What the Canonical and the Apocryphal Scripture Are

LIBER PRIMVS — BOOK ONE

Of Friar Sixtus of Siena, of the Order of Preachers: On the Divine volumes — [being] the FIRST BOOK of the Bibliotheca Sancta (the Holy Library)

The first book of this sacrosanct Library — in which, as the first foundations of the whole work to come, we have laid down the enumeration of all the divine volumes, their order, partition, authority, authors, arguments, and the times of the matters comprehended in them — we wish to be divided into three Sections: ¹ of which the first will contain the holy Scriptures and Writers, of the old as well as of the new testament, placed in the first order of the sacred Canon. The second will review the holy Scriptures and Writers of both testaments pertaining to the second order of the Canon. To the third and last Section we shall relegate the apocryphal Scriptures and Writers, inserted in various places of the old as well as of the new testament — showing all these things, now from the very testimonies of the divine scripture, now from the monuments of the ancient fathers, now from probable arguments, with the utmost fidelity and brevity. But before we expound the order of the proposed partition, the method of teaching seems to require that first of all we explain what the Canonical and the Apocryphal scriptures are, and in what way the Canonical writings of the first and of the second order differ between themselves.

ON THE DIVINE SCRIPTURES AND WRITERS OF THE FIRST ORDER — SECTION ONE

What the Canonical and the Apocryphal scripture, and [their] Writers, are.

The Divine or Canonical scriptures ² (which the Greeks call διαθηκόγραφα, that is, Testamentary writings) are those which, according to the tradition of our forefathers, are believed to have been divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit Himself for our instruction: whose authority is so great, that it is an abomination (nephas) to doubt concerning their trustworthiness. And the Divine and Canonical writers ³ are those who, at the dictation of the divine spirit, wrote the canonical scriptures with such constancy of faithfulness, that not to believe them most firmly is impious. Concerning their venerable authority ⁴ Augustine, writing to Jerome, says this: “I have learned to pay this fear and honor to those writers alone who are called canonical, that I hold most firmly that none of them erred in writing. And if I stumble upon anything in them which seems contrary to the truth, I shall reckon nothing else than either that the codex is faulty, or that the translator has not attained what was said, or that I have by no means understood it — of this I shall have no doubt. But the others I read in such wise that, however much they excel in sanctity or in doctrine, I do not therefore think a thing true because they so judged, but because they were able to persuade me, either through those canonical authors or by probable reasons, that it does not depart from the truth.” Thus far Augustine. ⁵

Moreover, the canonical books of the old as well as of the new testament are distinguished between themselves by two orders: ⁶ of which the one is prior, the other posterior — prior, I say, and posterior not in authority, or certainty, or dignity (for each receives its excellence and its majesty from the same Holy Spirit), but in [the Church’s] cognition [of them], and in time; by which two things it comes about that the one order precedes, the other follows.

The Canonical [books] of the first order, ⁷ which it is convenient to call Protocanonical, are books of undoubted credit; that is, concerning whose authority there was never in the catholic Church any doubt or controversy; but immediately from the beginning of the nascent Church they were received by the common consent of all the orthodox fathers, and taken up for the confirming of the authority of our faith: such as are, in the old Testament, the five books of Moses, and in the new Testament the four gospels, and others like to these, to be numbered in their place.

The Canonical [books] of the second order ⁸ (which of old were called Ecclesiastical, and are now by us termed Deuterocanonical) are those concerning which — because they came to the knowledge of the whole Church not immediately in the very times of the Apostles, but long afterward — opinion among Catholics was at one time wavering. Such are, in the old Testament, the books of Esther, of Tobias, of Judith, and of Baruch; the epistle of Jeremiah; the wisdom of Solomon; Ecclesiasticus; the prayer of Azariah; the Hymn of the three children; the history of Susanna; the history of Bel; the first and second book of the Maccabees. And similarly in the new Testament: the last chapter of Mark; the history in Luke of the bloody Sweat of Christ and of the apparition of the Angel; the history in John of the adulterous woman; the epistle to the Hebrews; the epistle of James; the second epistle of Peter; the second and third epistle of John; the epistle of Jude; the Apocalypse of John; and other books of the same kind — which of old the ancient fathers of the Church held as Apocryphal and not Canonical, and permitted them to be read at first only among the catechumens, not yet capable of the canonical reading (as Athanasius testifies in the Synopsis); then, with time proceeding, they allowed them to be recited among all the faithful (as Rufinus writes in [his exposition of] the Creed), not for the confirmation of dogmas, but solely for the instruction of the people; and, because they were read publicly in the Church, they named them Ecclesiastical ⁹; but at the last they willed that they be taken up among the scriptures of irrefragable authority.

But the Apocryphal — that is, hidden, occult, or doubtful — scriptures are so called in two manners: ¹⁰ either because their author is uncertain, in which manner assuredly it can happen that even some of the canonical books are “Apocryphal,” ¹¹ since it is not altogether certain and ascertained to the Church which of men was their scribe, although she believes most certainly that their author was the Holy Spirit; or they are called Apocryphal for another reason ¹² — that is, of hidden, unknown, uncertain, and obscure authority — because the ecclesiastical fathers did not know with certainty, nor dared to define, whether they were composed by their writers under the breathing [inspiration] of the Holy Spirit; and for this cause they willed not that they be brought forward for the confirmation of the dogmas of the Christian faith, nor be read publicly in the Church for the edification of the people and pronounced in the temples, but permitted them to be read only privately and at home. Such are the third and fourth books of Esdras; the third and fourth book of the Maccabees; likewise the

[manuscript margin note of the Spanish censor beside this last paragraph: “These appendices … are canonical, and by no means to be reckoned among the apocryphal scriptures, according to the decree of the Council of Trent, Session 4.”]

Appendix of the book of Esther; the Appendix of the book of Job; the Appendix of the psalter; the Appendix of Paralipomenon; and the scriptures akin to these, which we have put off to the third Section. The name of “apocryphal” is also wont, in the pontifical decrees, to be transferred at times to the interdicted and utterly condemned writings of heretics; ¹³ but of this signification we make no use for the present, precisely because we believe that in the vulgate Bibles of the catholics there is no part which the apostolic Church has either pronounced heretical or interdicted to christians. Since, then, the whole body of the Bible as it now stands among catholics is distinguished by a threefold difference of books — namely the canonical of the first order, the canonical of the second order, and the apocryphal — ¹⁴ we shall begin from the enumeration and manifold partition of the canonical volumes of the first order which are contained in the old Testament, as well among us as among the Hebrews; intending afterward to do the like for the books of the first order which the scripture of the new Testament embraces.

On the various reckonings of the Canonical books of the old Testament, which are placed in the first order of the sacred canon.

The volumes of the first order, which alone are held in authority among the Hebrews, ¹⁵ the Jews are wont to reckon up with a threefold variety of numbers. Some — among whom are Josephus and Philo — reckon the sacred books according to the number of the Hebrew letters: ¹⁶ so that, just as among the Hebrews there are twenty-two letters, by which all things that can be said and written are comprehended, so there should be twenty-two volumes in which are contained all things that can be known and declared concerning divine matters. This enumeration, among the Christians, Origen, Epiphanius, Gregory the Theologian, Jerome, and Rufinus have followed. ¹⁷ Others of the Jews — of whose number are Aben Ezra and David Kimchi — count twenty-four books of the old testament, ¹⁸ according to the same number of letters, the letter Iod being nevertheless thrice repeated, in honor of the divine name; for the Jews are accustomed to write that four-lettered name of God — which among them it is an abomination, for reverence of God, to utter with tongue and voice — with the letter Iod tripled, after the Chaldaic manner, in this fashion: ייי. ¹⁹ This partition some of the ancient Greeks took up, because it agreed most aptly with the number of the twenty-four Greek letters; and very many of the Latins, ancient as well as more recent, embraced it with equal zeal, having regard to that mystic number of the twenty-four elders whom John brought forward in the Apocalypse — adoring the Lamb that opens the book sealed with seven seals, which no one could open, neither in heaven nor on earth, and crying out: “Worthy art thou, O Lord, to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof.” ²⁰ Again, some of the Hebrews have been accustomed to number twenty-seven books, ²¹ according to the number of the twenty-seven Jewish characters, resulting from the twenty-two simple elements of which the whole Hebrew alphabet consists, and from the five final — or repeated, or double — letters. For there are among the Hebrews five geminate or two-formed letters, ²² which at the end of words are written otherwise than at the beginning and in the middle, namely כ caph, מ mem, נ nun, פ phe, צ zaddi: which at the end of words are noted with these figures — ך caph, ם mem, ן nun, ף phe, ץ zaddi. Of these three reckonings the examples are these: