HistoricalChristian.Faith

The Synopsis Scripturae Sacrae on the Old Testament Canon

Dates: c. 550 AD (the Synopsis Scripturae Sacrae, "Synopsis of Sacred Scripture," a pseudo-Athanasian compendium transmitted among the works of Athanasius but later than him; the core has been dated variously across the fourth to sixth centuries, with most scholarship placing the work as we have it in the sixth, the production of an anonymous Greek churchman) · Wikipedia
Verdict on the deuterocanon: NO — graded, in the Athanasian two-tier pattern. The Synopsis enumerates the canonical Old Testament as the Hebrew-sized list of twenty-two books — the deuterocanon not among them — and then, exactly as Athanasius had done, sets a second rank of books "not considered canonical, but… only read to catechumens": the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Sirach, Esther, Judith, and Tobit. So its "No" tiers the disputed books rather than rejecting them, and a later appendix even folds the Maccabees and other Greek writings into the "disputed" class. A document carrying Athanasius's name and reproducing his three-graded scheme a century or two on.

Claims & evidence

Tier one: the canon — "the canonical books of the Old Testament are twenty-two"

The compendium opens by listing the Old Testament book by book, each with the words it "begins" with, and closes the count at the Hebrew twenty-two:¹

And the books of the Old Testament are these: Genesis, which begins, "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth"; Exodus, which begins "These are the names of the sons of Israel that came into Egypt"; Leviticus, which begins "And the Lord called Moses again and spoke to him out of the tabernacle of witness"; Numbers, which begins "And the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sina, in the tabernacle of witness"; Deuteronomy, which begins "These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel"… Joshua son of Naue… Judges… Ruth… First and Second Kings… Third and Fourth Kings… Paralipomenon First and Second… First and Second Esdras… The Psalms of David, which includes 151 Psalms… The Parables of Solomon… Ecclesiastes… Song of Songs… Job… The Twelve Prophets… Esaias… Jeremias… Ezechiel… Daniel…

and then fixes the reckoning:¹

Thus the canonical books of the Old Testament are twenty-two, corresponding with the number of letters in the Hebrew, for they have this many elementary signs.

Measured against the disputed books the verdict on the canon proper is plain: no Tobit, no Judith, no Sirach, no Wisdom of Solomon, no Maccabees. This is the same Hebrew-letter count that Origen, Cyril, Athanasius, and Epiphanius all gave — the standard Eastern canon — here repeated under Athanasius's own name. (One feature marks the Synopsis as a Greek list reading from the Septuagint: it numbers the Psalter at "151 Psalms," counting the supernumerary Psalm 151 that the Greek Bible carried and the Hebrew did not.)

Tier two: "not considered canonical, but… only read to catechumens"

Immediately after the canon-list the Synopsis sets a second rank — the books read in the church but not reckoned Scripture — and it is precisely here that the deuterocanon falls:²

But aside from these there are moreover some other books with the Old Testament, which are not considered canonical, but which are only read to catechumens, which are these: The Wisdom of Solomon, which begins, "Love righteousness, ye rulers of the earth"; The Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, which begins "All wisdom cometh from the Lord, and is with him forever"; Esther… Judith… Tobit…

This is the Athanasian datum repeated almost to the title: the same five books — Wisdom, Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit — that Athanasius had filed "not… included in the Canon, but appointed by the Fathers to be read" stand here "not considered canonical, but… only read to catechumens." As in Athanasius, the protocanonical Esther is demoted into this second rank alongside the four Greek books, so the twenty-two are not simply the Jewish thirty-nine renumbered. The disputed books are neither admitted to the canon nor cast out as spurious; they occupy the middle, "read" tier — a graded "No," not a flat rejection.

The Maccabees and the rest — "these are disputed books of the Old Testament"

A later section of the work returns to the same category and widens it, gathering further Greek writings into the "disputed" (antilegomena) class:³

Among the disputed books of the Old Testament, of which we spoke previously, such as the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, and Esther and Judith and Tobit, also these are to be counted: the four books of the Maccabees, Ptolemaic books, the Psalms and Odes of Solomon, Susanna. These are disputed books of the Old Testament.

So the books the canon-list passed over — the Maccabees among them — are not silently dropped but expressly named "disputed": read, circulated, useful, but ranked below the canon. The effect is to set the whole deuterocanon (plus the Septuagint extras of Susanna and the rest) in the same second tier, the position Origen had opened and Athanasius had named.

Notes

• A pseudonymous witness, dated late. The Synopsis travelled under Athanasius's name and sits in his collected works, but it is not his: the language and contents place it later, and the prevailing judgment dates the work as transmitted to about the sixth century, the compilation of an anonymous Greek churchman, with some locating an earlier core. It is cited here for the canon-scheme it preserves, not as a fourth-century authorial statement — which is why it is slotted on the timeline well after the genuine Festal Letter of 367.
• NO to canonicity, not to use — the Athanasian pattern repeated. Like Athanasius and Epiphanius before it, the Synopsis excludes Tobit, Judith, Sirach, and Wisdom from the canon while keeping them in churchly use — "read to catechumens," "disputed" yet preserved. The honest summary is the same: not Scripture, but read. That this two-tier handling persists into the sixth century shows how durable the Eastern "ranked, not rejected" posture was, long after the Western councils (Hippo and Carthage, Innocent I) had levelled the same books up into the canon.
• No Baruch folded in. Where Origen, Cyril, Athanasius, and Epiphanius all reckon their single Jeremiah "with Baruch… and the epistle," the Synopsis's Jeremiah entry stands without that appendix — so this list does not carry the recurring Eastern Baruch-inside-Jeremiah signature; on Baruch its canon is the bare Hebrew shape.
• The Greek Psalter shows. The "151 Psalms" of the canon-list is the tell that the compiler counts from the Septuagint: Psalm 151 is the extra Greek psalm absent from the Hebrew Psalter. A Hebrew-sized canon counted under a Greek Bible — the same tension running through the Eastern lists, where the rank is set by the Hebrew count while the text read is the Septuagint.

Sources