Pints With Aquinas - 212: Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger w/ Gary Michuta

Episode Date: June 30, 2020

Ever wonder why Catholic Bibles are bigger than Protestant Bibles? In this new episode of Pints with Aquinas, I interview a genuine expert on the history of the canon of Scripture, Gary Michuta. We talk about issues like: • What is the “Deuterocanon” and why do Protestants call it “apocrypha” • How did Martin Luther justify removing seven books from the Old Testament • Why St. Jerome rejected the Deuterocanon (and why you shouldn’t) • What impact did the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls have on this question of the canon of Scripture? • Are there any New Testament “proofs” for the Deuterocanon  SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints  Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx  CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform Website - mattfradd.com  Facebook - facebook.com/mattfradd/  Twitter - twitter.com/mattfradd 

Hey there, welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd, and today I will be joined around the bar table by Gary Matuda, who wrote a book called Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger. Have you ever wondered that? Why are Catholic Bibles bigger? Why do they have 73 books, whereas the Protestant Bible only has 66 books? Perhaps we could ask it a different way. Why are Protestant Bibles smaller? If you've ever wondered that, if you've wanted to know how to respond to those who object to the fact that Catholics have more books than the Protestant Bible, this is the show for you. Gary Matuta is a nationally known Catholic speaker, author, and apologist. As I say, let me show you this book so you can get it for yourself. Why Catholic Bibles are bigger. You can get it on Amazon, but I like to support Catholic Answers or Catholic bookstores whenever I can. So I'll put a link down to the Catholic Answers shop to get this book, which I think after today's episode, you're going to want to buy. So he's wrote numerous books. He's done debates on this topic with Protestant apologists like James White. Super, super cool

dude. So you're going to really enjoy today's show, I think. Before we jump into the show, though, I want to say thank you to our sponsor, Halo. You've heard me talk about Halo a bunch. I don't know if you've downloaded the app ever since you've heard me talk about it, but I really do mean it. It's an excellent app. It's a Catholic meditation app to help you find peace and grow in your spiritual journey. Look how beautiful it is. I'm always impressed when a Catholic company puts out beautiful content, and that's what Halo do. They're 100% Catholic, and it's just a very sophisticated looking app. So go to halo.com, H-A-L-L-O-W.com. You can download the app right

now. They have a whole free version with content that's updated every day. But you can also pay to get access to everything that they have. But if you want to try everything that they have for free and decide if you want that kind of package, go to hallo.com, sign up for free, use the link below. And you can just use Matt Fradd as the promo code and that'll get you in for a month for free. You can try everything out before deciding to use or not. Really awesome app, hallo.com. All right, enough of that. Here is my episode with Gary Machuda. Gary Machuda, how are you? I'm doing great. How are you doing? Good. I'm doing excellent. Is it Gary Machuda or Machuda, how are you? I'm doing great. How are you doing? Good. I'm doing excellent. Is it Gary Machuda or Machuda?

Machuda, but I'll answer either way. Yeah, very good. Yeah. You know, I have to say, I've been a huge fan of Pints with Aquinas for, I don't know how long. And I especially want to thank you for identifying your theme song. Because for a long time i was going through all the sixpence none the richer you know catalog because i was sure it was

that yep and then you finally identified it it's like oh thank god because i couldn't find it anywhere did you find it after i identified it oh yeah yeah oh good yeah but otherwise i'd probably still be looking yeah i always yeah it's funny. I try to identify it every now and again because it seems like every time I open up my video comments, there's always someone somewhere asking what it is and where to get it. Yeah, that's my sister. So for those who are wondering, that intro song is called, well, I don't even know what it's called.

Golly, I forgot the name of my bloody song. Here, let's look it up right now so my sister was part of a band called well she's part of a band now called Heaps Good Friends so the song is called Finished Dreaming so if people just looked up Emma Fradd Finished Dreaming

they'd find it but there you go glad you liked the song it's so nice to meet you I used to work at Catholic Answers as you probably know for for three or four years. And whenever anybody would bring up the canon of Scripture and why Protestants have fewer books than Catholic Bibles, why Protestant Bibles have fewer books than Catholic Bibles, everybody says Gary Matuda. Everybody points to this book. Everybody points to this book. So I don't know if you're aware of that or not, but it's like this book is like, it doesn't seem like anyone's written a book in the Catholic world that would like put yours to bed.

Everyone, even today, keeps referencing this book. And I think you even just did a republish of it or something. Yeah, we did a second edition through Catholic Answers Press that's a little bit expanded and a little bit more simplified in certain areas. Give us the synopsis of the book. Well, basically, the reason why everybody recommends the book, Matt, isn't because it's so great. It's just there hasn't been a book written by a Catholic on this topic since like 1891 until I came up with a book.

I mean, there's been lots of articles, maybe chapters in books, but never like a full-length treatment. So the only book they could recommend is my book. Okay, well, maybe that's it. When did you—but that's very humble of you, though. But people do tell me it's an excellent book. When did you write it? Oh, it was about 10 years ago.

I used to run a nonprofit ministry. I actually tried to model it after Catholic Answers. It's called Thy Faith, Inc. And one of the constant questions we'd always get is, why do Protestant Bibles, why are they missing seven books that are found in Catholic and Orthodox Bible? I thought, you know, that would be a really cool book to write. And, you know, as I was researching, there really wasn't much from the Catholic side. And it's one of those topics, I don't know if you ever had it, where you choose a topic and it like haunts you for the rest of your life. Like you just can't get away from it. You're always finding

new stuff. And yeah, so anyway, that's I did the first book, it was a huge seller. And then I kept finding more material. And I found some things that I left on the cutting room floor because I couldn't establish it. I was able to establish it, so I put in the second edition and things like that. Yeah, excellent. I'm just curious, what was your faith at the time? I mean, have you always been a Catholic? Did this question of the canon ever bother you? Did you become more convinced of the—presumably, you became more convinced of the Catholic position after you, like, researched and wrote the book? Yeah.

No, I'm a lifelong Catholic. I kind of have an inversion experience with the Eucharist. And from that, I went full time ministry and apologetics. And I remember as a little kid, like flipping through the family Bible, you know, those huge, thick, 30 pound copies. And remember seeing woodcut art of Bell and the Dragon and what in the world is that about? And so that, I mean, it was always kind of a fascination for me. But it really wasn't until I started dialoguing with Protestants that I realized, wow, this is a huge issue. And practically, there's not a lot out there.

Most of them are Jewish or Protestant works on the Juro Canon. Then as I was researching, I realized that a lot of modern Protestant scholarship actually is affirming a lot of what Catholics were saying about these books. And so I thought, boy, I've got to put this all in a one-stop shopping and update it because, you know, as Catholics, there was a lot of old arguments we're using that are way past their freshness date, like the Council of Jamnia, you know, or the Alexandrian canon versus the Palestinian canon. And those things were debunked like back in the 50s, but they're still around, you know? Yeah, yeah, maybe we can get to that. Yeah, I know it's very satisfying when you chase

down one particular issue that bothers you or that you want to be able to better talk about. I recently did this with a friend of mine, Cameron Bertuzzi, his name is. He's a Protestant apologist on YouTube, love the guy. Well, him and I are doing monthly debates on Catholicism, and so we just did a debate for our patrons on the Eucharist. And so I spent like three or four weeks doing a deep dive into scripture and history regarding the Eucharist. And because of my days at Catholic Answers, I had always felt confident about it. But after this deep dive, I do not mean to be disrespectful to our Protestant viewers, but I agreed with Cardinal John Henry Newman, who said to be steeped in history is to cease to be a Protestant, because I just thought, you cannot deny that this is plain in the Bible and unanimously

taught by the Church Fathers, you know. Did you have a similar experience when it came to the canon? Were you bolstered in your faith? Yeah, in lots of surprising ways. Actually, it was after the first book, because I also wrote Case for the Deuterocanon and a couple others, you know, just more and more stuff keeps falling in my lap. Like, you know, I'm a nerd. I love research. I'm a research nerd. Yeah.

And I ran across an article written by a priest. It was an op-ed piece in like a London newspaper around 1910 around that. And he pointed out that you could find three or four early church fathers that actually use the Deuterocanon to confirm doctrine. And he said, you know, so this Protestant claim that these books can't confirm doctrine is false. So I figured, you know what, if there's three or four early church fathers, I'm sure there might be five or six. So I went through like all the early church fathers I could find in English and some things that weren't in English. And I found like a couple hundred where they use it for doctrine. Wow. Yeah, all sorts of things that it's, yeah, I said the same

thing. It's like, wow's it's right in your face that the early church accepted these it's fully canonical fully inspired scripture they use them to confirm doctrine and uh that was like uh wow i gotta put them all in my book so i put in the casebook very good well for those who have no idea what we're talking about you know maybe they know that there's some difference between cath and Protestant Bibles, but they're not really sure. Let's just take a step back. What is Deuterocanonicals and Apocrypha? What does that mean? And how, let's maybe kind of give a summarized version, how did it come about that the Protestant Bible ended up having fewer books than the Catholic Bible? Okay. Yeah, that's really confusing just in terms of names, you know. Yeah. When we say Deuterocanon, what we were referring to is seven Old Testament

books, Wisdom, Sirach, Judith, Tobit, Baruch, and 1st and 2nd Maccabees. Catholics call them Deuterocanonical. They're a subset of the Old Testament. So you have the proto-canonical books, which Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox accept, and you have the deuterocanonical books that only Catholics and Orthodox accept, but Protestants call them apocrypha, which is generally they view it as merely human writings that may be good to read, at least Luther thought it was good to read, but they can't be used to confirm doctrine. So Protestants call these books Apocrypha, Catholics call it Deuterocanonical.

And I should also mention a couple of sections in Daniel, two chapters in Daniel and some sections in Esther as well. No, you're good. Deuterocanonical then means second canon. Apocrypha, if I'm not mistaken, means hidden, I think. Yes. And it's usually when people talk about something being apocryphal, they're usually kind of disparaging it, or if not disparaging it, calling it into question.

So, okay. So how did it come about? Tell us about Luther and what happened in the Protestant Reformation. Hey, just want to pause for one moment to say thank you to our second sponsor, Strive. Strive21.com is a 21-day course which I created to help you break free from porn. So if you're a dude who struggles with porn in any way or lust and you're just tired of it and you're ready to live a better life, go to strive21.com. We have over 17,000 men going through the course right now. And the reviews have been really great. Look, that's what I look like without a beard. What do you prefer? I don't know. But go to

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So please check it out, strive21.com. All right, back to the episode with, if I can click the button, come on you little rascal, Gary Matuda. Tell us about Luther and what happened in the Protestant Reformation. Yeah, you know, and this is something that's only in the second edition, the Catholic Answers Press edition, is what I found was Martin Luther actually uses the Deuterocanonical books in debates to confirm doctrine, at least early on in the Protestant Reformation. Interesting. So I found three places where he quotes. Actually, it's

interesting because with medieval discussions, what they'll do is they'll first lay out the sources that they're going to rely on for their proofs, and then the rest of it, they'll build the proofs from those sources. So in these sources, he says, I'm going to rely only on sacred scripture. Then later he'll quote like a Deuterocanonical book. And one debate with the censor of Rome, Sylvester Macaloni, he actually says that I'm going to rely on canonical books and he uses the book of Tobit. Wow. Yeah. So now remember

the Protestant Reformation, usually they say it's 1517 with the nailing of 95 Theses. These debates took place at 1518. 1519 is where the change comes from. So he's using these books and debates, quoting them, you know, as using them as canonical scripture. And then he comes up to the second Lipsick disputation. And this is in 1519, where he goes up against Johann Eck, who is a Catholic theologian. And from what I understand, Eck in German means corner. So Eck lives up to his name in this debate. You know, his first debate,

he corners Luther on a number of points. The second debate, they start debating about purgatory. And so Eck cites actually several texts as proofs for purgatory, the Catholic understanding of purgatory. And so when Luther responds, he goes through each of these texts. He gives his, you know, he dismisses his interpretation of them. That is, until he comes to 2 Maccabees 12, 42 through 46. That's a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins. And Luther does something different there. He says, and this is a quote, there's no proof of purgatory in any portion of sacred scripture which can be entered into

argument and serve as proof. For the book of Maccabees, not being in the canon has weight with the faithful, but will not avail against the obstinate. So basically he says, you can't submit these in debate because they don't have canonical status. Was the question, I know there was, you know, obviously not, there was some questions about what the canon consisted of in the early church. about what the canon consisted of in the early church. But for the few hundred years leading up to Luther, was there any serious question or disagreement about the books of the canon, or was it not until the Protestant Reformation? Yeah, well, actually, we got to go in a wayback machine

back to Jerome in the 4th century. Yeah. Yeah, because that's kind of the aftermath from Jerome. Okay, then. Well, before we get to that, because I do want to throw five objections to you in this interview, I wanted to ask, how did it come about that Protestants all kind of unanimously agreed to this? You know, what did Luther point to to justify his removing these books and sections from the canon?

Yeah, very good. Yeah, in the debate, you know, Eck was a fantastic debater. And so he, smelling blood in the water, he pressed the point. And he basically said, you know, Luther, these books were confirmed as canonical in the 4th century councils. You know, you can't say they're not canonical. So Luther did. He took a step back and appealed to St. Jerome. And Jerome was the first person in antiquity to actually call these books Apocrypha.

He didn't believe them to be scripture. And so he kind of sets up Jerome as like a super pope against all these councils. Right. So Eck, of course, calls him out on it. And then Luther takes a step back and he basically says, no one can give a book something that doesn't have by its own virtue. In other words, there's something about interiorly about a book that establishes it as canonical, not church recognition of it. And by that, what he means is he comes up with this idea of Christ preached, that a book is canonical insofar as he could hear Christ being preached in it. So the canon isn't canonical versus non-canonical. It's actually a

spectrum of canonicity where some books are more canonical than others. He hears Christ being preached in one book. He doesn't hear it in others. And what's interesting, Matt, is that in the resolutions to this debate, because after every debate they put out a resolution, that's the first time Martin Luther begins to disparage the Epistle of James. Interesting. Yeah, tell us what he said. Yeah, later in his life he called the Epistle of James the Epistle of Straw, and he thought it contradicted—he didn't hear Christ in it,

so it wasn't fully canonical. So saying that whether I see Christ being preached in this book or not is the indicator, was that what he said? But isn't it also the case that he looked to the Jews who lived during his time and saw their canon? How does that play into it? No, actually, it's more of this canon within a canon idea for him. It becomes where Christ becomes the center even of the canon. And so the problem is, even the most ardent Lutherans didn't really follow him on that point. So some did, but not all. Oh, I see what you mean. Okay. Yeah. So by default, they go to Jerome, and Jerome, the reason why he rejected the book was because of the rabbinic canon.

I understand. Well, why don't I just throw that objection at you now, since we're kind of flirting with it. The greatest biblical scholar of antiquity was St. Jerome, and he rejected the Deuterocanonicals as apocrypha. So if that's true, aren't Catholics wrong to accept the Deuterocanonical as inspired? Yes, and yeah, so let's talk a little bit about Jerome. If he did it correctly, then yes, we should follow him. The problem is, he wasn't correct on the point. Like I said, you know, he's the only person in antiquity that I know of that actually assigns these books to the category of Apocrypha. The reason he did it was this. He was commissioned by Pope Damasus I to make a fresh translation of the Holy Scriptures. Up to that point, the Bible was translated in what's known as the Old

Latin, and the manuscripts had become corrupted, so they really needed a fresh translation. So Jerome was the right guy to go to. He was trilingual. He knew Hebrew, Greek, Latin. He actually knew a little Aramaic as well. So what he did was he started off the Latin Vulgate by looking at the Septuagint and other Greek translations, just like all the other Christians in history. Could you explain that for us real quickly? Oh, yeah. What's the Septuagint? Yeah, thank you. The Septuagint is a Jewish translation of the Old Testament that was made, started around 200 BC, and it progressed all the way to before the time of Christ. So the New Testament, that's their preferred text. So whenever the New Testament quotes from the Old Testament,

it normally goes, the quote will come from the Septuagint, not like the Hebrew or some other thing. So it became the Bible for all Greek-speaking Christians, which in the fourth century, that's pretty much everybody. So he starts off going to the Septuagint and translating the Septuagint from Greek to Latin. But the thing is, he knows Hebrew, too. So he knows that the Septuagint's translating to Hebrew. So he thought, well, why?

He completed the Psalms, and he thought, well, why should I just cut out the middleman? I know Hebrew. Why not just translate it straight out of Hebrew? And unlike the Greek text, there were different forms of it. There was a Septuagint, the Aquila, the Semach is all sorts of different versions. But at that time for the Jews, there was only one hebrew text one normative text and because of that saint jerome thought that must be identical to the original because this greek stuff is translating the hebrew and but the hebrew it only survived the one text so that must be identical to the original so he he came up with this idea of Hebrew truth, that if something's in the Hebrew, then it's true, it's authentic.

If it's not in the Hebrew text, then it's spurious, it's apocrypha. And so when he comes to Deuterocanonical books, you know, that one manuscript, which later becomes the Masoretic text, didn't have these books in it. later becomes the Masoretic text, didn't have these books in it. So that's why he says they're not authentic, they're apocrypha, so on and so forth. What's interesting is I know it was at the Council of Rome in 382 that Pope Damasus I issued the first sort of canon, and every book in that canon is what we have today in the Catholic Bible. So what happened between Jerome's wanting to dismiss the Deuterocanonicals and Pope Damasus I issuing them as canonical? Yeah, that's a good question. You know, it may have been that the decree of Damasus occurred before Jerome adopted the Hebrew truth idea. um and then you know when jerome was doing this by

the way he knew that he was going against the the uh the uh tradition of the church in christian bible had always included this how do we know that how do we know he knew that well because jerome loved to argue you know he wasn't a salonist, Casey. He loved slaying people's sacred cows, and he knew how to debate. So as he's translating the Old Testament, he was putting prefaces. See what I'm saying? These books are inspired. You know, the Deuterocanonical books aren't, and he'd send it to his patrons. He'd do some more, put another preface, set it out.

So it's going out piecemeal all over the place. Because he knew if he could get his word out first, he has an advantage in debate. So he wanted his position to get out. And that's ultimately why we have the problem later on in the Middle Ages. Because there was a reaction to Rome, and that comes in the North African councils of Carthage and Hippo, where there were near riots, by the way, in North Africa, because a different word he used for it. That's right. I learned about that from Jimmy Akin's book on the Bible. So for those who think that there was an idyllic period in the early church

where everybody was saints and martyrs and no one was being an idiot not necessarily the case yeah yeah so so they meant they reaffirmed the historic canon which included this these seven books uh but there was a problem though because jerome got his word out through these prophecies so as his bible's being translated and the prophecies are being translated and circulated, his opinions on these books also was propagated. So when you get to the Middle Ages where the Vulgate becomes the translation of the church, and there is also this revival of interest in ancient writings, ancient languages. You know, Jerome also did a lot of linguistic work. People started putting him on a pedestal and, you know, at least they would give him hat sips, you know, to quote his prophecies. Although they might use Deuterocanonical books as sacred scripture, you know, and that causes kind of confusion because you have this

problem with the greatest biblical scholar in antiquity, you know, broadcasting that these books aren't scripture when the church affirms that it is. But the coolest thing, though, Matt, for me, is back in the fourth century, there was no way for the church to prove Jerome wrong. His idea of Hebrew truth was solid. There was only one text. And it wasn't until the 1940s that we actually have been able to demonstrate that he's wrong. Tell us how. Because that's what we discovered, the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And what we found in Qumran is that there were a number of Hebrew texts in circulation besides this one text. And so it wasn't just one text that goes back to the original, but there were several different families of texts. So we could actually demonstrate now that he was wrong. But the cool thing was back in the fourth century when we couldn't, we could still rely on this has always been the Christian Bible. We know it's right, even though we can't demonstrate it. Help me understand that a little bit more. How did the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls show that Jews were reading the Deuterocanonicals? Is that what you're saying? Is that the case you're making? Yeah, essentially. Yeah, because, well, first, there was a multiplicity of texts that circulated in the first century.

And what happened was around, I believe it's somewhere around 130 AD, rabbinical Judaism adopts a single Hebrew text as their normative text. And that becomes the rabbinic Bible. And anything that wasn't in this text was rejected, and anything that was in it was affirmed. And so they stopped copying all of these different other texts that included Sirach and other things like that. And so by the fourth century, there was just one in existence. So it wasn't until 1940 we could finally say, Jerome, you're wrong. That's really interesting. Is it too simplistic to say that Luther used, you know, Jerome's opinion as an excuse to do away with books that seemed to prove the opposite of what he'd have taught, like Purgatory, for example? Yeah, I think so in a way. I mean, there was scholarly opinion that Jerome was right. There

were some scholars like Cajetan who was firmly a Jeromeist, almost to an extreme, like anything Jerome said in terms of biblical scholarship. Same thing with same thing with Thomas as well. You know, he was a Thomist in theology, a Jeromeist in biblical studies. So, I mean, there was intellectual cover to use that. Do you know if Thomas said anything to say about the Deuterocanonicals? Not specifically, but he uses a lot of them in his Summa Theologica, and uses them in Scripture.

Okay. Well, I've given you one objection, and that has to do with St. Jerome. Here's a second objection. I hear our Protestant brothers and sisters say this. The New Testament never quotes the Deuterocanon with such phrases as it is written, or thus says the Lord, or the Scripture says. So if Jesus isn't referring to the Deuterocanonical books, obviously he may have in some way indicated them, just like he could indicate any collection of works or author he

wants. It doesn't make them scriptural. So for that reason, shouldn't we reject the Deuterocanonical books? Yeah, and that's a very common objection. But if you think about it, it's not a very good objection, because if you, it's true the New Testament does a lot of formal quotations like that, it is written, thus saith the Lord, but they only do it for a few books. You know, it's kind of rarefied error that you get a book with a formal quotation. Moreover, there are lots of books in the Old Testament that are never quoted, like Ruth, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Esther's Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Ezekiel. So if an absence of a quotation equals that they're Apocrypha,

you have a problem because there's a lot of books that shouldn't be there. That's fair enough, But maybe the argument is there are two basic lists of books, right? We have the Hebrew scriptures, we have the Deuterocanonical books. So the fact that he doesn't reference the Deuterocanonical books, even one of them with that kind of the scripture says, isn't that an argument that we can just kind of get rid of this list and keep this list? Because if you reference one of those books in the Hebrew list, then maybe we can accept the whole thing.

Is that the argument? Yeah, kind of. But there's lots of problems with that because the list that has the rabbinical list was post-Christian, like 130 a.d you know what do you mean what do you mean the post-christian list uh because this uh the closure of the old testament for the rabbis didn't occur until like between the first and second jewish revolts which would be like between 80 and 132 so you can't say well, well, there's these two lists in existence because there really wasn't.

Right. In fact, you know, in Scripture, the New Testament community was not unified. It wasn't monolithic. You look at, excuse me, the Jewish community, you have the Samaritans, the Sadducees who accepted only the first five books. You have the Qumran community that may have accepted Sirach, Tobit, some of the proto-canonic books, maybe not Esther, plus some other books. Even the Pharisees, there were different schools of Shammai and Hillel. One accepted Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Esther. The other one didn't.

So there was a wide variety of different opinions as to which books were sacred or not. Got you. Now, although formal quotations might not be the best instrument, I say it's not whether a book is formally cited, but how a book is used, because the New Testament does use the Deuterocanonical books in several ways that I think evidence that they believe it as sacred scripture. Show us how, or show us where. Yeah, but the only thing is it doesn't say it is written or anything, but it's definitely there. written or anything, but it's definitely there. Yeah, let me give you two, okay? First one, I think,

is Matthew 27, verses 39 through 43. And just to give you the context, Jesus is on the cross. The people are, you know, wagging their heads and saying, you destroyed the temple. We rebuilt it in three days. Save yourself. If you're the son of God, come down from the cross. Then, now this is interesting, the chief priests, scribes, and elders, they joined in this mocking. And they say, he saved others, he cannot save himself. So this is the king of Israel. Let him come down from the cross and we'll believe in him.

He trusts in God, let him deliver now. If he desires them, for he he said i am the son of god okay which verse are we looking at here i have it open in front of me 27 verse 43 okay yep i'm with you here i see it he trusts in god let god deliver him now if he desires him for he said i am the son of god okay yeah now what's interesting is behind this text, of course, we have Psalm 22, right, which he committed his cause to the Lord, let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him, okay? That's definitely at work there, but there's something missing, though. There's nothing about the divine promise by god to rescue the true person who

claims to be a son it's nowhere in psalm 22 now in a catholic bible chances are you'll have a reference to psalm 22 and if you have a catholic or a very old protestant bible you'll have another reference and they'll be to wisdom 2 17 and 18 hmm yeah I don't know this one that's interesting which one is it wisdom wisdom 2 17 and 18 okay and it's only there you don't find it anywhere else in Scripture but it says this quote for if the just one be the Son of God he will defend him and deliver him from the hands of his foes. So there you have a divine promise or expectation that God is going to deliver the true son of God.

Right. So think about this. You remember of this, the scribes, the elders who are mocking him here's your chance to do the coup de grace right dispatch him uh lose any hope that he could possibly be the true messiah and what do you do you quote a apocryphal text right you know it doesn't make sense it seems to suggest that they understood that wisdom is giving revelatory information. And they're using that basically to dismiss Jesus because he claimed to be the son of God. Well, let's see if God will deliver him based on wisdom too.

Got you. Okay. And you said there was a second verse. Yeah. Well, there's many of them. Oh, okay. I'm just giving you my favorites. Sure.

What's one more? Yeah. Okay. Here's many of them. Oh, okay. I'm just giving you my favorites. Sure. What's one more? Yeah, okay, here's a really interesting one. Hebrews 11.35. Hebrews 11.35, all right. Yeah, and now Hebrews 11 is the Hall of Faith chapter, right? It's where they announce all these Old Testament saints who were, quote, attested to, okay? all these old testament saints who were quote attested to okay and so it's able you know abraham moses eventually get down to uh verse 35 and it says this it says uh women received their dead by resurrection it's referring to elijah and alicia then it says some were tortured refused to accept release that they might uh rise again to a better life or

for a better resurrection some translations have okay so it gives us three identity markers as these people first they were tortured second they refused release so they were offered release but they refused the third one is the motivation was for a better resurrection. Now, if you look in the Protestant Old Testament, you could find some that were tortured. You might be able to find somebody who was threatened with torture and accepted release or didn't accept. But nowhere will you find all three of those markers. The only place you find them is in 2 Maccabees, chapters 6 and 7. I could see somebody responding like, that's pretty vague. It seems like you're just looking for what you want to be true. Why can't this just be the sort of a general statement? You know,

some were tortured, you know, choosing that, you know, rather than to live, and for the obvious reason that they were hoping for a better life. Well, yeah, the problem is that it says that they're attested to. So where are they attested to in Scripture for those three things? Oh, where does it say attested to? It's in Hebrews 11, 2, and also again in, I think, verse 39, if I remember correctly. I see. So within the context, it's talking about, yeah, it's talking about particular people.

Right. Gotcha. Gotcha. So plus, you know, in addition to those three markers, there's also linguistic or lexical evidence. For example, the word translated tortured is kind of unusual. It's usually used for banging of cymbals or tambourines. But it's used here as for torture, which is also used in 2 Maccabees. And also the next verse talks about cruel mockings, which is another kind of odd word that also appears in 2 Maccabees

in the context of these martyrdoms. And yeah, this is not me reading my own Catholic bias. In fact, in Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger, the first references I give are those that were referenced in old Protestant Bibles. So I think this is in the King James 1611 version, the Alatan version, and if I remember the Geneva Bible, 1599. All of them have cross-references, and modern Bibles will as well, even Protestant Bibles. But once the Apocrypha, so-called, was removed from Protestant Bibles, guess what? These cross-references disappeared too. Interesting. You've touched on this a little bit, but here's my third objection. Paul says in Romans chapter 3, verse 2, that the Jews were

entrusted with the oracles of God. Therefore, the issue of the Old Testament canon is something that was decided by Judaism, and they accepted only the proto-canonical books, not the deuterocanonical books. Yeah, yeah. Well, there's several problems with this. First, Paul's talking about the Jews. Well, which Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God? If it's the Sadducees, then what happened to the rest of the Old Testament? Or, you know, was it the Qumras? They were Jews. So that's the first thing is, obviously, Paul is making a much broader statement than something specific with a canon. And the other thing I'd point out, too, is he says that they were entrusted. So this is something that this entrustment of the oracles of God

was something in the past, but certainly Paul believes that the oracle God are now entrusted to the Christians. Because certainly the Jews wouldn't have accepted Romans as scripture. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So that's a problem as well. And if you want to throw a third one in, he says the utterances of God, which could also include things like the Urim and Thummim would be considered an utterance. It's not in Scripture. What does that mean? It's a facet of the high priest breastplate where they would pose questions to God, and God would signal his response, like a yes-no response, that actually that word for utterance is applied for the breastplate as well. So even there, it's not talking about the Bible per se, but it's talking about God directing Israel,

which, of course, is a huge advantage over the Gentiles because, you know, God's shepherding them. Yeah. Okay, here's another objection. Yeah. Okay, here's another objection. Jesus affirms the Protestant Old Testament canon in Luke 11, 49-51, Matthew 23, 34-36, when he speaks about the shedding of the prophet's blood from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah. I'm going blind. The son of Barakiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Abel's martyrdom is recorded in the first book of the Bible, and Barakaya's martyrdom

is recorded in the last book of the rabbinic Bible, in 2 Chronicles 24, 20-22. Therefore, Jesus recognizes and maybe endorses the rabbinic Bible, which excluded the Deuterocanon. Yeah. Yes. excluded the deuterocanon yeah yes uh i call it the bookends argument that abel's at the front you know and uh zachariah's at the back so everything in between is canonical oh boy okay well there's lots of problems with that uh argument first the identification of zachariah is a huge problem because the argument believes that that Zechariah is the son of Jehoiada mentioned in 2 Chronicles. And that's not at all certain because, yeah, he was stoned in the temple

area, but there's a problem because in Matthew, Jesus identifies him as the son of Berechiah. But in 2 Chronicles, he's identified twice in two different ways as the son of jehoiada not barakaya so that's not a lock that he's talking about this particular uh zachariah in fact there is a zachariah in the bible that was the son of barakaya and that's the prophet zachariah but he's problematic also because it records nowhere how he died. So they both don't seem to fit. And there are other options, too. In fact, it could be that Jesus is referencing a Zechariah who was martyred, a contemporary of Jesus that was martyred.

Because he says, the blood of Zechariah, whom you murdered, and the you there would be the audience who is hearing Jesus. So they're complicit in this murder. So that's kind of odd to say you're complicit in a murder that happened way back in Second Chronicles. So it could be contemporary. And Matt, I know you love the early church fathers. It's interesting, many of the early church fathers like Origen believe that that Zachariah was actually the father of John the Baptist, that he was stoned in the temple area. And there's a bunch of different traditions like that, that believe that Zechariah is actually he. So the identification is kind of up in the air. We can't lock it in.

The other problem is this idea that 2 Chronicles is the last book of the rabbinic Bible. There's only one document in all of antiquity, one Jewish document, that has 2 Chronicles at the end of a canonical list. And that's like a 2nd century Jewish document called the Baba Bathra. Everything else has a different order. Oh, interesting. Yeah, including Christian lists that deliberately tried to reproduce the order of the rabbis of their day. Christian list that deliberately tried to reproduce the order of the rabbis of their day.

Usually Chronicles is at the beginning of the writings, that third section of the Old Testament, not the end. And it's only this one document up in the end, because when they start printing Hebrew Bibles, they follow that one text from antiquity, just as pro forma. And so whenever there was a printed version of the Hebrew Bible, it always had Second Chronicles at the back. So it's actually a printing tradition from like the Middle Ages, then something that's in antiquity. Okay. Well, what about this argument? You know, if the fathers are unanimous on something, we can't go against them. So my understanding, given what I've read regarding John 3, 5, is that the fathers are unanimous that to be born of water and spirit refers to baptism. that to be born of water and spirit refers to baptism. But there are times where the fathers disagree.

And the few fathers who knew Hebrew said that they knew that only the proto-canonical books are scripture. So given the fact that there was this dispute in the early church, why shouldn't we just play it safe? I could see somebody converting to Catholicism, right, and kind of like looking at this and wanting to go with the Catholic Church, but also not really wanting to subject themselves to books that aren't scriptural. And so, all right, maybe they are, maybe they aren't, I can't know for sure. So I'm going to put the Deuterocanonical books aside and just go with what I know the early church fathers accepted. Yeah, very good. Well, for one thing, it's not true that

only the people that knew Hebrew were the ones that promoted the shorter canon. As Rufinus says, there were always converts from Judaism that were proficient in Hebrew, new rabbinic tradition, they became Christian. Yet he says, and this is the fourth century, that no one ever demanded to change the canon, even though they had this knowledge. So it's kind of a wrong claim. The other thing too, and this is something that surprised me with my research. Now, remember I said the rabbis, they fixed their canon about 132 AD, right? Well, apparently, you know, the Christians knew that the Jews didn't accept all the same books they did, that there was a change in Judaism. But they really weren't sure what it was.

So there are like a handful of early church fathers who set out to find out which books the Jews accepted, like Melito. Sardis is one, Origin of Alexandria is another, so that we can appeal to the same books when we're evangelizing. And the problem is that often Protestant apologists, what they'll do is they'll appeal to these lists and say, see, they're adopting the rabbinical canon as its true canon. Because, look, they list only the proto canonical books when they kind of ignore the fact that they're trying to reproduce what the rabbis accept. And proof of that, like if you look at origin, because we have a lot of works from origin, he does list the the books of the Bible according to Hebrew tradition. But if you look at his other works, he quotes all the deuterocanonical books, calling them scripture, calling the word of God is written, all that stuff. And he uses it to

confirm doctrine. So when you look at these lists, some fathers will say, okay, this is what the Hebrews accept. But when you look at all the other things fathers will say, okay, this is what the Hebrews accept. But when you look at all the other things they wrote, they use them as scripture. They use it to confirm doctrine. They accepted them as fully canonical scripture. That's kind of where the rub is. Often they'll just appeal to lists, but they ignore what these lists are attempting to do. Okay, fantastic. What would you say, how would you respond to the claim of sola scriptura?

And for those watching at home, maybe help us understand what you think people mean by that, and then why you don't accept it. Because this is kind of obviously tangential, but to the point of the canon too. Yeah, well, sola scriptura, there's two varieties. If something's not in the Scripture, then it's tradition of men. It could be rejected. That's more of a fundamentalist view. Evangelicals will say that the Word of God is the norm that sets all norms

and the standard that sets all standards. So as long as it agrees with the Scriptures, it could be acceptable. The problem is, of course, with sola scriptura is it can't establish the sola, and it can't establish the scriptura. Because you don't find anything in scripture where it tells us that unless something is written down in inspired scripture, it's not Christian. But, you know, in terms of the script Torah, there's no inspired table of contents. There's nothing to indicate exactly which books belong in the Bible.

And so, you know, if you go by the Bible alone, you really can't establish the Old Testament canon or perhaps even the New Testament canon just based on those things. And so what I say is, you know, Scripture isn't the norm that sets all norms. Christ is the norm that sets all norms. And he knew which books were inspired and which ones weren't. And he certainly would have handed that on to the inspired apostles who had handed on to the church. So really, if you want to know what is the script Torah, you have to find out what was that original deposit of faith that was handed on through the Church as sacred writings. And I believe if you look at the history, you find out, yeah, it's a bigger Catholic Bible. It's not the Protestant Bible. Yeah, that is interesting. I've listened to several debates from James White on sola scriptura, and I'm really

trying to give him a fair shake. You know, I understand that when we go to these debates, we always want to root for our guy and not take seriously the claims of the other person. But yeah, this idea that, you know, sola scriptura presupposes scriptura does seem pretty damning, because even if there was, you know, an inspired list of contents uh or you know for the bible that would be circular like if i say well matthew says it is inspired therefore it is that's not a good argument whereas if you say christ established a church and we can demonstrate that through history and he gave that church authority which we can demonstrate that through history, and he gave that church authority, which we can demonstrate through history, and that church which he gave authority to told us the canon, therefore we can accept it, that seems to get you out of that circular reasoning.

You know, it's funny. Yeah, you go. When I debated James, I actually didn't even appeal to church authority. Oh, you've got to tell us about this. You debated James White? When was that? What was that like? Oh, it was a number of years ago in Long Island on the Deutero Canon. I think it was right when my book came out. Well, that must have been more than 10 years ago. Yeah, yeah.

I had black hair. But when did your book – I thought I asked you earlier when your book came out, and you said 10 years ago. Yeah, the new edition just came out, but the old edition came out about 10 years ago. So it was somewhere around when my first book came out. Okay, but sorry. I mean, first edition, I should say. So when did the first edition come out? Surely not 10 years ago.

It was, yeah, it was about then. Okay, but you were studying this prior to the book, of course, which is why you're here. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so tell me how that debate went. It went well. You know, it's funny. I think James did a very good job, and actually I got along with him very well. He seemed like a good guy.

It's very different to what I hear from people who recount their debate interactions with him. So I'm happy to hear it. Yeah, well, Matt, you know, it could be I was 6'8". That could be another reason why he was nice to me. But anyway, he was nice to me, and it was a good debate. But I think his problem was he thought I was going to come up there, say Jesus established a church, the church just inspired. And I didn't do that at all. In fact, I relied all on Protestant sources, early church fathers, because I think you can make a historical case, even apart from church authority, that these books really were normative in at least the first four centuries for sure.

And then, of course, after the North African Council, it becomes normative for the church in terms of law. Right. So, yeah, so I didn't do that. I appealed to history, and I think he was a little flustered by that. Yeah, I'm sure he was, because the route you didn't take is certainly the most common among Catholic apologists when they discuss the canon. Yeah, yeah, but it was good.

In fact, after the debate, I had a lot of people come up and ask some very good, honest questions, not only on canon of Scripture, but purgatory and other things, too. And it was a great evening uh it's a lot of fun so when people point to the fact that the canon wasn't infallibly defined until trent what do you say in response to that yeah yeah you know when we talk about definition you're talking about solemnity right right? Yeah. There are different orders of solemnity. So the issue of the canon was really settled in the 4th century.

Right. It wasn't until, in fact, those very same books were affirmed by the Ecumenical Council of Florence a couple hundred years before Protestants even came on the scene. Before Protestants even came on the scene, in their decree on the Jacobites, they affirmed the same thing from these councils. So it has ecumenical status. the first council to not only affirm these books as canonical scripture, but to put anathema, so that you cannot be a Catholic in good standing by denying the canonicity of these books. Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, okay, one more question. I don't know if you know much about this, but the Orthodox have several books, if I'm not mistaken, in addition to the Catholic Bible. Is that right? Yes, mistaken, in addition to the Catholic Bible. Is that right?

Yes. Yeah, they have even bigger Bibles. Yeah, so someone out there has probably written a book, Why Orthodox Bibles Are Bigger. So tell us about that. Why shouldn't we accept those books as canonical? Maybe we will one day. I guess that's another question, whether the canon is—well, so I'll let you. You're the expert.

is, well, so I'll let you, you're the expert. Well, yeah, when it comes to the Orthodox, you know, they rely on the Septuagint like the ancient church did. The problem was they used the Septuagint as a lectionary. And so as things continue in church history, more books began to be added to the Septuagint, like the Odes. They were adopted in the fourth century. You know, it's no way they're canonical scripture, but they're part

of the liturgy, right? So there's these liturgical documents that were attached to the Septuagint later on. So their Bible, you know, will include some more books than we do. So, you know, they also adopted the North African councils, interesting enough, at the Council of Trulot and also Second Nicaea. The canons of the North African councils were adopted. So they do have standing in the East for Eastern Orthodoxy. They do have standing in the East for Eastern Orthodoxy. And around, you know, in the Middle Ages, there was actually a patriarch called Sarah Luker who was influenced by Calvinist. He started adopting Calvinist doctrine. And part of it, he also rejected the Deuterocanon.

And this is, as far as I know, this is where the East actually pronounces something on the canon. See, for the West, we had to deal with the Vulgate, you know, and Jerome, and that's all Western Latin stuff. The East really wasn't affected by that until Sarah Luker. So there were some synods in Jerusalem and Jassy. In fact, I believe they even mentioned Carthage, where they confirmed the Catholic Deuterocanon, as far as I can tell. Yeah. Okay. Now, if you talk to an Orthodox priest, chances are they'll say, yeah, we certainly hold the Deuterocanon to be inspired. The other books, they're holy books.

They're some sense of scripture, but not quite equal to the other books. I didn't know that. So the Orthodox accept the Bible we accept, for the reasons we accept it anyway, but the additional books that they have in their Bible, not in an appendix, as was the case with the King James Version when it first came out with the Deuterocanonicals, you're

saying that even though it's in the same Bible, Orthodox theologians may say yeah, maybe, maybe not. Yeah, essentially. Because I don't think they've ever actually defined the canon. Bloody Orthodox, not defining stuff. Yeah, well, that's just the problem.

It's their thing. You're talking about orthodoxies. You're not talking about the orthodox. But, you know, you raise an interesting question, though. Could someday in the future, like 3rd and 4th fourth maccabees be accepted as scripture right um and actually at the council of trent there was a question put to the council fathers as to whether they wanted to condemn the books that weren't mentioned yes that's right as apocrypha and they didn't yeah you go yeah they voted to be silent on it they didn't. Yeah, you go. just my opinion i think there's wiggle room yes if the east and west ever come back together please god yeah absolutely i maybe uh we could allow them to accept these books as long as they don't

insist that they're canonical okay so you know there would be a happy peace between the two that's very interesting yeah this has been very fascinating for me. I have learned a lot, and I appreciate you doing this deep dive into this and educating us all. As we wrap up, I would love you to tell our people where they can learn more about you, how they can listen to your show, where they can get your book from. Sure. Well, I'm the host of Hands-On Apologetics. We're on Monday through Friday on Virgin Most Powerful Radio. You can just do a search on YouTube or Google. For my books, you can pick up my books at shop.catholic.com,

which is Catholic Answers. Some of them are also available on Amazon. And, yeah, that should pretty much do it. What about your debate with James White? Is that out there somewhere? Yeah, it's somewhere out there in YouTube land. I'm going pretty much do it. What about your debate with James White? Is that out there somewhere? Yeah, it's somewhere out there in YouTube land. I'm going to go find it. If I find it, will you allow me to post it on my channel?

Yeah, sure, if you'd like. I didn't know if there was a copyright issue or not, but that's fantastic. I hope I find it. I'd love to listen to it. All right. Thanks a lot, Gary. I really appreciate it.

Oh, thank you for having me on. It really was an honor. Well, thank you very much for watching today. If you enjoy the content that we're putting out here at Pints with Aquinas, maybe you've seen the new Pints with Aquinas Español channel where we've released, and you want to support us, that is definitely something you could do. And the way you could do it is by going to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. And what that enables you to do is to give a small amount monthly to see to it that

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