Apocrypha
General Information
The Apocrypha are books of the Old Testament included in
Roman Catholic and Orthodox Bibles as deuterocanonical
(added to the earlier canon), but excluded from the Hebrew
Bible and from most Protestant Bibles. It is not certain
why the term apocrypha (hidden things) was originally
applied to them, but they were considered less
authoritative than the other biblical books because of
their relatively late origin (c. 300 BC - AD 100). Except
for 2 Esdras, which was in Latin, they were part of the
Septuagint. The other books placed after the Old Testament
in the Revised Standard Version are the following: 1 and 2
Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Additions to the Book of Esther,
Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch and the Letter (Epistle) of Jeremiah,
Additions to Daniel (Prayer of Azariah, Song of the Three Hebrew
Children, History of Susanna, Bel and the Dragon), the Prayer of
Manasseh, and 1 and 2 Maccabees.
Roman Catholic Bibles also list 1 and 2 Esdras
and the Prayer of Manasseh as apocryphal. The Greek
Orthodox Bible omits 2 Esdras but adds 3 Maccabees and
Psalm 151, with 4 Maccabees as an appendix. The Apocrypha
are important sources for Jewish history and religious
developments in the 1st and 2d centuries BC.
Sherman E Johnson
Bibliography
B M Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha (1957);
B L Mack. Wisdom and the Hebrew Epic: Ben Sira's Hymn in Praise of
the Fathers (1986); R H Pfeiffer, History of New Testament Times,
with an Introduction to the Apocrypha (1949).
Also, see:
Pseudepigrapha
New Testament Apocrypha
.
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