HistoricalChristian.Faith

Do the writers who call the deuterocanon "not canonical" merely parrot Jerome's preface while citing the same books as Scripture in their own theology?

Type: supporting argument (off-timeline; methodological) · Assessment: contested — the verdict turns on which form of the deflation is weighed. Its factual core is solid and documented all across this timeline: a long line of Hebrew-conscious writers who rank the disputed books "not canonical" also cite the very same books as Scripture in their own voice — Gregory the Great calling the Wisdom of Solomon what "the Truth says through His Scripture" even as he denies 1 Maccabees the word "canonical," Athanasius filing Wisdom, Sirach, and Tobit below the canon yet quoting all three under Scripture-formulae — and much of the later shorter-canon testimony did inherit Jerome's preface distinction with the Vulgate's own front matter. So as a caution against counting these writers as a chorus of independent rejecters of the books' Scriptural status, the point lands (the same concession made on the "52 writers" page). But the strong rhetorical form — that the shorter-canon witness is "mere parroting" that the authors' own practice refutes, so the whole line collapses into one echoed and self-contradicted opinion — overstates. It proves too much (it makes Jerome, Athanasius, Rufinus, and Gregory self-contradictory); it miscasts a coherent, considered two-tier view (read-and-edifying vs. canonical-for-doctrine) as thoughtless copying; and it cannot touch the witnesses who reached the shorter list independently or who predate Jerome's prefaces — Athanasius (367) among them. The honest residue is the graded, dual standing the wiki keeps surfacing, not a phantom chorus dissolved by its own hand: strong as a check on double-counting, weak as a dissolution of the shorter-canon witness — no clear winner · back to timeline

Related arguments: Jerome and the Vulgate — see also did later evidence undercut Jerome's grounds for a Hebrew-only canon?, was the shorter Hebrew canon the medieval Western mainstream?, did Rome pressure Jerome into putting the Apocrypha in the Vulgate?, and does the deuterocanon's millennium in the Vulgate shift the burden of proof?.

See also: this is the direct complement of the "52 ecclesiastical writers and the Glossa Ordinaria" argument (contested) — both turn on the same mechanism, the propagation of Jerome's Vulgate-preface distinction through later writers — but from the opposite side: there the "parroting" fact deflates the Protestant headcount ("52 independent rejecters" → one source echoed), here the same fact is pressed the Catholic way (the shorter-canon witnesses are not real rejecters at all). It rests on the same list-versus-usage evidence weighed under reading the patristic witness — especially does quoting a book "as Scripture" prove a Father held it canonical? (plausible), what did the "ecclesiastical" (read-but-not-canonical) category mean? (sound), and does the Fathers' word "canon" mean the modern definition? (sound) — and it shares the divided-record finding of did the early church reject the deuterocanon? (contested).

The sub-claim is not about any one book but about how to weigh the record: when writer after writer labels the disputed books "not canonical" in language that traces to one preface, are they a chorus of independent witnesses against the deuterocanon's Scriptural status — or one opinion (Jerome's) echoed through prefatory matter and quietly contradicted by the same authors' working theology, where they cite those books to settle doctrine?

The claim

The deflation was pressed in The Great Debate IX: Is the Apocrypha Scripture? (James White vs. Gary Michuta, 2004) — the same debate that produced the "52 writers" talking point. White, defending the shorter-canon witnesses, granted that Gregory the Great "essentially parroted the words of Jerome" in denying 1 Maccabees the word "canonical," and asked whether that "actually reflect[s] what Gregory the Great himself believed, or is he simply giving a nod to… the greatest biblical scholar of his day." Michuta seized the concession and turned it into a general rule:¹

… you have 50 major theological writers who denied the Deuterocanonical books. But what you find — and I'm the type who actually looks up all these 50 people — is that the vast majority of them will parrot Jerome's words, but in their own writings, they affirm the inspiration of the books. That is precisely what occurs with Gregory the Great.

— Gary Michuta, The Great Debate IX. The mechanism has two moving parts. First, dependence: the long line of writers who file the deuterocanon "not canonical" are not reaching independent verdicts but reproducing Jerome's Vulgate-preface formula ("read for the edification of the people, not for confirming… ecclesiastical doctrines"), so a seeming chorus reduces to one voice. Second, self-contradiction: those same writers, in their own theology, cite the very books they disavow with "it is written" and "Holy Scripture says," and settle doctrine from them — so their prefatory disavowal is contradicted by their working practice, and cannot be taken as a considered rejection of the books' Scriptural status. Put together, the argument concludes that the apparent weight of shorter-canon testimony against the deuterocanon is illusory: one echoed opinion, refuted by the echoers' own hands.²

Who advances it

The proponent. Gary Michuta (Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger: The Untold Story of the Lost Books of the Protestant Bible) is the deflation's sharpest popular voice; it is the natural Catholic answer to the Reformed medieval roll compiled by William Webster and popularized by White, and it runs on a premise the wiki documents independently — that the Fathers who graded these books below the canon nonetheless cited them as Scripture (weighed on the citation-versus-canon and early-church pages). The adversary is White himself, who in the very same exchange refused the "mere parroting" reading of Gregory — "I don't believe Gregory was merely parroting Jerome at all" — and insisted the "not… canonical, yet… for the edification of the Church" distinction was "the constant differentiation made throughout the centuries by the majority of ecclesiastical writers": a considered two-tier posture, not a thoughtless copy.³

The factual core — what the record actually shows

Both halves of the observation are real, and both are documented on this timeline. The graded writers do cite the books they rank below the canon as Scripture in their own voice. Gregory the Great is the sharpest single case: in his letters and his Pastoral Rule he adduces the Wisdom of Solomon as what "the Truth says through His Scripture" (Wisdom 1:11) and chains Sirach and Tobit under "what is written," beside Luke and Matthew — yet in the Morals on the Book of Job he pauses over 1 Maccabees to say that "from the books, though not Canonical, yet brought out for the edifying of the Church, we bring forward testimony." One pope, both halves in his own hand. Athanasius does the same: Festal Letter 39 files Wisdom, Sirach, Judith, and Tobit "not… included in the Canon, but appointed by the Fathers to be read," and his own works quote Wisdom 9:2 under "it is written," Sirach 15:9 as "the words spoken by the Spirit," and Tobit 4:18 under "it is written." And the dependence half is real too: much of the later medieval testimony — the roll from Bede and Alcuin to Hugh of St. Victor and Nicholas of Lyra, and the Glossa Ordinaria's "not in the canon" rubrics — largely reproduces Jerome's prefaces, carried in the front matter of the Vulgate they copied (the point conceded on the "52 writers" page). So the argument is not built on nothing: as a check on treating the shorter-canon writers as a lopsided count of independent rejecters of the books' Scriptural status, it is correct, and the Reformed side effectively grants the lineage ("Yes, they follow Jerome").⁴

Adversarial assessment

What holds. Two modest things. (1) The shorter-canon witnesses are not a census of independent minds: much later testimony descends from one source (Jerome's preface), so a raw headcount of "writers who said ‘not canonical’" overstates the number of independent verdicts — exactly the deflation that undoes White's "52." (2) The same writers who graded the books below the canon really did cite them as Scripture in their own voice, so it is wrong to read their "not canonical" as "not inspired" or "merely human writing"; their practice shows they held the books higher than the Reformation's bare Apocrypha. Both are sound, and both are the wiki's own findings elsewhere.

What overstates. The strong conclusion — that the shorter-canon witness is "mere parroting" the authors' own practice refutes, so it dissolves — gives way at four joints.

1. It proves too much. If citing a book as Scripture while denying it the word "canonical" is self-contradiction, then the charge convicts its own star witnesses. Jerome prefaces Sirach 22:6 with "Holy scripture says" and translated Tobit and Judith — and it is his preface everyone is said to be parroting. Gregory, Athanasius, and Rufinus all cite the disputed books as Scripture and rank them below the canon in the same breath. A reading on which every one of these authors contradicts himself is not a discovery of hidden confusion; it is a sign the reading has mistaken a coherent distinction for a contradiction.⁵

2. The "contradiction" dissolves under a two-tier canon — which is what these writers actually held. The Fathers' "canon" is the narrower, technical rule from which doctrine is proved, not the modern blanket "inspired Scripture." On that meaning a book can be read, cited reverently, even quoted as the Spirit's voice, and still be ranked below the doctrine-proving canon — with no contradiction at all. That is precisely the graded "ecclesiastical" tier Rufinus names, Athanasius lists, and Jerome defines (weighed on the ecclesiastical-category and "canon"-word pages). Gregory citing Wisdom as "His Scripture" and calling 1 Maccabees "not Canonical" is not a man caught out; it is a man stating both halves of one settled posture. So the very citations the deflation marshals to show the writers "really affirmed inspiration" do not refute their grading — they are the graded view in action. White's answer on this point is the right one, even against his own headcount.⁶

3. It cannot touch the independent and pre-Hieronymian witnesses. "They all parrot Jerome" is chronologically impossible for the writers who graded the books before Jerome's prefaces existed or reached the shorter list by their own inquiry. Athanasius's three-tier Festal Letter is 367 — roughly a generation before Jerome's Vulgate prologues (from c. 390) — so his "not… in the Canon" cannot be an echo of Jerome; if anything the borrowing runs the other way. Melito of Sardis (c. 170) "went East" to inquire after the Hebrew books and returned the shorter list two centuries before Jerome; Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Epiphanius each render the Hebrew-sized count in their own right. The "one opinion echoed" model mistakes a shared inheritance — the twenty-two-book Hebrew reckoning, older than any of them — for a single modern source, and simply omits the writers who cannot be fitted to it.⁷

4. Diffusion is evidence a view was widely held, not that it was held by no one. Grant that many medieval writers inherited Jerome's distinction with the Vulgate's front matter. A writer who copies "not canonical, yet read for edification" into his own Bible and teaches from it has adopted the distinction, not merely transcribed a dead letter; that a view rode in every Latin Bible for a thousand years shows it was the common furniture of the medieval mind, not that it was absent from it. So the dependence fact deflates the count of independent origins (there was essentially one), but it does not deflate the reach of the view (it was nearly universal). The deflation quietly slides from "one source" to "no real witnesses," and the second does not follow from the first.⁸

A flag on the proponent's proof-texts. The popular form of the deflation sometimes rests its Athanasius half on careless proofs. The lines usually quoted to show Athanasius "himself" treating the deuterocanon as holy Scripture — Wisdom 1:11 ("the mouth that belies slays the soul") and Sirach 30:4 — are not in fact his own words but sit inside documents by others (a synodal letter of the Egyptian bishops; a letter of Alexander of Thessalonica) that Athanasius merely compiled into his Defence against the Arians; and Baruch 3:12, also adduced, is a book Athanasius kept inside his canon, folded into Jeremiah — so it is no tier-two contradiction at all. The substantive point survives on firmer, genuinely own-voice texts (Wisdom 9:2, Sirach 15:9, Tobit 4:18), but the deflation overreaches when it leans on the weaker ones — a reminder that "he affirms inspiration in his own writings" must be checked case by case, not asserted wholesale.⁹

What the record really shows. Strip the "mere parroting" framing away and the residue is the same shape the whole timeline keeps yielding: a real, considered, largely Hieronymian current ranked the disputed books below a canon measured by the Hebrew table, and read, cited, and honored those same books as Scripture in worship and argument. That is not a phantom chorus dissolved by its own practice; it is a graded or dual standing held consciously by the writers themselves — the posture the Eastern Synod of Jerusalem (1672) would later put into words, that these books were "not always… considered on the same level as the rest," yet received and read. The deflation is right that you cannot count the shorter-canon writers as a lopsided census of independent rejecters; it is wrong that their own hands refute them.

Assessment

Contested. The deflation is genuinely double-natured, and the verdict turns on which form is weighed. Its factual core is solid: much of the later shorter-canon testimony did inherit Jerome's single preface distinction, and the graded writers really did cite the disputed books as Scripture in their own voice — so as a caution against counting them as a chorus of independent rejecters of the books' Scriptural status, the point lands (the same concession that undoes the "52 writers" headcount). But the strong rhetorical thesis — that the shorter-canon witness is "mere parroting" the authors' own practice refutes, so it collapses into one echoed and self-contradicted opinion — does not hold: it proves too much (convicting Jerome, Athanasius, Rufinus, and Gregory of self-contradiction); the "contradiction" dissolves under the two-tier canon those writers actually held, so their citations are the graded view rather than a refutation of it; the "all echo Jerome" model cannot reach the independent and pre-Hieronymian witnesses (Athanasius predates the prefaces; Melito, Gregory of Nazianzus, and others render the Hebrew count in their own right); and diffusion of a distinction is evidence it was widely held, not that it was held by no one. The honest residue is the graded, dual standing the wiki keeps surfacing — strong as a check on double-counting Jerome, weak as a dissolution of the shorter-canon witness; no clear winner. Flag on the proponent both the slide from "one source diffused" to "no real witnesses" and the careless Athanasius proof-texts (Wisdom 1:11 and Sirach 30:4 are not his own words; Baruch he kept inside his canon), which the sounder own-voice citations render unnecessary.

Sources