Chapter 33

Jubilees, the Eastern Orthodox Canon, and Other Disputed Books

Throughout this book, we have been exploring two interrelated arguments: first, that the Septuagint deserves a far higher status in the Protestant church than it currently enjoys; and second, that the deuterocanonical books — the books Protestants left behind — are very likely inspired Scripture. But there is a third dimension to the canon question that we have only touched on so far, and it is one that many Western Christians — both Protestant and Catholic — rarely consider. The canon question does not end with the Catholic-Protestant debate. There are other books. There are other traditions. And there are other Christian communities, some of them very ancient, whose Bibles contain books that neither Protestants nor Catholics include in their own.

In this chapter, we step beyond the familiar Catholic-Protestant discussion and look at the broader landscape of the biblical canon. We will examine the Book of Jubilees — a fascinating Second Temple text that sheds important light on how ancient Jews understood Genesis and the biblical timeline. We will then survey the books that the Eastern Orthodox churches include beyond the Catholic deuterocanon: 3 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, and Psalm 151. And we will turn our attention to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which has the broadest canon of any Christian tradition in the world — a canon that includes not only 1 Enoch and Jubilees but several other books found in no other Christian Bible.

Why does all of this matter? Because the diversity of canonical traditions across Christian communions demonstrates something that most Protestants have never been taught: the question of which books belong in the Bible has never been as settled or as simple as we tend to assume. The Protestant canon of sixty-six books is not "the" Christian canon. It is one Christian canon — and it is the most restrictive one. When we see the full landscape, we begin to realize that the Reformation's decision to narrow the Old Testament canon was not a return to some pristine original. It was one choice among several, and it may not have been the best one.

The Book of Jubilees: A Retelling of Genesis in Jubilee Cycles

We begin with a book that is canonical in only one Christian tradition — the Ethiopian Orthodox Church — but that has enormous importance for understanding both Second Temple Judaism and the chronological debates we examined in Chapters 16 and 17. The Book of Jubilees is one of the most significant texts from the intertestamental period, and its relationship to the biblical chronology makes it directly relevant to our discussion of the Septuagint versus the Masoretic Text.

What Is the Book of Jubilees?

The Book of Jubilees is, at its most basic level, a retelling of the biblical narrative from Genesis 1 through Exodus 14. It covers the story from the creation of the world through the giving of the law at Sinai, but it does so with a very specific framework imposed upon the narrative. The book reorganizes all of sacred history into jubilee cycles — periods of forty-nine years (seven "weeks" of seven years each), followed by a fiftieth jubilee year. Every major event in Israel's history, from the creation of Adam to the Israelites' entry into the Promised Land, is fitted into this rigid calendrical scheme.¹

The book claims to have been dictated by an "angel of the presence" to Moses on Mount Sinai. This is, of course, a literary device common in Second Temple Jewish literature. The real author — whose identity is unknown — was writing sometime in the second century BC, probably around 160–150 BC. We know this from both internal evidence (the book's concerns reflect the Maccabean period) and external evidence (the book was known to and used by other Second Temple authors).²

One of Jubilees' most distinctive features is its advocacy of a 364-day solar calendar rather than the traditional Jewish lunar calendar. As Jubilees 6:32 states, the proper reckoning of time should be based on the sun, not the moon. This was a matter of intense debate in Second Temple Judaism, and it connects Jubilees to the community at Qumran, which also used a solar calendar. The Book of 1 Enoch — which we discussed in Chapter 32 — shares this same calendrical system, and the two books appear to come from related circles within Second Temple Judaism.³

Jubilees at Qumran

The importance of Jubilees in Second Temple Judaism is confirmed by its strong presence among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Fragments of at least fourteen or fifteen manuscripts of Jubilees have been found at Qumran, making it one of the most widely copied non-biblical texts discovered in the Judean Desert. To put that in perspective, the Community Rule (1QS) — one of the defining texts of the Qumran community — is attested in roughly a dozen copies. Jubilees was copied at least as often, and possibly more.⁴

This tells us something important. The Qumran community did not treat Jubilees as light reading or as a text of secondary importance. They copied it extensively, they quoted from it in other documents, and they appear to have regarded it with something close to scriptural authority. The Damascus Document (CD 16:2–4), for example, explicitly refers to the "Book of the Divisions of the Times into Their Jubilees and Weeks" — a clear reference to Jubilees — and cites it as authoritative for matters of calendrical observance.⁵

The fact that Jubilees was found in multiple copies at Qumran does not, by itself, prove that the book is inspired Scripture. But it does demonstrate that at least one significant Jewish community in the Second Temple period — a community that prized purity, precision in worship, and faithfulness to the law — valued this book very highly. And it means that Jubilees was circulating widely in the centuries immediately before and during the time of Jesus and the apostles.

Jubilees and the Chronology Debates

For our purposes, the most important aspect of Jubilees is its relationship to the biblical chronology — specifically, to the patriarchal ages in Genesis 5 and 11 that we examined in detail in Chapters 16 and 17. As we discussed in those chapters, there are three major textual traditions for the patriarchal ages: the Septuagint (LXX), the Masoretic Text (MT), and the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP). These three traditions give significantly different numbers for the ages at which the patriarchs fathered their sons, resulting in dramatically different total chronologies. The LXX gives the longest chronology, the MT gives the shortest, and the SP falls somewhere in between — though with important variations of its own.

Where does Jubilees fit into this picture? The answer is complex and illuminating. S. Douglas Woodward, drawing on the work of Henry B. Smith Jr. and other scholars, argues that Jubilees played a critical role in the history of the textual corruption of the Genesis chronology. Specifically, Jubilees' chronological framework — designed to fit all of sacred history into neat jubilee cycles — required the patriarchal ages to be adjusted. And those adjustments, Woodward argues, influenced the Samaritan Pentateuch and, ultimately, the proto-Masoretic tradition as well.⁶

Here is how Woodward, following Smith, explains the problem. Jubilees 50:4 states that Israel completed an epoch of 2,450 years — that is, forty-nine jubilees, or a "jubilee of jubilees" — when it entered Canaan. To make this scheme work, the author of Jubilees needed to arrange the patriarchal begetting ages so that the total elapsed time from Adam to the conquest of Canaan added up to exactly 2,450 years. This meant that the actual begetting ages in the authentic Hebrew text of Genesis had to be changed — shortened, in most cases — to fit the jubilee framework.⁷

Smith puts the point bluntly: the begetting ages in Jubilees "are not derived from the Genesis text but were invented by its author to create a jubilees-based chronology." In other words, the shorter chronology that eventually made its way into the Masoretic Text did not originate as a faithful copying of the original Hebrew. It originated, at least in part, as an artificial construction designed to serve a theological and calendrical agenda.⁸

The connection between Jubilees and the Samaritan Pentateuch is particularly telling. Smith notes that "there is general agreement that important changes took place in the Samaritan Pentateuch in the second century B.C." — the same period when Jubilees was composed. The SP's antediluvian chronology in Genesis 5 closely mirrors the deflated numbers found in Jubilees, suggesting that the SP was deliberately altered to align with Jubilees' chronological framework.⁹

As Woodward explains, the relationship between Jubilees and the SP works in both directions. They share numerous "affinities," as Smith puts it, and one Ph.D. dissertation cited by Smith concludes that "the Genesis 5 SP was derived from Jubilees itself." Scholar Lester Grabbe has noted the striking parallels between the jubilee-based chronologies in both traditions: "The Samaritans also use the jubilee, but they calculate the first jubilee as fifty years, then forty-nine years until the fifth jubilee. Whether because of this or in spite of it, the flood occurs in 1308 A.M. in Jubilees and 1307 in the Asatir and other Samaritan sources."¹⁰

Why does all of this matter for our broader argument? Because it demonstrates that the shorter chronology — the one now found in the Masoretic Text — was not the original reading of the Hebrew text. The original Hebrew, as witnessed by the Septuagint translation made in the third century BC, contained the longer chronological numbers. The shorter numbers were introduced later, partly through the influence of Jubilees' artificial jubilee framework, and partly through the second-century AD rabbinic editorial activity that we documented in Chapters 12, 16, and 17. Ironically, then, Jubilees — despite its own chronological problems — provides strong independent evidence that the MT chronology has been corrupted and that the LXX preserves the original figures.¹¹

Jubilees and its Theological Agenda

We should also note several other characteristics of Jubilees that are important for understanding its place in the broader canon discussion. Smith, as cited by Woodward, identifies four major features that mark Jubilees as a distinctive — and problematic — composition:¹²

First, Jubilees claims divine authorization through "an angel of the presence" mediating God's words to Moses. This is a claim to supernaturally revealed authority on par with, or even above, the Torah itself.

Second, it reveals a new theological agenda centered on a 364-day solar calendar, in contrast to the lunar calendar used in traditional Jewish worship. This was not a minor point — calendar disputes were among the most heated theological controversies in Second Temple Judaism.

Third, Jubilees claims to be based on "heavenly tablets" — texts supposedly written in heaven before the Torah was given. Since these heavenly tablets are said to predate the Torah, Jubilees implicitly claims a superseding authority over and above the law of Moses.

Fourth, and most relevant for our discussion, Jubilees provides a new chronological arrangement of sacred history governed by jubilee cycles. For anyone who accepted Jubilees as authoritative, this provided a theological rationale for altering chronological data in the canonical biblical texts.

Woodward is appropriately cautious in his assessment. He does not regard Jubilees as inspired Scripture, and he explicitly states that "Jubilees does not align with the Bible." But he also recognizes that Jubilees is enormously valuable as a historical witness — not because its own chronology is correct, but because its relationship to the Samaritan Pentateuch and the proto-Masoretic tradition helps us understand how and why the original Hebrew chronology was corrupted.¹³

I want to be transparent about my own assessment of Jubilees. I find it a fascinating and important text for understanding Second Temple Judaism, and I think Woodward is right that it sheds critical light on the history of the textual corruption of Genesis. But I do not regard Jubilees as inspired Scripture — not because the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is wrong to value it, but because its forced-fit chronology and its claims to supersede the Torah are, in my judgment, theologically problematic. That said, the Ethiopian Church's centuries-long use of this book is a legitimate canonical tradition that deserves our respect, and I believe Jubilees rewards careful study even by those who do not treat it as canonical.

The Eastern Orthodox Canon: Beyond the Catholic-Protestant Debate

We turn now from a single disputed book to an entire canonical tradition that many Western Christians know very little about. The Eastern Orthodox churches — Greek, Russian, Romanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Georgian, and others — are among the oldest Christian communities in the world. Their roots go back to the apostolic era. And their Bibles contain books that neither the Protestant nor the Catholic canon includes.

This is a fact that tends to surprise Western Christians, both Protestant and Catholic. Protestants often assume that the canon debate is simply about whether the Catholic "additions" belong in the Bible. Catholics often assume that their canon — defined at Trent in 1546 — represents the complete and final answer to the canon question. But the Eastern Orthodox tradition reminds us that the picture is more complex than either side typically acknowledges.

What the Orthodox Canon Includes

The Orthodox churches agree with the Catholic Church on the deuterocanonical books that we have been discussing throughout this book: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and the additions to Esther and Daniel. But beyond these, the Orthodox churches typically add several additional books that are not part of the Catholic canon:¹⁴

These additional books include 1 Esdras (sometimes called 3 Esdras in the Latin tradition), 3 Maccabees, the Prayer of Manasseh, and Psalm 151. Some Orthodox traditions also include 4 Maccabees, though usually in an appendix rather than as a fully canonical book. The treatment of 2 Esdras (4 Esdras in the Latin tradition) varies considerably across the different Orthodox churches and across time.¹⁵

As Timothy Michael Law notes, the Orthodox Churches do not always use the terminology of "canonical" and "deuterocanonical" in the same way Catholics do. Instead, the Greek Orthodox tradition uses the term anagignoskomena (ἀναγιγνωσκόμενα), meaning "things that are read" — books that are read in the liturgy for spiritual enrichment and instruction. This reflects a somewhat different approach to the canon question than the sharp Catholic distinction between "protocanonical" and "deuterocanonical" books or the Protestant distinction between "canonical" and "apocryphal."¹⁶

Law also makes an important observation about the diversity even within Eastern Orthodoxy: "The Armenian, Syriac, Coptic, Georgian, Slavonic, and Ethiopian churches all have different canons, and only the Ethiopian Orthodox have canonized other books like 1 Enoch and Jubilees. This lack of agreement among the churches should be borne in mind when one speaks of the Bible as 'the' Christian Bible."¹⁷

This is a point worth pausing over. We in the Western Protestant tradition tend to speak of "the Bible" as if there is one universally agreed-upon list of books. But there is not. There never has been. The Protestant Bible has sixty-six books. The Catholic Bible has seventy-three. The Greek Orthodox Bible has seventy-six or more. The Ethiopian Orthodox Bible has eighty-one. These are all Christian Bibles, all used by communities that confess the Nicene Creed, all cherished as the Word of God. The variation is not trivial, and it should make us humble about claiming that any one tradition has the final and definitive answer to the canon question.

Let us now examine each of the additional books found in the Eastern Orthodox canon. We will look at their content, their history, and their significance for the broader canon question.

3 Maccabees: God's Deliverance in Ptolemaic Egypt

Despite its name, 3 Maccabees has little in common with 1 and 2 Maccabees. It is not set during the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucids. Instead, it tells the story of an earlier episode of Jewish persecution — this time under the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt. The book is canonical in the Eastern Orthodox churches but not in the Catholic or Protestant canons.¹⁸

Content and Setting

The book is set during the reign of Ptolemy IV Philopator, who ruled Egypt from 221 to 203 BC. The story opens with Ptolemy's victory over the Seleucid king Antiochus III at the Battle of Raphia in 217 BC. After this military triumph, Ptolemy made a tour through the newly secured territories, visiting various temples and offering sacrifices. When he arrived in Jerusalem, he was so impressed by the Jewish Temple that he decided he wanted to enter the Holy of Holies — the inner sanctum where only the high priest was permitted to go, and then only once a year on the Day of Atonement.¹⁹

The Jewish people were horrified. The high priest Simon prayed desperately for God's intervention. And God answered: Ptolemy was struck with a sudden paralysis that left him unable to enter the Temple. He retreated in humiliation and returned to Egypt — but he did not forget the affront. Back in Alexandria, Ptolemy turned his fury against the Jewish population of the city. He ordered that all Jews who refused to accept the worship of Dionysus would be stripped of their citizenship and registered as slaves.²⁰

The story continues with a series of escalating threats and divine deliverances. At one point, Ptolemy orders that the Jews be trampled to death by elephants that have been driven mad with wine and incense. But God intervenes again: first, Ptolemy falls into a deep sleep and misses the appointed hour; then, when the elephants are finally released, they turn on Ptolemy's own soldiers instead of the Jews. The king, shaken by these supernatural events, repents of his persecution and issues a decree protecting the Jewish community.²¹

Genre and Historical Reliability

The genre of 3 Maccabees is best described as historical fiction or theological narrative. As Law observes, it has "a façade of historical reality but is patently inventive." The basic historical setting is plausible — Ptolemy IV did defeat Antiochus III at Raphia, and there were periods of tension between the Jewish community in Alexandria and the Ptolemaic authorities. But the specific events described in the book — the elephants, the miraculous deliverances, the king's sudden conversions — read more like the genre of divine deliverance narrative (similar to the book of Esther or Daniel 3 and 6) than like straightforward historiography.²²

The book was probably composed in Alexandria sometime in the late second or early first century BC. Its Greek style is similar to that found in the Letter of Aristeas and in 2 Maccabees, which helps explain why it was eventually included alongside the other Maccabean books in Christian manuscript collections. As Law notes, it was "probably included with the other books of the Maccabees in Christian manuscripts since it tells of another time when Jews lived under foreign kings and were threatened with the pressures of Hellenization."²³

Woodward also mentions 3 Maccabees in his discussion of the Letter of Aristeas, noting that the book "had nothing to do with the war against Antiochus Epiphanes IV" but is "included in the Septuagint; thus, it is included in the Catholic and Orthodox Bible." He provides a useful summary of the historical background: Ptolemy IV Philopator "returned to Egypt through Jerusalem after defeating Antiochus Epiphanes III in 217 B.C. at the Battle of Raphia. Philopator was rebuffed when he attempted to enter the Holy of Holies by the Temple Priests. Upon returning to Alexandria, he was furious."²⁴

Theological Significance

The theological message of 3 Maccabees is straightforward and powerful: God protects His people. When earthly rulers threaten the Jewish community with destruction, God intervenes — sometimes through miraculous acts, sometimes by changing the hearts of the rulers themselves. This is the same theological pattern we see in Exodus, in the book of Esther, in Daniel, and in many of the Psalms. Whether or not 3 Maccabees records literal history, its theological message is thoroughly consistent with the rest of Scripture.

The book also provides important historical background for understanding the Jewish diaspora in Egypt. The Alexandrian Jewish community was one of the largest and most influential in the ancient world, and its relationship with the Ptolemaic authorities — sometimes cordial, sometimes hostile — shaped the context in which the Septuagint was produced. Reading 3 Maccabees helps us understand the world in which the Greek Bible was born.

We should also note several features of 3 Maccabees that connect it to broader themes in Scripture. The motif of a pagan ruler attempting to violate the sanctity of the Temple is found throughout the Old Testament — from the Philistines capturing the ark in 1 Samuel 4–6, to Antiochus Epiphanes' desecration of the Temple in the Maccabean period, to the apocalyptic visions of Daniel. The motif of God intervening to protect His people from destruction — often at the last possible moment — is central to the theology of Esther, Daniel, and the Exodus narrative itself. And the theme of a pagan ruler who begins as an enemy of the Jews but ends by acknowledging the power of their God echoes the stories of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 3–4 and of Darius in Daniel 6.

In this sense, 3 Maccabees — whatever its genre — stands firmly within the theological tradition of the Hebrew Bible. It tells the same kind of story that the canonical books of Esther and Daniel tell: a story of faith tested by persecution, of divine power demonstrated in the face of human tyranny, and of God's unshakable commitment to preserving His covenant people. That the book lacks precise historical accuracy in some of its details does not diminish its theological power. After all, the same kinds of literary and historical questions have been raised about the canonical book of Esther, and no one seriously proposes removing Esther from the Bible on those grounds.

The inclusion of 3 Maccabees in the Orthodox canon also raises an interesting point about how different Christian communities have assessed the value of Jewish literature from the Hellenistic period. The Western church — both Catholic and Protestant — has been more restrictive in its approach, tending to accept only those books that had clear Latin textual support and conciliar affirmation. The Eastern church, by contrast, preserved a closer connection to the Greek literary heritage of Hellenistic Judaism and included texts that the Latin tradition did not always transmit. This is not a matter of one tradition being "right" and the other "wrong." It is a reminder that the church's relationship to its Jewish literary heritage has taken different forms in different cultural and linguistic contexts.

1 Esdras: A Parallel Account of Israel's Return from Exile

The books bearing the name "Esdras" (the Greek and Latin form of "Ezra") have a confusing history of nomenclature that has bewildered students and scholars alike for centuries. The numbering of these books varies across different traditions — Greek, Latin, Slavonic, and English — in ways that can be genuinely disorienting. But the book we are concerned with here is the one typically called 1 Esdras in English Bibles that print the Apocrypha (also called Esdras A in the Septuagint manuscripts, 3 Esdras in the Vulgate appendix, and 2 Esdras in the Slavonic tradition).²⁵

Content and Relationship to Canonical Books

1 Esdras is largely a parallel account of material found in the canonical books of 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Most of the book is, in fact, a straightforward Greek translation of portions of these canonical texts — specifically, 2 Chronicles 35–36, Ezra 1–10, and Nehemiah 7:73–8:12. However, 1 Esdras also contains one significant section (3:1–5:6) that has no parallel anywhere in the Hebrew Bible: the famous "Story of the Three Guardsmen," in which three young bodyguards of the Persian king Darius debate which is the strongest thing in the world — wine, the king, women, or truth. The contest is won by Zerubbabel, who argues for the supreme strength of truth, and as a reward he receives the king's permission to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.²⁶

The question of 1 Esdras' relationship to the canonical books of Ezra and Nehemiah is a matter of ongoing scholarly debate. Is 1 Esdras a later reworking of Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah, compiled from those canonical texts with some additions? Or is it an independent and possibly older Greek translation of a Hebrew source that partially overlapped with the canonical texts but also contained material (like the Story of the Three Guardsmen) that the canonical books do not include?²⁷

Law describes 1 Esdras as "the reworked account of material found in Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah" that "was translated in the second century BCE likely from a Semitic original but with attention to Greek style." He notes that most of the book is "a plain translation" of the canonical texts, "with the exception of a story in 3:1–5:6 not found in the Hebrew Bible."²⁸

Canonical Status

The canonical status of 1 Esdras is one of the more complicated questions in the history of the biblical canon. Some scholars, including Roger Beckwith, have argued that 1 Esdras is not really a separate book at all but an ancient, fuller Greek version of Ezra-Nehemiah — what might be called "Rewritten Scripture." If this view is correct, then accepting Ezra-Nehemiah as canonical implicitly includes the content of 1 Esdras as well.²⁹

Michuta provides a careful analysis of the canonical history of 1 Esdras. He notes that the book appears in some of the most important early Christian canon lists and manuscripts, including the great codices Vaticanus and Alexandrinus. Its status at the Council of Trent is particularly interesting: while Trent's canon list did not include 1 Esdras among the canonical books, the council fathers did not explicitly reject it either. According to Michuta's analysis of the capita dubitationum (the records of the council's deliberations), the fathers expressed a wish that the decree "not name these books as being rejected." This is a subtle but important distinction — the book was not affirmed, but neither was it condemned.³⁰

For the Eastern Orthodox churches, the question is simpler: 1 Esdras is part of the canonical Scripture that has been read in worship and used for instruction since antiquity. It appears in the great Septuagint manuscripts alongside the other historical books, and the Orthodox churches have never had reason to exclude it.

The Story of the Three Guardsmen (1 Esdras 3:1–5:6) deserves special attention, because it is one of the most memorable and theologically rich passages in any of the disputed books. The story unfolds at a banquet held by King Darius of Persia. Three young men from the king's bodyguard each propose an answer to the question: "What is the strongest thing in the world?" The first argues for wine — it makes all people equal, it causes the mighty to forget their rank, and it turns sorrow into joy. The second argues for the king — he commands armies, sends men to war, and receives the fruits of all their labor. The third — Zerubbabel — argues first for women (who give birth to kings and to the men who plant vineyards that produce wine) and then, in a stunning rhetorical turn, for truth. "Wine is not strong, the king is not strong, women are not strong, but truth is strong above all things" (1 Esdras 4:35). The crowd erupts: "Great is truth, and it prevails!" (Magna est veritas et praevalet, in the Latin tradition — a phrase that became proverbial in Western culture).

This story, whether or not it records an actual historical event, teaches a profound theological lesson that is consistent with the witness of the rest of Scripture: truth is the ultimate power in the universe because truth is rooted in the nature of God Himself. As Zerubbabel declares, "With her [truth] there is no partiality or preference, but she does what is righteous instead of anything that is unrighteous or wicked. Everyone approves her deeds, and there is nothing unrighteous in her judgment" (1 Esdras 4:39–40). This is the God of Israel — the God who is truth (cf. John 14:6), whose Word is truth (cf. John 17:17), and whose judgments are true and righteous altogether (cf. Psalm 19:9).

The Prayer of Manasseh: Repentance from the Depths

The Prayer of Manasseh is one of the most beautiful and moving texts in all of biblical and parabiblical literature. It is also one of the shortest — just fifteen verses in most editions. But what it lacks in length, it makes up for in theological depth and emotional power.

Background and Origin

The prayer is connected to one of the most dramatic stories in the Old Testament — the story of King Manasseh of Judah. According to 2 Kings 21:1–18, Manasseh was the most wicked king in Judah's history. He reigned for fifty-five years and filled Jerusalem with idolatry, sorcery, and bloodshed. He "did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger" (2 Kings 21:6). He built altars to foreign gods in the Temple itself, practiced divination and sorcery, and even burned his own son as an offering. The writer of 2 Kings says that Manasseh "led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem astray, to do more evil than the nations had done whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel" (2 Kings 21:9).

But then the Chronicler — the author of 1 and 2 Chronicles — tells us something remarkable. In 2 Chronicles 33:10–13, we read that God sent the Assyrians against Manasseh as a judgment. The Assyrians captured Manasseh with hooks and bound him with chains and took him to Babylon. And there, in his captivity, Manasseh repented:

"And when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. He prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God." (2 Chronicles 33:12–13, ESV)

The Chronicler then tells us that this prayer was recorded: "His prayer and how God was moved by his entreaty... are written in the records of the seers" (2 Chronicles 33:19). But the text of the prayer itself is not given anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. The canonical text tells us Manasseh prayed, tells us God heard his prayer, tells us the prayer was written down — but it does not give us the prayer itself.

The Prayer of Manasseh fills this gap. Whether it is the actual prayer that Manasseh prayed, or whether it is a later composition that imagines what such a prayer might have sounded like, it is a profound meditation on sin, repentance, and divine mercy.³¹

Content and Theological Themes

The prayer begins with a declaration of God's majesty and power — the God "of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and of their righteous offspring," who made heaven and earth and set bounds to the sea. It then moves to a confession of sin that is breathtaking in its honesty. Manasseh declares that he has "sinned beyond the number of the sand of the sea." His transgressions are "multiplied." He is "not worthy to look up and see the height of heaven" because of the multitude of his iniquities.³²

And then comes the plea for mercy: "I bend the knee of my heart, imploring you for your kindness. I have sinned, O Lord, I have sinned, and I acknowledge my transgressions." The prayer concludes with a promise of praise and an affirmation that "the host of heaven sings your praise, and yours is the glory forever." It is a masterful composition — theologically rich, emotionally powerful, and deeply consistent with the biblical portrait of God as one who forgives even the worst sinners when they turn to Him in genuine repentance.

As Law notes, the prayer is "written in a common style, found in biblical examples in Psalm 51, Nehemiah 9, and Baruch 1:15–3:8." A fragment of a different Hebrew prayer of Manasseh was found at Qumran (4Q381), suggesting that the tradition of composing prayers in Manasseh's name had deep roots in Second Temple Judaism. The Prayer of Manasseh as we have it is usually dated broadly to sometime between the fourth century BC and the third century AD, when it appears in the Didascalia, an early Christian treatise.³³

Canonical Status and Use in the Church

The Prayer of Manasseh has had a varied canonical history. It appears in some biblical manuscripts at the end of Psalms or following Chronicles (as in the Vulgate, where it is placed in an appendix). It has been widely used in Christian prayer manuals, catechetical literature, and liturgical texts. In some Orthodox traditions, it is included as part of the canonical Scripture. The Greek Orthodox Church includes it among the anagignoskomena. The Belgic Confession — one of the foundational documents of Reformed Protestantism — even lists the Prayer of Manasseh among the apocryphal books that "the Church may read and take instruction from."³⁴

The council fathers at Trent did not include the Prayer of Manasseh in their canonical list, but Michuta's analysis suggests that, as with 1 Esdras, the council did not explicitly reject it either. It remains in a kind of canonical limbo in the Catholic tradition — not formally canonical, but not condemned or dismissed either.³⁵

For our purposes, the Prayer of Manasseh illustrates an important principle: some of the most theologically rich and spiritually nourishing texts in the biblical tradition fall outside the boundaries of the Protestant canon. Whether or not this particular prayer is "inspired" in the technical sense, it is a text that has blessed and instructed the church for centuries. Its exclusion from the Protestant Bible is not a verdict on its spiritual value — it is simply a consequence of the Reformation's decision to adopt the most restrictive possible canon.

Psalm 151: David's Autobiography

The book of Psalms as Protestants know it contains 150 psalms. But in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, there is one more: Psalm 151, a short psalm attributed to David that celebrates his anointing as king and his victory over Goliath. It is canonical in the Greek and other Eastern Orthodox churches, and it holds a special place in the history of biblical scholarship because it was among the texts discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Content

Psalm 151 is a brief autobiographical psalm in which David speaks in the first person about his youth and his call by God. He describes himself as the youngest of his brothers, a shepherd tending his father's sheep, making musical instruments and singing songs to the Lord. But his brothers were tall and handsome, and they seemed more likely to be chosen by God. Yet God saw David's heart and sent a prophet (Samuel) to anoint him. The psalm then shifts to David's confrontation with Goliath — the giant who defied the armies of Israel — and his victory over the Philistine warrior.

The psalm is short — just seven verses in the Septuagint version — but it packs a great deal of theological meaning into those few lines. Its central message is that God's choice does not follow human expectations. The youngest, smallest, least impressive brother is the one God chooses. This is a theme that runs throughout Scripture, from Jacob and Esau to the calling of the apostles.

The Qumran Discovery

One of the most significant developments in the study of Psalm 151 came in the mid-twentieth century with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Among the manuscripts found in Cave 11 at Qumran was a large psalms scroll (11QPsalms^a, also known as 11Q5) that contained, among other things, a Hebrew version of Psalm 151 — or rather, two Hebrew psalms that correspond to the single Greek Psalm 151.³⁶

This discovery was enormously significant for several reasons. First, it proved that Psalm 151 was not a late Greek invention. It had a Hebrew original — or at least a Hebrew Vorlage (source text) — that predated the Septuagint translation. Second, the Qumran version is actually more extensive than the Greek version, containing material not found in the Septuagint. This means that the Greek Psalm 151 may represent an abridged or condensed version of a longer Hebrew original — similar to the pattern we have seen with other books where the Septuagint preserves or reflects earlier material that was later lost or edited in the Hebrew tradition.³⁷

As Law notes, "The psalm was discovered in Qumran (11QPsalms^a) but was actually divided into two with material not found in the Greek version. We still do not know enough about how the Greek and Hebrew versions relate to one another." This ongoing scholarly uncertainty is itself instructive — it reminds us that the textual history of the biblical books is far more complex than a simple "original Hebrew vs. Greek translation" model would suggest.³⁸

Canonical Significance

In the great Septuagint codices, Psalm 151 is placed at the end of the Psalter — but it is given a special notation. In both Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, the psalm is prefaced with the note that it is "outside the number" — that is, it was recognized as an extra psalm, beyond the standard collection of 150. This notation suggests that even the scribes who included it were aware of its unusual status.³⁹

Despite this qualification, Psalm 151 has been read and sung in the Orthodox churches for centuries. It shows the importance of Davidic authorship of the psalms in the Hellenistic period, and it demonstrates how the biblical tradition of David as poet, musician, and anointed king continued to generate new literary expressions long after the canonical Psalter was compiled.

The fact that Psalm 151 was found at Qumran is particularly important for our broader argument. It means that this psalm was circulating in Hebrew among Palestinian Jews in the Second Temple period — not just among Greek-speaking diaspora Jews. It is another example of how the Dead Sea Scrolls have expanded our understanding of what "Scripture" meant in the centuries before and during the time of Christ, and how the boundaries of the canon were more fluid than either Protestants or Catholics have traditionally assumed.

4 Maccabees: Philosophy, Martyrdom, and Atonement

While our primary focus in this chapter is on the books that are fully canonical in the Eastern Orthodox churches, we should also mention 4 Maccabees, which appears in an appendix in some Orthodox Bibles and has had a significant influence on Christian theology — particularly the theology of martyrdom and atonement.

4 Maccabees is a philosophical treatise that uses the stories of the Maccabean martyrs — particularly the story of Eleazar and the seven brothers and their mother from 2 Maccabees 7 (which we discussed in Chapter 24) — to argue that "devout reason is master over the passions." It is strongly influenced by Stoic philosophy, and its Greek is elegant and rhetorical. Unlike 1 and 2 Maccabees, it cannot be dated before the first century AD, and it may have been written as late as the period after the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135 AD.⁴⁰

What makes 4 Maccabees theologically significant is its interpretation of the martyrs' deaths as atoning sacrifices. The deaths of the faithful become, at a very early stage in Jewish literature, atonement for the nation. This concept — that the suffering and death of the righteous can atone for the sins of others — would become central to Christian theology of the atonement, and the language of 4 Maccabees has striking parallels with New Testament descriptions of Christ's death.

4 Maccabees is not canonical in any Christian tradition in the same way as the other books we are discussing. But its inclusion in the appendix of some Orthodox Bibles, and its profound influence on Christian thinking about martyrdom and sacrifice, remind us once again that the boundaries between "canonical" and "non-canonical" were never as sharp in the ancient church as they later became.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Canon: The Broadest Christian Bible

We come now to what is, in many ways, the most remarkable canonical tradition in all of Christendom. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church — one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, tracing its origins to the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch by the apostle Philip in Acts 8 and the later evangelization of Ethiopia in the fourth century — has the broadest canon of any Christian church. Its Bible contains eighty-one books, compared to the Protestant sixty-six, the Catholic seventy-three, and the Greek Orthodox approximately seventy-six.⁴¹

What the Ethiopian Canon Includes

The Ethiopian Orthodox canon includes all the books of the Protestant Old and New Testaments, all the Catholic deuterocanonical books, and all the additional books found in the Greek Orthodox canon. But it goes further still. The Ethiopian canon includes:⁴²

1 Enoch — the massive apocalyptic work that we discussed in detail in Chapter 32. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church is the only Christian tradition that includes the entire book of 1 Enoch as canonical Scripture. As we noted in that chapter, 1 Enoch had an enormous influence on the New Testament — particularly on the "Son of Man" Christology, the angelology and demonology, the eschatology, and the concept of the intermediate state. Jude 14–15 directly quotes 1 Enoch 1:9 as prophecy. The Ethiopian Church's decision to include this book in its canon reflects a deep continuity with the Second Temple Jewish tradition that shaped the theology of the apostolic church.

Jubilees — the book we discussed at the beginning of this chapter. The Ethiopian Church includes it as canonical Scripture, reflecting the high esteem in which it was held by the Qumran community and by the broader Second Temple Jewish tradition.

The broader Enochic literature — including additional texts associated with the Enochic tradition that are not part of 1 Enoch as it is known in Western scholarship.

Additional texts — the Ethiopian canon also includes several other books unique to its tradition, including the Sinodos (a collection of church orders), the Book of the Covenant, Clement (an Ethiopic text not identical to the Clementine literature known in the West), and the Didascalia. Some of these are books of church order and discipline rather than scriptural texts in the narrow sense, but the Ethiopian tradition treats them as part of its canonical collection.⁴³

The Ethiopian Old Testament canon also includes 4 Baruch (also called the Paraleipomena of Jeremiah or the "Remaining Words of Jeremiah"), which is found in no other canonical tradition. And the letter attributed to Baruch (2 Baruch 78–87, sometimes called the "Letter of Baruch") is included in the canon of the Church of the East, adding yet another layer to the complex canonical landscape.⁴⁴

Why Does the Ethiopian Canon Matter?

Some readers might be tempted to dismiss the Ethiopian Orthodox canon as an exotic curiosity — an interesting but irrelevant tradition from a church far removed from the mainstream of Western Christianity. I want to argue that this would be a mistake, for several reasons.

First, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Christianity was established in Ethiopia centuries before it reached most of northern Europe. The Ethiopian Church was confessing the Nicene faith while much of the Western church was still struggling with Arianism. Its canonical traditions are not recent innovations; they are ancient — in some cases, older than the canonical decisions that shaped the Western Bible.

Second, the Ethiopian Church's inclusion of 1 Enoch and Jubilees preserves a connection to Second Temple Judaism that the Western churches largely lost. As we discussed in Chapter 32, 1 Enoch was enormously influential in the world of the New Testament. The apostles knew it, used it, and in at least one case (Jude), quoted it as authoritative prophecy. The Western churches' decision not to canonize 1 Enoch was influenced by a number of factors — including the book's association with the fallen Watchers tradition, which some church fathers found theologically problematic, and the fact that the complete text of 1 Enoch survived only in Ethiopic (Ge'ez), not in Greek or Latin. But the Ethiopian Church, which preserved the complete text, never had reason to exclude it.

Third, and most importantly for our argument, the Ethiopian canon demonstrates that the question of which books belong in the Bible has never been settled by universal Christian consensus. The Protestant assumption that "sixty-six books" is the obvious and natural answer to the canon question simply does not hold up when we look at the full landscape of Christian tradition. If the Ethiopian Orthodox Church — with its ancient roots, its apostolic connections, and its centuries of faithful worship — includes eighty-one books in its Bible, on what basis can we say with certainty that the Protestant canon of sixty-six is the correct one?

Other Ancient Christian Canons: Syriac, Armenian, Coptic, and Georgian

The Eastern Orthodox and Ethiopian traditions are not the only ones that differ from the Protestant (and Catholic) canon. Several other ancient Christian churches have their own distinctive canonical traditions, each reflecting the particular historical and theological circumstances of their communities.

The Syriac Tradition

The Syriac-speaking churches of the Middle East — including the Assyrian Church of the East and the Syriac Orthodox Church — have their own complex canonical history. The Syriac Peshitta (the standard Syriac translation of the Bible) originally did not include 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, or Revelation in its New Testament canon. These books were added later under the influence of the Western tradition. On the Old Testament side, the Syriac tradition generally includes the deuterocanonical books that are common to the Catholic and Orthodox canons, though the precise list varies across different Syriac communities.⁴⁵

The Church of the East has its own distinctive canonical additions, including the Letter of Baruch (2 Baruch 78–87), which is not canonical in any other tradition. This is a reminder that canonical diversity exists not only between the major branches of Christianity (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox) but also within and among the various Eastern churches.

The Armenian Tradition

The Armenian Apostolic Church, one of the oldest national churches in the world (tradition dates its founding to the apostolic era, and Armenia became the first nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion in 301 AD), has a canon that largely corresponds to the broader Orthodox canon but with some distinctive features. The Armenian Bible was translated from Greek and Syriac sources in the fifth century, and its canon includes the deuterocanonical books. Some Armenian manuscripts also include additional texts such as the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, a collection of farewell speeches attributed to the twelve sons of Jacob, and 3 Corinthians (a pseudepigraphal letter attributed to Paul), which was at one time considered canonical in the Armenian tradition.⁴⁶

The Coptic and Georgian Traditions

The Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt and the Georgian Orthodox Church likewise have canonical traditions that include the deuterocanonical books and, in some cases, additional texts beyond those found in the Greek Orthodox canon. The Coptic tradition, rooted in the Christianity of Alexandria — the very city where the Septuagint was born — has a particularly strong historical connection to the Greek Old Testament and its broader canon.

The Georgian Orthodox Church has a rich manuscript tradition that includes its own distinctive translations and textual traditions. Georgian biblical manuscripts are among the earliest witnesses to the biblical text in any language, and they sometimes preserve readings that differ from both the Greek and the Syriac traditions.

The point of this brief survey is not to provide an exhaustive account of every canonical tradition in the Christian world. It is to make a simple but important point: the canon of Scripture has never been a settled, uniform, universally agreed-upon list. Different Christian communities — all of them ancient, all of them confessing the same Nicene faith, all of them heirs of the apostolic tradition — have drawn the boundaries of the canon in different places. The Protestant canon of sixty-six books is not wrong simply because other traditions are broader. But it is not self-evidently right either. And the diversity of canonical traditions should make us humble about claiming that our particular list is the only legitimate one.

The Implications: What Canonical Diversity Means for the Protestant Church

Having surveyed these various books and traditions, let me now draw together the implications of this chapter for the broader argument of this book. I think there are several important points that emerge from this material.

1. The Canon Question Is Broader Than Catholics vs. Protestants

Most Protestant discussions of the canon frame the issue as a binary: either the Protestant canon of sixty-six books is correct, or the Catholic canon of seventy-three books is correct. But this framing is far too narrow. The real question is: on what basis does any Christian community determine which books belong in its Bible? And the diversity of answers across the Christian world — from the Protestant sixty-six to the Ethiopian eighty-one — shows that this question does not have a simple, universally agreed-upon answer.

As we discussed in Chapter 28, the councils that produced formal canon lists — Hippo (393), Carthage (397, 419), Florence (1442), and Trent (1546) — all affirmed the deuterocanonical books. But these were primarily Western (Latin) councils. The Eastern churches had their own synods, their own canon lists, and their own criteria for determining which books were Scripture. The result is a landscape of canonical diversity that cannot be reduced to a single "correct" answer.

2. The Protestant Canon Is the Most Restrictive

This is a point worth stating plainly, because it is often overlooked. Among all the major Christian traditions in the world — Protestant, Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian, Syriac, and Georgian — the Protestant canon of sixty-six books is the smallest. Every other tradition includes more books than the Protestant Bible does.

This does not automatically mean the Protestant canon is wrong. It is possible, in principle, that the Reformers were right to narrow the canon and that all the other traditions have erred by including too much. But it does mean that the burden of proof falls on the Protestant position. When your canon is the most restrictive — when every other ancient Christian community includes books that you have excluded — you need very strong reasons for that exclusion. And as we have argued throughout this book, the reasons the Reformers gave — primarily an appeal to the Hebrew canon as defined by the rabbis — are not as strong as they initially appear, particularly once we understand the history of how that rabbinic canon was formed (as we discussed in Chapter 12).

3. Sola Scriptura Cannot Answer the Question of What Constitutes Scripture

This is perhaps the deepest challenge that canonical diversity poses for the Protestant tradition. The Reformation principle of sola Scriptura — Scripture alone as the ultimate authority for faith and practice — is a powerful and important theological conviction. I affirm it as a Protestant. But sola Scriptura presupposes that we already know what "Scripture" is. It tells us that Scripture is our supreme authority, but it cannot tell us which books are Scripture.

To determine the canon, we must appeal to something outside Scripture itself — to church tradition, to apostolic usage, to the testimony of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church, to the decisions of councils. This is not an argument against sola Scriptura. It is simply an acknowledgment that the canon question is logically prior to the authority question. Before we can say "Scripture alone is our authority," we need to know what Scripture includes. And the diversity of canonical traditions across the Christian world reminds us that this prior question has never been answered with complete unanimity.

4. The Dead Sea Scrolls Complicate the Picture Further

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the mid-twentieth century has added another dimension to the canon question that was not available to the Reformers — or, for that matter, to the Council of Trent. The Qumran community preserved and used a wide variety of texts, including many that are not in any Christian canon (like the Community Rule and the Temple Scroll) alongside texts that are canonical in some traditions but not others (like Jubilees, Psalm 151, and portions of Sirach and Tobit in Hebrew and Aramaic).⁴⁷

What the Qumran evidence shows is that in the centuries immediately before and during the time of Christ, there was no fixed, universally agreed-upon canon of Jewish Scripture. Different Jewish communities used different collections of texts. The Qumran community valued texts (like 1 Enoch and Jubilees) that were later excluded from the rabbinic canon. The Sadducees, according to ancient sources, may have accepted only the Torah (the five books of Moses) as authoritative. The Pharisees appear to have accepted a broader collection — but exactly how broad is a matter of scholarly debate.⁴⁸

The point is this: when Protestant apologists argue that "the Jews" had a settled canon of twenty-two (or twenty-four) books that Jesus and the apostles accepted, they are oversimplifying a complex historical reality. As we discussed in Chapter 19, the canon of the Hebrew Bible was not finalized until the rabbinic period — well after the time of Christ and the apostles. And as we argued in Chapter 12, the rabbinic decision to narrow the canon was motivated in part by anti-Christian polemic. The Protestant decision to accept the rabbinic canon as definitive for Christians is, in effect, allowing the post-Christian rabbinic establishment to determine the boundaries of the Christian Bible.

5. Diversity Need Not Mean Relativism

I want to be careful not to overstate the argument. Acknowledging canonical diversity does not mean that "anything goes" or that there is no way to distinguish between Scripture and non-Scripture. The vast majority of the biblical canon — the Torah, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, the Pauline Epistles, and most of the other New Testament books — is accepted by all Christian traditions without dispute. The disagreements concern a relatively small number of books on the margins of the canon.

But those margins matter. They matter because the books in question — Wisdom, Sirach, 1 Enoch, Psalm 151, and others — contain theological insights that have shaped the church's understanding of God, Christ, the soul, the afterlife, and the meaning of martyrdom. They matter because removing them from the Protestant Bible has created theological gaps in our Old Testament (as we discussed in Chapter 31). And they matter because the process by which they were removed — the Reformers' uncritical acceptance of the rabbinic canon — raises serious questions about whether that removal was justified.

I am not arguing that Protestants should immediately adopt the Ethiopian canon of eighty-one books. I am arguing something more modest but, I think, more important: that we should hold our canonical convictions with appropriate humility, that we should recognize our sixty-six-book canon as one tradition among several rather than as the self-evident truth, and that we should be open to reconsidering whether the books we removed should be restored.

Jubilees and the Other Disputed Books: A Summary Assessment

Let me close this chapter by offering a brief summary assessment of each of the books and traditions we have discussed.

The Book of Jubilees is a significant Second Temple text that, despite its own chronological problems, provides important evidence for the corruption of the Masoretic Text's chronology in Genesis 5 and 11. I do not regard it as inspired Scripture, but I consider it valuable for understanding the world of Second Temple Judaism and the history of the biblical text. Its canonical status in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is a legitimate expression of that church's ancient tradition.

3 Maccabees is a theological narrative that, while not historiographically reliable in all its details, conveys a powerful and thoroughly biblical message about God's protection of His people. Its canonical status in the Eastern Orthodox churches reflects its longstanding use in worship and instruction.

1 Esdras is a complex case. If it is essentially a parallel Greek version of the canonical books of Ezra and Nehemiah with some additional material, then its canonical status is less a matter of "adding a new book" and more a matter of recognizing a different form of a book that is already in the canon. Its inclusion in the Orthodox canon is reasonable, and its presence in the great Septuagint manuscripts demonstrates that it was valued by the early church.

The Prayer of Manasseh is a beautiful and theologically profound prayer that fills a gap left by the canonical text of 2 Chronicles. Whether or not it is the actual prayer that Manasseh prayed, it is a masterful expression of repentance and divine mercy that has blessed the church for centuries.

Psalm 151 is a short but significant psalm whose discovery at Qumran in Hebrew confirmed that it was not a late Greek invention but had roots in the Hebrew biblical tradition. Its canonical status in the Eastern Orthodox churches is well-grounded in both the manuscript evidence and the liturgical tradition.

The Ethiopian Orthodox canon is the broadest canonical tradition in Christendom and preserves a direct connection to the Second Temple Jewish literary tradition that shaped the New Testament. While not every book in the Ethiopian canon may be inspired Scripture, the tradition as a whole deserves our respect and serious engagement.

And the overall picture — the diversity of canonical traditions across the Christian world — should give us pause. It should make us ask whether our Protestant assumption of a sixty-six-book canon is as well-founded as we have always been told. As I have argued throughout this book, the evidence suggests that the Protestant canon is too restrictive — that the deuterocanonical books, at minimum, deserve to be restored to the Bible that most Protestants read. And the existence of even broader canonical traditions in the Orthodox and Ethiopian churches reminds us that the question of canon is one that the church has never fully settled, and one that deserves our continued humility, study, and prayer.

In the next chapter, we will turn to the synthesis argument for Septuagint priority — bringing together the evidence from across this book to make the cumulative case that the Septuagint, not the Masoretic Text, better preserves the original Old Testament text. The canon question and the text question are two sides of the same coin, and both point in the same direction: toward recovering the Bible that built the church.