HistoricalChristian.Faith

Cyprian of Carthage on the Old Testament Canon

Dates: c. 253 AD (Cyprian, c. 200 – 258; bishop of Carthage from c. 248 and martyr under Valerian, the leading Latin churchman of the mid-third century, whose treatises and letters belong to the decade c. 248–258) · Wikipedia
Summary: A generation after his fellow Carthaginian Tertullian, Cyprian quotes the disputed books not as edifying maxims but with the fullest citation formulae he uses for any book — “Holy Scripture teaches and forewarns,” “Holy Scripture instructs us,” “the sacred Scripture speaks,” “the Holy Spirit… by Jeremiah… teaches.” Across his treatises and letters he so cites Tobit, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), the Wisdom of Solomon, 1 Maccabees, the deuterocanonical Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch 6), and the Greek addition to Daniel (Bel and the Dragon) — the same label he reserves for Moses, the prophets, and the Gospel, with no mark of distinction. He draws up no canon-list, so he renders no canon-verdict; but he is the strongest Western/Latin witness yet to the disputed books read outright as Scripture, in the very African church whose councils would enshrine the longer canon.

Claims & evidence

He cites Tobit (12:8) as what “Holy Scripture instructs us, saying”

Moreover, those who pray should not come to God with fruitless or naked prayers. Petition is ineffectual when it is a barren entreaty that beseeches God… And thus Holy Scripture instructs us, saying, “Prayer is good with fasting and almsgiving.”

— On the Lord’s Prayer (Treatise 4), §32, source.¹ The saying “Prayer is good with fasting and almsgiving” is Tobit 12:8, the angel Raphael’s counsel to Tobit and Tobias. Cyprian introduces it with the bare formula “Holy Scripture instructs us, saying” — the same formula he uses elsewhere for the Law and the Gospel — and at once glosses it with the protocanonical example of Cornelius (Acts 10), the deuterocanonical verse and the canonical narrative treated as a single scriptural witness to prayer joined with almsgiving.

He cites Sirach (2:1, 4–5) as what “Holy Scripture teaches and forewarns, saying”

Holy Scripture teaches and forewarns, saying, “My son, when thou comest to the service of God, stand in righteousness and fear, and prepare thy soul for temptation.” And again: “In pain endure, and in thy humility have patience; for gold and silver is tried in the fire, but acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation.”

— On the Mortality (Treatise 7), §9, source.² The two quoted sentences are Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 2:1 and 2:4–5. Cyprian heads them with the strongest possible formula — “Holy Scripture teaches and forewarns” — and reasons from them as authoritative doctrine on why the Christian must expect to suffer, the deuterocanonical wisdom book functioning exactly as a protocanonical prophet would.

He cites the Wisdom of Solomon (3:4–8) as what “the sacred Scripture speaks”

And again, where the sacred Scripture speaks of the tortures which consecrate God’s martyrs, and sanctify them in the very trial of suffering: “And if they have suffered torments in the sight of men, yet is their hope full of immortality; and having been a little chastised, they shall be greatly rewarded: for God proved them, and found them worthy of Himself. As gold in the furnace hath He tried them, and received them as a sacrifice of a burnt-offering, and in due time regard shall be had unto them. The righteous shall shine, and shall run to and fro like sparks among the stubble. They shall judge the nations, and have dominion over the people; and their Lord shall reign for ever.”

— Epistle 80 (To Successus), §2 — written from hiding during the Valerianic persecution — source.³ The long quotation is Wisdom of Solomon 3:4–8. Cyprian names it “the sacred Scripture” and sets it in a chain with two Psalms (116:15; 51:17) and two sayings of Christ (John 12:25; Matthew 10:28), pressing the deuterocanonical promise that the martyrs’ sufferings are “tried… as gold in the furnace” as direct comfort to the confessors — cited as Scripture, indistinguishably from the Psalter and the Gospel beside it.

He cites 1 Maccabees (2:62–63) in a chain headed “Holy Scripture meets and warns us, saying”

…since Holy Scripture meets and warns us, saying, “But he who presumes and is haughty, the man who boasts of himself, who hath enlarged his soul as hell, shall accomplish nothing.” And again: “And fear not the words of a sinful man, for his glory shall be dung and worms. To-day he is lifted up, and to-morrow he shall not be found, because he is turned into his earth, and his thought shall perish.”

— Epistle 54 (To Cornelius), §3, source.⁴ The second quotation — “And fear not the words of a sinful man, for his glory shall be dung and worms…” — is 1 Maccabees 2:62–63, from the dying charge of Mattathias to his sons. (The first sentence in the chain is Habakkuk 2:5.) Cyprian gathers both under the single heading “Holy Scripture meets and warns us, saying,” the deuterocanonical history adduced as Scripture in the same breath as a canonical prophet to steady the church’s discipline against the proud.

He cites the Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch 6:6) as what “the Holy Spirit… by Jeremiah… teaches”

The Holy Spirit, moreover, suggests these same things by Jeremiah, and teaches, saying, “But in the heart ought God to be adored by thee.”

— On the Lord’s Prayer (Treatise 4), §5, source.⁵ The words “in the heart ought God to be adored” are from the deuterocanonical Letter of Jeremiah (carried in the Greek and Latin Bibles as Baruch ch. 6, the “Epistle of Jeremy”; the call to inward worship stands at v. 6). Cyprian ascribes the verse to “the Holy Spirit… by Jeremiah” — the highest attribution he gives any prophet — and sets it beside 1 Samuel 1:13 and Psalm 4:4 as a scriptural proof that God is worshipped in the heart, the deuterocanonical book cited under Jeremiah’s name exactly as Tertullian and Irenaeus had cited it.

He cites the Greek addition to Daniel (Bel and the Dragon 14:5) as the words of Daniel “filled with the Holy Spirit”

And Daniel, devoted to God, and filled with the Holy Spirit, exclaims and says: “I worship nothing but the Lord my God, who founded the heaven and the earth.”

— Exhortation to Martyrdom, Addressed to Fortunatus (Treatise 11), §11, source.⁶ Daniel’s confession “I worship nothing but the Lord my God, who founded the heaven and the earth” is Bel and the Dragon v. 5 (the Greek addition reckoned Daniel ch. 14), where Daniel refuses the idol Bel. Cyprian places it in a catalogue of biblical martyrs and confessors — the three youths of Daniel 3, “Tobias” (Tobit), the seven Maccabean brothers — calling Daniel “filled with the Holy Spirit” and quoting the deuterocanonical addition as Daniel’s own inspired word, indistinguishably from the protocanonical chapters around it.

Notes

• The fullest formulae, not woven maxims. Where Clement of Rome, the Didache, and Polycarp braid the disputed books in without a citation formula, and Tertullian ranks Wisdom among “Christian authorities,” Cyprian uses the bare, highest labels — “Holy Scripture,” “the sacred Scripture,” “the Holy Spirit… by Jeremiah… teaches” — the same words he reserves for the Law, the Psalms, the prophets, and the Gospel. On the level of citation-form he treats Tobit, Sirach, Wisdom, 1 Maccabees, and Baruch (Letter of Jeremiah) as Scripture without qualification.
• Use, not a canon-list. Cyprian nowhere enumerates the Old-Testament books, so — like Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, and Tertullian before him — he renders no canon-verdict. He bears on the canon question as a witness to Western practice, not to a list; the formulae make him the strongest such witness in the pre-Nicene Latin church.
• The Western/African line. Cyprian is the successor of Tertullian at Carthage and the predecessor of the councils of Hippo and Carthage (393–419) and of Augustine, who would receive the longer canon outright. His third-century practice — the deuterocanon cited as “Holy Scripture” — is the seed of that conciliar reception, and even Bruce Shelley, who presses the case that the early church largely excluded the Apocrypha, concedes that the Western church received it.
• Bearing on the argument. Cyprian stands firmly on the “using” side of the divide weighed in the argument “Did the early church reject the deuterocanon…?” (assessed contested): a mid-third-century Latin bishop and martyr citing six disputed books with his fullest Scripture formulae — weight against the flat claim that the primitive church did not reckon these books Scripture, and the clearest Western counterpart to the Greek-side practice of Origen, his near-contemporary.

Sources