Celebrating the Apocrypha
The Apocrypha is a group of books found in some Bibles, but not most. Some Christians dismiss the Apocrypha. They think since it isn’t in their Bible, then it doesn’t matter.
They assume the Apocrypha was added to Scripture. In truth, it was deleted.
The Apocrypha was in the original King James Version but was later removed.
The Apocrypha was also part of the Septuagint, a Greek translation of Scripture in widespread use during Jesus’s time. Jesus quoted from the Septuagint and so did the New Testament writers, including Paul.
Paul surely had the Apocrypha in mind (along with what we now call the Old Testament) when he said that every Scripture is inspired by God and useful to educate and equip us (2 Timothy 3:16–17). Every Scripture means all parts—not some or just the parts in our Bible today. (Although the New Testament didn’t exist when Paul wrote this, we add the New Testament books to our understanding of every Scripture.)
To celebrate and embrace the Apocrypha as part of every Scripture, we’ll explore its many intriguing characters, both the good and the bad, the heroes and heavies. In doing so, we’ll use as our basis the Common English Bible (CEB).
Here are the books of the Apocrypha as listed in the CEB:
• Tobit
• Judith
• Greek Esther
• Wisdom
• Sirach
• Baruch
• Letter of Jeremiah
• Prayer of Azariah
• Susanna
• Bel and the Dragon
• 1 Maccabees
• 2 Maccabees
• 1 Esdras
• Prayer of Manasseh
• Psalm 151
• 3 Maccabees
• 2 Esdras
• 4 Maccabees
Though this isn’t chronological, we’ll follow this order (as published in the CEB) for our discussion. This makes it easy to follow along in the CEB. In addition, some Apocryphal books are challenging to place on a timeline, as with other Old Testament books, such as Joel.
Many of the books in the Apocrypha contain history, but we’d be wrong to scrutinize them for historical details. Instead, our focus should rest on the narrative and the spiritual lessons we can learn from it.
Sometimes, references to historical people or nations may be archetypes instead of literal. This technique occurs throughout the Bible.
For example, the Bible continues to use the label of Israel after the nation’s destruction, applying it metaphorically to the nation of Judah or generically to all remaining Hebrew people. Son of David sometimes refers to David’s biological sons, such as Amnon, Absalom, or Solomon. But it can also refer to Jesus, one of David’s distant descendants.
Discover more in the “About the Apocrypha” section at the end of this book. Also, note that several people share names with other biblical characters. Whenever we encounter a duplicate name, we’ll add a numerical suffix to help us keep them straight. See the “Duplicate Names” section in this book’s back matter.
How do you view the Apocrypha? Do you know of any characters in the Apocrypha? If so, who?
[Discover more in Acts 17:11.]
