From: Jim Stamper (jstamper@shentel.net)
Date: Thu Feb 08 1996 - 12:01:11 EST
At 02:35 PM 2/7/96 -0500, you wrote:
>As to the reason why the Protestant church rejected WS, I cannot say.
However, it
>would be helpful to know if the apocryphal books were rejected as a group or
>individually. I suspect the former, thus WS's rejection may have been a
decision based
>more on 2Macc and Tobit than on anything in WS itself.
My recollection is that there hasn't been a formal, systematic "rejection"
in Protestant denominations. The Anglican Articles of Religion of 1553
which were generally consistent with the Reformation theology of the
Continent said:
"And the other Books (as Hierome [Jerome] saith) the Church doth
read for
example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not
apply them
to establish any doctrine; such are these following:
and it goes on to list what we call the Apocrypha, including WS.
As I remember, in the missionary explosion of the 19th Century, the British
and Foreign Bible Society started printing the AV [KJV] without the
Aprocrypha to save money and printers in USA followed suit. An economic
rather than a theological decision. As a consequence over time a lot of
people acquired Bibles without the Apocrypha.
In my travels, whenever I can, I try to look in churches at their old
lectern Bibles. My impression has been that most of the real antiques
include these books regardless of the denomination where they were located.
Don't know if the Apocrypha was read on Sundays or not and admit this is
very unscientific survey.
Authorized Roman Catholic translations, of course, included the Apocrypha.
As a child in **very** Protestant surroundings I was taught our Bible didn't
include them because they were "Catholic." The Anglicans/Episcopalians have
always included them, but not very much, in their lectionaries.
Jim-
James H. Stamper
PO Box 666
Woodstock, VA 22664
(540)459-2720
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