Origin and history of the books of the Bible, both the canonical and the apocryphal, designed to show what the Bible is not, what it is, and how to use it.

Front matter

Class.. .Qj22iM Book >\S 1

L<o a>i

ORIGIN AND HISTORY

Preface

The purpose of this volume can best be shown by a familiar illustration : I purchase several different parcels of real estate in the city of Hartford, and wish to ascertain the validity of my title to each one of the parcels. I take the deeds to the register's office and there trace each one by itself through all the preceding purchasers till I come to the title derived from the original proprietors. If there is no break in this chain of documentary evidence the title is perfect.

So each one of the books of the New Testament must be traced up to the Apostles, who only had authority to deliver inspired books to the churches. This is what the present volume professes to do. It is a book of authorities and testimonies ; it is the tracing and verifying of title deeds.

But there are some deeds in which the chain is broken before we get to the original proprietors ; there are some which are forgeries and were not given by the men whose names they bear ; and there are others which were given by the persons whose names they bear, but these persons had no authority to make the sales. All such deeds are invalid and confer no title.

These latter deeds represent the apocryphal books. It is proposed to show that every one of the apocryphal books belongs to one of these three classes, to wit: 1. They can not be traced to the apostles ; 2. Some of them are proved to be forgeries ; 3. And others, though genuine, were written by persons who had not apostolic authority to give inspired books to the churches.

In making our investigations we begin with the times of Jerome and Augustin ; because all admit that since that period there have been no changes in the canon, and no authority for any change.

Thus each individual book of the New Testament is shown to stand on its own merits, its own evidence ; and there is a full exposure of the groundlessness of the silly story so often repeated, that certain men got together and voted what should be Bible, and what should not, and that this is the authority on which we receive the books of the Bible as of Divine origin.

This being a book of authorities and testimonies, as has already been said, it must necessarily be, to a considerable extent, made up o^ extracts from the original authors and witnesses. The works from which these extracts are made 3 are not accessible to the

VI PREFACE.

people, or even to the ministers of the church, except in very few cases, and therefore there is an absolute necessity for giving the extracts quite fully, if we would afford to our readers a fair opportunity of making up their own judgment on sufficient grounds. To scholars by profession I recommend the voluminous works of the Church Fathers themselves, and the very copious and judicious selections from them made in the large and elaborate treatises by Lardner and Kirchhofer. I have faithfully endeavored to give a fair specimen of the testimony. To give the whole of it and the arguments arising from it, would be 'to make ten volumes like Lardner instead of one, and place the work entirely beyond the reach of those for whom I intend it. I have not given the strongest testimonies only, but fair specimens of both the strongest and the weakest ; that the reader may see exactly how the matter lies in the original authorities to which I appeal.

The extracts from the apocryphal books are also full and copious ; for these books for the most part are wholly inaccessible to the public generally, and without full extracts I should entirely fail of my object, which is to put into the hands of the common reader ample means of judging between the canonical and the apocryphal. Some of these books are exceedingly interesting. They are the honest endeavors of good Christian men, near the apostolic times ; and the manifest difference between the apostolic writings and theirs, is just the difference between divine inspiration and the unassisted efforts of the human mind at that period and in that class of people. Others of these books are mere fictions, contrived by men more remote from the apostolic period, who had withdrawn into caves and deserts, and who thought that the way to serve God was to have nothing to do with men. Their dreams and sleepy imaginings are just what we might expect under such circumstances ; but how different from the practical common sense and energetic worldly activity of the New Testament !

The style of my book is plain, simple and colloquial, as the purpose in writing it required. I hope it is neither barbarous nor un-grammatical ; for though I make no claims to elegance, I have endeavored to be correct, concise and intelligible.

A similar volume, of about the same size, on the Old Testament, including discussions of some general topics, necessary to a complete view of the whole subject, such as Inspiration, Miracles, the Laws of Interpretation, etc., will be ready early next spring, if Providence permit.

C. E. STOWE.

The Apocryphal Books of the Old Testament and

the reasons for their exclusion from the Canon, 541-583

Chapter First

THE COMMON POPULAR OBJECTIONS TO THE BIBLE AT THE PRESENT DAY. WHAT THE BIBLE IS NOT, WHAT IT IS, AND HOW TO USE IT.

John, v. 39 ; xvii. 17, — Search the Scriptures. Thy "Word is truth.

The Lord Jesus, when talking with the unbelieving Jews, says to them, Search the Scriptures, and when praying to his Heavenly Father, in behalf of his disciples, he says, Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth.

According to these two statements, the Lord Jesus must have considered the Scriptures to be the very best book in the world, both for believers and unbelievers, both for the regenerate and the unregenerate ; he must have regarded them as true ; he must have looked upon the Bible as it then existed, and was afterwards to be enlarged, as the best means of making men good and noble and true ; and he must have thought, that in order to derive benefit from it, men must search, examine, and study it.

Many persons in our day seem to have quite a different opinion of the Bible from that which the Lord Jesus here expresses. A respectable old book enough (they think) considering the times in which its different parts were written, but far behind the civilization of the present day, and it has, on the whole, about as many bad things in it as good ones. Without showing any disrespect to these men we may be permitted to say, so far as personal character is concerned, intellectual or moral, or so far as opportunity of knowledge on this subject is concerned, their mere opinion in regard to the Bible can not be considered, to say the very least, any more worthy of our regard than that of the Lord Jesus.

Let us bring this matter to the test of fact and common sense. These men say, that the Bible is no more inspired than the writings of Homer and Shakespear, and other great men, whom God has fitted to be the instructors of mankind. Well, then, let us try and see. Let us for a while use Homer and Shakespeare instead of the Bible, say night and morning, in our family prayers — when we meet in the house of God for his worship — in the hour of sickness and calamity and distress — at funerals, when all our earthly hopes are blighted, and we lay our dearest friends in the grave — let us then, instead of reading the Bible, take a few passages from Homer and Shakespeare. How long do you think this would last, before we should be glad to get back to our Bible again?

The old gross assaults on the Bible, of the Yoltaire and Paine school have now generally passed by, the book is treated rather respectfully than otherwise by its opponents, and the objections to it are founded mainly on what it is not and what it does not profess to be, rather than on what it is and what it does profess to be. And these objections for the most part are entirely inappropriate, wholly aside from all the facts of the Bible, and from all the claims which it makes for itself. They are just like objecting to a ship because it is not adapted to moving on a railway, or to a locomotive because it can not sail on the sea ; like objecting to an iron foundry because it will not make cloth, or to a cotton factory because it can not manufacture iron. To meet such objections we must consider what the Bible is not as well as what it is, what it does not claim to be, as well as what it does claim to be.

I. The Bible is not an amulet, a charm, a fetish, a thing which by its mere presence without any voluntary agency exerted in connection with it', accomplishes its purpose ; it is not to be used as the believers in witchcraft use a horse-shoe, or the American Indian his medicinebag, or the superstitious Christian his relic or crucifix.

The Bible is not, neither does it claim to be, anything of this kind. It is the principles of the Bible which must be brought into contact with the soul, which must be interwoven with the very texture of our minds, which must be made a part of our moral nature. This is the way and the only way in which it promises to benefit us, in which it has done any good ; and it does not operate by its mere presence like a charm or relic.

The thirsty man in the desert, when he comes to a spring, must drink of it as well as find it, or he perishes with thirst.

Yet men sometimes say, The Bible does no good ; here it has been in the world thousands of years ; and the world is still full of sin and misery, just as it always has been.

In the midst of Christian churches where the Bible is read every day, there are the dishonest, the licentious, the blood-thirsty, and the villainous. True, but are these dishonest, licentious, blood-thirsty, villainous people, in Christian communities, the men who love and read the Bible — or the reverse ? Which are the families generally that rear the industrious, frugal, intelligent, useful citizens ; the families that despise and neglect the Bible, or the families that revere and study it ? Are the men generally who neither believe nor love the Bible, who neither regard nor study it, better men than their neighbors, who believe, love and obey the Bible ? Is the Bible generally a favorite book in grog-shops and gambling houses and brothels ? Is it a book which cheats and swindlers and rogues especially love to study ?

Let us look at this matter in the light of common honesty and common sense. A plague is raging in a city, and a benevolent physician discovers a remedy, which, if taken according to the prescription, infallibly cures ; all who take it and follow the prescriptions escape death from the plague. But some refuse to take the medicine ; others take it and do not follow the prescriptions, and these sicken and die. Now, says the objector, see, that medicine does no good — people die of the plague just as they did before ! True, but who die ? they who take the remedy, or they who refuse or neglect it ? There is the test as you well know. Now try the Bible by that test and your objection is answered. Contrast any nation, any people, any community, that has and reverences and uses the Bible, with any nation, people or community that has it not, or refuses to put it to its proper use, and see the difference. However prejudiced you may be, you can not shut your eyes to the plainest of facts.

II. The Bible is not one unbroken chain of books, chapters, and verses, representing one unbroken series of divine utterances from beginning to end.

Look for no such thing as this when reading the Bible, but rather the contrary. The Scriptures were given to men piecemeal, throughout many ages, as God saw the right opportunities — at sundry times and in divers manners — this is what the Bible says of itself; and not all at once, as if you must have bud, blossom and fruit, all in the same hour. The analogy here between nature and the word, as in everything else, holds perfectly. First the blade, then the ear, and after that the full corn in the ear y this is what the Bible says of itself, and this is just what we find it to be. There is but little of external unity in the Bible, it makes no pretensions to any such thing ; you need not be at all shaken by the clamors of those who would make this obvious fact an objection to the authority of the Scriptures. As well might it be objected to the miracles of Christ that they are not given in philosophical order, beginning with the less and going on to the greater, with just so many and only so many of each kind.

The unity of Scripture is not an external, it is an internal, a spiritual unity, the unity of one grand idea running through the wdiole, the idea of reuniting the human soul to God, from whom it has been so sadly broken off by sin ; and that too through a long continued process of sharp conflict and agonizing struggle.

Outside, the Bible is like some of those grand old rural dwellings in England, a congeries of different buildings in every variety of style, the disconnected work of many successive generations ; but within, a perfect harmony of utility and convenience, and all proceeding on one idea.

Warwick Castle, for example, viewed from the outside, is an immense pile, the disjointed work of four or five successive centuries, with every variety of architecture ; but within, the apartments, though each is finished in the style appropriate to its own period, are most nicely adjusted to each other, so as to form suits of rooms perfectly harmonious, and make the whole edifice a convenient and delightful residence. So with the Scriptures, externally a miscellany, or if you please to call it so, a jumble, of different compositions, in different styles, by all sorts of authors, and separated by ages and centuries, yet internally, spiritually, a perfectly harmonious whole. So strong is this internal oneness, that it is even seen on the outside. 4 In the first three chapters of Genesis we have creation, paradise, and the apostacy ; then through all the succeeding books, conflict unspeakable, a protracted, dreadful struggle, till in the last three chapters of Revelations, we have the new creation, paradise regained, the final eternal victory over sin and Satan, and every form of evil.'*

It is no objection to the Bible, considering the uses it was designed to subserve, that it is made up, as the objectors say, of the fragments of Hebrew literature throughout many ages, or even that of some of the books the authors names are not certainly known ; — any more than it is an objection to Warwick Castle, * Archbishop Trench.

that it was not built at one time, by one architect, and in one uniform style of architecture ; or that the names of the different architects of the different portions of it have not all been preserved. The very interest and beauty of the edifice is greatly heightened by this diversity, as every one sees and feels ; and the name of an architect has no essential connection with the perfection of his work ; that stands on its own foundation, name or no name. All this is literally true of the Bible ; it is vastly more interesting, more beautiful, more adapted to the use of mankind, as it is, than it could be if it had been one compact, uniform treatise ; and the book of Job is just as interesting a book as it would have been if it were certainly known whether the name of the author should be written with two or three syllables instead of one, whether we should call him Job, or Moses, or Elihu. When we have a statute book issued by the authority of our government, w^e do not need to have the name of each one of the original engrossing clerks signed to each individual enactment, to give it authority ; enough that the whole book, as it stands before us, has been properly authenticated ; and this we claim has been done in respect to the Bible.

III. The Bible is not given to us in any celestial or superhuman language. If it had been it would, have been of no use to us, for every book intended for men must be given to them in the language of men. But every human language is of necessity, and. from the very nature of the case, an imperfect language. No human language has exactly one word, and only one for each distinct idea. In every known.

language the same word is used to indicate different things, and different words are used to indicate the same thing. In every human language each word has more than one meaning, and each thing has generally more. than one name.

The boy is learning his letters — the merchant is writing his letters — Dr. Johnson was a man of letters. In these three sentences the same word letters is used to designate three perfectly distinct and most widely divergent things — yet nobody mistakes, or nobody need mistake, for the connection in each case shows the meaning. How many different names there are to designate that one thing, a boat. In every known language words are sometimes used in a figurative sense and not always in their literal signification. In the first stanza of Grey's Ode on Spring, there are no less than eight words used in their figurative instead of their literal sense. Yet who mistakes ?

u Lo, where the rosy-bosomed Hours

Fair Venus' train appear, Disclose the long-expecting flowers

And wake the purple year !

The Attic warbler pours her throat Responsive to the cuckoo's note, The untaught harmony of Spring : While, whispering pleasure as they fly, Cool zephyrs through the clear blue sky

In all these cases men can mistake if they choose. They can make the metaphorical literal, and the literal metaphorical, they can confound the equivocal, and confuse the synonymous, if they will be perverse and unfair ; and they can understand aright if they desire to. All this is as true of the Bible as of any other book, and no more so.

Moreover, human minds are unlike in the impressions which they receive from the same word ; and it is certain that one man seldom gives to another, of different temperament, education, and habits of thought, by language, exactly the same idea, with the same shape and color, as that which lies in his own mind ; yet, if men are honest and right-minded they can come near enough to each other's meaning for all purposes of practical utility.

Here comes in the objection that the Bible can be made to mean everything and anything, all sects build upon it, the most diverse doctrines are derived from it.

This infelicity it shares with everything else that has to be expressed in human language. This is owing to the imperfection, the necessary imperfection of human language, and to the infirmity and the perverse ingenuity also of the human mind. It is not anything peculiar to the Bible. Hear two opposing lawyers argue a point of statute law in its application to a particular case. Hear two opposing politicians make their diverse arguments in reference to the true intent and force of a particular clause in the United States Constitution. Is there not here as wide room for diversity of opinion and opposition of reasoning, as in regard to the meaning of any text of Scripture, or the correctness of any point of theology ? Yet these laws and constitutions are made in our own language, and our own time, while the Bible comes to us from a remote age and in foreign tongues. Enough, that the Bible can be understood, if honestly studied, as well as any ■ 2 constitution or any body of statutes can be understood. This much is sufficient for all practical purposes, and it is for practical purposes only that the Bible was given.

Yet prepossessions, prejudices and passions come in so plentifully to darken and confuse men's minds, when they are reading the Bible. He opened their understandings that they might understand the Scriptures. Men in these times need to have their understandings both opened and straightened out, that they may understand the Scriptures.

IV. The Bible is not a specimen of God's skill as a writer, showing us God's mode of thought, giving us God's logic, and God's rhetoric, and God's style of historic narration. How often do we see men seeking ■out isolated passages of Scripture, and triumphantly saying that such expressions are unworthy of God, and could not have proceeded from Him. They are unskillful, the mode of thought is faulty, they are illogical, in bad taste, the reasoning is not conclusive, the narrative is liable to exception. God has not put himself on trial before us in that way in the Bible, any more than He has in the creation — any more than He has promised that the Bible shall always be printed for us on the best of paper, with the best of type, and perfect freedom from typographical errors, and that •after it is printed, it shall never be torn, nor soiled, nor any leaf lost : or that apostles and preachers shall be regularly handsome, men of fine forms and beautiful faces, and faultless elocution. It is always to be Temembered that the writers of the Bible were ' God's penmen, and not God's pens.'*

* Reply to Essays and Reviews.

It is not the words of the Bible that were inspired, it is not the thoughts of the Bible that were inspired ; it is the men who wrote the Bible that were inspired. Inspiration acts not on the man's words, not on the man's thoughts, but on the man himself; so that he, by his own spontaneity, under the impulse of the Holy Ghost, conceives certain thoughts and gives utterance to them in ce;tain words, both the words and the thoughts receiving the peculiar impress of the mind which conceived and uttered them, and being in fact just as really his own, as they could have been if there had been no inspiration at all in the case. The birth and nature of Christ afford an exact illustration. The Holy Infant in the womb of the Virgin, though begotten of God directly without any human father, (as it was said, the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee), — this infant lived by his mother's life, and grew by the mother's growth, and partook of the mother's nature, and was just as much her child as he could have been if Joseph had been his father, the human and the divine in most intimate and inseparable conjunction. It is this very fact of the commingled and inseparable union of the human and divine, which constitutes the utility, which makes out the adaptedness to the wants of men, both of the incarnation of Christ and of the gift of the word. Inspiration generally is a purifying, and an elevation, and an intensification of the human intellect subjectively, rather than an objective suggestion and communication ; though suggestion and communication are not excluded.

The Divine mind is, as it were, so diffused through the human, and the human mind is so interpenetrated with the Divine, that for the time being the utterances of the man are the word of God.

Moreover, should we admit the facts in this objection to be just what the objector assumes them to be ; even then they would only show the exact analogy between nature and the Bible, and thus prove, as far as analogy can prove anything, that they are both from the same author. Nature, as well as the Bible, has its useful things, and its good and beautiful things ; and nature, as well as the Bible, and even to a much greater extent, has that which to our eyes may seem mean, ugly and useless. Why not apply to nature the same kind of criticism which you apply to the Bible, and say of some of the annoying creatures which you find on land, or of some of the queer looking animals which come out of the sea: u God never made such a looking thing as that — so odd, so out of all taste, so disagreeable, so useless." Why is not creation as well as the word fairly open to this kind of criticism? Certainly it is just as well grounded in the one case as in the other, and so far as facts go, the creation stands at quite a disadvantage in this particular by the side of the Bible. I see no way to avert the force of this consideration, unless we affirm with the Magi of old that God created the horses and the cows and the nightingales, and the Devil made the hyenas and the hornets and the canker-worms. Could not the old Magian press the believers in one only Creator with the same argument which unbelievers now urge against the Bible, and with a much fairer show of justice ? God knows, if we do not, what He made every creature for, for everything He has made He has a use ; and so it is with every sentence in the Bible ; every paragraph has its own appropriate use, and will at some time or other come into appropriate play — or at least, how can you prove that it is not so, so as to derive from this source an argument against the Bible ? Example — the book of Jonah — Paul's cloak and parchment.

And here may properly be considered an objection derived from certain alleged wrongs and immoralities income parts of Scripture.

1. Some of these are just such wrongs as we find in nature, such as the destruction of people by hostile armies instead of famine or pestilence, fire or storm — making the innocent suffer for the sins of the guilty; — visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, even to the third and fourth generation, etc. All this happens every day, both in nature and Providence.

2. Others are not immoralities at all : the manners and social condition of ancient times were quite diverse from ours, and the alleged difficulty arises wholly from bringing the unsuspecting innocence of childhood in collision with the fastidious depravity of maturer years.

3. A true account of the ancient misdeeds of men otherwise good and holy, is not necessarily immoral or of immoral tendency. This depends wholly on the spirit and purpose of the narrative. A divine revelation must be true to facts, and give a strictly accurate view of human nature, and not a false or even a flattering one.

4. A revelation is designedly progressive, and morally progressive, as well as intellectually and religiously, socially and politically, as it must be if accountable men and not creatures merely passive, are to be trained, freely and not compulsively, from the infancy of the race to its maturity ; — and we have not and do not pretend to have the perfection of morals till we have perfection of revelation in the New Testament. The New Testament itself says, that the lata made nothing 'perfect hut the bringing in of a better hope did. — Heb. vii. 19. And there is verily a disannulling of the commandment going before, for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof

V. The Bible does not consist of systematic discourses, either on theology, or on morals, or on history, or on any other topic.

Do not expect the Bible to be like regularly planned and carefully written sermons ; if you do you will never understand it or get much good from it. Take any of the finished sermons of Jeremy Taylor or H. Melville, of Dr. Dwight or Dr. Emmons, and lay them side by side with what you find in the Bible, and they are no more like it than the trimmed lawns, and regular paths and formal trees of a gentleman's grounds are like the luxuriant and untouched forests of nature. So far as the form of composition is concerned can you possibly conceive of a greater contrast ? It may be said indeed of the discourses of these great and good men, that they were adapted to their times and to their congregations, and this no doubt is true ; but a much better and grander thing can be said of the discourses in the Bible, to wit: that they are adapted to all times and to all congregations ; and this universal adaptedness depends in no small degree on that very absence of systematic and philosophical structure and arrangement, which is sometimes urged against them as an objection. All men are not philosophers, but all men have impulses; few men are trained to systematic thought, but all are capable of emotion.