By Giuseppe Monno
The books called deuterocanonical are those books of the Old Testament that were not included in the biblical canon established by the rabbinic Jewish tradition, but which were received and recognized as inspired by the Catholic Church and by the Orthodox Churches. The deuterocanonical books are: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, the First and Second Books of Maccabees, to which are added certain passages of Esther and Daniel that are present in the Greek tradition of the Bible.
With the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, Martin Luther and the other Reformers accepted the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament contained in the Hebrew canon and rejected the seven deuterocanonical books that were instead recognized by the Catholic and Orthodox tradition. Luther did not completely remove these books from his Bible: in his German translation of 1534 he placed them in a separate section entitled “Apocrypha,” accompanying them with the note: “These books are not considered equal to Holy Scripture, but are useful and good to read.” Only in later Protestant editions were these books gradually removed entirely.
The principal reason given by the Reformers was that the deuterocanonical books were not included in the rabbinic Hebrew canon. However, this canon was defined only between the end of the first century and the beginning of the second century A.D., that is, after the birth of Christianity. In the past it was believed that this decision had been taken during a synod held at Jamnia (Yavne), but today many scholars question the very existence of an actual council in that place and believe instead that the definition of the Hebrew canon was the result of a gradual process.
Consequently, when the Reformers of the sixteenth century adopted the rabbinic Hebrew canon, they ended up using as a criterion a canon established within post-Christian Judaism, whereas the early Church had developed within a different biblical tradition.
In the sixth century B.C., the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar II conquered Jerusalem and deported many Jews to Babylon. When the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon in 539 B.C., he issued an edict that allowed the exiles to return to their land and rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem. However, many Jews remained in the regions of the diaspora, settling in various cities of the Mediterranean world, including Alexandria in Egypt, Antioch, and Rome.
After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C., Koine Greek became the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean world. In the Jewish communities of the diaspora, Hebrew gradually fell out of use and was replaced by Greek. For this reason a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures was produced for Greek-speaking Jews.
This translation, known as the Septuagint, takes its name from the tradition according to which it was produced by seventy-two translators. The Septuagint was widely used in the Jewish communities of the diaspora and in Greek-speaking synagogues. It contained not only the books present in the Hebrew canon but also other religious texts circulating within Jewish tradition during the Hellenistic period, including the books today called deuterocanonical.
In the early Church the Septuagint was held in very high regard. The authors of the New Testament frequently quote this version of the Scriptures: in the New Testament there are about three hundred quotations from the Old Testament, and in most cases they correspond to the text of the Septuagint rather than to the Hebrew Masoretic text.
A significant example is found in the Gospel according to Matthew. In Matthew 1:23 the evangelist cites Isaiah 7:14 using the Greek term parthénos (“virgin”), which appears in the Septuagint. In the Hebrew text, however, the term almâ appears, meaning “young woman.” If Matthew had relied exclusively on the Hebrew text, he could have used the Greek term neanis (“young woman”). The choice of parthénos therefore shows dependence on the Greek translation of the Scriptures.
There are also passages in the New Testament that seem to allude directly to the deuterocanonical books. In the Letter to the Hebrews (11:35) we read: “Women received back their dead by resurrection; others were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life.” This passage clearly recalls the martyrdom of the seven brothers and their mother narrated in the Second Book of Maccabees (chapter 7), where the protagonists face death professing their faith in the resurrection of the righteous.
Contrary to what is sometimes claimed, not all the deuterocanonical books were originally composed in Greek. Some of them were probably written in Hebrew or Aramaic. Fragments of texts belonging to the books of Tobit and Sirach have been discovered among the manuscripts found at Qumran near the Dead Sea, demonstrating that these works were already circulating within Jewish circles before the Christian era.
Many Church Fathers also used and regarded the books now called deuterocanonical as authoritative. Among them stands out Saint Augustine, who in the treatise De Doctrina Christiana includes among the canonical books Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, and the books of Maccabees. Saint Augustine also maintained that, in cases of disagreement concerning the canon of Scripture, particular weight should be given to the judgment of the most ancient and authoritative Churches, especially those founded by the apostles.
In the first centuries of Christianity there were some discussions concerning certain biblical books. Among the books of the New Testament that were debated were the Letter to the Hebrews, the Letter of James, the Second Letter of Peter, the Second and Third Letters of John, the Letter of Jude, and the Book of Revelation.
An important ancient document is the so-called Muratorian Fragment, discovered in the eighteenth century by the Italian historian Ludovico Antonio Muratori, which contains one of the earliest lists of the books of the New Testament and bears witness to the process of formation of the Christian canon.
The ecclesiastical historian Eusebius of Caesarea, in the fourth century, reports that some books were still the subject of discussion in the Church, but over time a consensus was gradually reached.
A synod convened in Rome in the year 382 under the pontificate of Pope Damasus established a list of the books considered inspired. This list was later confirmed by the synods of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397 and 419), which recognized as canonical the books that are today present in the Catholic Bible.
The biblical canon of the Catholic Church was finally defined in a solemn manner during the fourth session of the Council of Trent in 1546 with the decree De Canonicis Scripturis, which recognizes as inspired seventy-three books: forty-six of the Old Testament and twenty-seven of the New Testament.
In light of these historical elements, the presence of the deuterocanonical books in the Catholic Bible appears to be in continuity with the tradition of the ancient Church, which used the Septuagint and recognized these books as part of the Scriptures. Their exclusion from the Protestant canon, on the other hand, represents a decision that matured within the context of the sixteenth-century Reformation, based on the adoption of the rabbinic Hebrew canon defined after the apostolic age.