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The Apocrypha (Greek, "hidden books") are Jewish books from that period not preserved in the Tanakh, but included in the Latin (Vulgate) and Greek (Septuagint) Old Testaments. The Apocrypha are still regarded as part of the canon of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, and as such, their number is fixed.
When discussing the Jewish view on the Apocrypha, it is helpful to split it up into three categories: 1. Antithetical to Jewish Scripture. Some of these books contain stories or ideas that contradict Scripture and/or Jewish thought.
- Yehuda Shurpin
The Jewish apocrypha (Hebrew: הספרים החיצוניים, romanized: HaSefarim haChitzoniyim, lit. 'the outer books') are religious texts written in large part by Jews, especially during the Second Temple period, not accepted as sacred manuscripts when the Hebrew Bible was canonized.
- Tobit, written 225-175 BCE. This book tells the story of two Israelite people, a blind man named Tobit living in Nineveh and a woman named Sarah, living in a city called Ecbatana.
- Judith, written about 100 BCE. Judith, a Jewish widow, attracts and seduces an Assyrian general besieging her city. Having ingratiated herself with him, she waits until he is drunk and then decapitates him, saving the capital Jerusalem from total destruction.
- Esther, written around 115 BCE. Although the Hebrew version of Esther is canonical, the Greek translation adds six sections to it. Esther is the story of an Israelite woman who saves her people from an anti-Israelite Persian plot.
- Wisdom of Solomon, written around 50 BCE. This book centers on the importance of Wisdom as related to humans and to God. It may have influenced the famous prologue of the Gospel of John, with wisdom replaced by the “Word.”
2. The Apocrypha in Judaism. During the two centuries prior to the birth of Christ a great many books were written by Jewish authors. Since it was only about a.d. 100 that the idea of a “closed” Heb. Canon was implemented, the problem of the canonicity of these compositions was not serious.
One such set is called “Apocrypha” (meaning hidden things in Greek) and refers to a set of works deemed canonical by the Egyptian Jewish community, based in Alexandria, but not included in the smaller canon of the Palestinian Jewish community which became the present-day Tanakh.
Apocrypha, (from Greek apokryptein, “to hide away”), in biblical literature, works outside an accepted canon of scripture. The history of the term’s usage indicates that it referred to a body of esoteric writings that were at first prized, later tolerated, and finally excluded. In its broadest.
