[D-fendr]

I said they were in the Septuagint. And there are references to the Septuagint, including the Deuterocanonical books, in the New Testament.

If we wished to include in our canon and teach only that which is acceptable to Judaism, we would be Jews. There was a split, we have different canons and teaching about the interpretation of scripture, both old and new testaments. This is what makes us Christians.

thanks for your reply.

[aruanan]

I said they were in the Septuagint. And there are references to the Septuagint, including the Deuterocanonical books, in the New Testament.

And the Septuagint was the commonly used OT text in the New Testament period and before. The move in the 2nd century back toward the use of the Hebrew text (that eventually became the Masoretic text between the 7th and 10 centuries) was primarily because those early Jewish Christians were so effective in using the Septuagint to convert Jews that a change to the Hebrew text and the resulting less-than-clear readings in certain critical passages in many cases were used to stymie their evangelistic efforts.

The ironic thing is that for everything post-first century Judaism claims for itself, it cannot escape the fact that at least an unspoken part of its belief system is the assertion that to be a Jew means one cannot possibly believe Jesus is the Messiah. It has permanently defined itself not in terms of what it is but, as a clearly reactionary credo, in terms of what it cannot possibly be.