For your consideration
As to point one, there are protocanonical works that are not quoted anywhere in the New Testament. Moreover there are works that are considered Apocrypha by all Christians that are referenced in the New Testament.
As to point two, when Jesus makes this reference he is speaking to a crowd that did not use the Greek canon. This argument begs the question by assuming that the assumptions of the audience He is addressing are correct, which is the point at issue.
As to point three, it also begs the question. It assumes that the exact same group that rejected Jesus as Messiah and expelled Christians from the synagogues (the Pharisees of Javneh) is a reliable authority as regards the canon. That assumption is highly suspect.
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As to point four, the Dead Sea Scrolls also provide no commentary on many protocanonical books either. The Essenes were a small, cultish group - there is no reason to consider them as a reliable authority for the canon either. Especially since the DSS provide commentary and texts for dozens of books that no Christian considers canonical.
As to point 5, Philo and Josephus were very idiosyncratic individuals who were hardly representative of the Jewish community as a whole. No Jewish community has ever received them as sages or authorities.
As to point 5, Philo and Josephus were very idiosyncratic individuals who were hardly representative of the Jewish community as a whole. No Jewish community has ever received them as sages or authorities.
As to point six, the statement is inaccurate. The deuterocanon was included in the some of the earliest canonical lists of the Church. It is not the practice of Ecumenical Council to invent new teachings but to confirm established ones that have been challenged.
As to point seven, Jerome may have questioned the deuterocanon but - as the argument itself effectively admits - he was overruled by the majority. Neither Cyril nor Athanasius rejected the deuterocanon - this claim appears to be newly invented. Origen may have, but Origen has never been accepted by East or West as an orthodox Father because of his many bizarre opinions - including the advisability of self-mutilation and his belief that the Devil would be saved.
Protestant anti-Catholics have a nasty habit of outright lying.
Case in point:
“•Offering of money for the sins of the dead (2 Maccabees 12:43).”
False. There was a collection so that sacrifices and prayers for the dead could be made. Sacrifices took money. Someone had to buy the animals.
Here’s what the Bible actually says:
He then took up a collection among all his soldiers, amounting to two thousand silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem to provide for an expiatory sacrifice. In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view;
for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death.
Thus, no money was offered. Sacrifices were offered.
Anti-Catholics lie. They get away with it because they know most anti-Catholics are simply too lazy or stupid to actually crack open a book (even the Bible!) and look up the truth.
As to point eight, the deuterocanon was not always separated in the Scripture texts from the protocanon. It’s frequent placement between the Hebrew Scriptures and the the New Testament had more to do with the fact that the deuterocanon was, like the NT, written in Greek. No ancient edition followed the modern Protestant practice of placing them after the NT in an appendix.
As to point nine, there are inaccuracies (there is no talk of magic in the deuterocanon) and also question-begging. Do acts of charity for the living and the dead lead to sanctification? That’s a matter of debate - namely the Protestant notion that physical death, which Christ conquered, is able to create an unbridgeable separation between saints on earth and those who have gone to their reward.
As to point ten, there are protocanonical works which make no prophetic claims and even one, Esther, that does not even mention the Lord. If lack of prophetic character disqualifies a book, then the protocanon is also flawed.
1) At the time of Christ the Deuterocanonical (falsely referred to in the article as Apocryphal) books were widely accepted by the Jewish community, especially by Hellenized Jews who used the Greek Septuagint. This is the version of the Old Testament that the early Christians adopted.
2) Regardless of the debate of whether there was an actual Council of Jamnia in A.D. 70, Jewish authorities did not settle on the canon of the third division of the Old Testament known as the Ketuvim or "Writings" until the end of the 1st century. Indeed there was rabbinic debate until A.D. 200. If we were to accept the validity of the Jewish authorities to pass judgment on the canon of scripture at this late date then we would be forced to reject the entire New Testament.
Rejection by many in the Catholic Church
The Apocrypha was not officially accepted by the Catholic Church at a universal council until 1546 at the Council of Trent.
1) Notwithstanding a few isolated objections, there was near universal acceptance by the early Church for the Deuterocanonical books since they were included in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament used by the Church.
2) The present Catholic canon of scripture was declared by the Council of Rome in 382 under Pope Damasus I. The same canon was also declared by the Council of Hippo in 393 and reaffirmed by the Councils of Carthage in 397 and 419. The Deuterocanonical books were also included in the Latin Vulgate translations commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 383. In 405 Pope Innocent I sent a list of the canon of scripture to Bishop Exuperius of Toulouse. From this time there was no need to define the canon of scripture by an ecumenical council since the question was no longer in dispute. The definition of the Council of Trent only confirmed what the entire church accepted in opposition to the novel Protestant canon of scripture.
The question of the canon of scripture raises a fundamental question of church polity. Either the witness of the early Church as confirmed by the popes and bishops is a reliable authority or it is not. If it is, then that same witness that confirms Catholic belief is also reliable. If it is not, then we have no reliable authority to declare what is scripture and what is not; the Gospel of Thomas, anyone?
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Oh, no, one of those slick sites.
Catholics and Protestants disagree on a lot more than that.
So many falsehoods, so little time. No matter how often they are disproven, they keep being posted again and again!
1. Nearly a third of OT books are not quoted in the NT, but three of the seven dueterocanonicals are.
2. The deuterocanonicals aren’t placed after Zecharaiah, until Jerome who did so because he was translating from Hebrew to Latin, and did not have Hebrew versions of the deuterocanonicals. No way Jesus couldn’ve meant not to include them between.
3. The Jews rejected the deuterocanonicals at the Council of Jamnia, AFTER the Resurrection. At the time of Christ, there’s no evidence of any canon that includes the other books of the Khetuvim, but not the deuterocanonicals.
4. It is well known that the Jews placed the highest priority on the Law. Following that, some Jews believed in the centrality of the Prophets (the Pharisees), but the others did not (such as the Sadducees). Neither group regarded the Khetuvim (the scrolls) as highly. Yet the bible includes the other books of the Khetuvim.
6. In the sense that the Catholic Church only established the Deuterocanonicals as part of the canon in 1546, the Catholic Church had no canon at all until 1546. Which is, of course, ridiculous. The Catholic canon consisted of books which were used in the Catholic mass. The deuterocanonicals were used in mass, just like the rest. When Luther stated that all doctrine had to be based on the bible, and thus removed the portions of the bible which had doctrine he recognized as directly refuting his lies, the Catholic Church affirmed the notion that doctrine had to be biblical, and published a canon of the books which were to be included in the list of books which establish doctrine. (Curiously, the Catholic Church detected no doctrine — or any other unique teaching — in the book of Esdras III (”Greek Ezra”), since it’s a shorter redaction of two other books, Ezra and Nehemiah. So there emerged a slight difference between Catholic and some Orthodox bibles.)
7. Jerome calls anyone who claimed he rejected the canonicity of the Deuterocanonicals, “a fool and a slanderer.” The diabolical practice of referring to the Deuterocanonicals as “apocrypha” (a word otherwise used to represent “hidden books” which were not canonical at all) has led some uneducated or deceitful Protestants to proclaim that various founding fathers rejected the Deuterocanonicals, where they were actually rejecting books such as “The apocalypse of Moses,” and “the Book of Enoch.”
Origen never rejected the deuterocanonicals. The notion he did not was based, again, on the Hexalpa, a comparison of Hebrew to other, then-common languages. Like Jerome, Origen did not have a Hebrew version of the Deuterocanonicals.
8. The most significant time, prior to the Reformation, that the dueterocanonicals were placed in a separate section was by Jerome, who did so solely because he was translating Hebrew into Latin, and didn’t have a Hebrew version of them to work with. In a few other instances, various Church leaders debated the value of using the deuterocanonicals to debate with Jews, since the Jews of their day did not regard the deuterocanonicals to be inspired or even truthful.
9. It’s well known that Protestants reject participatory atonement; denying the authenticity of the deuterocanonicals on that basis, then, constitutes circular logic: Luther: “This can’t be true because it’s not in the bible...” Catholic Church: “Yes it is. Right there.” Luther: “Oh. Well that can’t be part of the bible, then.” Yes, that much abridged conversation did take place.
As for the “magic” of Tobit. Does the image of bronze serpent cure disease? Does a paste of mud and water cure blindness? Does eating a baked turd give prophetic powers? Does washing oneself in the spring tubs of Judaea cure paralysis? Yet these are all commanded of people to receive miracles. None are magic; they are signs of obedience.