Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Introducing the Old Testament apocrypha written by Bart Ehrman, read by Ken Teutch.
[00:00:10] Lots of people on the blog seemed to be really interested in early christian apocrypha, other gospels, acts, epistles, apocalypses that did not make it into the New Testament. It's a major area of fascination for me as well, but many folk talk about them as the apocrypha and probably thats not quite right. That is a designation usually reserved for the Old Testament apocrypha, which are not christian books, but jewish. Many years ago I explained what these books are on the blog and since I still get asked about them by members, I thought it would be helpful to cover that ground again. I begin with a basic overview taken from my textbook on the entire Bible, Genesis to revelation the Bible, a historical and literary introduction, second edition. In addition to the canonical books in the Hebrew Bible, there was other literature written by other jewish authors that cannot be found there, but that is of great importance for anyone interested in it. Of these other jewish books, none is of greater historical significance than a collection of writings that can be found in some christian versions of the Old Testament. These are the deuterocanonical writings, as they are called in the Roman catholic and eastern orthodox traditions. Protestants typically designate them as the apocrypha. The term apocrypha may not be altogether appropriate, as it is a word that means hidden things, or in this case hidden books. But there is nothing hidden about these books. They simply are books that are considered part of the canon by some christian denominations, but not by Protestants and not by Jews. For Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians, they are in a kind of second canon, hence the name deuterocanonical.
[00:01:59] These books are important for understanding the Bible of the early Christians. Even though these books are not found in hebrew manuscripts of the Bible, they were transmitted as part of the Bible. In the ancient greek translation known as the Septuagint. This was an important translation for Jews of the diaspora and eventually for Christians. As I have mentioned, most Jews by the time, say, of the maccabean revolt or later of the days of Jesus, did not live in Palestine and so no longer had any facility in reading Hebrew. Most Jews, of course, could not read at all, since, like most of the people living in the roman empire, the vast majority of Jews, probably 90%, were not literate. For most ancient people, to read a book meant hearing someone else read it aloud. The scripture was read regularly in the synagogue and people could hear it read and discuss its meaning, but virtually no one outside of Palestine could read it in Hebrew, the standard Bible for most Jews in the diaspora was the Septuagint. This became the Bible for the greek speaking christians at the very early stages of the christian movement. As soon as missionaries spread the religion outside of Palestine and the Septuagint included these dozen or so books that we are calling deuterocanonical or apocryphal. It was during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century that Martin Luther and like minded leaders of the protestant movement declared that the only books of the Old Testament to be accepted as scripture were those found in the Hebrew Bible, that is, the books regarded as canonical by Jews. Roman Catholics, on the other hand, declared that the writings of the Septuagint had always been part of the scriptures for Christians and so should continue to be accepted as such. The Orthodox Church is more or less sided with the Roman Catholics on this issue, but there was not a unanimous view on the subject. There are ten books that are accepted as deuterocanonical in both the Roman catholic and orthodox traditions. Four others are accepted by various eastern orthodox groups, for example, Greek orthodox and russian orthodox churches, and a couple of others that are accepted as standing on the margins by one group or another. All of these books were written by Jews and for Jews. Most of them were written after the final books of the Hebrew Bible and before the writings of the New Testament. So that, roughly speaking, they can be thought of as some of the intertestamental jewish literature that is written between the Testaments. They represent some of the truly great and interesting writings of the time. Some of them are historical narratives, for example, of the maccabean period. Others are historical fictions that teach religious lessons, others are expansions of books found in the Hebrew Bible, and others are books of wisdom. Here we can consider briefly the ten books that lie at the heart of the Apocrypha, the books accepted by both Roman catholic and orthodox traditions as deuterocanonical.
[00:05:08] The books I then discuss in my book briefly are Tobit Judith, additions to Esther, wisdom of Solomon Sirach, also called Ecclesiasticus Baruch, letters of Jeremiah, additions to Daniel, first Maccabees and second Maccabees. I'll introduce them here in a series of posts.
