Certainly a number of the early Fathers, especially St. Jerome, expressly
rejected the deuterocanonical books as canonical Scripture. The same may
be said for St. Gregory the Great. This is what they said respectively:
“Just as the Church reads Judith and Tobias and the Books of
Maccabees, but does not accept them as belonging among the
canonical Scriptures, so too let her read these two volumes for the
edification of the people but not for the purpose of confirming the
authority of the Church’s teachings.”
8
“…we are not acting irregularly, if from the books, though not
canonical, yet brought out for the edification of the Church, we bring
forth testimony. Thus Eleazar in the battle smote and brought down
an elephant, but fell under the very beast that he killed.”
9
First, it must be recognized that no Father is the Church or infallible in all
he says. Pope St. Gregory the Great did not promulgate the above quotation
as Church teaching, but as a private work, which he had begun before being
elected Bishop of Rome. For many centuries, it remained open to all and
sundry to express private opinions about the deuterocanonicals. The
overwhelming majority of early Christian writers quoted from them as
inspired Scripture without question, as, for example: the author of the
Didache; St. Clement I, author of the Epistle of Barnabas; the author of
The Shepherd of Hermas; St. Polycarp of Smyrna; Athenagoras of Athens;
St. Irenaeus of Lyons; St. Clement of Alexandria; Tertullian; St. Hippolytus
of Rome; Origen; St. Cyprian of Carthage; Dionysius of Alexandria and St.
Augustine of Hippo. Other Fathers did not accept the deuterocanonicals as
canonical but considered them ecclesiastical, and useful for edification and
instruction in doctrine. These included Sts. Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem,
Basil, Gregory Nazianzus and Epiphanius of Salamis. Sts. Jerome and Pope
St. Gregory the Great fall into this latter category. St. Jerome calls Judith
and deutero-Esther ‘holy books’. Later Doctors and Saints also questioned
the canonicity of the deuterocanon. Those who favored their inclusion
included Gratian, St. Stephen Harding, Stephen Langton, St. Bonaventure,
St. Albert the Great, St Thomas Aquinas; those against included Hugh of
St. Victor, Nicholas of Lyra, Cardinal Ximenes and Cardinal Cajetan.
8
St. Jerome, On the Three Solomonic Books, Preface (c. 398 AD).
9
Pope St. Gregory the Great, Moral Teachings Drawn from Job, Bk 19, 34 (inter
578-595 AD).
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