No, no, no. YOU are the one insisting that some never-identified mysterious corpus of books was put IN the Bible, declared to be inerrant, fully/equally canonical, divinely-inscripturated words of God by some Ruling Body of Christianity. You and Nathan just refuse to name this Ruling Body or meeting or quote the official declaration (or even what books you are talking about....). YOU are the ones claiming that some never-identified person gathered up all pew bibles and ripped "them" (?) out but you won't state who did that and when. YOU are the ones claiming that some mysterious unidentfied Body has forbidden publishing houses from including the mysterious "them" from tomes with "BIBLE" written on the cover. YOU are the ones claiming that if a book contains something YOU find helpful, thus it IS the inerrant, fully/equally canonical, divinely-inscripturated words of God that the Ruling Body of Christianity officially declared so (but you won't say what or where or when).
Friend, NO ONE is telling ANYONE what they may or may not read in this regard. NO ONE is telling ANY publishing house what they may or may not put in tomes with "BIBLE" on the cover. Millions of books contain helpful information.... MILLIONS of them, there's no reason to believe ERGO they all must be Scripture and legally required to be in all Bibles.
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First off it WAS the body of early Christians who without a doubt gave us the OT Scripture which included Maccabees, no declaration was needed as you can find that they quote from the Apocrypha over 300 times and often even reiterating "for the scripture says" or "The Lord has spoken" before quoting the common Apocrypha set without any distinction from the rest of the OT scripture.
Secondly there are many players in "sweeping up the books from the pews", the real question is their motive.
Jerome had befriended unbelievers who if they hadn't have influenced Jerome YOU wouldn't have a dog for the fight, the controversy began when Jerome accepted a canon designed to suit unbelieving Jews and imposed it on the Church.
This broke the scriptural tradition for the OT, none of the books had ever caused a protest that they be removed for neither the Jews before Christ nor for the early Church.
Sooner or a later there came a man who struggled immensely with Scripture, even to the point of having complete psychotic meltdowns and delusional bouts with Satan and God until he finally mustard up the guts to stick it to the bully Catholic system that kept him oppressed for so long. Hey im not judging him at all, I had that exact torture including the psychosis until I picked up the good book and read it for what it's worth, yeah my Catholic upbringing was found to be nothing more than force fed lie one after the other.
There were times when I began reading something in the scripture that aroused my anger to where I would throw the book across the room and refuse to accept it... I imagine Luther got rather frustrated with the book of James since he concluded that it couldn't have been James the Apostle, im just glad protestants know how to harmonize James with Paul.. but then he had a beef with Revelation teaching that all judgment of men will be based on their works.. So when you compare his belief that James was not really James the Apostle with his belief that 1 Maccabees should be included in Holy Scripture but 2 Maccabees probably not (so lets the throw the baby out with the tub water) you can see how his opinions on what is and isn't scripture are purely HIS personal opinions as he points are very specific and aren't tethered to the opinions of the Jews solely.
Luther didn't due all too much concerning the "ripping away of books" as all including him still had them in their Bible, just now the books Jerome deemed as apocrypha were gathered and segregated into its own section..
Protestants settled in America, and built their churches and preached scripture in their churches, I believe it was originally the protestants who created the numbering system of chapters, passages and verses.
They aslo created quick reference marginal notes which the printing press appropriated, and indeed quick references to the Apocrypha section was no exception, they were using them IN church! Rifinus designated 3 groups, one is canon which is the Jewish canon, a second is Apocrypha which were the NT Apocrypha better known as the "Apocalyptic" books ie the "Apocalypse of Peter" they were strictly forbidden inside the churcnes... the third are the ecclesiastical books which are allowed to be read in the church just as long as its understood that they are outside the rule of basing any doctrines off of... these he mentions are the books of Maccabees, Tobit, Wisdom, etc....
So you see the protestants understood it was okay to read the ecclesiastical books such as 2 Maccabees in the church and preach from it.. it was not understood as "uninspired" to them, the canon just meant they were moat important since they contain doctrine!
The mam behind the curtain are the 19th century bible societies that wanted to cut down the costs of printing by ripping out the Apocrypha books, which they succeeded in doing by 1816.
So today you have to go to a Catholic book store if you want to purchase a Bible with the Apocrypha, but it's really the misunderstanding between "Apocrypha" and "Apocalyptic" that got everyone all tribal about it.
Josiah words change, anything "read" in church is inspired by God, all of the attendees who open of their hymnal are singing God inspired songs, they just aren't for doctrine, they are more so the observance of doctrine, in this manner the traditional inspired Scriptures ie Tobit, Maccabees etc ARE divine Scripture to be read in Churches but not for creating doctrine since there has been nothing new in the OT worthy of creating a new Christian doctrine out of! Do you recall when I asked what doctrines based on the OT has Christianity discovered and taught?
I got one answer, tithing, which didn't even evolve money donations in OT times.
As for what this all means today, the Catholic Bible saved my life because it's the only one my family had and I really really needed answers fast, im sure the scriptures the first Christians had laying around was very very special and divine and handed to them by God on a silver plater
