The Jewish community and the Hebrew Christians of the New Testament did not use or include the Apocrypha. Jesus nor the Apostles ever quoted the Apocrypha as divine authority. The Hebrew Bible doesn’t include them. Did early Jewish believers use anything other then the writings of the Apostles and the Old Testament? No.
The historian Josephus, who was Jewish, excludes the Apocrypha. “The Jews had only twenty-two books that deserved belief, but those which were written after the time of Artaxerxes (the Apocrypha) were not of equal credit with the rest, in which period they had no prophets at all” (Lib. 1, Con. Apion.).
The books in the Apocrypha even include things that have been proven historically inaccurate.
If I remember correctly the Apocrypha was not included until after Trent even in the RCC. It was at Trent that they wanted something to refute the reformation arguments so officially included them to bolster their “doctrinal” teachings so saying they aren’t used for doctrine is weak at best.
I would suggest that it was not the “same clergy” who decided to include them.
The cure for ignorance is education. Since these profoundly false assertions have been thoroughly refuted in these threads many times the persistent posting of them is obviously not rooted in ignorance. It is therefore willful telling of an untruth. In any other venue that would be called a lie.
Thanks for bringing this thread back to the subject of the original post. I agree with you on these points and it is only those who cannot bring themselves to admit that the "Church" could have erred about anything who will defend the indefensible. There are more than enough scholarly works that prove the "inspired" books of the Bible stopped when the last prophet's writings were done. Malachi was written around 350 BC or even earlier, but it was the last book accepted into the Jewish canon under the heading of "minor prophets" - only because they were small books but not because of importance. The writings of the New Testament, as we know, started a few decades after Jesus was resurrected.
ALL the books included in the Bible are God-breathed and, because of this, they are infallible in the truths they present, they do not contradict each other and they are accurate in all ways. Even, we are discovering, in things of a scientific nature what is said is proved true. When things of historical nature are stated, biblical archeology consistently proves. And the most important area of all, the spiritual nature, our hearts affirm the words are from God because they speak to what matters, what is truth, what is God's message to us. In the same way that the early Jews knew what came from God through his prophets, so we know in the exact same way. God does not change.