HistoricalChristian.Faith

Isidore of Seville on the Old Testament Canon

Dates: c. 636 AD (d. 636; the canon-list is in the Etymologiae VI.i.3–9, the encyclopaedia compiled c. 615–630 and left unfinished at his death; Isidore c. 560–636, archbishop of Seville) · Wikipedia
Verdict on the deuterocanon: NO — but graded. Isidore is the seventh-century West's great compiler, and on the canon he keeps two patristic settlements side by side in one breath. First he reproduces, after Jerome, the Hebrew-sized twenty-two-book Old Testament in three Hebrew classes — Law, Prophets, and Sacred Writings (Hagiographa) — with the deuterocanon plainly not among the twenty-two, and Ruth and Lamentations counted only by "some" who "make twenty-four." Then, in the very next sentence, he adds a fourth class: "those books of the Old Testament that are not in the Hebrew canon" — Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Tobit, Judith, and the two books of Maccabees — which "the Church of Christ honors and proclaims among the divine books." So the disputed books are outside the Hebrew count yet inside the Church's reading: the Augustinian reception fitted onto the Hieronymian count, handed down as the medieval West's standard answer.

Claims & evidence

The Hebrew canon: twenty-two books in three classes, the deuterocanon absent

Isidore opens his account of Scripture by giving the Hebrew reckoning, credited (as Jerome had) to Ezra the redactor, and counted to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. He runs out the three Hebrew classes — the five of the Law, the eight Prophets, the nine Sacred Writings — and notes only that "some" stretch the count to twenty-four:¹

The Hebrews take the Old Testament, with Ezra as its redactor, as consisting of twenty-two books, corresponding to the number of letters in their alphabet. They divide these books into three classes: Law, Prophets, and Sacred Writings… These are the five books of Moses, which the Hebrews call Torah… The second class is of Prophets, in which are contained eight books… The third class is of Sacred Writings (Hagiographa), that is, of 'those writing about holy things', in which there are nine books: first Job; second the Psalter; third Masloth, which is the Proverbs of Solomon; fourth Coheleth, which is Ecclesiastes; fifth Sir hassirim, which is the Song of Songs; sixth Daniel; seventh Dibre haiamim, which means 'words of the days' (verba dierum), that is Paralipomenon (i.e. Chronicles); eighth Ezra; ninth Esther. All together these books – five, eight, and nine – make up the twenty-two as was reckoned above. Some add Ruth and Cinoth, which in Latin is the Lamentations of Jeremiah, to the Sacred Writings, and make twenty-four books of the Old Testament, corresponding to the twenty-four Elders who stand present before the face of God.

Measured against the disputed books the verdict on the canon proper is plain: no Tobit, no Judith, no Wisdom, no Sirach, no Maccabees among the twenty-two (or the variant twenty-four). This is, almost item for item, Jerome's Hebrew list — the same three-fold Hebrew division, the same Ezra-as-redactor note, the same twenty-two-letter count, even Jerome's transliterated Hebrew titles (Masloth, Coheleth, Sir hassirim, Dibre haiamim) carried straight over.

The fourth class: "not in the Hebrew canon," yet "the Church of Christ honors and proclaims them"

Isidore does not stop at the Hebrew count. In the next breath he adds a further rank of his own naming — the heart of his witness, and the thing that keeps him from being a flat "no":²

We also have a fourth class: those books of the Old Testament that are not in the Hebrew canon. Of these the first is the Book of Wisdom, the second Ecclesiasticus; the third Tobit; the fourth Judith; the fifth and sixth, the books of Maccabees. The Jews hold these separate among the apocrypha (apocrypha), but the Church of Christ honors and proclaims them among the divine books.

So Isidore sets the two early settlements down together. The count is Jerome's: the deuterocanon is "not in the Hebrew canon," held by the Jews "among the apocrypha." But the reception is Augustine's and the African councils': the same books the Church "honors and proclaims… among the divine books" (inter divinos libros et honorat et praedicat). The wording is markedly warmer than the merely tolerated middle rank of Rufinus ("read in the Churches, but not appealed to for the confirmation of doctrine") — Isidore does not say these books may not prove doctrine; he files them among the divine books while keeping them off the Hebrew count.

The "apocrypha" proper — no canonical authority

The fourth class is not Isidore's term for rejected writing; that word he reserves for a different category. In the same Book VI he glosses the genuine apocrypha — works of doubtful or false origin — and rules that whatever scraps of truth they contain, the falsehoods void any standing:³

These are called 'apocrypha' (apocryphus, lit. "hidden, secret") because they come into doubt… Although some truth is found in them, nevertheless on account of their many false statements there is no canonical authority in them.

The distinction matters for reading Isidore rightly: the deuterocanonical books of his "fourth class" are emphatically not filed here. He puts Wisdom and Maccabees among the divine books the Church proclaims; he puts the spurious writings here, with "no canonical authority." The one borderline case is Sirach: in his book-by-book notices later in Book VI he can remark that Ecclesiasticus, found among the Hebrews, "is regarded as belonging to the apocrypha" — a slip back toward Jerome's stricter label, not quite squared with the honored "fourth class."

Notes

• NO to the Hebrew count, but a graded, honored second rank — not a flat rejection. Isidore is a clear witness that the deuterocanon stands outside the twenty-two-book Hebrew canon (he says so, following Jerome). But he does not shut the books out: he gives them a named "fourth class" that the Church "honors and proclaims among the divine books." His is the medieval West's working compromise — Jerome's count beneath Augustine's reception.
• Where VI.9 sits. Both the twenty-two/twenty-four-book Hebrew list and the honored "fourth class" fall in the same chapter and run consecutively — Etymologiae VI.i ("On the Old and New Testament"), the Hebrew classes in sections 3–8 and the fourth class in section 9. The list often cited as "VI.9" is that section 9; the canon material is all one continuous passage, which is why Isidore can hold the two settlements together without seeming to notice the tension.
• The same scheme in his liturgical handbook. Isidore gives the identical four-fold arrangement in De ecclesiasticis officiis I.12 (On the books of the Old and New Testament): the Hebrew twenty-two in three orders, then the books "which are not in the canon of the Hebrews" — Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Tobit, Judith, and the Maccabees — which, "though the Jews separate them among the apocrypha, the Church of Christ honors and proclaims among the divine books." That he repeats it word for word in a second, independent work shows the graded position was settled in his mind, not a one-off remark.
• How it travelled. Isidore's four-fold scheme became the standard medieval Western statement. Rabanus Maurus in the ninth century reproduces it verbatim; the school of St Victor and others carry the same "fourth order" language down to the eve of the Reformation, where the books "read but not in the canon" become the seam along which Catholic and Protestant settlements would later split.

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