Old Testament Canon

The things I learned from Systematic Theology Chapter 3 – The Canon of Scripture.

Canon of Scripture = the list of all the books that belong in the Bible.

Apocrypha = the collection of books included in the canon by the Roman Catholic Church, but excluded from the canon by Protestanism.

A) Historical development of the Old Testament canon

1) The Ten Commandments (God Himself wrote it).
2) Moses wrote the words of the law (the 1st human hand).
3) Joshua added to it (the 2nd human hand).
4) The prophets wrote additional words from God (e.g. Samuel, Jehu, Isaiah, etc).
5) The last prophet who wrote is Malachi (435 B.C.)

After 435 B.C., no more additions to the Old Testament canon.

B) Authorship of the canon

The authors of the Old Testament canon consists of:

1) God Himself (e.g. the Ten Commandments).
2) God’ prophets (e.g. Israelite history, prophetic books).
3) Some "special people" who wrote during the times of the prophets when the Holy Spirit “has not yet departed from Israel” (e.g. David, Solomon).

C) The completion and closing of the Old Testament canon

1) Extrabiblical Jewish literature attests that the divinely authoritative words from God had ceased since 435 B.C.
2) 1 Maccabees records that there was no one who could speak with the authority of God as a prophet during the time of its writing (after 435 B.C).
3) Josephus states that what is now known as the Apocrypha “has not been deemed worthy of equal credit with the earlier records, because of the failure of the exact succession of the prophets”.
4) Rabbinic literature states that the Holy Spirit departed from Israel after the death of the latter prophets (e.g. Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi), therefore divine authority (or inspiration) to write Scripture has stopped.
5) The Qumran community awaited the authority that came from a prophet to supersede any existing regulations, hence the writings after 435 B.C. were not accepted as having equal authority with the rest of Scripture.
6) Jesus was in full agreement with the Jews over the extent of the Old Testament canon.

D) The rejection of the Apocrypha

1) The books in the Apocrypha were never accepted by the Jews as Scripture.
2) The inclusion of various Apocrypha in the canon of the early Christians was not done in any agreed way or at the earliest period, but occurred in Gentile Christianity, after the church’s breach with the synagogue, among those whose knowledge of the primitive Christian canon was becoming blurred.
3) Jerome included the Apocrypha in his Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible, but Jerome himself said that they were not “books of the canon” but merely “books of the church” that were helpful and useful for believers.
4) Melito, the bishop of Sardis (A.D. 170) named the earliest Christian list of Old Testament books, and none of the Apocrypha was mentioned.
5) Eusebius quotes Origen as affirming that none of the Apocrypha is canonical.
6) Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria (A.D. 367) wrote his Paschal Letter listed all the books of the Old Testament. He mentioned the Apocrypha, and said they were “not indeed included in the Canon, but appointed by the Fathers to be read by those who newly join us, and who wish for instruction in the word of godliness.”
7) None of the early Latin and Greek church fathers who quoted from the Apocrypha as Scripture knew any Hebrew.
8) The Apocrypha contains doctrinal and historical inconsistencies.

E) The Catholic-Protestant conflict over the Old Testament canon

At the Council of Trent (1546), the Roman Catholic Church officially declared the Apocrypha to be part of the canon. Roman Catholicism holds that the church has the authority to constitute a literary work as “Scripture.” However, Protestanism holds that the church cannot make something to be Scripture, but can only recognize what God has already caused to be written as His own words.

Analogy of the Catholic-Protestant conflict

You can recognize genuine money as genuine money, and you can recognize counterfeit money as counterfeit money. But you cannot make counterfeit money to be genuine, no matter how many people you can get to agree to say so with you. Only Bank Negara can make genuine money. The only thing we can do is recognize them from the counterfeit ones.

Similarly, only God can make words to be His very own words and worthy of inclusion in Scripture. We merely recognize what are God’s very own words when they indeed are God’s very own words. We cannot make something to be God’s very own words by declaring it to be so, any more can you make a piece of cardboard paper to be genuine money by declaring it in a meeting.

F) Factors for disqualification from the canon

Any written document (such as the Apocrypha) is not regarded as part of Scripture if:

1) They do not claim for themselves the same kind of authority as the Old Testament writings.
2) They were not regarded as God’s words by the Jewish people from whom they originated.
3) They were not considered to be Scripture by Jesus and the New Testament authors.
4) They contain teachings that are inconsistent with the rest of the Bible.

G) The status of the Apocrypha

They are merely human words, not God-breathed words like the words of Scripture. They have value for historical and linguistic research, but they have no binding authority for the thought or life of Christians today (the same way a history book by Ranjit Singh Malhi can be accurate and useful, but it has no authority over our lives the way the Bible has).