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Thanks for your response. I looked the article over and found no direct evidence presented that would show canonicity for any of your deuterocanonical books. That shouldn’t be too surprising, because it’s a very difficult standard to meet. Paul quotes a heathen philosopher when he says we live and move and have our being in God. That does not equate to Paul sanctioning the full text of that writer’s work as canonical. From this we derive a principle that more than mere quotation or allusion or even verification of truthfulness of the particular words quoted is necessary to achieve canonicity for the complete text out of which the quote is taken.

For example, you mention 2 Maccabees as playing a prominent role in Matthew 22:23-33. Not really. We begin with the fact that no certain determination can be made the text of Maccabees was involved at all. Your author suggests that the mere mention of the resurrection as a point of contention between the Pharisees and the Sadducees should be enough to implicate 2 Maccabees. This is so far from a serious argument as to be laughable. Resurrection as a general principle was well attested in several books of the standard OT canon. For that job at least, no deuterocanonicals need apply. Here is an introductory surevy of the subject:

http://www.doesgodexist.org/JanFeb11/Old.Testament.Teach.Resurretion.html

Your author also makes the argument that because Hanukah was still being observed in Jesus’ day, that somehow this imparts to the Maccabean story the status of God-breathed Scripture. That is a non-sequitur. One might as well say that because a certain type of pottery was used in Jesus’ day, therefore it is holy pottery. That’s just not even the beginning of a credible argument.

Indeed, after looking over your article, it jumps out at me that in not one place did Jesus or an Apostle ever say, “the Scripture says,” or “It is written” or such like, but what it was followed, without exception, with a reference to the primary canon, the one you and I would agree on in a heartbeat. There’s got to be a reason for that.

But if you can find an exception to that rule, or otherwise point me to a text where the reference to a deuterocanonical text is clear and unambiguous, I will be glad to consider it.

Again, thanks for getting back to me. I appreciate it.

Peace,

Here’s a long form discussion on the Topic.

I already had found that before i asked you for evidence, as this link, as must all others, utterly fail to evidence that the 7 apocryphal books in the Old Testament were the most cited by Christ in the Gospels, while that the Lord Himself quoted more from Psalms and then Deuteronomy (some count the latter as #1) than from any other portion of the Old Testament is shown. http://blog.biblia.com/2014/04/which-old-testament-book-did-jesus-quote-most/ .

Which is out of a total of at least 24 books and 49 different Old Testament verses (by one count not including the repeats of the same verses throughout the different books)

Even if you can find some actual citations/quotations of apocryphal books by the Lord - and the lists i recall even of all such in all the NT are mainly those of allusions, or one's similar to canonical books, while merely using an text does not necessarily mean it gives authority to the whole book, unlike quoting it as Scripture - this would come far far short of evidencing that the 7 apocryphal books in the Old Testament were the most cited by Christ in the Gospels.

Perhaps you were recalling a statement that said the Lord quoted, and read most often from the Septuagint (LXX) and then someone made the leap that concluded this sanctioned the apocryphal books since the LXX contained them.

However, this presumes that the Septuagint was a uniform body of texts in the time of Christ which contained all the apocryphal books at that time, but for which there is no historical evidence. The earliest existing Greek manuscripts which contain some of them date from the 4th Century and are understood to have been placed therein by Christians .

Furthermore, if quoting from some of the Septuagint means the whole is sanctioned, then since the Psalms of Solomon, which is not part of any scriptural canon, is found in copies of the Septuagint, as is Psalm 151, and 3, and 4 Maccabees (Vaticanus [early 4th century] does not include any of the Maccabean books, while Sinaiticus [early 4th century] includes 1 and 4 Maccabees and Alexandrinus [early 5th century] includes 1, 2, 3, and 4 Maccabees and the Psalms of Solomon), then we would be bound to accept them as well.

Edward Earle Ellis writes, “No two Septuagint codices contain the same apocrypha, and no uniform Septuagint ‘Bible’ was ever the subject of discussion in the patristic church. In view of these facts the Septuagint codices appear to have been originally intended more as service books than as a defined and normative canon of Scripture,” (E. E. Ellis, The Old Testament in Early Christianity [Baker 1992], 34-35.

See here on the whole issue of the canon and the . apocrypha

It is also of note that the New Testament i said to quotes the Old over 250 times (see my pop up list here ), with the Scriptures being what the Lord opened the minds of the disciples to. (Lk. 24:44,45) Which is what He refuted the devil by, in referring to every word of God. (Mt. 4:4)

And as Robert Nicole writes,

"It is noteworthy that the New Testament writers and the Lord Jesus himself did not hesitate on occasion to base their whole argumentation upon one single word of Old Testament Scripture (Matthew 2:15; 4:10; 13:35; 22:44; Mark 12:36; Luke 4:8; 20:42, 43; John 8:17; 10:34; 19:37; Acts 23:5; Romans 4:3, 9, 23; 15:9-12; 1 Corinthians 6:16; Galatians 3:8, 10,13; Hebrews 1:7; 2:12; 3:13; 4:7; 12:26), or even on the grammatical form of one word (Galatians 3:16). http://www.bible-researcher.com/nicole.html