CONTENDING FOR THE FAITH
In this regular feature Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call. Here is this week’s question: Dear Mr. Hunt and Mr. McMahon: I’m confused about the Apocrypha. I’ve been told that they are books added to the Bible, yet are not part of inspired scripture. Yet, a friend of mine who is a Roman Catholic, says they have important teachings and were thought highly enough to be included in early Protestant Bibles. Should I be reading the Apocrypha?
Tom:
Well, Dave, they are not inspired, certainly---
Dave:
Well, but how can you say that, Tom? How do you know that the Bible is inspired, but these are not inspired?
Tom:
Well, I know there was no claim for inspiration. There is in the Bible, but there isn’t in the Apocrypha. As a matter of fact, they said: We don’t really handle the language well---and you know, they made all kinds of excuses that you don’t hear from prophets of God who were writing.
Dave:
Yeah, first and second Macabees, it says it right in the text that God was no longer speaking to His people. So, if God was not speaking to His people how could He be speaking through the Books of Macabee. So, they themselves say they are not inspired.
Tom:
Dave, before somebody says, Wait a minute, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Apocrypha, what’s that? Well, these were, by most counts, these are 15 books, partial writings here and there that were introduced into books of the Bible, or tried to be anyway. So, there were 15 books written right around 250BC give or take some, but certainly after the last book of scripture of the Old Testament was written, and these were additional books. And they are valued by some as being sort of historical and getting an idea of the way people thought, and so on. But the Roman Catholic church, we talked about in an earlier segment, they have used a number of the books because it’s part of their Bible. The Catholic Bible will have, what they call, deuteron canonical, and many of the dogmas of Roman Catholicism are based on the Apocrypha books.
Tom:
Now you’re saying something important, because for example: Prayers for the dead, it’s a big thing in Catholicism, prayers for the dead. Of course in Mormonism it is, as well. In fact, getting baptized for the dead, getting married for the dead by proxy, and so forth. And they get that, Tom, I haven’t thought about this in years, but Second Macabees 240, or something like that, I don’t remember exactly where it was.
Tom:
Wait a minute, I’ll tell you, just a second. Second Macabees 12, verses in the 40’s 39 – 45, right in there. And there’s also salvation by alms giving, paying money, which is just like getting somebody out of Purgatory. That’s Ecclesiastics Chapter 3, verse 30.
Dave:
But Tom, there’s a problem, as I recall, right there in Second Macabees 12, because who are they praying for? They are praying for the soldiers, warriors that were killed in this battle, and under their bodies they later find idols to (Jannes and Jambres). So now, idolatry, that’s a mortal sin, and you can’t get them out of Purgatory by praying for them, they’ve gone to hell. So, we have a serious contradiction there. Many of the Catholic documents are just not biblical, so you couldn’t possibly support them from the Bible, but now they find some support in these Deuterocanonical books, and no wonder they include them. Well, they don’t actually include them as part of the Scriptures, these are separate sections they don’t have them all mixed in, but they like to draw authority from them.
Tom:
Well, it was Augustine who really opened the door for this, because he was doctor of the church and many of the Catholic dogmas we could trace back to Augustine. The Council of Trent, that’s one of the first counsels that said, Yes, these books are inspired of God, because the Council of Trent was a reaction to the Reformation, as you know.
Dave:
And the Council of Trent was held from 1545 to 1563, that’s kind of late down the road. Tom, so he asked, Should I read the deuterocanonical books? Should I read these books that are not biblical, not inspired of God.
Tom:
Now Dave, we recognize the fact that early Bibles, that is, Protestant Bibles, that would be clearly Protestant Bibles, they did have the Apocrypha in the books.
Dave:
But Tom, by early you mean in the 1500’s and 1600’s. See, now that’s a stretch---
Tom:
Well, the King James, for example, right up into the 17th century. I think that it was after late 1600’s that it was finally removed.
Dave:
But that’s hardly authoritative to put that in there because this was, how many? sixteen centuries after the New Testament came out, was put together. So, should I read them? Well Tom, if you want to read the stuff, there are literally truck loads of books written by the early church fathers, so called. You would have to know Syriac, and Latin of course, as well as Greek and Hebrew, and a number of other obscure languages that some of them are written in. Must I regard these as more authoritative as something else? There’s a problem here because a number of evangelicals, they say they are evangelicals who converted to Catholicism, they did it by reading the so-called church fathers. And they said, If you want to really understand what the Bible said, you’ve got to get back as close as you can to the days of Paul. Well, the fact that Ignatius of Antioch was a disciple, supposedly of Peter, or here’s a man who supposedly knew the apostles, Paul says to the Ephesians elders who he had trained personally, Of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things to draw away disciples. It’s not going to help us to get back as close as we can, let’s go by the Bible, not by what someone has said about it. And even today that’s what we must do. There are commentaries out there, but you must decide yourself what the Bible says, you don’t just follow a commentary. So, I think the danger of reading these books is that they have been given a status that’s somewhat higher than other writings, but they are not!
