A Dissertation on the Apocryphal Writings - St. John Gill
An Essay by Dr. Gill on the Deuterocanonical Books
A research project that I have been undertaking as I continue to read Particular Baptists is to see how these authors interact with the Deuterocanonical/Apocryphal books. For those who do not know, the Deuterocanon (meaning, of the second canon) refers to disputed books of Scripture that are not considered to be Inspired by God, yet profitable for the Church to read. Protestants affirm a 66-book canon of Scripture, which the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith confirms, and these books called “Apocrypha” (meaning, hidden) or “Deuterocanon,” though while profitable for the Christian to read—as they can contain, as St. Bunyan notes, “the sum and substance of many of the promises [of Scripture]1”—and good to supplement doctrine from, yet they are not a rule of faith over the Church, and their authority extends only as far as other human authorities and traditions over the Church. That being the case, Evangelicals—which I consider myself to be—have not lived up to our Protestant forefather’s use of the text, and this includes Baptist uses of the Deuterocanon!
As a stepping stone into my research project, I have turned to an essay by the Particular Baptist St. John Gill (1697 - 1771). For those who know a little bit about Baptist theologians, the reputation of St. Gill proceeds him. As I’ve been exploring his use of the Deuterocanon, I learned of an essay that he wrote entitled A Dissertation on the Apocryphal Writings; I could not find the essay on the web, and so after some digging, I found that it was published as an appendix to the sixth volume of his An Exposition of The Old Testament. I took it upon myself to extract the essay from Google Books into a separate document so that anyone can download and read St. Gill’s excellent work (a PDF is attached at the bottom of this article). Because I copied this over from Google Books, there are probably one or two formatting issues that remain within the final document. I added section headers to the document and retained Gill’s original footnotes.
In the essay, St. Gill discusses the following books:
1 and 2 Esdras (or, 3 and 4 Esdras)
Tobith
Judith
Expanded Esther
Wisdom of Solomon
Ecclesiasticus
Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah
The Song of the Holy Three Children
Susanna and the Elders
Bel and the Dragon
The Prayer of Manasseh
1, 2, and 3 Maccabees
He discusses various historical and theological concerns that arise from these works to defend the Protestant view that these works are not Inspired Scripture. In doing so, he makes ample citations of the Fathers such as St. Jerome, St. Epiphanius, and Origen, many Jewish commentators, and several Protestant commentators.
While I do not agree with everything St. Gill says in his essay, it is nevertheless an invaluable piece of Baptist History! A Google Docs version of the Essay can be found here. The pdf can be downloaded in the box below.
All Glory be to God.
St. John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners