See: http://bible.org/article/content-and-extent-old-testament-canon
or here: http://department.monm.edu/classics/Speel_Festschrift/sundbergJr.htm
Consider this:
“Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St. Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed amongst the apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecciesiasticus, as is plain from the Protogus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the Bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the Bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clearly through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage.” (Cardinal Cajetan, “Commentary on all the Authentic Historical Books of the Old Testament,” cited by William Whitaker in “A Disputation on Holy Scripture,” Cambridge: Parker Society (1849), p. 424)
Also see: http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2006/06/guest-blogdid-jerome-change-his-mind.html
Now, you claim “Martin Luther, an inveterate slanderer, labelled those books, “apocrypha,” to confuse them with another category of Christian writings which had been called apocrypha since the dawn of the Church.”
Were you aware that the term Deutero-Cathonical was coined in the late 1500s? They had been called Apocryphal for a thousand years...was Luther supposed to invent Deuterocanonical for you, so he could call them something else?
Your history is wrong.
Yes, the term Deuterocanonicals is fairly modern. No, they weren’t called “apocrypha;” they were called “holy scripture.” The term “deuterocanonicals” was invented to describe the books slanderously, diabolically and deceitfully called, “apocrypha” by Martin Luther, without surrendering to his slander and deceit. Incidentally, the term also includes the Book of Revelations, which Luther declared that no loving God could ever have inspired, Hebrews which he called “an epistle of straw,” James, which he called a “diabolical invention,” 2 and 3 Peter, and 1 and 2 John.
Why on earth would you cite Whittaker as a source for Cardinal Catejan as a source for Jerome, when you can read Jerome’s own words?
Examine Catejan’s words again. Can you picture someone defending the orthodoxy of the Catholic faith counseling advising, “For the words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome.”
As for your Sundberg article: It’s a fascination mix of admissions (the centrality of the Septuagint to early Christianity) and falsehoods (the absence of the deuterocanonicals from the Qumran.) His description of the contents of the Qumran read like what he’d wish the Qumran included. Five of the Seven dueterocanonicals are in the Qumran scripture. The book of Esther is entirely absent. (So much for the notion that the canon closed before the dueterocanonicals were recorded.) Also, the Book of Daniel, as it appears in the Qumran in fact does include the passages, “Bel and the Dragon” and “Susanna.” It does NOT however, include the last chapter, suggesting the compilation of Daniel’s stories was still a work in progress. (Some have read my assertion as denying the prophetic origin of Daniel, which is ridiculous, since the book is not told in the first-person voice.)