GraceLife Thoughts – Questions About the Canon (Part 1)

Grace Thoughts

GraceLife Thoughts – Questions about the Canon (Part 1)

Many Christians and non-Christians ask me about the “Canon” of the Bible. The Canon is known as the “rule of faith.” It is made up of the Books of the Bible believed to be inspired by God and thus vital for Christians to know and follow. Some Christian denominations have 66 Books in their Bibles. Others have more. The question is whether those others are Canonical or Deuterocanonical.

The term “deuterocanonical” is relatively new (16th Century AD). Sixtus of Siena was a Jew who converted to Catholicicsm and used the word to describe writings the Catholic Church considered canonical, but were not in the Hebrew Bible. The writings included:

Tobit
Judith
Wisdom of Solomon
Ecclesiasticus
Baruch (including Letter of Jeremiah)
1 Maccabees
2 Maccabees
Additions to Daniel (Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children, Bel and the Dragon, Susanna)
Additions to Esther

The Eastern Orthodox Church includes these deuterocanonical books, plus 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, and Psalm 151. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church also adds 1 Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, and 1, 2 and 3 Meqabyan to its deuterocanonical books.

People who identify themselves as Christians make up about one-third of the world’s population (more than two billion). They are members of about 38,000 different denominational groups. That’s a lot of divergence in a general belief in Jesus Christ as Savior and the Son of God. How many of those people believe that deuterocanonical books are God’s Word? More than 1.3 billion. That means more than half of all people who call themselves Christians accept deuterocanonical books as Scripture – the Word of God – inspired by the Holy Spirit. With that in mind, we’ll look at the deuterocanonical books and see why we should or should not accept them as God’s Word.