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Tobit or not Tobit
My son gave me a REALLY big “Complete 100-Book Apocrypha” for Christmas. I read a few things there, then bought the very reasonable Kindle version.
Growing up Baptist, I barely knew the Apocrypha existed, other than being told that “it was stuff Catholics added” (turns out it was stuff Protestant sects removed).
Like the positions of most “post-Luther” sects, the answer is more complicated than that. The “canonical” books of the Christian Bible were established by the Council of Rome under Pope Damasus in 382 and affirmed many times.
The Catholic Church considers the “Canon of Augustine” as being “the Bible,” with the Old and New Testaments being the “core,” and the remaining books of the Augustinian Bible being “The Apocrypha” (more accurately, “Deuterocanonical”). If you want to dig a level deeper, here is a link to Augustine’s selections which are the Catholic Bible and considered “important” by LCMS Lutherans (Luther included in his translation).
Having struggled through “City of God,” I believe Augustine is a figure in church history that all denominations desiring to be called Christian need to consider. Sadly, American Protestantism largely ignores nearly all church history. The belief seems to be that the KJV and whatever more recent translations they select are THE Bible, and “history is bunk”. This is somewhat interesting as they are typically all about the LITERAL text with little concern as to how that text came to be. I found this to be interesting on the origin of the KJV.
While the current KJV is considered to be one of the best — if not THE best — translations, it was done (very carefully) by humans, published by humans, and therefore required some revisions due to errors. The following from the “origin” link above is an entertaining example. One word can really matter … as is often the case with “is” in theology and Clintonian legality.
Some errors in subsequent editions have become famous. Perhaps the most notorious example is the so-called “Wicked Bible” (1631), whose byname derives from the omission of “not” in the injunction against adultery in the Ten Commandments (“Thou shalt commit adultery”).
Back to Tobit. It is a short book written somewhat like a novel. It tells the story of a righteous man (Tobit) living in exile in Nineveh, who has a son (Tobias) who needs a wife. He goes on a journey with a “messenger” to Rages of Media where a relative, Raguel, has a daughter, Sarah.
On the way, they stop by the river Tigris and a fish leaps out. The messenger has Tobias cut out the heart, liver and bile. Tobias is informed that in case a demon is encountered, the heart and the liver can be burned, and the smoke will drive the demon away.
Coincidentally, it turns out that Sarah has been married to 7 men, but on their wedding nights they all “perished in the bride chamber”. As Tobias enters the bride’s chamber, realizing it must be a demon that killed the men, he burns incense with the heart and liver of the fish, and in the morning, all is well! The 14-day wedding feast is observed, and Tobias, Sarah and the messenger return to Tobit.
We discover that the “messenger,” Raphael, is one of the seven angels mentioned in Revelation 8:2–6. Sons are born and both Tobit and Tobias live long and prosperous lives!
The message is that if you live righteously as Tobit did, God will send His angel to watch over you, the forces of evil will be defeated, and you will live happily ever after. This doctrine is much more evident in the OT, whereas in the New, Jesus says many times that the more you follow him, the more trouble you will have, but to take heart because he has overcome the world.
Is Tobit “true”? Is Shakespeare “true”? Was the KJV Bible “true” before the errors were fixed, and is it a “true” translation now?
Religion, like life, is not as cut and dried as the more “fundamental” Christians today prefer. But the same Christians tell us that “baptism is only a symbol,” while the Bible they confess to be literally true says in 1 Peter 3:21, “The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ”
To paraphrase Scotty, “I’m a computer scientist, not a theologian!”.
Deciding who will be in Heaven is up to Christ, not me, and I’d argue it’s not up to anyone on Earth to be “the one true church”. Proverbs 22:4 says “Humility is the fear of the Lord; its wages are riches and honor and life.”
Pride is its opposite, and I am among the Christians who believe it is the greatest sin because it was the sin of the Fall. Essentially, “not God’s way but mine”.
The origin of this quote is uncertain, but I fear it often applies to me:
“It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt.”
Published in Religion and Philosophy
I think it is better to say, “Protestants took the Apocrypha back out”. These Jewish writings were not accepted by the Jews as scripture. They were written in Greek, not in Hebrew. It is right to have the Church decide the books of the New Testament because they are Christian writings. The Old Testament was rightly established by the Jews since it was written to them and about them.
There are a few similar verses from Proverbs.
“The prudent keep their knowledge to themselves, but a fool’s heart blurts out folly.” Proverbs 12:23
“Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their tongues.” Proverbs 17:28
Hi.
(All I got time for. Maybe later.)
Yes.
Just read Tobit. Nice coincidence. Or was it???
Interesting post.
A bit off-topic, but if you like fiction, this is a good read:
https://ignatius.com/tobits-dog-tobdp/
This retelling of the biblical story of Tobit, set in North Carolina during the Depression, brings to life in surprising ways the beloved Old Testament characters, including the important but often overlooked family dog.
Ok. I’ll bit.
The dog is only mentioned twice, but is central to the story. Tobias made the journey to Ecbatana and back accompanied by a dog on one side and an angel on the other.
Interesting essay, thanks for sharing. I started taking a look at this after reading your essay. I suspect that if one chose theology as their major you could earn a doctorate on this subject.
Incidentally, I’ve met one of these folks.
That is an over-simplification. There was no established Jewish canon at the time the NT was being written. Here is a good explanation from Jimmy Akin of Catholic Answers:
CHALLENGE
“Scripture says that the Jews were ‘entrusted with the oracles of God’ (Rom. 3:2), so we should look to them for the Old Testament canon. They reject the deuterocanonicals, and so should we.”
DEFENSE
There are multiple problems with this argument.
First, not all Jewish people have the same canon. Falashas (Ethiopian Jews) have a canon including deuterocanonical books. It was rabbinic Jews that Protestants were familiar with in the 1500s, and their canon that the Reformers borrowed.
Second, as we cover elsewhere (see Day 255), there were multiple canonical traditions in the first century. The Pharisee tradition, which gave rise to the canon used by rabbinic Judaism, was only one tradition.
Third, first-century Christians did not use the Pharisee canonical tradition. They used the Septuagint tradition, which they passed on to the early Church (see Day 273).
Fourth, the Pharisee canonical tradition continued to be debated after the split with Christianity.
According to now outdated scholarship, the Pharisee/rabbinical canon was settled around A.D. 90 at the “Council of Jamnia” (“Jab- neh,” “Yavneh”). However, there was no such council. Christians held councils to settle issues; Jews did not. This “council” was actually a Jewish school set up in Yavneh after the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70, and it did not settle the canon of Scripture.
The so-called Council of Jamnia was more in the nature of a school or an academy that sat in Jamnia between the years 75 and 117. There is no evidence of a decision drawing up a list of books. It seems that the canon of the Jewish Scriptures was not definitively fixed before the end of the second century. Scholarly discussion on the status of certain books continued into the third century (Pontifical Biblical Commission, “The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures,” fn. 33).
Although the Jewish people were “entrusted with the oracles of God,” they had not reached a conclusion in Jesus’ day on what books counted as Scripture, and Christians should look to the decision of the Church on this matter—not that of a particular Jewish school, whose canon only solidified later in the Christian age.
The Jewish People and the Old Testament Canon | Catholic Answers Podcasts
I’ve met loads of them, especially when I was considering the various forms of Protestantism when I left atheism and attended a variety of Protestant churches.
My favorite thing about the Book of Tobit is that it contains the Bible’s only positive reference to dogs.
I really don’t get it.
How have I been a baptized Baptist for 33 years, spent 9 years in Baptist universities, been in Baptist churches with combined thousands of Baptists, etc., etc.–and only met one, if there are so many?
I don’t know. I’m not making this up: when I came back to Christianity, I came back with a vengeance, reading a great deal, popular writers such as C.S. Lewis as well as theologians such as St. Augustine and St. Aquinas. I was prejudiced against Catholicism, since I had been raised up in it at a time when the catechesis was absolutely dreadful, and I was convinced it was in error. So I went to a variety of churches, including a Baptist one for a while (Bethlehem Baptist church in Minneapolis, where John Piper was pastor). I think I went to a Presbyterian church at least once, and I think a Methodist one as well. (I had already been to Lutheran services since one of my childhood friends was a Lutheran.) I went to a variety of evangelical churches, even participating in a Bible study at one of them. Because of my reading, I wanted to square the teachings with the early church, but when I asked questions about the history of the various doctrines (and I was already seeing a distressing variety of doctrines, some of which contradicted the doctrines of other Protestant churches), I didn’t get any answers. The leader of the evangelical Bible study I went to was flustered by my questions – she had never heard of the Early Church Fathers, or even of the Nicene Creed. I stopped asking her questions because I didn’t want to put her on the spot – she clearly felt badly that she couldn’t answer my questions, and didn’t know anyone who could that she could point me to. So I asked other people I got to know in these various churches. No one seemed to have any familiarity of the history of the early church at all, and seemed surprised at my interest. Granted, I never did have a private conversation with John Piper – I am sure that he would have been an exception. But that experience, plus the multiplicity of doctrines, forced me to look at Catholicism and get beyond my childhood impression of it.
That was a long time ago, and given the availability of material on the internet, I am sure the situation (at least about knowledge of church history) is better now. When I listen to Protestant/Catholic debates, more often than not, the Protestant is familiar with early Church history and the Early Church Fathers. That pleases me. But I still come across the ignorance. A couple of years ago, I ended a friendship I had had with someone I had known since my teens, because he was a Baptist successionist and believed in the ridiculous “Trail of Blood” fiction by Carroll. He kept throwing this in my face because I am Catholic, and I finally had enough. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that this is historical ignorance at a toxic level. And a few years ago, I had a private student, a Baptist, and she was just as ignorant as what I had encountered many years before. I should add that I never bring up religion or politics with students, but she did, almost from day one, and we spent a fair amount of time in discussion because she threw all kinds of challenges at me: I knew, didn’t I, that Mary had other children with Joseph? I knew, didn’t I, that the Catholic church wasn’t founded until the fourth century? Didn’t I believe in the Rapture? (She meant a pre-trib rapture, as in the “Left Behind” books.) But I don’t think she actually had any historical basis for her opinions, because when I answered her challenges and asked her questions, she wasn’t able to counter anything I said or answer my questions. She simply was parroting what she had been told – she didn’t know anything. One of my closest friends that I’ve known for decades is an evangelical, and she knows nothing of church history or the history of the doctrines she accepts – she is of the “once saved, always saved” variety, but when I asked her about it, she couldn’t tell me why she believed it. (We are dear friends, so I don’t bring it up theology anymore, because I learned years ago it makes her uncomfortable.) Like my student, she only knew what she had been told. I have also encountered a kind of anti-intellectual snobbery by Protestants (usually evangelicals or Baptists) that make it sound as if any interest in church history outside of the Bible is a sign of a lack of love of the Scriptures – why waste your time with that nonsense when you have the Bible? It’s as if they are proud of their ignorance of those things.
The KJV is considered the “best” translation? By whom? Virtually every scholar of note these days considers the ESV to be the most accurate word translation. KJV is great language and poetry, but it was done long before we had a whole lot of sources (e.g., the Dead Sea Scrolls, etc.). Read Dallas Theological Seminary’s Dan Wallace (major scholar on the New Testament) on translations.
Respect for church history is a very good thing- there are a lot of issues cleared up by knowledgeable “tradition” that would otherwise be less clear under sola scriptura– but the Apocrypha are neither centrally important to the faith, nor were they broadly accepted as Scripture in the first and second centuries.
I’ve seen more of some of those things myself!
If it was good enough for the apostles, it should be good enough for us. (I have actually heard that said in all seriousness.)
Oh, that is funny!
Maybe the explanation is that you appear to be in an academic setting. Maybe the kinds of Baptists you are exposed to aren’t representative of the kinds of Protestants one encounters outside of that environment.
That might make some difference in the universities–little or none in the churches.
But the Baptists at DBU were frequently not at all academic, and the academics at Baylor were rarely Baptist.
Now if I were going to critique Protestants I’ve known, well . . . I sure could! At DBU it seemed like a whole lotta Christians were ridiculously shallow in their theology; chapel and worship music were emotionalized and pretty low on substantive content.
Sometimes “oversimplification” is actually a good thing if it is generally true. In fact, your statement “there was no established canon” is poor “oversimplification”. There has never been any “official” established canon in Judaism as far as I know. But that does not mean that there was not a generally recognized “canon”. When Jesus talked to the scribes and Pharisees he referenced the Law and the Prophets. No NT writer ever quotes from the Apocrypha. It does quote all but two or three books of the (Protestant?) OT. Jude does quote the book of Enoch but that is not even part of the Apocrypha.
I said nothing about the Council at Jamnia and I agree with your view of it. I am not sure why you brought it up.
Although the Septuagint was widely used by the early church, the portions that were originally written in Greek rather than Hebrew were not accepted. I will also note that the NT writers frequently used the Septuagint in OT quotations. Augustine argued with Jerome about what text to use for the Vulgate translation of the OT. Augustine wanted the Septuagint but Jerome preferred whatever Hebrew text he had available.
To a certain extent translation can become paraphrase by necessity, to include biblical texts. Memorization of single verses taken out of context is not necessarily theological discernment. Regardless of the differences in denominations there is a common danger in discarding what you don’t want to believe and accepting only what you want to believe when studying the Bible.
I wasn’t intending to bring it up. If you look at what I wrote, you will see that I was copying a Jimmy Akin article that dealt with the subject in general.
Where is the most accurate telling of Truth? In what was written 1700 years ago or through the eyes reading today?
A lot of both, I think.
One of the statements by a former pastor (who intended to go into academic linguistics before he became a parish pastor) that has stuck with me is when he noted that when reading or interpreting Scripture it is often important to know the environment from which a document or recorded words come. A phrase found in a bar or pub or sporting venue might mean something different from the same phrase found in an academic setting. As though translating Scripture isn’t hard enough to begin with.
But even staying in the “original” language is not a complete answer. My former pastor also noted that languages change over time. The same word or phrase in the “same” language today might mean something quite different from what the word or phrase meant a few hundred years ago, or a few thousand years ago. So even reading today Scripture in the “original” language will not necessarily immediately provide a reliable reading of the original meaning. He noted this in particular with the assertion by some Muslims that the Koran be read only in the “authentic” “original” Arabic language. Yet the Arabic language today is quite different from the Arabic language of 1400 years ago, when the Koran was recorded. Even reading the “original”language is somewhat of an interpretation of the original meaning.
My current pastor (also somewhat of an academic nerd) has said that the books of The Apocrypha are sometimes useful to understanding how people of the era read or understood the writings we now include in Scripture.
I liked the dog. As a cat guy, I’ll have to continue reading “Apocryphal”” texts and such in hopes of a cat! My felines claim clear Biblical discrimination. A lot of women scream PATRIARCHY!, but consider the cats! At least women are often mentioned in the Bible … though adnittedly not always positively. I do believe that Mary as mother of God is hard to beat for honor though! Even the Apostles get their share of (deserved) negativity. Mary? Other than Christ addressing her as “woman” (which is apparently a cultural thing not bad like we would see it), she is truly blessed.
I’m not sure I would have survived addressing my mom as “woman” though.
When Jesus addresses Mary as “woman,” he is NOT dissing her. It was respectful in that time and culture. It also has theological significance – He refers to her as the “woman” both at the beginning and end of His ministry. She is the new Eve, the one who said “yes” instead of “no.”
Identifying the key Question is the most important step!
Why is there anything rather than nothing?