Time for a HISTORY lesson . . .
This is how you Protestants arrived at your current Canon of the Old Testament.
The OPEN 1st century Jewish Canon included the 7 Deuterocanonical Books that you now reject.
These Books are:
Wisdom Sirach
Judith Tobit
Baruch I & II Maccabees
Portions or Daniel and Esther
This is the Canon of Scripture that Jesus and the NT writers studied from. We KNOW that they were part of the OPEN Jewish Canon of the 1st century because they are alluded to and quoted some 200 times in the New Testament. Some glaring examples are:
- Eph. 6:13-17 – The entire discussion of armor, helmet, breastplate, sword, shield follows Wis. 5:17-20.
- Heb 11:35 - Paul talks about the martyrdom of the mother and her sons described in 2 Macc. 7:1-42.
- Matt. 7:12 - Jesus' golden rule "do unto others" is the converse of Tobit 4:15 - what you hate, do not do to others.
Sometime around the year 70 AD, Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans during a Jewish uprising and the Temple was destroyed. After this – Jewish Temple sacrifices came to a halt and rabbinical schools replaced the Pharisaical leadership.
Now, pay attention because here's where it gets ugly . . .
Around 30 AD, during the 2nd Jewish uprising, there was a Jewish Rabbinical school in Jamnia.
One of the main Rabbis – a man named Akiva, declared TWO things:
a. A man named Simon Bar Kokhba was the "real" messiah. He turned out to be a false messiah and Akiva was a false prophet.
b. The Deuterocanonical Books needed to be REMOVED from the OPEN Canon - and the canon closed.
The reason for this was that was because of the “Hellenistic” influence it had on the Diaspora (Dispersed Jews).
SO - you Protestants adhere to a POST-Christ, POST-Temple OT Canon that was determined by a FALSE Prophet who declared a FALSE Christ.
Here's the worst part: the ONLY reason your Protestant Fathers chose to do this was to further-divorce themselves from the Catholic Church – who had it RIGHT all along!
ANYBODY who wants to look this up and challenge me - PLEASE do so . . .
