T HE term Apocrypha suggests to the average church member an ancient controversy be exact nature of both the Apocrypha and this disputation is rather vague. A knowledge of the Apocrypha is essential to Bible students for these reasons: , (1) The Apocrypha are in the Cath olic Bible, and, as such, are part of their Holy Writ. We ought to know if we have unwittingly excluded in spired books from our Bible. A dis cussion of the Apocrypha brings up the vital and serious problem of the canon of the Old Testament. (2) The Apocryphal literature con tains the historical background of the New Testament; the Old Testa ment comprises its theological back ground. Goodspeed states in this connection: “For the full understand ing of the New Testament, it is not too much to say that the Apocrypha are indispensable.” 1 Dr. Salmon ex presses his evaluation of the Apoc rypha in the following words: "These books, then, present sources of information which evidently can not be neglected by any one who de sires to study the history of the prep aration which God made through the religious training of the Jewish na tion, for the reception of the revela tion which His Son was to communi cate to the world.”2 (3) The Apocrypha were quoted by the early church fathers as the very Word of God. Again we quote from Dr. Salmon: “Numerous instances can be produced of the books of the Apocrypha by Christian Fathers from the earliest times; and in many cases the quotations are made with the usual formulae of Scripture cita tion.” 2 In fact, Clement’s Epistle to the Corinthians, the oldest patris tic document, quotes the Apocrypha. How can we account for this and how do we explain it? (4) It was not until 1827 that the Apocrypha were finally separated from the King James version. At one time, it was a crime punishable by one year in prison for a printer to omit the Apocrypha in an edition of the English Bible.1* In fact, to this day no king of England can be crowned apart from the use of a Bi
ble containing the Apocrypha.2 It is our concern, then, to be more fa miliar with books that were so in fluential in the production of our be loved English Bible. G e n e r a l I n f o r m a t io n The Apocrypha were books written by Jews from about 200 B.C. to 100 A.D. For the most part, they were written in Greek, but some in Ara maic, and a few, perhaps, in He brew. C. C. Torrey points out that the Jews called such books Outside Books, by which were meant unin spired, or uncanonical.2 All of these books have been labeled the Wider Apocrypha because only a part of them are actually in the regular Apocrypha. The Apocrypha proper are those books from among the Outside Books, or Wider Apocrypha, that are in the Catholic Bible. Since some of these books deal with themes like those found in Daniel and Rev elation, they are called apocalyp tic literature, the word apocalyptic meaning "revelation.” Other of these books were supposed to have been written by Old Testament heroes, which obviously they were not, and so these books were called the pseu- depigrapha or "spurious writings.”" Some of the books are historical in nature (Maccabees), some are legendary (Judith), some are didac tic (Ecclesiasticus), and some are apocalyptic (2 Ezra).2 How t h e A p o c r y p h a G ot I n t o t h e B ib le Judaism, after the Babylonian Captivity, split into two groups. In Palestine, the orthodox strict Juda ism was fostered, such as is de scribed, in the New Testament. In Alexandria, the Jews, mixing with Romans and Greeks, were modern ized, and developed cultural and phil osophic Judaism. Whether by the ac tual instigation of the Ptolemies, or because of their needs, the Jews of Alexandria translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek. This was the first great translation in history, called the Septuagint, because of the so- called seventy translators, and was indicated by the symbols LXX. The names of the books of the Bible, and their order, as they occur in the King James Version, were taken from the Septuagint. The translators o f the
LXX selected some of the books from the Outside Books, or The Wider Apocrypha, and put them into their translation. These books constitute the Apocrypha proper, or those books in the Catholic Old Testament (the Latin Vulgate) which are additional to the King James Old Testament list. These Alexandrian Jews in serted these extra books into their translation either because the ruling Ptolemy urged them to collect all of their literature together, ignoring the division between the inspired and the uninspired, or because they felt that they could part company with their Palestinian brethren if they so de sired.2 The Septuagint was the Bible of the early church. Biblical Hebrew ceased to be spoken during the cap tivities, and as Greek had become a world language, naturally the writers of the New Testament used the Greek Bible. The majority of the Old Testament quotations in the New Testament are from the LXX. Few, if any, of the early church fathers knew any Hebrew, and consequently never looked into the Hebrew Bible. They never dreamed that there might be a discrepancy between the canon of the LXX and the Hebrew canon. Hence, they treated the Apocryphal books which they found in their LXX as the very Word of God. When a translation was made, the LXX was used as a basis, so that the Apo crypha were included in the trans lations, one of them being the Old Latin Version, which became the Bi ble of the Western or Roman church. In 382 A.D., Pope Camasus ordered Jerome to revise this Old Latin Ver sion. So Jerome went to Palestine, studied Hebrew, and, when examin ing the Hebrew Bible, found to his amazement that the Apocryphal books were not in itjo He labeled them the Apocrypha, but “He did not mean to reject them as spurious, but to rate them as not inspired but still ecclesiastical, and suitable for a limited church use. He left them in the Latin Bible where he found them.” 11 So they came over into the Latin Vulgate, which was the Bible of the Western world for a thousand years. Hence, the Apocrypha were in good standing at the time the Au thorized Version (King James) was
tween Catholics and Protestants. The
JULY, 1947
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