In this episode, Trent unpacks his recent debate with Steve Christie on the Protestant Old Testament canon and the deuterocanonical books of scripture with fellow Catholic apologists Gary Michuta and William Albrecht.
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent Podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. And today I’m excited to share with you a portion of my debrief of my recent debate with Steve Christie. So if you listened about a week ago, I did a debate with the Protestant apologist, Steve Christie on the question of the Old Testament canon. So Steve actually had the affirmative in this debate though, you probably didn’t tell if you listened to his opening statement, a subject I get into here in the debrief. And his goal was to defend the Protestant Old Testament canon that lacks the deuterocanonical books of scripture. Books like Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, First and Second Maccabees, Baruch, and additional portions of Esther and Daniel.
And so it was a great debate. I thought it went very well and I thought to make it informative for people, I would do a debrief, like I do for all my debates, but for my debriefs for debates and dialogues, I find it’s really cool to bring in other people and have a dialogue with them about it, especially people who know a lot about the subject. So this debrief is really cool. It’s an excerpt from an appearance I did on Gary Michuta’s new YouTube channel, Apocrypha Apocalypse. So Gary is the man. Gary is the expert on the deuterocanon, on the canon scripture, he is really good at this. I studied his material before the debate. And we’re also joined by William Albrecht from Reason and Theology. Both of these men actually had previously debated Steve Christie on the deuterocanon.
So that helped me in preparation for my debate. So it was really cool for the three of us to be able to sit together and debrief and go over the recent exchange that I had with Christie. If you want to hear the full thing, be sure and go to Gary’s channel, Apocalypse, sorry, Apocrypha Apocalypse. So you can go and check that out. I’ll leave a link at trenthornpodcast.com for you to link and click to to get the access to the full episode, or you can just search for it on YouTube, Gary Michuta, Apocrypha Apocalypse. One thing I do want to mention before I share with you the debrief is that I did edit it a little bit. William’s connection to us was a little spotty and it was kind of hard to hear. So I cut some of that out.
So if you’re listening to it and you’re wondering, hey, why is some of the stuff that William Albrecht said not on here? It’s just because the connection and audio quality wasn’t high enough, it was kind of hard to hear. But if you want to hear the whole thing, go to Apocrypha Apocalypse, Gary’s channel to listen to the three of us. But I think you’ll like this portion where we specifically focus on the debate itself. So check it out.
Gary Michuta:
I’ve been looking forward to this discussion for quite a while.
Trent Horn:
Oh yeah, absolutely. It was a neat to finally do the debate with Steve on the deuterocanonicals and it’s a real treat here in this episode of your channel to debrief the debate that I had on deuterocanonicals with him, especially with you guys because I’m really standing on the shoulders of giants here as part of my debate prep. I examined your previous debates and interactions with Steve to formulate my replies in the debate. So you guys’ work was incredibly helpful in that regard.
Gary Michuta:
Yeah, I think I met William once and I met you Trent. I think I’m the only one that qualifies as a giant as far as stature, but I don’t know about intellectual stature though, but thank you.
Trent Horn:
No, your work’s been very helpful. And so it’s a very intricate subject to address with the deuterocanonical books of scripture. Gary, I really consider myself a Jack of all trades apologist. I have some areas that are a big area of expertise for me, like the issue of abortion, because I was doing that kind of apologetics before I did Catholic apologetics in general. So I’d say I have a decent amount of expertise in that area, but many of the other issues I’m relying on other experts to supplement knowledge and have to do debates across a wide variety of topics. I think William can appreciate this as well from the variety of topics he’s covered in debates. So that’s why it’s so helpful to have people who’ve intensively studied the subject to be able to go to as resources.
William Albrecht:
What would you say would be perhaps the most difficult thing about that part of the debate and maybe kind of reaching out to other people that might not know really the intricacies of the deuterocanon or the seven books if you will?
Trent Horn:
Well, the difficulty, William, of the deuterocanonicals and making our case for that is that it actually stretches a long time span across a variety of documents and disciplines. So we’re really stretching from the end of the exilic era in Israel’s history, going through the Maccabean history, Epistolic age, post-Epistolic age, all the way up really to the 16th century where you’re dealing with about 2,000 years of history that get brought up and it did get brought up in my debate with Steve. In fact, his opening statement, which I found to be surprising was he began his discussion with a discussion of the Council of Trent and alleged contradictions between it and the Council of Florence and Carthage about its identification of the canon.
Trent Horn:
And so the disciplines you’re covering are ancient languages, ancient Hebrew manuscripts, ancient Jewish sources like the Talmud, the church fathers, the patristic age, the conciliar texts. So you have to have… There’s a wide gamut and it’s easy when people pick off… And I think what Steve tried to do is he didn’t really make a positive case. He wanted to start with something that requires a lot of qualification and that will be the conciliar definitions of the canon to try to score points on a kind of technicality.
Gary Michuta:
And none of the stuff in the opening statement in regards to those councils have anything to do with the issue. Like you pointed out in the debate, the councils could be wrong, but that doesn’t prove that the Protestant Canon is correct.
William Albrecht:
Right.
Gary Michuta:
And yeah, a lot of secondary sources.
Trent Horn:
Well, what Steve does in his debates, Gary, that I find to be interesting, and I see what he is trying to do and I do something similar to this in my own. Like if you read my book, The Case for Catholicism, I often make many citations of Protestant scholars that affirm, and you guys do it too in your own work. If a Protestant scholar can affirm my point, that’s a good thing to do. Like for example, if you’re arguing the papacy, if you cite D. A. Carson who says, “Look, there’s no verbal distinction between petros and petra,” the rock that you’re founded on. So you cite like Carson or John Calvin. And that’s helpful because look, you’ve got someone, it’s like your book, Hostile Witnesses, Gary. You wrote a great book on that.
You get someone from the other side who affirms that point. And I think Steve tries to do that where he’ll cite just like kind of random, secondary Catholic sources that are really more popular level sources to try to affirm aspects of his case that many times I would say, well, it’s not a good citation because it’s actually not a great source to cite. It maybe Catholic, but it’s not the best scholarship or it’s really outdated scholarship on the issue.
Gary Michuta:
Yeah. He cited like John Martignoni, Michael Voris
Trent Horn:
That was the one that killed me. He cites Michael Voris on the… Michael Voris says it ends at Malachi. And it’s like, well, obviously Michael Voris does not deny the inspiration of the deuterocanonical books of scripture. He’s not a deuterocanonical specialist. He is just making a shorthand reference in another context to the end of the Old Testament prophets. And so to just… you’re right. So it’s either popular level Catholic stuff now or academic stuff like new advent that was written in 1906.
Gary Michuta:
Right. Yeah. And compare that to the secondary sources you use like [inaudible 00:08:05] Kaiser, you use the MacDonald, you use people that are experts in the field.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. And that’s a point that I drove home in the debate later on saying like when I was citing the sources making claims about the Septuagint, making claims about the use of the Septuagint in the deuterocanonicals among early Christians, secondary sources are helpful because they help bring in the level of expertise to say this isn’t just my opinion about the primary sources. There are other qualified experts who would agree with me. It’s like with the Septuagint, I quoted one of the editors of the Oxford handbook of the Septuagint. And that’s one thing that was disappointing me about Steve’s book that when I went through it, except for MacDonald, he really does not engage the wide variety of scholars on this issue.
Even in my studies for this, Gary, I went through a wide variety of deuterocanonical sources, and it was surprising what I finally… For example, I was reading Andrew Steinmann who wrote a book called The Oracles of God on the Old Testament canon question. And it’s interesting to see the different scholars position. So like MacDonald would take the view that the canon, the Old Testament canon was closed late into the Christian period. Steinmann is more conservative and holds that it was closed before Christ, but he doesn’t go back as far as like Ezra as MacDonald, sorry, as Christie does. And he rejects the Abel, Zachariah bookends arguments. So they’re like, when I quoted Steinmann, look, Steinmann basically agrees with you, Steve, but he rejects this whole Abel, Zachariah bookends arguments. So it’s not going to help you.
Gary Michuta:
I wonder why he did that. My own impression is I think he’s trying to attract Catholics so that he’s mentioning names that they may be familiar with. But he would be much better off citing, like you did, some sort of standard work, especially when he’s trying to nail down historical facts.
Trent Horn:
Right. And if he was really good, he could go fine, moderate Catholic scholars that might agree with him. He could go and try to find who is… It’s blanking on me, a second, Birth of the Messiah, Brown, Raymond Brown, Raymond Brown, or someone like that. And that would be a good tactical move on his end to find that or John Meyer or something like that. But you’re right. I think, Gary, that one, he wants to try to get things that people will appeal to. But also frankly, looking in his book, I feel like the research, it was just not really in depth beyond internet research versus actually going into these academic monographs.
Gary Michuta:
Yeah, I agree. I think he tried to wedge people’s ignorance to his side, because like you said, the topic of the deuterocanon covers all sorts of disciplines, lots of specialized study, and by touching on all these different subjects, the audience that probably will never look into it would be impressed just by the sheer number of accusations where, I know you probably felt the same way I did. I was a little bit dizzy because I look at all the different things he says, and it just doesn’t square.
Trent Horn:
And that’s what I tried to do in, although in my rebuttal, I tried to be prepared for that. And this happened to me similar to my debate with Dan Barker and Williams debated Barker as well, he has a tendency to do this. When I debated Barker in Minnesota, I knew from his previous debates, he would do the shotgun, it goes by different names, the Gish gallop, a shotgun approach, the kitchen sink, and like Barker tried to throw the kitchen sink at me in that debate by just quoting a ton of difficult Bible passages. So I had just like the most efficient and lean rebuttal possible to get through all of them and just read it verbatim. And it was just right on point.
And I was prepared to do something similar with Steve, to say, okay, I know he’s going to bring up a lot of different points. And so I wanted to have it somewhat organized just to be able to have something to address all of these different points, but it was jarring just when he started going at the Council of Trent. I think though, Gary, it did not help his case when he did the shotgun approach. And I asked other people who saw the debate that it’s not impressive to them because it wasn’t organized. So they didn’t take away a clear overarching message from it about why they should not accept the deuterocanon or accept the Protestant canon.
And so even though it might seem kind of impressive, if you don’t walk away with a single message, whereas I talked to people, they said my opening, there’s this clear message from it, then it’s just not as effective.
Gary Michuta:
Yeah. In fact, in the chat room, somebody just popped in while Steve was giving one of his statements and they asked whether he’s defending the Orthodox canon. So you’re right. It was kind of incomprehensible because there wasn’t a single message. Where when I debated Christie, I took maybe three points and I just tried to make it as clear as possible. Because that way, at least the people will walk away saying, “Okay, well, this is what Michuta argued,” whether they agreed with it or not.
William Albrecht:
You would kind of expect your opponent to give a coherent opening, something that the audience would be able to kind of grasp. From hearing him when he debated Gary and when he debated you a few days ago, I kind of got the idea that I was hearing an audible book on, maybe on a 20 times speed.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. He was really trying, I would say he was doing the Gish gallop. I’m very hesitant to accuse people. And for those who aren’t familiar, Duane Gish was a young earth creationist who would do this. In debates on evolution, he would throw out as quickly as possible dozens of problems with the theory of evolution and so much information his opponent could never have enough time to respond to it all. And so that’s pejoratively called the Gish gallop. And so sometimes it has been used falsely against me in my debate with Alex O’Connor a few months ago, I had a nine-step argument for God. And I talked to a friend about John DeRosa and he said, “No, you didn’t do a Gish gallop. It was just a multi-step argument.”
But when Christie was doing it, yeah, I felt like he just threw out… And just the fact that he was talking so fast, that’s similar to what you would do in high school forensics or high school debate. High school debaters are taught as part of their sport, you talk quickly to make your points to get points with the judges. But the debates the three of us do, it’s not about scoring points with a judge. It’s about getting the audience to be persuaded. And it’s just not persuasive when you talk that fast to people. In the debate I was also surprised in his closing statement, he really broke the rules of debate where he introduced new arguments. And one of them was straight out of Gary’s little book. I got it right here, with Gary, see this was… Gary, I think I got this from you, we were in person at a conference. Right?
And I got this from you in person. Yeah, at Steubenville, you gave me this. And it was so helpful because it addressed the claim he made that only 44% of the fathers at Trent adopted the canon, which is not true. That’s relating to the question of attaching the anathema, not to the question of the adopting of the canon, which is one of the misinterpretations you had in this book. And he brought it up in his closing statement and it was clear, William, like you’re saying, he’s getting this clearly from Webster or some other kind of secondary source arguing this and not bothering to check it out with the primary source. But again, Gary, I’m grateful you covered that actually in your work.
Gary Michuta:
Yeah. Well, hey, you’re welcome. I actually ran into that whole issue somewhere on the web years ago. And again, like William said, you got to check the sources, you just can’t take things for granted. And it actually comes from of all things, a really badly worded phrase from Bruce Metzger who’s otherwise a really good theologian, very precise. And yeah, so I’m glad it helped because again, I think you kind of smacked that down really quick in regards to the 44% thing. I know I was shocked by a few things that I thought I corrected him factually on my debates. Was there anything that surprised you that you thought he would never bring up and he did?
Trent Horn:
Well, no. I think what surprised me honestly was that he didn’t just make his positive case, that he didn’t, like to say, here is why we should trust the Protestant canon. And Chistie’s argument is unique among Protestants. I haven’t seen other people make an argument like his for better or worse about the idea of the Pharisaical canon being the true canon, and here’s how we can know that. And so my opening statement was crafted thinking, well, if I were Steve, that’s my main argument. And I’m going to run with my main argument and having the negative, part of me was making a negative, a case for the deuterocanon from all these different sources. But also I felt it was fair to address his main argument in my opening as part of my negative case based on what he had said in his book.
And I just assumed he’d probably bring out his strongest argument into the debate. So I ended up dropping some paragraphs from my opening statement because I felt I would confuse the audience in rebutting an argument that was never made in the debate at all. So I kind of was starting to run out of stuff to rebut at one point, except for the… You’re right, there are a lot of accusations in the beginning. So I just tried as best I could in my first rebuttal, because my first rebuttal, I dealt with his opening and first rebuttal to just try to assemble them in a coherent manner so they would make sense. And I think that took the wind out of his sails for his kitchen sink approach because I could systematically have an answer to quickly give for others.
And for people who are listening who do debates, that really is the key to be able to have systematic answers, especially when someone produces a plethora of arguments.
Gary Michuta:
Yeah, absolutely. One thing that floored me, Trent, was you brought up the Kaige recension, which is a Pharisaic recension that was made around the turn of the era. So like one B.C., one A.D., which is a killer for the feeder at least for his argument that the Pharisees held only to the Protestant canon. And he claimed he never heard of it, but I brought it up on my debate against him.
Trent Horn:
[crosstalk 00:18:55].
Gary Michuta:
And he also quotes A. C. Sundberg, which is one of the few scholars he actually quotes in his book. In that entire article he quotes, like immediately the paragraph afterwards, it’s all on the Kaige recension and it just floored me that he acted like he never heard of this before.
Trent Horn:
Well, I’ll tell you one thing that was interesting that I could have brought up as a clear rebuttal was he was trying to make the argument following Roger Beckwith’s argument that the Sadducees didn’t really have a different canon than the Pharisees. Because he was asking, “Well, how do you know the Sadducees had a shorter canon?” And I said, “Well, it’s just that’s a generally accepted belief in New Testament studies that it explains why the Sadducees didn’t believe in the bodily resurrection.” I could fire back and say, “Well, Steve, in your own book, you said the Jews did disagree. We just know the Pharisees had the right one.”
But it was almost like in the debate he just dumped that argument and tried to almost say that the Jews all had the same canon, or at least that the Sadducees and Pharisees were in agreement, which I found to be really surprising.
Gary Michuta:
And you know what Trent, that kind of puts a light to what you said earlier that you’re a Jack of all trades because when he pressed you on the sources, you came up with the two earliest ones of origin and epiphanias, I would say probably 5% of Catholic apologists out there would have had the answer like you pulled it out. So you’re being very humble and you’re just dabbling in this stuff.
Trent Horn:
I would say that I was versed enough for… I know the material, I’ve written on it for Case for Catholicism. It’s funny debates are kind of… They remind me of like taking a final exam back in high school or college. It’s like, oh yeah, I got the final exam in two months. I’ll be on that soon. Oh, final exams in two weeks, better put all the books together. The final exam is tomorrow, better really cover the notes very well tonight just to have it all together. And it’s easier with some topics on the back of your hand, others aren’t as much. But the key for me was, yeah, I tried to have all my research really organized.
Though it is funny when I do a lot of this work, I know different people have different note-taking styles. And I have notes I put forward for rebuttals, but like the day or two before, I just kind of sat down and just read a bunch of books and just absorbed it by osmosis is what I prefer to do than doing rigorous note-taking.
Gary Michuta:
I think it showed in the debate. You did an excellent job. And like you said, the way you combat the shotgun approach is just to keep it narrowly focused and clear because it’s really… The lack of clarity is really in your opponent’s camp.
Trent Horn:
Well, I’ll tell you one thing that… When this all comes to clarity and also tactical decisions I had to make, like the strongest argument he is trying to make to make doubts in Catholics so that the councils disagree with each other. And he was bringing up the case of First Esdras, which even if you have enough time is difficult to explain to people how it’s a recension or compilation of previous Old Testament material. And trying to explain the difference between First and Second Ezra, the difference between First, Second, Third, and Fourth Ezra versus First and Second Esdras, or third Esdras. Because that’s hopelessly confusing people and saying, well, no, let’s just talk about Ezra, Nehemiah, Esdras, and the Apocalypse of Ezra would be just easier.
But when you use these terms and say, well, the council didn’t have this, it didn’t have that, I do think it does a disservice to the audience. You’re just trying to score points as I was saying. Well, just explain this all. And then as Gary, as you pointed out to me before the show, you have explained this to him and he’s just making a mistake on this.
Gary Michuta:
Yeah. And it’s almost like he wasn’t listening or I don’t know, because he said some factual errors that I pointed out in my debate. For example, he claimed that the first person to split Ezra and Nehemiah, because they’re once combined as one book was Jerome. And in my debate, I pointed out that Roman is preface to the Book of Kings. He says that both the East and West, the Greeks and the Latins divide this book. And that was written like two years before Hippo. So obviously he couldn’t be the first person to do that.
Trent Horn:
And there isn’t really a contradiction because I thought Carthage says just two books of Ezra. And what they try to say is, oh, it’s Ezra, Nehemiah and then this other recension like, well, no, but Augustine describes Ezra, Nehemiah as the two books of Ezra. So it’s not a contradiction.
Gary Michuta:
Yeah, exactly. And the other thing too is he said some surprising things… Trent, I don’t think he understands the argument about Trent not rejecting explicitly Ezras and the other things, because at one point he actually agreed with you and says that they didn’t reject these books. And it’s like, yeah, that’s the point, they didn’t reject-
Trent Horn:
But he takes that as like a kind of a slam dunk saying we can’t have confidence in the canon unless we have a closed canon. And I think, and I could have brought this out more explicitly in my replies because he was asking about the Eastern Orthodox books. And I think it’s important for Catholics too who might have a misunderstanding of the canon to be able to express this point clearly, Trent says what the sacred books are and condemns those who condemn these sacred books. It says what the books are, not what they aren’t. And so it leaves open, it’s a very important question to leave open like Psalm 151, Third Maccabees, even the Prayer of Manasseh.
Because for example, the question if the Orthodox ever come back into communion with Rome, we are going to have to confront this question, what do we do with the wider canon that they have? And so it’s hypothetical. And as I said in the debate, what I would imagine would be what we would allow them to read them as scripture, they just couldn’t enforce that upon others. And then maybe centuries later after the reconciliation, there could be an understanding that this part of the deposit of faith, that these books… It’s not like the book of Mormon or something. These are ancient texts. They pass the test of antiquity. They’ve just been preserved in the East and now they’re more fully understood in the wider church if that were to happen.
As I said in the debate, I intend to Byzantine Catholic church, during lent or the Great Fast, we pray the Prayer of Manasseh but as a liturgical text, not as an inspired one.
Gary Michuta:
Right. Yeah. And he seemed to completely miss the whole idea that the question was put to the council fathers as to whether they wanted an explicit condemnation of those that weren’t affirmed. And so the father said, “We don’t want to do that. We’ll just affirm these books and walk away.” And then he says something surprising and maybe, Trent, you know what he was getting at. But he said, “But the Council of Florence did reject these books.”
Trent Horn:
I’m not sure what he was… I think he was trying to get at Steve trying to say that because there is a description either in Florence and other council about affirming only what was in like the old Latin Vulgate maybe, that’s the best that I could get from there. But I didn’t know what he was saying that they rejected it. I didn’t know what he was talking about.
Gary Michuta:
Yeah, same here. In fact, I flipped open Florence just to reread it. And it just says that we accepted and venerate these books. In fact, it doesn’t even use the word canon. So I don’t know how…
Trent Horn:
So what’s interesting though, yeah, with the books, I tried to turn it on its head a little, because it’s an interesting question like for the Orthodox and their wider canon, how to accept that. Like I would say to Christie, and I didn’t get an answer to the debate is, suppose, yeah, I accept the pillars of Protestantism, Sola scripture, Sola fide, could I be a saved Christian but I accept the deuterocanon? Would I have to reject belief in the deuterocanon to be either a Protestant or even to be saved under his view? And he seemed like you couldn’t even do that, which I don’t see how he could defend from his position.
Gary Michuta:
Yeah. Absolutely. One more point then, William, you could let loose, but Trent, I loved how you also went on the offense of, and you gave him the Apocrypha Apocalypse challenge about Hebrews 11:35 B-
William Albrecht:
Oh, totally.
Gary Michuta:
… [crosstalk 00:27:30] in the Protestant Old Testament, you find these, anybody that matches that full description, the best he could come up was Jeremiah. And I don’t know how in the world he sees that being described there in it.
Trent Horn:
No. Yeah, I wish I’d had more time to go with that because I also had the question just, I asked him point blank before we ran out of time, “You assembled 50 Protestant commentaries that connect Hebrews 11 and Second Maccabees seven, Hebrews 11:35 B and Second Maccabees seven.” I asked him like, “Are all 50 of them wrong, Steve?” He’s like, “Well, they’re not wrong, they’re just saved by the bell.” But I think that that… Totally, totally. But yeah, that was important for me to go to scripture. And I think it’s important for people, like if you do a debate on this subject, the examples of where the deuterocanonical books are attested to in the New Testament, they are of varying strengths, there are clear examples and less clear.
So like when you’re in a debate, and it doesn’t matter what the topic is, you should always go with your strongest argument in a debate. Don’t settle for a weaker one that’s your pet argument. And I feel like the strongest ones really are Hebrews 11:35 B about those who are tortured to gain a better release and a bodily resurrection, and also the prophecy in Wisdom chapter two about God rescuing the son of God from his enemies, which is a reference to Matthew 27:43. I picked those two because I saw in his book the different rabbit trails he goes down through the other references, but I felt like his replies on those particular verses were very weak. And I was looking forward to rebutting his rebuttals, but it just never came up.
Gary Michuta:
Yeah. That’s unfortunate. William, go ahead.
William Albrecht:
Y’all able to hear me all right?
Trent Horn:
Well, yes.
William Albrecht:
Wonderful. Trent, I agree 100%. I felt you were about to hold his feet to the fire when the bell rang on Two Maccabees. You were getting going there, in Hebrews 11 and Two Maccabees, the connection there. And I agree with you, the power within that text there is really, in my opinion, irrefutable. You bring up a really good point on whether or not he is going to disagree with all of those commentaries. One other thing that I would add as well that Gary and myself have been talking about is that there were fathers as well that saw that connection. He doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know that because he hasn’t done the research.
And then even grammatically. Grammatically, I think the one area where he doesn’t realize, and it’s very important, it’s when the Greek in the Greek New Testament is lining up with something so clearly in the Septuagint text, not only grammatically, even contextually as well.
Trent Horn:
Right. So yeah, I was hoping to get to that. I was saving that in my back pocket if that came up to connect these texts. But I do find it striking that in Hebrews 11:35 when it’s talking about they were tormented using the Greek word, [foreign language 00:30:43], that word, we only find that construction in the Septuagint of Second Maccabees seven. It’s not a slam dunk, but when you find those very unique grammatic constructions, it provides a lot of evidence for a touchpoint. By itself, it may not mean much, but with everything else behind it, it really solidifies that we’ve got a case of explicit citation of Maccabees. Which is why all the Protestant commentaries Gary sites, it clearly agrees.
And then he is got to just face the music here. At best he could just say, “Fine, it’s like Enoch and cited in Jude, but we just don’t think it’s inspired,” that at least would be the honest way to confront it.
William Albrecht:
You have got a number of these fathers utilizing the deuterocanon as holy writ. You’ve got Clement of Rome, you have Barnabas, even Polycarp, I believe Polycarp cited Tobit, if I’m correct. Do you think that that is problematic for the Protestant position on the Canon?
Trent Horn:
Oh, I definitely think so because well, one big reason for it was, and what I started to see was he tried to make that argument that the deuterocanon was not a part of the Septuagint. Now, of course, if he’s going to make that argument, it requires a burden of proof. If it wasn’t in the first century Septuagint, where did it end up in church history? And that’s why I pushed back in the debate saying, “Well, if it wasn’t in the first century Septuagint, then how is Josephus citing deutero Esther? How is Clement citing these works or Polycarp? And then that’s of course, then why I brought up the Kaige recension, which puts us right around the end of round one B.C.
That I think for me, not just the citations, but that, although I don’t really… I think a lot of other… Well, I don’t know, it’s weird. You’ll basically have Protestant scholars, I guess there’s two camps, to be honest with you guys. There’d be the Christie, White, Roger Beckwith camp that will take these very minority views that are favorable to their position like that the Sadducees didn’t have a separate canon or the first century Septuagint did not have the deuterocanon and try to make that argument because it really helps their position versus other Protestant scholars like MacDonald, or David de Silva, or other people will say, “Well, yeah, it’s in there. We just don’t end up accepting it. But it was certainly there.”
I’m just not sure how to describe this approach that they’re taking, but I do think that citing that is helpful to go after that more rigid Protestant apologists’ take on the canon. I would say there’s a Protestant apologist take on the canon and a Protestant scholar take on the canon. I think Gary, you might agree with that. I would say that when you read all the literature, I would say there’s a difference. The Protestant apologists’ take of White, Webster, Christie, and Beckwith… Beckwith is a scholar, but frankly, the other scholars treat him like an apologist. He’s got it. He has a predetermined view that he will argue for no matter what. And then just Protestant non-Catholic scholars. I really do think there’s two separate camps and that’s important to bring out in the deuterocanon discussion.
Thank you guys so much for listening, I hope it was edifying for you all. And remember, if you want more resources on this particular topic, Catholic Answers has a book, Why Catholic Bibles are Bigger by Gary Michuta, that’s available at Catholic Answers. I also cover the deuterocanon in my book, The Case for Catholicism published by Ignatius Press. So be sure to check that out. Also, just a reminder, there won’t be any episodes on Thanksgiving or Black Friday of this week. So enjoy Thanksgiving with your families. I’m going to be enjoying it with mine as we continue our move across the country. So no episode Thursday or Friday, but new episodes will be airing next week, one week from now.
So take Thanksgiving off, enjoy time with your family. Pray for my family during this move. It is really great to be able to share this episode with you all. And I just hope you have a blessed weekend and a happy and blessed Thanksgiving.
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