Quick Reference
Reasons Offered For Rejecting The Deuterocanonical Books
  • The Jews of Palestine never accepted the inspiration of
    these books.
    When referring to the “Jews of Palestine,” one has to ask, “Which Jews?” In
    Palestine, at the time of Christ were many Jewish sects which accepted
    different sets of books as the Scripture. There were Pharisees, Sadducees,
    Essenes, etc. So, blanket statements referring to the “Jews of Palestine” as
    if the “canon of the Old Testament was a settled matter in Jesus’ day
    disregards history.

    When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1948, a nearly complete copy
    of the Book of Tobit was found included with the Scriptures. So we now
    know that at least some of the “Jews of Palestine” DID accept these books.

    These books were all in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew
    Scriptures that Paul used in his preaching. 300 of 350 quotations of the Old
    Testament cited in the New Testament come from the Septuagint, which
    contained the “apocrypha.” It is apparent, then that St. Paul and the other
    New Testament writers were not only familiar with the Septuagint but
    accepted it as inspired Scripture.

  • Jesus never quoted the Apocrypha.
    Also, Jesus never quoted many other books of the Old Testament. Are we
    then to discard them as spurious as well? If this was a valid criterion then
    we would have to remove Ecclesiastes, Esther, and Obadiah from the Old
    Testament.

    While Jesus does not quote from the apocrypha it is apparent that he was
    familiar with it. Consider this:

    In John 10:22, Jesus attends the feast of the Dedication which is
    established in the 2 Maccabees 10:1-8. Is Jesus to be found participating in
    non-Scriptural events?

    Also, consider this from the Book of Sirach 11:18-19:
    “A man may become rich through a miser’s life, and this is his allotted
    reward: When he says: ‘I have found rest, now I will feast on my
    possessions,’ he does not know how long it will be till he dies and leaves them
    to others.”

    Jesus tells the same story in Luke 12:16-21 even though this was written
    nearly 200 years earlier.




    This erroneous idea that deeds of virtue are not required for salvation
    cannot be used to disqualify a book. What does the Lord say to the rich
    young man in Matt 19:21 and Luke 18:22? Jesus says to “give what you have
    to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven.” This criterion also must be
    rejected or we must remove the Gospels of Matthew and Luke as well.
Copyright 2008