A spurious and wishful argument in the third post. It says the church does not read them as canonical, and the church themselves does not put them forward as a confirmation of the faith, though they do use them for edification. My quotes are from the Symbol and the preface for Kings. What would something in the preface of Judith matter? The Jews have nothing whatever to do with his statements therein, and you have to ignore the actual wording to do it. As for Baruch, many church fathers quote all sorts of works. It does not change that he called them noncanonical.
>> It says the church does not read them as canonical <<
As Jerome himself indicated, he did not mean that they were not part of the Catholic Holy Scriptures, but rather that they were not part of the canon of the Jews.
>> and the church themselves does not put them forward as a confirmation of the faith <<
He did not state that they do not contain necessary doctrine, but rather that they do not provide proof, in themselves, the Christian faith to the Jews, simply because the Jews do not recognize them as the Word of God.
>> My quotes are from the Symbol and the preface for Kings. What would something in the preface of Judith matter? <<
Nothing, if they were written by two different people capable of holding two different opinions. But since they were written by the same person as part of the same work, any interpretation must reconcile both portions.
As for the preface to the Book of Kings, Jerome quite plainly, in this instance, is describing the contents of the JEWISH canon, and even emphasizing that the various groups of Jews don’t even agree.
>> As for Baruch, many church fathers quote all sorts of works. It does not change that he called them noncanonical. <<
Jerome doesn’t just QUOTE the deuterocanonicals; he QUOTES them AND CALLS THEM HOLY SCRIPTURE. It does not change that he calls them non-canonical, since the canon he refers to is THAT OF THE JEWS.