Books Jesus Read

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Books Jesus Read

For some Protestants, the Apocrypha has been something of an unwanted stepchild. For while the testimony of other noncanonical documents, like Josephus, the Apostolic Fathers, and the Church Fathers, is often used to shed light on the Scriptures, the Apocrypha remain mostly untouched, perhaps because of their inclusion in the Bible by Roman Catholics. True, these writings were not included in the Hebrew canon. 14 Yet, as already mentioned, they were included in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Scriptures that was authoritative for the early church. The Septuagint was the Bible of the apostles, and that fact alone ought to make it the subject of careful study by every student of the New Testament. 15 Neglect of the Apocrypha in modern times is partly due to the influence of biblical scholars who have assumed that the genuine sayings of Jesus must be entirely different from what the rabbis of his day taught. 16 Thankfully, a new generation of scholars is shedding light on our understanding of the New Testament by way of a careful study of the Apocrypha and other intertestamental writings. David deSilva’s work, The Jewish Teachers of Jesus, James, and Jude , is an exemplar of this approach. Consider, for example, Sirach, about which deSilva concludes, 14 Canon – literally means “measuring rod,” and refers to the list of books recognized as Holy Scripture by the authoritative leaders of a religious community—in this case, Jewish rabbis. 15 None of this is to suggest the Apocrypha should be adopted into the Protestant canon of Scripture. It is, however, important reading for an understanding of the broader Christian canon, as well the thematic and textual issues that led Protestant Reformers to delimit that canon. 16 This “criterion of dissimilarity” has been used to distinguish “genuine” sayings of Jesus from those assumed to be later additions by the Church.