Between 90 and 98 CE, Jewish scholars met at Jamania and established the criteria for the books of the Hebrew Bible that would later be adopted as part of Christianity's official biblical canon—the "canonical books." Criteria of antiquity, language, and moral integrity were established. Books that failed to meet the criteria came to be called "apocryphal."
The word is a Greek plural neuter adjective meaning "hidden." As a literary term it was first applied to books containing esoteric wisdom deemed too sensitive for the uninitiated. Hence, it was a term of honor among scholars. But after the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem in 70 CE, its meaning gradually evolved to mean "spurious" or even "heretical."
When it came time for the New Testament canon to be "fixed" at the Council of Hippo in 393 CE, the criteria were established that each book had to have been written by an apostle or someone close to an apostle, and each had to have been traditionally used in public worship.
The term apocryphal is now applied to books not included in the official canon of the Bible but often included, especially in Protestant Bibles, as a section between the Old and New Testaments. Such writings include additions to the book of Esther, the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men, Psalm 151, and the books of Baruch, Bel and the Dragon, Ecclesiasticus, 1 and 2 Esdras, Letter of Jeremiah, Judith, 1-4 Maccabees, Prayer of Manasseh, Susanna, Tobit, and Wisdom of Solomon. Orthodox, Roman, and Protestant churches differ regarding the importance and content of these sections.
Jerome, writing in the early fifth century, was probably the first to use the term "Apocrypha" to describe noncanonical books. He believed apocryphal books should be read for edification but not "for confirming the authority of church dogmas." Because of their acceptance in church tradition, he felt compelled to include them in his famous Latin Bible, The Vulgate, which became the official translation of the Roman Catholic Church.
In the Greek Orthodox Church all but four books of the Apocrypha were accepted as canonical. After the Reformation of the sixteenth century, most Protestants generally ignored the Apocrypha. Martin Luther added the Apocrypha to the end of his German translation while commenting, "These books are not held equal to the sacred Scriptures but are useful and good for reading." That statement probably marked the beginning of the end for the study of the Apocrypha in most Protestant circles. Because they were placed together in a group, they were easy to remove, and most Protestant Bibles do not contain even a mention of such books.
works of Jewish and early Christian literature that were not included by their churches in their canons—that is, those not used in the divine liturgy. Not all the works excluded from the Jewish canon are considered apocryphal by the Christian church; moreover, there are differences among various Christian churches as to which works belong among the Apocrypha.
The term “Apocrypha” was first used in a papal decree at the end of the fourth century, and it was at that time that the first list of apocryphal works was drawn up by the Christian church. Apocrypha are divided into Old Testament, New Testament, and biographical works. The Old Testament Apocrypha are landmarks of Jewish literature primarily of the second and first centuries B.C. They include the first three books of the Maccabees, the Epistle of Jeremy, the Wisdom of Solomon, Judith, the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach, the third book of Esdras, Tobit, and a number of others. The Christian church (except for the Lutherans) has included part of the Old Testament Apocrypha in its canon; therefore, some of it, which was lost in the original Hebrew, has been preserved in the Greek translation. Certain of the Old Testament Apocrypha were evidently written in Greek, including the third book of the Maccabees and the Prayer of Manasseh, and some were written in Aramaic—for example, Tobit. Fragments of Old Testament Apocrypha were found among the Qumran manuscripts, discovered during the period 1947–65 in caves along the shores of the Dead Sea. New Testament Apocrypha include numerous gospels—such as those of Peter and Thomas and the Protevangelium of James—and epistles by Clement, Polycarp, Barnabas, and others. A number of Coptic New Testament Apocrypha—for example, the gospels of Thomas and of Truth—were found in 1946 during excavations at Nag-Hammadi, Egypt. On the borderline between New Testament and biographical Apocrypha are the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (Paul, Andrew, and others), which recount the dissemination of Christianity and the sufferings of its first preachers.
During the Middle Ages the creation and dissemination of Apocrypha were most frequently connected with popular antifeudal movements and heresies. Thus, in Bulgaria the Bogomil movement evoked a flourishing apocryphal literature. In its struggle with heresies the Christian church condemned the majority of Apocrypha as heretical, but at the same time certain Apocrypha—those which did not contradict the canon—were not only not condemned by the church but were even recommended for reading by believers. In old Rus’, Apocrypha were being extensively propagated at the same time that Christianity was spreading. These were the so-called forbidden books, many of which, having penetrated through Bulgaria, were translations and reworkings of Greek Apocrypha—for example, “The Virgin’s Descent Into Hell” and the apocryphal works about Solomon and Kitov-ras. Russian texts of Apocrypha have come down to us in copies the earliest of which date back to the 11th century. The Anthology of Sviatoslav (1073) enumerates some “hidden,” or apocryphal, books. Some Apocrypha, however, even found their way into such official church collections as Velikie Chet’i Minei (The Great Monthly Readings), published during the 16th century. Many Apocrypha were preserved in monastery libraries—for example, in the Solovetsk Monastery. Apocrypha were reflected in paintings—for example, the icon Descent into Hell; in folklore—for example, religious verses, charms, and divinations; and in music—for example, A. Serov’s opera Judith.
A. P. KAZHDAN, N. N. ROZOV, and M. I. ZAND