found in the LXX. That 2 Esdras (i.e. 4 Ezra) was not incorporated can only have been due to an accident. Further, it is to be observed that, whereas 3 and 4 Maccabees and Psalm 151 are found in most manuscripts of the LXX, they are absent from the Vulgate and the Apocrypha Proper.
Thus the difference between the Protestant Canon and that of Rome represents the difference between the Canon of the Palestinian and the Alexandrian Jews. This difference is not due, as it was thought at one time, to the difference in the language of the originals—a view which appears as early as the controversy of Africanus with Origen; for, as we are now aware, the bulk of the Apocrypha was originally written in Hebrew.
But besides the Apocrypha Proper there was a vast body of literature in circulation in Judaism to which is now generally attached the term 'Pseudepigrapha', i.e. books written between 300 B.C. and A.D. 120 under the names of ancient worthies in Israel. Since these will be briefly dealt with in the Introduction to vol. ii we shall not discuss them here.
To the Apocrypha Proper in this volume we have added 3 Maccabees—a quasi-historical work—which is found in very many manuscripts of the LXX. It might have been advisable to have included also Pseudo-Philo's Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, which was written originally in Hebrew and possibly soon after A.D. 70. But this work has not yet been critically edited. Of lost apocrypha we might mention the History of Johannes Hyrcanus, mentioned in 1 Macc. xvi. 23, 24, Jannes and Mambres (i.e. Jambres), Book of Joseph and Asenath.
§ 3. Various meanings of the term 'apocryphal'.
(1) In its earliest use this term (ἀπόκρυφος) was applied in a laudatory signification to writings which were withheld from public knowledge because they were vehicles of mysterious or esoteric wisdom which was too sacred or profound to be disclosed to any save the initiated. In this sense it is found in a magical book of Moses, which has been edited by Dieterich (Abraxas 169) and may be as old as the first century A.D. This book is entitled 'A sacred secret Book of Moses' (Μωυσέως ἱερὰ βίβλος ἀπόκρυφος).
But we have still earlier indications of the existence and nature of the Apocrypha in this sense. The Book of Daniel is represented as withheld from public knowledge until the time came for its publication: xii. 4, 'But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, even unto the time of the end.' The writer of 1 Enoch speaks of his revelations as designed not for his own, i. 2, cviii. 1, but for the elect of later generations: xciii. 10
And at its close shall be elected
The elect righteous of the eternal plant of righteousness,
To receive sevenfold instruction concerning; all His creation.
Similarly, the writer of the Assumption of Moses enjoins that his book is to be preserved for a later period, i. 16–17. That with large bodies of the Jews this esoteric literature was as highly or more highly treasured than the Canonical Scriptures is clear from the claims made by the Rabbis on behalf of their oral, which was originally in essence an esoteric, tradition, since it was not to be committed to writing. Though they insisted on the exclusive canonicity of the twenty-four books, they claimed to be the possessors of an oral tradition that not only overshadowed but frequently displaced the written Law. In 4 Ezra xiv. 44 sq. we have a categorical statement as to the superior worth of this esoteric literature: 'So in forty days were written ninety-four books. And it came to pass when the forty days were fulfilled, that the Most High spake unto me saying: The twenty-four books[1] that thou hast written publish, that the worihy and the unworthy may read (them): But the seventy last thou shalt keep to deliver to the wise among thy people.
- ↑ The twenty-four books are, of course, the Old Testament: the seventy are the apocryphal, but especially the apocalyptic books.
viii
