‍No council of the Christian church for the first four centuries recognized the Apocrypha as inspired

  Gary Hoge  ·  October 12, 2026

‍I found this objection in Josh McDowell’s book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict¹, but McDowell was actually quoting from a book by Norman Geisler and William Nix.² It's technically true in what it says, but grossly misleading in what it leaves out.

‍What does it imply? What are we supposed to infer from it? That the early Church held councils that recognized the rest of the Bible as inspired, but excluded the “Apocrypha”? That these books were latecomers whose inspiration wasn't recognized until centuries later and is therefore suspect?

‍But here's what the objection doesn't tell you. When Church councils began issuing comprehensive lists of Scripture in the late fourth century, they addressed the whole canon, not just the deuterocanonical books, and not just the Old Testament. If these were the first councils to recognize the deuterocanonical books—as the objection implies—they were also the first to list the books of the Old Testament and the 27-book New Testament. According to British Bible scholar David F. Payne:

‍It was not until the year A.D. 393 that a church council first listed the 27 New Testament books now universally recognized. There was thus a period of about 350 years during which the New Testament Canon was in process of being formed.³

‍That council was the Council of Hippo, held in 393. Its canonical list included the deuterocanonical books interspersed among the other books of the Old Testament, along with all 27 books of the New Testament. Four years later, the Council of Carthage (397) adopted the same canon.⁴

‍So Geisler and Nix could just as well have said, “No council of the Christian church for the first four centuries recognized the New Testament as inspired.” Just as true, and just as misleading.

‍And, contrary to what this objection wants us to infer, the fact that the Church waited until the late fourth century to issue a conciliar list of the biblical books doesn’t mean that those books weren’t previously regarded as inspired Scripture. The bishops at Hippo didn’t just pull their list out of thin air, after all. As Protestant scholar F. F. Bruce observed regarding the New Testament:

‍When at last a Church Council – the Synod of Hippo in A.D. 393 – listed the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, it did not confer upon them any authority which they did not already possess, but simply recorded their previously established canonicity.⁵

‍But what about the deuterocanonical books? Were they also regarded as Scripture before Hippo? According to Protestant patristics scholar J. N. D. Kelly, they were:

‍[The Old Testament] always included, though with varying degrees of recognition, the so-called Apocrypha or deutero-canonical books. … In the first two centuries . . . the Church seems to have accepted all, or most of, these additional books as inspired and to have treated them without question as Scripture. Quotations from Wisdom, for example, occur in 1 Clement and Barnabas . . . Polycarp cites Tobit, and the Didache [cites] Ecclesiasticus. Irenaeus refers to Wisdom, the History of Susannah, Bel and the Dragon, and Baruch. The use made of the Apocrypha by Tertullian, Hippolytus, Cyprian and Clement of Alexandria is too frequent for detailed references to be necessary.⁶

‍Although Kelly acknowledges that acceptance of these books was not universal, he concludes that “for the great majority” of early Christians, the deuterocanonical writings “ranked as Scripture in the fullest sense.”⁷ 

‍Something similar was true of the New Testament. Some books, such as the four Gospels, were widely accepted very early. Others, such as Hebrews and Revelation, were disputed for a time but eventually accepted. Still others, such as The Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache, were highly regarded by some Christians and even considered Scripture by some, but ultimately excluded. In both Testaments, Christians generally agreed on the core of the canon, but there was some fuzziness around the periphery.⁸

‍As we've seen, the absence of an earlier conciliar decree doesn't mean that Christians hadn't already been treating those books as Scripture. When the North African councils finally issued their canonical lists in the late fourth century, they included the deuterocanonical books interspersed among the other books of the Old Testament, without distinction. They also included the same 27 books of the New Testament that Christians accept today. The same councils. The same time. The same recognition.

‍__________

^‍1 Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict (San Bernardino, CA: Here’s Life Publishers, 1972), vol. 1, 36.

^‍2 Norman Geisler and William Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible (Chicago: Moody Press, 1968), 173.

^‍3 David F. Payne, “The Text and Canon of the New Testament,” in International Bible Commentary, ed. F. F. Bruce (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1986), 1005.

^‍4 The canon adopted at the Council of Hippo (393) was preserved in the Breviarium Hipponense, incorporated into the proceedings of the Council of Carthage (397). Canon 36 lists the canonical books as follows (with explanatory identifications added in brackets):

‍“The canonical Scriptures are: Genesis. Exodus. Leviticus. Numbers. Deuteronomy. Joshua. Judges. Ruth. Of Reigns, four books [1–2 Samuel and 1–2 Kings]. Of Paralipomenon, two books [1–2 Chronicles]. Job. Psalter. Of Solomon, five books [Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom, and Sirach]. Book of Twelve Minor Prophets [Hosea through Malachi]. Also Isaiah. Jeremiah [traditionally including Baruch]. Ezekiel. Daniel [including the Prayer of Azariah, the Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon]. Tobit. Judith. Esther. Of Ezra, two books [Ezra and Nehemiah]. Of Maccabees, two books [1 and 2 Maccabees]. And of the New Testament: Gospels, four books. Of the Acts of the Apostles, one book. Of the apostle Paul, fourteen epistles. Of Peter, two. Of John, three. Of Jude, one. Of James, one. The Apocalypse of John.”

‍Edmon L. Gallagher and John D. Meade, The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 223–224. The quotation omits the surrounding provisions concerning the reading of noncanonical writings in church, consultation with the church across the sea [i.e., the Roman church], and the reading of martyrs’ accounts.

^‍5 quoted in McDowell, Evidence, 38.

^‍6 J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 53–54.

^‍7 Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 55.

^‍8 Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 47–51, 63–65, 235–237.