J E R O M E T O T H E R E F O R M A T I O N
Jerome’s Latin Bible made its way slowly but surely in the western church, gradually ousting the Old Latin version. If even an enlightened reader like Augustine was a little disconcerted by what seemed to be Jerome’s ruthless rejection of the Septuagint as a basis for the Old
Testament translator, it may well be imagined what resistance was offered by the rank and file to Jerome’s innovations. They were not at all impressed by the argument that the new translation was much more accurate than the old: then, as now, accuracy was a matter of concern only to a minority. Nevertheless, the sheer merit of Jerome’s version won the day, until it came to be known as the ‘Vulgate’ or
‘common’ edition-a designation previously used of the version that Jerome’s work superseded.
So far as the Old Testament canon was concerned, this too was a matter of interest only to a minority. For purposes of devotion or edification, why make any distinction between Esther and Judith, or between Proverbs and Wisdom?
It became customary to add to copies of the Latin Bible a few books which Jerome had not even included among those which were to be read ‘for the edification of the people’, notably 3 and 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh. Of these, 3 Esdras (or the ‘Greek Ezra’) is the 1 Esdras of the Septuagint (and of the common English Apocrypha); 4
Esdras (the ‘Apocalypse of Ezra’), frequently referred to as 4 Ezra, is the 2 Esdras of the common English Apocrypha (it had never been included in the Septuagint)‘; the Prayer of Manasseh, composed to give substance to the allusion to that king’s prayer in 2 Chron.
33: 12f., 18f., may belong to the first or second century BC but first appears in extant literature in a manual of church order called the Doctrine of the Apostles (early 4th century AD). It is a beautiful prayer of penitence (but, like 4 Esdras, had never belonged to the Septuagint).
Throughout the following centuries most users of the Bible made no distinction between the apocryphal books and the others: all alike were handed down as part of the Vulgate. But the vast majority of western European Christians, clerical as well as lay, in those centuries could not be described as ‘users’ of the Bible. They were familiar with certain parts of the Bible which were repeated in church services, and with the well-known Bible stories, but the idea of well defined limits to the sacred books was something that would not have occurred to them. Even among the most literate Christians a lack of concern on such matters sometimes manifests itself. Thus, of some of the Old English translators of the Bible it has been pointed out that, while
‘Bede, Aldhelm, Aelfric all protest against the widespread popular use’ of some completely uncanonical writings, ‘all three themselves use others’ of the same kind. *
With the revival of serious biblical study in the early Middle Ages, fresh attention was paid to questions of canonicity. Nowhere was this revival more marked than in the Abbey of St Victor at Paris in the twelfth century. In the school attached to the abbey Hebrew sources were explored and a new emphasis was placed on the literal sense of scripture. Hugh of St Victor, who was prior of the abbey and director of its school from 1133 until his death in 114 1, enumerates the books of the Hebrew Bible in a chapter ‘On the number of books in holy writ’
and goes on to say: ‘There are also in the Old Testament certain other books which are indeed read [in church] but are not inscribed in the body of the text or in the canon of authority: such are the books of Tobit, Judith and the Maccabees, the so-called Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus.’ Here, of course, the influence of Jerome can be
’ On the Esdras literature see also pp.47 with n. 11, 85 with n. Il.
’ G. Shepherd, in ‘English Versions of the Scriptures before Wyclif, CHB II, p.364.
’ Hugh of% Victor, On theSacranrenr~, I, Prologue, 7 (PL 176, ~01s. 185- 186D).
‘A continuous succession of the more learned Fathers in the West maintained the
discerned: for mediaeval students of the Bible in the Latin church there was no master to be compared with him.
For those who were more concerned with the spiritual than with the literal sense the distinction between first and second grades of canon- icity was unimportant: the apocryphal books could be allegorized as easily as those which were stamped with ‘Hebrew verity’ and could be made to yield the same meaning.
There is evidence of some reaction on the part of mediaeval Jewish scholars to the Christian treatment of the Old Testament canon. E. I.
J. Rosenthal has shown how Isaac Abravanel (1437- 1509) applied Aristotelian categories to prove that the Jewish division of the sacred books into Law, Prophets and Writings was superior to the fourfold Christian division into legal, historical, poetical with wisdom, and prophetical books.4 On the other hand, it has been shown that more than two centuries earlier Moses Nachmanides (1194-c 1270) read the book of Wisdom in an Aramaic text.’
The two Wycliffite versions of the complete Bible in English (1384, 1395) included the apocryphal books as a matter of course;
they were part of the Vulgate, on which those versions were based.
The ‘General Prologue’ to the second version (John Purvey’s) contains a strong commendation of ‘the book of Tobias’ (Tobit) because of the encouragement it provides to those who are persecuted for righteous- ness’ sake, teaching them ‘to be true to God in prosperity and adversity, and. . . to be patient in tribulation; and go never away from the dread and love of God’. There is a recognition of the distinction drawn by Jerome between those books which might be used for the confirmation of doctrine and those which were profitable for their ethical lessons: ‘Though the book of Tobias is not of belief, it is a full devout story, and profitable to the simple people, to make them keep patience and God’s hests’ (i.e. behests).6
distinctive authority of the Hebrew Canon up to the period of the Reformation’ (B. F.
Westcott, ‘Canon of Scripture, The’, Smith’s DB I, p.507; he gives a list from Primasius to Cardinal Cajetan). See more generally B. Smalley, TheStudy o/the Biblein rhe Midrllr Ages (Oxford, * 1952).
A CHB II, p.273 (‘The Study of the Bible in Medieval Judaism’).
’ A. Marx, ‘An Aramaic Fragment of the Wisdom of Solomon’, JBL 40 (192 l), pp.57-69.
’ M. Deanesly, The Lolhrd Brbh (Cambridge, 119201 1960), p.256.
B E F O R E A N D A F T E R T H E R E F O R M A T I O N
T H E R E F O R M E R S A N D T H E O L D T E S T A M E N T C A N O N
With the sixteenth-century Reformation the issue came more sharply to the fore. When Luther, in his controversy with Johann Maier von Eck, maintained the authority of scripture alone (sola scr$tura) over
against that of the church, this quickly raised the question of what precisely constituted ‘scripture alone’. It was Luther’s protest against the abuse of the indulgence system (especially in the hands of Johann Tetzel) that led him ultimately to break with Rome. But the indul- gence system was bound up with belief in purgatory and the practice of prayers for the dead, and these too were given up by Luther. When Luther was challenged to abide by his principle of ‘scripture alone’ and concede that scriptural authority for praying for the dead was found in 2 Mace. 12:45f. (where praying for the dead, ‘that they might be delivered from their sin’, is said to be ‘a holy and pious thought’), he found a ready reply in Jerome’s ruling that 2 Maccabees did not belong to the books to be used ‘for establishing the authority of ecclesiastical dogmas’. ’
(It may have been for this reason that Luther manifested a special animus against 2 Maccabees: he is reported as saying, ‘I hate Esther and 2 Maccabees so much that I wish they did not exist; they contain too much Judaism and no little heathen vice.‘8 It is noteworthy that he shows his exercise of private judgement here by including Esther under the same condemnation as 2 Maccabees: Esther is one of the books which Jerome acknowledged as acceptable for the establishing of doctrine- though to be sure it is difficult to imagine what doctrine of Jewish or Christian faith could be established by the book of Esther.)’
’ Luther’s Wirtenberg colleague A. R. Bodenstein von Karlstadt defended Jerome’s position in De canoniciJ wipturis Iibelh (1520), but within the Apocrypha he gave a higher status to Wisdom, Ben Sira, Judith, Tobit, and 1 and 2 Maccabees than to the other books.
a Tischreu’en (Weimar edition 1, p.208): too much weight should not be laid on many of the obiter dicta in Luther’s collected Tabfe Talk.
9 It might be said that Esther bears witness to the operation of divine providence, but that is not a distinctively Jewish or Christian doctrine (it was a central feature of Stoic belief). A powerful imagination can see what is otherwise invisible, as when W.
Vischer could see the cross of Christ in Haman’s gallows (‘The Book of Esther’, EQ 11 [ 19391, pp.3-21, especially pp. 11- 17). One still comes across allegorizations of the story in which Esther corresponds to the church (the bride ofchrist), Mordecai to the Holy Spirit, and King Ahasuerus (believe it or not) to Christ.
THE CANON OF SCRIPTURE
Luther showed his acceptance of Jerome’s distinction between the two categories of Old Testament books by gathering the Apocrypha together in his German Bible as a sort of appendix to the Old Testament (1534), instead of leaving them as they stood in the Vulgate. They were largely translated by various helpers, while he himself composed the prefaces. The section containing them was entitled: ‘The Apocrypha: Books which are not to be held equal to holy scripture, but are useful and good to read.’ In Zwingli’s Zurich Bible ( 15 24 - 29) the apocryphal books had already been separated from the rest of the Old Testament and published as avolume by itself. Luther’s friend George Spalatin had translated the Prayer of Mana&eh into German in 15 19; another translation was included in the complete German Bible of 1534. As for 3 and 4 Esdras and 3 Maccabees, they were not included in Luther’s Bible; they were added to later editions from about 15 70 onward.
Luther had little regard for the Apocrypha in general, but his guidance in matters of the canon was derived not from tradition but from the gospel. In both Testaments ‘what preaches Christ’ was for him the dominant principle; in the Old Testament Genesis, Psalms and Isaiah preached Christ with special clarity, he found.
Erasmus took a humanist rather than an evangelical attitude to such questions. In his treatise on The Free&n of the Will, for example, he based an argument on Ben Sira’s wisdom book (Ecclesiasticus): ‘I cannot see’, he said, ‘why the Hebrews left this book out when they included Solomon’s Parables and the amatory Canticles’.” The Erasmian attitude was expressed also by Calvin’s convert Sebastian Castellio (15 15 -63), translator of the Bible into both Latin and French, whom the Reformed authorities in Geneva refused to ordain because he would not spiritualize the Song of Songs but held it to be a poem in celebration of human love. I’
Tyndale did not live to complete the translation of the Old Testa- ment; had he done so, he would probably have followed Luther’s precedent (as he did in other respects’*) by segregating the apocryphal books in a section of their own. In an appendix to his 1534 revision of the New Testament he translated those Old Testament passages which were prescribed to be read in church as Epistles on certain days
‘” Erasmus, Thr Frmfonr o/the WiN (1524), quoted by R. H. Bainton, CHB III, p.6.
I’ See B. Hall, C H B III, pp.7lf. (‘Biblical Scholarship: Editions and Commentaries’). ” See p.246.
102
BEFORE AND AFTER THE REFORMATION
according to the use
of
Sarum. A kw of these are from the Apocrypha;they appear6 narutally, in their liturgical sequence. I3
Coverdafe’s English Bible of 1535 followed the example of its continental predecessors by separating the apocryphal books (and
parts of books) from the rest of the Old Testament and placing them after MaIachi, with a separate title-page: ‘Apocripha: the bokes and treatises which amonge the fithers of old are not rekened to be of like authorice with the other bokes of the byble, nether are they founde in the Canon of Hebrue.’ Then come their titles, beginning with 3 and 4 E&as. But one apocryphal work was left in situ, as a note at the foot of the title-page explains: ‘Vnto these also belongeth Baruc, whom we haue set amonge the prophetes next vnto Jeremy, because he was his scrybe, and in his tyme.’ (In a 1537 edition of Coverdale, however, Baruch was removed from its position among the protocanonical books and placed after Tobit.) The next page has an introduction indicating the inferior authority of these books.
Thomas Matthew’s Bible of 1537 (actually edited by John Rogers) reproduced Coverdale’s Apocrypha, but added the Prayer of Manasseh.
This was the first appearance of the Prayer of Manasseh in English; for Matthew’s Bible it was translated from the French version in Olivetan’s Bible (1535). Richard Taverner’s Bible of 1539, a revision of Matthew’s Bible, omits the introduction to the Apocrypha found in Coverdale and Matthew. Taverner’s Bible was revised in turn by Edmund Becke (1549-5 1); Becke added a translation of 3 Maccabees, which now appeared for the first time in an English dress. He also provided a completely new translation of 1 E&as, Tobit and Judith, and in an introduction of his own to the apocryphal books justified their separation from the protocanonical works but commended their reading ‘for example of life’.
The Great Bible, first published in 1539, was edited by Coverdale but used Matthew’s Bible as its basis (and that meant Tyndale’s Bible, so fat as Tyndale’s work extended). I4 The first edition reproduced Coverdale’s introduction to the Apocrypha but called the books Hagiographa, not Apocrypha. (Hagiograpba, ‘holy writings’, was originally the Greek equivalent of Hebrew K$@m, the ‘Writings’, I3 E.g. Sir. 15.1-6 for St John the Evangelist’s Day (December 27), Wisdom 5: l-5 for St Philip and St James’ Day (May 1).
I4 Of the Old Testament books in English Tyndale published only the Pentateuch and Jonah, but he left in manuscript the translation of the historical books from Joshua to 2 Chronicles; this was published in Matthew’s Bible.
T H E C A N O N O F S C R I P T U R E
the third division of the Hebrew Bible.) The fifth edition of the Great Bible (154 1) omitted the introduction and supplied a new title-page in which the list of apocryphal books was preceded by the words: ‘The fourth part of the Bible, containing these bokes. ’ This form of words was plainly calculated to play down the distinction between the Apocrypha and the protocanonical books.
T H E C O U N C I L O F T R E N T
Meanwhile the Counter-Reformation concerned itself with the canon of scripture as well as with many other issues which the Reformers had put in question. The Council of Trent, convened in 1545, had to consider the relation of scripture and unwritten tradition in the transmission of Christian doctrine; it made pronouncements, among other things, on the text, interpretation and canon of scripture. These subjects were dealt with during the fourth session (April, 1546): it was decreed that among various forms of the biblical text it was to the
‘ancient and Vulgate edition’ that ultimate appeal should be made, and that this edition comprised what we call the protocanonical and deuterocanonical books without distinction. It was decided not to enter into the question of difference in status between one group of books and another. Thus Jerome’s distinction between the books certified by the ‘Hebrew verity’ and the books which were to be read only ‘for the edification of the people’ was in effect set aside.
This was probably the first occasion on which a ruling on the canon of scripture was given by a general (or ecumenical) council of the church, as opposed to a local or provincial council. A similar list had indeed been promulgated by the Council of Florence over a hundred years before, but there was some doubt whether this particular Florentine decree carried full conciliar authority. The decree of Trent (like its companion decrees) was fortified by an anathema pronounced against all dissentients. I5
The ruling that the ‘ancient and Vulgate edition’ (the Latin Vulgate) be treated as the authoritative text of holy scripture required the provision of an accurate edition of this text. After the abortive attempt to make this provision in the Sixtine edition of 1590, the need was adequately met (for the next three centuries, at least) by the Clemen-
” Sessio IV: Decrrtc/nr de canonh ~cvipt~~ris. See F. J. Crehan, CHB III, pp. 199-202 (‘The Bible in the Roman Catholic Church from Trent to the Present Day’).
tine Vulgate of 1592. In this edition 3 and 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh were added as an appendix: they formed no part of the canon of Trent and were not included in the Sixtine Vulgate. It was the Clementine edition of the Old Testament that formed the basis of the English Douay version of 1609- 10.
The decree of Trent was repromulgated by the first Vatican Council of 1869-70, which explained further that the biblical books were not acknowledged as canonical because they had first been produced by human intelligence and then canonized by the church’s authority, but rather because they had God for their author, being inspired by the Holy Spirit and then entrusted to the church. I6 As for the status of the books which Jerome called apocryphal, there is general agreement among Roman Catholic scholars today (as among their colleagues of other Christian traditions) to call them ‘deuterocanonical’ (a term first used, it appears, in the sixteenth century);” Jerome’s distinction is thus maintained in practice, even if it does not enjoy conciliar support.
T H E E L I Z A B E T H A N S E T T L E M E N T
The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, which have been (in theory at least) authoritative for the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England since 1562/63’*, were in essence a repromulgation of the Forty-Two Articles of 1553 (issued seven weeks before the death of Edward VI). The doctrine of scripture is dealt with in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine, which corresponds to Article V of the Forty-Two.
Unlike the earlier Article, however, which simply affirmed the suffi- ciency of the scriptures for ‘all things necessary to Salvation’, Article VI includes a precise statement of the contents of the Old Testament scriptures. Headed ‘Of the sufficiency of the holy Scriptures for salvation’, it proceeds:
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby,
”DoKtt~afir.Constitt/tion on the Catho& Faith, ch.2 (‘Of Revelation’).
” According to F. J. Cr$an (CHB III, p.206), the word ‘deuterocanonical’ was first used in this way by a converted Jew, Sixtus of Siena (1520- 1569).
‘s All thirty-nine were approved by Convocation at that time, but Article 29 (‘Of the Wicked which eat not the Body of Christ in the use of the Lord’s Supper’) was held over (probably at Queen Elizabeth’s instance) and did not receive legal ratification until 1571.