The earliest Councils that declared Canon were before 400 and included the Deuterocanonicals. The East was well represented and constituted the majority of bishops, actually. There did not seem to be reluctance to accept them. The site I referenced was quite explicit regarding the Eastern Fathers’ use of them.
there was a distinction made between canon and ecclesiastical writings Mark (New Catholic Encyl) where canon could speak to doctrine, while ecclesiastical was recognized as good spiritual reading but were not recognized as authoritative Scripture.
So the key is definitions. Since it is apparent that the apocrypha writings were circulated, they were relegated to this lower level of authority as not authorative scripture.
Mark -
I hope you can clarify and I’m interested in what you do (with links of course lol)
However, I’m pretty much checking off the net for the next several days, so I won’t be able to contribute much more. Have a good weekend.