The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament/Volume I/General Introduction
INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME I[1]
§ 1. The origin of the term apocryphal.
How the term 'Apocryphal Books' (ἀπόκρυφα βιβλία) arose has not yet been determined. It did not, as Zahn (Gesch. des Neutestamentlichen Kanons I. i. 123 sq.), Schurer, Porter, N. Schmidt, and others maintain, originate in the Late Hebrew phrase ספרים גנוזים, 'hidden books.'[2] But Talmudic literature knows nothing of such a class. The Hebrew word ganas (גנז) does not mean 'to hide', but 'to store away' things in themselves precious. Indeed, so far is it from being a technical term in reference to non-Canonical writings, that it is most frequently used in reference to the Canonical Scriptures themselves. When writings were wholly without the pale of the Sacred books—such as those of the heretics or Samaritans—they were usually designated ḥiṣonim, i.e. 'outside' (Sanh. x. 1 ספרים חצונים and ספרי המינים). To this class the Apocrypha were never relegated, save Sirach, according to a statement found only in Sanh. x. 1 in the Palestinian Talmud, where it is stated that 'whoso reads the outside books would have no part in the life to come'. But it is clear that there is some error either in the text or the interpretation; for Sirach is very frequently cited by the Rabbis (see the Original Hebrew of a Portion of Ecclesiasticus, Cowley and Neubauer, pp. xix-xxx), and two passages of it (Sir. vii. 10 in Erubin 65a and xiii. 16 in Baba Qama 92b) are cited as belonging to the Hagiographa. The facts show that Sirach was read—read at all events for private edification though not in the synagogues.
§ 2. Extent of the Jewish apocryphal writings.
We are not here of course concerned with all Jewish apocryphal writings, but with those which were written between 200 B.C. and A.D. 120. The most notable of these in the past centuries were those which we may define as the Apocrypha Proper, i.e.
- 1 Esdras
- 2 Esdras
- Tobit
- Judith
- Additions to Esther
- Wisdom of Solomon
- Ecclesiasticus or Sirach
- 1 Baruch
- Epistle of Jeremy
- Additions to Daniel—The Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Children
- Additions„ to Daniel—„Susanna
- Additions„ to Daniel—„Bel and the Dragon
- Prayer of Manasses
- 1 Maccabees
- 2 Maccabees
If we compare the collection of the Sacred books as they are found in the Hebrew Old Testament, the LXX, and the Vulgate, we shall find that the Apocrypha Proper constitutes the excess of the Vulgate over the Hebrew Old Testament, and that this excess is borrowed from the LXX. But the official Vulgate (1592) does not include 1 and 2 Esdras (i.e. 4 Ezra in this edition) and the Prayer of Manasses among the Canonical Scriptures, but prints them as an appendix after the New Testament. The Roman Church excludes them from the Canon.[3] Only 1 Esdras is 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[4] 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.
For in them is the spring of understanding,
The fountain of wisdom,
And the stream of knowledge.'
In a like laudatory sense Gregory of Nyssa reckons the New Testament Apocalypse as ἐν ἀποκρύφοις (Oratio in suam ordinationem, III. 549: Ed. Migne).
(2) But the word was applied to writings that were withheld from public circulation, not on the ground of their transcendent worth, but because their value was confessedly secondary or questionable. Thus Origen differentiates writings that were read in public worship from apocryphal works (Comm. in Matt. x. 18, xiii. 57). This use became current, and prepared the way for the third and unfavourable sense of the word.
(3) The word came to be applied to what was false, spurious, or heretical. This meaning appears also in Origen, Prolog. in Cant. Cantic.: Lommatzsch, xiv. 325).
§ 4. The attitude of the Christian Church to the Apocrypha.
The degree of estimation in which the apocryphal books have been held in the Church has varied with age and place.
(1) The Greek Fathers such as Origen and Clement, who used the Greek Bible, which included these books, frequently cite them as 'scripture', 'Divine scripture', 'inspired', or the like. Later Greek Fathers[5] rejected in various ways this conception of the Canon, but it was accepted and maintained in the West by St. Augustine. Where the Greek differed from the Hebrew Augustine held that the difference was due to Divine inspiration, and that this difference was to be regarded as a sign that in the passage in question an allegorical—not a literal—interpretation was to be looked for. Since he habitually used a Latin Bible, which embraced the Apocrypha, he appealed to the authority of these books as of the rest of the Scriptures. The Council of Hippo (A.D. 393)[6] and that of Carthage (A.D. 397), at both of which Augustine was present respectively as a presbyter and a bishop, drew up a list of Canonical writings, which, though formed by Latin-speaking bishops, was the chief authority on which the Council of Trent based its own decision. In fact the list authoritatively issued by the Council of Hippo and that of Trent agree in nearly every respect, save that the Tridentine divines appear to have misunderstood the meaning of 1 and 2 Esdras in the list of the African Council. That in this list 1 Esdras meant the apocryphal book which Augustine acknowledged as Scripture (De Civ. Dei, xviii. 36) and 2 Esdras meant the Canonical Ezra and Nehemiah there is no reason for doubt; but the Tridentine divines, taking 1 Esdras as = the Canonical Ezra and 2 Esdras as = the Canonical Nehemiah;[7] through a misunderstanding declared 1 Esdras (i.e. the apocryphal Esdras) apocryphal.
(2) On the other hand, teachers connected with Palestine and familiar with the Hebrew Canon, like Africanus and Jerome, declared all books outside the Hebrew Canon as apocryphal.
(3) Alongside these two opposing views arose a third which held that, though these books were not to be put in the same rank as those in the Hebrew collection, they nevertheless had their value for moral uses, and should be read in the Church services. Hence they were called 'ecclesiastical'—a designation that is found first in Rufinus (ob. A.D. 410). Notwithstanding many variations in the attitude of different authorities and councils these three opinions maintained their ground down to the Reformation.
At the Reformation the above ecclesiastical usages were transformed into articles of belief, which may be regarded as characteristic of the Churches by which they were adopted. As we have already remarked, the Council of Trent adopted the Canon of the Council of Hippo and of Augustine, declaring: 'If any one receive not, as sacred and canonical, the said books entire with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin Vulgate . . . let him be anathema.'[8] All the Apocrypha except 1 Esdras, 4 Ezra, and the Prayer of Manasses belonging to the Apocrypha Proper were declared Canonical.
On the other hand, the Protestant Churches have universally declared their adhesion to the Hebrew Canon of the Old Testament. Yet amongst these a milder and a severer view prevailed. While in some Confessions, i.e. the Westminster, it is decreed that they are not 'to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings', a more favourable view is expressed regarding them in many other quarters; e.g. in the preface prefixed to them in the Genevan Bible: 'As books proceeding from godly men (they) were received to be read for the advancement and furtherance of the knowledge of history and for the instruction of godly manners: which books declare that at all times God had an especial care of His Church, and left them not utterly destitute of teachers and means to confirm them in the hope of the promised Messiah'; and in the Sixth Article of the Church of England: 'the other books the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners.'
In addition to the spiritual and moral service rendered by these books, the modern student recognizes that without them it is absolutely impossible to explain the course of religious development between 200 B.C. and A.D. 100. In this respect the Apocrypha is to be regarded as embracing the Pseudepigrapha as well. If the Canonical and Apocryphal Books are compared in reference to the question of inspiration, no unbiased scholar could have any hesitation in declaring that the inspiration of such a book as Wisdom or the Testaments of the XII Patriarchs is incomparably higher than that of Esther.
§ 5. Editions—partial or complete—of the Apocrypha.
§ 6. General literature dealing directly or indirectly with the period of this literature.[9]
- ↑ This Introduction is not intended to be a General Introduction to the Apocrypha, but only to bring forward a few important points in connexion with the Apocrypha.
- ↑ This error appears to have arisen from Aboth R. N., I. i, where it is said, 'Formerly because Proverbs, the Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes, contained only proverbs, and did not belong to the Hagiographa, they were stored away (גנוזים) until the men of the Great Synagogue explained them.' Here many scholars have rendered the Hebrew word wrongly as 'hidden'.
- ↑ The rest of the Apocrypha Proper was declared to be Canonical by the Council of Trent (1546), which pronounced an anathema on the man who did not accept libros ipsos integros cum omnibus suis partibus, prout in Ecclesia Catholica legi consueverunt et in veteri vulgata Latina editione habentur, pro sacris et canonicis.
- ↑ The twenty-four books are, of course, the Old Testament: the seventy are the apocryphal, but especially the apocalyptic books.
- ↑ In the next century Athanasius, in an Easter letter (A.D. 365), states that the books of the Old Testament were twenty-two in number according to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Other books not included in the Canon, such as Wisdom, Sirach, Esther, Tobit, Judith, might be used for the instruction of catechumens. It is noteworthy here that the Maccabees are omitted, and Esther is treated as an apocryph.
- ↑ Zahn, Gesch. des N. T.lichen Kanons, II. i. 246–253.
- ↑ Council of Trent, April 8, 1546. 'Testamenti veteris . . . Esdrae primus et secundus, qui dicitur Nehemias.'
- ↑ This decree of the Council of Trent was ratified by fifty-three prelates, 'among whom (Westcott, Bible in the Church, 257) there was not one German, not one scholar distinguished by historical learning, not one who was fitted by special study for the examination of a subject in which the truth could only be determined by the voice of antiquity.'
- ↑ This list includes only a few of the works interesting to the student of this literature.