Thanks for your response. I think you will find Beckwith does deal with what the extent of the First Century OT canon was, and that it did not embrace the deuterocanonicals.
As for the creditability of any given scholar, being an attorney who likes to win, I am fine with impeaching a witness. But the impeachment must have better form than “Well, he’s a Protestant.” That would never sell in court. “Well, he’s Republican, Democrat, Black, White, Hispanic, Catholic, Mormon, etc etc etc.” Impeach him if you can, but on substance, not via “genetic fallacy.”
Peace,
SR
How about something like "since the Catholic church has decreed that Catholic doctrine, as authoritatively proposed by the Church, has the same God as its author as the Scriptures it is the steward of, then Catholic doctrine should be the supreme law, and all interpretation is foolish and false which is opposed to the doctrine of the Church." If she does say autocratically so herself.
Of course I did not effectively impeach him for bias. To do that I would actually have to read his book and see how he treats the issue of the pre-Nicaean fathers making references to the Deuterocanonical books of the Septuagint. I would also look to understand how the esteemed professor explains the motivation of the “4-5th Century Christians” to write a voluminous historical work on the subject of the struggle of the Maccabees, culminating in heroic refusal to eat pork. Or how the touching epic of Tobit profits specifically Christianity. However, it was your job, not mine. You brought up an assertion that is absurd on its face and the passage you quoted as damning to Roman Catholicism is cooly mentioned in the Catholic Encyclopedia, because of course it does not prove anything, while the writings of the Early Father prove the opposite.