I originally posted this as a Facebook Note in 2011. It has been edited from that posting for capitalization. LP
Posted by Jnorm on OrthodoxApologetics:
For those that don't know what the term "Deuterocanon" mean. It's the historical usage for what many Puritan Protestants and some secularists call "Apocrypha". These books weren't really called "Apocrypha" by most Christians in the past. It is true that some did call these books Apocrypha, but this is mostly seen in the west from the 5th century on. Before the time of Jerome these books were never called "Apocrypha".
The word "deuterocanon" simply means "secondary". Or the secondary order of books. The historical title for the other set of books is "protocanon". Which means, "primary", or the Primary order of books. Some Orthodox Scholars prefer not to use the term "Deuterocanon" because that is a western Roman Catholic term. But whatever the case, in varying degrees, the Church has always embraced at least some of these books as scripture.
So when did the nonbelieving Jews officially reject the "Deuterocanon"?
Well, in 135 A.D., Akiba ben Joseph was made head of the Academy of Jamnia. It was under his influence that the Jews "officially" rejected the Deutocanon.
He supported "Bar Kochba" by calling him the Jewish Messiah. The Christians refused to see him as the Messiah and thus the hatred for the Deutocanon and New Testament books. According to Wiki....and no....I don't really like Wiki, and I reject their cynicism in thinking Akiba didn't really support Bar Kochba in the rebellion.....but one thing they did include was his dislike for Christianity and the D.C.'s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akiba_ben_Joseph
As quoted from Wiki:
"He has, however, no objection to the private reading of the Apocrypha, as is evident from the fact that he himself makes frequent use of Ecclesiasticus (W. Bacher, Ag. Tan. i. 277; H. Grätz, Gnosticismus, p. 120).
Akiba stoutly defended, however, the canonicity of the Song of Songs, and Esther(Yad. iii.5, Meg. 7a). Grätz's statements (Shir ha-Shirim, p. 115, and Kohelet, p. 169) respecting Akiba's attitude toward the canonicity of the Song of Songs are misconceptions, as I.H. Weiss (Dor, ii. 97) has to some extent shown. To the same motive underlying his antagonism to the Apocrypha, namely, the desire to disarm Christians—especially Jewish Christians—who drew their "proofs" from the Apocrypha, must also be attributed his wish to emancipate the Jews of the Dispersion from the domination of the Septuagint, the errors and inaccuracies in which frequently distorted the true meaning of Scripture, and were even used as arguments against the Jews by the Christians."
And in Michuta's book he says:
"The first revolt(of 70 A.D.) was a national uprising; this second Revolt(around 135 A.D. or maybe 150 A.D.) would be a messianic movement.
By means of Akiba's work, a large number of jews joined in the rebellion. Even Samaritans and pagans joined Bar Kochba in his revolt. However, there was one Jewish sect which refused to join: that obstinate tribe known as Christians. The Christians, a majority of whom were still ethnically Jewish, were pressed to join in this life and death struggle with Rome, but they refused. To accept bar Kochba as Messiah, as Akiba insisted, would have been nothing short of Apostasy; and because of their refusal to do so, Christians were treated by the Jews as heretics and traitors. It is this same Rabbi Akiba who is the very first writer to explicity and forthrightly reject the inspiration of both the Christian New Testament and the books of the Deuterocanon. Akiba's declaration is found in Tosefta Yahayim 2:13 which reads;
"The Gospel and heretical books do not defile the hands. The books of Ben Sira and all other books written from then on, do not defile the hands."
Two outstanding points must be drawn from this impious declaration: first, it must have been common knowledge even at this early date that the Christians accepted the Deutercanon and used it as Scripture (along with the Gospels), otherwise, there would have been no need to rule against them; secondly that at least some Jews must also have shared that acceptance, otherwise Akiba's decree would have been superfluous."
Here we have a hostile witness confirming through his actions that the earliest Christians accepted both the Gospels and the Deuterocanon as inspired and sacred Scripture. It was in this watershed event - the naming of the false Messiah Bar Kochba and the anathematizing of those who rejected him- which occasioned the very first unquestionable rejection of the Deuteros by a single, widely recognized Jewish authority. It was under Akiba's tenure that a single textual tradition of the Old Testament was first adopted; before this time (as we have shown) a variety of different texts were in use among the Jews. It was here, sometime in the middle of the second Christian century, that Judaism first adopted an official normative text(i.e. the Masoretic Text or the MT).
pages 68-70 from the book "Why Catholic Bibles are Bigger: the untold Story of the lost books of the Protestant Bible" by Gary G. Michuta
A lot of christians in America don't know this particular theory or interpretation of history. I know I didn't until a few years ago. Before then I was told that a Jewish rabbinical council of Jamnia of either 70 A.D. or 90 A.D. rejected these books. But it seems as if officially such a thing probably didn't happen until some decades later. The truth is, the Jews didn't have church councils in the way that Christians did. So there was never really a Jewish council of Jamnia. Jamnia was a Jewish school. A type of rabbinical Academy, so it would be more accurate to call it, the Academy of Jamnia. The first person to call it a "synod" was the Jewish historian H. Graetz(1817-1891). Some Christians who read his work speculated it was a Jewish version of a Christian church council.
And this is where the whole "council of Jamnia of 90 A.D." comes from. It comes from speculation. The sources that we do have about that time never mentions anything about any books being taken out of a canon. Most of the debates was around the Book of Ecclesiastes and maybe the Song of Songs. This Jamnia assembly didn't lay down the limits of the Old Testament canon.
Therefore, in regards to Jamnia, it is more accurate to point to what happened around 135 A.D. for this is when the Jamnia rabbinical school officially rejected not only the Deuteros, but also the Christian Gospels.
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