Do you know why the Ap. book "Susanna and the Elders" in particular wasn't included into the canon? What did the church fathers have against it?
Simple Answer! Your question is actually 2 in one. First, The church fathers aren't the ones who decided on Canon. The Canon was determined by the churches as whole. Letters that were given to churches by the Apostles or their associates and the local churches preserved them and granted them authoritative based on authorship. Church Fathers followed the same Canon that the churches all already embraced. "Susanna and the Elders" was not part of the Canon for this reason, it wasn't part of the Jewish Bible, the Tanakh. The Jews recognized prior that the addition of that book to Daniel was written well after the Book of Daniel was written. The Bible of the church of the mid first century was the Jewish Old Testament and "Susanna and the Elders" was not part of the Jewish Old Testament. It really is as simple as that. The Apocrypha is a very interesting group of writings. The fact that they were not part of the Jewish bible, their authorship is unknown, and that elements of them contradict History or Jewish and later Christian Theology are the reasons why it was left out of the Canon. Keep in mind, The Apocrypha was not Jewish Canon that was later rejected by the church. The Apocrypha was rejected as Jewish Canon and its rejection was reaffirmed by the early church. The reformation simply rejected from their scriptures what the early church and their Jewish forefathers had already rejected prior to them. :^)
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