The Apocrypha and the Hebrew canon

For my Bible reading project this year, I decided for the first time to read through a Roman Catholic translation, including the Apocrypha. I've read through the books of the Apocrypha before, but I thought it would be informative to read through them as they stand in the Bible. I take them in the order they appear in the New American Bible, Revised Edition, which is the translation I have chosen to read. So today I reached the first of these books, Tobit. (I admit that Tobit is a fascinating story, if a bit strange in detail and with a decided emphasis on almsgiving as a means of righteousness.)

Now my friends will hit me from both sides the fence on this reading choice. My Protestant friends will ask me why I bother to read the Apocryphal books at all. (Some might even question why I'd bother with a non-Protestant translation, but I reading through a variety of translations gives me insights into where many of them come from theologically, and the Word of God is powerful in any good translation-and even in many bad ones!) As someone who has a deep interest in the early church, especially the Ante-Nicene period, I know that while these books were generally not accepted as canonical, they were respected as books that provided spiritual insight that could be helpful. In many respects, they are an OT era parallel to books like the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, and 1 Clement, which were valued by the church but were ultimately determined to be non-canonical.

My Roman Catholic friends, on the other hand, would ask why, if I consider them worthwhile enough to read and respect the opinion of the early church that they have some value, I don't consider them canonical. While there are a number of reasons to reject the Apocrypha (and even the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches view them as having a lesser canonical status), there really is one reason that stands out for me: they were not part of the Hebrew canon.

The Tanakh, as it later came to be called, was generally settled by time of the Hasmoneans. (The story that it was set at the Council of Jamnia in the late 1st or early 2nd century has been widely discredited.) The name comes from the Hebrew words for the three sections of the Hebrew Bible: Torah (Law), Nebi'im (Prophets), and Kethubim (Writings). It consisted of 22 or 24 books, depending on who was doing the division and whether they felt the need to have the same number of books as the Hebrew alphabet had letters. Several of our current 39 OT books were combined: the books of Samuel, the books of Kings, the books of Chronicles, Ezra/Nehemiah, and the Twelve minor prophets. (To get 22, you can combine Judges/Ruth and Jeremaih/Lamentations.)

This three-fold division, with its constituent books, was well-attested by Jesus' time. The Apocrypha lay outside of the Hebrew canon then, and continues to be rejected as canonical by Jews to this day. In my view, the establishment of what we call the Old Testament canon should follow the practice of the Jewish people, for whom it was a remains Scripture. For Christians to add to that canon is to place our (often much later) views on a higher plain than the views of those for whom these words were life.

I will continue to read the Apocrypha, and I anticipate that I will find it informative, spiritually uplifting, and helpful as devotional literature. I will still, however, base my beliefs and my theology on those books that I believe, and that the Jews believe, are the ones inspired by God.