HistoricalChristian.Faith

Cyril of Jerusalem on the Old Testament Canon

Dates: c. 350 AD (the Old Testament list is in Catechetical Lecture 4.33–37, the baptismal catechesis delivered at Jerusalem c. 348–350; Cyril c. 313–386) · Wikipedia · his New Testament canon page
Verdict on the deuterocanon: NO by the list — but his usage tells against it. Catechizing the candidates for baptism, Cyril gives an Eastern Old-Testament list of twenty-two books, the Hebrew-letter count. Tobit, Judith, Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon, and 1–2 Maccabees are all absent from it, and he charges the catechumen to "have nothing to do with the apocryphal writings." Yet his Jeremiah carries Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah folded in — a deuterocanonical text kept inside a canonical book — and elsewhere in the same lectures he quotes the very books his list omits as Scripture: Baruch as "the Prophet," the Wisdom of Solomon "according to Solomon," Sirach, and the Greek Daniel's Susanna. He credits the whole Hebrew-sized canon to the Septuagint's seventy-two translators. A near-neighbour Eastern witness to the Hebrew-canon pattern of Melito and Origen, a generation before Athanasius.

Claims & evidence

The twenty-two books — "study earnestly these only which we read openly in the Church"

In the fourth Catechetical Lecture, instructing the baptismal candidates "Of the Divine Scriptures," Cyril recites the Old Testament book by book and fixes the count at twenty-two, the number of the Hebrew letters:¹

Of these read the two and twenty books, but have nothing to do with the apocryphal writings. Study earnestly these only which we read openly in the Church… And of the Old Testament, as we have said, study the two and twenty books… For of the Law the books of Moses are the first five, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. And next, Joshua the son of Nave, and the book of Judges, including Ruth, counted as seventh. And of the other historical books, the first and second books of the Kings are among the Hebrews one book; also the third and fourth one book. And in like manner, the first and second of Chronicles are with them one book; and the first and second of Esdras are counted one. Esther is the twelfth book; and these are the Historical writings. But those which are written in verses are five, Job, and the book of Psalms, and Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs, which is the seventeenth book. And after these come the five Prophetic books: of the Twelve Prophets one book, of Isaiah one, of Jeremiah one, including Baruch and Lamentations and the Epistle; then Ezekiel, and the Book of Daniel, the twenty-second of the Old Testament.

The deuterocanon is absent

Measured against the disputed books the verdict is plain: no Tobit, no Judith, no Sirach, no Wisdom of Solomon, no Maccabees. Cyril's twenty-two are the protocanonical Hebrew books (Ruth folded into Judges, the paired books of Kings, Chronicles, and Esdras each counted as one), and he draws the line sharply — "have nothing to do with the apocryphal writings," "study earnestly these only which we read openly in the Church."¹ This is the same Hebrew-sized canon Melito had set and Origen had counted, and that Athanasius and Jerome would carry further down this timeline.

The bundled exception — "Jeremiah… including Baruch and… the Epistle"

Cyril's list is not perfectly clean of the Greek extras. His single book of Jeremiah is reckoned "including Baruch and Lamentations and the Epistle" — folding in both Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah (Baruch ch. 6 in the Vulgate numbering), two short deuterocanonical works, not as separate books but as appendices to Jeremiah, exactly as the Greek manuscripts transmitted them.¹ So even a Father formally counting "the two and twenty books" carried a deuterocanonical text inside his canon — the same gesture by which Origen bundled "the epistle" with Jeremiah, and a sign of how the church's Greek Bible shaped the lists of those who preferred the Hebrew count. Baruch's place inside Jeremiah will recur all down the Eastern lists — Athanasius and Epiphanius keep it likewise.

Yet the disputed books still do the work of Scripture in his catechesis

Set against that exclusion, Cyril's actual practice across the rest of the Catechetical Lectures is the classic list-versus-usage strain. The same catechist who tells the candidate to "have nothing to do with the apocryphal writings" reaches, elsewhere in the very same course of instruction, for books his twenty-two omit — and quotes them as prophecy, as Solomon, and as the work of the Holy Spirit.

Baruch, called "the Prophet." Proving that the One begotten of the Father became man and is God, Cyril says — "Hear the Prophet saying" — and quotes Baruch 3:36–37:³

This is our God, none other shall be accounted of in comparison with Him. He hath found out every way of knowledge, and given it to Jacob His servant, and to Israel His beloved. Afterwards He was seen on earth, and conversed among men.

The book his list folded silently into Jeremiah he here calls out by itself, as a freestanding prophetic voice carrying a proof of the Incarnation. This is the sharpest tension of all: the list keeps Baruch only as an appendix to Jeremiah, but the usage treats it as "the Prophet" in its own right.

The Wisdom of Solomon, cited "according to Solomon." Arguing upward from the creation to the Creator, Cyril writes that this is "according to Solomon, who says," and quotes Wisdom 13:5:⁴

For by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionably the Maker of them is seen.

The Wisdom of Solomon is nowhere in his list — his five books "written in verses" are Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song — yet here he ascribes it to Solomon by name and lets it carry the argument, exactly as he would Proverbs.

Sirach, as a charge to humility. Warning the catechumens off speculation about the divine nature — "first gaze steadfastly upon the sun, and then curiously scan the Lord of the sun" — he clinches it with Sirach 3:21–22:⁵

Seek not the things that are too deep for thee, neither search out the things that are above thy strength: what is commanded thee, think thereupon.

Susanna, as a work of the Spirit. Cataloguing the operations of the Holy Spirit, Cyril sets the Greek Daniel's Susanna among them: the Spirit "endued with wisdom the soul of Daniel, that young as he was he should become a judge of Elders," for⁶

The chaste Susanna was condemned as a wanton; there was none to plead her cause; for who was to deliver her from the rulers?

Susanna belongs to the Greek additions to Daniel — the Hebrew Daniel his list counts has none of her — yet Cyril adduces her vindication as the Spirit's own work, brought forward "as a testimony."

None of this softens his formal verdict: he did draw the twenty-two-book line, and meant it. But it shows what "below the canon" amounted to in practice — read, quoted, and pressed into doctrine. The gap between Cyril's list and Cyril's usage is one of the clearest single-Father instances of the wider pattern weighed on the "did the early church reject the deuterocanon?" argument page.

A Hebrew count credited to the Septuagint

Cyril gives the Hebrew-sized canon, but he ascribes it to the Greek translation: just before reciting the list he retells the Letter of Aristeas legend — Ptolemy's seventy-two interpreters, each in a separate chamber on Pharos, producing translations that "agreed not only in the sense but even in words," so that "the translation of the Divine Scriptures, spoken by the Holy Ghost, was of the Holy Ghost accomplished" — and bids the catechumen "read the Divine Scriptures, the twenty-two books of the Old Testament, these that have been translated by the Seventy-two Interpreters."² The combination is characteristic of the fourth-century Eastern witnesses: a Hebrew enumeration carried under a Septuagint pedigree. (The inspiration-of-the-Septuagint legend itself is gathered on the Origin and Inspiration of the Septuagint page and not re-argued here.)

Notes

• The criterion is reading, not a council. Cyril draws the boundary by liturgical reception — read what "we read openly in the Church," because "the Apostles, and the bishops of old time… handed down these books"; the apocrypha are to be "put aside" and "read not even by thyself." That is the rule of reading, not of destruction, and his fuller charge on the point — with the New-Testament list that omits the Apocalypse — is treated on his New Testament canon page.
• List and usage do not line up. Cyril is sometimes cited flatly as a witness against the deuterocanon. His list does exclude Tobit, Judith, and the Maccabees outright. But two qualifications cut against the flat reading. First, his Jeremiah carries Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah folded in — so even his list is not the bare Protestant thirty-nine; it holds two deuterocanonical works lodged inside a protocanonical book. Second, and sharper, his practice elsewhere in the lectures quotes the very books the list omits as Scripture — Baruch as "the Prophet," the Wisdom of Solomon "according to Solomon," Sirach as a wisdom charge, and the Greek Daniel's Susanna as the Spirit's work (see "Yet the disputed books still do the work of Scripture" above). The lead that brought this witness onto the timeline flagged exactly this list-versus-usage tension.
• Whose count, the Hebrew or the Greek? Cyril's twenty-two match the Hebrew reckoning (the same count Origen, Athanasius, and Jerome give), yet he credits them to the seventy-two translators of the Septuagint — the very Greek Bible that also carried Tobit, Judith, and the rest he excludes. The tension is not resolved on the page; it is the standard fourth-century posture of ranking by the Hebrew list while reading from the Greek.

Sources