EARLY CHURCH WRITINGS
I.
INTRODUCTION
NONCANONICAL WRITINGS FROM THE
OLD TESTAMENT ERA
Charles P.
Poole, Jr.
1. Prefatory Remark
2. Tradition
3. Canon of the New Testament
4. Old Testament Disputed Writings.
5. Canon of the Old Testament.
6. Canonicity of the Deuterocanon
7. Noncanonical OT
Books (Pseudepigrapha)
8. Books of Adam and Eve.
9. Secrets of Enoch
10. Psalms
and Odes of Solomon
11. Letter of
Aristeas
12. Story of Ahikar
13. Books of Maccabees
14.
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
15. Book of
Jubilees and Prayer of Manasseh
16. Old
Testament References in the New Testament
1. Prefatory Remark
The
object of this short course is to survey the religious literature of the first
three centuries of the Christian Era, from the time of
the Apostles until the Council of Nicaea which was
held in the year 325 AD. During January
and February of last year we surveyed the literature of the Old Testament (OT)
in four sessions, and during September and October we surveyed the literature
of the New
Testament (NT) in five sessions. This
short course constitutes a sequel to, or more accurately a continuation of, the
account of the development of God’s Church through time. The present lecture begins with some
introductory remarks, and then focuses on the writings that concern events
prior to, or were written before, the time of Christ.
2. Tradition
We
learned in our early catechism days that the beliefs of the Church come from
Scripture and Tradition. Martin Luther
accepted only the first of these two criteria, with his emphasis on sola scriptura -
scripture alone. It will become clear
from the facts presented in these discussions that the beliefs that both
Catholics and Protestants jointly profess when they say the Apostles Creed or
the Nicene Creed are based firmly on both Scripture and Tradition. Many of these creedal beliefs come directly
from Scripture, while others are based on Tradition.
The
Catechism of the Catholic Church (
“What
Christ entrusted to the Apostles, they in turn handed on by
their preaching and writing,
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,
to all generations, until God comes in glory.”
“Sacred Tradition and Sacred
Scripture make up a single sacred
deposit of the Word of God, in which, as in a mirror, the
Pilgrim
Church
contemplates God, the source of all her riches.”
Much of what we know from Tradition has is found in
the consensus of the writings of popes, patriarchs, and other leaders and
teachers of the first few centuries of Christianity, men whom we designate as
Fathers of the Church. In the Glossary
of the second edition of the catechism the Fathers of the Church are defined as
“Church
teachers and writers of the early centuries whose teachings
are a witness to the Tradition of the Church (Sect. 78,
688).”
In these classes we will encounter some of the
earliest of the Fathers, and discuss what they teach us.
There
were a large number of writers in the early Church, and many documents have
come down to us. There is a great
variety of types of writings that have survived. Those written by the Church Fathers are, for
the most part, authentic and orthodox.
Others, written by misguided individuals ranging from some with an
overactive imagination to actual heretics, proclaim teachings at variance with
our beliefs. It is the Magisterium, or the teaching authority of the Church, which
many centuries ago decided which writings were authentic, and which were
not. We will comment on various types of
these early writings.
3. Canon of the New Testament
The
Sacred Scriptures came down to us in the form of manuscripts written on scrolls
of papyrus or sheets of vellum sewn together to form a book called a codex, as
was explained in the first New Testament discussion last October 6. There are
five codices in existence
that contain either the entire New Testament, or the majority of
it. Two of them date from the fourth
century: Codex Vaticanus
(B) at the
In
addition to the Old and New Testaments, Codex ! contained the manuscripts
of the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas,
and Codex A contained the first and second Epistles of Clement, and the Songs
of Solomon. The inclusion of these five
early writings in such important codices made many in the early Church conclude
that they belonged in the official Canon of the Scriptures. The History of the Church, published in 324
AD by Eusebius of Caesarea, the Father of Church History, contains an appendix
which lists a) 21 recognized books, 20 of the present NT books plus 1 Clement,
b) the 7 disputed books Hebrews, James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and
Revelation, and also c) 14 rejected
books, namely the Epistle of Barnabas,
the Shepherd of Hermas, the second Epistle of
Clement, the Gospels of the Hebrews,
Matthias, Peter, and Thomas, and the Acts of Andrew, John, and Peter and
Paul, the Preaching and the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Teachings of the
Apostles. The Muratorian
Canon, discovered by L. A. Muratori at Milan in
1780, most probably originally dates
from the latter half of the second century, and it includes 22 of the
present 27 NT books, all but Hebrews,
James, 1 and 2 Peter, and 3 John. In
addition it assigned to the canon the Wisdom of Solomon and the Apocalypse of
Peter. Origen
of Carthage and Athanasius of Alexandria also
proposed Canons. Thus for several
centuries the content of what constituted the actual New Testament was in doubt,
with some Fathers of the Church favoring a shorter canon, and others a longer
one. The Athanasian
Canon of 27 books that we accept today was officially established and endorsed
by the North African Synods of Hippo 393 AD, Carthage
4. Old Testament Disputed
Writings.
We
explained in the first discussion of the Old Testament in January of last year
that at the time of Christ there were two versions of the Old Testament in
circulation, the Masoretic text in Hebrew and the
Septuagint or LXX version in Greek. The
LXX contained the books Tobit, Sirach
(formerly called Ecclesiasticus), Judith, Baruch,
Wisdom, first and second Maccabees, and parts of
Esther and Daniel that were not present in the Hebrew original. The Protestants
call these extra books the apocrypha, and Catholics refer to them as forming the deuterocanon
or second canon. In this class we will
discuss additional ancient books sometimes called the Lost Books of the Old
Testament which never made it into the OT canon. These have been traditionally called
apocryphal by Catholics, and pseudepigraphical by
Protestants to distinguish them from the deuterocanonical
books.
In
the nest lecture we will discuss gospels, epistles, acts of
the apostles. and apocalypses (i.e.
revelations) that never became accepted as canonical NT scriptures, and these
are referred to as the apocrypha of the New Testament. Thus the extra books not admitted into the
canon are called apocrypha when they are New Testament types,
and pseudepigrapha when they are Old Testament
types. These two plural words have the
respective singular forms apocryphon and pseudepigraphon that are rarely used. All this probably seems like a horribly
confusing terminology.
5. Canon of the Old Testament.
From
the Jewish viewpoint the Old Testament had not been closed yet at the time of
Christ and during the apostolic age. The
Old Testament was not composed at a single point of time, but underwent a
gradual development lasting hundreds of years. The contents of the first five
books called the Torah, the Law, or the Pentateuch,
became officially determined at about 400 BC, and the official canon of what
the Jewish people call the Prophets was established about 200 BC. The remaining
books called the Writings were fewer in number in the Hebrew Masoretic version of the Old Testament that was widely used
in
Since
the Christian Church had disassociated itself from the Jewish religion and its
adherents were largely Greek speaking they used the Greek Septuagint version as their
scriptures, and the Deuterocanonical books were
accepted as inspired like the remainder of the Old Testament. At the time of the Reformation the
Protestants decided to adopt the shorter Jewish version of the Old Testament as
their official canon, so they rejected the inspiration of the Deuterocanon. In the
next section we will present arguments in support of the Catholic
position.
The writers of the New Testament were mainly
Greek speaking, and they wrote their gospels and epistles in Greek. Only Matthew might have been an exception,
since his Gospel may have been written originally in Aramaic, the language
spoken by Jesus, but no Aramaic manuscripts are extant. Since the evangelists were writing in Greek,
it was only natural that they would quote the Greek Septuagint when they made
reference to Old Testament prophesies and events. This would save them the trouble of
translating, or having someone else translate, the
quotations from Hebrew into Greek. In
the Gospel of Matthew, for example, the United Bible Society booklet “Old
Testament Quotations”, edited by Robert G. Bratcher, lists 61 references to the
Old Testament in the Gospel of Matthew.
Twenty seven of them are citations or direct quotes, five are
paraphrases, and 22 are allusions. The
direct quotations from the Septuagint are, of course, easily identifiable, but
the sources of the paraphrases and allusions are not always evident.
I
used data from the Bratcher booklet, and a direct comparison of Greek texts (I
do not know any Hebrew), to conclude that 27 of the citations are from the
Greek Septuagint, two are from the Hebrew Masoretic
text, and two could be from either one.
Since the inspired writers of the New Testament obtained their
quotations from the Septuagint version it is clear, that they considered that
version as inspired, and by implication the Deuterocanon
was also considered as inspired. In
addition there are references in the Gospel of Matthew from the following Deuterocanonical books: 2 from Judith, 7 from Tobit, 6 from Wisdom, 24 from Sirach,
6 from 1 Maccabees, and 2 from 2 Maccabees.
The Deuterocanonical books are extensively quoted in the
overall New Testament. The number of
citations, paraphrases and allusions from the Deuterocanon in the NT are as follows: 13 from
Judith, 29 from Tobit, 107 from Wisdom, 109 from Sirach, 22 from 1 Maccabees, and
36 from 2 Maccabees.
This shows the high esteem in which the evangelists held these
books. By way of comparison Genesis is
quoted 134 times, Jeremiah is quoted 157 times, and the Psalms are quoted over
300 times in the New Testament.
7. Noncanonical OT
Books (Pseudepigrapha)
In
1980 Crown Publishers published a book entitled The Forgotten Books of Eden, with the subtitle Lost Books of the Old Testament.
It was a reprint of a 1927 edition.
This work contains the texts of some of the books called pseudepigrapha that never made it into the canon of the Old
Testament scriptures. Other pseudepigrapha not
included in the Lost Books of the Old
Testament are The Book of Jubilees, The Martyrdom of Isaiah, Susanna, the
Epistle of Jeremiah, four books of Enoch, 3 Maccabees,
The Fourth Book of Esdras, The Assumption of Moses,
and the Apocalypse of Baruch. Most these books were
written during the period between the closing of the canon of the Prophetical
books of the Old Testament, 200 BC, and the closing of the canon of the
remaining Old Testament books called the Writings in 100 AD. These centuries corresponded to the
successive Greek, Hasmonaean, and Roman periods of
rule in
The pseudepigrapha are mainly Jewish writings, but during
apostolic times this collection was enlarged by Christians who added to the
Book of Enoch, the Odes of Solomon, and
the Ascension of Isaias. These various books under discussion
influenced both Jewish and Christian thinking during the Apostolic Age. We will proceed to discuss the contents of
some of them.
8. Books of Adam and Eve.
The
First Book of Adam and Eve is also called the Conflict
of Adam and Eve with Satan. It discusses
the careers of Adam and Eve after God expelled them from the Garden and
commanded them to dwell in a cave in a rock, called the
The
first 72 chapters of the First Book of
Adam and Eve, in addition to presenting these prophesies, recount various trials and temptations of
Adam and Eve, and Satan’s repeated apparitions to them. The final four chapters describe the marriage
of Adam and Eve, the birth of Cain and his sister Luluwa, the birth of son
Abel and the daughter Aklia, and finally the murder
of Abel by his elder brother, Cain.
The Second Book of Adam
and Eve is only about a third as long as the first. It begins with the grief over the death of
Abel, his burial, and 140 days of mourning. Eight years later Eve gave birth to
her fifth child Seth who later married his sister Aklia,
and subsequently Adam lived to see grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The descendants of Seth fell into evil ways,
Enoch, the father of Methuselah, was taken up to heaven, and only three
righteous men remained on earth, namely Methuselah, his son Lamech,
and his grandson Noah. The coming of the
flood was predicted.
9. Secrets of Enoch
The
book begins with Enoch having a vision of two men who told him how that day he
would be taken up to heaven, and urging him to report this to his three
sons Mathusal
(Methuselah), Regim and Gaidad. Then the angels took him up to the first
heaven and showed him the treasure houses of snow and dew. At the second heaven he saw darkness where
the apostates, who had disobeyed God’s commands, were continually
tortured. At the third heaven he saw
the paradise prepared for the righteous, and the hell prepared for the doers of
evil. At the fourth heaven he witnessed the
passages of the sun, the moon, and the stars, with 15 myriads of angels in
attendance by day. At the fifth heaven
he saw the followers of Satan who had rejected God, and at the sixth heaven he
saw the seven bands of good angels, and the archangels who are above the
angels. The angels departed from him at the seventh heaven. At the eighth
heaven he saw the changer of seasons, at the ninth heaven were the homes of
the twelve signs of the zodiac, and at the tenth heaven the Archangel Michael
led him up before the Lord’s face. He
sat down on the Lord’s left with Gabriel.
The
manner of creating the world was explained to Enoch, ending with the creation
of the Garden of Eden. The eighth day
was the first after the creation of the world.
Enoch mentioned the handwritings of Adam, Seth, Enos,
Cainan, Mahaleleel, and Jarad the father of Enoch, and commented on how they had
rejected his commandments and his yoke.
As a result the Lord will bring a deluge on the earth and destroy all
mankind. Then there will arise another
generation long afterwards. Enoch was
sent back to earth and given 30 days to admonish the people that they should
obey the commandments of the Lord.
Several chapters recount how Enoch carried out this mission. The people were urged to endure every wound
for the sake of the Lord, and not to injure widows, orphans, or strangers. Finally after 30 days Enoch again ascended to
heaven, and his sons prepared an altar and sacrificed to the Lord.
10. Psalms and Odes of Solomon
The Psalms of Solomon are 18 war songs related to the
exploits of the Roman general Pompey in
The
Odes of Solomon, in contrast to the Psalms, are 42 beautiful songs of joy and peace, that may have been songs sung by newly baptized first
century Christians. Ode 19 makes
reference to a painless virgin birth “The Spirit opened the womb of the Virgin,
and she received conception and brought forth; the Virgin became a mother with
many mercies.” Ode 24 begins “The dove
fluttered over the Messiah.” Psalm 39
mentions “His footsteps stand firm on the water”, and Ode 41 asserts “The Son
of the Most High appeared in the perfection of His Father.”
11. Letter of Aristeas
Ptolemy
Philadelphus wished to have the world’s biggest
library in Alexandria, as we read in Chap. 1 "Demetrius of Phalerum, the president of the king’s library, has received
vast sums of money for the purpose of collecting together as far as he possibly
could, all the books in the world.” He
then notes “I am told that the laws of the Jews are worth transcribing, and
deserve a place in your library.” He
will trade 100,000 captives for these Laws, as they are now “absent from the
library.” He wishes a translation of the
Hebrew scriptures into Greek made by 72 scholars, six
elders from each tribe, and their tribes and names are enumerated in Chap.
2. This is what became known as the
Septuagint version of the OT. The book
describes royal presents such as an immense table, and the city of
12. Story of Ahikar
This book begins by telling the story of how Ahikar, the Grand Vizier of Sennacherib, has 60 wives, but
is destined to have no son, so he adopts Nadan, the
son of his sister. Chapter 2 provides
the wisdom that Ahikar taught to Nadan
in a series of proverbs concerning many varieties of human conduct. Some examples are: 1) Be content with thy
daily bread and thy goods, and covet not what is another’s; 2) If the rich man eat a snake, they say, it
is by his wisdom, and if a poor man eat it, the people say, from his hunger; 3)
Make not an enemy of a man stronger than thyself; 4) There are four things that
cannot be hidden: the prudent and the foolish, and the rich and the poor; 5) If
thou hast heard a report, spread it not, and if thou hast seen something, tell
it not. When Ahikar
retired and handed over his possessions to his nephew, the nephew reacted with treachery,
tried to do him in, and to have him killed.
Toward the end Ahikar summed up the problem to
Nadan “They made the wolf go to school so that he
might learn to read and they said to him “Say A, B”“ and
he said “Lamb and goat in my belly.” More pointedly: “Thou hast been to me like the scorpion
which, when it strikes on brass, pierces it.”
Nadan shriveled up and died; justice had
triumphed in the end!
13. Books of Maccabees
The first two books of Maccabees
are deutercanonical, and hence belong to the canon of
the Old Testament. The third and fourth
books are not part of the canon. These
four books recount the cruel rule of the
Chapter 6 of 2 Macc
recounts the martyrdom of the aged Eleazar because he
refused to eat the meat of unclean animals (i.e. nonkosher
meat). The next chapter tells how a
mother and her seven sons also refused to eat unclean meat, so they were
tortured and killed one by one, the mother last. Each martyrdom
was witnessed by those who remained.
Seventy five percent of 4 Macc is devoted to
retelling these two stories in great detail, with some embellishment. Chap. 4 asserts “If an old man despised the
torments unto death for righteousness sake it must be admitted that the
Inspired Reason is able to guide the passions.”
This theme is repeated several times, so the fourth book of Maccabees is sometimes called the Supremacy of Reason. This work influenced the Christian practice
of commemorating martyrs, and was cited by many of the Fathers of the
Church. However, despite its influence,
it never made it into the Canon of the Scriptures.
14. Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
The
testaments of the twelve patriarchs are alleged statements made by each of the
twelve sons of Jacob on their death beds.
They each comment on the events of their lives, and make recommendations
to their children about how they should live their lives. These accounts are presented in the order of
the birth of the sons (patriarchs), and in each case the name of the mother is
given. (We read in the 29th
chapter of Genesis how Jacob worked for seven years to obtain the hand of Laban’s beautiful younger daughter Rachel in marriage, only
to be deceived by Laban and spending his wedding
night with the older daughter Leah instead.
Jacob labored for seven more years to obtain his second wife Rachel whom
he loved). Zilpah
was the maid of Leah, and Bilhah was the maid of
Rachel. All four women were living at
the time that the various patriarchs were born.
The
49th chapter of Genesis provides us with Jacob’s Testament in which
he foretells what will happen later in the lives of his sons. Jacob treats Simeon and Levi together with
the same testament, but we separate them in our account. We present excerpts
from the individual testaments of the twelve patriarchs in column 3 of the
following table , and mention in column 2 the earlier
predictions of Jacob. Some paraphrasing
is done to condense this information.
Son &
Mother Testament of Jacob (Gen 49) Testament of Patriarch
Reuben/Leah Reuben, my strength and the I repented of
the seven spirits
first fruit of my manhood; of deceit ...
unruly as water, you shall Love the truth
no longer
excel Let each one
express
love for his brother
Simeon/Leah Simeon,
cursed be your fury I was jealous of
Joseph, sought
so
fierce; I will scatter you to destroy him, then repented
through out
Levi/Leah Levi, cursed be your fury By thee and
so
fierce; I will scatter you Lord appear among men;
through out
priesthood
Judah/Leah Judah is like a lion’s whelp; Love of money leads to idolatry
The scepter shall
never There shall be continuing
wars
depart from
or the mace from him He
will not destroy the
kingdom from my seed forever
Issachar/Leah Issachar is a
rawboned ass, For
the mandrakes I hired
He became a toiling
serf Jacob
to thee for one night;
Keep,
children, the Law of God
Zebulun/Leah Zebulun shall
dwell by the I wept in secret on
account of Joseph;
sea I sailed
along the shores catching fish
Dan/Bilhah Let
Dan be a serpent, a Anger
is an evil thing
horned
viper by the path Love the Lord through
all your life
Naphtali/Bilhah Naphtali
is a hind let loose, Rachel loved me
very much
which brings forth
lovely because I was born on her lap
fawns
Gad/Zilpah Gad
shall be raided by raiders Beware my
children of hatred;
and he shall
raid at their If a man prospereth more than
heels thee do not be vexed
Asher/Zilpah Asher’s
produce is rich, he There are two
ways of good
he shall furnish
dainties and evil, two inclinations
for kings
Joseph/Rachel Joseph is a wild colt,
They let me down into a
pit,
The blessings of
heaven They
sold me into slavery,
may they rest on
the head I was taken into captivity
of Joseph ... the prince I
struggled against a shameless
among his brothers wife
The
Lord doth not forsake
them that fear
him
Benjamin/Rachel Benjamin is a ravenous wolf Rachel my mother died in
mornings
he devours the prey giving me birth
and evenings
distributes My father loved Rachel
dearly
the spoils
Concerning
the third son Levi, the Testament of Jacob says “I will scatter you throughout
Moses and his brother Aaron,
the first high priest, were of the tribe of Levi. Jacob’s Testament said of
Several of these twelve testaments have
references to the coming of the Messiah.
In the Testament of Simeon we read “The Lord shall raise
up from Levi as it were a high priest, and from
15. Book of Jubilees and Prayer
of Manasseh
The Book of Jubilees
has been called Little Genesis, and also the Book of Divisions of Time into
their Jubilees and Weeks. By ancient
tradition a jubilee is 49 years. This
book is a rewriting of the history recounted in the Pentateuch from Genesis 1
to Exodus 14. It omits some offensive
sections, and embellishes others. The
Prayer of Manasseh is
a beautiful psalm 16 verses long which appears as an appendix in the Latin
Vulgate bible.
16. Old Testament References in the New Testament
The
Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine volume tabulates the
number of times the various books of the Old Testament are referred to in the
New Testament. The referrals include
direct citations, paraphrases, and allusions.
This listing is of interest because so many of the references are to deuterocanonical books, and some are even to noncanonical books or pseudepigrapha. Thus even these latter books were known to
the New Testament authors. The last few citations are to secular Greek
authors.
The tabulation of the
references is as follows: Genesis 134,
Exodus 290, Leviticus 97, Numbers 80, Deuteronomy 200, Joshua 32, Judges 32,
Ruth 5, I Samuel 48, II Samuel 37,
I Kings 91, II Kings 47, I Chronicles 30, II Chronicles 21, Ezra 4,
Nehemiah 13, Esther 7, Job 22, Psalms
335, Proverbs 86, Ecclesiastes 12, Canticle of Canticles 2, Isaias
388, Jeremiah 157, Lamentations 7,
Ezekiel 162, Daniel 105, Hosea 51, Joel 17, Amos 19, Obadiah 1, Jonah 18, Micah 15, Nahum 4,
Habakkuk 13, Zephaniah 8, Haggai 5, Zechariah 60, Malachi 19,
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I
wish to thank Mr. L. A. Marsha for a grant which helped to purchase the books
needed to prepare these lecture notes.
I would like to thank Doris Christley for her critical reading of, and her thoughtful comments and recommendations concerning, the first draft of this work.