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When the Hasmonian king Jonathan sent a letter to the Spartans seeking an alliance, he made a fascinating remark worth repeating. According to 1 Maccabees, King Jonathan says, “We have the holy scrolls as encouragement” (1 Maccabees 12:9). This statement indicates that Jonathan, or, more generally, the author of 1 Maccabees, recognized a canon of Scripture, likely the Hebrew canon we know today. But the quote also seems to indicate another thing: that the Maccabean author did not consider his work to be part of this canon.
The Hebrew Bible does not include the Apocrypha. Nevertheless, in the Septuagint, and in Bibles of the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox, the Apocrypha appears. So, does the Apocrypha belong in our Bibles? Are the books of the Apocrypha canonical?
First, a word on what we mean by canonical and how books became part of our Bible. There are many resources on this subject, so we’ll keep it brief. The word canon means “rule,” and it refers to the books that the Jews regarded as having rule over the Jewish faith, and later, to the books that Christians regarded as having rule over the Christian faith. Books that are canonical are books that must be obeyed and treated as definitive. They are called Scripture. Non-canonical books may be old and important, but they are not considered Scripture. The study of the canon is both historical (i.e., how did the books in our Bible get there?) and theological (i.e., which books belong in the Bible?).
In both Judaism and Christianity, the process of developing the canon was long and complex, but we can summarize each process rather simply. In Judaism, books were considered canonical 1) when they had their origin in the work of one of the prophets, 2) when they were connected to Israeli Judaism (as opposed to Jewish writings from Alexandria or elsewhere), and 3) when they had the authority of great age. These books were considered inspired, that is, from God himself. The thirty-nine books[1] in the Hebrew canon fit these criteria, especially the first criterion of prophetic origin, since all the canonical Old Testament books were in some way or another connected to the prophets.
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