Articles

Paperback: 185 pages (6″ x 9″)

Price: $15.00 plus shippingThe subject of the
Old Testament canon has been a matter of debate between Protestants
and Roman Catholics for centuries. In the sixteenth century,
the Council of Trent officially accorded the Apocrypha canonical
status, decreeing these writings to be inspired Scripture. Roman
apologists assert that Trent merely affirmed what had been the
universal practice of the Church beginning with the North African
Councils of Hippo and Carthage in the late fourth century.
In this work, William Webster documents the history of the Old
Testament canon and the Apocrypha from the Jewish age up to the
time of the Reformation. The historical evidence conclusively
demonstrates that the Jews did not accept the Apocrypha as part
of the inspired corpus of the Old Testament, that many of the
early Church fathers followed the Jewish canon in rejecting the
Apocrypha, and that the Church throughout the middle ages, including
the period of the Reformation itself, followed the opinion of
Jerome in denying the Apocrypha full canonical status. The writings
were considered useful for the purposes of edification and for
reading in the churches but were not authoritative for the establishment
of doctrine.
This work provides extensive documentation from the writings
of the most renowned theologians of the Church from the sixth
to the sixteenth centuries, much of which has been translated
into English for the first time. The documentation gives convincing
evidence that Trent’s decree, rather than affirming the universal
practice of the Church, was, in fact, contrary to it.