The attitude of Luther toward the Old Testament Apocrypha was maintained by the Lutheran Churches, whose Confessions do not, however, attempt a more exact definition of the value and authority of the Apocrypha. The earlier Reformed (Calvinistic) Confessions take substantially the same ground: the Ecclesiastical Books, or Apocrypha, are useful, especially for moral instruction, but they have not the same authority as the canonical books, and doctrines may not be deduced from them alone. The Articles of the Church of England (1563; English translation, 1571) agree on this point with the other Reformed Confessions: after enumerating the canonical books "of whose authority there was never any doubt in the Church," the Sixth Article continues: "And the other books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life, and instruction of manners; but yet it doth not apply them to establish any doctrine." A list of such books follows, comprising those commonly printed in the English Bible under the title Apocrypha.
A more radical position was represented by the Synod of Dort (1618) and by the Westminster Assembly (1643). The latter declares: "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 otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings."
In opposition to the Protestant limitation of the canon of the Old Testament to the books of the Hebrew Bible, the Roman Church defined its attitude more sharply. In the Fourth Session of the Council of Trent (1546) it framed a "Decree concerning the Canonical Scripture," in which the books set apart by the Protestants as Apocrypha are included with the rest. The complete contents of the Old Testament in the Catholic Bible as thus defined are as follows: The Five Books of Moses, that is, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; Joshua, Judges, Ruth, four Books of Kings [Samuel, Kings], two Books of Chronicles, 1 and 2 Esdras [Ezra, Nehemiah], Tobit, Judith, Esther, Job, the Psalter of David, containing one hundred and fifty Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Isaiah, Jeremiah with Baruch, Ezekiel, Daniel, the Twelve Minor Prophets, two Books of Maccabees, namely, the First and Second.... "If any man does not accept as sacred and canonical these books, entire, with all their parts, as they have customarily been read in the Catholic Church and are contained in the ancient common Latin edition ... let him be anathema!"
This decree not only affirms that all the books in question are Holy and Canonical Scripture, but seems to put them all in one class, and deliberately to exclude the ancient distinction between the books of the Jewish Bible and the Ecclesiastical Books. Many of the Fathers had, however, made such a distinction, and Catholic scholars, even after Trent, thought it permissible to class the Ecclesiastical Books (which Protestants call the Apocrypha) as "deuterocanonic," meaning not thereby to imply that they are inferior in authority or infallibility or dignity—for both classes owe their excellence to the same Holy Spirit—but that they had attained recognition in the church at a later time than the others. Individuals have sometimes gone farther, and acknowledged a difference in authority: the deuterocanonic books are useful for edification, but not for the proof of doctrines—a position substantially the same as that of the Greek Fathers and of moderate Protestants; but this is plainly against the sense of the decree of Trent.
CHAPTER II
THE OLD TESTAMENT AS A NATIONAL LITERATURE
For the religious apprehension of Jews and Christians the Old Testament is a body of Sacred Scriptures, containing the Word of God as revealed to the chosen people. The revelation was made "at sundry times and in divers manners" through many centuries, that is to say, it has a historical character, an adaptation to the needs or accommodation to the capacities of men, and, from the Christian point of view, makes a progressive disclosure of the divine purpose and plan of salvation. To understand this economy of revelation, or this pedagogic of religion, it is necessary to distinguish the times, and to determine the nature, authorship, and age of the several books or parts of books. The critical questions which lie at the threshold of every historical inquiry arise, therefore, in the study of the Old Testament, and much learning and acumen have been expended upon them, especially in modern times, by scholars of all shades of theological opinion. That there should be wide divergence in their conclusions on many points is not surprising, in view of the difficulty of many of the questions and the insufficiency of the data available for a solution; the same thing is true in other ancient literatures.
A more radical difference exists in the Old Testament, however, because, for many scholars, Catholic and Protestant, the deliverances of the church, or the consent of tradition, or the testimony of the New Testament, or the concurrence of all these, outweighs, in such a matter as the unity and Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, the internal evidence of the books themselves, and makes it their task to show that the evidence which seems to contradict this attribution is, when properly interpreted, compatible with it; while others hold that no external authority and no theory of inspiration can be allowed to countervail the cumulative weight of internal evidence.