Jesus Never Quoted the Apocrypha

Protestant apologists often claim: ‘Jesus and the apostles never quoted the Apocrypha.’ But that statement is simply not true.

First, remember: Jesus and the apostles overwhelmingly used the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament.
The Septuagint contained not just the books Protestants call ‘canonical,’ but also the Deutero-canonical books — Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, Baruch, Maccabees, and the longer forms of Daniel and Esther.

These writings are echoed all over the New Testament. For example:

The mockery of Christ on the cross in Matthew 27 mirrors the mocking of the righteous man in Wisdom of Solomon 2.

The Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 recites clearly the teaching of Sirach 28 on forgiveness.

Hebrews 11 explicitly references the martyrdoms in 2 Maccabees 7.

So yes, Jesus and the apostles knew and used the Deuterocanon.

Even if quotation were the test, remember — Jesus never quoted from books like Joshua, Judges, Esther, or Ecclesiastes either. By Protestant logic, you’d have to throw those out too.

But it goes deeper: the claim that the Deuterocanonical books ‘never existed in Hebrew’ is also false. The Dead Sea Scrolls — preserved by Jews long before Christ — contain portions of Tobit, Sirach, and Baruch in Hebrew and Aramaic. This proves these books weren’t late, foreign intrusions — they were part of the Jewish scriptural tradition at the time.

And when you look at the broader Jewish world, the evidence is completely consistent: Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic scrolls at Qumran, even Nabatean, with Greek in the Septuagint, and Aramaic in use in synagogues.

The people of God used all three languages as the medium of divine revelation. It was never ‘Hebrew only.’

The next time you hear, ‘Jesus never quoted the Apocrypha,’ recognize it for what it is — a modern myth. The Septuagint proves the Church inherited a larger canon, the Dead Sea Scrolls prove the Deuterocanon existed in Hebrew, and the New Testament itself shows these books shaping the worldview of Christ and his apostles.

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