The Apocrypha and the Early Church— David Bercot — Ep. 066

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I'm here with David Burso. We're in your office here in, I forget the name of the town again. Amberson. Amberson, okay. Amberson. Population about 120. Small town here in Pennsylvania, but yeah, you're pretty well known for having written, you know, you've written a number of books, you speak at a lot of conferences.

Last year you spoke at Anabaptist Identity Conference on the Apocrypha, which was quite interesting. And so yeah, we want to talk about that a little bit today. First of all, how long have you had an interest in the Apocrypha? Was this something you noticed as a young Christian? Well, I definitely had no interest in it. I was raised to believe that it was something the Roman Catholic Church added to the Bible. So I mean, it was, I never had read it, you know, as a young Christian or when I was 35, I was trying to find out what the historic faith actually was. What did Christians believe in the beginning, close after the time of the apostles?

How did they understand the New Testament? So I started reading the writings of the Christians before the Council of Nicaea. That would be within the first 200 years of Christianity or 300. And while I'm reading them, and the last question on my mind was the Apocrypha. I mean, that was like, yeah, that's something the Roman Catholic Church invented. And I suddenly started seeing them quoting from these books. And it's like, what? I mean, at first it was such a shock because I mean, I'd always believed this was something added, you know, centuries after the apostles. And like Clement of Rome, who, you know, probably knew Paul and Peter, who wrote about the year 100, you know, he quotes from them.

And it's like, wait a minute, what's going on here? But they all do. And they mention people, figures like the Maccabees that I thought they were a mythical people. I knew nothing about them. It took me a long time to get past that barrier that probably a lot of the people listening to this interview have grown up with because we've all heard the same myth. The Roman Catholic Church stuck this in the Bible. Yeah. Yeah, me as well. I mean, it's, yeah, that's just kind of assumed. Or, and maybe not even with that much detail. It's just like, oh yeah, that's just, it's not part of, we don't even, we haven't, I mean, I don't really know anybody who's ever really read it, you know?

I mean, no, it's kind of there, but yeah. So this sounds like this is something you've at least encountered or been interested in for quite a while then. Yeah. So this would go back, wow, what's, yeah, over 30, 35 years. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So how did you begin to change your mind? Because I'm pretty sure you don't believe that anymore. Yeah. You know, those initial prejudices you had. Yeah. I was curious. Okay. What's the story here? What's going on? I mean, I could see what I was, had been told was obviously false, but yeah, what was the story? And so then, you know, I started digging from there. Now, the other thing I discovered from reading the early Christian writings was that their Old Testament, the version of the Old Testament they used was the Septuagint, which, you know, we've done an interview on that.

These books, it's really only seven additional books. It's not like there's a whole, you know, ton of them. Sure. Sure. Were part of the canon of the Septuagint. If the early Christians were using the Septuagint, which they were, that was their Old Testament, well, then naturally these books were all part of that. I mean, they didn't know these as, oh, this is the Apocrypha and this isn't. It was just all the Old Testament to them because it was part of their canon. Yeah. Then it suddenly made sense. And I realized, you know, what I'd been told all my life was just absolutely false. Okay. So clearly you're advocating, at least we need to know more about this.

So what would you say are some of the best reasons you would have for Christians being familiar with the Apocrypha, at least reading them, understanding them, knowing the history? When we were discussing the Septuagint, and I mentioned that, you know, no doctrine is going to change because of this. No Christian commandment is affected, whether you use the Septuagint or the Masoretic text. It's the same way with the Apocrypha. It is not going to change any Christian doctrine. It's not going to change your walk with Jesus. So if you never read them, yeah, you could still be a fine Christian, but it will bless you. You're going to see things that will strengthen your faith. One extremely amazing messianic prophecy, perhaps the most specific anywhere in the Old Testament, that is only, it's in the wisdom of Solomon.

And it's like, I think what converted me, I mean, it's hard to get past prejudices. Even when I saw early Christians quoting from them, it's like, ah, you know, it's hard, you can only get stretched so far. And it's like, oh man, not this, you know? And I went and got a copy and started reading. And I noticed the early Christians quoted a lot from the wisdom of Solomon. So I think that was probably where I started. When I read that, it has a prophecy about Jesus, about the ones plotting against him. I mean, his name isn't Jesus. It's the righteous one. Okay. They say, you know, let's condemn him to a shameful death, you know?

And if he really, he says he's the Son of God. If he really is the Son of God, then God will rescue him. And it's like exactly what the Pharisees said to Jesus, you know? Hey, if you're the Son of God, come down off that cross, you know? And I'm reading this and it's like, and it's a long, it's not just a verse. Like a lot of the prophecies are just one verse of them. And this is maybe, I don't know, eight verses. It's a long passage. And you're reading and it's such an obvious description of the crucifixion of the ones who were bothered by him, who were the scribes and Pharisees who, you know, that they say, you know, this man is, he's distasteful to us, but it was stronger than that.

You know, this guy really, we want to get rid of this righteous one, you know? And it's like, I read that and I thought, how could just a human write something like that and hit it, you know, right on the head without, I mean, long before Jesus, you know, was here on earth. I guess I can't believe that that just came about by some human guessing. And again, the early Christians quoted this, that particular prophecy a lot to the unbelieving Jews. Well, you can see why the scribes and Pharisees then would not want that book considered part of scripture because anyone reading that is going to see, well, wait a minute, this is, this is talking about Jesus.

It's like, hey, you guys are the ones who were saying that about Jesus, you know, that if he's the Son of God, let him, you know, let God rescue him and all of this. I think that was one of the reasons why they ended up rejecting these books. Now, these again, these were all Jewish books. The Christians didn't write these. And it wasn't until after the first century, at the end of the first century, you know, like around the year 100 AD, that the rabbis decided, okay, you know, we're going to exclude these from the canon. And they set the canon at 22 books, which roughly correspond to the 39, maybe 38 books, but the 39 books that are in the Protestant Old Testament.

So what you had for the next several hundred years were the Christians had one canon for the Old Testament and the unbelieving Jews had a different canon. Now, the irony is that Protestants use the canon of the unbelieving Jews and reject the ones that Christians use. I mean, none of us do this intentionally. Like I said, I didn't know any of this, but I mean, it's right there. I mean, anyone looking at the facts will say the same thing. Okay. Like you mentioned this at the beginning, but there's definitely Christians out there who say, yeah, this is a Catholic Roman, you know, the Roman Catholic Church invented these books. And you're already pretty clearly saying, no, that just is not true.

What's some historical data you can give on this and why is that to be rejected? Why is that? Yeah. Why is that not true? As I said, long before there was a Roman Catholic Church as we know it today, yeah, Christians were using these books. Not only that, in the early Christian writings, like one of them is Justin Martyr. It was written maybe 150 AD, maybe 160 at the latest in that time period. And he's having a conversation with an unbelieving Jew. It's called Dialogue with Trypho the Jew. Okay.

And they talk about this. And of course, the unbelieving Jew is saying, what, you're using books that aren't in the Bible. And you know, the Christian is saying, no, your religious leaders cut these books out of the Bible, you know? And they go, you know, back and forth in that. And you read the same thing in Tertullian. And yeah, it's always the same conversation that the Christians are defending these books and the Jews are saying, yeah, those books are not genuine, you know, scripture. Obviously, the Holy Spirit was guiding the church on what is scripture, you know? And the church, I mean, it wasn't like you have a divided church. The church universally accepted these books.

The story of the Apocrypha is the story of the Septuagint. So the two go, you know, are interlocked. When Jerome, the Pope's secretary, translated the Latin Vulgate in our interview on the Septuagint, I described how he went back to the Jewish text, the Masoretic text, and rejected the Septuagint. Well, when he did that, then, you know, he had a problem. There's all these books that aren't in the Masoretic text because the Jews have rejected them. The Christians used them. He translated them, but of course he had to translate them from the Septuagint, but he kind of slammed them, you know? So rather than the Roman Catholic Church being the ones who invented these books and stuck them in the scriptures, it was actually this translator for the Pope who, you know, was the one who put a bad mark on them.

But they did stay in the Catholic Bible and the Catholic Church, you know, did declare later that, yeah, this is part of scripture. Wow. So especially, I'm curious what the Anabaptists would have said about this too. Like, you know, where did they come into the picture? Because obviously that's much later in history. Yeah. But what was the early Anabaptists' view on this? So the Anabaptists, of course, they came out of the Protestant movement, you know, very early on. Yeah, they were influenced by it and they were using Protestant Bibles for the most part. Like without the Apocrypha at this point? Well, not exactly because Luther said that these books are not part of scripture. Okay.

But they were in the Lutheran Bible. Okay. So the Anabaptists. Interesting. Yeah, used, well, because Christians had been using these, you know, to just drop them out of the Bible. Luther didn't want them dropped out because how do you know what happened? Ezra and Nehemiah, you know, they're rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. They're rebuilding the temple. And then suddenly nothing. And then next thing you know, it's John the Baptist, you know? Yeah. Well, yeah, without the Apocrypha, you don't even know what happened in that time period, you know? So Luther wanted that in there because he realized, yeah, Christians need to know what happened in the history. Plus books like the wisdom of Solomon, you know, with the fantastic prophecy about the Messiah.

And then Sirach has such good, just practical teaching on godly living that, yeah, none of them, even like Calvin and them, you know, they didn't want that to just be disappeared. So we'll put it in there. We'll say it's not really inspired, but it's worthwhile for reading. And that's what they put on it. Well, the Anabaptists, yeah, they didn't follow Luther and they were using Bibles that had that in there. It really struck a responsive note with them because they were being persecuted bitterly, not only by the Catholics, but by the Lutherans and the Calvinists. Okay. Well, what book in the Old Testament are people being persecuted for their religious beliefs, for, you know, worshiping the true God?

Well, I guess Daniel would have, you know, a bit on that. But the book that really has the most is Second Maccabees. And it describes, for example, these seven sons who the Greeks, you know, brought forward and said, all right, you know, renounce the law, renounce Moses and you'll live. And they refused to do it. So the Greeks took the oldest, tortured him in front of their mother, in front of the other seven brothers, you know, to get him to renounce, you know, the Mosaic law. He never would, you know? And then they take the, and they finally torture him to death. Then they take the second one and go through all seven. I mean, it's, and all seven, you know, were faithful, you know, in accepting torture.

And it's the one that I'm pretty sure Hebrews is talking about, where he said some accepted torture rather than to renounce their faith. Because there's no one else you read in the Old Testament who was tortured for their faith, except in Second Maccabees. You know, in the New Testament, you have some people, the Anabaptists who were facing torture all the time and all that. Yeah, they really liked that book. And then Sirach, they saw so much, yeah, just counsel on godly living in Sirach. So the Anabaptists quote them all the time. The writings of Menno Simons, yeah, it's, you see the Apocrypha quoted a lot because, yeah, there's really just a lot of fruitful, solid, you know, godly inspired counsel in there.

And so, and the Anabaptists never make a difference. Now, oh, now this isn't scripture, but yeah, they'll quote the, you know, say Sirach, and then the next verse they quote Psalms or something like that. They never made a distinction that way. So where did, because I mean, if you go to an Anabaptist church now, you know, they're not going to be using the Apocrypha as a general rule. What changed? What changed? Okay. In the last couple hundred years, the Anabaptists used them until the 1800s. Okay. Okay. Now today, the older Amish would still use them. So, okay, what happened in the 1800s, the Anabaptists were seeing the need for spiritual renewal. They were what, 300 years old by then?

Yeah. They saw a lot happening with revivals. It was right when the, you know, revival movements were real big, DL Moody and that sort of thing. And so they turned a lot to the Protestants for spiritual renewal. And they adopted so much of Protestant beliefs and that sort of thing. Well, it wasn't until the 1800s that it was taken out of the King James. Okay. Because it was in the King James Bible as well from 1611 on, you know? And so right when the Anabaptists started using the King James and all that, getting away from Luther's German Bible, and they started using, having English services and stuff. Yeah. They picked up the King James. It's not in there.

And so, yeah, they bought the Protestant view that, oh, these aren't inspired. And so it's a pretty recent thing in Anabaptist history. And yeah, I would argue very strongly that, yeah, as Anabaptists, yeah, we need to get back that these books, yeah, we will find very useful in raising our children, in raising godly families, in having godly congregations and that sort of thing. Yeah. So you're basically saying there's the Protestant influence. Protestant, big reason for it. It's, I'd say the only reason we're not using them. Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. Like I was unaware that the 1611 King James would have actually had the Apocrypha in that. I'd never thought of that. Oh, that was, yeah, because we don't have that now, you know?

Exactly. It's been taken out. Yeah. You don't think about it. I didn't know any of this either. You know, it's like, you know, just having, you know, to just keep digging and following and it's like, oh, wow, you know, just learning something new each time I've dug further. Yes. It's not like we're making these huge statements of, oh, you know, now we've lost the Apocrypha or however you want to take it. I mean, we've just, it's terrible. It's not necessarily that. It's just like there are extra blessings here, basically is what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have found them all very edifying. Once I got past my prejudice, it took me, I have to admit, it took me a long time.

I mean, because I can say from childhood on, I was turned against those books and it is hard to overcome prejudice. Are you suggesting, you know, everybody, hey, go out and, you know, read through some of this stuff, check it out yourself? Yeah. If you, and get a, if you're used to reading a modern English version of the Bible, then read them in modern English. If you're used to King James, again, you can, well, in fact, you can get the original King James of these. It's out there, you know? Wow. Yeah. Read them in the language that you're used to reading the Bible in. It helps you to understand the New Testament better because now Sirach would have lived like, I don't know, 100 BC.

So he's not real far from the New Testament. Yeah. So you can see what Jews believed that close to Jesus and what Jewish morality was like. And so then when you get to the New Testament, there's not this big jump. Yeah. It's like, oh, well, this is, in fact, almost everyone who reads Sirach comments that, oh, this is closer to the New Testament than any of the rest of the Old Testament because it says a lot of the same things. In fact, a lot of James, he doesn't necessarily directly quote from Sirach, but he's obviously paraphrasing it. It's so similar, the parallel thoughts. And in fact, a lot of the Sermon on the Mount is right there in Sirach.

Again, he doesn't quote from it directly, but the Holy Spirit had already been teaching the Jews many of these things. So yeah, there was a transition that God was building in, preparing the Jews, you know, for the coming of Christ. But yeah, I would encourage people, let yourself be stretched a little bit. There's not going to be some weird doctrine you're going to be introduced to or anything like that. But I think, yeah, you will find you're blessed. Yeah. So if we accept the Apocrypha or, you know, consider this at least worthy of our time or I don't know, whatever you want to, wherever you want to fall on the spectrum of if they're inspired or not, I'm curious then, how do we respond to the other books that the early church would have quoted from that was, you know, that we would not consider part of the canon at all?

Like for, you know, there was, I think some quoted from the book of Enoch, for example. What do we do with that? I don't know that any of the early churches ever accepted Enoch as part of their canon. A lot of early Christians quote from it because Jude quotes from it. You know, he says, uh, that Enoch, the seventh in line from Adam, uh, he prophesied that about the holy ones coming, you know, at the coming of Christ. And so that's right there in the New Testament. So obviously Enoch is a book that I think Christians should read when you have a prophecy quoted from it. But, and I don't really know the answer why, but it was not part of the Septuagintal canon as far as we know.

Some of the early Christians like Tertullian might have wanted to argue we should include it in the canon. There is one church, the Ethiopian church. It is part of their canon. But the book of Enoch. The book of Enoch is. Yeah. Interesting. But they're the only one. But it is an interesting book. I think it has a lot of genuine history in it and obviously a prophecy. I do wonder if maybe it got corrupted through the centuries and maybe that's why it's not part of the canon. I really don't know. But yeah, when the New Testament quotes a prophecy from the book, he specifically says, Enoch said this, the seventh in line from Adam. Yeah.

Then when we read that prophecy and he's, you know, quoting it from the book, then it tells us, okay, there's something here worthwhile, but that doesn't necessarily mean it should be in the canon of scripture. Like Josephus is worthwhile reading, but it's, you know, never been part of the canon. Sure. And because I think my understanding from different people I've talked to, the concern is, okay, if we say, all right, the Apocrypha is worthy of our time and, you know, and maybe even, you know, God used it, God, whatever, they're afraid that if we quote, open that door a little, what other books are we going to have to start deciding on? I mean, there's so many other, you know, historical pieces of, yeah, it can get really messy.

The concern should be the other way. When we start taking certain books out of the Bible, where does that end? See, Luther is the one who said, okay, this is not scripture. And look what happened. It was in Lutheran seminaries that they started saying, oh yeah, this isn't really scripture. This isn't really scripture. This isn't inspired. This is all that. So no, I see it being the other way around. Interesting. The way it happened in history. Yeah. Hmm. But yeah, back to, I mean, I think people are genuinely concerned about the authority of scripture, what's inspired, what isn't. And I think that's probably some of the knee-jerk reaction that we get when we say, oh no, maybe you should check out these books.

These might be worth your time. Maybe they're concerned. Okay. Well, there's so many other books out there. You know, we don't want to go down that road. Yeah. Basically. Well, there's several safeguards we have. You know, again, the early Christians and what they quote, and like I say, Enoch would be the only one that I think anyone would have made an argument on. So it's not like, yeah, there's a whole bunch of other ones that should be up there for consideration. And there weren't enough people who would have been arguing for Enoch. Again, they would have read it. They maybe would have viewed it as having some accurate history in it.

But for whatever reason, not necessarily inspired of God. I mean, something can be accurate history like Josephus, but Josephus isn't an inspired writer. But we read his writings for their historical value. But yeah, I think the concern is, is we just, oh, we don't want to open this door because then it's like open season on the canon of scripture and we're going to have all these. And I think, yeah, from what you're saying, that just does not, historically, that just does not make sense. Yeah. That's never going to happen. I think that's important for our audience to hear that. That's pretty, like, obviously we take God's word very seriously. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. When you start cutting books out of the canon, then I think, and start deciding, I don't think this is inspired.

When the church has always viewed it as inspired, then I think that's a greater danger. And I think we're dealing with that today of people no longer accepting the Bible as inspired of God. Right. That's, I mean, obviously that's a whole, you know, that's a whole other topic, but just in general viewing scripture as well, maybe this isn't, you know, maybe this section doesn't matter. Right. Something that's a very dangerous road to go down. It really is. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. And thanks for taking the time to be on this episode and to tackle a subject that's kind of a lightning rod. Right. Yeah. Well, it's been fun to talk about. Yeah. This is great.

Thank you so much, David.