Expert: Sal - 11/29/2008

Question
QUESTION: Can you support your claim that Jesus and the apostles used these apocraphal books?

ANSWER: Dear Sir:

Scholars have noted that when Jesus and the Apostles quote the Old Testament it is usually from the longer version called the Septuagint. The Septuagint contains the 7 disputed books (Baruch, Judith, Sirach, Tobit, Wisdom of Solomon, and 1 & 2 Maccabees). Jesus and the Apostles quote this version 67% of the time. Obviously if our Lord and the Apostles did not support the longer version of the Scriptures they would not have quoted from it so often.

Some specific support, for example, comes from the fact that Jesus' quote of Isaiah in Mark 7:6-7 is only found in the Septuagint. St. Paul's recounting of a story from 2 Maccabees 7 is found in Hebrews 11:35. A good list of New Testament passages that quote the Septuagint can be found at scripturecatholic.com/deuterocanon.html.

God Bless,
Sal

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thanks for your response. I did, however, find it difficult to make the connection with what I WAS able to find. Could you please show some line by line comparisons? If I understood you correctly, you are saying that 67% of the quotes of Jesus and the apostles are from Baruch, Judith, Sirach, Tobit, Wisdom of Solomon, and 1 & 2 Maccabees? Could you point me to your credible source that verifies this information?

Jesus often says "it is written" when referring to the scriptures. Is there an instance when he says this in reference to these disputed books?


ANSWER: Dear Sir:

You did not understand me correctly. Scholars do not say that Jesus and the Apostles quoted from the 7 disputed books 67% of the time. Scholars say that Jesus and the Apostles quoted from the Septuagint which contains the 7 disputed books. In other words Jesus and the Apostles accepted as inspired scripture the Septuagint which contained the 7 disputed books that they must have considered inspired as well. If Jesus did not want to seem to promote the 7 disputed books he could have easily quoted only from the Palestinian Old Testament which did not contain the 7 books. Then no one could claim that Baruch, Sirach, Tobit, Wisdom of Solomon, and 1 & 2 Maccabees are inspired Scripture.

God Be With You,
Sal

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thanks for your response, and excuse my ignorance, but this is still not 100% clear to me. From what you have provided I can only conclude that you are saying that 67% of the time (does this mean 67% of quotes or 67% of the New Testament, or 67% of the words of Jesus or the apostles??) the Septuagint (the extended version of the Old Testament/not accepted by Protestants) is being quoted.

Do you see why this remains unclear? What is the other 33% quoting? And if the Jesus and the apostles quote from the Septuagint 67% of the time, then wouldn't this mean that they are quoting from any of the 7 disputed books 67% of the time? Otherwise, how would it be distinguishable whether they quote from the Septuagnint or the so-called Palestinian Old Testament?

Answer
Dear Sir:

It is 67% of Old Testament quotes of Jesus and the Apostles that come from the Septuagint. The other quotes seem to come from the shorter version of the Old Testament. Both Old Testaments were in use in Jesus' day. It takes a scholar to be able to determine from which Old Testament text the quotes come from. They determine this by the slight differences in the two texts. For example, in Mark 9:12 it tells of John the Baptist being identified as Elijah who "restores" all things in the Septuagint and who "returns" all things in the Palestinian text.

God Bless You,
Sal