DEUTEROCANONICAL, in the school theology, an appellation given to certain books of Scripture, which were added to the canon after the rest, either by reason of their not being written till after the compilation of the canon, or of some dispute as to their canonicity. The word is Greek, being compounded of divtice, second, and κανων, canonical.
The Jews, it is certain, acknowledged several books in their canon, which were inserted there at a later period than the rest. They say, that under Esdras a great assembly of their doctors, which they call by way of eminence the Great Synagogue, made the collection of the sacred books which we now have in the Hebrew Old Testament; and they agree that this assembly put books therein which had not been so before the Babylonish captivity, such as those of Daniel, Ezekiel, Haggai, and those of Esdras and Nehemiah.
The Roman Catholic church has since added others to the canon, which were not, and could not be, in the canon of the Jews, by reason that some of them were not composed till afterwards. Such is the book of Ecclesiasticus, with several of the apocryphal books, as the Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, &c. Others were added at a still later period, by reason that their canonicity had not yet been examined; and till such examination and judgment took place they might be set aside at pleasure. But since that church has pronounced as to the canonicity of these books, there is no more room now for her members to doubt of them, than there was for the Jews to doubt of those of the canon of Esdras; and the deuteronomical books are with them as canonical as the protocanonical; the only difference between them consisting in this, that the canonicity of the one was not generally known, examined, and settled, as soon as that of the others.
The deuteronomical books in the modern canon are the book of Esther, either the whole, or at least the last seven chapters; the Epistle to the Hebrews; that of James; that of Jude; the second epistle of St Peter; the second and third epistles of St John; and the book of the Revelation. The deuteronomical parts of books are, in Daniel, the hymn of the three children; the prayer of Azariah;
the histories of Susannah, and of Bel and the Dragon; the last chapter of St Mark; the bloody sweat, and the appearance of the angel, related in St Luke (chap. xxii.); and the history of the woman taken in adultery, in St John (chap. viii.)