“…The canon of the North African Councils differed from that decreed by the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century on one important. Hippo and Carthage stated that 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras were canonical, referring to the Septuagint version of 1 and 2 Esdras, the Bible their Latin version was based upon. In that version, 1 Esdras was the apocryphal additions to Ezra and Nehemiah which they combined into one book. This was 2 Esdras in the Septuagint version. It was Jerome (in his Latin Vulgate) who separated Ezra and Nehemiah into two books, calling them 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras respectively. This became standard for the Vulgate and the basis upon which Trent declared the Septuagint 1 Esdras to be noncanonical. 1 Esdras in the in the Septuagint then became 3 Esdras in the Vulgate… Augustine quoted from the book of III Esdras (I Esdras in the Septuagint) in his work The City of God. Thus, when the Council of Carthage gave its list of canonical books for the Old Testament it followed the Septuagint translation. In referring to Esdras as comprising two books they were referring to I and II Esdras of the Septuagint. And when Carthage sent these decrees to Rome for confirmation, it was these books which were confirmed as canonical. Innocent I affirmed this in his letter to Exuperius and they were later included in the decrees of Popes Gelasius and Hormisdas…This contradicts the decree passed by Trent which followed Jerome in assigning I and II Esdras to the canonical Hebrew books of Ezra and Nehemiah respectively. Therefore, Trent declared uncanonical what the Council of Carthage and the bishops of Rome, in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, declared to be canonical.”
