Luther neither removed the Apocrypha from the Bible nor discouraged its use. Rather, he received and preserved the ancient distinction inherited from the fathers: the Apocrypha is valuable, edifying, and worthy of reading, but it is not Holy Scripture and therefore cannot serve as the foundation of Christian doctrine.
One of the perennial accusations made by Roman Catholic apologists is that Martin Luther removed books from the Bible. The charge is therefore that Protestants have abandoned not only sacred tradition but even sacred Scripture itself. Such an accusation cannot go unanswered, especially by those who confess the Reformation principle of sola Scriptura, and perhaps most especially by those who bear Luther’s name.
The books in question are, of course, the Apocrypha. The word apocrypha comes from the Greek term meaning “hidden.” While the word originally referred to writings considered too sacred for general circulation, it eventually came to designate books whose authority was regarded as uncertain and therefore unsuitable for establishing doctrine. These disputed writings generally include Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Tobit, Ecclesiasticus (Sirach), Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah, 1 and 2 Maccabees, the Greek additions to Esther, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, the Prayer of Azariah, the Song of the Three Young Men, and the Prayer of Manasseh. Some lists also include 1 and 2 Esdras, 3 and 4 Maccabees, and Psalm 151. Nearly all of these works were composed in Greek during the intertestamental period between the Old and New Testaments.
Because they were written in Greek, these books naturally found a place within the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament. They were not, however, part of the Hebrew canon. Since the Septuagint was the Old Testament most commonly used by the early Church, the Apocrypha was frequently read in worship and studied alongside the canonical Scriptures. This explains why fathers such as Clement, Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine sometimes quoted these books alongside the Old Testament.
Yet the fathers did not do so uncritically. Origen, for example, remarks in his Commentary on Matthew that the Apocrypha contains faults and errors and should not be regarded as equal to the Hebrew Scriptures. In his fourth Catechetical Lecture, Cyril of Jerusalem explicitly instructs his hearers to base doctrine only upon the canonical books received by the Jews and to avoid the apocryphal writings. Most significant of all is Jerome, translator of the Latin Vulgate, which would later become the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. Although Jerome included the Apocrypha in his translation, he clearly distinguished these books from the canonical Scriptures in his prefaces, warning readers that they were useful for edification but not for establishing doctrine.
The early Church, then, maintained what might seem to modern readers a nuanced position. It included the Apocrypha in its Bibles, lectionaries, and devotional life, while at the same time distinguishing it from the canon of Holy Scripture and denying it doctrinal authority.
Martin Luther inherited this understanding precisely. When he translated the Bible into German, he included the Apocrypha in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments, providing prefaces for each book just as he did for the canonical Scriptures. Following the judgment of the fathers, Luther noted that many of these books possess uncertain authorship, contain historical and factual difficulties, or consist of later additions to canonical books. Consequently, he did not regard them as part of the canon of Holy Scripture, yet he nevertheless commended them as profitable and worthy of reading.
Nor was this merely a theoretical position. Every early Lutheran who learned the faith through Luther’s illustrated Small Catechism encountered the Apocrypha firsthand. The woodcut accompanying the Eighth Commandment, “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor,” depicts the story of Susanna, teaching children the commandment through an apocryphal narrative. Likewise, generations of sixteenth-century Lutherans regularly heard readings from Sirach, Wisdom, Maccabees, Bel and the Dragon, Susanna, and the Prayer of Azariah in the appointed lectionary of their parish churches. Lutherans did not reject the Apocrypha; they simply refused to accord it the authority of canonical Scripture.
The Fourth Session of the Council of Trent (1546) marked a significant departure from this earlier consensus. For the first time, an ecumenical council formally declared the Apocrypha to be part of the biblical canon and made its acceptance a matter of dogma. In doing so, Trent anathematized Luther and all who maintained the ancient distinction between canonical Scripture and ecclesiastical books—books that are profitable for reading and instruction but insufficient for establishing doctrine. Ironically, the same council affirmed Jerome’s Vulgate as the Church’s authentic Latin Bible, even though Jerome himself consistently distinguished the Apocrypha from the canonical Scriptures in his prefaces.
Luther’s approach continued to characterize German Lutheranism for centuries. The Apocrypha remained in Lutheran Bibles, appeared in Luther’s Catechism through its illustrations, and continued to be heard in the historic lectionary. Its disappearance among English-speaking Lutherans owes far more to publishing history than to Lutheran theology. As German-speaking Lutherans gradually adopted English—especially after the First World War—they relied increasingly upon English-language Bibles produced by publishers from the Reformed tradition. Those publishers had largely omitted the Apocrypha following the influential decisions of the British and Foreign Bible Society in the nineteenth century.
Thankfully, this loss has begun to be reversed. Concordia Publishing House has produced an edition of the Apocrypha as a companion to its Lutheran Study Bible, as well as a Reader’s Edition of the Book of Concord that restores the original woodcuts from Luther’s Small Catechism, including the illustration of Susanna. Likewise, the Lutheran Missal Project has worked to recover the historic lectionary and its rich use of the Apocrypha throughout the Church Year.
In many respects, Lutheranism today is in a better position than it has been for generations to answer the charge that it abandoned either church tradition or the biblical canon. The historical record tells a different story. Luther neither removed the Apocrypha from the Bible nor discouraged its use. Rather, he received and preserved the ancient distinction inherited from the fathers: the Apocrypha is valuable, edifying, and worthy of reading, but it is not Holy Scripture and therefore cannot serve as the foundation of Christian doctrine.
