...And yet these doubts must be regarded as more or less academic. The countless manuscript copies of the Vulgate produced by these ages, with a slight, probably accidental, exception, uniformly embrace the complete Old Testament Ecclesiastical usage and Roman tradition held firmly to the canonical equality of all parts of the Old Testament There is no lack of evidence that during this long period the deuteros were read in the churches of Western Christendom.
The statement that "few are found to unequivocally acknowledge their canonicity" confirms my point about singling out Luther. The New Catholic Encyclopedia states that,
"...St. Jerome distinguished between canonical books and ecclesiastical books. The latter he judged were circulated by the Church as good spiritual reading but were not recognized as authoritative Scripture."That the deuteros were read in the churches for purposes of edification but not considered canonical in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith was stated as long ago as Pope Gregory the Great. Two senses of the term canon was explained by Cardinal Catejan:
"Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed amongst the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, as is plain from the Prologus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clearly through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage."That the deuteros were included in manuscript copies of the Vulgate proves nothing about their status as Scripture, i.e., as a rule for confirming matters of faith. New Advent simply does not understand the historical view of canonicity as explicated by Cardinal Catejan above.
(In ult. Cap. Esther. Taken from A Disputation on Holy Scripture by William Whitaker (Cambridge: University, 1849), p. 48.)
"The Glossa ordinaria states in the Preface that the Church permits the reading of the Apocryphal books only for devotion and instruction in manners, but that they have no authority for concluding controversies in matters of faith. It goes on to state that there are 22 books of the OT. In listing those 22 books it uses the testimonies of Origen, Jerome and Rufinus as support, and when commenting on the Apocryphal books, it prefixes an introduction to them all saying: ‘Here begins the book of Tobit which is not in the canon; here begins the book of Judith which is not in the canon' and so forth for Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, and Maccabees etc.Subsequent to Jerome's time and down to the period of the reformation a continuous succession of the more learned Fathers and theologians in the West maintained the distinctive and unique authority of the books of the Hebrew canon. Such a judgment, for example, was reiterated on the very eve of the Reformation by Cardinal Ximenes in the preface of the magnificent Complutensian Polyglot edition of the Bible which he edited (1514-17)...Even Cardinal Cajetan, Luther's opponent at Augsburg in 1518, gave an unhesitating approval to the Hebrew canon in his Commentary on All the Authentic Historical Books of the Old Testament, which he dedicated in 1532 to pope Clement VII. He expressly called attention to Jerome's separation of the canonical from the uncanonical books, and maintained that the latter must not be relied upon to establish points of faith, but used only for the edification of the faithful
Bruce Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha (New York: Oxford, 1957), p. 180)." link, with Latin, and English Translations from the Glossa
What part was rejected by Trent? Trent re-iterated the canon as declated by Damasus.
Septuagint 1 Esdras. It is different than the one decreed by Trent
The enlarged canon of Augustine, which was, as it will be seen, wholly unsupported by any Greek authority, was adopted at the Council of Carthage (A.D. 397?), though with a reservation (Can. 47, De confirmando ist Canone transmarine ecclesia consulatur), and afterwards published in the decretals which bear the name of Innocent, Damasus, and Gelasius…and it recurs in many later writers.
F. Westcott, The Canon of Scripture. Found in Dr. William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981), Volume I, Canon, p. 363.
The New Catholic Encyclopedia confirms this:
III Esdras (I Esdras in the Septuagint) was certainly compiled before A.D. 90, for the Jewish historian Josephus quoted from it (Ant. 11); but its exclusive concern with Jewish interests puts its composition before the Christian era, closer to 100 B.C. Until the 5th century, Christians very frequently ranked 3 Esdras with the Canonical books; it is found in many LXX MSS (Septuagint manuscripts) and in the Latin Vulgate (Vulg) of St. Jerome. Protestants therefore include 3 Esdras with other apocrypha (deuterocanonical) books such as Tobit or Judith. The Council of Trent definitively removed it from the canon."As I said, what was decreed canonical by Damasus and the Council of Rome was decreed uncanonical by Trent. Therefore, the statement that, "it was declared by Pope Damasus but not definitive until Trent" is just not accurate.
Cordially,
New Advent simply does not understand the historical view of canonicity as explicated by Cardinal Catejan above.
This is the opinion of Cardinal Cajetan, not a binding, infallible decree. Not too long ago, Cardinal Martini, one of the most prolific Cardinals at the Vatican reasoned that contraception should be okay in certain circumstances. A thousand years from now, if someone reads his interview in the light you read Cardinal Cajetan's, the future historian would draw the conclusion that the Church, in 2006, declared infallibly that contraception is okay. It doesn't work that way.
Until the 5th century, Christians very frequently ranked 3 Esdras with the Canonical books; it is found in many LXX MSS (Septuagint manuscripts) and in the Latin Vulgate (Vulg) of St. Jerome. Protestants therefore include 3 Esdras with other apocrypha (deuterocanonical) books such as Tobit or Judith. The Council of Trent definitively removed it from the canon."
There is much confusion over this, so I understand your error here. The apocryphal Book of Ezra is known in the Greek as 1 Esdras. Because it was not preserved in Hebrew, Jerome flushed it, but in doing so, renamed it "3 Esdras". 1 Esdras, as Jerome differentiated, was the combined Ezra and Nehemiah. That became the accepted title for Ezra-Nehemiah. The Septuagint, however, sometimes referred to the Ezrah-Nehemiah combination at "2 Esdras". So now you have Pope Damasus faced with Jerome, who's popularized "1 Esdras (Substantially the Book of Ezra to the Greeks, substantially the "Ezra" portion of the canonical "Ezra-Nehemiah" as known by the Greeks from Jerome's nomenclature). Remember, the apocryphal Book of Ezra (Greek) has been kicked to the curb and re-named 3 Esdras. Now, the Greeks sometimes referred to the Book of Ezra-Nehemiah (rejected by Jerome) as "2 Esdras" ("3 Esdras" to Jerome). Jerome's "2 Esdras" comprised the "Nehemiah" portion of the canonical Greek "Ezra-Nehemiah"
SO: Jerome's "1 Esdras" would later be renamed, "Ezra". Jerome's "2 Esdras" would later be renamed just "Nehemiah". The Church, at the time of the Declaration of Damasus knew these texts as "1 Esdras" and "2 Esdras" (as named by Jerome). By the time Trent came around, no one referred to Ezra and Nehemiah as "1 and 2 Esdras". But the Eastern Church still recognized the Septuagint "1 Esdras" (or "The Book of Ezra") and "2 Esdras" (or "the Apocalypse of Ezra"). Therefore, in rejecting "1 Esdras and 2 Esdras", Trent was not rejecting Ezra and Nehemiah - which Damasus approved of under the Jerome-named 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras - instead, the Council was clarifying, for the sake of the Eastern Churches still using the Greek, that "The Book of Ezra" (or the East's "1 Esdras") and "The Apocalypse of Ezra" (or the East's "2 Esdras") were not canon material.
Therefore, any claims that Trent in some way contradicted the Council of Rome is absolutely false.
The 1 and 2 Esdras referred to by Trent were two completely different texts than the 1 and 2 Esdras referred to at Rome. What's truly mind-bending is that there were different name assignment for Ethiopic text of Esdras, but I can't go into that because my head is about to explode.