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Biblical apocrypha

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The biblical apocrypha includes texts written in the Jewish and Christian religious traditions that either

  • were accepted into the biblical canon by some, but not all, Christian faiths, or
  • are frequently printed in Bibles despite their non-canonical status.

A comparative list can be found in the article on books of the Bible. For other works sometimes referred to as "apocrypha", see the article on apocrypha.

The biblical apocrypha are sometimes referred to as the Apocrypha. Although the term apocrypha simply means hidden, this usage is sometimes considered pejorative by those who consider such works to be canonical parts of their scripture.


Contents

[edit] Apocrypha in the editions of the Bible

Due to the unavailability of a universally definitive and authoritative list of the canon of scriptures before the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation,<ref>Old Testament Canon, Catholic Encyclopedia, 1917. The article states that Trent gave "the first infallible and effectually promulgated pronouncement on the Canon"</ref> all 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 did place them in a separate Apocrypha section apart from the Old and New Testaments to indicate their status.

[edit] The Gutenberg Bible

This famous edition of the Vulgate was published in 1455. Like the manuscripts on which it was based, the Gutenberg Bible lacked a specific Apocrypha section<ref> Scanned pages of the Gutenberg Bible</ref>; its Old Testament included the books that Jerome considered apocryphal, and those which Clement VIII would later move to the appendix. The Prayer of Manasses was located after the Books of Chronicles, and 3 and 4 Esdras followed 2 Esdras.

[edit] The Luther Bible

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 for the deutrocanonical books / apocrypha. Books and portions of books not found in the Hebrew Tanakh were moved out of the body of the Old Testament to this section. The books 1 and 2 Esdras were omitted entirely<ref>Preface to the Revised Standard Version Common Bible</ref>. Luther placed the deutro-canonical books between the Old and New Testaments. For this reason, these works are sometimes known as inter-testamental books. Many twentieth century editions of the Luther Bible omit the Apocrypha section.

Luther also believed four books of the New Testament to be apocryphal: the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistles of James and Jude, and the Revelation to John. He did not put them in a separate section, but he did relegate them to the end of the New Testament.

[edit] The Clementine Vulgate

In 1592 Pope Clement VIII published his revised edition of the Vulgate. He labeled three books not found in the canon of the Council of Trent apocrypha and placed them in an appendix, "ne prorsus interirent", that is, "lest they utterly perish"<ref> Introductory material to the appendix of the Vulgata Clementina, text in Latin</ref>.

All the other books labeled as deuterocanonical books, were placed in the Old Testament in their traditional positions.

See also: Books of the Latin Vulgate

[edit] Apocrypha of the King James Version

The English-language King James Version of 1611 followed the lead of the Luther Bible in using an inter-testamental section labelled "Apocrypha". It included those books of the Vulgate's Old Testament and Apocrypha which were not in Luther's canon. These are the books most frequently included under the appellation "the Apocrypha", and are comprised as follows:

[edit] Other 16th century Bible editions

All English translations of the Bible printed in the sixteenth century included a section or appendix for Apocryphal books. Matthew's Bible, published in 1537, contains all the Apocrypha of the later King James Version in an inter-testamental section. The 1538 Myles Coverdale Bible contained the Apocrypha minus Baruch and the Prayer of Manasses. The 1560 Geneva Bible omitted the Prayer of Manasses from its Apocrypha, but did include the other texts. The Douay-Rheims Bible (1582-1609) placed the Prayer of Manasses and 3 and 4 Esdras into an appendix of the second volume of the Old Testament.

In 1569 the Spanish Reina Bible following the example of the pre-Clementine Latin Vulgate contained the deuterocanonical books in its Old Testament. Valera's 1602 revision of the Reina Bible removed these books into an inter-Testamental section following the other Protestant translations of its day.

[edit] Modern editions

The first King James Bible published without its Apocrypha section appeared in 1640. Other printings included it. In 1826, the British and Foreign Bible Society decided to refuse to distribute Bibles containing the Apocrypha. Since then most modern editions of the Bible and re-printings of the King James Bible omit the Apocrypha section. Even modern reprintings of the Vulgate and Douay-Rheims versions, although they include the deuterocanonical books, omit their Apocrypha section. Modern Catholic versions of the Bible contain the deuterocanonical books, but do not include the apocrypha found in earlier Catholic versions.

There are some exceptions to this trend, however. Some editions of the Revised Standard Version of the King James Bible include not only the Apocrypha listed above, but also the third and fourth books of the Maccabees, and Psalm 151. The American Bible Society lifted restrictions on the publication of Bibles with the Apocrypha in 1964. The British and Foreign Bible Society followed in 1966.<ref>A Brief History of the United Bible Societies</ref> The Stuttgart edition of the Vulgate (the printed edition, not most of the on-line editions), which is published by the UBS, contains the Clementine Apocrypha as well as the Epistle to the Laodiceans and Psalm 151.

Brenton's edition of the Septuagint includes all of the Apocrypha found in the King James Bible with the exception of 2 Esdras. He places them in a separate section at the end of his Old Testament, following English tradition. In Greek circles, however, these books are not traditionally called Apocrypha, but Anagignoskomena, and are integrated into the Old Testament.

[edit] Anagignoskomena

The Septuagint, the pre-eminent Greek version of the Old Testament, contains books that are not present in the Hebrew bible. These texts are not traditionally segregated into a separate section, nor are they usually called apocrypha. They are referred to as the Anagignoskomena. The anagignoskomena are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Jesus Seirach, Baruch, Epistle of Jeremy (sometimes considered part of Baruch), additions to Daniel (The Prayer of Azarias, the Song of the Three Children, Sosanna and Bel and the Dragon), additions to Esther, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, Odes, including the Prayer of Manasses, and Psalm 151.

[edit] Pseudepigrapha

Technically a pseudepigraphon is a book written in a biblical style which is ascribed to an author who did not write it. In common usage, however, the term pseudepigrapha is often used by way of distinction to refer to apocryphal writings which do not appear in printed editions of the Bible, as opposed to the apocryphal texts listed above. Examples<ref>The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 2, James H. Charlesworth</ref> include Letter of Aristeas, Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah, Joseph and Aseneth, Life of Adam and Eve, Lives of the Prophets, Ladder of Jacob, 4 Baruch, Jannes and Jambres, History of the Rechabites, Eldad and Modad, History of Jospeh, Psalms of Solomon, Odes of Solomon, Prayer of Joseph, and Prayer of Jacob. Often included among the pseudepigrapha are 3 and 4 Maccabees because they are not traditionally found in western bibles, although they are in the Septuagint. Similarly, the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees are often listed with the pseudepigrapha although they are commonly included in Ethiopian bibles.

[edit] Cultural impact

[edit] Biblical canon

Main article: Biblical canon

Regarding the latter-day pejorative use of "apocrypha," R.M. Wilson wrote:

"The Greek word apocryphos was not always used in the disparaging sense in which it later was. In Gnostic circles it was used of books the contents of which were too sacred to be divulged to the common herd, and it was in fact the heretical associations which it thus came to possess which led to its use as a term of disparagement..."
—from Studies in the Gospel of Thomas (the "apocryphal" Gospel of Thomas)</blockquote>

The definition of "apocryphal" material varies depending on the denomination: Catholic and Orthodox Christian Bibles contain several texts not included in the biblical canon by Protestant Christians. The Hellenist (Greek speaking) Jews also include seven apocryphal books. Early Christians received the Bible by way of the Hellenist Jews, and thus were familiar with the seven books of the Apocrypha.

Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians consider some of these texts equally canonical to other books of the Bible (with Catholics terming them deuterocanonical, from Greek: "second canon," or "measuring rule"), and consider them divinely inspired; written under the influence of the Holy Spirit, whereas Protestants do not. The Church of England takes an intermediate position; its sixth article of religion says of the Apocrypha that "the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine".

[edit] The Council of Jamnia

At least until the Council of Jamnia in AD 92, Jews did not have a single unified canon of Scripture. Some ancient Jewish sects (including the Essenes, as evidenced in the Dead Sea scrolls) included as Scripture much that modern Jews consider non-canonical. The Council explicitly excluded certain books for reasons that included their late composition or because they were not written in Hebrew (although some parts of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh itself are in biblical Aramaic). The word Apocrypha means hidden writing, and it was given to such books by the Jews to distinguish them from the books which they accepted as canonical.

Gentiles continued to use Greek translations made in the period from the third century to the first century BC, which a legend ascribes to a school in Alexandria, Egypt. These works, which collectively became known as the Septuagint, included several that were rejected at Jamnia.

The Jewish view today of the rejection of some of these works says they lack the unction of the prophetic books of the canon. However they are regarded as consistent, for most part, with the wisdom which rests on the fear of God and loyalty to His law, and some Jews have at various times drawn from them as a legitimate part of Jewish literary creativity, even using elements from them as the basis for two important parts of the Jewish liturgy.

In the Mahzor (High Holy Day prayer book), a medieval Jewish poet used the book of Sirach as the basis for a beautiful poem, Ke'Ohel HaNimtah.

A closing piyyut in the Seder Avodah section, in the Yom Kippur Musaf begins:

"How glorious indeed was the High Priest, when he safely left the Holy of Holies.
Like the clearest canopy of Heaven was the dazzling countenance of the priest."

Mahzor replaces the medieval piyyut with the relevant section from Ben Sira, which is more direct.

Apocrypha have even formed the basis of the most important of all Jewish prayers, the Amidah (the Shemonah Esrah). Sirach provides the vocabulary and framework for many of the Amidah's blessings, which were instituted by the men of the Great Assembly. The description of the origins of Hanukkah is also to be found in the books rejected at Jamnia.

While the texts themselves may not be accepted as canonical, some of their contents are regarded as historical truth. In particular, 1 Maccabees is cited by Jewish scholars as highly reliable history and was used by Josephus in his history of the Maccabean revolt.

[edit] Majority Christian usage

The ancient Greek Old Testament known as the Septuagint contained both the protocanonical books and the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament. The protocanonical books of the Old Testament are found in the Bible of the Hebrews. The deuterocanonical (deuteros, "second") are those books whose canonical character have been contested and classed by Protestants as apocrypha.

The Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches accept as part of the Old Testament some books excluded from the Jewish and Protestant canon. Roman Catholics refer to them as deuterocanonical books, a term first used by Sixtus of Siena in 1566, signifying that general recognition of their canonical status came later than that of the other books. Catholics and Orthodox today do not usually call these books apocrypha, a term they apply only to books they consider non-canonical.

The deuterocanonical books are Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch, as well as some parts of Esther and Daniel.

Eastern Orthodox Churches sometimes also consider 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, 1 Esdras and/or 2 Esdras to be deuterocanonical and include Psalm 151 with the Psalms, while the Ethiopian Orthodox venerate additional books, such as Jubilees, Enoch, and the Rest of the Words of Baruch. The inclusion of Enoch is justified on the grounds that the Book of Jude quotes it as Scripture. See here for conflicting accounts on what is actually included in the Ethiopian canon.

Since there was no fixed canon even among Jews until the Council of Jamnia (c.70-90 AD), it is not surprising that, historically, there have been hesitations among Christians, especially in the early centuries, about which Old Testament books to consider canonical. St Jerome explicitly denied the canonical character of any Old Testament book not included in the Hebrew Bible; but later, in his Preface to the Book of Tobit (PL 29, 24-25), stated that he translated the deuterocanonical books into Latin as a concession to the authority of the bishops; and in 402 AD declared he had not really denied the inspiration of these books, but had only given the opinion of the Jews (Apol. contra Ruf. 11, 33. PL 23, 476).

In view of that controversy, a list of canonical books (with the deuterocanonical books included) was drawn up at councils in Africa and approved by the Pope of the time. This was generally accepted in the West, while in the East, particularly in Syria, general agreement was reached only in the seventh century. Within the Roman Catholic Church, individual leaders and scholars, even at a later date, sometimes expressed contrary views, but the matter was definitively settled in 1546, when the Council of Trent, reacting to the views of the Protestant Reformers, declared that it accepted all the books of the Old and New Testaments with equal feelings of piety and reverence, and named them in accordance with the list of the fifth-century African councils. The First Vatican Council reaffirmed this declaration.

[edit] Protestant views

Martin Luther rejected the books that do not appear in the Jewish Tanakh, partly because of the stress the Reformers laid on translating from the original text, and partly because some passages contradicted his views, especially where 2 Maccabees speaks, by implication, of purgatory: "It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins." (12:46).

Luther also considered the Epistle of James apocryphal, doubting authorship by any of the several New Testament figures named James, and also because the epistle contains a statement that seemingly contradicts Luther's teachings (drawn from other passages in the New Testament, eg Eph. 2:8-9) of Salvation by faith alone: "Faith without works is dead" (James 2:26). His edition of the Bible relegated this and three other books (Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistle of Jude and the Revelation, to an appendix. Later Lutherans included these books with the Protestant Canon in their New Testament, but placed them after those books. Thus, the books of the Lutheran New Testament (at least in German) are ordered somewhat differently than other Protestant Bibles.

Protestants call the biblical books that are not in Luther's canon apocrypha. Luther (and the Anglican Church) regarded them as useful for edification, but not to be relied upon for doctrine, while Calvin and in general his followers attached no value to them beyond that of any other human writing, and objected to any use of them in church.

In 1615, the Archbishop of Canterbury imposed a year’s imprisonment for publishing Bibles without the Apocrypha; but in later printings of the Bible in English these books were omitted more and more. In the early nineteenth century, the Edinburgh Bible Society denounced them as superstitious and absurd, and soon all the Bible Societies decided not to publish them. More recently, in spite of the expense involved, Protestant Bibles in English have again sometimes included them, placing them in a separate section either between the Old Testament and the New or at the end.

What most Christians consider to be canonical parts of Esther and Daniel are in some instances counted by Protestants as additional books. In the book of Esther, it is difficult to separate these from the rest, since they are tightly integrated into the Greek text, and even the common parts of the book contain small variations from the Hebrew text. Protestant Bibles therefore sometimes give the entire book of Esther in two versions, one, based on the Hebrew text, as part of the Protestant Old Testament, and one, translated from the Greek, in the "Apocrypha" section.

Not all Protestants have omitted the Apocrypha. For example, all Luther Bibles in the Lutheran areas of Germany included them until World War II. Only after the war, when American Bible Societies offered funding on condition that the Apocrypha were omitted, they began to be dropped from most editions.

See also: Books of the Bible, a side-by-side comparison of the Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox canons.

[edit] Jerome's Influence

Jerome completed his version of the Bible, the Latin Vulgate in 405. In addition to the sacred text, the Vulgate manuscripts included prologues<ref> Prologues of Saint Jerome, Latin text </ref> by Jerome. For ten centuries, these prologues were part of every Bible in the western Church, and through these prologues many western Christians received their first exposure to the concept of apocrypha[citation needed].

The Vulgate manuscripts were divided into Old and New Testaments only; there was no Apocrypha section. But the prologues clearly identified certain books of the Vulgate Old Testament as apocryphal, meaning not in the canon. In the prologue to the books of Samuel and Kings, which is often called the Prologus Galeatus, Jerome described those books not translated from the Hebrew as apocrypha; he specifically mentions that Wisdom, the book of Jesus son of Sirach, Judith, Tobias, and the Shepherd "are not in the canon". In the prologue to Esdras he mentions 3 and 4 Esdras as being apocrypha. In his prologue to the books of Solomon, he mentioned "the book of Jesus son of Sirach and another pseudepigraphos, which is titled the Wisdom of Solomon". He says of them and Judith, Tobias, and the books of the Machabees, that the Church "has not received them among the canonical scriptures".

He mentions the book of Baruch in his prologue to Jeremias and does not explicitly refer to it as an apocryphon, but he does mention that "it is neither read nor held among the Hebrews". In his prologue to Judith he mentions that "among the Hebrews, the authority [of Judith] came into contention", but that it was "counted in the number of Sacred Scriptures" by the Nicene Council.

Although in his Apology against Rufinus, Book II he denied the authority of the canon of the Hebrews, this caveat does not appear in the prologues themselves, nor in his prologues does he specify the authorship of the canon he describes. Whatever its origin or authority, it was this canon without qualification which was written into the prologues of the bibles of Western Europe.

[edit] Classification

The Apocrypha of the King James Bible constitutes the books of the Vulgate that are present neither in the Hebrew Old Testament nor the Greek New Testament. Since these are derived from the Septuagint, from which the old Latin version was translated, it follows that the difference between the KJV and the Roman Catholic Old Testaments is traceable to the difference between the Palestinian and the Alexandrian canons of the Old Testament. This is only true with certain reservations, as the Latin Vulgate was revised by Jerome according to the Hebrew, and, where Hebrew originals were not found, according to the Septuagint. Furthermore, the Vulgate omits 3 and 4 Maccabees, which generally appear in the Septuagint, while the Septuagint and Luther's Bible omit 4 Ezra, which is found in the Apocrypha of the Vulgate and the King James Bible. Luther's Bible, moreover, also omits 3 Ezra. It should further be observed that the Clementine Vulgate places the Prayer of Manasses and 3 and 4 Ezra in an appendix after the New Testament as apocryphal.

It is hardly possible to form any classification which is not open to some objection. Scholars are still divided as to the original language, date, and place of composition of some of the books which must come under this provisional attempt at order. (Thus some of the additions to Daniel and the Prayer of Manasseh are most probably derived from a Semitic original written in Palestine, yet in compliance with the prevailing opinion they are classed under Hellenistic Jewish literature. Again, the Slavonic Enoch goes back undoubtedly in parts to a Semitic original, though most of it may have been written by a Greek Jew in Egypt.)

A distinction can be made between:

  • the Palestinian, and
  • the Hellenistic literature

of the Old Testament, though even is open to serious objections. The former literature was written in Hebrew or Aramaic, and seldom in Greek; the latter naturally in Greek.

Next, within these literatures there are three or four classes of subject material.

  • Historical,
  • Legendary (Haggadic),
  • Apocalyptic,
  • Didactic or Sapiential.

The Apocrypha proper then would be classified as follows:--

[edit] References

<references/> Texts:

  • Holmes and Parsons, Vet. Test. Graecum cum var. lectionibus (Oxford, 1798-1827)
  • Henry Barclay Swete, Old Testament in Greek, i.-iii. (Cambridge, 1887-1894)
  • Otto Fridolinus Fritzsche, Libri Apocryphi V. T. Graece (1871).

Commentaries

  • O. F. Fritzsche and Grimm, Kurzgef. exeget. Handbuch zu den Apok. des A.T. (Leipzig, 1851-1860)
  • Edwin Cone Bissell, Apocrypha of the Old Testament (Edinburgh, 1880)
  • Otto Zöckler, Die Apokryphen des Alten Testaments (Munchen, 1891)
  • Henry Wace, The Apocrypha ("Speaker's Commentary") (1888)

Introduction and General Literature:

  • Emil Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, vol. iii. 135 sqq., and his article on "Apokryphen" in Herzog's Realencykl. i. 622-653
  • Porter in James Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible. i. 111-123.
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