@NEETzsche @caekislove The idea that Protestants changed the canon is ludicrous.

What happened is, there was already a distinction between protocanon and deuterocanon. When the humanist movement happened, we needed to decide how we were going to justify dogma based on the original Scriptures. Protestants decided that the protocanon can establish, and the deuterocanon (or apocrypha) can only inform it.

Roman Catholics also largely accepted this ancient distinction, which goes back to St Jerome, including Luther’s critics. But the Council of Trent, to set themselves against reformers, decided to abolish the distinction altogether, and call everything protocanonical.

However, this was not the case in the East. If you look in Eastern Orthodox catechisms, they will still make the same distinctions Protestants do. Their protocanonical list is still the 66 book canon, though the deuterocanon is still in lectionaries (as it sometimes is in Protestant lectionaries, as well.)

There’s a separate issue, which had to do with printing. Publishers, at a date well after the Reformation, decided it was prudent not to print the deuterocanon because it wasn’t as important, and then when Bible translation became an industry in its own rite, Protestant groups usually opted not to bother with the deuterocanon for the same reason, it’s just not an important use of resources.

Uneducated Roman Catholics will take these modern business decisions, and anachronistically attribute them to Luther. I disagree with those decisions, I don’t use Bibles without the apocrypha, but that’s not something that you can put on the Reformers. Luther did have his opinions on the legitimacy of certain books, which were wrong, but some of those he recanted, and the Lutheran tradition has never followed him on that point, nor has any Protestant tradition.

Thank u for coming to my micro-lecture.