From Board Question #87426:
Accepting some of these books as canon only separates you from mainstream Christianity if Catholicism isn't mainstream.The Entomophagist wrote:The second is that we get enough weird looks from the rest of Christianity without accepting the Apocrypha into our (already extended) canon.
I'd be really interested in seeing an original manuscript of Genesis. I'm not sure I understand the point being made here.The Entomophagist wrote:Think about it: no one has anywhere close to an original manuscript for any apocryphal works, assuming they were actually written down close to the time that they occurred; at least we can say that Joseph Smith had the gold plates when he translated the Book of Mormon.
Also,
As I said in the disclaimer, I don't quite agree with all of that. For instance, I find it pretty difficult to discover any divine truth in "let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak." Not letting women pray in General Conference seems to have been about the last vestige of the Church's adherence to that admonition, but now we've allowed women to speak to God as the voice of the Church as a whole. And the Church didn't seem to need a new revelation establishing the fulfillment of a law or the dawning of a new era in order to ignore those words of scripture. Interesting.Kirito wrote:What I love so much about the scriptures is you can trust them. You don't always know exactly what it means sometimes, but whatever it means, it's true. The Apocrypha isn't in our canon because you can't quite trust it like you can the scriptures.
Instead of the difference being questionable versus unassailably true, I use different standards of evidence to make determinations about falsehood. With apocrypha, I'm comfortable going with untrue based on the preponderance of the evidence while with canon, I tend to assume truth unless it is beyond reasonable doubt. But, you know, I'm just the transgender kid whose take on the Church is automatically highly suspect anyway.