canonicity, then why are none of these works included by Protestants in the
canon today? Third, there are protocanonical Old Testament books
accepted by Protestants that are not referred to in the New Testament either,
including the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Obadiah, Zephaniah,
Judges, 1 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Lamentations and Nahum. Should
these books, in consequence, be excluded also?
The reality, however, is that there are many hundreds of quotations from,
and allusions to, the Septuagint and deuterocanonical books found in the
New Testament. For example, when Our Lord quoted Isaiah to condemn
those whose “heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me” (St. Mark
7:6-7), He used that version of Isaiah found only in the Septuagint. Christ
also alluded to Sirach 27:6 which reads “The fruit discloses the cultivation
of a tree.” In St. John 10:22-36 Our Lord and the Apostles observed the key
Feast of the Dedication, or Hanukkah, which celebrates events only
recorded in 1 and 2 Maccabees. Likewise, St. Paul draws from Wisdom
chapters 12 and 13 in Romans 1:19-25. Again, in Hebrews 11:35 we read
of women who “received their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured,
refusing to accept release, that they might rise again to a better life.” The
ex-Protestant convert James Akin in his tract Defending the
Deuterocanonicals states:
“There are a couple of examples of women receiving back their dead
by resurrection in the Protestant Old Testament. You can find Elijah
raising the son of the widow of Zarepheth in 1 Kings 17, and you can
find his successor Elisha raising the son of the Shunammite woman
in 2 Kings 4, but one thing you can never find––anywhere in the
Protestant Old Testament, from front to back, from Genesis to
Malachi––is someone being tortured and refusing to accept release for
the sake of a better resurrection. If you want to find that, you have to
look in the Catholic Old Testament––in the deuterocanonical books
Martin Luther cut out of his Bible.”
6
Altogether, there are over twenty allusions to the deuterocanonicals in the
New Testament. In addition, there are another 335 verses in the
6
James Akin, Defending the Deuterocanonicals, www.ewtn.com.library, 20/1/99.
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