With respect to the lack of any unanimous consent about the status of the freestanding Apocryphal (Deuterocanonical) books in early Christianity, Edmon Gallagher and John Meade note:
On 8 April 1546 the Roman Catholic Council of Trent voted in favour of delineating the biblical canon, and they pronounced an anathema on anyone who did not accept it. It was not the first time a council had voted on the biblical canon; earlier regional councils had considered the matter and issued (sometimes conflicting) canon lists—see the lists from the Synod of Laodicea and the Brevarium Hipponense —and the (Western) ecumenical Council of Florence a century before Trent had issued a biblical canon list (session 11, 4 February 1442) . . . [B]oth Luther and Trent can claim patristic precedent. These books were almost never included in the early Greek lists, and a few lists include a group of books that are non-canonical but useful to read, anticipating Luther’s category. (Edmon L. Gallagher and John D. Meade, The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity [New York: Oxford University Press, 2017], 1, 26)
As they correctly note, many (actually, the majority) of canon lists produced by Christians in the patristic era did not match the later list that would be dogmatised in 1546 at Trent. For instance, we read the following about the Bryennios List:
In 1873, Philotheos Bryennios was working in the library of the Jerusalem Monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre in the city of Constantinople when he discovered a manuscript (copied in 1056) containing the previously lost Didache, the two epistles of Clement, and several other compositions. Among these other compositions was a list of the OT books that has become known as the Bryennios List (BL) . . . Old Testament canon: This canon list contains a similar catalogue of books to the Jewish and Protestant canons in twenty-seven books The identification of Esdras A and Esdras B is an open question, as well as whether Lamentations, Baruch, and the Epistle or a combination of these works are subsumed under the title of ‘Jeremiah’. This list does not contain any of the deuterocanonical books . . .
. . .
The ordering of the books in BL provides more evidence of its date. The order is unique among the lists:
Genesis
Exodus
Leviticus
Joshua
Deuteronomy
Numbers
Ruth
Job
Judges
Psalter
1 Kingdoms (= 1 Samuel)
2 Kingdoms (= 2 Samuel)
3 Kingdoms (= 1 Kings)
4 Kingdoms (= 2 Kings)
1 Paralipomena (= 1 Chronicles)
2 Paralipomena (= 2 Chronicles)
Proverbs
Ecclesiastes (= Qoheleth)
Song of Songs
Jeremiah (= Lamentations? + Baruch? + Epistle?)
The Twelve Prophets
Isaiah
Ezekiel
Daniel
Esdras A
Esdras B
Esther (Ibid., 70-71, 75)
With respect to the Synod of Laodicea, they write:
The Synod of Laodicea (SoL) probably occurred sometime between 342 and 381. All of the Greek and Latin canonical collections of this synod have as part o their title ‘the canons of the Synod in Laodicea of Phyrgia’. Theodoret of Cyrrhus (ca. 430) mentions the synod gathered in Laodicea of Phrygia (i.e. north central Asia Minor). Thus 430 is the terminus ante quem for the synod . . . Old Testament canon: The canon list of SoL agrees with the twenty-two books of the Jewish canon except that it includes Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah together with Jeremiah as the twentieth book. SoL included Esther, and it excluded the deuterocanonical books. (Ibid., 129, 131)
To be fair, there were a few listings that were more conducive to the later, dogmatically defined list promulgated by Trent. With respect to the Breviarium Hipponense, they note:
In October 393, the first plenary council of the African provinces met in the North African city of Hippo. Augustine was serving as a priest in Hippo at the time, and he may have been involved in planning the Council, as Cross speculates: ‘It was an event of the first importance, and the choice of place is a sufficient proof that Augustine was the motive power behind it. The remarkable respect in which he was already held is shown by the circumstance that he—a mere presbyter-should have been asked to preach the sermon’. The acts of this Council of Hippo no longer survive, but a summary of the Council’s decisions was prepared by the bishops of Byzacena (Tunisia) for submission to the Council of Carthage in August 397. This summary, the Breviarium Hipponense, was accepted by the Council of Carthage and reaffirmed at later councils, including a subsequent Council of Carthage in 419. The canons and various liturgical matters. Canon 36 lists the books of the biblical canon.
Old Testament canon: The OT canon includes all of the books of the Jewish canon plus the deuterocanonical books, along with 1 Esdras. In this way, the Old Testament matches precisely the Old Testament promoted by Augustine, with the exception of some differences in order, especially the placement of the group Tobit, Judith, Esther, Ezra, and Maccabees, which concludes the canon here but stands between Job and Psalms in Augustine’s list. Jeremiah is mentioned without any additions, but it probably included Lamentations, Baruch, and the Letter of Jeremiah. (Ibid., 222)
Clearly, there was no unanimous consent on the freestanding works of the Apocrypha; furthermore, the Tridentine list represents a minority view in early Christianity.
For those who wish to delve into the study about the development (and debates) about the Old and New Testament canons, I highly recommend their study; it is available on Amazon.
