The Protestant Philosopher@ProtPhilosopher
Your list looks impressive at first glance. But it falls apart on closer inspection. It doesn't offer much support for the Catholic 73-book canon.
Your first council is "Rome 382AD 73 books." I'm not sure where you picked this up, but for the last hundred years scholars have argued there's no undisputed list from the Council of Rome. The work that supposedly contains such a list is now regarded as an anonymous composition from the sixth century. Attributing it to a 382 council is a misattribution. Not off to a great start.
Next you list "Hippo 393AD 73 books." We don't actually have Hippo's own records. What we know about Hippo comes from a summary prepared in 397 for Carthage. It's called the Breviarium Hipponense. Canon 36 lists the books of the canon. But read what it actually says. It opens with "nothing should be read in church under the name of the Divine Scriptures." That's a liturgical regulation about what gets read in worship. It's not a dogmatic definition of equal canonical authority. And it closes with "the church across the sea should be consulted to confirm this canon." The council didn't even treat its own list as settled. It sent it overseas for ratification. That's not how you handle something you consider infallibly defined. And as Gallagher and Meade (2017) note, the OT list "matches precisely the Old Testament promoted by Augustine," the man who planned the council, hosted it in his own city, and preached the sermon. This isn't the universal church carefully discerning the boundaries of the canon. It's one theologian's reading list getting rubber-stamped at a regional synod he organized.
Ref: Gallagher, E. L., & Meade, J. D. (2017). The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity. Oxford University Press.
Then you list the two councils of Carthage (397/419). Carthage 397 is the council that received the Breviarium Hipponense. It reaffirmed what Hippo had done. Same list, same absence of justification. It didn't independently examine the books and arrive at its own conclusion. It accepted a four year old summary from a regional synod that had itself requested overseas confirmation. Carthage 419 reaffirmed the earlier canons again, this time folding them into a larger code of African church law. These aren't dogmatic councils solemnly defining the boundaries of divine revelation. They're regional African synods managing church administration. Not one of these councils offered a single argument for why Tobit belongs alongside Isaiah. They all just repeated the same list that originated with Augustine's influence at Hippo.
Then you list "Florence 1442AD 73 books," which many Catholics treat as a slam dunk. But Florence actually undermines whatever argument you think your list is building. Yes, the books were listed. But they weren't dogmatically defined. There was no anathema attached. And it didn't settle anything. Gallagher (2025) notes that "this clear statement did not settle the matter," because observers weren't convinced Pope Eugene IV intended to resolve the ancient disputes about specific books. The list "seemed to many observers to be less binding." Debate about the deuterocanonicals didn't just continue after Florence. It intensified. Neither side of the debate even relied on the Florentine statement. If Florence had definitively settled the canon the way you're suggesting, why did the debate get worse afterward? Why did Cardinal Cajetan feel free to argue for Jerome's restricted canon in a commentary dedicated to the Pope ninety years later? Why did Seripando argue at Trent that the question of a twofold canon was still open despite Florence? Your list treats Florence as a settled data point.
Ref: Gallagher, E. L. (2025). The Apocrypha through History. Oxford University Press.
Then you list Trent. I've discussed it at length elsewhere, so I'll just mention the essentials. When Trent finally forced the vote on equal authority for the deuterocanonicals, the council's own best scholars voted against it. Jedin, the Catholic historian of Trent, says the minority was "outstanding for its theological scholarship." The vote was 24-15-16. That's 44% in favor. That's your infallible council.
Ref: Jedin, H. (1961). A History of the Council of Trent, vol. 2. Thomas Nelson.
Lastly, you say Protestants "removed" seven books. But that's not the right question. The restricted canon is older than every council on your list. It's the canon of the Hebrew Bible, received by the Jewish community, endorsed by Christ, defended by Jerome, maintained by the Glossa Ordinaria, affirmed by Hugh of St. Victor, and argued for by the Church's own top Thomist in 1532. The real question is why Trent needed an anathema to stop people from noticing what Jerome noticed. If these books had the same stuff as Genesis and Isaiah, you wouldn't need an anathema. You'd point to the texts.
They couldn't. So they voted.
