letters such as the Epistles of Barnabas and Clement, among others, as
scriptural. The oldest texts listing all of the Old Testament books date back
only to the 4th century AD.
The initial objection against the deuterocanonical books is that they were
not part of the Hebrew Old Testament used by Christ and the Apostles.
Such a theory, however, relies on the incorrect notion that there was a fixed
Old Testament canon known to all the Jews by this time. From Moses until
the coming of Christ, divine revelation was communicated to the Jewish
people through one of three ways: (i) the High Priests; (ii) prophets; or (iii)
special men chosen by God to decide important matters in His name. Of
these three, the most common were the prophets. Their extraordinary
vocation, sanctity of life, and miraculous interventions in their favor
testified to the divine origin of their public missions. Their testimony that a
certain book was inspired was therefore a sure certification that it should be
accepted as coming from God.
There are various theories as to when the Jews closed their Old Testament
canon. One is that the Old Testament was closed once and for all by Ezra
(400 BC). This is a view that was held by some of the Fathers and many
Protestants. Such a view, however, runs into a number of difficulties. For
example, the second book of Ezra contains genealogies of the High Priests
continuing 150 years after the death of Ezra. In the same book is a list of
the descendants of King David traced down to the sixth generation after
Zerobabel, that is, down to about 300 BC. The existence of these
genealogies is proof enough that the Old Testament canon remained open
at least 150 years after Ezra’s death.
In fact, the Old Testament canon was still in a state of flux in the time of
Christ. Both the Sadducees and Samaritans, for example, accepted only the
first five books of Moses as inspired and canonical. The great Jewish
historian, Josephus Flavius, provides one important hint as to why
uncertainty still surrounded the Old Testament canon so late in its history:
“From the time of Artaxerxes to our own time, our history has been
written down very particularly (accurately and in detail), but these
books have not been considered worthy of the same credit as the
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