Conservapedia

Apocrypha

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The Apocrypha refers to books of the Bible that are not considered part of the Biblical Canon - precisely which books varies between denominations.

The Protestant canon of 66 books was originally formulated by Martin Luther, the Catholic definitive final canon of 73 books was retained "as read by the Church" by the Council of Trent. This canon was listed by the Fourth Council of Chalcedon (451). The Catholic Bible includes 27 books of the New Testament and 46 books "with all their parts" from the ancient Septuagint as used by the apostles and the early Christian church and included in Jerome's Vulgate translation as part of the Old Testament and accepts those books as scripture. For some time the King James Bible contained those books deemed as apocryphal books in a separate section, between the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Episcopal Church includes the books of the Apocrypha in the cycle of scripture readings in its services, but holds that the apocryphal books are useful for study and edification, but not for doctrine. Most Protestant churches do not use the Apocrypha as scripture at all.

Books apocryphal to the Protestant canon include (titles as listed in 1881 Bibles):

Martin Luther pronounced as "apocryphal" these books of the New Testament: [1]

He removed these 4 from the New Testament and placed them in an appendix to the Bible as "Apocrypha" along with the 7 books he removed from the Old Testament. Later, he revised his opinion of them and included them among the New Testament books as "useful", but excluded from the Old Testament the 7 remaining books and parts of other books he had originally removed as "apocryphal".

Western art and theology continued to make reference to Apocryphal subjects long after they were deemed apocryphal. For example:

There are also a number of books which are not included in the Catholic Bible either, which are part of the Orthodox canon, 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, 3 Maccabees, and the appended 4 Maccabees. Other apocryphal works are called "pseudepigrapha". These include, for example, the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs from the Old Testament period. The "Apostolic Fathers" include the Didache and the Epistles of Ignatius and the Shepherd of Hermas from the early 2nd century. The later Gnostic writings and gospels such as the Gospel of Thomas, found hidden in the abandoned monastery library at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, were written after the New Testament period. These books were of disputed status in the early Church as to whether they were scriptural or not, and were not included by the regional Third Council of Chalcedon and by the later General Council of Trent in the list of canonical scriptures. The Early Church fathers were concerned only with books relevant to the Christian faith, books which concerned salvation and growing in the Lord, following the oral tradition of the apostles (2 Thessalonians 2:15).

References

  1. ↑ The Reasons Why the Catholic Bible is not Accepted by Modern Churches
    Luther and "New Testament Apocrypha"
    Defending the Deuterocanonicals

External links

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