Apocrypha and the "intertestimental gap" between OT and NT

[The Liturgist]

again - not true. Josephus is very specific in his criteria as his text shows. His criteria was stated as the unchanged Hebrew canon that was kept in the temple and had not been changed in over 300 years.

The same that they still have unchanged today in the Hebrew Bible.

There are so many problems with this assertion, but just to name a few:

1. In addition to the Classical Septuagint and the Ethiopian Bible, there were, as previously noted, several other extant textual variants. By the third century, the Rabbinical Hebrew text was becoming increasingly unreliable as was shown by Origen in his comparative Scriptures, whereas the Christians have scrupulously maintained the Septuagint, which corresponds textually to our New Testament. Furthermore, insofar as the text is different, we know by comparison of the Peshitta and the Vulgate, whose Old Testaments were translated in the second and fourth century AD, and from the three oldest Greek Bibles, the Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, that the Masoretic text has drifted further from the versions of the Bible preserved by the Christian church rather than vice versa, because these translations act like snapshots. This primarily validates the superior Septuagint translations, which contain clearer and more evident Christological references everywhere except Psalms 1:12 (and in some cases, the Masoretic Hebrew does not make sense, whereas the Christian-preserved versions do, for example, compare Psalms 96:5 between the Septuagint (where it is Psalm 95 v. 5 due to the differences in versification and Psalm numbering), and a Bible using the Masoretic text.
2. Thus, the validity of the Masoretic text is itself questionable, because we do not have an extant Hexapla and cannot compare it to the variants used in the Temple. It is entirely possible the versions of the texts Josephus cites correspond with the Christian-preserved text vs. the Masoretic and the proto-Masoretic.
3. The Hebrew canon as it exists today is largely irrelevant, because it is a fruit of the propagtion of the Masoretic text, a recension, or edited version, based on the ideal of maximum accuracy from a Jewish position, with various mathematical techniques used representing the oldest known example of error correction in a text as is now commonly used in utilities. However, as noted above, all this has preserved is a textual variant favored by the Masoretes, who many speculated were Karaite Jews, who among various unusual beliefs deny the existence of the devil. Not withstanding my great respect for the Karaites and my sympathy towards them and the Samaritans* for the persecution they have suffered, I cannot for reasons stated above regard their textual traditions as being any more reliable than those preserved by Rabbinical Jews, because the existence of Christian-preserved texts and texts from the Qumran Caves (the Dead Sea Scrolls) which predate the first century.
4. We do not know that Josephus knew for sure what books were in the Temple or not, or accurately represented it, since we have not examined it in person. Even if we attribute to him complete honesty however, which is charitable, it is still irrelevant because the Old Testament texts which are of greatest importance and reliability for Christian purposes are those directly quoted by our Lord and the Apostles and Evangelists in the New Testament.
5. Furthermore, it is also irrelevant, because by the time our Lord arrived, we know there were serious problems with First Century Judaism, including the adoption of a range of man-made traditions which obviously contradict the Old Testament; the extent to which the Old Testament was being contradicted by first century Judaism under the Roman protectorate of King Herod Antipas and the first century Sanhedrin is evident from any Old Testament version, but it becomes more evident when we compare the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls to the Masoretic text.
6. It seems probable based on what we know of the Sadducees, who Joseph was not likely a member of, that regardless of what was in 5he temple, to many Jews only these books were (and are) essential. Indeed one could argue the rest of the Old Testament is in Judaism a true deuterocanon, albeit one fixed since the adoption of the Masoretic Text. The problem of course is that the Masoretic text was compiled by a group of purists, most likely living in Spain during its occupation by the Caliphates, when it was called Al Andalus. Spain prior to its occupation was a very different place, as indeed it is now.
7. We do know that the idea of a closed canon was uncommon at the time, to ther and extent the early Christian church never even bothered attempting to define a canon until the Marcionite schism, because Marcion did establish a canon which was clearly wrong.
   
8. Josephus cannot be regarded as more authoritative than the New Testament, since he is not Christian. Neither can the Masoretes.
9. Therefore, further to this, translations of the Hebrew Bible, a very large number of which have turned up in Hebrew or Aramaic, at least in fractions, are invaluable, because they represent the Old Testament as it was known at the time of translation.
   
   
10. Since the New Testament quotes books like 1 Enoch directly, and includes quotes from the Septuagint, which correspond with the versions of the Hebrew Scriptures found at the Dead Sea Scrolls, which correspond with the versions found in the Septuagint, we cannot deny the validity of the Septuagint at least insofar as it agrees with the New Testament.
11. Consequently, we can, without argumentum ad hominem, not accept as authoritative his statements about early Christianity, but we can accept him as representing a proto-Rabinnical Judaism.
12. As noted above, the Masoretic text is irrelevant to us; there is no basis for assuming it represents the authentic Old Testament any more than what was considered to be the correct by the Ethiopians or other groups, including the early Christians. Specifically with regards to Ethiopian Judaism, it is noteworthy in that it is addressed by St. Philip the Deacon’s meeting with that of St. Frumentius, but not subject to the same criticizm our Lord directs towards the Pharisees. Meaning that the conversion of the Beta Israel (the formal name of Ethiopian jewry, House of Israel in Ge’ez, the Semitic language of Ethiopia) is still important, but that the faith and praxis of the the Falashas (Jews of the Beta Israel). And the Ethiopians preserved 1 Enoch, which is quoted by St. Jude.

* Really, the only authorities we have discussed who agree have relevance to the faith and praxis of Christianity are St. Jerome and

** Completeness requires us to note that there was, and still is, the corrupt Samaritan Torah used to this day by the descendants of Ephrem, Naphtali and the Levites and Kohanim of the Northern Kingdom. Based on the words of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as asserted in the Gospel according to John, that we can assert is at a minimum corrupt insofar as it includes a modified decalogue ordering worship at Mount Gerizim).

 

[The Liturgist]

The problem with the historical view of St. Jerome, is that modern apologist (on both sides) want to give St. Jerome far more authority than what he had. St. Jerome was a priest and a monk. He was not a bishop. What St. Jerome had going for him and what made him the perfect choice to initially revise the Old Latin Bible, which is what he was originally called to do to the Gospels and most probably to the whole NT, and later his new translation of most of the writings of the OT, was his unique skillset of being of one of the very few men if not the only man, who knew Latin, Greek and Hebrew fluently.

When St. Jerome became a monk, he moved to Palestine, and from his obvious strong relationships with local Jews, was moved to respect and honor the Hebrew Scriptures more than the Greek. They moved him so much that he eventually resisted to translate any more of the OT writings if he could not find the writing in Hebrew, Aramaic or one the offshoots of this language. For example the only reason why he translated Tobit into Latin was because he found a manuscript of Tobit in Chaldean.

Anyway it is obvious that St. Jerome was heavily influenced by his Jewish friends, which is his prerogative.

This is also an extremely valid point; St. Jerome is the only Patristic figure who had this opinion; even his allies against Origen disagreed with him (for example, St. Epiphanius of Salamis, who I do admire on some level, but also disagree with, thought that Origen was trying to discredit the Septuagint (when the reverse was the case); Epiphanius and Jerome were the among most outspoken opponents of Origen.

 

[The Liturgist]

He initially did not include the additional books in his canon, but later relented.

It’s not so much that he relented as that he agreed with the consensus of the Church to avoid incontumacy.

 

[The Liturgist]

Oddly enough, with Sola Scriptura and now Solo Scriptura kind of muddies the water doesn't it?

If you mean with Nuda Scriptura, then yes. However, the one criticism I do have of the early reformers is they embraced St. Jerome’s ideas despite their variance from the conensus patrum. The early church in replacing the Vulgate with vernacular Bibles should have, in my opinion, used the Septuagint and the Peshitta (which some may be surprised to learn they were aware of*; the KJV translators even had one; the only major texts which the KJV translators did not have which were relevant were the Ethiopian Bible, the Alexandrian text-type and the Dead Sea Scrolls).

*Were it not for the fact that the Maronite alliance with and integration into the Roman church resulted in the Assemani family contributing generations of scholars and translators to Rome who basically inaugurated the field of Syriac Studies in the West and made Syriac texts accessible by translating them into Latin; this is actually the second or third time when Syriac speaking Christians made enormous contributions to Western knowledge, for a few hundred years previously, Syriac Orthodox and Assyrian monks as well as Syriac monks at the Coptic Orthodox Syrian Monastery, which operated for the benefit of their sister church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, translated massive amounts of Greek philosophical texts into Arabic, texts which otherwise would be lost.

 

[Trivalee]

A number of non-traditionalist denominations such as SDAs, Baptists, most Presbyterian, all Methodists, evangelicals etc - do not accept the Apocrypha as "scripture" and so have an even wider "intertestimental period" then the approx. 100 year gap that the traditionalist admit to. That is fine with me because the non-traditionalist group are the ones I run into the most my area of the USA. So I am not bothered by being in what Christianity Today called the 5th largest Christian denomination in the world - that sides with the evangelical groups in agreeing on the "wider gap" in intertestimental period.

from: What Is the Apocrypha? Are Apocryphal Books Really Scripture?.

"The United Methodist Church The United Methodist Church, like most other Protestant denominations, do not recognize the Apocrypha as authoritative Scripture. But they do allow apocryphal books to be read aloud ..."​

"In the third century B.C., Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) into Greek, resulting in the Septuagint. Several books were included in the Septuagint that were not considered divinely inspired by Jews but were included in the Jewish Talmud, which is a supplement, of sorts, or interpretation of the Hebrew Bible.

“That version incorporated a number of works that later, non-Hellenistic Jewish scholarship at the Council of Jamnia (AD 90) identified as being outside the authentic Hebrew canon. The Talmud separates these works as Sefarim Hizonim (Extraneous Books),” according to Britannica.​

Because of ancient Israel's continuous sin and rebellion, God had warned that he would stop speaking to them and in that time, they would run thro and fro in search of word from him (God) but won't find it.

Amos 8:11 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord:

12 And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.

At the end of OT at the return from captivity, God ceased to speak to Israel. God's silence lasted for 400 years and was only broken when the angel Gabriel spoke to Zacharias that his barren wife, Elizabeth would bear a son, John the Baptist. Luke 1:8-13.

Although God did not speak to any prophet according to his word during this period, life still continued in Israel. Naturally, Jewish writers tried to document and chronicle the events of this period, these books are called the Apocrypha because they were not inspired by God. It doesn't mean their accounts are not true events, unfortunately, they cannot be held to the same infallible standard as those inspired by God.

 

[bbbbbbb]

The problem with the historical view of St. Jerome, is that modern apologist (on both sides) want to give St. Jerome far more authority than what he had. St. Jerome was a priest and a monk. He was not a bishop. What St. Jerome had going for him and what made him the perfect choice to initially revise the Old Latin Bible, which is what he was originally called to do to the Gospels and most probably to the whole NT, and later his new translation of most of the writings of the OT, was his unique skillset of being of one of the very few men if not the only man, who knew Latin, Greek and Hebrew fluently.

When St. Jerome became a monk, he moved to Palestine, and from his obvious strong relationships with local Jews, was moved to respect and honor the Hebrew Scriptures more than the Greek. They moved him so much that he eventually resisted to translate any more of the OT writings if he could not find the writing in Hebrew, Aramaic or one the offshoots of this language. For example the only reason why he translated Tobit into Latin was because he found a manuscript of Tobit in Chaldean.

Anyway it is obvious that St. Jerome was heavily influenced by his Jewish friends, which is his prerogative.

Nevertheless, Jerome's role was pivotal in the Catholic Church. Prior to the Latin Vulgate translation by him, the Bible was limited to those only fluent in Greek and/or Hebrew which were essentially dead languages. Latin, although not used in secular society, was considered to be the primary, if not sole, language for use in the Roman Catholic Church. Jerome's translation was foundational and his abilities as translator proved to be immensely influential.

 

[The Liturgist]

Because of ancient Israel's continuous sin and rebellion, God had warned that he would stop speaking to them and in that time, they would run thro and fro in search of word from him (God) but won't find it.

Amos 8:11 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord:

12 And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.

At the end of OT at the return from captivity, God ceased to speak to Israel. God's silence lasted for 400 years and was only broken when the angel Gabriel spoke to Zacharias that his barren wife, Elizabeth would bear a son, John the Baptist. Luke 1:8-13.

Although God did not speak to any prophet according to his word during this period, life still continued in Israel. Naturally, Jewish writers tried to document and chronicle the events of this period, these books are called the Apocrypha because they were not inspired by God. It doesn't mean their accounts are not true events, unfortunately, they cannot be held to the same infallible standard as those inspired by God.

Ah no, alas, that is fundmentally inaccurate, for three reasons: Esther, Ezra and Daniel.

The former obviously postdates the return from captivity, which was accomplished with the collapse of the Chaldean Empire at the hands of the Persians under Xerxes.

Then, we have Ezra and Daniel, which are both reckoned as protocanon, yet both of them significantly postdate books like Nehemiah written after the return, due to the very high use of the Aramaic language. Indeed Daniel is mostly written in Aramaic.

Also, around this time, the Jewish Old Testament switched from being written in Paleo Hebrew (the Samaritan Old Testament still is written using a Paleo-Hebrew style alphabet), to being written in the distinctive “Square letters” of the Imperial Aramaic alphabet, in which it is still written, and there is a consistent use of “Old Testament Aramaic” which appears in the text, even in older books, which seems attributable to this timeframe.

Furthermore, there are numerous other reasons to suggest our Lord did not stop speaking to the Jewish people at that time, but rather, sometime between the Crucifixion and the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple.

By the way, just out of curiosity, have you read any of the books in question?

 

[Erose]

Nevertheless, Jerome's role was pivotal in the Catholic Church. Prior to the Latin Vulgate translation by him, the Bible was limited to those only fluent in Greek and/or Hebrew which were essentially dead languages. Latin, although not used in secular society, was considered to be the primary, if not sole, language for use in the Roman Catholic Church. Jerome's translation was foundational and his abilities as translator proved to be immensely influential.

Actually there was a Latin Bible before Jerome's Vulgate called the Old Latin Bible. St. Jerome in 383AD was commissioned by Pope St. Damasus to revise the Old Latin Gospels and possibly the whole New Testament (Only the his preface of the Gospels survived so we don't truly know). That is how he got on the path of translation.

Oddly enough St. Jerome's translation (not revision) of the OT writings were not done under ecclesiastical commission like the Gospels. This task was done due to the request of private friends or his own desires.

Anyway the Old Latin OT was a Latin translation of the Septuagint, and was the primary Bible of the West some say up to the 9th century. It took a few centuries according to some historians before St. Jerome's Bible became the dominate translation. Some say due to his being primarily translation from Hebrew instead of the Septuagint, but I would imagine it had just as much to do with how hard it was to copy and distribute codexes as large as a full Bible.

One other point about the current Latin Vulgate. Not all of it was translated by St. Jerome, and since as far as I know we do not have St. Jerome's original translations we probably can't know.

 

[The Liturgist]

Actually there was a Latin Bible before Jerome's Vulgate called the Old Latin Bible. St. Jerome in 383AD was commissioned by Pope St. Damasus to revise the Old Latin Gospels and possibly the whole New Testament (Only the his preface of the Gospels survived so we don't truly know). That is how he got on the path of translation.

Oddly enough St. Jerome's translation (not revision) of the OT writings were not done under ecclesiastical commission like the Gospels. This task was done due to the request of private friends or his own desires.

Anyway the Old Latin OT was a Latin translation of the Septuagint, and was the primary Bible of the West some say up to the 9th century. It took a few centuries according to some historians before St. Jerome's Bible became the dominate translation. Some say due to his being primarily translation from Hebrew instead of the Septuagint, but I would imagine it had just as much to do with how hard it was to copy and distribute codexes as large as a full Bible.

One other point about the current Latin Vulgate. Not all of it was translated by St. Jerome, and since as far as I know we do not have St. Jerome's original translations we probably can't know.

Indeed, the Vetus Latina predates the Vulgate (Vetus means Old and Latina means Latin; I should note however that if one travels back in time to ancient Rome that it would likely be considered discourteous to refer to elderly women using this term).

The Vetus Latina is interesting because it is written in beautiful Classical Latin, and the Roman liturgy of the traditional Latin mass still quotes it. For example, “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” which is also the basis for a rather fun Christmas Carol is rendered as “Gloria in Altissimus Deo” in the Vulgate, which sounds a bit clunkier to me.

It is also interesting because the third century translations of the New Testament Gospels into Syriac to replace the Diatessaron (which survive in a codex and a palimpsest, and are collectively referred to as the Vetus Syra, Vetus meaning Old and Syra meaning Syrian or Syriac), a Gospel harmony compiled by Tatian* They, along with the Vetus Latina, are the only two books of scripture (the Vetus Syra was not a complete Bible; it had the Gospels only) to use the Western text type.

In contrast, the Vulgate and the Peshitta tend to follow something like the Byzantine text type, with minor variations in the Peshitta.

*Tatian’s Diatessaron was extremely suboptimal on account of being boring and in both a divine and literary sense, clearly uninspired compared to the four Gospels it attempted to blend together, and came under suspicion of being heretical after Tatian left the early Church in order to found his own Gnostic sect. Thus replacing them was a matter of some urgency.

 

[BobRyan]

The Jews used that same terminology as we see Luke using and it covered the entire Hebrew Bible - which we still have today.

Why Is There a Threefold Division of the Hebrew Canon? (Law, Prophets, Writings) by Don Stewart.

The Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms: how is the Old Testament divided? – The Bible Made Plain

The point remains.

No your point does not remain.

You are of course free to simply "differ" as your solution.

In the mean time
1. most Bible scholars do understand this point I just made above.
2. The Jews still do have that same content
3. The Protestant Bible did not simply invent it - the Jews already have it as the Hebrew Bible
4. Jesus used it. Luke confirms it.

"hoping" that the Jews of Christ's day "used something else" and that even the Jews themselves are unaware of it... is a rather thin solution.

 

[BobRyan]

No your point does not remain. A) You have no idea what was included in those scrolls. You don't period. There is no historical evidence outside this one paragraph of Josephus, which does not name the books in question. So you have to guess and that is what you are doing guessing.

The fact remains that there is no listing of these 22 books offered by other authors in the first 3 centuries of AD, that match perfectly the modern accepted canon of the Jews or Protestants. It just doesn't exist. Look it up, you want find a single canon listing that matches.

Jerome complained that the Catholic scholars of his day knew almost nothing about the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and that they needed someone who knew both Hebrew and Latin to do the Vulgate translation.

 

[BobRyan]

Actually there was a Latin Bible before Jerome's Vulgate called the Old Latin Bible. St. Jerome in 383AD was commissioned by Pope St. Damasus to revise the Old Latin Gospels and possibly the whole New Testament (Only the his preface of the Gospels survived so we don't truly know). That is how he got on the path of translation.

Oddly enough St. Jerome's translation (not revision) of the OT writings were not done under ecclesiastical commission like the Gospels. This task was done due to the request of private friends or his own desires.
.

Interesting wording

 

[BobRyan]

Because of ancient Israel's continuous sin and rebellion, God had warned that he would stop speaking to them and in that time, they would run thro and fro in search of word from him (God) but won't find it.

Amos 8:11 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord:

12 And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.

At the end of OT at the return from captivity, God ceased to speak to Israel. God's silence lasted for 400 years and was only broken when the angel Gabriel spoke to Zacharias that his barren wife, Elizabeth would bear a son, John the Baptist. Luke 1:8-13.

Although God did not speak to any prophet according to his word during this period, life still continued in Israel. Naturally, Jewish writers tried to document and chronicle the events of this period, these books are called the Apocrypha because they were not inspired by God. It doesn't mean their accounts are not true events, unfortunately, they cannot be held to the same infallible standard as those inspired by God.

Not all books in the Apocrypha are actual history - some are stories that have morals to them but are something that happened in real life - such as the case of Bel and the dragon, the book of Enoch also appears to be heavily interpolated , edited, extended ...

 

[JSRG]

Are Theodore's commentaries on the NT available online? I couldn't find any.

I do not think they are available in English on the Internet. Actually, I'm not sure they're available in full in English anywhere--the best I could find is "Theodore of Mopsuestia" by Frederick McLeod, but that only seems to have translations of selections of his texts rather than the full things (or so the descriptions of the book say, I haven't read it).

If you want to read them in full, and if you want to read them on the Internet, then you're going to have to settle for reading them in Latin or Greek. I don't know if you can do that, but in case you can--or for the benefit of anyone curious who can read those languages--here's where you can find them.

Things are a little complicated here. Of the original Greek in his New Testament commentaries, we have only fragments. Actually quite a good number of fragments--the New Testament commentary fragments go from column 705 to 962 of J.P. Migne's Patrologia Graeca volume 66 (each page has two columns)--but nevertheless, only fragments and no full copy. Patrologia Graeca volume 66 includes other works of his (and works by other authors too), but his New Testament commentary fragments start here:
Patrologiae cursus completus... Series graeca... Accurante J.P. Migne : Migne, J.-P. (Jacques-Paul), 1800-1875 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
If anyone is looking for a specific commentary, the full table of contents is found at the end of the book (the start of the book only lists the general sections, e.g. when the New Testament commentaries start, it's only the end of the book index that tells you exactly where in that section each one is), you can find that here:
Patrologiae cursus completus... Series graeca... Accurante J.P. Migne : Migne, J.-P. (Jacques-Paul), 1800-1875 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Those are on The Internet Archive. If someone should prefer the Google Books format, you can find the volume here:
Patrologiæ cursus completus [Series Græca]

Migne's edition includes both the original Greek and a Latin translation of the Greek (done by him), so if you happen to know Latin but not Greek, you can still read it.

Now, I noted that we have only fragments of the Greek. However, a few decades after Patrologia Graeca was published, full copies his commentaries on 10 of the Pauline epistles were discovered and published... in a Latin translation. These can be found, along with the applicable Greek fragments from those epistles, in these two volumes by Henry Barclay Swete:
Theodori episcopi Mopsuesteni : in epistolas B. Pauli commentarii : the Latin version with the Greek fragments : Theodorus, Bp. of Mopsuestia, ca. 428 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive (Volume 1, which has Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians)
Theodori episcopi Mopsuesteni : in epistolas B. Pauli commentarii : the Latin version with the Greek fragments : Theodorus, Bp. of Mopsuestia, ca. 428 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive (Volume 2, which has 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon)

So, if you want to read the full commentaries of the applicable epistles, you can find them at the above links, which are available in Latin (with fragments of the original Greek). For the other books of the New Testament, you'll have to settle for the many fragments of the commentaries that Migne provided, which are included both in the original Greek and Latin translations.

(to be clear: The full Latin translations, available in Swete's book, were done by someone in the 6th century, or around that period, and were simply being reproduced in the book. The Latin translations of the Greek fragments in Migne's edition were new ones done in the 19th century either by Migne or people working for him)

So probably not that useful to anyone who wants to read them in English, but if you want to read them online, those seem to be your options.

 

[Hawkins]

"Protestants" were in actuality "protesting Catholics" -- that is to say "Catholics protesting something". They were not trying to invent a new Bible or come up with a Bible. They thought they had one.

In the end, they rejected Apocrypha to be canonical, while Catholics' Bible has more books as a result.

 

[BobRyan]

In the end, they rejected Apocrypha to be canonical

Indeed they found that the Jews were correct not to include it in the OT and they also admitted that Christians did not write the OT.

 

[Andrewn]

3. The Protestant Bible did not simply invent it - the Jews already have it as the Hebrew Bible

You have a habit of attributing your own beliefs, or the beliefs of your sect, to all Protestants despite evidence to the contrary. You did this before in a discussion of the Holy Trinity. This is not a good habit. Your denomination did not exist during the Protestant Reformation and was only established after 1844 with many atypical beliefs.

the book of Enoch also appears to be heavily interpolated , edited, extended ...

The book of Enoch is not part of the Apocrypha, except in the Ethiopian Church. Like the great majority of Christians, I have strong reservations against it.

 

[Hawkins]

Indeed they found that the Jews were correct not to include it in the OT and they also admitted that Christians did not write the OT.

Yes. OT is a testimony of the Jews. The canonization belongs to them. NT is a testimony of the Apostles. Its canonization belongs to Christians.

 

[The Liturgist]

Indeed they found that the Jews were correct not to include it in the OT and they also admitted that Christians did not write the OT.

Ah no “they” didn’t, because as we have been over in this thread repeatedly, of the two largest Protestant denominations, the Anglicans and the Lutherans, the former continues to use the Deuterocanon and the latter also make use and do not regard it as incorrect.

Furthermore, while it is not claimed by anyone that Christians wrote the books of the Old Testament, it is the case that Christians alone posess editorial authority over it.

It is worth noting that the people disagreeing with you in this thread such as myself and @Andrewn are Protestants, not Roman Catholics. I would also note that the sole historical figure you have brought to bear in defense of your position is St. Jerome, who is quintessentially Roman Catholic, chiefly venerated within the Roman Catholic church (I believe the Eastern Orthodox do venerate him but not to the same extent).

 

[The Liturgist]

Yes. OT is a testimony of the Jews. The canonization belongs to them.

This again is not the case. The Jewish religion does not have that authority since the death of our Lord, and possibly for several years before that time, given a major theme in the New Testament concerns corruption of the Jewish leadership. This sentiment does not mean we should not be loving towards Jews, but the Christian religion is a completely different religion compared to modern Judaism, which in turn is very different from ancient Judaism (and indeed, if we look at the persecuted Christians of the Middle East, Ethiopia and India, they are in many places purely of Jewish descent).