I'm sorry, I didn't realize Popes Innocent I, Gelasius and Hormisdas were not Catholic sources </dry humor>
If what you continue to believe is true, then those lists would have equaled “47 OT Books” in the Catholic OT canon
No they wouldn't. The issue is not the number of books because if you separate one book (Ezra/Nehemiah) into two, and then exclude III Esdras you end up with the same total number of books either way. The issue is when this separation occurred, and the answer is that Jerome (who did NOT accept the deutercanonicals in the strict sense) was the first. I have not seen you produce any evidence, Catholic or otherwise, for any earlier separation from any Father who followed the wider canon. You assert an earlier Latin tradition but you have produced no direct evidence from any sources, Catholic or otherwise. The funny thing is, I agree with the Catholic encyclopedias. I think they are accurate, but they do not show what you are trying to prove. They demonstrate just the opposite. For example, you cite: In De doctrina christiana 2.8.13 (AD 396-97) Augustine listed 44 OT books (=46 since Bar and Lam are part of Jer) including the Deuterocanonical books and his great stature tended to close the canon in the West on the extent of the canon. Thus, the Western Councils mentioned above [the article in the previous section cites Rome 382 AD, Hippo 393 AD, Carthage III 397 AD, and Carthage IV 419 AD) and the letter of Pope Innocent I in 405 agreed on a list of “46 OT BOOKS” [emphasis mine] and 27 NT Books.
There is nothing in that reference that I disagree with, as far as it goes, because it is only those Fathers who followed the Hebrew canon and reject the deuterocannicals in the stricter sense, such as Jerome, who separates Ezra and Nehemiah as separate books as distinct from the Hebrew practice of joining them as one. He was the first to do so. So citing Augustine, who did not agree with Jerome and who did not follow the Hebrew canon, doesn't help your case because Augustine and Hippo/Carthage followed the enlarged Septuigant canon in which 1 Esdras meant Septuagint 1 Esdras and not the Hebrew Ezra. Augustine's 1 Esdras (3 Esdras) is the book that was later excluded by Trent.
You have asserted an earlier Latin Tradition, but have provide zero documentary evidence prior to Jerome, the original author of the Vulgate, in support of your hypothesis. The irony of this is that Jerome himself exluded it from the strict canon because he followed the Hebrew canon, not the enlarged Septuigant canon.
I will leave you with two citations from New Catholic Encyclopedia:
"Until the 5th century, Christians very frequently ranked 3 Esdras with the Canonical books; it is found in many LXX MSS (Septuagint manuscripts)."
and
"The Council of Trent definitively removed it from the canon"(New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw Hill, 1967), Volume II, Bible, III,pp. 396-397).
What was Trent removing, if it was not there in the first place?
Cordially,
Diamond:
Ok good one with the Popes!!, I got a laugh out of that one. Pope Innocent did tell the Western Church to keep 3 and 4 Esdras in the Appendix of the Latin Bibles. That point is true, and as the article cited below notes, 3 Esdras was printed in many versions of the Latin Vulgate in an appendix and prayers from IV Esdras were incorporated into the Catholic Requim Liturgy/Funeral Mass.
I have never said the 3 Esdras was not on some canonical Lists. It was, as it was on Origen’s List in the 3rd century representing the Tradition of Alexandria, which along with Antioch and Rome, were the 3 major Sees of the early Church (see Canon 6 I think, from the Council of Nicea in 325 AD].
In addition, Alexandria, representing an Eastern Tradition had different lists than the ones that were agreed to in the West. Still, the early Churches tended to look to each other [i..e Rome, Alexandria and Antioch] to see what lists were agreed to in the various Churches in those regions.
Also, I also point out that the Greek Orthodox Church, and many other of the Orthodox Churches [Russian, Serbian, Ukranian, etc] recognize the canon, which is conistent with the last 2 citations that you post. I agree with them and as I noted above, yes, 3 Esdras was in the LXX and was always viewed as canonical by the Eastern Church, which I recognize as holding to all of the Doctrines and Dogmas of the One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church as they hold have valid Priests/Bishops and thus valid sacraments/Mysteries, etc.
So 3 Esdras, using ST. Jerome’s terminology is in fact canonical OT for the 2nd largest Church in Christendom, i.e. the Eastern Orthodox Church as it was recognized by many in the East as Canonical back in the 3rd and 4th century. I think that is the reason the Council of Trullo II, a regional Council in the Eastern Church, stated that the Church should not be so “fixed” on what the Canon is with respect to the lists defined by the Western Church in the late 4th/5th century.
Now, back to and earlier statement you made [sorry about going in circles here], but when I stated that St. Jerome, in dividing 1 and 2 Esdras from the LXX into 1, 2, and 3 Esdras and then calling another book that was attributed to Esdras 4 Esdras, I was basing that on the Catholic encylopedia artice linked before. Under the section of 1 Esdras, there is a statement that indicates that Western Writers were already separating Greek Esdras B into 2 dinstinct books, which would be Ezra and Nehemiah, i.e. 1 and 2 Esdras under St. Jerome’s terminology, which if I am reading the article correctly, was a Western Tradition already in place as if it were assigned to St. Jerome, that would be pointed out. It seems that Jerome was following and already established Western Tradition when he began working on the Vulgate after Pope Damasus asked him to revise the extant Latin Manuscripts at that time.
Under the section III Esdras, the article indicates “although not belonging to the canon of scripture”, this work was usually found in the appendix of some copies of the Latin Vulgate, which might count for the confusion as the Catholic Church. The practice of having works in an appendix may have become more pressing in the time of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Council of Trent.
For example, the Protestant OT canon which had the 39 book OT canon [the shortest OT canon and the one that is the historical anomaly among the 3 OT canons, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant] and then relegated all the Deuterocanonicals to the appendix.
So, what seems to have happened at Trent is for any work not part of the canon being removed from the appendix and not allowed to be printed with the 46 books of the Catholic OT canon. Given that the work that you and I are questioning was indeed published in some copies of the Latin Vulgate in an appendix, which itself indicates a non-canonical status, Trent’s decree that III Esdras be removed seems to be addressing this question.
In summary, and this is hard to get at, the question is whether St. Augustine is following an already established Latin Tradition, which separated the works in question into 1 Esdras, II Esdras and III Esdras which seems to have been the case if how I am interpreting the section in the article linked below regarding Greek Esdras B or LXX II Esdras {single volume in the LXX and Hebrew version} [1 and 2 Esdras using Jerome] was already divided into two distinct books, which would be 1 and 2 Esdras. So, Greek Esdras A or LXX Esdras 1 would then correspond to 3 Esdras in Latin.
Again, under the section ‘The Books of Esdras”, quoted below
“Not a little confusion arises from the titles of these books. Esdras A of the Septuagint is III Esdras of St. Jerome, whereas the Greek Esdras B corresponds to I and II Esdras of the Vulgate, which were originally united into one book. Protestant writers, after the Geneva Bible, call I and II Esdras of the Vulgate respectively Ezra and Nehemiah, and III and IV Esdras of the Vulgate respectively I and II Esdras. It would be desirable to have uniformity of titles. We shall follow here the terminology of St. Jerome. “
So given that Jerome was charged with translating the Latin Manuscripts by Pope Damasus in 382, it appears by what was stated above that by the time of those Councils we are talking about, which were written in Latin, the Latin terminology was already in place thus Esdras 1 in the LXX refers to III Esdras and Esdras II in the LXX refers to 1 and 2 Esdras, which in our modern Bibles relates to Ezra and Nehemiah.
So unless I am missing something, when Trent decreed III Esdras be removed, they were referring some of the Latin Vulgate translations having it printed as an ‘appendix”, which again suggests non-canonical status or questionable canonical status as it was recognized by the Eastern Orthodox as canon then, as it is now.
Regards
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05535a.htm