In a recent volume on the biblical canon, we read that
for St. Athanasius, Scripture is used
for dogmatic purposes by citing Old Testament outside of the Jewish sense of “canon”
(whether taken as Philo’s Pentateuch only, or his sundry references to a
possibly wider canon among approved Jewish monastic Therapeutae in Egypt). For
example, in his On the judgment of Dionysius (written around AD 354),
St. Athanasius cites the following as Scripture:
(1.) 1 Ezra 4:40
(2.) 1 Maccabees 6:22
(3.) Wisdom 7:25 (2x); 7:26; 14:22-28;
15:3
(4.) Sirach 50:28 (Martin Jugie, A
Complete History of the Biblical Canon in the Christian East and West, Volume
1: Greek, Latin, and Slavic Biblical Canon from the New Testament Until AD 1500,
translated, edited and expanded by Christiaan Kappes [N.P.: Patristic Pillars,
2022], 41)
The
endnote for the following references "Register: Kanonische
Schriften," in Athanasius Von Alexandrien: De Dententia Dionysii
(trans. Uta Heil; Patristische Texte Und Studien 52; Berlin: Walter De Gruyter,
1999), 323-24. Here are the images of the two pages:
