Who took themselves out [of Catholicism?]? Your Pope got together with the churches that still agreed with him and voted the rest out.
What? What Pope? Got together with what churches? And "voted" the rest out? When? Who voted and what was the vote?
"Nope, those books[the deuterocanonicals] were never in the canon of inspired literature before the Reformation, so there was nothing to be subtracted."
Can you find me a church before, say, 1500 AD that had a 66-book canon? A church, a synod, a council, a bishop, a scholar, anybody? Even Jerome, whose opinion was strongly influenced by the Jewish scholars who excluded the deuterocanonicals (as well as the entire New Testament!!) did not substitute his individual opinion, or the AD Jews' rabbinical opinions, for the actual practice of the churches:
Said Jerome: "What sin have I committed if I followed the judgment of the churches? But he who brings charges against me for relating the objections that the Hebrews are wont to raise against the Story of Susanna, the Song of the Three Children, and the story of Bel and the Dragon, which are not found in the Hebrew volume, proves that he is just a foolish sycophant. For I was not relating my own personal views, but rather the remarks that they [the Jews] are wont to make against us. (Against Rufinus, 11:33 [AD 402]).
So Jerome acknowledged the principle by which the canon would be settled —the judgment of the Church,what was actually used liturgically in the churches, rather than his own judgment or the judgment of Jews who had rejected Christ.
Of course, it's all more complicated than either of us has yet described. St. Jerome translated Tobias and Judith from Chaldean, parts of Esther and Daniel from Greek. Baruch, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus and the Maccabees he left unchanged from an early Latin version of the Scriptures (the Old Testament which was translated from the Septuagint, and was also called the Italic version).. The Psalms he did translate from Hebrew, but this translation was not popular, and the Clementine Vulgate contains the Old Latin translation corrected by St. Jerome according to the Septuagint.
As for his translation from the Hebrew. A strong argument for favoring the Vulgate over the Masoretic Text seems to me that it is based on pre-Masoretic Hebrew texts. The Vulgate is almost 600 years older than the Masoretic Text.
It's a little equivocal to speak of "the" "Hebrew Canon" (as if there were just one Hebrew Canon) when the Greek LXX, which was translated from the Hebrew --- as was confirmed by the Dead Sea Scrolls --- was translated from an OLDER Hebrew text than the Masoretic.
St Justin Martyr (AD 100 – 165) supports the Septuagint and claims that the Jews altered their Scriptures to eliminate obvious prophecies of Christ: for instance, the still-debated question of "a virgin shall bear a son" vs. "a young woman shall bear a son" in Isaiah.
“What? What Pope?”
Well, it was 3 popes actually, since the entire process took a few decades. Paul III, Julius III, and Pius IV.
“Got together with what churches?”
The ones who opposed the Reformation, most representatives were from Italy and Spain. Those who supported the Reformation were invited to attend, but refused the right to vote.
“And “voted” the rest out? When? Who voted and what was the vote?”
In 1563, at the conclusion of the Council of Trent. 255 attendees (of those who were allowed to vote of course) declared the Protestants heretics.
“So Jerome acknowledged the principle by which the canon would be settled —the judgment of the Church,what was actually used liturgically in the churches, rather than his own judgment or the judgment of Jews who had rejected Christ.”
Yet, there is a big difference between the “judgement of the churches” and “judgement of the Church”. The churches used various arrangements of books, as there was no agreed upon Old Testament canon at that point. So, when he translated the Vulgate, he included all the books that were commonly in use by various churches, with his disclaimer that some of these books were not to be taken as authoritative for spiritual doctrine. He did not have, or declare, a “judgement of the Church” - say, an official proclamation from an ecumenical council - that told him those books were canonical for the whole Church.
Just because Jerome included them in the Vulgate tells us nothing of their canonicity, even though the Pope authorized that translation. For example, there were other works included in the Vulgate that nobody today, or in Jerome’s day believed to be inspired, such as the Epistle to the Laodicians. Jerome said of that work, “it is rejected by everyone” - so much for “judgement of the churches”!
“It’s a little equivocal to speak of “the” “Hebrew Canon” (as if there were just one Hebrew Canon) when the Greek LXX, which was translated from the Hebrew -— as was confirmed by the Dead Sea Scrolls -— was translated from an OLDER Hebrew text than the Masoretic.
St Justin Martyr (AD 100 – 165) supports the Septuagint and claims that the Jews altered their Scriptures to eliminate obvious prophecies of Christ: for instance, the still-debated question of “a virgin shall bear a son” vs. “a young woman shall bear a son” in Isaiah.”
Well, if you don’t like the phrase “Hebrew Canon”, let’s just say “Hebrew Scriptures”. Whether the Jews have altered the text they currently use from the ancient form or not, at least they have a genuine provenance for their documents from ancient Hebrew manuscripts, unlike the Apocrypha.
That’s not a small point either. We know that the last prophets wrote around the 5th century BC, and that Hebrew was still the only language being used in sacred documents at that time. Even after Aramaic, then Greek became the common languages of everyday life, Hebrew was retained as the only sacred language for liturgy. If these documents were composed originally in Greek, then that puts them at a very late date, probably centuries after the last prophets of Israel.