Finalized at the councils of Hippo and Carthage in 393 and 397, and confirmed at the council of Trent after being challenged after over 1100 years by a heretic.
That’s a myth:
“Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St. Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed amongst the apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecciesiasticus, as is plain from the Protogus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the Bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the Bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clearly through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage.” (Cardinal Cajetan, “Commentary on all the Authentic Historical Books of the Old Testament,” cited by William Whitaker in “A Disputation on Holy Scripture,” Cambridge: Parker Society (1849), p. 424)
The earliest Latin version of the Bible in modern times, made from the original languages by the scholarly Dominican, Sanctes Pagnini, and published at Lyons in 1528, with commendatory letters from Pope Adrian VI and Pope Clement VII, sharply separates the text of the canonical books from the text of the Apocryphal books. Still another Latin Bible, this one an addition of Jerome’s Vulgate published at Nuermberg by Johannes Petreius in 1527, presents the order of the books as in the Vulgate but specifies at the beginning of each Apocryphal book that it is not canonical. Furthermore, in his address to the Christian reader the editor lists the disputed books as ‘Libri Apocryphi, sive non Canonici, qui nusquam apud Hebraeos extant’ (Bruce Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha (New York: Oxford, 1957), p. 180).
Hippo and Carthage were regional. The only ecumenical council on the matter, Trullo, endorsed canons ranging from Athanasius all the way to canons that included 3 Maccabees and books not today considered canonical by the RCC. The majority view in the West throughout the middle ages was that of Jerome’s, with the apocrypha only serving a role as “brought forward for the edification of the people,” but not “for the confirmation of the faith.”
The New Testament that is accepted by all, on the other hand, even when resisted by a few groups, was used and accepted by the entire church from the beginning.
By now i would have thought FR RCs would have known better. Luther was not a maverick in doubting some books, but RC scholarship did so even in Trent, which issued the first indisputable canon of all books Rome holds as Scripture (the EO list differs slightly ) while the Prot. canon also has ancient support.
See here .
And
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2661829/posts?page=217#217
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2637924/posts?page=1224#1224
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2637924/posts?page=2066#2066
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2637924/posts?page=2181#2181
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2637924/posts?page=2802#2802
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3003863/posts?page=226#226
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3003863/posts?page=447#447
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3003863/posts?page=226#226
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3003863/posts?page=239#239
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3003863/posts?page=260#260
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3003863/posts?page=286#286