Question: St Jerome was persuaded,
against his original inclination, to include the deuterocanonicals in his
Vulgate edition of the Scriptures. What are your comments?
Answer: True, yet he classed the Apocrypha in a separated
category. He differentiated between the canonical books and ecclesiastical
books, which he did not recognize as authoritative Scripture. This is
admitted by the modern Catholic church:
“St. Jerome distinguished between canonical books and ecclesiastical
books. The latter he judged were circulated by the Church as good
spiritual reading but were not recognized as authoritative Scripture. The
situation remained unclear in the ensuing centuries...For example, John of
Damascus, Gregory the Great, Walafrid, Nicolas of Lyra and Tostado
continued to doubt the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books. According
to Catholic doctrine, the proximate criterion of the biblical canon is the
infallible decision of the Church. This decision was not given until
rather late in the history of the Church at the Council of Trent. The
Council of Trent definitively settled the matter of the Old Testament
Canon. That this had not been done previously is apparent from the
uncertainty that persisted up to the time of Trent” (The New Catholic
Encyclopedia, The Canon).
The practice of the Church up to the time of the Reformation was to
follow the judgment of Jerome who rejected the Old Testament apocrypha on
the grounds that these books were never part of the Jewish canon. These
were permissible to be read in the churches for the purposes of
edification but were never considered authoritative for establishing
doctrine. The Protestants did nothing new when they rejected the apocrypha
as authoritative Scripture. It was the Roman church that rejected this
tradition and ‘canonized’ the ecclesiastical books.
Please read the following explanation from the Roman Catholic Cardinal
Cajetan, a contemporary of Martin Luther:
"Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the
Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of
Maccabees) are counted by St. Jerome out of the canonical books, and are
placed amongst the apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecciesiasticus, as
is plain from the Protogus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw
scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils
or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words
as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of
Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops
Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the
canon of the Bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a
rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical,
that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as
being received and authorised in the canon of the Bible for that
purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clearly
through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial
council of Carthage." (Cardinal Cajetan, "Commentary on all
the Authentic Historical Books of the Old Testament," cited by
William Whitaker in "A Disputation on Holy Scripture," Cambridge: Parker
Society (1849), p. 424)
The apocrypha are useful for edification, but canonical in the sense
that they are the rule for confirming matters of faith, no!