In Jamnia c 90, according to one theory now largely discredited, rabbis endorsed a narrower canon, excluding deuterocanonical works such as 2 Maccabees. This had little immediate impact on Christians, however, since most Christians did not know Hebrew and were familiar with the Hebrew Bible through the Greek Septuagint text from hellenistic Jews, although some researchers believe that under Christian auspices the books known to Protestants and Jews as apocryphal and to Roman Catholics as deuterocanonical were added to the Septuagint. In addition, the canonical status of deuterocanonical books was disputed among some notable scholars from early on and into the Council of Trent, which first definitively settled the matter of the OT Canon on 8 April 1546, after the death of Martin Luther.
Although 2 Maccabees was included by Luther and other early reformers in their Bibles, they were rejected as being on the same level as canonical writings. Martin Luther said: “I am so great an enemy to the second book of the Maccabees, and to Esther, that I wish they had not come to us at all, for they have too many heathen unnaturalities.”
Other evangelical writers have been more positive towards the book: twentieth century author James B. Jordan, for example, argues that while 1 Maccabees “was written to try and show the Maccabean usurpers as true heirs of David and as true High Priests” and is a “wicked book,” a “far more accurate picture of the situation is given in 2 Maccabees.”
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The book of 3 Maccabees is found in most Orthodox Bibles as a part of the Anagignoskomena, while Protestants and Roman Catholics consider it non-canonical, except the Moravian Brethren who included it in the Apocrypha of the Czech Kralicka Bible. It is also included in the Armenian Bible.
