You did a great job stating that you didn't agree with my facts from a well known researcher...but you gave no proof of such disagreement.
You're right.
It was late last night, and I didn't feel like typing in a novel-length essay to corroborate my points.
You are correct there aren't 15 books in the Apocrypha there are 19 different works (you got the number 7 because the RCC did not accept 12 of the works
Actually, the Catholic Church rejected far more than just twelve; also rejected were 1 and 2 Adam and Eve; the Book of Enoch; the Book of Jubilees; the Testament of Abraham; the Assumption of Moses, the Ascention of Isaiah, the Book of Asenath, the Prayer of Manasseh, and the Testament of the 12 Patriarchs. If you want to get into New Testament pseudepigrapha, this list could be greatly expanded.
(for what reason I do not know)
Read some them some time, and you'll know. They're pretty strange.
but during the Council of Trent(1546) determined the canonicity of the 7 books THEY chose
Trent merely re-confirmed the already existing canonical list, which was defined by Pope Damasus in 382 AD, confirmed by the Councils of Hippo in 393 AD, 3rd Carthage in 397 AD, 4th Carthage in 418 AD, Florence in 1441 AD, and Trent in 1546 AD. The Canon was officially closed by Pope Innocent I in 405 AD.
As far as the Catholic Church, they may teach whatever they wish,
If you really believe this, then I'm afraid you have a very warped concept of how the Catholic Church operates.
but they are not the keepers of God's Word...the Jews are the keepers,
Even though they reject the New Testament?
and their history and canon contains none of the books of the Apocrypha because they considered them of unknown origin.
Again, how do you account for the dichotomy of the general use of the Septuagint prior to 90 AD?
deu·tero·ca·non·i·cal
Date: 1684
Actually, it was coined in 1566 by Sixtus of Sienna, who used
prototcanon and
deuterocanon to distinguish between Hebrew and Greek books.
of, relating to, or constituting the books of Scripture contained in the Septuagint but not in the Hebrew canon
This means that the books included under this definition were not included in the ORIGINAL Hebrew canon
No, this means that the books included in this definition were not included in the final Jamnian/Masoretic text issed in 90 AD. I see nothing in the definition concerning chronologies or mention of "original" writings. The simple fact that Ptolemy's 70-odd Jewish scholars included these books in their collection of the Jewish Scriptures which became known as the Septuagint indicates pretty clearly that the Diasporic Jews considered them to be Scripture.
The apocryphal books are not in those most ancient works which allude to the Old Testament Scriptures.
Let's not overlook the Scripture
itself. The Septuagint, which includes these books, was the version of the Jewish Scriptures used everywhere in the ancient Mediterranean, with the single exception of Palestine (Mackenzie,
Dictionary of the Bible; Kodell,
Bible Study Handbook; Romero,
Unabridged Christianity). The fact that this version was held in high esteem even amongst Palestinian Jews is indicated by the fact that of the 350 direct OT quotations in the NT, 300 of them follow the Septuagint Greek construction, rather than the Masoretic Hebrew (ibid).
More than half of these books have been found in archaeological discoveries either in Hebrew (Sirach, Judith, 1 Maccabees) or in Aramaic (Tobit); the Qumran discoveries indicate that these books were in circulation during the 1st century in Palestine and were not kept separate from the other OT Scriptures in the collections found; there is no evidence to indicate that these books were considered to have a different origin from the other OT books, as they would have been if indeed they had been later additions to an already fixed Hebrew canon (Boadt,
Reading the Old Testament; Brown, Fitzmeyer, Murphy,
Jerome Bible Commentary).
Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Cyrprian of Carthage all quoted from the Deuterocanon; some other Patristic sources include:
Hillary of Poitiers; lists both Tobit and Judith in his
Commentary on the Psalms (365 AD).
Eusebius in
The History of the Church, Book 4, Chapter 26, lists Wisdom among his canonically-considered books.
The Muratorian Fragment of 155 AD also lists the Book of Wisdom.
The Council of Laodicea lists Baruch (343 AD), as does Cyril of Jerusalem in the
Catechetical Lectures (350 AD).
Origin lists the Books of Maccabees in his
Commentary on the Psalms (244 AD).
Sirach and all the others are naturally listed by Damasus in 382 AD.
Some of these lists include other books not included in any present canon, such as
the Shepherd of Hermas; and some reject still other books
included in the present canon, such as the Book of Esther. What this all boils down to is the fact that from the start of the Church up to the end of the 4th century, there was great variance about what books were actual Scripture and which were not, and it was the Pontiffs and Councils of the early 5th century, aided by the Holy Spirit, who made the final decisions, which remined in place for the next 1,100 years, until Martin Luther came along and figured he knew better.
Jesus Christ and His inspired New Testament penmen quoted from, or alluded to, the writings and events of the Old Testament profusely. In fact, some 1,000 quotations or allusions from thirty-five of the thirty-nine Old Testament books are found in the New Testament record. And yet, significantly, not once is any of these apocryphal books quoted or even explicitly referred to by the Lord, or by any New Testament writer.
Not even
referred to, you say? Hmmm.....let's see.
Matthew 6:12, 14-15---"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; if you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your heavenly father forgive your transgressions."
Sirach 28:2---"Forgive your neighbor's injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven."
Luke 1:17 (describing John the Baptist)---"He will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of fathers towards children and the disobediant to the understanding of the righteous, to prepare a people fit for the Lord."
Sirach 48:10---"You are destined, it is written, in time to come, to put an end to wrath before the day of the Lord, to turn back the hearts of fathers towards their sons, and to re-establish the tribes of Jacob."
Luke 1:28, 1:42---"And coming to her, he said, 'Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you!'.....Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb."
Judith 13:18---"Then Uzziah said to her: 'Blessed are you, daughter, by the Most High God, above all the women of the earth; and blessed be the Lord God, the Creator of heaven and earth.
Luke 1:52---"He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones, but lifted up the lowly."
Sirach 10:14---"The thrones of the arrogant God overturns, and establishes the lowly in their stead."
Luke 12:19-20---"I shall say to myself, 'Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!' But God said to him, 'You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?'"
Sirach 11:19---"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."
Luke 18:22---"When Jesus heard this, he said to him, 'There is still one thing left for you: sell all that you have and distribute it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.'"
Sirach 29:11---"Dispose of your treasure as the Most High commands, for that will profit you more than the gold."
John 3:12---"If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?"
Wisdom 9:16---"Scarce do we guess the things on earth, and what is within our grasp we find with difficulty; but when things are in heaven, who can search them out?"
John 5:18---"For this reason the Jews tried all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath, but he also called God his own Father, making himself equal to God."
Wisdom 2:16---"He judges us debased; he holds aloof from our paths as from things impure. He calls blest the destiny of the just and boasts that God is his Father."
John 10:29---"My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father's hand."
Wisdom 3:1---"But the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them."
Paul alludes to the Deuterocanon as well; for example, Rom 1:20-29; compare with Wisdom 13:5-8. Or Romans 9:20-23; compare with Wisdom 12:20 and 15:7. Or 2 Cor 5:1-4; compare with Wisdom 9:15. You can also contrast James 1:19 with Sirach 5:11 and James 1:13 with Sirach 15:11-12.
And if you want to get into
loose allusions, we can quote
dozens of references.....
Despite the fact that New Testament writers quote largely from the Septuagint rather than from the Hebrew Old Testament, there is not a single clear-cut case of a citation from any of the fourteen apocryphal books . . . . The most that can be said is that the New Testament writers show acquaintance with these fourteen books and perhaps allude to them indirectly
True.
but in no case do they quote them as inspired Scripture or cite them as authority
This, however, is merely his opinion.
I ask, WHY DIDN'T our Saviour refer to any of these books in His teachings?
Why didn't He refer to Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, or the Song of Solomon, either, then? Are they not canonical Scripture because He did not reference them?
Anyway, there is tooooo much proof pointing away from the Apocrypha and I do not see the authority to add them in the hands of the RCC, but only in God's chosen people, and the Jews did not include them.
And, not surprisingly, I see too much historical and exegetical evidence pointing to their acceptance by the Diasporic Jews as legitimate Scripture; it was only the legalistic Pharisaic faction, and not the entire Jewish people, which excluded them (260-odd years after their composition) at the Council of Jamnia.
Incidentally, you again mention that the Catholic Church "added" the Deuterocanon to the Bible, and you previously mentioned this happened at Trent in 1546. Yet, Martin Luther placed these books into an appendix in the back of his 1534 German translation of the Bible, stating that while they were worthy for moral reading, they were not inspired Scripture.
My question is, if the Catholic Church didn't
add these books until 1546, how did Martin Luther
re-arrange them into the back of his German Bible twelve years earlier? Did he add them first only to remove them, since, as you suggest, they weren't put there until 1546???
HE WOULDN'T! 
