books of earlier date, because there has not been an exact succession
of prophets.”²
From these last words, it is evident that Josephus required a prophet to
appear and canonize the deuterocanonical books in the same way other
prophets in the past had done for the protocanonical books. The question at
the time of his writing was still open. Unbeknowns to Josephus, this
prophet was to be Christ speaking through His Church.
Nevertheless, Josephus makes it clear that the deuterocanonical writings
enjoyed great credit among the Jews as sacred literature:
“But what credence we have given to all those books of our own
nation is evident from our conduct; for, though so long a time has
passed, no one has ever been so bold as to add anything to them
whatsoever. But all Jews are instinctively led, from the moment of
their birth, to believe that these books contain divine oracles and to
abide by them and, if need be, gladly to die for them.”³
To emphasize this point, Josephus says that in the composition of his
Jewish Antiquities he used exclusively “sacred writings,” yet he frequently
quotes 1 Maccabees and the deutero fragments of Esther. Furthermore, the
Talmud refers to Baruch as a ‘prophetic book;’ to Wisdom as a book
‘written by Solomon;’ and to the book of Sirach in quotation.
In addition––with the exception of Wisdom, 2 Maccabees and possibly
Tobit––all the other parts of the deuterocanon were previously written in
Hebrew. This points to Palestine as the place, not only whence the texts
originated, but whence the Alexandrian Jews received their belief in their
inspiration and divine character. This is why there are no records of any
schism or controversy on the subject between the Palestinian and
Alexandrian Jews.
For Jews today, no final determination of the Old Testament was made
until the so-called Council of Jamnia (Javnah) in 90 AD. The Jews in this
gathering (and again in 118 AD), seeking to build a new focal point for
their religious beliefs after the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 AD,
and in an attempt to counter the early Christians who quoted the Septuagint
2
Contra Apion., I, 8.
3
Ibid.
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