'Sacred Writings: The Deuterocanonicals: Your Friend or Foe?' by David Bercot

January 28, 2023 - 3:00 PM

Strength to Strength welcomed David Bercot to explore the books of the Old Testament apocrypha.

These books from the so-called intertestamental period, largely written in Greek, have had a strong influence throughout the history of the church. This extended to Anabaptism in Europe, and significantly was a part of the King James Version of 1611. The Apocryphal books were often printed with the KJV up until about the 19th century.

David explores the history and controversy surrounding these books, and offers a great perspective for our consideration today.

An interactive question-and-answer period follows.

[betawithbrett]

I so appreciate David Bercot. He has had a HUGE impact on my life. I formerly was ICOC, read like you Sam Baer, the Kingdom that Turned the World Upside Down... and it turned my world upside down. I then began, having read that book, to focus so much more on the gospels and the words of Jesus. After over a year of wrestling alone with what I was coming to realize, both from my adulterous spouse (she had been twice married so in that sense) and me being an adulterer, and from my church friends, finally left... both, the marriage and the church. I am still alone to this day and intend to stay this way. Let me say, prior to "the David that turned my world upside down" (haha), I had not know anything about the "Apocrypha". Once I heard David's historical telling of their history, I began reading them and was WOW-ed by their wisdom. I think so many people are so afraid of being MISLED, that they will cling to various sources of TRUTH. This includes KJV only-ism... Hebrew translation of OT only-isim... reject the idea of possibly benefiting and getting closer to God's words by studing the biblical languages... and rejecting Bibles that might use much older NT manuscripts rather than much later ones because of tradition and even demonize the older ones apparently out of fear and believing the slander, not knowing how to validate rumors. We certainly live in a day of information overload and often have trouble knowing who or what to believe. Clinging to TRADITION just gives us comfort, even it there might be errors passed on, it is just easier to believe "God would not allow that" rather than REALLY dig in and invest whatever it takes to get to the bottom of the rumors. David has been one to do that, and I endeavor to do likewise.

Bottom line: the Apostles did NOT hand a canonical list of what is from God and what is phony. Certain writings were circulated over the span of the first century AD and into the 2nd century AD, we have early christians giving testimony. David makes a solid logical defense to know who of them to believe and why. Many of them used what would later be demonized by Jerome (400 AD), a man who became quite prominent in a State Church that was rapidly becoming like what we would think of as Catholic. Jerome called the Apocrypha from Greek meaning "hidden" and did not see them as inspired (I mean the ones in the centuries earlier group of LXX "apocryphal" books). But the 2nd century guys that knew the apostles or knew their disciples, quoted from them. So... hmmmm....?

If we are going to follow the later "Catholics" and even worse, fast forward to Reformation times and beyond, follow the Protestants who reject them, then we are ignoring the earliest evidence of their apostolic use and value by the friends of the apostles in 2nd century and even 3rd century to some degree.

[jonathankinner]

Thank you for this. David has been a tremendous blessing to my faith as well. His use of the word prejudice was a good word choice. I appreciate his willingness to bring the facts of early church history to the table. As a former evangelical pastor, we took for granted the established position of mainstream Christianity. Personally, I have been interested in textual criticism for many years and took a strong stand on the Masoretic text. Ironically, I would have used similar arguments for the Masoretic text that the early church fathers used for the Septuagint. Namely, it's legacy in the church and its use by God. What a great interview!

[carlhenderson]

We have local people in our congregation of the Church of Christ who are for the first time paying attention to and looking at the deuterocohnia writings. And foremost it's a very edifying experience. I have been teaching from them for years but people just thought I was a history buff and knew a lot about church history and Jewish history, when in fact I was just relating what I read in The Maccabees, etc. I see this also going on as a missionary, I have heard teachers / professors talking about things in the interstitial mental period, as if they were history buffs when they could have easily just had their students read TheMaccabees on their own.

[FM-idti]

@Bryant Martin I would highly recommend beginning with the book "The Wisdom of Solomon." Its Messianic prophecies alone are outstanding and personally convinced me to dive more deeply into the deuterocanonical books. I wish you all the best as you study out these valuable works.

[briantrask]

Thank you David for a great talk. That was very informative and I am now happy that I have the Orthodox Study Bible. I wanted to ask you about the books of Enoch and the assumption of Moses which are qouted from in the book of Jude. Would you give these any consideration?

[betawithbrett]

At 29:40 David mentions early Anabaptist quoting in their commentary about the book Sirach, which was written in 2nd century BC by a Jew who had access to the Hebrew scriptures, who was an OT expert. In the Dead Sea Scolls there is a Hebrew manuscript found of Sirach dated to about 100 BC. His son translated it into Greek. So much Jewish wisdom in it.

[betawithbrett]

How did Deutercanonicals lose friendship status to becoming our "foes"? Three steps 23:24

Step 1. 23:38
In 400s AD, Jerome & and his Latin Vulgate translation not using Greek OT LXX but unbelieving Jews OT Masoretic Text MT.

Step 2: 27:07
In 1500s AD, Martin Luther grouped the Deutercanonicals calling them Apocrypha (hidden in Greek) a term Jerome came up with.
declared in his translation Deutercanonicals are good to read and be edified but not used for doctrine.

Step 3: 30:50
In 1826, the British & Foreign Bible Society began printing the KJV Bible without the Deutercanonicals to make a leaner evangelism tool. This caught on and soon Evangelical church's exclusively used these leaner KJV bibles i.e. 66 books rather than 74 books that had always been in the Bibles of the Western churches stretching back to the Council of Carthage 397 AD and beyond.

[betawithbrett]

Q&A 57:00 Dialogue by Justin Martyr with Trypho the Jew... see chapters 70 -72 where Justin points out Jews had excluded certain books and modified the Hebrew.

Tertullian also had a debate with Jews about scriptural corruption... name? maybe ANF volume 2

[MelvinLapp-zqgz]

David, you seem to have left our a lot of crucial information on this subject. Aren't you aware that Melito of Sardis, Origen, and Athanasius give a clear list of the Old Testament canon. Their list is the same as the Hebrew canon and modern Protestant canon.
I agree that the early church fathers quote the deuterocanonical books, but do any of them give a clear list of canonical books with the seven extra books included?
Also, is there any evidence that the original Septuagint contained the apocrypha.

[betawithbrett]

Hey brother David, there is a reasonable amount in the OT about demons. To your statement 48:20.

Some of it is translators' translation choices and some of it manuscripts. Evangelical Dr Michael Heisner has given interesting talks on this.

Justin Martyr quotes his Psalm 96:5 (LXX 95:5) the gods of the nations are idols of demons.

[betawithbrett]

2 Esdras = 2 Ezra
In the 3rd century BC when the Hebrew was translated into another language for the first time, which was Koine Greek, they TRANSLITERATED the way they pronounced every name, like Abraham, Isaac, Isaiah (Esaias in LXX)... into the Greek language attempting to preserve the pronunciation of Hebrew, but limited by the limitations of the Greek alphabet. TransLITERATION is to preserve pronunciation but TransLATION is to preserve meaning when going to another language. So apparently, since the Greek alphabet does have Zeta ζ for a ZEE sound, they Hebrew pronunciation of the day must have been more of an S sound (Esdra) since they did not make use of the Zeta letter but used the Sigma (S) instead. Today, Hebrew uses a Z sound Ezra.
In some canons it is 4th Esdras.

Ancient surviving manuscripts is a challenge for OT more than NT... across the board. Before Dead Sea Scrolls' discovery, we didn't have any Hebrew books older than 10th century AD... AD!!
So because we have no 2 Esdras manuscripts older than 1st century AD, many conclude it was not written by Ezra. This is unfair because if we treated other accepted books this way, our Canon would shrink.