Thanks for your informative posts on this important subject.
Are you aware of any texts that you consider to be God-breathed that are NOT a part of our canon of scriptures? (the collected and voted-in books)
I know there is more than one canon. So that may account for a few that are not in everyone's Bibles. The Apocrypha being an obvious example. God-breathed, or no? (sadly, I haven't read it)
I personally am inclined to regard everything in the Greek and Russian Orthodox canon, including Psalm 151 and the Deuterocanonical Books (Tobit, Sirach, also known as Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, Judith, the Maccabees, etc), as well as everything held canonical in the Broad Canon and the Narrow Canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church that pertains to the Old Testament, and in both canons one finds 1 Enoch, which I think is particularly obviously inspired because St. Jude quotes it in His epistle. I also think Psalms 152-155, which survive only in Syriac, are canonical. However, Psalms 151-155 are less important than the main Psalter of 1-150.
I think the Septuagint, or LXX as it is abbreviated, is preferable to the Masoretic, or MT, in most cases, particularly the Psalter (Psalms) in the case of Psalm 1:12, where the Masoretic text has a Christological reading less clear in the Septuagint, and Psalm 23, which in the English language was particularly exquisitely translated in the KJV. However, the Septuagint, as a rule, makes Christological readings more apparent than the Masoretic, and the Psalter is no exception; there are about a dozen references to our Lord more obvious in the LXX Psalter than the MT Psalter. And consider this verse, from Psalm 95 v. 5 in the LXX “The gods of the gentiles are demons” vs Psalm 96 v 5, the corresponding verse in the MT Psalter (which combines and splits apart some Psalms so the numbers are out of sync), which reads “The gods of the gentiles are idols.” I think that the Masoretic reading is obvious, whereas the Septuagint reading points to an extremely important spiritual reality about Paganism and false religions.
Also Daniel and Esther in the Septuagint are much more compelling and spiritual.
But I don’t regard anything else canonical; I am not even sure about Psalms 152-155, but they are likeable and not heretical and I for one would enjoy hearing them.
Some people wanted to include 1 Clement in the Bible; it is a crucial Patristic text and it could well be inspired, but it did not meet the Patristic criteria for New Testament canonicity, in that the New Testament can contain only authentic writings of the Apostles or Evangelists who were recording the Apostolic kerygma (for example, St. Mark, a disciple of St. Peter, and the owner of the Cenacle, based his Gospel on the Petrine narrative, and St. Luke, a disciple of St. Paul and a physician, based his account on the Pauline narrative and the narratives of other Apostles he had access to such as St. Peter and St. John, all three of whom were alive in a region of the Eastern Roman Empire stretching from the Levant to Rome, particularly the coast of Asia Minor (home of Ephesus, Antioch, and other important cities).