Why is it that there is no direct quote from any of these vast Apocryha in the whole NT? Surely if these were so valuable as the RCC claims, when the apostles or Jesus prefaced a remark with the words "It is written", it would have been followed with direct quotes from Sirach, Judith, Maccabees, Bel and the Dragon, or the like. But there are no direct quotes at all from these books and your indirects are a true stretch of the imagination.
And yet whole parts of the Hebrew OT are found throughout the NT, in most cases verbatim -- word for word. And yet at the time of the writing of the NT, the Hebrew of the OT had not been translated into Greek as yet, except in some isolated cases by unofficial unknowns.
The absence of direct quotes, even though these Apocrypha were originally written in the Greek language already, is a testimony against them -- and against those who still 2000 years later think that they are "inspired". If they don't know inspiration from lack of inspiration, they don't know the Word of God.
It wasn't that these books did not have things in them that were not valuable or true or in line with God's Word, but that included with truth was error -- in some cases, theological, historical, and geographical. The presence of error alongside truth made these books unacceptable to the Jews and the Christian Church, but acceptable to those who did not mind mixing truth with error in their doctrines and in their churches.
Read these again (here are some I picked at random) and then compare them to the closest passages that I could find in the Protestant OT (go to www.biblegateway.com to search for yourself):
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Read through all of Hebrews 11. You will then see that Chapter 11 is a recapitulation of historical events recorded in the Bible, except for "Others [women] were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection." No such events are recorded in the Pentateuch or protocanonical books. But in 2 Maccabees 6-7 we see the story of a mother who sees seven of her sons tortured. The king offers to release her sons if they will agree to disobey God. The mother urges them to be faithful and tells them that they will all be reunited in Heaven some day. Ultimately they are all put to death.
Wis. 5:17-20
He shall take his zeal for armor and he shall arm creation to requite the enemy; He shall don justice for a breastplate and shall wear sure judgment for a helmet; He shall take invincible rectitude as a shield and whet his sudden anger for a sword, And the universe shall war with him against the foolhardy.
Eph. 6:13-17
Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Closest passage in the Protestant OT:
Isaiah 59:17
He put on righteousness as his breastplate, and the helmet of salvation on his head; he put on the garments of vengeance and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak.
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Wisdom 15:7
For truly the potter, laboriously working the soft earth, molds for our service each several article: Both the vessels that serve for clean purposes and their opposites, all alike; As to what shall be the use of each vessel of either class the worker in clay is the judge.
Rom. 9:21
Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?
Closest passage in the rest of the Old Testament (see search results here:
Isaiah 45:9
"Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, 'What are you making?' Does your work say, 'He has no hands'?
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It's hard to imagine that the writer of Romans 1:18-25 was unfamiliar with Wisdom 13:1-10
Wis. 13:1-10
For all men were by nature foolish who were in ignorance of God, and who from the good things seen did not succeed in knowing him who is, and from studying the works did not discern the artisan; But either fire, or wind, or the swift air, or the circuit of the stars, or the mighty water, or the luminaries of heaven, the governors of the world, they considered gods. Now if out of joy in their beauty they thought them gods, let them know how far more excellent is the Lord than these; for the original source of beauty fashioned them. Or if they were struck by their might and energy, let them from these things realize how much more powerful is he who made them. For from the greatness and the beauty of created things their original author, by analogy, is seen. But yet, for these the blame is less; For they indeed have gone astray perhaps, though they seek God and wish to find him. For they search busily among his works, but are distracted by what they see, because the things seen are fair. But again, not even these are pardonable. For if they so far succeeded in knowledge that they could speculate about the world, how did they not more quickly find its LORD? But doomed are they, and in dead things are their hopes, who termed gods things made by human hands: Gold and silver, the product of art, and likenesses of beasts, or useless stone, the work of an ancient hand.
Rom 1:18-25
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen.
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Wisdom, iii, 5, 6
Chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed, because God tried them and found them worthy of himself. As gold in the furnace, he proved them, and as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself.
I Peter, i, 6, 7
In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Closest passage in protocanonicals:
Zechariah 13:8-9 In the whole land," declares the LORD , "two-thirds will be struck down and perish; yet one-third will be left in it. This third I will bring into the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on my name and I will answer them; I will say, 'They are my people,' and they will say, 'The LORD is our God.' "
The passage in Zechariah is close but doesn't contain a parallel to:
"In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials."
Although the following line from Wisdom does:
"Chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed,"
Is this the best connection you can come up with between the Apocrypha and the NT?
I can pick some more at random and compare them. But the more I look, the stronger the parallels look to be between these NT passages and the passages in the Deuterocanonicals.
Regardless, if this doesn't impress you, there's also the fact that 300 of the 350 references to the Old Testament in the New Testament are from the Septuagint (rather than from the "Protestant" Palestinian OT) which generally contained the Deuterocanonical books of the Bible. (See link to Catholic Encyclopedia entry regarding the Old Testament Canon in the original post)
Why is it that there is no direct quote from any of these vast Apocryha in the whole NT?
There are no direct quotes from several books in the "Protestant" OT in the NT.
Surely if these were so valuable as the RCC claims, when the apostles or Jesus prefaced a remark with the words "It is written", it would have been followed with direct quotes from Sirach, Judith, Maccabees, Bel and the Dragon, or the like. But there are no direct quotes at all from these books and your indirects are a true stretch of the imagination.
Again, there are no direct quotes from several books in the "Protestant" OT in the NT.
And yet whole parts of the Hebrew OT are found throughout the NT, in most cases verbatim -- word for word. And yet at the time of the writing of the NT, the Hebrew of the OT had not been translated into Greek as yet, except in some isolated cases by unofficial unknowns.
The ancient Greek Old Testament known as the Septuagint was the vehicle which conveyed these additional Scriptures into the Catholic Church. The Septuagint version was the Bible of the Greek-speaking, or Hellenist, Jews, whose intellectual and literary centre was Alexandria (see SEPTUAGINT). The oldest extant copies date from the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, and were therefore made by Christian hands; nevertheless scholars generally admit that these faithfully represent the Old Testament as it was current among the Hellenist or Alexandrian Jews in the age immediately preceding Christ. These venerable manuscripts of the Septuagint vary somewhat in their content outside the Palestinian Canon, showing that in Alexandrian-Jewish circles the number of admissible extra books was not sharply determined either by tradition or by authority. However, aside from the absence of Machabees from the Codex Vaticanus (the very oldest copy of the Greek Old Testament), all the entire manuscripts contain all the deutero writings; where the manuscript Septuagints differ from one another, with the exception noted, it is in a certain excess above the deuterocanonical books. It is a significant fact that in all these Alexandrian Bibles the traditional Hebrew order is broken up by the interspersion of the additional literature among the other books, outside the law, thus asserting for the extra writings a substantial equality of rank and privilege...It wasn't that these books did not have things in them that were not valuable or true or in line with God's Word, but that included with truth was error -- in some cases, theological, historical, and geographical. The presence of error alongside truth made these books unacceptable to the Jews and the Christian Church, but acceptable to those who did not mind mixing truth with error in their doctrines and in their churches.This factor should be considered in weighing a certain argument. A large number of Catholic authorities see a canonization of the deuteros in a supposed wholesale adoption and approval, by the Apostles, of the Greek, and therefore larger, Old Testament The argument is not without a certain force; the New Testament undoubtedly shows a preference for the Septuagint; out of the 350 texts from the Old Testament, 300 favour the language of the Greek version rather than that of the Hebrew.
Then why are most OT quotes from the Septuagint (which generally included the Deuterocanonical books)?