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DEACON ROB STOUT
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Why the Reasons Offered For Rejecting The Deuterocanonical Books Cannot Stand

   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.

The Apocrypha defends dishonesty and deceit (Tobit 5:4-13; Judith 9:10,13).
On this basis, we must also exclude Genesis (27:19) and Joshua (2:4).

The Apocrypha teaches that salvation depends on deeds of virtue (Tobit 4:10-11; 12:9; Ecclesiasticus 3:30).

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.

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