The Apocrypha

[mike]

Let's discuss the Apocrypha. A couple weeks ago, I started listening to a daily Bible podcast that includes the Apocrypha, and it is currently going through Sirach. I really like what I'm hearing from Sirach. It reads a lot like Proverbs with similar material but with its own unique thoughts.

I also was intrigued by what I've heard in 1 Maccabees. I never knew that Judas Maccabeus went to Rome and invited a partnership with them in order to help protect Judea from the Greeks.

What are the reasons for the inclusion/exclusion of the Apocrypha in the various canons? Is there variation among the books as to the validity of their status? What value if any do they have as extra-canonical books? Are there questions about the reliability of the history they contain?

[MaxPC]

Another outstanding thread for MN. Some excellent questions here. I shall read with interest.

[Sudsy]

Speaking of exclusions some Protestants don't know that Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar, the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation, proposed removing a number of books from the New Testament, including Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. For instance, Luther thought the book of James appeared to contradict Paul's statements about justification by faith, and it didn't directly mention Christ.

The 27 Books of the NT that we have today was initially proposed by Athanasius, in his Easter Letter of AD367, which were to be regarded as Scripture. His list is the earliest list which corresponds with the canon of the New Testament as we now know it.

There are some very interesting doctrines that have come from the Apocrypha. I belive the teaching regarding Limbo is one that comes from there.

[Valerie]

Another outstanding thread for MN. Some excellent questions here. I shall read with interest.

Indeed. Being introduced to Apocrypha some years ago has been a tremendous blessing!

[Josh]

Let's discuss the Apocrypha. A couple weeks ago, I started listening to a daily Bible podcast that includes the Apocrypha, and it is currently going through Sirach. I really like what I'm hearing from Sirach. It reads a lot like Proverbs with similar material but with its own unique thoughts.

I also was intrigued by what I've heard in 1 Maccabees. I never knew that Judas Maccabeus went to Rome and invited a partnership with them in order to help protect Judea from the Greeks.

What are the reasons for the inclusion/exclusion of the Apocrypha in the various canons? Is there variation among the books as to the validity of their status? What value if any do they have as extra-canonical books? Are there questions about the reliability of the history they contain?

Some of the Calvinist Reformers wanted to remove them for various reasons, but this did not catch on until the United Bible Society cut the apocryphal books mostly to save on printing costs in the late 1800s.

Luther also put them in a separate part of his Bible translation as opposed to simply presenting them as part of the OT. It is a good question why he had the authority to do this. Ironically, German speaking Anabaptists consider apocrypha to be scripture to this day mostly because they insist on using older German editions of Luther’s translation.

In 1826,[46] the National Bible Society of Scotland petitioned the British and Foreign Bible Society not to print the Apocrypha,[47] resulting in a decision that no BFBS funds were to pay for printing any Apocryphal books anywhere. They reasoned that not printing the Apocrypha within the Bible would prove to be less costly to produce.

I find it amazing that fundamentalist that claim to hold the Bible in high esteem also are willing to take a pair of scissors to it. One might as well toss out the OT as well - printing costs would be even lower.

[mike]

From Wikipedia. The Amish get a mention.

The biblical apocrypha (from Ancient Greek ἀπόκρυφος (apókruphos) 'hidden') denotes the collection of apocryphal ancient books thought to have been written some time between 200 BC and AD 400.[1][2][3][4][5] The Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches include some or all of the same texts within the body of their version of the Old Testament, with Catholics terming them deuterocanonical books.[6] Traditional 80-book Protestant Bibles include fourteen books in an intertestamental section between the Old Testament and New Testament called the Apocrypha, deeming these useful for instruction, but non-canonical.[7][8][9][10] To this date, the Apocrypha are "included in the lectionaries of Anglican and Lutheran Churches".[11] Anabaptists use the Luther Bible, which contains the Apocrypha as intertestamental books; Amish wedding ceremonies include "the retelling of the marriage of Tobias and Sarah in the Apocrypha".[12] Moreover, the Revised Common Lectionary, in use by most mainline Protestants including Methodists and Moravians, lists readings from the Apocrypha in the liturgical calendar, although alternate Old Testament scripture lessons are provided.[13]

Although the term apocryphal had been in use since the 5th century, it was in Luther's Bible of 1534 that the Apocrypha was first published as a separate intertestamental section. The preface to the Apocrypha in the Geneva Bible claimed that while these books "were not received by a common consent to be read and expounded publicly in the Church", and did not serve "to prove any point of Christian religion save in so much as they had the consent of the other scriptures called canonical to confirm the same", nonetheless, "as books proceeding from godly men they were received to be read for the advancement and furtherance of the knowledge of history and for the instruction of godly manners."[14] Later, during the English Civil War, the Westminster Confession of 1647 excluded the Apocrypha from the canon and made no recommendation of the Apocrypha above "other human writings",[15] and this attitude toward the Apocrypha is represented by the decision of the British and Foreign Bible Society in the early 19th century not to print it. Today, "English Bibles with the Apocrypha are becoming more popular again" and they are often printed as intertestamental books.[8]

[mike]

Wikipedia on Luther's treatment of the Apocrypha.

Martin Luther 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.[33] 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.[34] 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,[35] stating that books not found in the Hebrew were not received as canonical. Although his statement was controversial in his day,[36] 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.[37]

Luther also expressed some doubts about the canonicity of four New Testament books, although he never called them apocrypha: the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistles of James and Jude, and the Revelation to John. He did not put them in a separately named section, but he did move them to the end of his New Testament.[38]

[mike]

And Wikipedia on the KJV's Apocrypha.

King James Version
The English-language King James Version (KJV) of 1611 followed the lead of the Luther Bible in using an inter-testamental section labelled "Books called Apocrypha", or just "Apocrypha" at the running page header.[40] The KJV followed the Geneva Bible of 1560 almost exactly (variations are marked below). The section contains the following:[41]

1 Esdras (Vulgate 3 Esdras)
2 Esdras (Vulgate 4 Esdras)
Tobit
Judith ("Judeth" in Geneva)
Rest of Esther (Vulgate Esther 10:4 – 16:24)
Wisdom
Ecclesiasticus (also known as Sirach)
Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremy ("Jeremiah" in Geneva) (all part of Vulgate Baruch)
Song of the Three Children (Vulgate Daniel 3:24–90)
Story of Susanna (Vulgate Daniel 13)
The Idol Bel and the Dragon (Vulgate Daniel 14)
Prayer of Manasseh
1 Maccabees
2 Maccabees
(Included in this list are those books of the Clementine Vulgate that were not in Luther's canon).

These are the books most frequently referred to by the casual appellation "the Apocrypha". These same books are also listed in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England.[42] Despite being placed in the Apocrypha, in the table of lessons at the front of some printings of the King James Bible, these books are included under the Old Testament.

Given this, it is interesting that a lot of the KJV-only or KJV-predominate folks today probably would feel the Apocrypha doesn't belong in the canon.

[mike]

And it looks like we have the Puritans to thank as to why they were removed from the canon by British publishers.

The Bible and the Puritan revolution
The British Puritan revolution of the 1600s brought a change in the way many British publishers handled the apocryphal material associated with the Bible. The Puritans used the standard of Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone) to determine which books would be included in the canon. The Westminster Confession of Faith, composed during the British Civil Wars (1642–1651), excluded the Apocrypha from the canon. The Confession provided the rationale for the exclusion: 'The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of the Scripture, and therefore are of no authority in the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings' (1.3).[43] Thus, Bibles printed by English Protestants who separated from the Church of England began to exclude these books.

[Neto]

I've read that Sirach came the closest to being accepted by the Jews as a part of their canon. The Maccabees was also valued, but mainly as a historical record of the time period many Christians refer to as the "Time of Silence" (or something to that effect).

(We read through all of these books in our Old Testament Survey course in Bible institute. This class was taught by Dr. Daniel Goldberg, a Christian Jew.
I don't know if that school continued with the same syllabus after he left there, and became a professor at the Bible college to which I had transferred earlier. I did ministry service in the mission he was involved in, helping his wife with Jewish evangelism, and kept in touch with them for some years after graduation. I attribute my continued interest in Jewish belief and practice to that involvement with them.)