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The status of these books remained unchanged until the Protestant Reformation. The Protestants repudiated the decisions of the councils and declared that the following books were essentially to be rejected: The Book of Baruch, The Book of Tobit, The Letter of Jude, The song of Solomon, Ecclesiastics, The First and Second Books of Maccabees. They excluded these books from the list of acknowledged books.
Moreover, the Protestants also rejected the decision of their forbears regarding some chapters of the book of Esther. This book consists of 16 chapters. They decided that the first nine chapters and three verses from chapter 10 were essentially to to be rejected. They based their decision on the following six reasons:
1 These works were considered to be false even in the original Hebrew and Chaldaean languages which were no longer available.
2 The Jews did not acknowledge them as revealed books.
3 All the Christians have not acknowledged them as believable.
4 Jerome said that these books were not reliable and were insufficient to prove and support the doctrines of the faith.
5 Klaus has openly said that these books were recited but not in every place.
6 Eusebius specifically said in chapter 22 of his fourth book that these books have been tampered with, and changed .In particular the Second book of Maccabees.
Reasons Nos. 1, 2, and 6 are particularly to be noted by the readers as self-sufficient evidence of the dishonesty and perjury of the earlier Christians. Books which had been lost in the original and which only existed in translation were erroneously acknowledged by thousands of theologians as divine revelation. This state of affairs leads a non-Christian reader to distrust the unanimous decisions of Christian scholars of both the Catholic and the Protestant persuasions. The followers of Catholic faith still believe in these books in blind pursuance of their forebears.
