I recently encountered the following from a Roman Catholic on a friend’s facebook discussion about Sola Scriptura:
Such claims are common among many misinformed Catholic apologists; however, such the antiquity of the Tridentine canon, that dogmatically formulated by the Roman church in April 1546 which is viewed as “infallible” does not have its basis in the earlier councils (e.g., Carthage; Rome; Hippo) and the LXX.
With respect to the LXX, various copies of the LXX, while sometimes containing some of the Apocrypha (Deutero-Canon), often omits other books of the Apocrypha as well as containing volumes that both Catholics and non-Catholics reject.
Furthermore, the recension of books accepted in the earlier councils and synods differ from that of Trent, most notably on the issue of 1 Esdras. As William Webster noted:
The canon of the North African Councils differed from that decreed by the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century on one important. Hippo and Carthage stated that 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras were canonical, referring to the Septuagint version of 1 and 2 Esdras, the Bible their Latin version was based upon. In that version, 1 Esdras was the apocryphal additions to Ezra and Nehemiah which they combined into one book. This was 2 Esdras in the Septuagint version. It was Jerome (in his Latin Vulgate) who separated Ezra and Nehemiah into two books, calling them 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras respectively. This became standard for the Vulgate and the basis upon which Trent declared the Septuagint 1 Esdras to be noncanonical. 1 Esdras in the in the Septuagint then became 3 Esdras in the Vulgate... Augustine quoted from the book of III Esdras (I Esdras in the Septuagint) in his work The City of God. Thus, when the Council of Carthage gave its list of canonical books for the Old Testament it followed the Septuagint translation. In referring to Esdras as comprising two books they were referring to I and II Esdras of the Septuagint. And when Carthage sent these decrees to Rome for confirmation, it was these books which were confirmed as canonical. Innocent I affirmed this in his letter to Exuperius and they were later included in the decrees of Popes Gelasius and Hormisdas...This contradicts the decree passed by Trent which followed Jerome in assigning I and II Esdras to the canonical Hebrew books of Ezra and Nehemiah respectively. Therefore, Trent declared uncanonical what the Council of Carthage and the bishops of Rome, in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, declared to be canonical. (William Webster, The Old Testament Canon And The Apocrypha [Battle Ground, Mich.: Christian Resources, 2001], 48-50)
Gary Michuta, in his 2007 book, Why Catholic Bibles are Bigger: The Untold Story of the Lost Books of the Protestant Bible (Port Huron, Mich.: The Grotto Press, 2007), simply argues that the council Fathers of Trent “passed over” the issue of LXX 1 Esdras, as he did in his 2004 debate on the Apocrypha with James R. White (the vote was 42 to 3 at Trent on this issue). So, in the eyes of Michuta and other Catholics, there could indeed be one book that is inspired by God but is not part of Trent’s infallible, binding, unchanging decree from 1546(!) So much for the claim that one has infallible certainty of the canon if they embrace Roman Catholicism, and the myth, perpetuated by John Henry Cardinal Newman that, to be deep in history is to become Catholic.
