“”Some” Jews did not accept the Deuterocanonicals, most did.”
Jerome says you are wrong. The Jews say you are wrong. And Jesus made it clear what HE accepted - and he did not use the Apocrypha as scripture. I’ll go with the practice of Jesus...
“Trent was hardly the first Ecumenical Council to address the Canon.”
It was the first Ecumenical Council to determine the Canon. That is why it did so. If it had been addressed, once for all, earlier, then Trent would not have needed to do so. Indeed, Cardinal Cajetan would not have written the Pope as he did, if there had been binding direction before Trent.
Then Trent screwed up. The list it gave wasn’t complete. So three books of the Vulgate were moved:
“The Clementine differed from the manuscripts on which it was ultimately based in that it grouped the various prefaces of St. Jerome together at the beginning, and it removed 3 and 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasses from the Old Testament and placed them as Apocrypha into an appendix following the New Testament.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgata#Clementine_Vulgate
Thus the Apocrypha became the Deuterocanon - because there had to be a way to reconcile the infallible list of Trent with the Old Vulgate that Trent also said was correct.
St. Jerome was not infallible, that is reserved collectively to the Episcopacy (Magisterium) and the Pope.
Jerome did not say the Deuterocanonicals were not Scripture, he only said that the rabbinical Jews of Jerusalem said they were not. In fact, St. Jerome wound up strenuously defended the Deuterocanonicals as inspired Scripture, writing in Against Rufinus 11:33 [A.D. 402]; "What sin have I committed if I followed the judgment of the churches? But he who brings charges against me for relating the objections that the Hebrews are wont to raise against the story of Susanna, the Son of the Three Children, and the story of Bel and the Dragon, which are not found in the Hebrew volume (ie. canon), proves that he is just a foolish sycophant. For I wasn't relating my own personal views, but rather the remarks that they [the Jews] are wont to make against us" The overwhelming majority of those that comprised the early Magisterium, the Church Fathers and other early Christian bishops regarded the deuterocanonical books as having exactly the same inspired, scriptural status as the other Old Testament books that Protestantism accepts. A few examples of this acceptance can be found in the Didache, The Epistle of Barnabas, the Council of Rome, the Council of Hippo, the Third Council of Carthage, the African Code, the Apostolic Constitutions, and the writings of Pope St. Clement I (Epistle to the Corinthians), St. Polycarp of Smyrna, St. Hippolytus, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Cyprian of Carthage, Pope St. Damasus I, St. Augustine, and Pope St. Innocent I.
Since you are dealing with translations of translations of translations you cannot establish that the passages from the Deuterocanonicals that are thematically the same as the Gospels did not arise as quotes. Jesus actually paraphrased much of his references to the Old Testament that you accept.
Over the 12 years and 25 sessions the Council made many decrees on nearly every aspect of Catholicism, reaffirming dogma and doctrine challenged by the Reformation and rebutting the heresies. How many of these have you studied to conclude that a pronouncement was issued ex nihilo (from nothing) to fill a gap in Catholic teaching? I would also like to know where you studied them and in what language.
Apparently, the Jews could not accept those books as inspired because they put forth the Maccabee kingship as divinely anointed. But the Maccabees were not of the Davidic line so this conflicted with the rest of the OT. Do you know anything about this or can you verify?
You make interesting points about Jerome, the Council of Trent, etc. Thanks.