ON THE APOCRYPHA.

LECTURE.

(By the Rev. T. J. Smith, M.A., St.

Andrew's, Narracoorte.)

I.

If you open an ordinary English Bible in which the Apocrypha is printed, you will find that the books collected under that name are fourteen in number, viz.—1 and 11 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Esther, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, Song of the three children, Susanne, Bel and the Dragon. Prayer of Manasses, 1, and 11 Maccabees. Then if you get hold of a Douay Version of the Old Testament, you will find that of these fourteen, three are omitted, viz.—1 and 11 Esdras and the prayer of Manasses. The remaining eleven are all printed in the Douay Version, though if you are not accustomed to that Version, you may not at ones find them; for the Song of the three children and Susanna and Bel are all printed as part of Daniel, while the conclusion of Esther is printed with Esther.

Now, I have a copy of the Latin Bible issued by a Tremellius and Junius over three centuries ago, and I find there printed a fifteenth Apocryphal book called III. Maccabees; while in Swete's Septuagint, which is the famous Greek Bible, I find also a IV. Maccabees, and even a seventeenth Apocryphal book called the Psalms of Solomon. And then, again, I know that had I been living, say, 1500 years ago, I might have heard quoted as a part of the Bible such books as Enoch, the Apocrypha of Baruch, the Testament of the twelve patriarchs, the Assumption of Moses, or the book of Jubilees.

Here then there are some twenty-two Apocryphal books surrounding the Old Testament Scriptures, and of these books I find some printed with one Bible and some with another. But I also find that some branches of the Christian Church not only pick out and print some of the Apocryphal books, but they also say that these books which they pick out and print are true scripture. They assert, I mean, that these books are of equal authority with Deuteronomy, or Psalms, or Isaiah, for instance—that these books are really inspired, and are therefore a true part of the Bible.

The Greek and Latin Churches do that, but the Lutheran and Anglican Churches will not go so far as that. These two Protestant Churches will not admit that the Apocryphal books are true Scripture, or that they are really inspired; but they still allow that they are a kind of semi-scripture. These books, say they, have no authority as Scripture; but they are useful for edification and should be read for that purpose in the Church. But the Reformed or Calvinistic Churches take up the position of an extreme denial. They assert that these writings are of equal value and authority only with all other interesting secular writings, but they are not scripture, nor even a semi-scripture.

So when I try to find out what the Apocrypha is I come across what I may call three sets of selections. There is the Greek and Roman selection of eleven books; there is the Protestant selection of fourteen books; and there is the student's or scholar's selection of about two dozen books; but that selection is really not a selection, for it includes all he can get. Also, when I try to find out of what authority or value Apocrypha is, I come across four sets of judgments. There is the Greek and Roman judgment which says these books are true Scripture; there is the Lutheran and Anglican judgment which says they are semi-Scripture; there is the Reformed judgment which tends to depreciate them as of little value; and there is what may be called the scholar's, or student's, or reader's judgment, which says that these books are always valuable, often interesting and sometimes beautiful.

II.

Now, I will try to give you an accurate idea of what the Apocrypha really is. Imagine a plain and out of that plain rises a plateau or sloping high ground not unlike a small range of hills; and then again out of that range of hills there rise two peaks which tower up towards the sky. Well, that plain is what we call human literature. These two peaks towering up to the sky are the Old and New Testament Scriptures. That sloping high ground or plateau or range of hills which leads up to the great peaks and down again from them is the Apocrypha. That is the best picture I can put before you to help you to realize and grasp these books. But of course such a picture is a picture of this literature regarded from a human point of view. I am not speaking of inspiration. The Church alone can determine what literature is inspired and what is not; and a literature which is inspired is thereby made a thing apart.

Looking then at this literature called the Apocrypha, and looking at it in the way of this picture of a sloping range of hills leading up to and then down from the two great peaks I am struck at once by the fact that there must be not one Apocrypha, but four Apocryphas. There must be a literature leading up to the Old Testament Scriptures and then again one leading down from these Scriptures. So also there must be a literature leading up to the New Testament and another literature leading down from it. And that will give us four Apocryphas instead of one Apocrypha; and we shall probably find that our one Apocrypha, the one we are familiar with, is just one out of these four; while for some reason or other, the remaining three have never been taken into account.

And that is just what we do find. There seem to have been four Apocryphal literatures —one leading up to the Old Testament and another leading down from it; a third leading up to the New Testament and the last leading down from it. But the strange thing is that our Apocrypha, what we call the Apocrypha, that Apocrypha which has filled so large a place in the history of the Church, is not made up of a selection from these four. That is perhaps what we should have expected, viz.— that a selection would have been made of the best books in these four literatures, and that this selection of the best would have been pre-served and used in the Church as a kind of help, commentary, extension of the Bible itself. Such has not been the case. Our Apocrypha is just one out of the four Apocryphas; one taken away from the other three, and put into the proud position of being the only book now-a-days is ever printed as an addition to Holy Scripture.

III.

 Before then I examine our Apocrapha, I would say something about those other three which have been pushed altogether on one side. First, let us take the Old Testament and search in it to find whether there are any traces there of a literature which seems to have led up to the Old Testament itself. There are such traces. We find in the Old Testament references to such writings as the book of Jasher, and the book of the Wars of Jehovah. A book called the Acts of Solomon is also named. So it the history of Samuel the Seer the history of Nathan the prophet, the history of Gad the Seer. So again is the prophesy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and the visions of Iddo the Seer; also the history of Shemarab the prophet ; also the commentary of the prophet Iddo; also the history of Johu, the son of Hanani.

Supposing then that the history of Samuel mentioned here is the book of Samuel in the Bible, that still leaves us the names of nine apparently quite distinct writings quoted or named in our Old Testament. And that shows us that there was a large Apocryphal literature which led up to and prepared readers for the inspired Scripture. But that literature has wholly perished. So far as I am aware, no trace of it has anywhere ever been discovered. The substance of it may have been taken up into the Old Testament, so it may not have been found necessary to preserve the literature itself. Any way we know these two things— that there was a large Apocryphal literature leading up to the Old Testament, and that literature has disappeared.

After the first I will take the last, after the literature leading up to the Old Testament, the literature leading down from the new. And concerning this I do not think I can do better than read you an extract from that excellent scholar Professor Sanday. He writes—" The end of the second century is the true turning point in the history of the Canon. We are rightly reminded (by Harnack) that the forming of the Canon was not only a process of collection and accretion, but even more a process of reduction and contraction. What a number of works circulated among the Churches of the second century all enjoying a greater or less degree of authority, only to lose it ! In the way of Gospels, those according to the Hebrews, according to the Egyptians, according to Peter; in the way of Acts, the so called Travels of Apostles, the preaching of Peter, the Acts of Paul, the Acts of Paul and Thekla; in the way of Epistles, 1 and 11 Clement, and Barnabas; then an allegory like the Shepherd of Hermas; a manual like the Didache; an apocalypse like that of Peter.
 Truly it may said that here too the last was first and the first last. Several of these books had a circulation and a popularity considerably in excess of that of some of the books now included in the Canon. It is certainly a wonderful feat on the part of the early Church to have by degrees sifted out this mass of literature; and still more wonderful that it should not have discarded, at least so far as the New Testament is concerned, one single work which after generations have found cause to look back upon with any regret. Most valuable no doubt many of them may be for enabling us to reconstruct the history of the times, but there is not one which at this moment we should say possessed a real claim to be invested with the authority of the Church."

IV.

 
I have thus brought under your notice two out of our four Apocryphal literatures, viz., that leading up to the Old Testament and that leading down from the New. But there remains two more to examine, the two lying between the Testaments— the former of which leads down from the Old Testament, and the latter leads up to the New. And at once the thought will be suggested that it must be hard to distinguish between these two. For if you have before you two great peaks and between them a sloping ground connecting them, a kind of declivity which first runs down and then runs up again, it would be hard —at least in literature it would be hard—to distinguish exactly the one declivity from the other. And that is just what happens. It is hard to distinguish accurately the Apocrypha which runs down from the Old Testament from that other Apocrypha which runs up towards the New. In fact we probably could not make this distinction accurately had we merely our own modern literary judgment to guide us. But we have another guide — though it be chiefly an hypothesis—and that guide I think will serve.

Whenever a sacred book appears anywhere let it be granted that there has appeared first an apocryphal literature leading up to that sacred book, and that there appears afterwards another apocryphal literature leading down from it. But between these two there is a well marked distinction of this nature. Concerning the Apocrypha which comes after a sacred book, there is generally a fight to get it into the Canon, to have it acknowledged as sacred also, to have it invested with authority as inspired; but there is no similar contention concerning the Apocrypha which came before the sacred book. The appearance of the sacred book itself seems to mark a new beginning—viz., the interference of the Divine in human literature. All that came before it regarded as merely natural, however necessary it may have been to the sacred book itself, and however intimate its connection with the sacred book. That which came first was merely natural. Then came the sacred book, the new supernatural beginning. Then came the works which follow on the sacred book; and it is concerning these works that there arises a question at to whether they also are sacred or not. For the supernatural having interfered in human literature, men do not know exactly when its interference stops, and when things relapse back into the merely natural again.

Applying that test then to the works which lie between the Old and New Testaments I find that concerning some there was a considerable conflict as to whether or not they were to be regarded as part of the sacred Old Testament Scriptures; but I find also that concerning others there was no such conflict at all. I conclude therefore that the books concerning which there was a conflict are the true Apocrypha leading down from the old Testament; and that the books concerning which there was no conflict are that other Apocrypha which leads up to the New Testament.

V.

I consider then, at this point, those books which form the Apocrypha leading up to the New Testament. These books are The Book of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees or Little Genesis, the Assumption of Moses, the Apocalypse of Eyza, the Apocalypse of Baruch, and the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs; perhaps also the Psalms of Solomon, though this is of all the most difficult book to place, some regarding it as a part of the Apocrypha which leads down from the Old Testament, others taking it here. Also I should mention such books at Joseph's Prayer, Eldad and Medad, Apocalypse of Elijah, Apocalypse of Zephaniah, The Martyrdom of Isaiah, The Books of Adam, of Abraham, of Jannes and Jambres, and a Book of Noah.

Now concerning these books, and such as these, I would remark three things. First, they were used by the early church fathers, and some of them even by the New Testament writers ; and we gather that several generations of those men, who were expecting the Messiah, or who accepted the Messiah when He appeared, had been feeding their minds on such books. They were the current popular literature which prepared the way for Christ, for Christianity, for the Christian Scriptures, and for the Christian Church. Next, I notice that though these books were valued and extensively read and were quoted by individuals as inspired, yet they were never regarded as Scripture, nor does there ever seem to have been any contention in the Councils of the Church about receiving them into the Canon of Scripture or rejecting them therefrom. Last, I note that though many of these books have been lost so that we know merely their names or at most a short quotation from them or a general idea of what had been their contents, yet some have survived almost complete, and even within our own day some of these old works have been recovered and published for all to read.

Of all the books of this Apocrypha, the one which has interested me most is the Book of Enoch; and that not only because it is expressly quoted in the New Testament as containing genuine prophecies delivered by Enoch; but especially because, from what I have read of it, I think that it throws great light on the Gospels, and reveals so as many things which were quite familiar to the minds of our Lord and His disciples. It is a book which shows us the kind of ideas and expectations in which that generation were brought up, and the kind of reading which was commonly passed from hand to hand among, the people.

There are two other names which perhaps should be mentioned in this literature—Josephus and Philo. But I cannot find that Josephus was in any way a moulding influence in early Christian literature; and though Philo was undoubtedly such an influence, yet he is so separate, he is such a well marked link in another history—the history of the combination of Moses and Plato—that I think it better to omit him from this list. I think that those who know the subject best and feel the nuances of it will agree with me that Philo's name should be omitted from the apocryphal literature which leads up to and introduces the New Testament Scriptures.

Narracoorte Herald (SA : 1875 - 1954), Friday 8 December 1899, page 3