The Apocrypha and Pseudopigraphia

“I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.” (Rev. 22.18-19 ESV)

For a people who hold firmly to the authority of scripture, the question of “Which texts are scripture?” is of utmost importance. Whether a text indeed belongs in the Bible and recognized as divinely inspired matters greatly. In addition to the above warnings from Revelation, if a text is excluded that shouldn’t be, we lack all that would furnish us unto “every good work” (2 Tim. 3.17). On the other hand, if a false text is included, we corrupt God’s word and generate a gospel that curses rather than blesses (Gal. 1.9). Therefore, great care must be exercised when determining whether a text should be considered within the biblical canon (determined to be included in the genuine texts).

Of course, this is not a new concern: The Jews also recognized the need to distinguish between inspired (i.e. authoritative) texts and those which were not. By the time of Jesus, the canon of Jewish scriptures (which we refer to as the Old Testament) had been long established, and other Jewish writings were considered perhaps useful, but separate from these. One good place to see this is in Luke 24.44:

“Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” (ESV, emp. mine)

Jesus’ reference to the “law…prophets…psalms” was not simply a coincidence. By that time the Jews had organized their sacred scriptures into what was known as the Tanakh, (תָּנָ״ךְ), which itself was shorthand for the three major divisions: Torah (the Law), Nevi’im (the Prophets), & the Ketuvim (the Writings). These three sections of the Tanakh included the same books that are present in most Bibles, albeit in a different order. This selection of texts has long been recognized by Rabbinic Judaism as the authoritative list of divinely inspired works, also known as the Masoretic Text (MT). The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls from 1946-1956 also confirms this list in incredible fashion, as fragments or entire scrolls of every Old Testament book (except Proverbs) were found.[1]

“While the Dead Sea Scrolls can neither prove nor disprove inspiration, they clearly indicate that a community of Jews more than nineteen centuries ago possessed a library of sacred writings which, in all essential details, is the same as the Bible which we have regarded as authoritative. They also had books which we term apocryphal, as well as works distinctive to their sect. Their regard for the Old Testament was, however, supreme. Commentaries were written on its books. Scholars who have examined the manuscripts assert that the Biblical scrolls are written in a style of writing which is distinctive — as if to mark them off for special consideration. Those who believe in an inspired Bible find much encouragement in the Qumran texts”. (Charles F. Pfeiffer, The Dead Sea Scrolls and The Bible, pg. 111)

As referenced above, there were many other works written during the intertestamental period (from Malachi’s ministry (~420 BC to the arrival of John the Baptist in the early 1st century AD). As a group they are known as the Apocrypha, which comes from the Latin apocryphus (“secret”), from the Greek apokryphos (“private"). These works are included in some Bibles today, most often Catholic and Orthodox versions. In fact, all English versions of the Bible included these works, including the King James Version, up to the 1800’s. These texts include:

• 1 Esdras (Vulgate 3 Esdras)
• 2 Esdras (Vulgate 4 Esdras)
• Tobit
• Judith ("Judeth" in Geneva)
• Additions to Esther (Vulgate Esther 10:4 – 16:24)
• Wisdom
• Ecclesiasticus (also known as Sirach)
• Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremy ("Jeremiah" in Geneva) (all part of Vulgate Baruch)
• Additions to Daniel
  • Song of the Three Children (Vulgate Daniel 3:24–90)
  • Story of Susanna (Vulgate Daniel 13)
  • The Idol Bel and the Dragon (Vulgate Daniel 14)
• Prayer of Manasseh
• 1 Maccabees
• 2 Maccabees

The key question revolves around why they were included in the first place, and the Septuagint seems to be the main culprit. Beginning in the third century BC, the Hebrew scriptures were translated en masse into Koine Greek, a project that according to Jewish legend was commissioned by Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The idea was that Ptolemy desired the Hebrew tanakh for inclusion in his famous Library of Alexandria and commissioned 72 Jewish elders (6 from each of the 12 tribes) to perform the task (the name “Septuagint” means “seventy”, referencing this notion). Later scholars will argue that the Hellenic Jews of Alexandria completed the task between ~250-132 BC. There are no surviving originals of the Septuagint (or “LXX”) today, the oldest known copies are the Codex Vaticanus (4th century AD), Codex Sinaiticus (4th century AD), and the Codex Alexandrinus (5th century AD).

This poses not a few key issues for the Apocrypha’s inclusion within inspired scripture. First, many scholars agree that the various Jewish apocryphal books were completed sometime between 180-100 BC, which would be far too late to be considered within the biblical canon[2]. Secondly, the three earliest surviving copies of the Septuagint do not include the same apocryphal works:

“Although the LXX translations were undertaken before Christ, the LXX evidence that has come down to us is both late and mixed. An important early manuscript like Codex Vaticanus (4th cent.) includes all the Apocrypha except 1 and 2 Maccabees; Codex Sinaiticus (4th cent.) has Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus; another, Codex Alexandrinus (5th cent.) boasts all the apocryphal books plus 3 and 4 Maccabees and the Psalms of Solomon. In other words, there is no evidence here for a well-delineated set of additional canonical books.”[3]

Even more troubling is the fact that NONE of these works are ever quoted in the New Testament. Given the literally hundreds of quotations and endless references to the Old Testament, it should strike us as compelling that New Testament authors never referred to these apocryphal works as authoritative.

Lastly, we must recognize the difference between these texts and the Old Testament as that being between what we would call “fan fiction” and canonical works. Simply put, these works are written in a style that imitates canonical works, and often using the same characters as Biblical books, but there are statements made throughout these that contradict what is taught in the inspired text and as such disqualify them for inclusion. Consider a few examples:

• Tobit 12.9: “For almsgiving delivers from death, and it will purge away every sin. Those who perform deeds of charity and of righteousness will have fulness of life;
  (This passage is used by Roman Catholics to justify a “mass stipend” to pay for the offering of a mass (i.e., their assembled worship) for the soul of a deceased person. In essence, you can pay for the sins of someone who has died.)
• Tobit 6.1-8: Tobias is told by Raphael (an angel) to catch a fish, then use the heart & liver to ward off a troublesome “demon or evil spirit”.
• 2 Maccabees 14.41-46: A man known as “Razis” attempts to fall on his own sword to die “nobly” rather than “suffer outrages unworthy of his noble birth”. He is unsuccessful, and in v.46 tears out his own entrails, throws them at his attackers, and calls “upon the Lord of life and spirit to give them back to him again.”
• 2 Maccabees 15.37b-38: “So I too will here end my story. If it is well told and to the point, that is what I myself desired; if it is poorly done and mediocre, that was the best I could do.”
  (This isn’t exactly a strong argument for this book’s inclusion in scripture: It was the best I could come up with?)
• Sirach 50.27: “Instruction in understanding and knowledge I have written in this book, Jesus the son of Sirach, son of Eleazar, of Jerusalem, who out of his heart poured forth wisdom.”
  (How different this is than Peter’s statement in 2 Peter 1.21: “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”)

One would say that by excluding the Apocrypha we aren’t missing much of what God has to say, except that statement would not be fully accurate. By excluding the Apocrypha, we reach the same conclusion the Jews reached two millennia ago: We aren’t missing anything God has said to us. In the Biblical canon we indeed have “all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1.3).

This isn’t to say that these writings are without utility. Uninspired as they are, these were written in certain time periods, which can lend themselves useful to studying the history of those periods. For example, 2 Maccabees does describe historical events which have been corroborated by outside sources, one noteworthy example is the ravaging of Jerusalem by Antiochus Epiphanes and the subsequent revolt led by Judas Maccabeus. These works can help us understand not only the history of the period, but the way in which those authors thought and spoke and even read the biblical canon. In a sense, these works highlight the quality of the Old Testament through a simple adage: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

The Pseudepigrapha

As before, so again. When the New Testament writers completed their works and they began to be distributed throughout the Ancient Near East, other authors again began writing what one could describe as “bad fan fiction” or works concerning the characters and events of the life of Christ that were (to put it kindly) less than accurate, and certainly not inspired. The name pseudepigrapha comes from the Greek pseudo (fake or false), and epigraphḗ (name or inscription), denoting works that were attributed to authors such as Bartholomew, Judas Iscariot, or Joseph of Arimathea. These works also fail (spectacularly in some cases) to “hold a candle” to divinely inspired texts.
A few examples should suffice:

• The Gospel of Thomas
  • v.7: “Jesus said, ‘Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human.’"
  • V.11: “Jesus said, "This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away. The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. During the days when you ate what is dead, you made it come alive. When you are in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one, you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?"
  • V.22: “Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the kingdom." They said to him, "Then shall we enter the kingdom as babies?" Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]."
• The Gospel of Bartholomew
  • 1.30: “And Bartholomew said: Lord, how many souls depart out of the world daily? Jesus saith unto him: Thirty thousand.”
  • 1.34: “Bartholomew saith unto him: Lord, how many souls above the number are born into the world daily? Jesus saith unto him: One soul only is born above the number of them that depart.”
  • 2.14-22: Mary (Jesus’ mother) has to be physically restrained by the apostles in order to tell the story of Jesus’ birth announcement by Gabriel. When she finishes the account, fire bursts from her mouth, and Jesus has to make it stop.
• Epistle of Barnabas
  • Ch. 10: Refers to hyenas changing sex from year to year (male – female, & vice versa)
• The Narrative of Joseph of Arimathea
  • Ch. 1: Judas Iscariot was not a “disciple before the face of Jesus”, but the Jews supported his following Jesus, in order to betray Him. (a mole, in essence). They paid Judas ½ a gold shekel a day for his services.
  • Ch. 2: Jesus is accused of stealing the Law of Moses form the temple, when in fact the thief crucified on Jesus’ right side had committed the crime.
    Jesus is betrayed for 30 pieces of gold, not silver.
    The body of the pardoned thief disappeared after his death.
• The History of Joseph the Carpenter
  • Ch. 2: Joseph was actually a priest in the Temple
    (an incredible feat for a carpenter, living in Galilee, of the tribe of JUDAH!)
    Also, Mary was Joseph’s 2nd wife.
  • Ch. 10: Joseph lived 111 years, and never experienced pain or ill effects of age.

While some of these are absurd to the point of humor, it is sobering to consider their potential impact on the unwary. “The Gospel of Judas”, a 2nd-century Gnostic work discovered in the 1970’s, depicts Judas Iscariot as the only disciple to have received the “true gospel” with the other 11 being mistaken! Namely, the likes of Peter and Paul are said to be wrong concerning our bodily resurrection from the dead (1 Cor. 15.12-58). Further, it propagates the Gnostic notion that “Jesus” was the fleshly clothing of “Christ” (i.e. Christ didn’t die, just His outer fleshly “shell”) and condemns the Lord’s supper as cannibalistic.

These are not minor aberrations from the inspired scriptures. Adoption of concepts from these works constitute a complete departure from sound doctrine and that which edifies. Paul warned against such in Titus 2.1: “But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine.”, which comes just after a warning against those who are “…devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth (1.14). While some of these may be useful for helping us understand the historical context in which they were written, or even how they perceived the New Testament works, they must not be held on par with these.

Conclusion

“I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them.” (Rom. 16.17 ESV)

These people existed then. These exist today. No wonder Paul often referenced remaining true to what his readers were taught by himself and other inspired writers (Col. 2.7; 2 Th. 2.15; Titus 1.9).

These writings, both in the period of silence between the testaments, and in the silence that extends since the inspired writings of the 1st century, do not change or modify anything said within the canon of scripture. Rather, like any good tool we must be aware that while they have utility in the right hands, in the hands of the undiscerning or the devious these works can distract, dissuade, and even divide brethren.

I often heard it said as a child that some things have to be received or taken “with a grain of salt.”

When it comes to reading and studying the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha, feel free to dive in, but bring your Bible and a salt shaker when you do.

[1] https://www.truthmagazine.com/the-dead-sea-scrolls-and-the-text-of-the-old-testament

[2] https://www.evidenceunseen.com/world-religions/roman-catholicism/the-apocrypha/why-are-the-apocrypha-in-the-septuagint/

[3] D.A. Carson, “The Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books: An Evangelical View.” in The Parallel Apocrypha (Edited by John R. Kohlenberger III. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), xliv-xlvii.