament and the New Testament for that matter. In addition, there are many manifestly ungodly books that do make claims for inspiration. Thus, a claim of inspiration is neither a requirement for a book that is inspired nor a guarantee that one, which claims to be so, actually in inspired. This is one of the weakest points of all concerning the apocrypha and yet it is oft repeated and accepted at face value without any consideration of the problems inherent in it.
4. These books were never acknowledged as sacred Scriptures by the Jewish Church, and therefore were never sanctioned by our Lord.
This, as presented, is a non sequitir argument. Even if the first part is correct, the second does not follow from the first.
What is not stated here is that the “Jewish Church” did not officially “accept” any books until after the New Testament era. Further, in the “Jewish” Bible of the Greek-speaking world (the Septuagint) the Apocrypha is included. The Septuagint (LXX) is the translation in use during the New Testament period because as we said above it was in the language of the people of that day.
The website
http://www.yrm.org/apocrypha.htmpresents the following in their diatribe against the deuterocanonical books:
“In fact, the Jewish people rejected and destroyed the Apocrypha after the overthrow of Jerusalem in 70 CE.”
How interesting and irrelevant! What does that mean to me as a Christian? Nothing. Why? Well, the fact that they had overthrown (in their hearts at least) the Lord Jesus Christ about 40 years earlier makes their rejection of anything in 70 CE meaningless. They had rejected the Living Word, so is it any surprise that they also rejected parts of God’s written revelation and especially so since these writings were accepted by the followers of their rejected Messiah.
As far as our Lord's sanction of these books, while it it true He never quoted from them, there are certainly allusions to them from His lips and from the Apostles.
5. They were not allowed a place among the sacred books, during the first four centuries of the Christian Church.
See #1 above.
6. They contain fabulous statements, and statements which contradict not only the canonical Scriptures, but themselves; as when, in the two Books of Maccabees, Antiochus Epiphanes is made to die three different deaths in as many different places.
I am not certain what they are getting at by using the word “fabulous” here. This word can mean several things: viz. beyond belief, historically inaccurate, mythical, or extremely pleasing. If they mean that these are only mythical stories, they are wrong. These books provide some very important historical facts unavailable to us from other sources. If they refer to their statements as beyond belief, one might say the same about other statements of Scripture and yet they are accepted on faith. So I will have to conclude that the fabulous statements are the very pleasing ones in these books.
As far as the contradictions are concerned, they are unwilling to deal with the seeming contradictions of the Apocrypha in the same way they deal with the seeming contradictions in the other canonical books. Naturally, this would be attributed to the fact that “these books aren’t canonical.” But this is a circular argument and does not hold water.
One might also remember that there are two different stories of several events (Creation is one example) in the accepted books of the Bible but these are explained by scholars.
7.The Apocrypha inculcates doctrines at variance with the Bible, such as prayers for the dead and sinless perfection.
And the day following Judas came with his company, to take away the bodies of them that were slain, and to bury them with their kinsmen, in the sepulchers of their fathers. And they found under the coats of the slain some of the donaries of the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbiddeth to the Jews: so that all plainly saw, that for this cause they were slain. Then they all blessed the just judgment of the Lord, who had discovered the things that were hidden. And so betaking themselves to prayers, they besought him, that the sin which had been committed might be forgotten. But the most valiant Judas exhorted the people to keep themselves from sin, forasmuch as they saw before their eyes what had happened, because of the sins of those that were slain. And making a gathering, he sent twelve thousand drachmas 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 they 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. (2 Maccabees 12:39-46)
The big shocker for Protestants is that the Early Christians also prayed for the dead as I demonstrated in Prayer for the Departed.
Where the Apocrypha teaches sinless perfection is not stated and I have never seen it, so I can’t refute it.
We will pick up on number 8 in our next post.
