The Hebrew Canon and the Apocrypha

Protestant scholars and pastors have taught from time immemorial that the fourteen Apocryphal books, as found in the A.V. 1611, never were accepted by the Jews in their Hebrew Bible as part of their canon of scripture. Instead, the inquirer of the Apocrypha is consistently told that the Jews only and always had the same 39 books that exist today in the Protestant Old Testament. Since Paul said that unto the Jews "were committed the oracles of God" (Romans 3:1-2), it follows that if the Jews never received the Apocrypha as scripture, neither should we.

Several lines of evidence point toward the rejection of the Apocrypha by the Jewish community. This is interesting because the NT affirms that the Jewish community knew that their Scriptures were inspired—at least by the first-century AD. Paul writes that the Jewish people “were entrusted with the oracles of God” (Rom. 3:2). Jesus spoke to the Sadducees of “what was spoken to you by God” (Mt. 22:31; cf. Jn. 5:39; Acts 17:2, 11; 28:23). How could the NT authors make such statements if the Jewish people didn’t know their own Scriptures? Why do we never find the NT authors disputing with the Jewish people over which books were inspired?

(Rochford)

The godly Jews under Ezra rejected the Apocrypha as having been inspired by the LORD when they formed the Old Testament canon.

(Jones, The Apocrypha 1)

[T]he following 20 reasons may be given for rejecting the Apocrypha from the Old Testament Canon: 1. It is universally acknowledged that they never had a place in the Hebrew Canon.

(Miller 117)

But as is proven in the rest of this article, the Apocryphal books (along with many other inspired books now lost) were part of the Hebrew canon of scripture up to and beyond the time of Christ but were removed by the Jews in the early second century A.D.

The earliest indication of a Hebrew canon can be found in 2 Esdras 14, depicting events in 510 B.C. (cf. 2 Esdras 1:3, 3:1 [Jones, The Chronology 280]), after the Babylonian captivity. In that chapter, it is recorded that the Hebrew scriptures had been burnt and totally destroyed (2 Esdras 14:21-22). In response to this, God (who promised to preserve his words forever, Psalm 12:6-7) freshly gave the entire Hebrew Bible again by inspiration through Ezra and five of his associates. They ended up with 204 books of scripture, 70 being secretive and to be kept from the common man (so 134 books for the common man).

41 And my mouth was opened, and shut no more.

42 The Highest gave understanding unto the five men, and they wrote the wonderful visions of the night that were told, which they knew not: and they sat forty days, and they wrote in the day, and at night they ate bread.

43 As for me, I spake in the day, and I held not my tongue by night.

44 In forty days they wrote two hundred and four books.

45 And it came to pass, when the forty days were fulfilled, that the Highest spake, saying, The first that thou hast written publish openly, that the worthy and unworthy may read it:

46 But keep the seventy last, that thou mayest deliver them only to such as be wise among the people:

47 For in them is the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom, and the stream of knowledge.

48 And I did do.

2 Esdras 14:41-48 A.V. 1611 (PCE 1900)

Thus in 510 B.C., the Hebrew canon was 204 books, which had perished with the Babylonian captivity in 586 B.C. (Jones, The Chronology 280). After this time, the additional books of Ezra (450-444 B.C), Nehemiah (445-440 B.C.), Esther (485-465 B.C.), Ezekiel (595-574 B.C.), Daniel (607-534 B.C.), Obadiah (586 B.C.), Haggai (520 B.C.), Zechariah (520 B.C.), Malachi (441 B.C.), were composed (280; The Ruckman Reference Bible 676, 694, 716, 1068, 1136, 1184, 1210, 1213, 1226). Among the Apocrypha, the books written after the destruction of Jerusalem would include 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch (+ Epistle of Jeremy), 1 Maccabees, and 2 Maccabees. This makes for at least 220 canonical books of the Hebrews by the time you get to the Lord Jesus Christ's appearance in the first century A.D.

After Ezra, allegedly in 285 B.C., Roman Catholic and Protestant scholars date the creation of the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Old Testament) under Ptolemy Philadelphus II. While it is not the purpose of this article to get into the Septuagint in depth, the reader would do well to consult brother David Daniels' Did Jesus Use the Septuagint? His work is full of excellent historical research demonstrating the Septuagint story and translation is a fraud from the hand of Philo sometime before A.D. 50. However, I must warn the reader that despite Daniels' excellent research, he makes the historical mistake (which, unfortunately, forms his book's thesis) of claiming the entire Old Testament, along with the Apocrypha, was part of Philo's Septuagint. In contrast, the Letter of Aristeas (penned by Philo himself, per Daniels) and Josephus (A.J. 12.11-118 [Whiston]) simply claim the law of Moses was translated into Greek. The rest of the books of the Old Testament would be subsequently and individually translated by others in Alexandria, Egypt (circa A.D. 50-100) and added onto Philo's LXX as time went on.

In Ecclesiasticus (132 B.C.), there is evidence for a threefold division of scripture among the Hebrews, which is called "the law, and the prophets, and other books of our fathers," and "the law itself, and the prophets, and the rest of the books" (The Prologue of the Wisdom of Jesus, the Son of Sirach). The law would obviously be the five books of Moses (Genesis to Deuteronomy), but the prophets and the rest of the books are a bit hazier. No number of books is provided for any of the three categories.

The Lord Jesus Christ in A.D. 27-30 (Jones, The Chronology 280) confirms a larger canon in his day than now because he quotes Ecclesiasticus and refers to it as scripture.

37 In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.

38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

John 7:37-38 A.V. 1611 (PCE 1900)

Compare this to the following passage in Ecclesiasticus, where Lady Wisdom (a doctrinal reference to Christ in 1 Corinthians 1:24) claims to be a water that can be drunk and that if one obeys her (synonymous with belief in 1 Peter 2:7), God will fill that man with wisdom so abundantly, it will overflow that man like rivers that overflow their banks.

21 They that eat me shall yet be hungry, and they that drink me shall yet be thirsty.

22 He that obeyeth me shall never be confounded, and they that work by me shall not do amiss.

23 All these are the book of the covenant of the most high God, even the law which Moses commanded for an heritage unto the congregations of Jacob.

24 Faint not to be strong in the Lord; that he may confirm you, cleave unto him: for the Lord Almighty is God alone, and beside him there is no other Saviour.

25 He filleth all things with his wisdom, as Phison and as Tigris in the time of the new fruits.

26 He maketh the understanding to abound like Euphrates, and as Jordan in the time of the harvest.

27 He maketh the doctrine of knowledge appear as the light, and as Geon in the time of vintage.

Ecclesiasticus 24:21-27 A.V. 1611 (PCE 1900)

Similarly, James Zebedee (writing in A.D. 43) quotes Hosea interpreted in the light of 2 Esdras and includes both books as scripture, as shown in the verses below.

Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?

James 4:5 A.V. 1611 (PCE 1900)

They will not frame their doings to turn unto their God: for the spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them, and they have not known the LORD.

Hosea 5:4 A.V. 1611 (PCE 1900)

Like as a whore envieth a right honest and virtuous woman:

2 Esdras 16:49 A.V. 1611 (PCE 1900)

This immediately dispenses with the Protestant lie that Jesus and the apostles never quoted the Apocrypha. They not only quoted it (as Paul quoted pagan Greek poets in Acts 17:28) but referred to those books as "scripture." In this same period, the Lord Jesus used the same threefold division of the Hebrew canon as Ecclesiasticus.

44 And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. 

45 Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,

Luke 24:44-45 A.V. 1611 (PCE 1900)

In this same period (before A.D. 50), Philo names the same threefold division of the Hebrew canon as "the laws and oracles that have come down thru the prophets, along with psalms and other books" ("Philo Judaeus, On the Contemplative Life" III [Tilden]). Philo gives no names or the number of books in any of the three divisions.

Up to this point, from Ezra's canon of 204 books (220 by the time of Christ), there have been no contrary claims in Jewish history about the number of books in the Hebrew canon. However, after this period, some Protestant scholars claim a Jewish council in A.D. 90 was held in Jamnia that fixed the canon of scripture to the 39 books they accept. This council allegedly disqualified all the Apocryphal books from being part of the canon and supposedly enforced the canon for all Jews.

By a national synod held at Jamnia, near Jaffa, in 90 AD, the Old Testament canon was practically though not finally closed, and from that date one may say that the limits of the Old Testament were once and for all fixed, no writings being included except those written in Hebrew, the latest of these being as old as 100 BC.

(Davies)

[T]he Jewish council of Jamnia (A.D. 90) had settled the Old Testament canon; that council excluded every Apocryphal book.

(Ruckman 9)

Somehow, claiming a special council long after the time of Christ fixed the Jewish canon is supposed to prove that the Hebrew Bible Jesus used decades prior aligned with that canon. The mental gymnastics of Protestants notwithstanding, the evidence for a Council of Jamnia is non-existent.

The theory that an open canon was closed at the Synod of Jamnia about AD 90 goes back to Heinrich Graetz in 1871, who proposed (rather more cautiously than has since been the custom) that the Synod of Jamnia led to the closing of the canon. Though others have lately expressed hesitations about the theory, its complete refutation has been the work of J. P. Lewis and S. Z. Leiman. The combined result of their investigations is as follows:

(a) The term 'synod' or 'council' is inappropriate. The academy at Jamnia, established by Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai shortly before the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, was both a college and a legislative body, and the occasion in question was a session of the elders there.

(b) The date of the session may have been as early as AD 75 or as late as AD 117.

(c) As regards the disputed books, the discussion was confined to the question whether Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs (or possibly Ecclesiastes alone) make the hands unclean, i.e. are divinely inspired.

(d) The decision reached was not regarded as authoritative, since contrary opinions continued to be expressed throughout the second century.

(Beckwith 276)

Moving on from the myth of Jamnia, in circa A.D. 100, Josephus makes a statement involving some of the books of scripture, which Protestants have seized upon as proof the Jews never accepted the Apocrypha (Miller 117). Allegedly, Josephus provides the same threefold division of scripture as used by Ecclesiasticus, Christ, and Philo; but lists only 22 books for the Jewish canon (which Protestants say is the same as their 39 books for the Old Testament). Even more significant, Josephus is alleged to claim that this smaller canon was this way for so many generations and that all Jews everywhere hold to the same books as scripture. These claims made about Josephus' words are false and imputed to him by over-imaginative Protestant scholars.

For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another [as the Greeks have], but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine; and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of three thousand years; but as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets, who were after Moses, wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life. It is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time; and how firmly we have given credit to those books of our own nation, is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add anything to them, to take anything from them, or to make any change in them; but it becomes natural to all Jews, immediately and from their very birth, to esteem those books to contain divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be, willingly to die for them.

(Josephus, C. Ap. 1.38-42 [Whiston])

Two points must be made in refuting the Protestant interpretation of Josephus' words. Firstly, the phrase, "which are justly believed to be divine," is a forgery of Josephus' words. Thackeray (Josephus 178) points out that the Greek term for "to be divine" (θεῖα) is only present in Eusebius' presentation of Josephus' words in the 300s A.D., over two centuries after Josephus wrote in A.D. 100. All other texts of Josephus omit this word. Thus, Thackeray translates Josephus' words as saying these books "are justly accredited." There is no mention here by Josephus about these 22 books alone being regarded as divine.

Secondly, the prior context of Josephus' words is not about the canon of scripture but answering the Greeks on the charge that the Jews have no real history from ancient times.

However, since I observe a considerable number of people giving ear to the reproaches that are laid against us by those who bear ill will to us, and will not believe what I have written concerning the antiquity of our nation, while they take it for a plain sign that our nation is of a late date, because they are not so much as vouchsafed a bare mention by the most famous historiographers among the Grecians, I therefore have thought myself under an obligation to write somewhat briefly about these subjects, in order to convict them that reproach us of spite and voluntary falsehood, and to correct the ignorance of others, and withal to instruct all those who are desirous of knowing the truth of what great antiquity we really are.

(Josephus, C. Ap. 1.2-3 [Whiston]).

Read in this light, Josephus is not listing out the Hebrew canon. He is listing simply the books which provide a complete history of the Jews from the beginning. The subject is not which or how many books are given by inspiration of God. The books which give "the records of all the past times" of Israel from Moses to Artaxerxes number twenty-two. This would be the five books of Moses, thirteen books from the prophets, and four other books of hymns. They provide "records of all the past times" in that they provide a complete and unbroken chain of Israel's history. From Artaxerxes onward, Josephus says, "our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time." In contrast to the records from Moses to Artaxerxes, the Jewish records didn't record an unbroken chain of the Jews' history after that time. Instead, they record the history of the Jews, "very particularly," or highlighting various events of Israel's history, but not as an unbroken historical record. "[T]here hath not been an exact succession of prophets," Josephus says; but this does not deny the existence of prophets from Artaxerxes onward, simply an unbroken line of prophets to provide an unbroken historical record of the Jews. These would include some of the Apocryphal books. After saying all this, Josephus says of all "those books of our own nation" (including the 22 books until Artaxerxes and the books written afterward) that the Jews esteemed "those books to contain divine doctrines." Josephus is not providing a comprehensive list of the Hebrew canon of scripture; instead, he lists which scriptural books provide an unbroken history of the Jews from Moses to Artaxerxes (which are 22 in number) and then those which provide their history "very particularly" from Artaxerxes onward. If one were to ask, "What about the 204 inspired books before Ezra?" the answer must be that 70 were hidden from the common Jews (as discussed earlier, 2 Esdras 14:46) and that 112 of the more common books discussed other matters besides the Jews' history (like pure prophecy, doctrine, wisdom doctrine, hymns, etc., that furnish no value to providing a history of Israel).

There is, therefore, no merit in deciding the canon of the Old Testament on Josephus' statement. To do so would be to build upon a foundation of sand. All Josephus affirms about the Hebrew scriptures is that all Jews, up to this point for a long time, agreed upon their divine nature. But no Hebrew canon is given, nor the number for all the books of the Hebrew canon.

Moving further into the early second century A.D., we find the cause of the change in Judaism from the large 220-book canon to the smaller canon of the Protestant-approved 39 books. Enter Akiba Ben Joseph (A.D. 50-132). Akiba was a highly influential Jew, so much so that he is called "the father of rabbinical Judaism" and "the man who marked out a path for rabbinical Judaism for almost two thousand years." (Ginzberg). In an article from The Jewish Encyclopedia (written by Louis Ginzberg, Ph.D., Professor of Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City), it is admitted that Akiba fixed the Hebrew canon as we know it today and argued persuasively against the Apocryphal books due to an anti-Christian bias.

In the first place, Akiba was the one who definitely fixed the canon of the Old Testament books. He protested strongly against the canonicity of certain of the Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus, for instance (Sanh. x. 1, Bab. ibid. 100b, Yer. ibid. x. 28a)...To the same motive underlying his antagonism to the Apocrypha, namely, the desire to disarm Christians—especially Jewish Christians—who drew their "proofs" from the Apocrypha, must also be attributed his wish to emancipate the Jews of the Dispersion from the domination of the Septuagint, the errors and inaccuracies in which frequently distorted the true meaning of Scripture, and were even used as arguments against the Jews by the Christians.

(Ginzberg)

The precise number of canonical Hebrew books was determined to be 22, using the convenient excuse that this matches the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. As The Jewish Encyclopedia elsewhere admits,

It is scarcely by accident that this number coincides with that of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The same tendency that led poets to write alphabetic psalms prompted scribes to arrange the canon so as to make the total twenty-two.

(Emil)

In A.D. 128, Following the example of Akiba, and "under Akiba's guidance" (Ginzberg), a Jewish convert named Aquila produced a new Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which omitted the Apocrypha (Miller 113). Due to Akiba's influence and Aquila's definitive canon of scripture in his Greek translation, the entire Jewish world threw out all books not found in Aquila's Greek Bible in the early part of the second century.

By the time one reaches the first Old Testament canonical lists given by the early Christian churches, he has already gone past four decades from Aquila's influential Greek canon. Miller (113-114) can only list Justin Martyr (A.D. 164), Melito (A.D. 170), Tertullian (A.D. 150-220), Origen (A.D. 254), the Council of Laodicea (A.D. 363), Hilary of Poiters, France (A.D. 305-366), Ruffinus of Aquileia, Italy (died A.D. 410), Jerome (A.D. 340-420), and Augustine (A.D. 354-430) as providing the earliest Christian canonical lists (all of which omit the Apocryphal books for the standard 39 Protestant Old Testament books). That all these Church Fathers unanimously favored the standard Protestant Old Testament canon is indisputable. But they all favored this short canon because when they checked with the Jews to see which books they held to be canonical, the Jews had already cut out every Apocryphal book under the direction of Akiba and Aquila four decades earlier. While the common Christians in the churches kept reading and believing the Apocryphal books (or at least those few which had been translated from Hebrew into their Greek tongue in the Septuagint), the Church Fathers strove to correct them with their "scholarly" opinion that the Hebrew canon of their time (the shorter one) was the limit for inspired Old Testament books.

From one point of view, the canon was a broad one, comprising all those Jewish books which were generally read in the Church for purposes of edification, and in this sense the canon would always include more or less of the Apocrypha and sometimes a few of the apocalyptic Pseudepigrapha. From the other point of view, the canon was a narrow one, consisting simply of the books of the Jewish Bible, which scholars like Melito, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, Epiphanius, Gregory of Nazianzus and Jerome took the trouble to distinguish from the rest as alone acknowledged to be inspired, though they too used the others for edification, and their distinction seems often to have been ignored.

(Beckwith 2).

For the great majority [of early Christians—JA], however, the deutero-canonical [Apocryphal—JA] writings ranked as Scripture in the fullest sense.

(Kelly 55).

Thus sums up the history of the Jewish canon of scripture, what it was initially, when it was changed to remove the Apocrypha, who changed the canon, and why the earliest Church lists of the Old Testament books omit the Apocrypha. Thankfully, despite Jewish alteration of the Hebrew Canon, the Lord in his providence has preserved for us in the 1611 King James Bible some of those books hidden and concealed by the Jews in the suitably named Apocrypha ("Apocrypha" means hidden or concealed [The Oxford English Dictionary, "Apocrypha"]). Granted, they may not make up all of the missing books from Ezra's original 204-book canon, but the 80-book canon found in the pure and preserved King James text evidently has been judged by God to be sufficient for us in doctrine and practice (2 Timothy 3:16-17). The Protestant lie that the Jews never accepted the Apocrypha as given by inspiration of God is therefore overturned by the documented facts of history. The King James Bible is always right, including the Apocrypha.

Works Cited

Apocrypha Apocalypse. “Josephus and the OT Canon Part 2.” YouTube, 4 Dec. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ymjeJfZOkM&ab_channel=ApocryphaApocalypse. Accessed on 13 Nov. 2022.

Apocrypha Apocalypse. “Josephus and the OT Canon PT 1 - Reading ‘Canon’ into Josephus?” YouTube, 26 Nov. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG-CC963O-c&ab_channel=ApocryphaApocalypse. Accessed on 13 Nov. 2022.

Apocrypha Apocalypse. “Josephus vs. Josephus: Josephus and the OT Canon Part 3.” YouTube, 11 Dec. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uLide5w8CA&ab_channel=ApocryphaApocalypse. Accessed on 13 Nov. 2022.

Beckwith, Roger. The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1985.

Daniels, David W. Did Jesus Use the Septuagint? Ontario: Chick Publications, 2017.

Davies, Thomas Witton. “Apocrypha.” International Standard Bible Encyclopedia Online, StudyLamp Software LLC, 2022, https://www.internationalstandardbible.com/A/apocrypha.html. Accessed on 13 Nov. 2022.

Emil, Hirsch G., et al. “Bible Canon.” JewishEncyclopedia.com, https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11683-old-testament. Accessed on 13 Nov. 2022.

Ginzberg, Louis. “Akiba Ben Joseph.” Jewishencyclopedia.com, https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/1033-akiba-ben-joseph. Accessed on 13 Nov. 2022.

Jones, Floyd Nolen. The Apocrypha. 1993, https://www.floydnolenjonesministries.com/files/130648958.pdf. Accessed on 13 Nov. 2022.

Jones, Floyd Nolen. The Chronology of the Old Testament: A Return to the Basics. Master Books, 2019.

Josephus, Flavius. Josephus. Vol. 1, translated by H. St. J. Thackeray, London: William Heinemann, 1926, https://archive.org/details/Josephus02War13. Accessed on 13 Nov. 2022.

Josephus, Flavius. The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged. Translated by William Whiston, Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1987.

Kelly, J.N.D. Early Christian Doctrines. 5th ed., London: Continuum, 1968.

Miller, H.S. General Biblical Introduction: From God to Us. Houghton: The Word-Bearer Press, 1960.

The Oxford English Dictionary. Vol. 1, London: Oxford University Press, 1933.

"Philo Judaeus, On the Contemplative Life." Indiana University Studies. Vol. 9, translated by Frank William Tilden, March 1922. Indiana University, https://archive.org/details/philojudeausonco00phil. Accessed on 13 Nov. 2022.

Rochford, James M. "The Apocrypha." Evidence Unseen, 2022, https://www.evidenceunseen.com/world-religions/roman-catholicism/the-apocrypha/. Accessed on 13 Nov. 2022.

Ruckman, Peter S. The Mythological Septuagint. Pensacola: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1996.

The Ruckman Reference Bible. 4th ed., Pensacola: BB Bookstore, 2009.