In the early sixteenth century, just prior to the Reformation, Cardinal Ximenes, the Archbishop of Toledo, in collaboration with the leading theologians of his day, produced an edition of the Bible called the Biblia Complutensia. There is an admonition in the Preface regarding the Apocrypha, that the books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, the Maccabees, the additions to Esther and Daniel, are not canonical Scripture and were therefore not used by the Church for confirming the authority of any fundamental points of doctrine, though the Church allowed them to be read for purposes of edification.191 B.F. Westcott comments:
At the dawn of the Reformation the great Romanist scholars remained faithful to the judgment of the Canon which Jerome had followed in his translation. And Cardinal Ximenes in the preface to his magnificent Polyglott Biblia Complutensia-the lasting monument of the University which he founded at Complutum or Alcala, and the great glory of the Spanish press-separates the Apocrypha from the Canonical books. The books, he writes, which are without the Canon, which the Church receives rather for the edification of the people than for the establishment of doctrine, are given only in Greek, but with a double translation
http://www.christiantruth.com/articles/Apocrypha3.html
Thanks bkaycee; unlike Gamecock’s useless and wilfully ignorant rants, you posted something useful which spurred me onto further research.
I googled your first paragraph and found you verbatim pasted from http://www.christiantruth.com/articles/Apocrypha3.html. That in turn cited, A General History of the Canon of the New Testament by Westcott, without actually quoting the preface. That’s where it gets interesting:
Ximines, like JErome, was interested in converting the Jews. As such, he expressed the same concern as Jerome, using the same language as Jerome. His contemporaries, on the same project, were more careful to clarify Ximines’ language: (emphasis mine): The books which are without the canon OF THE HEBREWS, which the Church reads for edification, are given only in Greek.” Hence, were they separated from the rest of Ximinez’ Hexalpa. This is why Hexalpas have several times separated the deuterocanonicals: Because they did not have the Jewish versions of the deueterocanonicals at hand, since they were rejected by the Jews.
Now why would a book about the New Testament canon go to such lengths about the Old TEstament canon? Because the same sources also note the same thing about the New Testament deuterocanonicals: Ximines< Jerome and Luther also describe the 2-3 Peter, 1-2 John, Revelations, James and Hebrews as “not for establishing doctrine, but for the purpose of edification within the Churches.” Did Ximines and Jerome really mean to exclude seven books of the PROTESTANT canon from the bible? Luther thought so. A better explanation is that they don’t preach the proof of the resurrection from OT scripture, so they are not helpful for the conevrsions of the Jews, but they are helpful to instruct those who have already accepted Christ.
Another who took the same interpretation as Luther was Erasmus. And, of course, from Germanophones, we get the infamous 19th-century Quelle school of biblical criticism which ended up throwing out nearly the entire bible, from which all sorts of anti-Christian “Christian” scholarship has flowed (the Jesus seminar, etc.)