Category Archives: Orthodoxia

What Books do you call Sacred Scripture?

Following the rule of the Catholic Church, we call Sacred Scripture all those which Cyril [Lucar] collected from the Synod of Laodicea, and enumerated, adding thereto those which he foolishly, and ignorantly, or rather maliciously called Apocrypha; to wit, “The Wisdom of Solomon,” “Judith,” “Tobit,” “The History of the Dragon,” “The History of Susanna,” “The Maccabees,” and “The Wisdom of Sirach.” For we judge these also to be with the other genuine Books of Divine Scripture genuine parts of Scripture. For ancient custom, or rather the Catholic Church, which hath delivered to us as genuine the Sacred Gospels and the other Books of Scripture, hath undoubtedly delivered these also as parts of Scripture, and the denial of these is the rejection of those. And if, perhaps, it seemeth that not always have all been by all reckoned with the others, yet nevertheless these also have been counted and reckoned with the rest of Scripture, as well by Synods, as by how many of the most ancient and eminent Theologians of the Catholic Church; all of which we also judge to be Canonical Books, and confess them to be Sacred Scripture.

From The Confession of Dositheus, available in full here

Patriarch Dositheus of Jerusalem wrote the Confession in 1672 as part of a local Synod of Jerusalem. It is a point by point response to the Confession attributed to Cyril Lucaris, erstwhile Patriarch of Constantinople, which appeared in Latin in Geneva in 1629, but which the Synod of Jerusalem, in comparing Cyril’s other writings, determined was a forgery. (Almost certainly, however, they erred in this determination; Cyril was educated in Geneva and likely found Reformed opinion on the Apocrypha probative.) One of Cyril’s answered questions was on the biblical canon. Here, Patriarch Dositheus gives a short but pithy answer. He does not apportion the “extra” books to a separate, second-class body of Scripture, whether “deuterocanonical” or “Apocrypha,” but maintains an older opinion founded in patristic and Conciliar sources. (It should be noted that the term “Apocrypha” in Byzantine times had developed a connotation of “spurious and heretical,” a connotation that persisted into later Greek Christian usage.)

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