Apocryphal dispute

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Apocryphal Dispute was a dispute between strict Anglicans and Reformed people from the British Isles on the one hand and continental Lutherans on the other hand over the correct printing of Bibles between 1825 and 1827 , which led to the separation of the Bible Societies in England from their continental sister societies .

The question of whether the Apocrypha were worthy of being printed and distributed with the canonical scriptures, as is required and practiced in Germany based on Luther's assessment , was mostly answered in the negative in England. After long negotiations, the British and Foreign Bible Society dropped the Apocrypha and withdrew their support from the societies that disseminated the Apocrypha, while the continent's Bible societies separated from the British.

Background of the dispute

In the oldest linguistic usage, the apocryphal writings of the heretics are in contrast to those of the Catholics ; since Jerome those books of the Greek Old Testament ( Septuagint ) and the translations flowing from it that are not in the Hebrew Bible . Before Hieronymus these were called “ecclesiastical reading books” ( therefore Jesus Sirach is called Ecclesiasticus in the Latin Church ).

The Apocrypha of the Old Testament include: the three books of the Maccabees (of which Luther only translated the first two), the book of Judith , the book of Tobias , the book of Jesus Sirach (with the preface also not translated by Luther), the book of the wisdom of Solomon , the book of Baruch , the letter of Jeremiah (for Luther the 6th chapter of the book of Baruch), the so-called third book of Ezra (also Ezra I, not translated by Luther, an extension of a Greek translation of the canonical Ezra book ), some later additions to the books Daniel and Esther .

None of these writings were included in the Hebrew canon of the Palestinian Jews, partly because they were unsuitable from the outset because they were written in Greek, partly because their young origin was known. The original Hebrew spellbook of Jesus Sirach is not included because it circulated under the name of its author, but the younger Daniel Apocalypse is because it can be traced back to a famous name.

Since the Christian Church adopted the Old Testament in the form of the Greek-Alexandrian Bible, the oldest ecclesiastical writers used these apocrypha as well as the canonical books of the Old Testament as holy scriptures. Uncertainty about their dogmatic meaning only arose when it became clear that they were missing from the Palestinian-Hebrew canon.

As early as the 3rd century, in the Greek-Oriental Church, they were referred to as ecclesiastical reading books useful for reading. Rufin and Hieronymus (end of the 4th and beginning of the 5th century) judged similarly in the West , whereas the African Church decided at the Synod of Hippo (393) to include the Apocrypha in the Old Testament canon. This decision gradually found imitation in the rest of the West too , but the judgment fluctuated throughout the Middle Ages .

It was not until the Council of Trent , in its fourth session on April 8, 1546, that the Apocrypha contained in the Latin Church Bible (the so-called Vulgate ) (apart from the 3rd and 4th books of Esra) be equated with the other writings of the Old Testament. In 1672, at the Synod in Jerusalem, the Greek Church decided on the inspiration of the Apocrypha.

On the other hand, Luther, although he translated the Apocrypha into German with a few exceptions and published them as an appendix to the Old Testament, paid attention to these for books "if they are not equivalent to Holy Scripture and yet are useful and easy to read".

The Apocrypha of the Old Testament, partly originally written in Greek and partly translated from Hebrew, was included in the Septuagint, while it is missing in the Hebrew canon. Therefore, in the early church they were only considered to be church readings. In the Greek Church they were never fully ranked with the canonical books, while the Latin Church has blurred the differences since Augustine of Hippo .

Cause of the dispute

Pope Leo XII. 1824 condemned the Protestant initiative to distribute Bibles freely and widely in his encyclical Ubi primum . This triggered the "apocryphal dispute" in the Protestant movement in 1825/26. Evangelicals within the Church of England banned the Apocrypha, which they considered Catholic, in their Bibles, with the result that the Bible Societies in England split off from their continental sister societies.

“The total rejection of the Apocrypha came from the Scottish-Puritan tradition. As early as 1648 the Westminster Confession had declared with regard to the Old Testament Apocrypha: "... of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings" - [they are] "without authority in of the Church of God, not recognized or used differently from other human writings ”. From this tradition came to a large extent not only the founders, but also the sponsors of the BFBS. On the one hand, there were the dissenters , the nonconformists, and on the other, above all those circles of the Church of England that we would call evangelicals .

The Reformed, too, strongly emphasized the difference between the canonical and the apocryphal biblical scriptures, and so it came about that the British and Foreign Biblical Society (BFBS) even completely omitted the apocrypha from the editions of the Holy Scriptures since 1827.

The German Lutherans objected to this. Luther himself had kept the Apocrypha as books "which are not to be respected equally to the Holy Scriptures, but which are good and useful to read".

effect

“Among the most hateful personal attacks, the dispute, especially directed against the pressure of the Catholic Bibles, was carried on for two years, only to end with the victory of the Apocrypha enemies.” With this, all continental Bible societies that allowed the Apocrypha were separated from the English. Carl Friedrich Adolf Steinkopf , the Lutheran Foreign Secretary of the BFBS, resigned from his office in 1826.

With the breaking of the connections to the BFBS through the apocryphal dispute, a special peculiarity developed in the continental Bible societies with regard to the distribution of the Bible. It consisted of feeling a responsibility not only for spreading but also for reading and understanding the Word of God. Again and again, the use of the Bible in house groups was reported and the service personnel were recommended to read the Holy Scriptures.

Meaning of the apocrypha in northern Germany

In the first year of 1815, the Schleswig-Holstein Biblical Society distributed 3,266 scripts, German and Danish house Bibles, German school Bibles and 215 copies of Jesus Sirach , an apocryphal script that enjoyed a certain popularity in the Schleswig-Holstein area for several years.

In 1825 Pinkerton, secretary of the British Bible Society, had been in Wismar and Rostock . Another donation of 500 Bibles from Schleswig had arrived. In the following year, the news came unexpectedly that the British and Foreign Biblical Society would in future only be able to convey Bibles without Apocrypha. The Calvinist Scots had pushed for this decision. The interdenominational London society threatened to break down on this question. For the sake of cooperation in England, the apocryphal dispute had to be decided so negatively.

In Lutheran northern Germany , on the other hand, the Apocrypha were especially loved. The Rostock Biblical Society, for example, had distributed the book Jesus Sirach in large numbers alongside and with the psalms, which corresponded strongly to enlightenment piety. Bibles without Apocrypha were not in demand. This decision practically means the solution from the parent company, which in ten years had given 2400 Bibles and 1250 New Testaments to Rostock alone and thus actually got the work going.

It was the same in Schwerin and especially in Neustrelitz . The dismay in Mecklenburg was great. You didn't understand this decision. The theological and denominational divorce took place here much later. But it was a blessing at the time that external support almost completely ceased and the companies in Mecklenburg became fully independent.

On May 14th, 1826, celebrated on May 14th, 1826, the celebration of the introduction of Christianity by Ansgar in northern Albingia and Scandinavia , 1000 years ago, was especially dedicated to the spread of the Bible through the Bible Society and the Bible Clubs. In the apocryphal dispute sparked by the British and Foreign Bible Society , the Schleswig-Holstein Bible Society decided in agreement with the other continental Bible societies, the establishment of which the BFBS had originally prompted, to continue to print and distribute Bibles with apocrypha. The break with the English parent company regarding the financial support of Bibles with Apocrypha was unfortunately complete.

literature

  • Rudolf Stier : The Apocrypha. Defense of their traditional affiliation with the Bible. Braunschweig: CA Schwetschke and son 1853.
  • Rudolf Stier: Last word about the apocrypha. Schwetschke and Son, Braunschweig 1855 ( online )
  • Gottfried Ernst Hoffmann : 150 Years Schleswig-Holstein Bible Society. In: Yearbook. Vol. 8, Witten / Berlin 1965, pp. 26-50.
  • Gerhard Voss : The Bible work in Mecklenburg - its origin and its development , in: The Bible in the world. Yearbook of the Association of Evangelical Bible Societies in Germany, Volume 11 , Witten and Berlin 1968, pp. 79–93 ( online at pkgodzik.de ).
  • Otto FA Meinardus : Schleswig-Holstein Bible Society in the past and present. In: The Bible in our country. 175 years of the Schleswig-Holstein Bible Society. Schleswig 1990, pp. 9-33.
  • Otto FA Meinardus: 175 years of Lauenburg-Ratzeburg Bible Society , in: Hermann Augustin (Ed.): Lauenburger Land, eighth the Lord's word! Festschrift for the 175th anniversary of the Lauenburg-Ratzeburg Biblical Society 1816–1991 , Ratzeburg 1991, pp. 17–39.
  • Peter Godzik (Ed.): History of the North Elbian Bible Societies , 2004 (online at pkgodzik.de) (PDF; 411 kB).
  • Hermann Barth : Joy extends life. Useful, funny, witty: the wisdom of Jesus Sirach. (Texts for the soul, edition chrismon) , Hansisches Druck- und Verlagshaus, Frankfurt am Main 2010.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Brockhaus Konversationslexikon, 14th edition, 1894-1896 (online)
  2. ↑ Brockhaus Konversationslexikon, 14th edition, 1894-1896 (online)
  3. ^ Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon, Volume 1. Leipzig 1905, p. 619 (online)
  4. ↑ Otto FA Meinardus: 175 years Lauenburg-Ratzeburgische Bibelgesellschaft, in: Hermann Augustin (Hrsg.): Lauenburger Land, eighth of the Lord's word! Festschrift for the 175th anniversary of the Lauenburg-Ratzeburg Biblical Society 1816–1991 , Ratzeburg 1991, pp. 17–39, here p. 25.
  5. ^ Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon, Volume 1. Leipzig 1905, p. 619 (online)
  6. ^ Article Steinkopf, Karl Friedrich Adolf in deutsche-biographie.de
  7. ↑ Peter Godzik (Ed.): History of the North Elbian Bible Societies , 2004, p. 24 (online at pkgodzik.de) (PDF; 411 kB)
  8. ↑ See: Hermann Barth: Joy extends life. Useful, funny, witty: the wisdom of Jesus Sirach. (Texts for the soul, edition chrismon) , Hansisches Druck- und Verlagshaus, Frankfurt am Main 2010, pp. 56–63, 199–203.
  9. ↑ Gerhard Voss: The Bible work in Mecklenburg, its origin and its development , in: "The Bible in the World", Volume 11. Yearbook of the Association of Evangelical Biblical Societies in Germany , Witten and Berlin 1968, pp. 79–93, here p 88 f.
  10. ^ Otto FA Meinardus: Schleswig-Holstein Bible Society in Past and Present. In: The Bible in our country. 175 years of the Schleswig-Holstein Bible Society. Schleswig 1990, pp. 9-33.