re deuterocanonicals esp sirach in article may athos rutgers edu db n andrew cmu edu d andrew byler writes michael siemon writes protestants love to play up jerome for all he is worth yes but no more than he is worth seriously jerome is merely and grandly another christian witness to be taken for what he can tell us he is one in the community of saints you seem to wish for a greater polarization and dichotomy between catholic and protestant thought than seems to me from a historical perspective to be valid to be sure rome rejects some significant aspects of protestant thought just as vehemently as protestants reject some significant aspects of roman thought other than some peoplw who apparently try to embody the greatest extreme of this rejection on either side there is not quite so vast a gulf fixed as casual observers seem to assume ecumenical consultations between rome and the lutherans as well as those between rome and the anglican communion to which i belong show very nearly complete convergence on understanding the basic theological issues the sticking points tend to be ecclesiology and church polity thus for example as you go on to say they should remeber that after the decree of pope st damsus i many of us do not regard a papal decretal as having any necessary as opposed to political significance sometimes it will sometimes it won t you misread me if you think that my communion at least throws out the deuterocanonical books nor do i think you should overstress the sense in which the more reformed may do so again why must the church of jesus christ adopt the canon of the unbelieving jews drawn up in jamnia in ad in countering the christian use of the septuagint i seriously suggest you rethink what you are saying here it verges on and could be taken as anti semitic in the worst sense the unbelieving jews were according to what i understand as a christian the chosen people of god and the recipients of his pre incarnational revelation i think they have some say in the matter the javneh meeting should not be over interpreted a recent magisterial study titled mikra i don t have more citation information on hand sorry produced primarily from the background of christian rather than specifically jewish scholarship suggests strongly that the javneh meeting mostly resolved a lingering question where in practice the canon had long been fixed on the basis of the scrolls that were kept in the temple and thereby made the hands unclean when used the list of sacred books that may be drawn up from josephus and other pre yavneh sources correspond plus or minus one book if i rememeber the chapter correctly to the current jewish canon of tanakh all of this is not to throw out the deuterocanonicals what by the way is your position about the books the greeks accept and rome does not just to observe that the issue is complex and simply binary judgment does not do it justice andy byler michael l siemon i say you are gods sons of the mls panix com most high all of you nevertheless or you shall die like men and fall mls ulysses att com like any prince psalm
