I may, in fact, find prophecy far earlier even than Abraham. I might
regard—and rightly regard—our patriarch, Noe (who lived even before the great
flood), as a prophet; for he was a prophet at least in the sense that the ark
which he made, and in which he and his family were saved from the flood, was
itself a prophecy of what is happening in the Church today. I might go even
beyond Noe to Henoch, who lived as far back as the seventh generation from
Adam. Does not the canonical Epistle of St. Jude the Apostle openly declare
that Henoch spoke as a prophet?
It is true, indeed, that the alleged writings of these two men have
never been accepted as authoritative, either by the Jews or by us Christians,
but that is because their extreme antiquity makes us afraid of handing out, as
authentic, works that may be forgeries. The fact is that certain irresponsible
people who believe anything as their whim dictates do hand about certain
writings which are said to have been written by Henoch and Noe. But the canon,
which must be kept immaculate, has repudiated these writings; not, of course,
because there was any doubt about the holiness of these men themselves—for they
were pleasing to God—but simply because it is too difficult to believe that the
writings are authentic. Nor should this critical reserve with respect to
writings allegedly of such enormous antiquity astonish anyone.
The point of exclusion from the canon may be illustrated from the Book
of Kings. This deals with the history of Israel and Juda and contains many
historical facts, some of which we have confidently included in the canonical
Scriptures, while other facts are not mentioned in full, but are merely alluded
to as being narrated in other books written by men who were Prophets and whose
names are, in two instances, mentioned. The ‘other books’ are not to be found
in the Hebrew canon.
I confess that I know of no satisfactory explanation of this
exclusion. However, I will suggest as an hypothesis that authors, to whom the
Holy Spirit revealed such matters as should be binding in religious faith,
could have written parts of their works in their capacity as careful
historians, and other parts in their capacity as divinely inspired prophets,
and that the distinction was so clear to the writers themselves that they
understood that the former parts should be attributed to themselves while the others
should be attributed to God speaking through them. Thus, the human parts would
be a matter of fullness of historical knowledge, while the inspired parts would
have the full force of religious revelation. It is with this last alone that
the canon is concerned.
In regard now to such writings as fall outside the canon, and are
passed off under the names of very ancient prophets, these writings have no
value even from the point of view of fullness of information, for the simple
fact that no one can verfy whether they belong to the men whose names they
bear. In a word, it is because they might be spurious that they are not to be
trusted; and this is pre-eminently the case with works that contain
declarations that run counter to the faith as contained in canonical writings,
for then we can be absolutely sure that the attribution is spurious. (Augustine,
The City of God, Books XVII-XXII [trans. Gerald G. Walsh and Daniel J. Honan;
The Fathers of the Church 24; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1954], 145-46)
