[jo kus]

In the end, your argument is hypocritical because you utilize the Fathers that you THINK disagree with the OT Deuts' place in Scripture - while simultaneously ignoring the same sources that ALSO disagree that the NT Deuts belong in the Scriptures.

It is clear that you cannot explain why you take such a two-sided stance. IF you accept the NT Deuts, explain why you do not except the OT Deuts. I have asked you this before - so what's the answer? Or are you again going to call Catholics anti-semetic and go off on a tangeant about "such and such Father didn't accept the OT Deuteros..."

Your argument is special pleading based on the idea that you have some special and unproven access to what the Scriptures are WITHOUT the Church.

I trust the Holy Spirit to lead me.

What evidence do you have that He leads you to determine the Scripture canon? That is a self-serving statement if I ever heard one. It didn't work for Jean Calvin, so why would it work for you?

Regards

[kosta50]

Concerning "hypocrites." The 1st century Didache (c. 70 AD) says:

"CHAPTER 8

"8:1 But as for your fasts, let them not be with the hypocrites, for they fast on the second [Monday] and fifth [Thursday] days of the week, but do ye fast on the fourth [Wednesday] and sixth [Friday] days [this is still observed by the Eastern Orthodox 2,000 years later].

8:2 Neither pray ye as the hypocrites, but as the Lord hath commanded in his gospel so pray ye: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name..."

Our Lord Jesus Christ calls the Pharisees hypocrites (and worse!) on more than one occasion.

"Woe to you, " [Mat 23:27]

The trouble is that many a Protestant apparently refuses to acknowledge that besides the Pharisees there were other Jews who neither used the Pharisaical 'Jewish canon' nor recognized the monopoly of Pharisaical 'Jewish canon' as normative.

The only surviving sect of Judaism are the Pharisees and naturally they declared the 'norm' in Jamnia (end of 1^st century AD).

That's fine,as long as we recognize that there were many other Jews whose canon did not agree with that of the hypocrites, a term used by the Jews to describe the Pharisees. Such other Jews included the Sadducees, the Essenes and the hellenized Jews in Asia Minor, Greece and Italy.

[kosta50]

Concerning the deuterocanonicals (Protestants accept NT deuts but reject the OT deuts), this is what the first Church hisotrian Eusebius says (4th century AD):

"Let there be placed among the spurious works the Acts of Paul, the so-called Shepherd and the Apocalypse of Peter, and besides these the Epistle of Barnabas, and what are called the Teachings [Didache] of the Apostles, and also the Apocalypse [Revelation] of John, if this be thought proper; for as I wrote before, some reject it, and others place it in the canon." [Historia Ecclesiastica III, 25]

+Athanasius, for example, as well as +John of Damascus, considered Didache to be canonical. But the Church didn't! So, while +Jerome was allowed to voice his opinion, he coud do so without condemnation as long as it was not stated as fact but as a theological opinion (theologoumena). As you mention, however (and this is crucial) he submitted to the wisdom and the Apostolic authoirty of the Church