CANON
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CANON
scriptive argument, owing to the complexity and
inadequacy of the N. T. data.
All the books of the Hebrew Old Testament are cited in the New except those which have been aptly called the Antilajomena of the O. T., viz.. Esther, Ecclesiastes. and Canticles; moreover Esdras and Nehemias are not employed. The admitted absence of any explicit citation of the deutero writings does not therefore prove that they were regarded as in- ferior to the above-mentioned works in the eyes of N. T. personages and authors. The deutero litera- ture was in general unsuited to their purposes, and some consideration should be given to the fact that even at its Alexandrian home it was not quoted by Jewish writers, as we saw in the case of Philo. The negative argument drawn from the non-citation of the deuterocanonicals in the N. T. is especially min- imized by the indirect use made of them by the same Testament. This takes the form of allusions and reminiscences, and shows unquestionably that the Apostles and Evangelists were acquainted with the Alexandrian increment, regarded its books as at least respectable sources, and wrote more or less under its influence. A comparison of Hebrews, xi and II Machabees, vi and vii reveals unmistakable references in the former to the heroism of the martyrs glorified in the latter. There are close affinities of thought, and in some cases also of language, between I Peter, i, 6, 7, and Wisdom, iii, 5, 6; Hebrews, i, 3, and Wisdom, vii. 26, 27; I Corinthians, x, 9, 10, and Judith, viii, 24-25; I Corinthians, vi, 13, and Ec- clesiasticus, xxxvi, 20.
Yet the force of the direct and indirect employ- ment of O. T. writings by the New is slightly impaired by the disconcerting truth that at least one of the X. T. authors, St. Jude, quotes explicitly from the "Book of Henoch", long universally recognized as apocryphal, see verse 14, while in verse 9 he borrows from another apocryphal narrative, the "Assumption of Moses". Concerning the use of apocrypha in the N.T. cf. Wildeboer, "Origin of the Canon of the O. T., Par. .">." The N. T. quotations from the Old are in general characterized by a freedom and elasticity regarding manner and source which further tend to diminish their weight as proofs of canonicity. But so far as concerns the great majority of the Palestinian Hagiographa — a fortiori, the Pentateuch and Proph- ets — whatever want of conclusiveness there may be in the N. T., evidence of their canonical standing is abundantly supplemented from Jewish sources alone, in the series of witnesses beginning with the Mishnah and running back through Josephus and Philo to the translation of the above books for the Hellenist Greeks. But for the deuterocanonical literature, only the last testimony speaks as a Jewish confirma- tion. However, there are signs that the Greek ver- sion was not deemed by its readers as a closed Bible of definite sacredness in all its parts, but that its somewhat variable contents shaded off in the eyes of the Hellenists from the eminently sacred Law down to works of questionable divinity, such as III Machabees.
This factor should be considered in weighing a certain argument. A large number of Catholic au- thorities sec a canonization of the deuteros in a supposed wholesale adoption and approval, by the Apostles, of the Greek, and therefore larger, O. T. The argument is not without a certain force; the N. T. undoubtedly shows a preference for the Sep- tuagint; out of about 350 texts from the ( ). T.. 300 favour the language of the (ireek version rather than that of the Hebrew. Hut there are considerations which bid us hesitate to admit an Apostolic adoption of the Septuaginl en him-. As remarked above, there
are coEent reasons for believing that it was not a fixed quantity at the time. The existing oldest rep- resentative MSS. are not entirely identical in the
books they contain. Moreover, it should be remem-
bered that at the beginning of our era, and for .some
time later, complete sets of any such voluminous
collection as the Septuagint in manuscript would be
extremely rare; the version must have been current
in separate books or groups of books, a condition
favourable to a certain variability of compass. So
neither a fluctuating Septuagint nor an inexplicit
N. T. conveys to us the exact extension of the pre-
Christian Bible transmitted by the Apostles to the
Primitive Church. It is more tenable to conclude
to a selective process under the guidance of the Holy
Ghost, and a process completed so late in Apostolic
times that the N. T. fails to reflect its mature result
regarding either the number or note of sanctity of
the extra-Palestinian books admitted. To histor-
ically learn the Apostolic Canon of the O. T. we
must interrogate less sacred but later documents,
expressing more explicitly the belief of the first ages
of Christianity.
(2) The Cation of the 0. T. in the Church of the first three centuries. — The sub-Apostolic writings of Clement, Polycarp, the author of the Epistle of Barnabas, of the pseudo-Clementine homilies, and the "Shepherd" of Hennas, contain implicit quota- tions from, or allusions to, all the deuterocanonicals except Baruch (which anciently was often united with Jeremias) and I Machabees and the additions to Daniel. No unfavourable argument can be drawn from the loose, implicit character of these citations, since these Apostolic Fathers quote the protocanoni- cal Scriptures in precisely the same manner. For details of these testimonies see Loisy, "Canon de TAncien Testament", pp. 71-72.
Coming down to the next age, that of the apologists, we find Baruch cited by Athenagoras as a prophet. St. Justin Martyr is the first to note that the Church has a set of O. T. Scriptures different from the Jews', and also the earliest to intimate the principle pro- claimed by later writers, namely, the self-sufficiency of the Church in establishing the Canon; its inde- pendence of the Synagogue in this respect. The full realization of this truth came slowly, at least in the Orient, where there are indications that in cer- tain quarters the spoil of Palestinian-Jewish tradition was not fully cast, off for some time. St. Melito, Bishop of Sardis (c. 170), first drew up a list of the canonical books of the O. T. While maintaining the familiar arrangement of the Septuagint, he says that he verified his catalogue by inquiry among Jews; Jewry by that time had everywhere discarded the Alexandrian books, and Melito's Canon consists ex- clusively of the protocanonicals minus Esther. It should be noticed, however, that the document to which this catalogue was prefixed is capable of being understood as having an anti-Jewish polemical pur- pose, in which case Melito's restricted canon is ex- plicable on another ground (see Comely, Introduction I, 75 sqq.). St. Irenaeus, always a witness of the first rank, on account of his broad acquaintance with ecclesiastical tradition, vouches that Baruch was deemed on the same footing as Jeremias, and that the narratives of Susanna and Bel and the Dragon were ascribed to Daniel. The Alexandrian tradition is represented by the weighty authority of Qrigen. Influenced, doubtless, by the Alexandrian-Jewish usage of acknowledging in practice the extra writings as sacred while theoretically holding to tin 1 narrower
Canon of Palestine, his catalogue of the (>. T. Scrip- tures contains only the protocanonical books, though
it follows the order of the Septuagint. Nevertheless Origen employs all tic deuterocanonicals as Divine Scriptures, and in his letter to Julius Africanus de- fends the sacredness of Tobias. Judith, and the frag- ments of Daniel, at the same time implicitly asserting the autonomy of the Church in fixing tic I anon I I i references in Comely). In his Ilexaplar edition of
