The deuterocanonical books, meaning 'of, pertaining to, or constituting a second canon', collectively known as the Deuterocanon (DC), are certain books and passages considered to be canonical books of the Old Testament by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, and the Church of the East. In contrast, modern Rabbinic Judaism and Protestantism regard the DC as Apocrypha.
Seven books are accepted as deuterocanonical by all the ancient churches: Tobit, Judith, Baruch with the Letter of Jeremiah, Sirach or Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, First and Second Maccabees and also the Greek additions to Esther and Daniel. In addition to these, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Church include other books in their canons.
The deuterocanonical books are included in the Septuagint, the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. They date from 300 BC to 100 AD, before the separation of the Christian church from Judaism, and they are regularly found in old manuscripts and cited frequently by the Church Fathers, such as Clement of Rome, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Irenaeus, and Tertullian.
According to the Gelasian Decree, the Council of Rome (382 AD) defined a list of books of scripture as canonical. It included most of the deuterocanonical books. Patristic and synodal lists from the 200s, 300s and 400s usually include selections of the deuterocanonical books.
List of deuterocanonicals
Canonical for the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, and the Church of the East: Tobit Judith Baruch including the Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch chapter 6) Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus) 1 Maccabees 2 Maccabees Wisdom Greek additions to Esther Greek additions to Daniel
Canonical only for the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches: Prayer of Manasseh 1 Esdras 2 Esdras 3 Maccabees 4 Maccabees as an appendix Psalm 151
Dates of composition
Historical background
Deuterocanonical is a term coined in 1566 by the theologian Sixtus of Siena, who had converted to Catholicism from Judaism, to describe scriptural texts considered canonical by the Catholic Church, but which recognition was considered "secondary". For Sixtus, this term included portions of both Old and New Testaments. He also applies the term to the Book of Esther from the canon of the Hebrew Bible.
The term was then taken up by other writers to apply specifically to those books of the Old Testament which had been recognised as canonical by the Councils of Rome (382 AD), Hippo (393 AD), Carthage (397 AD and 419 AD), Florence (1442 AD) and Trent (1546 AD), but which were not in the Hebrew canon.
Forms of the term "deuterocanonical" were adopted after the 16th century by the Eastern Orthodox Church to denote canonical books of the Septuagint not in the Hebrew Bible, a wider selection than that adopted by the Council of Trent, and also by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church to apply to works believed to be of Jewish origin translated in the Old Testament of the Ethiopic Bible, a wider selection still.
The acceptance of some of these books among early Christians was widespread, though not universal, and surviving Bibles from the early Church always include, with varying degrees of recognition, books now called deuterocanonical.J.N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 53 Some say that their canonicity seems not to have been doubted in the Church until it was challenged by Jews after 100 AD,Stuart G. Hall, Doctrine and Practice in the Early Church, p. 28 sometimes postulating a hypothetical Council of Jamnia. Regional councils in the West published official canons that included these books as early as the 4th and 5th centuries.
The Catholic Encyclopedia states:
Dead Sea scrolls The Book of Sirach, whose Hebrew text was already known from the Cairo Geniza, has been found in two of the Dead Sea Scrolls (2QSir or 2Q18, 11QPs_a or 11Q5) in Hebrew. Another Hebrew scroll of Sirach has been found in Masada (MasSir). Five fragments from the Book of Tobit have been found in Qumran written in Aramaic and in one written in Hebrew (papyri 4Q, nos. 196–200). The Letter of Jeremiah (or Baruch chapter 6) has been found in cave 7 (papyrus 7Q2) in Greek.
Recent scholars have suggestedLena Cansdale 1997, Qumran and the Essenes pp. 14 ff. cites Rengstorf 1963, Golb 1980, and several others, as well as detractors of this theory. that the Qumran library of approximately 1,100 manuscripts found in the eleven caves at Qumran was not entirely produced at Qumran, but may have included part of the library of the Jerusalem Temple, that may have been hidden in the caves for safekeeping at the time the Temple was destroyed by Romans in 70 AD.
Influence of the Septuagint Deuterocanonical and Apocryphal books included in the Septuagint are: Greek nameTimothy McLay, The Use of the Septuagint in New Testament Research .—The current standard introduction on the NT & LXX.TransliterationEnglish nameDeuterocanonical for the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches Tobit or Tobias Judith Esther with additions 1 Maccabees 2 Maccabees Wisdom or Wisdom of Solomon Sirach or Ecclesiasticus Baruch Epistle of Jeremiah Daniel with additionsDeuterocanonical for the Eastern Orthodox Churches Prayer of Manasseh 1 Esdras 3 Maccabees 4 Maccabees Psalm 151Apocrypha Psalms of Solomon
The large majority of Old Testament references in the New Testament are taken from the Koine Greek Septuagint (LXX), editions of which include the deuterocanonical books, as well as apocrypha – both of which are called collectively ("readable, worthy of reading"). No two Septuagint codices contain the same apocrypha.
Greek Psalm manuscripts from the fifth century contain three New Testament "psalms": the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Nunc dimittis from Luke's birth narrative, and the conclusion of the hymn that begins with the "Gloria in Excelsis". Beckwith states that manuscripts of anything like the capacity of Codex Alexandrinus were not used in the first centuries of the Christian era, and believes that the comprehensive codices of the Septuagint, which start appearing in the 4th century AD, are all of Christian origin.
In the New Testament, Hebrews 11:35 is understood by some as referring to an event that was recorded in one of the deuterocanonical books, 2 Maccabees. For instance, the author of Hebrews references a tradition which spoke of an Old Testament prophet who was sawn in half in Hebrews 11:37, two verses after the 2nd Maccabees reference. Other New Testament authors such as Paul also reference or quote period literature.
Influence of early authors The Jewish historian Josephus () wrote that the Hebrew Bible contained 22 canonical books.Josephus wrote in Against Apion, I, 8: "We have not 10,000 books among us, disagreeing with and contradicting one another, but only twenty-two books which contain the records of all time, and are justly believed to be divine." These 22 books make up the canon of the Hebrew Bible. The same number of 22 books was reported also by the Christian bishop Athanasius, but they might differ on the exact content (see below for Athanasius), as Josephus did not provide a detailed list.
Origen of Alexandria (), cited by Eusebius, described the Hebrew Bible as containing 22 canonical books. Among these books he listed the Epistle of Jeremiah and the Maccabees.
Eusebius wrote in his Church History () that Bishop Melito of Sardis in the 2nd century AD considered the deuterocanonical Wisdom of Solomon as part of the Old Testament and that it was considered canonical by Jews and Christians. On the other hand, the contrary claim has been made: "In the catalogue of Melito, presented by Eusebius, after Proverbs, the word Wisdom occurs, which nearly all commentators have been of opinion is only another name for the same book, and not the name of the book now called 'The Wisdom of Solomon'."
Cyril of Jerusalem () in his Catechetical Lectures cites as canonical books "Jeremiah one, including Baruch and Lamentations and the Epistle (of Jeremiah)".
In Athanasius's canonical books list (367 AD) the Book of Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah are included while Esther is omitted. At the same time, he mentioned that the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Sirach, Judith and Tobit, the book of Esther and also the Didache and The Shepherd of Hermas, while not being part of the Canon, "were appointed by the Fathers to be read". He excluded what he called "apocryphal writings" entirely.
Epiphanius of Salamis () mentions that "there are 27 books given the Jews by God, but they are counted as 22, however, like the letters of their Hebrew alphabet, because ten books are doubled and reckoned as five". He wrote in his that Jews had in their books the deuterocanonical Epistle of Jeremiah and Baruch, both combined with Jeremiah and Lamentations in only one book. While Wisdom of Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon were books of disputed canonicity.
Augustine of Hippo (), in his book On Christian Doctrine (Book II Chapter 8), cites a list of the canon of the Old Testament and the New Testament, including the deuterocanonical books as canonical:
According to the monk Rufinus of Aquileia () the deuterocanonical books were not called canonical but ecclesiastical books. In this category Rufinus includes the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Judith, Tobit and two books of Maccabees. Baruch is not specified by name in Rufinus's list, but it is in Cyril's, as though a part of Jeremiah, "Jeremiah, with Baruch, and the Lamentations and the Epistle." (Catech. 4, §36.), A Commentary on the Apostle's Creed; in: , The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 3, (NPNF2-03) Theodoret, Jerome, Gennadius, & Rufinus: Historical Writings, p. 545
Pope Innocent I (405 AD) sent a letter to the bishop of Toulouse citing deuterocanonical books as a part of the Old Testament canon.
In the 7th century Latin document the Muratorian fragment, which some scholars actually believe to be a copy of an earlier 170 AD Greek original, the book of the Wisdom of Solomon is counted by the church.
Synods In later copyings of the canons of the Council of Laodicea (from 364 AD) a canon list became appended to Canon 59, likely before the mid fifth century, which affirmed that Jeremiah, and Baruch, the Lamentations, and the Epistle (of Jeremiah) were canonical, while excluding the other deuterocanonical books.
According to Decretum Gelasianum, which is a work written by an anonymous scholar between 519 and 553, the Council of Rome (382 AD) cites a list of books of scripture presented as having been made canonical. This list mentions all the deuterocanonical books as a part of the Old Testament canon:
(According to the Council of Laodicea, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Epiphanius of Salamis, the Book of Jeremiah forms a single book together with Baruch, Lamentations and the Letter of Jeremiah, also called the Epistle of Jeremiah.)
The Synod of Hippo (in 393 AD), followed by the Council of Carthage (397) and the Council of Carthage (419), may be the first councils that explicitly accepted the first canon which includes a selection of books that did not appear in the Hebrew Bible;McDonald & Sanders, editors of The Canon Debate, 2002, chapter 5: The Septuagint: The Bible of Hellenistic Judaism by Albert C. Sundberg Jr., p. 72, Appendix D-2, note 19. the councils were under significant influence of Augustine of Hippo, who regarded the canon as already closed.Everett Ferguson, "Factors leading to the Selection and Closure of the New Testament Canon," in The Canon Debate. eds. L. M. McDonald & J. A. Sanders (Hendrickson, 2002) p. 320.F. F. Bruce (1988), The Canon of Scripture. Intervarsity Press, p. 230.Augustine, De Civitate Dei 22.8
Canon XXIV from the Synod of Hippo (in 393 AD) records the scriptures which are considered canonical; the Old Testament books as follows: