§ II.

THE ROOTS OF THE SACRED SCRIPTURE TREE,

THE AUTHORS OF THE INDIVIDUAL BOOKS

Judgment of Scriptural controversies.

I. Regarding the authors of the individual books of Holy Scripture, nothing certain can be established except that the five books of which we know the Pentateuch the first five books of the Bible to consist were written by Moses. However, whether he himself wrote prophetically the final part of Deuteronomy the fifth book of Moses, in which his death is narrated, or whether Joshua or someone else added it after his passing, remains a matter of debate for us. It is also certain that the Psalter the Book of Psalms was written by David, but not that he wrote all the Psalms contained therein with his own hand. We certainly ascribe the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs to Solomon, and most probably the Book of Wisdom. The four major prophets and the twelve minor prophets either wrote or dictated the books inscribed with their own names. Jesus son of Sirach wrote Ecclesiasticus, as he himself confesses in the text. Ezra wrote the first [book of] Ezra, and Nehemiah the second. The certain author of the others is not held; yet it is not improbable [to accept] whatever we are taught about their authors by good, Catholic, and diligent authors. The authors of the New Testament are the Apostles and Disciples who entitle those books.

II. The autographs of the Sacred Volumes, or archetypes, that is, the exemplars which the immediate Sacred writers wrote and inscribed with their own hands, do not currently exist in the Catholic Church; nor was it necessary for those first ones to be preserved, whatever the opinion of the Armacanus referring to Richard FitzRalph, Archbishop of Armagh and the Senensis referring to Sixtus of Siena might be regarding the Pentateuch, which they claim is preserved in Bologna. Even if such codices existed, they would hold no authority regarding matters of faith without the Church’s approval.

III. Ezra, most skilled in the Law, collected the Sacred codices and books from various regions that escaped persecution and fire. Having compared them among themselves from more weighty exemplars, and especially from those which were given by Jeremiah to those departing into exile original: "transmigrantibus", he purged them, amending and expunging foreign elements that had crept in, and reducing everything to true and solid exemplars so that they would remain in their primal purity. Nor is it absurd that not only