The Content of Scripture

Paragraph one of the first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith sets forth the necessity of Scripture, if Scripture is necessary then it is essential to know which ancient Judeo-Christian writings combine to make up its content. The Westminster Assembly’s confession answered this question in paragraphs two and three of chapter one.

2. Under the name of Holy Scripture, or the Word of God written, are now contained all the books of the Old and New Testament, which are these:[Listed are the 39 books from Genesis to Malachi and 27 from Matthew to Revelation.] All which are given by inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life.

3. The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of the Scripture, and therefore are of no authority in the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings.

The content of Scripture is known historically as canon, which comes from the Greek kanōn meaning a norm, measure, or standard. J. I. Packer said of canon that,

The use of canon for a list of books that are canonical is secondary and derivative. The church has always known, more or less clearly, that it did not create a canon by discretionary fiat but received the canon that God created for it. The Old Testament canon…came to the church from the hands, as it were, of Christ and the apostles, for whom Christianity’s credentials presupposed the divine authority of the Jewish Scriptures which the Christian facts fulfilled (“Scripture,” New Dictionary of Theology, IVP, 1988).

It might be thought that at some point in history a group of ecclesiastics gathered to examine a collection of textual candidates for inclusion in the canon, they made their selections and compiled the Bible, as Packer put it, by “discretionary fiat,” but this is not the case. Over the centuries various correspondence, ecclesiastical documents, and bound or scrolled collections of biblical books have testified to the canon of books that are inspired and therefore the word of God. The compiling of the canon was a work of providence, not fiat.

Two examples of testimonies to the canonical books will be given as examples. The first is a document by Athanasius from 367 A.D. that lists the biblical books including two books of apocrypha, Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah, with 38 books in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. The missing book in the Old Testament is Esther. By 367 the canon of Scripture was nigh unto the canon of today. The second example was provided by the Fourth General Council at Carthage, 397 A.D., which produced a list of books accepted for reading in worship that includes 38 Old Testament books including Jeremiah and Lamentations as a single book, and 27 New Testament books. Both these lists include apocrypha with Athanasius’s having the two books mentioned and Carthage having six apocryphal books of which neither of Athanasius’s selections is included. Both these sources apart from the apocrypha include essentially the books of the Bible currently held to be canonical.

Packer addressed canonicity further by pointing out that the divine authority of the Old Testament canon was presupposed by Christ and the apostles as they quoted it to show its fulfillment in Christ. Quotes of the Old Testament in the New include passages from 29 of the 39 books according to Archer’s Old Testament Quotations. Old Testament quotations in the New Testament are not always exact copies of the originals, but as the inspired New Testament writers used passages their adjustments of the originals for their purposes became newly inspired scripture. At least by the time of Athanasius’s list, if not sooner, the New Testament canon was set and the Old Testament, plus or minus a book, was set, however, the list of apocrypha was variable.

To answer accusations by Reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin and affirm the historical positions of Catholicism, the papacy held the General Council of Trent in three sessions between the years 1545 and 1563 at Trento in Northern Italy. Trent marks the beginning of the Counter Reformation which extended into the seventeenth century for the purpose of defending Roman Catholic doctrine and making changes to end clerical corruption. Given the emphasis of the Reformers on Scripture it might be expected that Trent would respond to their views and address the canon, which it did. The Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures issued April 8, 1546 affirmed all the books of the Old and New Testaments in the same order given in the Westminster Confession 1:2 except for, first, the book of Lamentations is not listed but appears to have been assumed in association with the book of Jeremiah, and second, seven books of apocrypha were inserted at different points of the Old Testament collection. The apocrypha included were Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and 1 & 2 Maccabees. Trent described these books as “deuterocanonical,” which means a second canon suitable to read for edification but not for use as authorities for church dogma. Protestants sometimes errantly say that Catholics hold the apocryphal books with the same regard as they do their Old and New Testament books, but this is not the case. Having affirmed the Catholic canon and the deuterocanon, the next step was for Catholicism to publish a Bible in the vernacular. Translating Jerome’s Latin edition of 405 A.D. called the Vulgate into English resulted in the Douay-Rheims New Testament published 1582, however, the Old Testament and deuterocanon were not issued until 1610. The Douay-Rheims included in its front matter a copy of the Decree Concerning Canonical Scriptures with its omission of Lamentations as a separate book, but when the Douay-Rheims was published the book of Lamentations was included in its place following Jeremiah as a separate book. Whether the printer had taken liberty to separate the two or a later decision of the papacy had separated them is not clear. The Douay-Rheims remained the only English translation for Roman Catholics into the twentieth century.

But there is more to the story of the apocrypha.

Before the Douay-Rheims New Testament was issued, the Geneva Bible was published in 1560 having been translated into English by exiled scholars in John Calvin’s Geneva. Given that a mark of editions of the Bible currently is omission of the apocrypha, one might not expect to find apocrypha in the Geneva Bible, but one would be wrong. The Geneva Bible not only has apocrypha, but it has also more apocryphal books than the Douay-Rheims version. The fourteen selections of apocrypha include: Prayer of Manasseh (between 2 Chronicles and Ezra); then between the Old and New Testaments are 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the rest of Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch with the Epistle of Jeremiah, Song of the Three Holy Children (Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego), History of Susanah, History of Bel and the Dragon, 1 Maccabees, and finally 2 Maccabees. Why were there so many apocryphal books given the reformers interest in Scripture alone? Just as the reformers were reassessing doctrines including the Lord’s Supper, vocation, justification, and marriage by returning to the ancient theological sources, ad fontes, the content of Scripture itself was scrutinized out of concern that the canon be correct. From the Genevan scholars’ perspective, it was possible that one or more of the fourteen apocrypha could properly have a place in the canon. In a note by the translators inserted at the end of the Geneva Bible Old Testament it is said the apocrypha “were not received by a common consent to be read and expounded publicly in Church,” neither are they used “to prove any point of Christian religion save in as much as they had the consent of the other Scriptures called Canonical.” The translators viewed the apocrypha in a way similar to the view that would be expressed by Trent.

The Geneva Bible in English was a tremendous success with at least 140 editions coming off the presses in Great Britain and the continent between 1560 and 1644. It was the first complete study Bible in English; the prophetic and poetic books were translated directly from Hebrew into English for the first time; verse divisions were first used in an English translation in the Geneva Bible; and finally, it became the Bible for English speaking Protestants influenced by Reformed theology in Europe as well as for the Plymouth Pilgrims and others in the American Colonies. The first English Bible published without the apocrypha except for the Prayer of Manasseh, is the Geneva Bible published in 1640 at Amsterdam by Thomas Stafford. This edition includes a statement by the Synod of Dort, dated 1618, titled, “An Admonition to the Christian Reader,” which explains why the apocrypha should not be included in Bibles. There are earlier editions of the Geneva Bible held in archives that do not have any apocryphal books even though they were issued with them; presumably, the decisions in later years against inclusion of the apocrypha stimulated Bible owners to tear out the no-longer acceptable books.

From the Assembly’s call to order July 1643 until it ended April 1653 its actions regarding the Westminster Standards show, as testified to by the minutes, no influence from the apocrypha. It appears that the current sixty-six book canon was a presupposition of the members of the Assembly as they composed paragraphs two and three. Proof of this is seen in the Scripture and apocrypha index in Chad Van Dix Hoorn’s Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly where only one out of roughly 3000 references in the Scripture and apocrypha Index is to apocrypha and the one case is Ben Sirach 25:16 (Vol. 2:119). The Dort statement in 1618 contributed significantly to abandoning the inclusion of the apocrypha in Bibles. The only remaining apocrypha to be removed by the Assembly was the half-page Prayer of Manasseh. The 66 books of paragraph two have been published in Bibles ever since for nearly four centuries, and the Bibles of confessionalists and non-confessionalists alike owe the sixty-six-book canon to the Westminster Assembly.

Notice further the way the Westminster Assembly expressed the canon in paragraphs two and three. The two paragraphs stand in an antithetical relationship with each other. “Holy Scripture” is opposite to “apocrypha”; “given by inspiration of God” is opposite to “not being of divine inspiration”; and “to be the rule of faith and life” is antithetical with “nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings.” The point is emphatically made that the Holy Scripture is unique, but the apocrypha are merely writings like any other. In the latter half of the sixteenth and into the first half of the seventeenth century there was an influential logic system developed called Ramism. Ramism was the dialectical method developed by the French Huguenot rhetorician-philosopher-mathematician Peter Ramus (1515-1572). It used diagrams with the symbol <. The general concept was given at the point and then the two particulars were at each leg. The most influential user of Ramism was the Elizabethan Puritan, William Perkins, whose “A Golden Chain” provides a clear example of using Ramism. It seems the Westminster Assembly was defining the canon with Ramism in mind because it brought clarity and emphasis to the subject at hand.

A subject such as the correct canon of Scripture may seem mundane given how long the current canon has been accepted. Paragraphs two and three are likely given short shrift when lessons on the Confession are taught, but the two paragraphs, as has hopefully been seen, were very important in their historical context and for the future of the Bible and the Church.

Barry Waugh

Notes—James I. Packer, “Scripture,” in Sinclair B. Ferguson, David F. Wright editors, New Dictionary of Theology, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1988; this article provides a clear and succinct survey of the doctrine of Scripture including the canon. A helpful book was, Gleason L. Archer & Gregory Chirichigno, Old Testament Quotations in the New Testament, Chicago: Moody Press, 1983; according to this book the ten books not quoted in the New Testament are Judges, Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, Obadiah, and Zephaniah. D. A. Carson and G. K. Beale edited, Commentary on the New Testament use of the Old Testament, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007; I did not have access to a copy, but it would surely be beneficial and likely interacts with Archer & Chirichigno. For English translations of Papal Encyclicals from the General Council of Trent (1545-1563), see “Papal Encyclicals Online,” which has translations transcribed from, J. Waterworth, ed. & tran, The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and Ecumenical Council of Trent, Celebrated Under the Sovereign Pontiffs Paul III, Julius III and Pius IV, London: C. Dolman, 1848. The Church of England has decidedly Protestant origins, but it and other denominations associated with Anglicanism include apocryphal books because of their inclusion in the King James Authorized Version, 1611. Athanasius’s canon is from Philip Schaff. A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Second Series, vol. 4, St. Athanasius: Select Works & Letters, New York: Christian Literature Company, 1890, pp. 551-52. A copy of the 1640 edition of the Geneva Bible including the Dort statement is available HERE, but it is an extremely large file that I was unable to download. David Daniell’s book is The Bible in English: Its History and Influence, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003; the book’s 899 pages provide considerable information that is easily accessible due to a fine index; a full chapter is dedicated to the Geneva Bible. Gordon Campbell’s Bible: The Story of the King James Version, 1611-2011, Oxford, 2010, is a handy survey of the editions leading up to the King James Bible and the history of the version up to the quadricentennial. Chad Van Dixhoorn, ed., David F. Wright, con. ed., The Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly, 5 vols., Oxford, 2012. T. H. Darlow and H. F. Moule compiled, Historical Catalogue of the Printed Editions of Holy Scripture in the British and Foreign Bible Society, which was published in London by Bible House in 1903. Information about the inclusion of verse numbers in the Geneva Bible is from, “Where did verse numbers come from?” as on the Tyndale House, Cambridge, website, tyndalehouse.com. Information about Carthage is from, “The Acts of the Council of Carthage of 397 AD (Incorporating the Acts of the Council of Hippo of 393 AD),” as translated by Roger Pearse, dated 2002, and kindly placed in the public domain. Regarding Peter Ramus see, The Logic of Peter Ramus, which includes his first and second books of dialectic and is available from Berith Press as translated by Rollo MacIlmaine, 1574, and R. F. Gent, 1636. Information about Ramism is from, Erland Sellberg, "Petrus Ramus", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2024 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2024/entries/ramus/>. If you are interested in reading more about William Perkins, the 2024 issue of The Confessional Presbyterian, vol. 20, has several articles about him.