TO DWELL AT TOO GREAT LENGTH on this matter of the "apocryphal"
books of the Old Testament, however, could be very misleading, for in some
significant respects it is entirely beside the point. Some much more critical
issues are at stake. In order for these issues to be meaningfully or
intelligently addressed, it is first necessary to understand and accept that
the Church and the Holy Scriptures have a history... that is, that
certain things happened in a certain order at certain times, and that, at least
to a meaningful extent, we can determine what these were. We must, to reduce
the matter to simplicity, admit that the Church existed on the Monday after
Pentecost... but that at that point none of the books of the New
Testament yet existed, and most of them would not be written for yet another
twenty or more years, and a few not until nearly the end of the century. If we
(or those with whom we discuss the Faith) deny the existence of this history,
refuse to admit facts as part of divine Truth... then we really have nothing to
discuss at all.
In the first weeks, months, years of her existence, the Church had no
written documents whatever, except the books of the Old Testament as indicated
earlier. The events of the Gospel were related from one believer to another by
word of mouth; those who came to accept the Faith heard them from the
believers. This was entirely in keeping with the culture in which the Church
lived, which was above all else an oral culture. Relatively few people
were able to read, let alone write... and so they heard the word of God
and kept it (cf. Lk. 8:2 1; 11:28).
The holy Apostle Paul insists upon the matter: "Therefore brethren,
stand fast and hold to the traditions which you have been taught, whether by word
or our letter" (2 Thess. 2:15).
In due course, as the Church began to spread beyond her place of origin in Jerusalem
and Galilee, communications between the local churches
became necessary... and letters were written. Some of these were of such great
importance to understanding the Faith that they began to be read in church
services, along with the Scriptures (the Old Testament). But copies existed
initially only in the local churches to which they had been addressed, although
in time in many others as well. As travelers moved from one place to another
they carried hand-written copies of the letters for the edification of other
believers. Some of these letters were written by the apostles, but there were
others, written by other believers as well. Eventually, some of them came to
have the character of what we now call "open letters" addressed to
the Church as a whole, rather than to any particular congregation. These are
the "universal" or "catholic" or "general"
epistles.
As the Church spread, it also became necessary to commit the central core of
the events of Our Lord's life and His teaching to writing, to provide a written
Gospel for those who came to the Faith far from the little out-of-the-way
province of the Empire in which the Lord had lived and died. So it was that the
four written Gospels came into being. But this came to pass only after
the Gospel had been proclaimed and passed from one believer to another by word
of mouth, by tradition ("handing-on") for many years. It is readily
apparent upon comparison that no one of the written Gospels contains the entire
story. Just as important, perhaps more so... as one would assume, had he no
prejudice to the contrary, all four of them together yet are less than the
totality of the Tradition of which they are a part. As the Gospel of St. John
concludes: "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the
which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world
itself could not contain the books that should be written" (Jn. 21:25).
To be sure, all that is essential of the Lord's life and teaching is
to be found in the Gospels - but not all that is desirable or helpful to our
salvation. Neither any one nor all four of the Gospels together were written to
be absolutely exhaustive and final. Were that the
case, of course, we would have no need of the rest of the New Testament, nor
the Old Testament either. (There have been heretics who claimed just such
outrageous foolishness.)
The Revelation of St. John the Theologian (the
"Apocalypse") and the Acts of the Apostles are of course
"special cases." The former, almost certainly the last book of the
New Testament to be written, is agreed by most scholars to have been written by
St. John near the end of his life, during the reign of Dometian, probably about
A.D. 95 (although parts of it may perhaps have been written at an earlier
date). It is the only book of the New Testament concerning which there was
significant disagreement in the Church... there were parts of the Church for
several centuries in which it was not accepted as part of the Scriptures (of
this, more later). The Acts of the Apostles, written by the Evangelist Luke, of
course could not have been completed any earlier than A.D. 63, as it refers to St.
Paul's imprisonment at Rome
which continued into that year.
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