https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2025/09/a-troubling-revival-of-historic-anti.html
As I have recently indicated, the hijacking of the Septuagint and Apocrypha debate by Right-wing Anti-Semites has been the source of considerable grief for me as I believe it unnecessarily muddies the waters and will overshadow future discussion. This issue is one of many that I have called attention to in recent years - another point of deviation (on my part) from the Magisterial Reformation narrative as embraced by Confessionalists and contemporary Evangelicals.
That said, the issue of the Apocrypha and Septuagint is still a live one for me and the Right-wing's attacks on the Masoretic Text and tradition are an unfortunate complication. Leaving that aside with assurances that in no way am I motivated by anything Anti-Semitic, let us turn to the historical and doctrinal issues at hand.
The suggestion that the Apocrypha (so-called) was only formally adopted by Trent in the 16th century is misleading if not altogether false.
The Apocrypha was in use throughout the first centuries of the Church and is often quoted by the Early Church Fathers as Scripture. The Jews who in the decades after the destruction of the Temple sought to tighten their canon and exclude these books would eventually exert an influence on Jerome and lead him to doubt their place in the canon. He dare not remove these books (and the additional sections of Esther, Daniel, etc.) as they were almost universally recognized and celebrated, but he categorized them as dubious. Nevertheless they remained in copies of the Scripture all throughout Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Renaissance. And yet because of historial developments in the West, Jerome's Vulgate became the dominant translation throughout the Middle Ages and it always contained his caveat and his labelling of these books as Apocrypha - a title they never had in the East. Even among the Orthodox, the label of Deuterocanonical only emerged in the 16th century in light of these controversies.
These debates are further clouded by modern textual criticism which (by this author's estimation) wrongly dates some of these writings, as they do with the other Scriptures. Ironically anti-Apocrypha polemicists will embrace the arguments of textual criticism when it comes to Tobit, Judith, or Baruch, but then chafe when the same kind of reasoning and examination are levied at Isaiah or Jeremiah. I would argue that we should condemn the canons of textual criticism at all times for an examination of them demonstrates they are arbitrary, often completely false, and operate on the basis of numerous false assumptions and are fundamentally rooted in anti-supernaturalism, a rejection of revelation, and unbelief.
Rome did not need to formalize the canonicity of the so-called Apocryphal books because for all the previous centuries they were functionally part of the canon. The voices that doubted them are few and far between and never given any great weight or standing. The Council of Carthage (397) also makes this abundantly clear as it ratified these books as part of the canon, but anti-Apocrypha polemics will insist this doesn't have standing because it was not an ecumenical council. This line of argument also fails when one considers the arbitrary and self-serving nature in which the ecumenical councils are treated by Protestants - a point we will return to below.
For my part I don't want to build arguments on the foundation or authority of councils, but they provide a historical record that does not fit the narrative we're given by the defenders of the Magisterial Protestant canon.
The Magisterial Reformers (following Luther's lead) began to question the canon of Scripture with some Lutherans even going so far as to label the so-called Antilegomena as New Testament Apocrypha. For Lutherans, a two-tier Scriptural authority emerged - something that never found a place within the Reformed tradition.
And it was this attack on the Scripture (by the Lutherans) that led the Roman Catholics at Trent to formalize what had always been the functional canon. But when contemporary Protestants frame this narrative, they leave out these critical points and largely turn the process on its head - insisting that Trent canonized these books as Scripture that had never been considered thus - in order to to buttress doctrines such as purgatory. It's simply not true.
And yet the 'Apocrypha' continued to be utilized for generations of Protestants after the onset of the Reformation - eventually fading away as we come into the 19th century. Countless Protestant Bibles contained these books and yet it must be admitted there was clearly some ambiguity. One thinks of the 1560 Geneva Bible which includes these writings and the now popular and re-published 1599 edition which does not. And we cannot but chuckle when we consider the way King James Only Fundamentalists champion the 1611 edition - which included the Apocrypha.
We must state once again, it was due to the attacks of the Reformers on the question of canon that Trent was driven to formalize what had already been functional for centuries. The oft-repeated narrative that suggests these books were added by Rome in the 1560's is completely false and misleading.
If the historical claims and narratives of the Magisterial Reformation are to be questioned, then it follows that we can (and perhaps should) also question the theological reasoning pursued by Luther and the Reformed when it comes to these larger questions as well. The Early Church quoted these books as Scripture and it's clear the Medieval Dissenters also used these books without reservation or qualification.
It could be argued that as the Dissenters (such as the Waldenses) more often than not relied on the Vulgate for their vernacular translations, they simply followed in the errors of those who included the Old Testament Apocrypha - including Jerome who did so begrudgingly.
But we also know the Waldenses were not unfamiliar with the writings of the ancients and were known to utilize works by Augustine and others - works that would include quotations from the so-called Apocrypha. So the argument which suggests they just repeated previous errors may not actually be the case.
As an aside, this point is also of interest because it counters the claims of Anabaptists (who hate Augustine above all) who view themselves as heirs of the Waldensian tradition and lineage.
On the other hand as the Anabaptists tended to retain use of the Luther Bible, they are (at least historically) familiar with the Apocrypha and have made use of it - though most modern Anabaptists have followed the Magisterial Reformers and set it aside - especially as most of them in North America abandoned German and now read English Bibles.
Returning to the question of the Waldenses, I found this 1875 commentary to be of interest. It's by Samuel Davidson in his work on The Canon of the Bible :
"The canon of the Waldenses must have coincided at first with that of the Roman Church; for the Dublin MS. containing the New Testament has attached to it the Book of Wisdom and the first twenty-three chapters of Sirach; while the Zurich codex of the New Testament has marginal references to the Apocrypha; to Judith, Tobit, 4 Esdras, Wisdom, Sirach, and Susanna. The Nobla Leyczon containing a brief narration of the contents of the Old and New Testaments confirms this opinion. It opposes, however, the old law to the new, making them antagonistic. The historical document containing the articles of "The Union of the Valleys," A.D.1571, separates indeed the canonical and apocryphal books, purporting to be founded on a Confession of Faith as old as A.D.1120; but the latter is mythical, as appears from a comparison of it with the epistle which the legates of the Waldensians gave to OEcolampadius. The articles of that "Union" are copied from Morel's account of his transactions with OEcolampadius and Bucer in 1530. The literature of this people was altered by Hussite influences and the Reformation; so that though differing little from the Romanists at first except in ecclesiastical discipline, they diverged widely afterwards by adopting the Protestant canon and doctrines.(378) Hence, the Confession issued in 1655 enumerates as Holy Scripture nothing but the Jewish Palestinian canon, and the usual books of the New Testament.(379)"
Davidson reveals that they abandoned the older canon as a result of their contact with the Magisterial Reformers out of Switzerland. And then began the unfortunate debates over Waldensian antiquity with some trying to (anachronistically) read Magisterial Reformed doctrines (and canon) into their past and (by some accounts) tinker with dates - such as the still disputed date of composition for the Noble Lesson.
The Waldenses were neither Calvinists, Lutherans, nor Baptists. By the estimations of these groups, the Waldenses would appear much closer to Roman Catholicism which they themselves repudiated. They represented a Christianity that is at odds with some of the central claims and narratives of the Magisterial Reformation. As such there is no need to try and make them into something they weren't. But for many Protestants of the Renaissance and Enlightenment period in order to counter Roman Catholic claims of novelty, there was a drive to try and ground their movement in pre-Reformation Church history and as such they attempted to appropriate the Waldenses and read their history through an anachronistic lens.
Make no mistake there were numerous Anti-Catholic dissenters - First Reformation protestants of a kind, but they were not of the same character or type as what emerged after 1517. I contend they (the Waldenses and some others) were much more faithful to the testimony of the Early (Ante-Nicene) Church and the New Testament, but this testimony was lost in the fires and tumult that emerged in the Reformation period. As I have stated previously, the Anabaptists (who emerged at this time) retained some of the First Reformation's Kingdom teachings and ethics, but lost many of their doctrines in the process as the Waldenses were not Anabaptists and did not share their ecclesiology or understanding of the sacraments.
The Hussites represent something of a spectrum - the main bodies (Utraquists and Taborites) pursuing a different path in terms of Christendom, violence, and the like. The Unitas Fratrum or Bohemian Brethren which later emerged from remnants of the Taborites and from Utraquist dissenters looked (originally) to Petr Chelčický (c.1380-c.1460) whose doctrines closely parallel Waldensianism - so much so that some believe he was a member of that sect.
Interestingly, Chelčický also freely and without qualification quotes from the Apocrypha, citing Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon among other works.
One aspect of the debate over the Old Testament Canon is related to the question of the Old Testament text. A case can be made for the Septuagint (LXX) as it was the Old Testament of the Early Church and is still in use today among the Eastern Orthodox. The questioning or even rejection of the Masoretic Text should have nothing to do with negative views of the Jews. After all it was Jewish scholars who translated the Septuagint - presumably from a different textual tradition than what would later emerge with the Masoretes.
An argument can be made that the Masoretic tradition emerged as a result of Jewish attempts to remove from the canon some of the books that so richly testify and point to Jesus of Nazareth as being the Christ, the expected Messiah - a point new readers of the Apocrypha are often surprised to discover. But even if this is the case, it provides no occasion to justify Anti-Semitism. Those who do so are motivated by other concerns. We would do well to follow Paul's teaching in Romans 11. They are enemies in terms of the gospel but we are not to 'boast against the branches' but be humbled. The societal and cultural problem between Jews and Christians arises with Christendom - when Christians in disobedience to the New Testament take up the sword and try to forge a Christian order.
The Waldensian Canon (so to speak) is interesting simply because it points to deeper historical truths and belies claims made by some groups that these underground believers were pre-Reformation Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, or even Presbyterians. They were none of those things and yet they were a vibrant New Testament Christian (and Anti-Roman Catholic) voice that existed (and suffered) for centuries prior to Luther and the Magisterial Reformation. I continue to contend the First Reformation was more Biblical in nature than the later Magisterial Reformation which ultimately undermined the former and all but eradicated its testimony. The First and Magisterial Reformations took different positions on the questions of canon, and the nature of doctrine in general. The Magisterial Reformation interacted in an ad hoc fashion with the ecumenical councils while the First Reformation was less concerned with adhering to the Catholic tradition. That said, the First Reformation was far less prone to fall prey to Scholasticism - a methodology driven by overarching social and cultural concerns that would eventually infect and overcome the Magisterial tradition, leading to the eventual abandonment of Ad Fontes-inspired humanism. The ethics were widely divergent. The First Reformation retained the ethical framework of the Early Church, while the Magisterial Reformation retained the Constantinian tradition and would eventually move beyond it in other realms such as national interest and economics. The two Reformations were also split on the question of soteriology - the First Reformation retaining the Early Church view of salvation by faith - but not in the framework presented by Luther. Like Luther and the Lutherans, they retained a high and efficacious view of the sacraments - also in keeping with the Early Church, while the Reformed tended to stray from this and lay the groundwork for later Baptistic theologies. The Magisterial Reformation was also forced to rely on a notion of charism and theological progressivism in order to lay claim to the Constantinian mantle. The debates continue as to how to interpret this - some suggesting it (the charism) effectively ceased in 451, the 16th century, or with the ratification and adoption of Confessions in the 1600's. The First Reformation retained a faith in Scripture Alone - but interpreted in far more rigorous terms than the Magisterial Reformation, let alone its later Confessional tradition.
The Ecumenical Councils claim the charism and thus the Magisterial Reformation's utilization of their work is strangely selective and ad hoc. They accept the Christological and Trinitarian teachings but reject everything else the council's teach - many also rejecting at least portions of Ephesus' and Chalcedon's Christological proclamations as well - for example the rejection of Mary as Theotokos.
The Magisterial Reformation's narrative is divided. For a long time it was understood that the Church fell into darkness, the truth was maintained by underground minorities, and then the gospel was recovered on a wider scale in the 16th century - the Reformation constituting a great revival. The process and progress of theological and dogmatic development was halted in the 17th century when the last of the great confessions was produced. This implied that the charism had either reached its potential and stopped, or the notion was simply dispensed with.
In light of Western Civilization's decline, many Protestants are rekindling the notion of the charism without necessarily using the same nomenclature. The Holy Spirit was promised to the Church, and they struggle with the suggestion that the Church went wrong and fell into apostasy. Thus leads to a complete re-reading and recasting of the Middle Ages. The Roman Church becomes 'the Church' until the debates and controversies of the 16th century. At that point the charism shifts to Magisterial Protestantism, but again is arrested with the formulation of the confessions of the 16th and 17th century. No further development is permitted. This argument is proving troublesome for many and such thinking all but drives them in the direction of Wittenberg, Canterbury, and Rome.
They seem to think that the apostasy narrative denies this charism, this promise that the Spirit would guide the Church. One is left wondering if these thinkers have read the New Testament or have they simply become lost in the labyrinth of Church history?
Over and over again the New Testament warns of coming apostasy and promises that the Church will be persecuted and plagued by false teaching. It will join forces with the world and lose its identity, having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof, an image presented in the most striking manner in the bride-turned-whore imagery of Mystery Babylon mounted on the Beast, in alliance with it, ruling the world and drunk on the martyr-blood of the saints. This is Christendom, the very ideal that so many deceived people continue to seek after, the passion that drives so many Christian leaders mad. We do well to remember that when the Beast turns on the Whore and destroys it - heaven rejoices.
The Holy Spirit was certainly present and guiding the Church through the dark centuries when the light was maintained by individuals - some underground, meeting in secret, smuggling copies of the Scriptures across Europe. Sometimes they were monks in monasteries. In some instances there were believers in the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church - Christians in spite of Rome as it were. Some also make the case for the Church of the East despite its accusations of Nestorianism - a charge it continues to deny. The bottom line is this, there were many minority testimonies to the faith outside of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christendom. Some (such as the Cathars) were heretical, others were not.
The Spirit worked, preserving the Scriptures and the faith among different people in different places. Contrary to the apologists of the Magisterial Reformation, I do not believe their movement was a return to New Testament Christianity nor was it the reclamation of the gospel - in the terms they claim it. Was it a corrective to certain aberrations in Roman theology? Certainly, but it also introduced as many problems as it solved. The record and legacy are mixed but the turmoil it unleashed in the form of religious war and counter-reformation led to the virtual erasure of the First Reformation. Pietism and later Restorationism unknowingly tried but failed to recapture aspects of its ethos, but these movements also proved wayward and largely lost their way. The tumult and turmoil of the industrial age and the world wars reordered the world and the way men think, and only now is there some hope of once again addressing these crucial questions and calling for reform.
The charism never failed but did not lead the Church to build Christendom, castles, universities, cathedrals, nor to launch crusades. Nor did it lead to the formation of the British and American Empires. These are all tokens of the Antichrist. Christendom is certainly filled with wonders. I have walked the castle walls, entered many a cathedral, spent untold hours gazing on Christendom's art and the wonders of its labours. I also know that it is not what many think it is. It's actually far more complex and profound and yet far less Christian than many suppose.
For Rome and an increasing number of Protestants, the charism suggests the Church has grown and advanced in a near linear fashion and the result is Christendom- now under threat. This latter concept has itself divided and become multi-faceted over the past few centuries with the age of Enlightenment and Revolution. For some the latter's principles of Liberalism are antithetical to Christendom, for others they represent a mixed bag of positive and negative developments, with many baptizing at least aspects of these movements and the ideologies they have spawned. From the vantage point of the New Testament, these latter developments have simply added complexity to the debate - a host of new errors that must be contended with. The battlefield grows ever more complex and complicated. No matter through which lens it is viewed, the culture war is a farce. We do well to remember the context of the Ante-Nicene Church and the world it flourished within - a world in which Christendom did not exist nor was it even in the minds of the baptised. Everything changed with Constantine and his successors. The very nature of the Church was changed as it adopted a new set of ethics and means of reasoning and interaction with the world. The fact that so many succumbed to it without protest is not testimony to the charism at work forging a united front as some suppose, but rather a tale of apostasy and downfall - resulting in centuries of turmoil and great evil. Some of the problems had already been on the horizon as we see with the Ante-Nicene protest movements such as the Montanists and Novatians, as well as the adoption of philosophy by the apologists and the major (Antiochene and Alexandrian) schools. But by the end of the 4th century, the Church that had emerged from the New Testament was all but unrecognizable - shattered and scattered, and yet living and surviving. History would never be the same and the fallout from that period is very much alive and with us today.
All of these questions are to some extent open for debate and should be re-examined, but for many in the Confessional tradition, these are questions which are not easily entertained - as such questions move quickly from stepping on toes to outright iconoclasm. And again, these discussions are all further complicated by 19th century narratives imposed on Waldensian history as well as today's de facto rejection of the Waldenses (and First Reformation) in the face of major revisionism concerning the Middle Ages and the Medieval Roman Catholic Church - all in the service of an attempt to revive and supposedly recapture Christendom from the jaws of Secular Humanism.
Until these questions are considered and these lessons learned, the new Reformation that is so sorely needed cannot happen and the same tortured circles of history seen in the 4th and 16th century are likely to be repeated.
See also:
https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2023/03/melia-and-waldenses-i.html
https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2024/10/appropriating-waldenses-i.html
https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2020/09/nevins-early-christianity.html