With regard to the charge that the deuterocanonical books are not quoted in the NT. The question should be, do we only accept an Old Testament book because it is quoted in the New Testament? If so we would not be able to accept everything that Protestants accept as Scripture, as not everything in the Protestant Old Testament is quoted in the NT. We would also have to ask who has the authority to decide what is and is not Scripture? The Jewish Canon was not settled until well after the Church (At the time only the Catholic Church existed) The Great schism between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches had not taken place, Protestantism would not be invented for 1200 years and Islam did not exist.

The Catholic Church compiled and agreed on all of the Books that the Old and New Testaments contained, long before these other groups rejected the books they did not like. The early Churches throughout the known world had different ideas, some rejected the Apocolypse, (Revelation) and included the Shephard of Hermas, and other books.

What we do know from reading the New Testament books of the Bible in the Original Greek, is that the Authors of the books used a translation of the Jewish Bible, or Old Testament called the Septuagent. The Septuagent was a Greek translation of what we today call the Old Testament, and it contained all of the books that are present in the Catholic version of the Old Testament. If it was faulty because it contained the books later edited out of the Bible by Protestants, you would think we would have an indication that we should not use the Septuagent, or that it was not authentic. But the fact is the authors of the NT books used the Septuagent rather than the Hebrew text, which did not contain the Deuterocanonical books.

Later (around 600 years after Jesus’ time) Jewish scholars met to try and deal with the problem of Chritians using Jewish texts to prove Jesus was the Messiah, (remember there was still only the Catholic Church at the time.) Like the problems in the early Church, there were many different groups among the Jews who accepted various books as Scripture, and there was no one list or canon of Scripture. There is a book called the Book of Jubelees, which told more stories of Moses, some groups of Jews accepted it as Scripture, others did not. The Rabbis ultimatly decided to reject any book or part of the book that was not originally written in Hebrew. This means that portions of books, or entire books that many Jews had held as Scripture for centuries were removed from the Jewish Canon long after Christians had accepted them. This change to what Jews accepted as Scripture did not change what Chrisitans have always held as Scripture, because the Church and not the Synagogue now had the authority to make such determinations. Jews do however consider these books, while not Scripture, are a secondary canon, and important books. They are still read as part of the Synagogue services. On the Feast of Purim, the Migellot (Book of Esther) is read from beginning to end, and the Festival of Hannukah, is based on the stories from the Book of Maccabees.

To read more about this take a look at this link.
[url:270awpr6]http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2002/0203fea3.asp[/url:270awpr6]