father of the higher criticism of modern times, which has taken the Bible to pieces and destroyed its power.  But Catholic writers fail to state that the uncertainty which Luther occasionally manifests regarding the divine origin and authenticity of certain books of the Bible is due to the confusion which the Catholic Church has created by decreeing that the apocryphal books shall be considered on a par with the canonical writings of the Bible.  Setting aside the verdict of the ancient Church, and even of their famous church-father Jerome, the Catholic Church has by an arbitrary decree ruled the following books into the Bible:  1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, The Rest of Esther, The Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (Sirach), Baruch, with the Epistle of Jeremiah, The Song of the Three Holy Children, The History of Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, The Prayer of Manasses, 1 and 2 Maccabees.  These writings are called apocrypha because their divine origin is in doubt.  Scrupulously careful to keep the divinely inspired writings separate from all other writings, no matter how godly their contents might seem to be, the Church of the Old Covenant excluded these writings from the canon, that is, from the list of fully accredited inspired writings.  Besides, in the Catholic Bible in Luther’s days there were apocryphal portions inserted in canonical writings like Esther.

In the course of his studies Luther learned that certain writings in the Catholic Bible represented as Biblical were no part of the Bible.  Acting upon the direction which the Lord gave to the Jews:  “Search the Scriptures . . . they are they which testify of Me” (John 5, 39), he considered this a good test of the genuineness of any portion of the Bible, viz., that it conveyed to him knowledge of Christ and the way of salvation.  The Bible, he held, can speak only for, never against Christ.  By this principle he determined for himself the respective value of various writings in the Bible.  Ecclesiastes and Jonah did not appeal to him as very full of Christ.  In the New Testament he seems strongly attracted by the Gospel of John.  But there are statements in his writings in which he expresses a preference for Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  One must understand Luther’s view-point and aim on a given occasion to grasp these valuations.  In regard to Job he expressed the opinion that the book is dramatic rather than historical:  it does not relate actual occurrences, but rather points a moral in the form of a narrative.  In the New Testament the overgreat emphasis which he thought James placed on works as against faith caused him to depreciate this Epistle and to question its apostolic authorship.  Luther also knew that in the earliest centuries of the Christian era the question had been raised whether Second Peter, Jude, James, Revelation, really belonged in the canon.