re deuterocanonicals esp sirach what we call today the old testament was being written up to approx imately bce according to most modern scholars aside from the book of daniel the whole ot predates alexander the great these books were written predominantly in hebrew there were also other books being written at about this time and later by greek speaking or hellenistic jews these books are those which are reckoned by many denominations as apocrypha before the closing of the writings the third part of what is today called the canon all of the books were in use by jews of the day however there were those who reckoned based on zech that prophecy had ceased this faction maintained that there were no true prophets in their day they also maintained that literature of a prophetic character could not be genuine teachings from god by the time of c ce another faction had entered the mess christians had come in claiming that their writings were also suitable to be read in synagogues and used for worship therefore the palestinian jewish leaders got together and stated that the books written from the time of ben sira sirach onward were not sacred writings they justified this from zech in particular they said the writings of the christians called heretics were not inspired at about ce they codified things further by closing the canon in somewhat of an official sense at the council of jamnia a few books ecclesi astes song of songs esther made it in after that date but these were those which had been written prior to the official cut off point the time of ben sira for inclusion that they had established in order to keep out the christian and hellenistic writings jerome excluded the apocrypha because they were not in use by jews of his day and because they were except for sirach not found in hebrew in his time his criterion for separating them from the other pre christian writings was not based on inspiration there is plenty more to say but i do not have time the passage you quote concerns the book rev in which it is found frank d
