‍These books don't have the characteristics of inspired Scripture

  Gary Hoge  ·  October 1, 2026

‍Inspiring or Inspired?

‍One thing I’ve noticed about genuine Scripture is that it really doesn’t have any “characteristics” that give it an obviously divine character. On the contrary, the canonical books display a remarkable range of style and content. Some parts are beautifully written and deeply moving, but others are about as exciting to read as a census report. Some parts are a census report.

‍The important thing all the canonical books have in common is that they’re inspired. But inspiration is an invisible quality; there are no objective literary characteristics that make it obvious. It’s therefore pointless to make “poetic and religious feeling” a litmus test of inspiration because 1) it’s extremely subjective; 2) there’s no indication anywhere in Scripture that it is a characteristic all inspired books must display; and 3) many of the books Protestants accept as inspired don’t have much of it either.

‍Consider the Hebrew form of Esther, for example. It’s a great story, but it never explicitly mentions God at all—not even once. It’s hard to see, then, how it could stir up a lot of “religious feeling.” On the surface, much of the book reads more like a court narrative than what someone might expect “religious literature” to sound like. 

‍And what about the bleak passages in Ecclesiastes? What sort of warm religious feelings are we supposed to get when we read, “‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless’” (Ecclesiastes 1:2)? Sorry, but that is one book that definitely fails the “religious feeling” test. In fact, if it weren’t already in the Bible, I doubt if it would ever occur to me to put it there.

‍Read the first eight chapters of 1 Chronicles sometime (I dare you!), then tell me how poetic those eye-glazing genealogies were. Or read Leviticus 13:47-14:57, which tells you more than you ever wanted to know about how to handle mold or mildew, and tell me how your heart was strangely warmed by it. 

‍Please don’t misunderstand me: I’m not mocking the Word of God. I’m simply pointing out that it’s wrong to equate being inspiring with being inspired. A passage doesn’t cease to be Scripture simply because it fails to stir our emotions. The deuterocanonical books are much like the rest of the Old Testament in this respect: some parts are exciting and moving; others aren’t.

‍What About “Prophetic Power”?

‍The objection also claims that the deuterocanonical books lack “prophetic power.” But if by “prophetic power” the objection means predictive prophecy, its absence obviously cannot show that a book is uninspired, because many undisputed biblical books contain no predictive prophecy at all. In fact, most of them don’t. What “prophetic power” does 3 John have? Or Paul’s personal letter to Philemon?

‍Although the absence of predictive prophecy doesn’t prove anything, genuine predictive prophecy can certainly be evidence of divine inspiration. For where else could it come from except from God? Consider, for example, Psalm 22:

^‍7 All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads:
⁸ He trusts in the LORD; let the LORD rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.
^…
18 They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.

‍For Christians, the parallels with the crucifixion of Jesus are striking—and the Gospel writers themselves draw our attention to them. Since the psalm was written centuries before Jesus was born, those correspondences provide powerful evidence of divinely inspired prophetic writing.

‍The Righteous Man of Wisdom 2

‍So how do the deuterocanonical books stack up, prophecy-wise? Well, pretty much like the rest of the Bible, actually. They don’t contain much predictive prophecy, but they do contain at least one passage that is remarkably difficult for a Christian to read without thinking of Christ. Consider this passage from the second chapter of Wisdom:

^‍12 Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sins against the law, and accuses us of sins against our training.
¹³ He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord.
¹⁴ He became to us a reproof of our thoughts;
¹⁵ the very sight of him is a burden to us, because his manner of life is unlike that of others, and his ways are strange.
¹⁶ We are considered by him as something base, and he avoids our ways as unclean; he calls the last end of the righteous happy, and boasts that God is his father.
¹⁷ Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life;
¹⁸ for if the righteous man is God’s child, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries.
¹⁹ Let us test him with insult and torture, so that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance.
²⁰ Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected.

‍The resemblance to the Passion of Christ is striking. The righteous man calls himself “a child of the Lord” and boasts that “God is his father” (Wisdom 2:13, 16). His enemies reject him because he reproaches them for their sins, conspire against him, subject him to insult and torture, and finally condemn him to “a shameful death.”

‍Most striking of all is their taunt: “If the righteous man is God’s child, he will help him” (Wisdom 2:18). Compare that with the mockery directed at Jesus on the cross: “He trusted in God; let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God’” (Matthew 27:43). Psalm 22 contains the first idea—“He trusts in the LORD; let the LORD rescue him”—while Wisdom contains the second: “If the righteous man is God’s child, he will help him.” Matthew’s mockers combine both ideas.

‍Whatever we conclude about the conscious intention of the author of Wisdom, it is difficult for a Christian to read this passage without noticing its remarkable resemblance to the Passion of Christ. And that makes it particularly difficult to dismiss the book on the grounds that it lacks anything resembling “prophetic power.”

‍“Poetic and religious feeling” and “prophetic power” therefore cannot serve as objective tests of canonicity. They would exclude too much of the Bible Protestants already accept—and Wisdom 2 shows that, even by those subjective standards, the deuterocanonical books cannot simply be dismissed.