Zach,
If you want big amounts of proof for what you want to teach, well, it doesn’t exist. That’s not to say nothing exists, just not big definitive proof.
Of course you, as a Catholic, the Council of Trent is your proof sufficient.
First, let’s mention the Council of Jamnia as already mentioned in this thread. The major problem with using that as positive or negative proof is that it’s been pretty well discounted that it seriously looked at the canon of scripture. It was a theory, mostly pushed by one guy, that was quite popular for awhile, but it’s been dying due to the simple fact there is no evidence that it ever set any canon of scripture.
Saying Luther looked to it is strange indeed because he never mentions it. He does mention of course Jerome.
If you take the resources that Luther used in his translation, the Septuagint and Erasmus’ Greek text were silent on the matter. Everything else he used made a distinction between the authoritative books of scripture and the nonauthoritative, apocryphal books.
After Luther came Trent, and for hundreds of years, we’ve been told that they authoritatively set the authoritative canon.
However, as the first person allowed to thoroughly examine and write upon the proceedings of Trent, Catholic historian Hubert Jedin wrote that early in the proceedings, the Council of Trent voted not to decide the authority of the books. That was left effectively an open question. So you have the books that are to be in the canon, but their authority is not decided.
That would be consistent with how the Orthodox use them. They insist on their inclusion, but do not rely on them for doctrine.
And that too would be consistent with the reformers, they too included them. Often they set them in a separate section, a practice the reformers did not start, in order to distinguish them as far as their authority to the plowboy they intended the scripture for. Even many priests of their time did not know the difference, though it was taught to the learned in the seminaries. Truth was, educational level, even among the clergy, was a horrible mess, hence the counter reformation and it’s reforms.
