Chapter 31

What We Lose Without the Deuterocanon

Theological Gaps in the Protestant Old Testament

Imagine you are assembling a jigsaw puzzle — a beautiful mosaic of salvation history stretching from creation to Christ. You work your way through Genesis, Exodus, the Psalms, and the Prophets, and you build up a picture of a God who creates, calls, covenants, judges, and promises to redeem. Then you reach the last piece of the Old Testament — the book of Malachi, written around 430 BC — and you set it down. The next piece in the box is the Gospel of Matthew, written roughly four and a half centuries later. And when you try to fit Malachi together with Matthew, something doesn't feel right. The pieces don't quite connect. The picture jumps. Key ideas appear in the New Testament that seem to have no clear foundation in the Old. Where did the theology of bodily resurrection come from? Where did the highly developed picture of the soul's survival after death originate? Where did the sophisticated understanding of divine Wisdom as a personal, pre-existent figure — the Logos — emerge from? What happened during those four hundred silent years?

The answer, I'm increasingly convinced, is that the puzzle is missing several crucial pieces. Those pieces are the deuterocanonical books — the books that Protestants removed from their Bibles during and after the Reformation. And when you put those pieces back, the picture snaps into focus. The New Testament makes more sense. The theological bridge between the Testaments becomes more complete, more coherent, and more powerful.

In previous chapters, we've traced the historical process by which the deuterocanonical books were relegated to a secondary status and eventually removed from Protestant Bibles altogether. We've examined the decisions of Luther, Calvin, and the Westminster divines (Chapter 29). We've followed the economic and cultural forces that led the British and Foreign Bible Society to stop printing them in 1826 (Chapter 30). Now it's time to step back and ask a different kind of question — not a historical one, but a theological one. What have we actually lost?

The thesis of this chapter is straightforward: the removal of the deuterocanonical books leaves significant theological gaps in the Protestant Old Testament — gaps that the New Testament presupposes have been filled. Without the deuterocanon, the bridge between the two Testaments is missing several crucial spans. And the result is a Bible that is harder to understand, theologically thinner, and less coherent than the Bible the apostles and the early church actually used.

Let me walk through these gaps one at a time.

I. The Theology of the Afterlife and the Soul's Survival

This is perhaps the most striking gap of all — and it's one that matters deeply to me personally, as someone who holds firmly to substance dualism and a conscious intermediate state.

Here is the problem. If you read only the protocanonical Old Testament — the thirty-nine books in the standard Protestant Bible — the picture of the afterlife you get is remarkably vague and, at times, downright discouraging. The dominant Old Testament portrayal of death is Sheol, a shadowy underworld where the dead exist in a diminished state. The Psalmist writes, "In death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise?" (Ps. 6:5, ESV). Job laments that death is a land of "gloom and deep darkness" from which no one returns (Job 10:21–22). And most famously — or perhaps most troublingly — Ecclesiastes declares: "For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten" (Eccl. 9:5, ESV).

Now compare that with the New Testament. Jesus promises the repentant thief, "Today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). Paul writes that to depart this life is "to be with Christ, which is far better" (Phil. 1:23). He tells the Corinthians that to be "away from the body" is to be "at home with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8). The book of Revelation depicts the souls of the martyrs crying out from under the heavenly altar (Rev. 6:9–10). The New Testament consistently teaches that the soul survives the death of the body, that the righteous are in a state of conscious blessedness with God, and that the unrighteous face a conscious reckoning.

How did we get from Ecclesiastes 9:5 to Luke 23:43? Where did this dramatic theological development come from?

The answer lies in the deuterocanonical books, especially the Wisdom of Solomon. Wisdom chapters 2–5 present the most developed and explicit pre-Christian Jewish theology of the afterlife anywhere in the biblical tradition. Consider the opening lines of Wisdom chapter 3:

"But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace. For though in the sight of others they were punished, their hope is full of immortality." (Wis. 3:1–4, NRSV)

The Greek here is extraordinary. The word for "souls" is psychai (ψυχαί), the plural of psychē (ψυχή) — the very word that Greek-speaking Jews and early Christians used for the immaterial, conscious self that survives bodily death. The author is not speaking poetically or metaphorically. He is making a direct theological claim: the righteous dead are conscious, they are in God's care, they are at peace, and their hope is full of athanasia (ἀθανασία) — "immortality," literally "deathlessness."¹

This is precisely the theology that the New Testament presupposes. When Paul tells the Philippians that departing to be with Christ is "far better," he is not inventing a new doctrine from thin air. He is drawing on a theological tradition that was already well established in Second Temple Judaism — a tradition most clearly articulated in the Wisdom of Solomon. As Timothy Michael Law observes, the Wisdom of Solomon "is one of the first Jewish texts to speak about the immortality of the soul and was extraordinarily influential in the New Testament and other early Christian theology."²

The Wisdom of Solomon does not stop at affirming the soul's survival. It also teaches divine judgment after death — that the righteous and the wicked face different fates. Wisdom 3:10 warns that "the ungodly will be punished as their reasoning deserves," while the righteous "will govern nations and rule over peoples, and the Lord will reign over them forever" (Wis. 3:8). Wisdom 5:1–5 depicts a dramatic scene of eschatological reversal, in which the wicked stand before the righteous in terror, realizing too late that the ones they mocked and persecuted are now "counted among the children of God."³

Without the Wisdom of Solomon, the Protestant Old Testament simply does not contain a clear, developed teaching on the conscious survival of the soul after death. There are hints and intimations — Psalm 16:10 ("you will not abandon my soul to Sheol"), Psalm 73:24 ("afterward you will receive me to glory"), and Isaiah 26:19 ("your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise") — but nothing approaching the clarity and theological sophistication of Wisdom 3. The result is that Protestant readers encounter a jarring discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments on one of the most fundamental questions of human existence: What happens when we die?⁴

For those of us who hold to substance dualism — the view that a human being is composed of both a material body and an immaterial soul that can exist apart from the body — the Wisdom of Solomon is not just theologically interesting. It is theologically essential. It provides the clearest Old Testament-era foundation for the New Testament's teaching on the intermediate state: that the souls of the righteous are with God in paradise, and the souls of the unrighteous are in Hades awaiting judgment. As I've argued elsewhere in this book, the consistent biblical teaching is that the saved go to be with Christ at death (Luke 23:43; Phil. 1:23; 2 Cor. 5:8), while the unsaved go to Hades — a waiting place, not the final Lake of Fire — where, I believe, they may still have the opportunity to receive Christ (see my discussion in Chapter 24). The Wisdom of Solomon provides the theological groundwork for exactly this framework.

Some Protestant scholars have attempted to fill this gap by pointing to Daniel 12:2 ("And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt") as the Old Testament's clear teaching on the afterlife. And Daniel 12:2 is indeed significant — we'll discuss it more below. But Daniel 12:2 speaks specifically of bodily resurrection, not of the soul's conscious survival in the intermediate state between death and resurrection. The Wisdom of Solomon addresses both — the soul's immediate survival after death and the future hope of bodily transformation. This is precisely the two-stage eschatology that the New Testament teaches: first, the soul goes to be with Christ at death; then, at the resurrection, the body is raised and reunited with the soul.⁵

The loss of this theology from the Protestant Bible has had real consequences. It has contributed to theological confusion about the intermediate state among Protestant Christians. Some have embraced "soul sleep" — the view that the dead are unconscious between death and resurrection — in part because the protocanonical Old Testament, read in isolation, can seem to support that view. Others have simply avoided thinking about the intermediate state altogether, skipping directly from death to the final resurrection as if nothing happens in between. The Wisdom of Solomon, had it remained in Protestant Bibles, would have provided a powerful corrective to both of these errors.⁶

II. The Theology of Bodily Resurrection

If the Protestant Old Testament is thin on the survival of the soul, it is almost equally thin on the doctrine of bodily resurrection. As I noted above, Daniel 12:2 provides the clearest statement: "And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." This is a crucial verse, and its importance should not be minimized. But it is also, remarkably, the only clear and unambiguous statement of bodily resurrection in the entire protocanonical Old Testament.

There are other passages that hint at resurrection — Isaiah 26:19 ("Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise"), Ezekiel 37 (the valley of dry bones, though this is primarily about national restoration), and possibly Job 19:26 ("and after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God," though the Hebrew text is notoriously difficult). But none of these provides the kind of extended, theologically developed, unambiguous affirmation of bodily resurrection that we find in the New Testament — where resurrection is absolutely central to the faith, the cornerstone of the gospel, the hope of every believer.

Where does the New Testament get its robust, confident, fully developed theology of resurrection? Part of the answer, of course, is the resurrection of Jesus Himself. But the New Testament authors clearly expected their audience to already understand and believe in the resurrection before Jesus rose. The Pharisees believed in it. Martha believed in it — "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day" (John 11:24). The audience at Pentecost understood Peter's resurrection argument. The concept was not new to them.

So where did this widespread Jewish belief in bodily resurrection come from, if Daniel 12:2 is the only clear text in the protocanonical Old Testament?

The answer is 2 Maccabees 7.

Second Maccabees chapter 7 tells the story of a Jewish mother and her seven sons who are arrested during the persecution of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (167–164 BC) and commanded to eat pork in violation of the Torah. One by one, each son refuses, and one by one, each is tortured and killed. But as they die, they make extraordinary statements of faith in the resurrection:

The second brother, as he is dying, declares to the tyrant: "You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws" (2 Macc. 7:9, NRSV).

The third brother extends his hands to be cut off and says: "I got these from Heaven, and because of his laws I disdain them, and from him I hope to get them back again" (2 Macc. 7:11).

The fourth brother makes a devastating distinction: "One cannot but choose to die at the hands of mortals and to cherish the hope God gives of being raised again by him. But for you there will be no resurrection to life" (2 Macc. 7:14). Notice what he's doing — he is distinguishing between the resurrection of the righteous and the fate of the wicked, a theological distinction that the New Testament will develop further.⁷

And the mother herself makes perhaps the most theologically profound statement of all: "I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of humankind and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, as you now regard yourselves less than nothing, for the sake of his laws" (2 Macc. 7:22–23).

This is not a vague hope. This is not a bare affirmation that "the dead will rise." This is an extended, passionate, theologically sophisticated proclamation of bodily resurrection, grounded in the character of God as Creator, articulated in the face of martyrdom, and expressed with a detail and confidence that far surpasses anything in Daniel 12:2. It is, as David deSilva has noted, "the most explicit and extended statement of bodily resurrection in the pre-Christian Jewish literature."⁸

The connection to the New Testament is direct and explicit. The author of Hebrews, in his great "hall of faith" chapter, writes: "Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life" (Heb. 11:35, ESV). The first sentence refers to the stories of Elijah and Elisha raising the dead (1 Kings 17; 2 Kings 4). But the second sentence — "some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life" — has no parallel in the protocanonical Old Testament. It is almost certainly a reference to 2 Maccabees 7, where the seven brothers are tortured and refuse to accept release (by eating pork and saving their lives) precisely because they believe in the resurrection. As we discussed in Chapter 20, the verbal and thematic parallels are too precise to be explained as coincidence.⁹

Without 2 Maccabees 7, the Protestant reader of Hebrews 11:35 is left scratching their head. Who are these people who were tortured, refusing release, "so that they might rise again to a better life"? There is no one in the protocanonical Old Testament who fits this description. The seven brothers of 2 Maccabees are the obvious and widely acknowledged referent — but Protestant readers have no access to their story because it was removed from their Bibles.¹⁰

The irony is painful. The New Testament author assumed his readers knew the story of the Maccabean martyrs. He assumed it was part of their Bible. And for the first fifteen hundred years of Christianity, it was.

III. The Intertestamental Historical Context — The "Silent Centuries"

Open a Protestant Bible and turn from the last page of Malachi to the first page of Matthew. What do you see? A blank page. Maybe a title page saying "The New Testament." But between the prophet Malachi, writing around 430 BC, and the birth of Jesus, around 5–4 BC, there is a gap of more than four hundred years. Protestants sometimes call these the "silent centuries" or the "four hundred years of silence" — as if God had simply stopped speaking, stopped acting, and stopped guiding His people for four centuries.

But God was not silent during those centuries. And the people of God did not experience those centuries as a theological void. Empires rose and fell. Alexander the Great conquered the known world, and Greek culture spread everywhere — a process we call Hellenization that would ultimately provide the common language (Greek) in which the New Testament would be written. The Ptolemies and then the Seleucids ruled over the land of Israel. Antiochus IV Epiphanes attempted to stamp out the Jewish faith entirely, desecrating the Temple in Jerusalem by erecting an altar to Zeus on the altar of burnt offering — the "abomination of desolation" that Daniel prophesied (Dan. 11:31; cf. Matt. 24:15). A priestly family led a guerrilla revolt — the Maccabean revolt — that succeeded in driving out the Seleucids and rededicating the Temple (the event commemorated in the festival of Hanukkah, which Jesus Himself celebrated; see John 10:22). The Hasmonean dynasty ruled an independent Jewish state for about a century before the Romans arrived. The Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes emerged as the major Jewish parties. The synagogue became the center of Jewish religious life outside Jerusalem. The Septuagint was translated, giving the Jewish Scriptures to the Greek-speaking world.¹¹

All of this is essential background for understanding the world of Jesus and the New Testament. When Jesus debates the Pharisees and Sadducees, when He celebrates Hanukkah, when He speaks of the "abomination of desolation," when Paul travels freely through a Greek-speaking Mediterranean world — the reader needs to know how all of this came to be.

Where does the Protestant reader learn about all of this? Not from the Bible. Not from Scripture. They have to go to secular history books or Bible dictionaries or study notes. But historically, the church did not treat these events as "secular history." They were recorded in 1 and 2 Maccabees — books that the Christian church received as part of its Scripture and read as part of the sacred narrative of God's dealings with His people.¹²

Think about what this means practically. A Protestant reader picks up their Bible and reads the Old Testament from Genesis through Malachi. They learn the story of creation, the patriarchs, the Exodus, the conquest, the monarchy, the exile, and the return. Then the story just... stops. The next thing they read is the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1. Four hundred years of history — history that shaped every single aspect of the world Jesus entered — is simply absent from their Bible. And because it's absent from their Bible, many Protestant Christians assume it's either unimportant or unknowable.

This is a staggering loss. The intertestamental period is not a parenthesis in salvation history. It is a vital link in the chain. And the deuterocanonical books — especially 1 and 2 Maccabees — provide that link.¹³

It is worth noting that even Jesus Himself acknowledged the events recorded in the Maccabean literature. His attendance at the Feast of Dedication (Hanukkah) in John 10:22 presupposes the events of 1 Maccabees 4, where Judas Maccabeus rededicates the Temple after its desecration by Antiochus IV. Jesus didn't explain Hanukkah to His audience — He assumed they knew the story. And for fifteen centuries, Christians did know the story, because it was in their Bibles.¹⁴

IV. The Theology of Creation Ex Nihilo

The doctrine of creation ex nihilo — that God created the universe out of nothing, not from pre-existing matter — is one of the most fundamental doctrines of Christian theology. It distinguishes the biblical God from the gods of Greek philosophy, who merely shaped pre-existing material. It grounds God's absolute sovereignty: if God created everything from nothing, then nothing exists independently of Him. It is the theological foundation for the New Testament's soaring Christological claims — "All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made" (John 1:3); "For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible" (Col. 1:16).

But where is creation ex nihilo explicitly taught in the Old Testament? Genesis 1:1 ("In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth") is certainly compatible with ex nihilo creation, and most Christians have understood it that way. But the text does not explicitly say "from nothing." Some scholars have argued that Genesis 1:1 can be translated "When God began to create the heavens and the earth" — a rendering that doesn't necessarily imply ex nihilo creation at all.¹⁵ Psalm 33:6 ("By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host") and other similar passages strongly suggest ex nihilo creation, but none of them explicitly state it.

The clearest and most explicit statement of creation ex nihilo in the entire Old Testament era comes from 2 Maccabees 7:28, spoken by the brave mother of the seven martyred brothers as she encourages her youngest son to face death with courage:

"I beg you, my child, to look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed." (2 Macc. 7:28, NRSV)

In the Greek, the key phrase is ouk ex ontōn epoiēsen auta ho theos (οὐκ ἐξ ὄντων ἐποίησεν αὐτὰ ὁ θεός) — literally, "God made them not from existing things." This is a direct, unambiguous, philosophically precise statement of creation from nothing. And it is remarkable for several reasons.¹⁶

First, the mother is making a metaphysical argument to ground her faith in the resurrection. Her logic is stunning: if God can create the universe from nothing, then He can certainly re-create her sons' bodies from death. Creation ex nihilo and bodily resurrection are linked — the same divine power that brings something from nothing can bring life from death. This is exactly the same theological logic Paul uses in Romans 4:17, where he describes the God "who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist."¹⁷

Second, this verse played a crucial role in the early church's formulation of the doctrine of creation. As Timothy Law notes, 2 Maccabees 7:28 "is the strongest statement in the Bible for the doctrine of creation from nothing, or creation ex nihilo," and it was "doubtless an influence on the champion of the doctrine, the North African theologian St. Augustine."¹⁸ The early church fathers — including the Shepherd of Hermas, Hilary of Poitiers, and Augustine — all cited 2 Maccabees 7:28 to confirm creation ex nihilo. As Gary Michuta documents, the Shepherd of Hermas may have used this verse as early as the mid-second century, and Hilary of Poitiers explicitly cited it to prove that God created from nothing.¹⁹

Without 2 Maccabees 7:28, the Protestant Old Testament contains no explicit statement of creation ex nihilo. The doctrine must be inferred from Genesis 1 and other passages — a perfectly legitimate inference, but one that lacks the directness and philosophical precision of 2 Maccabees. The deuterocanonical books, once again, fill a gap that the protocanonical books leave open.

V. The Development of Wisdom/Logos Theology

The opening verses of the Gospel of John are among the most theologically profound words ever written:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made." (John 1:1–3, ESV)

Where did John get this? Every Christian knows that his language echoes Genesis 1:1 ("In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth"). And most scholars recognize that John is drawing on the Jewish tradition of divine Wisdom, personified in the Old Testament wisdom literature — especially Proverbs 8, where Wisdom speaks in the first person: "The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old" (Prov. 8:22, ESV); "then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight" (8:30).

But there is a problem. Proverbs 8, while foundational, does not get us all the way to John 1. There are critical elements in John's Prologue that have no parallel in Proverbs but are clearly present in the deuterocanonical books, especially Sirach 24 and Wisdom 7–9.

Consider six points of contact between John 1, Proverbs 8, and the deuterocanonical Wisdom literature:

First, John calls the pre-incarnate Christ "the Word" (Logos, λόγος). Proverbs 8 never calls Wisdom "the Word." But Sirach 24:3 does: "I came forth from the mouth of the Most High" (egō apo stomatos hypsistou exēlthon, ἐγὼ ἀπὸ στόματος ὑψίστου ἐξῆλθον). Wisdom is the Word that proceeds from God's mouth — the spoken, creative utterance of the Almighty personified as a divine figure. As Michuta argues, the identification of Wisdom with God's "Word" is "the first and most significant contribution" of Sirach to John's Prologue, providing "the centerpiece of John's prologue" that is entirely absent from Proverbs.²⁰

Second, John says "the Word was with God" (John 1:1). Proverbs 8:30 says Wisdom was "beside him, like a master workman." Sirach 24:4 specifies: "In the highest heavens did I dwell, my throne on a pillar of cloud." Both Proverbs and Sirach describe Wisdom's intimate presence with God before creation — but Sirach adds the imagery of heavenly enthronement.

Third, John says the Word "became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). The Greek word translated "dwelt" is eskēnōsen (ἐσκήνωσεν), which literally means "pitched his tent" or "tabernacled." Proverbs 8 says nothing about tabernacling. But Sirach 24:8 says: "Then the Creator of all gave me his command, and he who formed me chose the spot for my tent (skēnē, σκηνή)." The verbal connection is unmistakable. John is drawing on Sirach's imagery of Wisdom tabernacling in Israel to describe the incarnation of Christ.²¹

Fourth, John says the Word is "the only begotten of the Father" (John 1:14, using the Greek monogenēs, μονογενής). Where in the protocanonical Old Testament is Wisdom described as "only-begotten"? Nowhere. But Wisdom 7:22 describes Wisdom as possessing a spirit that is "unique" — using the very same Greek word, monogenēs. As Michuta notes, "There is no text in the Protestant Old Testament that identifies God's Wisdom as being 'only-begotten' of God. Unless, that is, your copy includes the deuterocanonical book of Wisdom."²²

Fifth, the connection extends beyond John to the letter to the Hebrews. Hebrews 1:3 describes the Son as "the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature." The Greek word translated "radiance" is apaugasma (ἀπαύγασμα). This word appears in only one other place in the entire Greek Bible: Wisdom 7:26, where Wisdom is described as "a radiance (apaugasma) of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness." The author of Hebrews is using a deuterocanonical text to formulate core Christological doctrine — the precise relationship between the Father and the Son.²³

The renowned Protestant scholar Aloys Grillmeier recognized this connection in his monumental Christ in Christian Tradition, stating that "so strong is the similarity between the Johannine prologue and Prov. 8 and Ecclus. 24 that one can speak of a literary dependence."²⁴ In other words, the unique points of contact between Proverbs 8, Sirach 24, and John 1 are too numerous to be coincidental. John used these texts — including a deuterocanonical one — to construct his Prologue.

The theological bridge from Proverbs 8's personified Wisdom to John 1's incarnate Logos runs through the deuterocanon. Without Sirach 24 and Wisdom 7–9, there is a significant gap in the development of the Wisdom/Logos tradition — a gap that makes John's Prologue harder to explain and harder to ground in Old Testament theology. With the deuterocanon restored, the bridge is complete. The trajectory from Proverbs 8 through Sirach 24 and Wisdom 7 to John 1 is smooth, coherent, and theologically powerful.²⁵

VI. The Messianic Profile — The Suffering Righteous One

Every Christian knows the "Suffering Servant" passages in Isaiah — especially Isaiah 52:13–53:12, which describes a righteous figure who is "despised and rejected by men," who "has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows," and who is "wounded for our transgressions" and "crushed for our iniquities." These are among the most powerful Messianic prophecies in the entire Old Testament, and the early church recognized them immediately as pointing to Jesus.

But Isaiah's Suffering Servant is not the only Old Testament portrait of the suffering righteous one. The deuterocanonical Wisdom of Solomon contains a passage so strikingly parallel to the passion of Christ that scholars — including Protestant scholars like David deSilva — have recognized it as proto-Messianic or explicitly Messianic. I exegeted this passage in depth in Chapter 21, so I will summarize briefly here and provide the cross-reference.

Wisdom 2:12–20 depicts the wicked plotting against the righteous man:

"Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions... He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord... He became to us a reproof of our thoughts; the very sight of him is a burden to us, because his manner of life is unlike that of others, and his ways are strange. We are considered by him as something base, and he avoids our ways as unclean; he calls the last end of the righteous happy, and boasts that God is his father. Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life; for if the righteous man is God's child, he will help him... Let us test him with insult and torture, so that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance. Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected." (Wis. 2:12–20, NRSV)

The parallels with the passion of Christ are extraordinary. The righteous man "calls himself a child of the Lord" — Jesus called God His Father. "He became to us a reproof of our thoughts" — Jesus rebuked the religious leaders. "Let us test him with insult and torture" — Jesus was mocked and scourged. "Let us condemn him to a shameful death" — Jesus was crucified. "According to what he says, he will be protected" — the mockers at the cross jeered, "He trusts in God; let God deliver him" (Matt. 27:43). Indeed, Matthew 27:43 appears to be a direct allusion to Wisdom 2:18, which reads: "For if the righteous man is God's son, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries."²⁶

As I discussed in Chapter 21, this passage adds crucial content to the Old Testament's portrait of the suffering Messiah — content that the New Testament Gospel writers appear to have recognized and drawn upon. Without the Wisdom of Solomon, the Old Testament's Messianic profile is missing an important dimension: the righteous man who is mocked precisely because he claims to be God's Son, who is tested with torture to see if God will protect him, and who is condemned to a "shameful death." With the Wisdom of Solomon restored, this dimension is brilliantly present — and the correspondence with the events of Holy Week is unmistakable.²⁷

VII. Prayers for the Dead and the Intermediate State

This is perhaps the most controversial of all the theological gaps, because it touches on one of the issues that divided Catholics and Protestants at the Reformation. But I want to approach it carefully and honestly, because I think there is a genuinely important point here that Protestant readers need to hear — even if they don't end up agreeing with every detail.

Second Maccabees 12:38–46 describes Judas Maccabeus discovering that soldiers who had fallen in battle were wearing pagan amulets (sacred tokens of the idols of Jamnia, which the Torah forbids). He takes up a collection and sends it to Jerusalem to provide for a sin offering on behalf of the fallen soldiers. The text comments:

"In doing this he acted very well and honorably, taking account of the resurrection. For if he were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead. But if he was looking to the splendid reward that is laid up for those who fall asleep in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Therefore he made atonement for the dead, so that they might be delivered from their sin." (2 Macc. 12:43–45, NRSV)

This text explicitly presupposes several things: a conscious intermediate state (the dead are somewhere, in a condition that can be affected by prayer); the possibility that the living can benefit the dead through prayer and sacrifice; the resurrection of the dead; and the possibility of postmortem deliverance from sin.²⁸

Now, I want to be very clear about my own position here, because it differs from both the standard Catholic view and the standard Protestant view. As I discussed in detail in Chapter 24, I reject the Catholic doctrine of purgatory — the view that the saved undergo a process of punitive purification after death before entering heaven. I believe the saved go immediately to be with Christ in paradise (Luke 23:43; Phil. 1:23; 2 Cor. 5:8). They do not suffer. They are at peace.

But I also affirm the legitimacy of praying for the dead. Why? Because I believe the unsaved go to Hades during the intermediate state — not Hell, not the Lake of Fire, but Hades, a waiting place. And I believe that in Hades, the unsaved may still have the opportunity to receive Christ. God is a God of relentless love, and I believe He continues to pursue people even after death. If that is the case, then praying for the dead — praying that God would open their hearts, soften their resistance, and draw them to Himself even in Hades — is not only legitimate but urgent and loving.²⁹

Within this framework, 2 Maccabees 12 is not teaching Catholic purgatory. It is teaching something much simpler and much more biblical: that the dead are conscious, that their condition can be affected by prayer, that the resurrection is coming, and that it is a "holy and pious thought" to intercede for those who have died. These are truths that the New Testament presupposes — and they find their Old Testament foundation in the deuterocanonical books.

The Protestant who rejects 2 Maccabees because it seems to support purgatory is making the same mistake Luther made: rejecting a book because it supports a doctrine he finds uncomfortable. But the proper response to a misinterpretation of a text is not to throw away the text — it is to interpret it correctly. And 2 Maccabees 12, read within the author's theological framework, teaches a theology of the intermediate state that is fully consistent with the New Testament and deeply enriching to the Christian faith.³⁰

VIII. The Moral and Ethical Bridge — Sirach and the Teaching of Jesus and James

Beyond the "big-ticket" theological doctrines we've been discussing, the deuterocanonical books also provide an important ethical and moral bridge between the Old and New Testaments. This is especially true of the book of Sirach (also known as Ecclesiasticus).

I discussed Sirach in depth in Chapter 22, so I will summarize briefly here. The verbal and thematic parallels between Sirach and the New Testament — particularly the letter of James — are so extensive that the great Protestant scholar Alfred Edersheim wrote that they "prove beyond doubt the familiarity of St. James with Ecclus [Sirach]."³¹ Consider just a few examples:

James 1:19 — "Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger." Compare Sirach 5:11 — "Be quick to hear, and be deliberate in answering." The parallel is exact.³²

James 1:13 — "Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am tempted by God,' for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one." Compare Sirach 15:11–12 — "Do not say, 'It was the Lord's doing that I fell away'; for he does not do what he hates. Do not say, 'It was he who led me astray'; for he has no need of the sinful." Both James and Sirach are addressing the same theological problem — the temptation to blame God for our own sin — and they answer it in virtually identical terms.³³

James 3:5–6 — "So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!" Compare Sirach 28:12 — "If you blow on a spark, it will glow; if you spit on it, it will be put out; and both come out of your mouth." Both James and Sirach use the same distinctive imagery — fire kindled by the tongue — to warn about the destructive power of speech.³⁴

These are not isolated coincidences. The connections between James and Sirach run throughout both books, touching on the testing of faith through trials, the danger of the tongue, the critique of the rich, and the call to practical wisdom. Some scholars have even called James "the Christian Sirach." The point is not that James is simply copying Sirach — it is that James is clearly familiar with Sirach's teaching and regards it as authoritative enough to echo in his own inspired letter.

Without Sirach, the Protestant reader loses this rich moral and ethical tradition — a tradition that directly shaped the teaching of the New Testament. The letter of James makes more sense, is more deeply rooted, and is more clearly connected to the Jewish wisdom tradition when the reader has access to Sirach. Without it, an important piece of the ethical bridge between the Testaments is missing.

IX. The Theology of Angels, Demons, and Divine Providence — Tobit and Baruch

The deuterocanonical books also contribute significantly to the biblical theology of angels, divine providence, and God's care for His people in exile. The book of Tobit, which I discussed in Chapter 23, tells the story of a righteous Israelite living in exile who suffers unjustly, remains faithful to God, and is ultimately delivered through the intervention of the angel Raphael. The theological themes of Tobit — God's providence in suffering, the ministry of angels, the power of prayer, the importance of almsgiving, and the faithfulness of God to those who obey His commandments even in exile — directly anticipate key New Testament themes.³⁵

The book of Baruch contains one of the most remarkable proto-incarnational texts in the entire Old Testament era. Baruch 3:36–38 reads: "This is our God; no other can be compared to him. He found the whole way to knowledge, and gave her to his servant Jacob and to Israel, whom he loved. Afterward she appeared on earth and lived among human beings." The language is extraordinary — God's Wisdom "appeared on earth and lived among human beings." This is not simply a personification of an abstract concept. It is a prophetic statement that reads, from the perspective of the Christian reader, as a direct anticipation of the incarnation: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). Early church fathers like Augustine and Peter Chrysologus cited Baruch 3:37–38 as a prophecy of the incarnation, and the Council of Sardica used deuterocanonical texts to support Christological doctrine.³⁶

Without these books, the Protestant reader loses not just individual passages but entire theological threads that contribute to the richness and depth of the biblical tapestry.

X. The Cumulative Case — The New Testament Makes More Sense with the Deuterocanon

I want to step back now and make the cumulative argument. We have looked at seven major theological gaps — or, better, seven places where the deuterocanonical books provide crucial content that the New Testament presupposes:

1. The afterlife and the soul's survival — Wisdom 3:1–9 provides the clearest pre-Christian teaching on the immortality of the soul and the conscious intermediate state, filling the gap between Ecclesiastes 9:5 and Luke 23:43.

2. Bodily resurrection — 2 Maccabees 7 provides the most extended and theologically developed pre-Christian statement of bodily resurrection, filling the gap between Daniel 12:2 and the New Testament's robust resurrection theology, and providing the referent for Hebrews 11:35.

3. The intertestamental historical context — 1–2 Maccabees provide the scriptural narrative for the four hundred years between Malachi and Matthew, including the events that created the world Jesus entered.

4. Creation ex nihilo — 2 Maccabees 7:28 provides the clearest Old Testament-era statement of creation from nothing, a doctrine that the New Testament and the early church treated as foundational.

5. Wisdom/Logos theology — Sirach 24 and Wisdom 7–9 bridge the gap between Proverbs 8 and John 1, providing the theological vocabulary ("the Word," "tabernacling," "only-begotten," "radiance") that the New Testament uses to describe Christ.

6. The Messianic profile — Wisdom 2:12–20 adds the portrait of the suffering righteous one who is mocked because he calls God his Father and is condemned to a shameful death — a portrait that the Gospel writers appear to have recognized as fulfilled in Christ.

7. The intermediate state and prayers for the dead — 2 Maccabees 12 and Wisdom 3 provide a theology of the conscious intermediate state and the efficacy of prayer for the dead that the New Testament presupposes.

Any one of these gaps, taken individually, might not seem decisive. Perhaps the New Testament's afterlife theology could be traced entirely to Daniel 12:2 and a few Psalms. Perhaps the Logos Christology of John 1 could be grounded entirely in Proverbs 8. Perhaps Hebrews 11:35 could be explained without reference to 2 Maccabees 7. Perhaps.

But taken cumulatively, the pattern is overwhelming. The New Testament authors did not write in a vacuum. They wrote out of a rich theological tradition that included the deuterocanonical books. They used the language of Wisdom and Sirach to describe Christ. They drew on 2 Maccabees to illustrate the faith of the martyrs. They presupposed a theology of the afterlife that finds its clearest Old Testament expression in the Wisdom of Solomon. They assumed their readers knew the history of the Maccabean period. They used a Christological vocabulary — apaugasma, monogenēs, skēnoō — that comes directly from the deuterocanonical Wisdom literature.³⁷

As Michuta argues in his chapter on the implausibility of the contrary, the standard Protestant apologetic against the deuterocanon "fails to provide a coherent, plausible, Christian explanation of all the evidence." If the deuterocanonical books are merely human writings — no more authoritative than Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, as the Westminster Confession implies — then why did the inspired New Testament authors draw on them so extensively? Why did the early church universally receive them as Scripture? Why did the church's Bible include them for fifteen centuries? And why does the New Testament make more sense, not less, when they are included?³⁸

XI. Addressing the Objections

Before closing, I want to address some objections that Protestant readers may have at this point. I want to treat these objections fairly and seriously, because they deserve a fair hearing.

Objection 1: "The theological gaps you describe aren't really gaps. The protocanonical Old Testament contains the seeds of all these doctrines."

I agree that the protocanonical Old Testament contains seeds and hints of all the doctrines we've discussed — the afterlife, resurrection, creation ex nihilo, divine Wisdom, and so on. I am not claiming that these doctrines are absent from the protocanonical books. I am claiming that they are present only in seed form — and that the deuterocanonical books develop them into the mature theological formulations that the New Testament presupposes. The difference between a seed and a fully developed plant is significant. Daniel 12:2 is a seed of resurrection theology; 2 Maccabees 7 is the plant. Proverbs 8 is a seed of Logos theology; Sirach 24 and Wisdom 7 are the mature development. The New Testament writers appear to have assumed that their readers had access to the mature development, not just the seeds.³⁹

Objection 2: "Even if the NT authors knew and used the deuterocanonical books, that doesn't make them inspired Scripture."

This is a fair point, and I acknowledge it. Paul quotes pagan poets (Acts 17:28; Titus 1:12) without thereby endorsing their entire works as inspired. The mere fact that a New Testament author alludes to a text does not automatically make that text canonical.

But there is a crucial difference between quoting a pagan poet and drawing on a text to formulate core Christian doctrine. Paul quotes Epimenides and Aratus to make an incidental point about common ground with his Athenian audience. But when the author of Hebrews uses the rare word apaugasma from Wisdom 7:26 to describe the Son's relationship to the Father (Heb. 1:3), he is using a deuterocanonical text to formulate one of the most important Christological statements in the New Testament. When John structures his Prologue on the framework of Sirach 24, he is using a deuterocanonical text to articulate the doctrine of the incarnation. These are not incidental quotations. These are cases where the New Testament's theological architecture depends on the deuterocanonical foundation.⁴⁰

As Michuta argues, if the inner relationship of the Trinity "can only be known through divine revelation" — and it can — then the fact that Wisdom 7:26 provides precisely the theological vocabulary the author of Hebrews needs to describe that relationship "shows that the inspired author believed that Wisdom was capable of confirming this revealed truth."⁴¹

Objection 3: "The deuterocanonical books contain errors and doctrinal problems that disqualify them from being inspired Scripture."

I've addressed specific alleged errors and problems in earlier chapters — the alleged historical inaccuracies in Judith, the questions about the late date of some compositions, and so on. These deserve honest engagement, and I've tried to provide it. But I want to make a general point here: every book of the Bible — protocanonical and deuterocanonical alike — contains passages that are difficult, that seem to contradict other passages, and that have been misused to support bad theology. The Song of Solomon was nearly excluded from the Jewish canon because of its erotic content. Ecclesiastes was debated because it seems to deny the afterlife. Esther was questioned because it never mentions God. The letter of James was questioned by Luther because it seemed to teach salvation by works.

The presence of difficulties in a text is not evidence against its inspiration. It is a normal feature of Scripture. As Michuta observes, Protestant apologists who reject the deuterocanon because they find faults in it are essentially "placing themselves 'over the Scripture' so as to judge it" — the very thing Protestants have historically accused the Catholic Church of doing.⁴²

Objection 4: "The Jews rejected the deuterocanonical books, which shows they were not part of the inspired canon."

This objection was addressed in detail in Chapters 3, 12, and 19, so I will only summarize briefly here. The "Jews" who rejected the deuterocanonical books were the second-century rabbinic establishment — the same rabbis who, as we have argued throughout this book, also rejected the Septuagint, altered the Hebrew text of Messianic prophecies, and compressed the biblical chronology to invalidate Christian claims about Jesus. The same Rabbi Akiba who rejected the deuterocanon also declared Bar Kokhba to be the Messiah, opposed the Christian interpretation of Isaiah 7:14, and oversaw changes to the Hebrew Bible that weakened its testimony to Christ (see Chapter 12). Should Christians really accept the canonical decisions of rabbis who were actively working to undermine Christian faith?⁴³

Moreover, the "Jewish rejection" was not universal. As we discussed in Chapter 19, there is strong evidence that the deuterocanonical books were widely used and highly regarded by Jews in the Second Temple period — at Qumran, in Alexandria, and even in Palestine. The rabbinic rejection of the deuterocanon was part of the same second-century process that produced the narrower Hebrew canon — a canon shaped in part by anti-Christian polemic. The church has no obligation to accept the canonical decisions of a community that explicitly rejected its Lord.

XII. What We Gain When We Restore the Deuterocanon

I want to close this chapter on a positive note. We've spent most of our time talking about what we lose without the deuterocanon. But perhaps it's more helpful — and more encouraging — to talk about what we gain when we restore these books to their rightful place.

We gain a richer, more complete Old Testament — one that includes not just the seeds of New Testament theology but their full growth and development. We gain the story of the Maccabean martyrs, who died rather than deny their faith and who proclaimed the resurrection with a confidence that anticipates the New Testament. We gain the Wisdom of Solomon, with its profound theology of the soul, its stunning prophecy of the suffering righteous one, and its sophisticated Christological vocabulary. We gain Sirach, with its practical wisdom, its beautiful personification of divine Wisdom, and its deep ethical teaching that directly shaped the letter of James. We gain Tobit, with its moving picture of God's providential care for the faithful in exile. We gain Baruch, with its remarkable proto-incarnational prophecy. We gain the additions to Daniel and Esther, which restore the theological dimension to stories that would otherwise lack it.⁴⁴

We gain a Bible that reads as a seamless whole — Old Testament flowing naturally into New, with no four-hundred-year gap, no jarring theological discontinuities, and no mysterious New Testament allusions to books the reader has never seen. We gain the Bible that the apostles actually used. We gain the Bible that built the church.

And perhaps most importantly, we gain something that should matter deeply to every Protestant: a Bible that doesn't depend on the canonical decisions of second-century rabbis who rejected Jesus. As I have argued throughout this book, the Protestant Old Testament is based on the Masoretic Text and the rabbinic canon — a text and a canon that were shaped, at least in part, by anti-Christian motivations. When we restore the deuterocanon, we are not adding "Catholic books" to the Protestant Bible. We are recovering the books that the apostles used, the early church received, and the Reformers mistakenly removed.

I understand that this is a big claim, and I don't make it lightly. The case has to be made on the evidence — historical, textual, and theological. That is what we have been doing throughout this book, and that is what we will continue to do in the chapters that follow. But if the evidence is as strong as I believe it is — and I believe it is very strong — then the conclusion is inescapable: the deuterocanonical books belong in the Bible. They always have. And it's time for Protestants to bring them home.⁴⁵

In the next section of this book (Part VI), we will turn to additional witnesses — 1 Enoch (Chapter 32), Jubilees and the Eastern Orthodox canon (Chapter 33), and a synthesis of the Septuagint priority argument (Chapter 34) — before bringing the entire case together in our concluding chapters. But the argument of this chapter stands on its own: the New Testament makes more sense when the deuterocanonical books are included in the Old Testament. The theological bridge between the Testaments is more complete, more coherent, and more powerful. And the Protestant church is poorer — theologically poorer — for having lost these books.

It is time to recover what we have lost.

Bibliography

deSilva, David A. Introducing the Apocrypha: Message, Context, and Significance. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002.

Grillmeier, Aloys, S.J. Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (451). Translated by John Bowden. 2nd revised ed. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975.

Law, Timothy Michael. When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Metzger, Bruce M. An Introduction to the Apocrypha. New York: Oxford University Press, 1957.

Michuta, Gary G. The Case for the Deuterocanon: Evidence and Arguments. 2nd ed. Livonia, MI: Nikaria Press, 2017.

Michuta, Gary G. Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger: The Untold History of the Bible. Rev. 2nd ed. El Cajon, CA: Catholic Answers, 2017.

Woodward, S. Douglas. A Biography of the Christian Bible: And How We Defend the Protestant Scriptures in the 21st Century. Oklahoma City: Faith Happens, 2020.

Woodward, S. Douglas. Rebooting the Bible: Exposing the Second Century Conspiracy to Corrupt the Scripture and Alter Biblical Chronology. Oklahoma City: Faith Happens, 2018.