Paul and the Apocrypha

Some time ago, I was visiting the chapel of a young pastor in Detroit. On the wall of his sanctuary was a framed tractate that caught my attention, since it said something to the effect that the New Testament appealed only to the canon of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament), but never to any of the works in the so-called Apocrypha. The point of this display was to underscore the legitimacy of the Protestant canon as opposed to the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox canon of Old Testament Scriptures, both the latter of which recognize the Apocrypha as Scripture. While I am neither Roman Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox, it seems to me that this tractate said either too much or too little, too much if it intended that the New Testament writers never used the Apocrypha at all or too little if they did not take the trouble to even investigate the possibility. Now, I will frankly concede that there are no uncontested quotations from the Apocrypha in the New Testament, but it should at least be admitted that Paul (and others) on occasion appealed to ideas that were first expressed in the Apocrypha. A good example is Paul’s argument in Romans 1:20-29, where he states that a rudimentary knowledge of God is available from the created universe, and while not in itself redemptive, it is sufficient to render humans as without excuse when they rebel against it. 

Paul here seems to be drawing upon traditional Jewish theology, especially the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon (13:5, 8-9, RSV). His language is too strikingly similar to this ancient text to be coincidental.

For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator. 

Yet again, not even they are to be excused; for if they had the power to know so much that they could investigate the world, how did they fail to find sooner the Lord of these things?

Later, in 9:20, Paul again probably alludes to the Wisdom of Solomon (12:12), when he says, “One of you will say to me, ‘Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?’”

             For who will say, ‘What hast thou done? Or who will resist thy judgment?

He goes on in 9:21, using the analogy of the potter, where God makes vessels for different reasons, some for noble purposes and some for common use. This analogy, also, has its parallel in the Wisdom of Solomon (15:7).

For when a potter kneads the soft earth and laboriously molds each vessel for our service, he fashions out of the same clay both the vessels that serve clean uses and those for contrary use, making all in like manner; but which shall be the use of each, of these the worker in clay decides.

In 2 Corinthians 5:1, 4, Paul uses the unusual metaphor describing the human body as a perishable tent, once again, echoing language from the Wisdom of Solomon (9:15).

…for a perishable body weighs down the soul, and this earthly tent burdens the thoughtful mind.

None of these allusions demonstrate beyond argument that Paul regarded the Wisdom of Solomon as Scripture, but at the same time, his usage of this intertestamental work does suggest that he valued it and thought it worth referencing. At the very least, no one makes allusions to literary works he hasn’t been reading!

St. Paul's "Other" Letters

Thirteen letters in the New Testament bear the name of Paul. However, they were not the only correspondence written by the great apostle-missionary. We know by his own words, for instance, that he wrote a letter to the Corinthians prior to what we know as 1 Corinthians (1 Co. 5:9). Between what we know as 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, he also wrote what he describes as a “painful letter” to this same church (2 Co. 2:3-4), and this letter is unlikely to be 1 Corinthians. We know he also wrote a letter to the Laodecians (Col. 4:16). Some have speculated that it may have been what we know as Ephesians, based on the fact that our earliest copy of Ephesians (p46 ca. AD 200) as well as several other early manuscripts do not have the words “in Ephesus” in the Greek text. Indeed, I have personally examined p46 at the University of Michigan where it is housed in the Hatcher library, and indeed, this early papyrus copy is missing those words. The Ephesian letter may have been a circular letter to several congregations, but then again, Paul may have written to the Laodecians completely apart from what we know as Ephesians. Ephesians also contains the intriguing parenthetical statement, “as I wrote before in a few words”, which might refer to what he said earlier in the same letter but might also refer to some other letter he wrote. All these are phrases actually appear in Paul’s known letters, and it is certainly not a stretch to suppose that he may have written other letters of which we know nothing.

This, then, raises an interesting speculative question. Though by this late date it is unlikely, what if one or more of these other correspondences of Paul were discovered? Would we consider them canonical? Would they be of merely historical interest? I, for one, would be riveted by what other things he may have written, but at the same time, I would be doubtful about including them in the canon of the New Testament. I think the long canonical tradition of the church is better left undisturbed, and at a more theological level, I am content that the Holy Spirit has preserved through the vicissitudes of history those writings which were necessary. Still, it is an intriguing idea!

A Revised Canon?

The formation of the canon was always problematic for me (along with the mechanics of the inspiration of the bible) but your faith in "the work of the Holy Spirit in the early church fathers vis-à-vis their canonical decisions and processes" informed and inspired inspired my faith. Still though, it's somehow always easier for me to believe in inspiration and canonical decisions occurring a long time ago in a land far, far away.