What is the Bible?

The apocrypha might be regarded as of secondary authority (secundae auctoritatis), but they had an attraction for preachers because of the stories they contained which could be used as exempla. They were in an important sense part of a secure and fixed whole, although the debate about canonicity went on into the Reformation period. The question of what was or was not part of the Bible and what kind of a whole it constituted is not our immediate concern here. But the debate points to the development of ideas about the identity of the Bible. Robert Bellarmine divides the libri sancti into three ‘orders’. The first includes those books over whose canonicity there is no doubt. In the second order he places Hebrews, the Epistle of James, the second Epistle of Peter, parts of Luke, Mark, John, Tobias, Judith, Ecclesiasticus and other books whose authorship or canonicity has been brought into question. The books of the first order have the testimony of the Church in every age to support their divine auctoritas. In the case of books and parts of books of the second order there are sometimes major difficulties to be got out of the way. Books of the third order, ‘even though some of them seem canonical’ are called ‘apocrypha’ because their status is not clear. But they contain nothing misleading or erroneous. He wanted to bring the Scriptures together as a whole for its readers, despite the complex nature of the claims to authenticity of its parts.