Apocrypha

Which books?

The name comes from the Greek apokruphos (ἀπόκρυφος), ‘hidden’, the word Paul uses when he says that in Christ "are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3). In early Christian use it could mean books not read publicly in church, or books of doubtful origin; Protestants came to use it for the books of the Old Testament period that are not in the Hebrew Bible: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and additions to Esther and Daniel. The Belgic Confession also lists 3 and 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh.

Most of these books were written in the last centuries before Christ, and they were part of the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, which the early church widely used. The New Testament writers probably knew their stories. In this verse many interpreters hear an echo of the martyrs of 2 Maccabees 7:

Others were tortured and refused their release, so that they might gain a better resurrection.

Hebrews 11:35

Yet the New Testament never quotes these books with ‘it is written’ as Scripture. The same word is used for the apocryphal gospels, such as the Gospel of Thomas, which belong to a different group that no church received. Usage also varies: books such as 1 Enoch, which Protestants usually call pseudepigrapha, are what Catholics call apocrypha.

How the church has judged them

Opinion was already divided in the ancient church. Many Fathers quoted these books as Scripture, and Augustine and the Council of Carthage in 397 included them in the list of biblical books Council of Carthage. Jerome, who learned Hebrew to translate the Old Testament, held that the church reads them but does not use them to establish doctrine, and the Church of England's Thirty-Nine Articles quote him to that effect: "the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine" Thirty-Nine Articles, Art. 6. Luther's German Bible gathered them in a section of their own between the Testaments, as books not equal to Scripture yet useful and good to read Luther, Preface to the Apocrypha. The Belgic Confession (1561) says:

All which the Church may read and take instruction from, so far as they agree with the canonical books; but they are far from having such power and efficacy as that we may from their testimony confirm any point of faith or of the Christian religion

Belgic Confession, Art. 6

The Westminster Confession is stricter: they are not to be "any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings" Westminster Confession 1.3.

Where the traditions differ

The Catholic Church calls these books deuterocanonical and receives them as inspired Scripture equal to the rest of the Old Testament; the Council of Trent defined them as canonical in 1546 Council of Trent, Decree on the Canonical Scriptures. Catholics point to the Septuagint, to the Fathers who quoted them, and to the ancient lists. The question was bound up with other disputes: the prayer for the dead in 2 Maccabees 12, for instance, was part of the debate over purgatory. The Orthodox, following the Septuagint, receive a few more books, and Orthodox writers describe their standing in somewhat different ways. Protestants hold that the Old Testament Jesus and the apostles received was the Hebrew Bible, so these books are outside the canon, though Protestant churches differ over how much use to make of them. See also the lesson The canon: which books are Scripture and What about the 'other gospels'?