Apocrypha

Apocrypha are biblical or related writings not forming part of the accepted canon of Scripture. While some might be of doubtful authorship or authenticity,^[1] in Christianity, the word apocryphal (ἀπόκρυφος) was first applied to writings which were to be read privately rather than in the public context of church services. Apocrypha were edifying Christian works that were not considered canonical scripture. It was not until well after the Protestant Reformation that the word apocrypha was used by some ecclesiastics to mean "false," "spurious," "bad," or "heretical."

From a Protestant point of view, biblical apocrypha are a set of texts included in the Septuagint (the Hebrew Bible in Greek), used for several hundred years by Jews and by early Christians, and still by Eastern Orthodoxy. In the centuries after the fall of Jerusalem, Jewish scholarship compiled the Masoretic Text in Hebrew, which remains the standard text used by Jews. Some books which were included in the Septuagint were not regarded as canonical, from the original Hebrew Bible, and were set apart and remained in Greek. Later, when Jerome translated the Canon of Scripture and produced the Latin Vulgate, he labelled those books as Apocrypha. Catholic and Orthodox Churches consider them to be deuterocanonical, whereas some Protestants consider them apocryphal, that is, non-canonical books that are useful for instruction.^[2][3] Luther's Bible placed them in a separate section in between the Old Testament and New Testament called the Apocrypha, a convention followed by subsequent Protestant Bibles.^[4] Some non-canonical apocryphal texts are called pseudepigrapha, a term that means "false attribution".^[5]

The adjective "apocryphal", meaning of doubtful authenticity, mythical, fictional, is recorded from the late 16th century.^[6]