One of the deuterocanonical books attests that the period that comprised the writings of the deuterocanonical texts had no prophets. Those years are referred to as "silent" and "inter-testate" for a reason: there were no prophets of God to write inspired material.
The Apocryphal books do not share many of the characteristics of the Canonical books: they are not prophetic, there is no supernatural confirmation of any of the apocryphal writers works, there is no predictive prophecy, there is no new Messianic truth revealed, they are not cited as authoritative by any prophetic book written after them, and they even acknowledge that there were no prophets in Israel at their time.
And they laid up the stones in the mountain of the temple in a convenient place, till there should come a prophet, and give answer concerning them. (1 Maccabees 4:46)
And there was a great tribulation in Israel, such as was not since the day, that there was no prophet seen in Israel. (1 Maccabees 9:27)
And that the Jews, and their priests, had consented that he should be their prince, and high priest for ever, till there should arise a faithful prophet. (1 Maccabees 14:41)
And that the Jews, and their priests, had consented that he should be their prince, and high priest for ever, till there should arise a faithful prophet. (1 Maccabees 9:27)
Neither Jews nor even early Catholics accepted them as inspired. Josephus explicitly rejected the Apocrypha, as did Jerome, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Athanasius.
When Jesus cited the scope of Scripture, it did not include the apocrypha, either, encompassing “... the blood of Abel [Genesis 4:8] to the blood of Zechariah [2 Chron. 24:20], who was killed between the altar and the house of God; yes, I tell you, it shall be charged against this generation (Luke 11:51; Matthew. 23:35). (Chronicles was the last book according to the arrangement of the Jewish Scriptures.)
The Dead Sea Scrolls do not contain commentaries on the Apocrypha as they do for the Jewish Old Testament books, and they do not cite the Apocrypha authoritatively as scripture.
The Roman Catholic Church did not officially canonize the Apocrypha until the Council of Trent (1546 AD). This was in part because the Apocrypha contained material which supported certain Catholic doctrines, such as purgatory, praying for the dead, and the treasury of merit.
Not one of them is in the Hebrew language, which was alone used by the inspired historians and poets of the Old Testament.
Not one of the writers lays any claim to inspiration. These books were never acknowledged as sacred Scriptures by the Jewish Church, and therefore were never sanctioned by our Lord.
They were not allowed a place among the sacred books, during the first four centuries of the Christian Church.
They contain fabulous statements, and statements which contradict not only the canonical Scriptures, but themselves; as when, in the two Books of Maccabees, Antiochus Epiphanes is made to die three different deaths in as many different places.
The Apocrypha inculcates doctrines at variance with the Bible, such as prayers for the dead and sinless perfection.
The apocrypha contains offensive materials unbecoming of God's authorship.
Josephus rejected the apocryphal books as inspired and this reflected Jewish thought at the time of Jesus
"From Artexerxes to our own time the complete history has been written but has not been deemed worthy of equal credit with the earlier records because of the failure of the exact succession of the prophets.
" ... "We have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine..."
(Flavius Josephus, Against Apion 1:8)The Manual of Discipline in the Dead Sea Scrolls rejected the apocrypha as inspired.The Council of Jamnia held the same view rejected the apocrypha as inspired.
They debated the canonicity of a few books (e.g., Ecclesiastes), but they changed nothing and never proclaimed themselves to be authoritative determiners of the Old Testament canon.
