one more point, those who defend the 39 book OT canon point to the Jews and say it is the canon they accept. true enough, but these are the same Jews that Jesus declared to be spiritually blind. He promised the Holy Spirit would be given to believers and lead them to all truth. So the Church, guided by the promised Holy Spirit, was able to determine Scripture from non-Scripture. I believe our God is great enough and powerful enough to make sure His people have the correct Scriptures, not be wrong for 1,500 years. Hopefully you agree.
RE: one more point, those who defend the 39 book OT canon point to the Jews and say it is the canon they accept. true enough, but these are the same Jews that Jesus declared to be spiritually blind.
I’ mot sure we can use this as proof that the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ time (i.e. the Pharisees ) were using the wrong scripture or Canon.
Jesus DID tell the people to LISTEN to the teachings of the Pharisees, not to follow their hypocritical ways.
MATTHEW 23:1-3
“The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so DO and OBSERVE WHATEVER THEY TELL YOU, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice.”
1. There is not sufficient evidence that they were reckoned as canonical by the Jews anywhere.
2. The LXX design was literary, to build the library of Ptolemy and the Alexandrians.
3. All LXX manuscripts are Christian and not Jewish origin. With a 500 years difference between translation and existing manuscripts. Enough time for Apocryphal books to slip in.
4. LXX manuscripts do not all have the same apocryphal books and names.
5. During the 2nd Century AD the Alexandrian Jews adopted Aquila’s Greek version of the OT without apocryphal books.
6. The manuscripts at the Dead Sea make it clear no canonical book of the OT was written later than the Persian period.
7. Philo, Alexandrian Jewish philosopher (20 BC-40 AD), quoted the Old Testament prolifically, and even recognized the threefold classification, but he never quoted from the Apocrypha as inspired.
8. Josephus (30-100 AD.), Jewish historian, explicitly excludes the Apocrypha; numbering the books of the Old Testament as 22 neither does he quote the apocryphal books as Scripture.
9. Jesus and the New Testament writers never once quote the Apocrypha, although there are hundreds of quotes and references to almost the entire book of the Old Testament.
10. The Jewish scholars of Jamnia (90 AD) did not recognize the Apocrypha.
11. No canon or council of the Christian church recognized the Apocrypha as inspired for nearly four centuries.
12. Many of the great fathers of the early church spoke out against the Apocrypha---for example, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Athanasius.
13. Jerome (AD 340-420) The great scholar and translator of the Latin Vulgate rejected the Apocrypha as part of the canon.
14. Not until 1546 AD in a polemical action at the counter-Reformation Council of Trent (1545-63), did the apocryphal books receive full canonical status by the Roman Catholic Church.
(http://www.truthnet.org/Bible-Origins/6_The_Apocrypha_The_Septugint/index.htm)