1st November 2025 Question box

OK today’s question is:

How should we approach the deuterocanonical books? Are they helpful, harmful of confusing?

OK, so if you look at a Roman Catholic edition of the bible, you’ll notice that there are a bunch of extra books at the end of the Old Testament, and in some editions in use in the Orthodox church there’s a few more again. Protestants usually call these books the “apocrypha.”

Now, let me preface my answer by admitting that though I’ve read bits & pieces of the apocrypha, I have not read it all. To be honest, I haven’t felt the need to.

These books were generally written during the 400 years between the last events of our Old Testament, and the resurrection of Jesus. And even though many of these books were written after the Old Testament was first translated in to Greek, these books were often included in Greek editions of the Old Testament. For this reason, they were in circulation in the early centuries of Christianity, although not all Christian leaders (e.g. Pope Leo I) thought that these books should be used in church. We should remember that during this time there was a tendency generally in Christianity to keep adding traditions and teachings even after the time of the apostles. It was really the Reformation in the 16th century where these books became controversial. Because the Reformation was a movement to “go back to the sources” and strip away the layers of tradition that had been added to the teaching of the apostles. And so the Reformers asked: well, what bible did Jesus use? And can we go back to that for our Old Testament?

Protestants generally note three reasons why we don’t include the apocrypha in our bibles:

• First, the Jews only include the books which are in our Old Testament.
• Second, Jewish tradition says: “Since the death of the last prophets, Haggai, Zachariah and Malachi, the Holy Spirit departed from Israel; yet they were still able to avail themselves of a daughter of a voice.” (This is from a set of writings known as the Babylonian Talmud.) And so people kept writing books about God, but the Jews themselves didn’t recognise these books as divinely inspired.
• Third, Jesus himself once said: “And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.” (Matthew 23:35) Now we can note that in the Hebrew bible, Abel is the first person to be murdered in Genesis, and Zechariah is the last person to be murdered. And so for Jesus’ point to make sense he must have been using the same bible as the Jews today use.

And so, what should we do with these extra books? Well, treat them like any other book. You don’t need to read them. But you can if you want. If you’re into history, the Maccabees fill in some of the historical gaps, and can help you understand some of the cultural background to the gospels. Some of them are entertaining, like Daniel killing the dragon, I’m not sure it happened: it’s bit a like watching “the Chosen”: someone’s filling out the story a bit.

What we won’t do, is use them in church for our bible readings,
because I’m not convinced that these books are an authoritative source of doctrine.

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This question was originally answered in our evening service on 29 June 2025. I’ll aim to post another question and answer next week. You can read about how our question box works here.