The .4 rmenian version also draws no line between Canon and A.
(e) The Later Gr. Church.— The views of the Fathers of the E.astem Church could not be without permanent inlluence, but their failure to reach consistency made it possible for the LXX to retain its currency. At the time of the Reformation some Eastern scholars, appealing to Cyril and Athanasius, declared the a*" books to be uncan. So Metrophanes Critopulos (1625) and Cyril Lucar (1629). Against them the Synods of Const.anti. nople (16.'?S), Jafla (1612), and Jerus. (1672) sus- tained the older tisage, and declared tlie full canonieity of the A. It appears, however, that clearness and consistency have never been reached, for Philaret's Longer (Jatechism of the Orthodox CatholicE. Church (1839, etc.), which has otticial sanction, gives to all books outside of the 22 a subordinate place, as meant for the reading of those just entering the Church (citing Athanasius) ; while the otticial Bible of the Gr. Church contains (after Ch) Pr. Man ; (after Neh) 1 Es, To, Jth ; (after Ca) Wis, Sir; (after La) Ep. Jer, Bar; (after Mai) 1-3 Mac, 4 Ezr.
3. In the Western Church. —(a) Roman Catholic. — In the Lat. Church there was a stronger inclination to let Christian us.'vge, rather tlian scholarly theory, determine the place of the A. in the Canon ; and this in spite of the fact tliat Rome produced the man of all antiquity who most strongly pressed the sole validity of the Heb. Canon (Jerome), and committed to this very man the revision of its OT Scriptures.
The earliest Lat. tr. (Itala) was made from the LXX, and seems to have contained all the \. of the LXX except 3 and 4 Mac, and to have added 2 Es.
Jerome first revised the Itala after the LXX, but then tr. the OT anew from Heb. In this tr. the A. would fall out. And this Jerome demands. In the famous Prol. Galeatus he gives a list of the 22 books of the Heb. Canon in the Heb. order, and adds, ' whatever is beyond these is to be put among the A.' So Wis, Sir, Jth, To, and Shepherd 'are not in the Canon. Of Mac, I have found the first book in Heb. ; the second is Greek,' etc.
This explicit denial that even an intermediate position sfiould be given to the A. would, in con- sistency, require their entire removal from tht Bible. But Jerome elsewhere gives these books an intermediate position. For he says (Prol. to liks of Sol), 'as the Church reads Jth and To and the Bks of Mac, but does not receive them among can. Scriptures, so also let it read these two Woks [Wis and Sir] for the edification of the people, not for confirming the authority of Church dogma-s.' Only by such a view can wo understand Jerome's revision of Jth and To, which he under- took, indeed, under protest and with careless haste, excusing himself by the fact that they were extant in Chaldee, and that the Council of Nicoea counted Jth in the number of sacred Scriptures (of this there is no other evidence). Jerome also inserted the Additions to Dn and Est, distin- guishing them by marks, and collecting the Ail. Est together at the end of the book, where they have remained, out of their proper place, ever since.
After these ooncessionB by Jerome himself, it is notstraiige that the other books of the A. grailually fuunil their old place in his version as it gained recognition.
IT2
ArUGKYPHA
APOCRYPHA
Ot other Lat. Fathcre, Bilary ot Poitiers (d. 368) reaffirms Origen'8 Can., hut shows some inclination to add To and Jih^ .or which Urigen's position gave ground.
Hujinus (d. 410), who studied at Alexandria and Jems., gives the E. list of 22 books, and pul5 the A. in an intermediate class, which he calls (for the first time?) Ecclesiastici, viz. M'U, ^'i/*. To, Jth, Bka o/ Mm, and, in NT, Shepherd and Two Ways (also JudLTuent according to Peter ?!. These the Fathers wished to be read in the churches, but not brought forward for the confimiation of faith. 'Other Scriptures tliey named a'^i which they wished not *o be read in the churches.' The three- fold division is £., but the name ' ecclesiastical ' and tlie e.\planation (wiiich is practically the view of Jerome also) are new. The A. are to be read not privately, but in the churciies. Tills would originally have meant full canonicity. But a dis- tinction is attempted in degrees of authority for doctrine among books which, in their text and in their church use, are not ciistin''ui8hed. it is not strange that the theory of an inter- mediate class gained no firm tooting in the W., and that the A. went into the first, not into the third class.
The early Lat. lists are characterised by the two groups, (1) Ps, Pr, Ca, Ec, ll'i<, Sir ; (2) Job, To, Est, Jth, 1 and 2 Mac, 1 and 2 Es, in wlaich, apart from the additions to the prophets Jer and Dn, the books of A. are usually found. "They are found in the Can. of Mominsen, wliich perhaps represents the average Western Can. of c. 360 A.D. It includes the A., and still counts 24 books (Rev 410) by the device of reckoning the 5 Solomonic books as one. "The West had not, however, the interest in the number 24 that the East had in 22, and generally disregarded even this formal agreement with the Jews.