Biblical Books Called Apocrypha
During the birth of Christianity, some of the Jewish apocrypha that dealt with the coming of the Messianic kingdom became popular in the nascent Jewish-Christian communities. Christianity eventually gave birth to new apocalyptic works, some of which were derived from traditional Jewish sources. This was not strange, as the large majority of Old Testament references in the New Testament are taken from the Greek , which is the source of the Deuterocanonical books as well as most of the other biblical apocrypha.
Slightly varying collections of additional Books form part of the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox canons. New Testament possible reliance on these books includes these examples: James 1:19-20 shows dependence on Sirach 5:13-14, Hebrews 1:3 on Wisdom 7:26, Hebrews 11:35 on 2 Maccabees 6, Romans 9:21 on Wisdom 15:7, 2 Cor. 5:1, 4 on Wisdom 9:15, etc.
What Is The Apocrypha Are Apocryphal Books Really Scripture
The word apocrypha comes from the Greek word meaning “hidden” or “secret.” Originally, the term was reserved for books with content considered too sacred and grand to make accessible to the general public. Over time, “apocrypha” took on a more negative connotation, due to the questionable origins and doubtful canonicity of these books.
- Christianity.com Editorial Staff
- 201925 Apr
The word apocrypha comes from the Greek word meaning “hidden” or “secret.” Originally, the term was reserved for books with content considered too sacred and grand to make accessible to the general public. Over time, “apocrypha” took on a more negative connotation, due to the questionable origins and doubtful canonicity of these books.
Those who dont accept these books as canon call them the Apocrypha apocryphal. But those who do accept them call them the Deuterocanon or deuterocanonical books, meaning belonging to the second canon.
Apocrypha In The Editions Of The Bible
Surviving manuscripts of the whole Christian Bible include at least some of the Apocrypha as well as disputed books. After the Protestant and Catholic canons were defined by Luther and Trent respectively, early Protestant and Catholic editions of the Bible did not omit these books, but placed them in a separate Apocrypha section apart from the Old and New Testaments to indicate their status.
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The Apocrypha And The Old Testament
Every word of God is flawless he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar.Proverbs 30:5-6, NIV
The canon of scripturethat is, the official list of whats in the Bibleis not revealed to us by any saying of Jesus, nor does scripture itself contain any list. The canon of scripture is determined by the Church, and there are differences among the various church bodies.
I have to cover this material in several parts:
But first a little clarification, because the word apocrypha
has a second, relatively obscure scholarly use, and we dont want to get confused. Sometimes youll see a reference to the so-called New Testament Apocrypha,
which is a general term for ancient Christian religious writings in the form of gospels, acts, and epistles that no one in the ancient church ever thought were scriptural. Thats not the topic here.
The historic Church never suppressed or destroyed religious writings it deemed heretical. Some ancient Christian writings, both orthodox and heretical, have been lost, either through happenstance, neglect, or lack of popularity. It wasnt until the middle ages, and only in the west, that anyone burned heretics or books.
The Apocrypha that we are discussing here consists of books whose canonical status in the Old Testament has come under criticism. The Apocrypha is also called the deuterocanonical books.
(You can find out the difference between the terms apocryphal
What Is The Apocrypha
The exact content of the Writings portion of the Hebrew Bible hadnt been fixed even by the New Testament era. The Jews in Alexandria and the Greek-speaking Diaspora had more books in this section of their Bible than the Jews in Palestine had in theirs, so we refer to them as the Alexandrian canon and the Palestinian canon. The books in the Alexandrian canon that do not appear in the Palestinian canon are called the Apocrypha
implies that the books are not canonical, while deuterocanonical
means that they are latecomers to the canon. Im using the term apocrypha
only because it is more familiar to my readers.
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The Historical Background To The Canon
The question of this article, What are the lost books of the Bible, is an important one, but before we can answer it decisively, we need to understand something of the Early Church background.
During the second century AD, Maricon the heretic produced a list of his approved books of Scripture. He held that the Old Testament god was an evil god of wrath.
In his thinking, this was incompatible with the god of Scripture, so he eliminated the Old Testament in his Bible, along with those places in the New Testament that referred to God in the Old Testament.
To answer Maricon, the Early Church formulated once and for all the list of books in the Canon of Scripture.
All the Church did in recognizing the books was to utilize the books of Scripture that were already in circulation among the Churches.
A few questions were raised about Jude and Johns letters, but the Church quickly determined these were Scripture as they were apostolic, and nothing suspicious was contained in their content.
Several other books, such as the First Letter of Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas, were proposed for inclusion. The Church didnt include them because the authors of these books indicate a difference between their view of authority and the apostles authority.
None of the other books in circulation were seriously considered because the Church deemed them frauds.
The Matter Of The Lost Books Of Scripture
Now that weve discussed at some length the background of how and why the Canon was organized, we can now dive into and answer the question, What are the lost books of the Bible?
There are no lost books of the Bible, or books that were taken out of Scripture, or even books missing from the Bible. Every book that the Lord intended to be in Scripture is there. While there are many legends and rumors of lost books of Scripture, the books were not lost but rejected.
There are hundreds of religious texts written during the same time that many of the Bible books were written. Some of these books contain actual historical events . Others contain good teaching .
These books are not inspired by God. If we read any of these books, such as those in the Apocrypha, we have to treat them as fallible historical and religious books, but not as the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God.
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Esoteric Writings And Objects
The word apocryphal was first applied to writings which were kept secret because they were the vehicles of esoteric knowledge considered too profound or too sacred to be disclosed to anyone other than the initiated. For example, the disciples of the GnosticProdicus boasted that they possessed the secret books of Zoroaster. The term in general enjoyed high consideration among the Gnostics .
SinologistAnna Seidel refers to texts and even items produced by ancient Chinese sages as apocryphal and studied their uses during Six Dynasties China . These artifacts were used as symbols legitimizing and guaranteeing the Emperor’s Heavenly Mandate. Examples of these include talismans, charts, writs, tallies, and registers. The first examples were stones, jade pieces, bronze vessels and weapons, but came to include talismans and magic diagrams.
From their roots in Zhou era China , these items came to be surpassed in value by texts by the Han dynasty . Most of these texts have been destroyed as Emperors, particularly during the Han dynasty, collected these legitimizing objects and proscribed, forbade and burnt nearly all of them to prevent them from falling into the hands of political rivals.
Which Bible Does The Vatican Use
In 2007 the Catholic Truth Society published the CTS New Catholic Bible, consisting of the original 1966 Jerusalem Bible text revised to match its use in lectionaries throughout most English-speaking countries, in conformity with the directives of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the
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Jews Have Never Accepted The Apocrypha As Scripture
The Jews dont believe the Apocrypha belongs in their Bible, and they never have. Josephus, the greatest Jewish historian of the first century, explained:
It is true, our history has been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but has not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers.1
Josephus quote is especially helpful here. He indicates that ever since the reign of Artaxerxes , the Jewish writings have not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers. In other words, the Jewish consensus was that while these writings might contain some helpful history and content, they dont belong in the same category as the Old Testament texts.
Rabbinic literature during the first couple of centuries also affirms this distinction. The Babylonian Talmud reports:
After the latter prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi had died, the Holy Spirit departed from Israel.2
Based on this text, the Jews recognized that the Spirit stopped speaking through the prophets after Malachi died. Thus, the Apocryphal documents, which were written after Malachi, are not Spirit-inspired Scripture.
In fact, no early or recent Jewish canon includes the Apocrypha. That the Jews reject these Jewish documents as Scripture is a strong indication that they dont belong in our Bible.
Writings Of Questionable Value
Apocrypha was also applied to writings that were hidden not because of their divinity but because of their questionable value to the church. The early Christian theologian Origen, in his , distinguishes between writings which were read by the churches and apocryphal writings: ‘ . The meaning of is here practically equivalent to “excluded from the public use of the church” and prepares the way for an even less favourable use of the word.
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Rejection By Jesus And The Apostles
1. There are no clear, definite New Testament quotations from the Apocrypha by Jesus or the apostles. While there may be various allusions by the New Testament to the Apocrypha, there are no authoritative statements like thus says the Lord,as it is written, or the Scriptures say. There are references in the New Testament to the pseudepigrapha and even citations from pagan sources , but none of these are cited as Scripture and are rejected even by Roman Catholics. In contrast, the New Testament writers cite the Old Testament numerous times and use phrases such as thus says the Lord,as it is written, or the Scriptures say, indicating their approval of these books as inspired by God.
2. Jesus implicitly rejected the Apocrypha as Scripture by referring to the entire accepted Jewish Canon of Scripture, From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah , who was killed between the altar and the house of God yes, I tell you, it shall be charged against this generation .
New Testament Apocryphal Literature
New Testament apocrypha books similar to those in the New Testament but almost universally rejected by Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants include several gospels and lives of apostles. Some of these were clearly produced by Gnostic authors or members of other groups later defined as heterodox. Many texts believed lost for centuries were unearthed in the 19th and 20th centuries , producing lively speculation about their importance in early Christianity among religious scholars, while many others survive only in the form of quotations from them in other writings for some, no more than the title is known.
Though Protestants, Catholics and, in general, Orthodox agree on the canon of the New Testament, the Ethiopian Orthodox has in the past also included I & II Clement, and Shepherd of Hermas in their New Testament canon. This is no longer the case, according to Biblical scholar R.W. Cowley. A well-known New Testament apocryphal book is the Gospel of Thomas, the only complete text of which was found in the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. The Gospel of Judas, a Gnostic gospel, also received much media attention when it was reconstructed in 2006. Artists and theologians have drawn upon the New Testament apocrypha for such matters as the names of Dismas and Gestas and details about the Three Wise Men. The first explicit mention of the perpetual virginity of Mary is found in the pseudepigraphical Infancy Gospel of James.
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Why Did Martin Luther Change The Bible
While he was sequestered in the Wartburg Castle Luther began to translate the New Testament from Greek into German in order to make it more accessible to all the people of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. He translated from the Greek text, using Erasmus second edition of the Greek New
Publication Of The Complete Bible Translation
The translation of the entire Bible into German was published in a six-part edition in 1534, a collaborative effort of Luther and many others such as Johannes Bugenhagen, Justus Jonas, Caspar Creuziger, Philipp Melanchthon, Matthäus Aurogallus, and Georg Rörer. Luther worked on refining the translation up to his death in 1546: he had worked on the edition that was printed that year.
There were 117 original woodcuts included in the 1534 edition issued by the Hans Lufft press in Wittenberg. They reflected the recent trend of including artwork to reinforce the textual message.
Luther’s Bible was a bestseller in its time. About 200,000 copies in hundreds of reprinted editions appeared before Luther died in 1546. However, the book remained too expensive for most Lutherans an unbound copy of the complete 1534 Bible cost the equivalent of a month’s wages for the average laborer. Instead, the Bible was bought by churches, pastors, and schools.
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Apocrypha In Editions Of The Bible
Apocrypha are well attested in surviving manuscripts of the Christian Bible. After the Lutheran and Catholic canons were defined by Luther and Trent respectively, early Protestant editions of the Bible did not omit these books, but placed them in a separate Apocrypha section in between the Old and New Testaments to indicate their status.
translated the Bible into German during the early part of the 16th century, first releasing a complete Bible in 1534. His Bible was the first major edition to have a separate section called Apocrypha. Books and portions of books not found in the Masoretic Text of Judaism were moved out of the body of the Old Testament to this section. Luther placed these books between the Old and New Testaments. For this reason, these works are sometimes known as inter-testamental books. The books 1 and 2 Esdras were omitted entirely. Luther was making a polemical point about the canonicity of these books. As an authority for this division, he cited St. Jerome, who in the early 5th century distinguished the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments, stating that books not found in the Hebrew were not received as canonical. Although his statement was controversial in his day, Jerome was later titled a Doctor of the Church and his authority was also cited in the Anglican statement in 1571 of the Thirty-Nine Articles.
Why Did The 1611 Kjv Include The Apocrypha
QUESTION: Didnt the King James Bible when first printed contain the Apocrypha?
ANSWER: Yes.
EXPLANATION: Many critics of the perfect Bible like to point out that the original King James had the Apocrypha in it as though that fact compromises its integrity. But several things must be examined to get the factual picture.
First, in the days in which our Bible was translated, the Apocrypha was accepted reading based on its historical value, though not accepted as Scripture by anyone outside of the Catholic church. The King James translators therefore placed it between the Old and New Testaments for its historical benefit to its readers. They did not integrate it into the Old Testament text as do the corrupt Alexandrian manuscripts.
That they rejected the Apocrypha as divine is very obvious by the seven reasons which they gave for not incorporating it into the text. They are as follows:
1. Not one of them is in the Hebrew language, which was alone used by the inspired historians and poets of the Old Testament.
2. Not one of the writers lays any claim to inspiration.
3. These books were never acknowledged as sacred Scriptures by the Jewish Church, and therefore were never sanctioned by our Lord.
4. They were not allowed a place among the sacred books, during the first four centuries of the Christian Church.
6. It inculcates doctrines at variance with the Bible, such as prayers for the dead and sinless perfection.
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Why Did Martin Luther Remove 7 Books From The Bible
Several reasons are proposed for the omission of these books from the canon. One is the support for Catholic doctrines such as Purgatory and Prayer for the dead found in 2 Maccabees. Another is that the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1646, during the English Civil War, actually excluded them from the canon.