Before the Douay-Rheims New Testament was issued, the Geneva Bible was published in 1560 having been translated into English by exiled scholars in John Calvin’s Geneva. Given that a mark of editions of the Bible currently is omission of the apocrypha, one might not expect to find apocrypha in the Geneva Bible, but one would be wrong. The Geneva Bible not only has apocrypha, but it has also more apocryphal books than the Douay-Rheims version.

Paragraph one of the first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith sets forth the necessity of Scripture, if Scripture is necessary then it is essential to know which ancient Judeo-Christian writings combine to make up its content. The Westminster Assembly’s confession answered this question in paragraphs two and three of chapter one.

2. Under the name of Holy Scripture, or the Word of God written, are now contained all the books of the Old and New Testament, which are these:[Listed are the 39 books from Genesis to Malachi and 27 from Matthew to Revelation.] All which are given by inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life.

3. The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of the Scripture, and therefore are of no authority in the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings.

The content of Scripture is known historically as canon, which comes from the Greek kanōn meaning a norm, measure, or standard. J. I. Packer said of canon that,

The use of canon for a list of books that are canonical is secondary and derivative. The church has always known, more or less clearly, that it did not create a canon by discretionary fiat but received the canon that God created for it. The Old Testament canon…came to the church from the hands, as it were, of Christ and the apostles, for whom Christianity’s credentials presupposed the divine authority of the Jewish Scriptures which the Christian facts fulfilled (“Scripture,” New Dictionary of Theology, IVP, 1988).

It might be thought that at some point in history a group of ecclesiastics gathered to examine a collection of textual candidates for inclusion in the canon, they made their selections and compiled the Bible, as Packer put it, by “discretionary fiat,” but this is not the case. Over the centuries various correspondence, ecclesiastical documents, and bound or scrolled collections of biblical books have testified to the canon of books that are inspired and therefore the word of God. The compiling of the canon was a work of providence, not fiat.

Two examples of testimonies to the canonical books will be given as examples. The first is a document by Athanasius from 367 A.D. that lists the biblical books including two books of apocrypha, Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah, with 38 books in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. The missing book in the Old Testament is Esther. By 367 the canon of Scripture was nigh unto the canon of today. The second example was provided by the Fourth General Council at Carthage, 397 A.D., which produced a list of books accepted for reading in worship that includes 38 Old Testament books including Jeremiah and Lamentations as a single book, and 27 New Testament books. Both these lists include apocrypha with Athanasius’s having the two books mentioned and Carthage having six apocryphal books of which neither of Athanasius’s selections is included. Both these sources apart from the apocrypha include essentially the books of the Bible currently held to be canonical.

Packer addressed canonicity further by pointing out that the divine authority of the Old Testament canon was presupposed by Christ and the apostles as they quoted it to show its fulfillment in Christ. Quotes of the Old Testament in the New include passages from 29 of the 39 books according to Archer’s Old Testament Quotations. Old Testament quotations in the New Testament are not always exact copies of the originals, but as the inspired New Testament writers used passages their adjustments of the originals for their purposes became newly inspired scripture. At least by the time of Athanasius’s list, if not sooner, the New Testament canon was set and the Old Testament, plus or minus a book, was set, however, the list of apocrypha was variable.

To answer accusations by Reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin and affirm the historical positions of Catholicism, the papacy held the General Council of Trent in three sessions between the years 1545 and 1563 at Trento in Northern Italy. Trent marks the beginning of the Counter Reformation which extended into the seventeenth century for the purpose of defending Roman Catholic doctrine and making changes to end clerical corruption. Given the emphasis of the Reformers on Scripture it might be expected that Trent would respond to their views and address the canon, which it did.

Read More