Theological study is generally done within a very clear set of perameters, formed by the church sponsoring the work, or the religious persuasion of the theologians involved. Such study is seldom done to question the church in any way; the proof being in the staying power of orthodox doctrine. One of those very solid doctrines in mainstream Bible-based religion is the acceptance of the books that compromise those Bibles. This work challenges the very authority controlling the list of “acceptable books”, and the reasons those authorities use for the content of that list.
We start this series with the books known as the Apocrypha. Researching the concepts for the absence of these books will lead one through a plethora of reasoning. The arguments range from the dubious claims that they are forgeries to the more honest ones stating that the church has the right to exclude anything it wants. Fact seems to play no part in the debate.
Perhaps one of the best kept secrets of the modern Protestant Church is that the Bible used by that body is not the original King James Bible. That translation, completed in 1611, and the Bibles published for the use of the clergy and the church members until late in the 19th Century contained 80 books. Attempts to remove the 14 books known as the Apocrypha from the Bible began immediately after the King James translation was completed. Despite those efforts, they remained in the Bible until the end of the 19th Century. There is no doubt that the 14 books of the Apocrypha were controversial, but it cannot be denied they were included in the original King James Bible.
Any concept or discussion in the Protestant Church about the Apocrypha is virtually non-existent, with the general understanding that only the Catholic Church uses it.
Even this is a mistake, as the Catholic Bible, The Douay-Rhimes, does not contain all of the Books of the Apocrypha foundin the original King James Bible. Here is a comparison:
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The King James |
The Douay-Rhimes |
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1st Esdras Not in the Douay-Rhimes Add to Esther |
1st Esdras Not in the King James Abdias |
One would be hard-pressed to find any members of the clergy even aware that these books were ever included in the King James Bible. There are 155,683 words, and over 5,700 verses contained in 168 chapters now missing from the King James translation of the Bible due to the exclusion of the Apocrypha.
Although this only happened just over a hundred years ago, their existence as fully accepted scripture is virtually unknown. The only reason any knowledgeable Protestant can find for the books of the Apocrypha being absent from the Bible is that they are not in the Bible. Some think they are not in the King James Bible because they are in the Catholic Bible, which is a moot point because most of the books in the King James Bible are also in the Catholic Bible. Still others declare them worthless despite never having read a single sentence from one of them.
A History of Inclusion
A clear history exists of the inclusion of the books called the Apocrypha in the King James Bible and their presence long before that translation:
● “In 405 Pope Innocent I embodied a list of canonical books in a letter addressed to Exsuperius, bishop of Toulouse; it too included the Apocrypha. The Sixth Council of Carthage (419) Re-enacted the ruling of the Third Council, again with the inclusion of the apocryphal books… “The Sixth Council of Carthage repromulgated in Canon 24 the resolution of the Third Council regarding the canon of scripture, and added a note directing that the resolution be sent to the bishop of Rome (Boniface I) and other bishops: ‘Let this be made known also to our brother and fellow-priest Boniface, or to other bishops of those parts, for the purpose of confirming that Canon [Canon 47 of the Third Council], because we have received from our fathers that these are the books which are to be read in church.’” (The Canon On Scripture, F. F. Bruce)
● In the year 1615 Archbishop Gorge Abbott, a High Commission Court member and one of the original of the 1611 translators, “forbade anyone to issue a Bible without the Apocrypha on pain of one year’s imprisonment”
● “It should be observed that the Old Testament thus admitted as authoritative in the Church was somewhat bulkier and more comprehensive than the [Protestant Old Testament] . . . It always included, though with varying degrees of recognition, the so-called Apocrypha or Deutero-canonical books.
● The use made of the Apocrypha by Tertullian, Hippolytus, Cyprian and Clement of Alexandria is too frequent for detailed references to be necessary” (Early Christian Doctrines, J. Kelly)
● “The books that follow in order after the Prophets unto the New Testament, are called Apocrypha, that is, books which were not received by a common consent to be read and expounded publicly in the Church, neither yet served to prove any point of Christian religion save in so much as they had the consent of the other scriptures called canonical to confirm the same, or rather whereon they were grounded: but as books proceeding from godly men they were received to be read for the advancement and furtherance of the knowledge of history and for the instruction of godly manners: which books declare that at all times God had an especial care of His Church, and left them not utterly destitute of teachers and means to confirm them in the hope of the promised Messiah, and also witness that those calamities that God sent to his Church were according to his providence, who had both so threatened by his prophets, and so brought it to pass, for the destruction of their enemies and for the trial of his children.” (Geneva Bible, 1560, Preface)
● “The holy ecumenical and general Council of Trent . . . following the example of the orthodox Fathers, receives and venerates all the books of the Old and New Testament . . . and also the traditions pertaining to faith and conduct . . . with an equal sense of devotion and reverence . . . If, however, any one receive not, as sacred and canonical, the said books entire with all their parts, as they have by custom been read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin Vulgate, and knowingly and deliberately rejects the aforesaid traditions, let him be accursed.” (Decree of the Council of Trent in 1546)
● “In the name of Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church. . . And the other books (as Jerome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners: but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine.” (Articles of Religion of the Church of England, 1563, Sixth Article)
● “APOCRYPHA, that is, Books which are not to be esteemed like the Holy Scriptures, and yet which are useful and good to read.” (Luther Bible, 1534)
- Most early Bibles contained the Apocrypha; here are just a few:
1534 Luther’s German translation of the Bible
1534 Coverdale
1537 Thomas Matthew Bible
1539 Taverner
1541 The “Great” or “Cromwell’s” Bible
1551 The “Tyndale/ Matthews” Bible
1560 The Geneva Bible
1568 The Bishops’ Bible
1610 Catholic Old Testament
1611 King James Bible
1615 King James Version Robert Barker at London, England
1625 A King James Version
1717 King George 1st, AKA, The “Vinegar Bible”
1782 The Aitken Bible
1791 The Family Bible
1846 The Illuminated Bible - The Apocrypha are are also contained in the following:
The Septuagint (LXX) – Except II Esdras.
Codex Alexandrinus (A) – Also contains III & IV Maccabees
Codex Vaticanus – Except I & II Maccabees and The defaulter of Manassah
Codex Sinaiticus (Aleph)
Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus – Includes Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus
Chester Beatty Papyri – Fragments of Ecclesiasticus
The Dead Sea Scrolls – Some apocryphal writing was found among the The Writings of Church Fathers - Bibles are still available with Apocrypha:
The Bible: Authorized King James Version with Apocrypha: Published by Oxford University Press; ISBN: 0192835254 (Pub. Date: July 1998)
KJV Standard Reference Edition With Apocrypha: Published by Cambridge Univ Pr (Bibles); ISBN: 0521509467; Slipcase edition (Pub. Date: August 1997)
1611 Edition: a reprint of the 1611 KJV With Apocrypha, Published by Nelson Bible; ISBN: 0840700415; Reissue edition (Pub. Date: June 1, 1982)
King James Version Lectern Edition: Published by Cambridge Univ Pr (Bibles); ISBN: 0521508169; (Pub. Date: March 1998)
The Dake Annotated Reference Bible, Standard Edition: King James Version With Apocrypha, Published by Dake Publishing ISBN: 1558290699 (Pub. Date: April 1996)
A History of Exclusion
There is also a history of attempts to have the Apocryphal books removed from the Bible.
- “The books and treatises which among the Fathers of old are not reckoned to be of like authority with the other books of the Bible, neither are they found in the Canon of Hebrew.” (Coverdale Bible 1535)
- The Synod of the Reformed Church held at Dordrecht in 1618 condemned the Apocrypha.
- “The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the Canon of Scripture; and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings.” (Westminster Confession, 1647)
- The thirty nine Articles of the Church of England in 1562 rejected the canonicityof these apocryphal writings, which the Roman church had proclaimed.
- In 1880 the American Bible Society voted remove the “Apocrypha” Books from the King James Version..
- The “Apocrypha” was officially removed from the English printings of the KJV by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1885 leaving only 66 books.
What is perplexing is the lack of knowledge or even the mention of these books. Surely, 120 years is long time, but not by church standards. One would be hard pressed to find any signifcant doctrine or practice alteration of this magnitude. The “accepted” Bible, the “Authorized King James Version” used by the Protestant churches contains almost 775,000 words and the missing Apocryphal books contain over 155,000. Combined they had a total of over 930,000 words. Considering the entire New Testament contains just over 181,000 words, the exclusion of such a massive amount of scripture rates very high on the magnitude scale.
It could be speculated that the world is fortunate that the “authorities” chose to eliminate only the Apocryphal books. But, where is the line to be drawn? The Protestant Church accepts all the other books King James included in his translation. The Protestant Church included the Apocryphal books in the Bible for almost 300 years. Were they just extra pages, never read, never used in sermons, never considered inspired? Of course not! They were scripture, the inspired word of God given to the authors, just as the 66 books that survived.
The question then must be, when did the inspiration wear off? A rather ridiculous concept, but what are we left with? We find Pope Innocent I, in 405 AD proclaiming that “these are the books which are to be read in church.” This was less than a century after the Emperor Constantine founded the Catholic Church. Therefore, the books were considered part of the Bible from the beginning of modern Bible-based “Christianity”.
A decree from the Council of Trent in 1546 declared that any who “knowingly and deliberately rejects the aforesaid traditions, let him be accursed.” Those traditons included the Apocryphal books. The ‘Preface’ to the Geneva Bible, published in 1560, stated that the Apocryphal books should be considered “as books proceeding from godly men they were received to be read for the advancement and furtherance of the knowledge of history and for the instruction of godly manners”. The Geneva Bible was in wide circulation in the Protestant Church of that day. Archbishop Gorge Abbott, one of the King James Bible translators, “forbade anyone to issue a Bible without the Apocrypha on pain of one year’s imprisonment” in 1615.
In the Original 1611 King James Version, the Protestant translators felt eleven New Testament verses were quotes from “Apocrypha” books, and cross-referenced them in the margin notes as such.
A History of Church Censorship
- The following are excerpts from the Catholic Encyclopedia, Censura Librorum:
“In general, censorship of books is a supervision of the press in order to prevent any abuse of it. In this sense, every lawful authority, whose duty it is to protect its subjects from the ravages of a pernicious press, has the right of exercising censorship of books. This censorship is either ecclesiastical or civil, according as it is practiced by the spiritual or secular authority, and it may be exercised in two ways, viz.: before the printing or publishing of a work, by examining it (censura prævia); and after the printing or publishing, by repressing or prohibiting it (censura repressiva). This is the double meaning of the classical word censura, especially as used in the legislation of the Roman Church. Later on, however, particularly in civil law, censura denoted almost exclusively censura prævia. Wherever the abolition of censorship in past centuries is referred to, only the latter is meant.” - Just following the above statement is an apparent attempt to make church censorship seem mild when compared to what are referred to as the “more severe press-laws”:
“The reverse of censorship is freedom of the press. In all civilized countries, however, that have abrogated the censura prævia, freedom of the press is by no means unlimited. It abuse may, in the worst cases, be condemned and punished according to common law, and the old censorship has nearly everywhere been replaced by more severe press-laws.”
“During the Middle Ages prohibitions of books were far more numerous than in ancient times. Their history is chiefly connected with the names of medieval heretics like Berengarius of Tours, Abelard, John Wyclif, and John Hus. However, especially in the thirteenth and fourteen century, there were also issued prohibitions against various kinds of superstition writings, among them the Talmud and other Jewish books. In this period also, the first decrees about the reading of various translations of the Bible were called forth by the abuses of the Waldenses and Albigensians. What these decrees (e.g., of the synod of Toulouse in 1129, Tarragona in 1234, Oxford in 1408) aimed at was the restriction of Bible-reading in the vernacular.” (Catholic Encyclopedia: Censorship of Books) - Pope Innocent III stated in 1199: “to be reproved are those who translate into French the Gospels, the letters of Paul, the psalter, etc. They are moved by a certain love of Scripture in order to explain them clandestinely and to preach them to one another. The mysteries of the faith are not to explained rashly to anyone. Usually in fact, they cannot be understood by everyone but only by those who are qualified to understand them with informed intelligence. The depth of the divine Scriptures is such that not only the illiterate and uninitiated have difficulty understanding them, but also the educated and the gifted.”
- From the Council of Toulouse of November 1229, which set up a special ecclesiastical tribunal, or court, known as the Inquisition, comes the following edict found in Canon 14:
“We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; unless anyone from motive of devotion should wish to have the Psalter or the Breviary for divine offices or the hours of the blessed Virgin; but we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books.” - From the Council of Tarragona of 1234, Canon 2:
“No one may possess the books of the Old and New Testaments in the Romance language, and if anyone possesses them he must turn them over to the local bishop within eight days after promulgation of this decree, so that they may be burned lest, be he a cleric or a layman, he be suspected until he is cleared of all suspicion.” - In 1408 the Third Synod of Oxford, England, banned unauthorized English translations of the Bible and decreed that possession of English translations had to be approved by diocesan authorities. The Oxford council declared:
“It is dangerous, as St. Jerome declares, to translate the text of Holy Scriptures out of one idiom into another, since it is not easy in translations to preserve exactly the same meaning in all things. We therefore command and ordain that henceforth no one translate the text of Holy Scripture into English or any other language as a book, booklet, or tract, of this kind lately made in the time of the said John Wyclif or since, or that hereafter may be made, either in part or wholly, either publicly or privately, under pain of excommunication, until such translation shall have been approved and allowed by the Provincial Council. He who shall act otherwise let him be punished as an abettor of heresy and error.” - William Tyndale completed a translation of the New Testament from the Greek in 1525, which the Church of England tried to confiscate and burn. After issuing a revised edition in 1535, he was arrested, strangled, and then burned at the stake October of 1536. Ninety percent of the New Testament found in the 1611 King James Bible was taken from Tyndale’s work.
- In 1543, the English parliament forbade the use of any English translations other than the “Great Bible”. Tyndale’s New Testament was specifically prohibited and later Wycliffe’s and Coverdale’s Bibles were also banned. It was decreed a crime for any unlicensed person to read or explain the Scriptures in public. Many copies of Tyndale’s New Testament and Coverdale’s Bible were burned in London, even though the authorized “Great Bible” contained the work of both men.
- In the Index of Trent (Index Librorum Prohibitorum) of 1559, Pope Pius IV compiled a list of the forbidden books and officially prohibited them. This is an excerpt from that Index:Rule IAll books which were condemned prior to 1515 by popes or ecumenical councils, and are not listed in this Index, are to stand condemned in the original fashion.
Rule II
Books of arch-heretics – those who after 1515 have invented or incited heresy or who have been or still are heads and leaders of heretics, such as Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Hubmaier, Schwenckfeld, and the like — whatever their name, title or argumentation — are prohibited without exception. As far as other heretics are concerned, only those books are condemned without exception which deal ex professo with religion. Others will be permitted after Catholic theologians have examined and approved them by the order of bishops and inquisitors. Likewise, Catholic books written by those who subsequently fell into heresy or by those who after their lapse returned into the bosom of the Church can be permitted after approval by a theological faculty or the inquisition.
Rule III
Translations of older works, including the church fathers, made by condemned authors, are permitted if they contain nothing against sound doctrine. However, translations of books of the Old Testament may be allowed by the judgment of bishops for the use of learned and pious men only. These translations are to elucidate the Vulgate so that Sacred Scripture can be understood, but they are not to be considered as a sacred text. Translations of the New Testament made by authors of the first sections in this Index are not to be used at all, since too little usefulness and too much danger attends such reading.
Rule IV
Since experience teaches that, if the reading of the Holy Bible in the vernacular is permitted generally without discrimination, more damage than advantage will result because of the boldness of men, the judgment of bishops and inquisitors is to serve as guide in this regard. Bishops and inquisitors may, in accord with the counsel of the local priest and confessor, allow Catholic translations of the Bible to be read by those of whom they realize that such reading will not lead to the detriment but to the increase of faith and piety. The permission is to be given in writing. Whoever reads or has such a translation in his possession without this permission cannot be absolved from his sins until he has turned in these Bibles.
Rule VI
Books in the vernacular dealing with the controversies between Catholics and the heretics of our time are not to be generally permitted, but are to be handled in the same way as Bible translations. …
- Here it is made obvious that the censorship, specifically of the Apocrypha, started from the very beginning of the Universal Church:
“Thus, in the first Christian centuries, the so-called apocrypha (q.v.) above all other books appeared to the faithful as libri non recipiendi, books which were on no account to be used. The establishment of the Canon of Holy Writ was, therefore, at once an elimination and a censuring of the apocrypha.” The two documents referring to this, both from the latter half of the second century, are the Muratorian Canon (q.v.) and the Apostolic Constitutions (see Hauler, Didascaliæ Apostolorum fragments, Leipzig, 1900, p. 4). (Catholic Encyclopedia: Censorship of Books)
- In a March, 2005 interview with the Milan newspaper Il Giornale, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Archbishop of Genoa, and a close friend of Pope John Paul II, made the following statements on censorship:
“Don’t buy this. Don’t read this because this is rotten food,”
“A lot of novels do good but this book is rotten food … it does harm, not good,”
“It’s impossible to pull the book off shelves of general bookstores … but certainly not selling it in Catholic bookstores would be a good first step,”
“I am happy that a lot of people have been put on the alert and that I have sounded the alarm of vigilance against the spread of this book,”
“I have arrived too late. Millions of copies have been sold. I can’t hope to slow down sales but at least to prompt a critical response,”
| The church has made many statements indicating that censorship has not been a practice of the church since 1966, but just the previously cited statements from one of the highest officers of the church prove this is only rhetoric. There is much more evidence showing a clear history of censorship in the church and this will be covered more clearly in a later edition of this series. |