Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

-----

Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Friday, November 2, 2012

The Biblical Apocrypha

Biblical apocrypha

 
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
This article is about a class of books included in some Bibles.
For other books generally excluded from Bibles, see Apocrypha.
 
This article is about biblical books printed apart from the New and Old Testaments.
For books whose inclusion in the Old Testament canon
is controversial, see Deuterocanonical books.
 
 
The Biblical apocrypha (from the Greek word ἀπόκρυφος, apókruphos, meaning "hidden") denotes the collection of ancient books found, in some editions of the Bible, in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments[1] or as an appendix after the New Testament.[2] Although the term apocrypha had been in use since the 5th century, it was in Luther's Bible of 1534 that the Apocrypha was first published as a separate intertestamental section.[3] Luther was making a polemical point about the canonicity of these books. As an authority for this division, he cited St. Jerome, who in the early 5th century distinguished the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments,[4] stating that books not found in the Hebrew were not received as canonical. Although his statement was controversial in his day,[5] Jerome was later titled a Doctor of the Church and his authority was also cited in the Anglican statement in 1571 of the Thirty-Nine Articles.[6]
 
There was agreement among the Reformers that the Apocrypha contained "books proceeding from godly men" and therefore recommended reading. The Geneva Bible[7] said this in 1560:
These bokes that follow in order unto the Newe testament, are called Apocrypha, that is, bokes, which were not received by a comune consent to be red and expounded publickely in the Church, neither yet served to prove any point of Christian religion, save inasmuche as they had the consent of the other Scriptures called Canonical to confirme the same, or rather whereon they were grounded : but as bokes proceding from godlie men, were received to be red for the advancement and furtherance of the knowledge of the historie, and for the instruction of godlie maners : which bokes declare that at all times God had an especial care of his Church and left them not utterly destitute of teachers and meanes to confirme them in the hope of the promised Messiah, and also witnesse that those calamities that God sent to his Church, were according to his providence, who had bothe so threatened by his Prophetes, and so broght it to passe for the destruction of their enemies, and for the tryal of his children.
 
Later, during the English Civil War, the Westminster Confession of 1647 excluded the Apocrypha from the canon and made no recommendation of the Apocrypha above "other human writings",[8] and, as the Catholic Encyclopedia says, "...the name Apocrypha soon came to have an unfavourable signification which it still retains, comporting both want of genuineness and canonicity."[9] This hostile attitude towards the Apocrypha (considered Catholic by some British Protestants) is represented by the refusal of the British and Foreign Bible Society in the early 19th century to print it (see below).
 
Catholic and Orthodox Christians regard as fully canonical most of these books called Apocrypha, and their canonicity was explicitly affirmed at the Council of Trent in 1546[10] and Synod of Jerusalem (1672) respectively. They are called deuterocanonical by Catholics and anagignoskomena by the Orthodox.
 
Biblical canon
The protocanonical and deuterocanonical books he placed in their traditional positions in the Old Testament.
 
King James Version
 
The English-language King James Version (KJV) of 1611 followed the lead of the Luther Bible in using an inter-testamental section labelled "Books called Apocrypha", or just "Apocrypha" at the running page header. The KJV followed the Geneva Bible of 1560 almost exactly (variations are marked below). The section contains the following:[18]
 
Included in this list are those books of the Clementine Vulgate that were not in Luther's canon. These are the books most frequently referred to by the casual appellation "the Apocrypha". These same books are also listed in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England.[19] Despite being placed in the Apocrypha, in the table of lessons at the front of some printings of the King James Bible, these books are included under the Old Testament.
 
Other early Bible editions
 
 
All English translations of the Bible printed in the sixteenth century included a section or appendix for Apocryphal books. Matthew's Bible, published in 1537, contains all the Apocrypha of the later King James Version in an inter-testamental section. The 1538 Myles Coverdale Bible contained an Apocrypha that excluded Baruch and the Prayer of Manasseh. The 1560 Geneva Bible placed the Prayer of Manasseh after 2 Chronicles; the rest of the Apocrypha were placed in an inter-testamental section. The Douay-Rheims Bible (1582–1609) placed the Prayer of Manasseh and 3 and 4 Esdras into an Appendix of the second volume of the Old Testament.
 
In the Zürich Bible (1529–30) they are placed in an Appendix. They include 3 Maccabees, along with 1 Esdras & 2 Esdras. The 1st edition omitted the Prayer of Manasseh and the Rest of Esther, although these were included in the 2nd edition. The French Bible (1535) of Pierre Robert Olivétan placed them between the Testaments, with the subtitle, "The volume of the apocryphal books contained in the Vulgate translation, which we have not found in the Hebrew or Chaldee".
 
In 1569 the Spanish Reina Bible, following the example of the pre-Clementine Latin Vulgate, contained the deuterocanonical books in its Old Testament. Following the other Protestant translations of its day, Valera's 1602 revision of the Reina Bible moved these books into an inter-testamental section.
 
Modern editions
 
All King James Bibles published before 1666 included the Apocrypha.[20] In 1826,[21] the British and Foreign Bible Society decided that no BFBS funds were to pay for printing any Apocryphal books anywhere. Since then most modern editions of the Bible and reprintings of the King James Bible omit the Apocrypha section. In the 18th century, the Apocrypha section was omitted from the Challoner revision of the Douay-Rheims version. In the 1979 revision of the Vulgate, the section was dropped. Modern reprintings of the Clementine Vulgate commonly omit the Apocrypha section. Many reprintings of older versions of the Bible now omit the apocrypha and many newer translations and revisions have never included them at all.
 
There are some exceptions to this trend, however. Some editions of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible include not only the Apocrypha listed above, but also the third and fourth books of the Maccabees, and Psalm 151; the RSV Apocrypha also lists the Letter of Jeremiah (Epistle of Jeremy in the KJV) as separate from the book of Baruch, following the Orthodox tradition.
 
The American Bible Society lifted restrictions on the publication of Bibles with the Apocrypha in 1964. The British and Foreign Bible Society followed in 1966.[22] The Stuttgart edition of the Vulgate (the printed edition, not most of the on-line editions), which is published by the UBS, contains the Clementine Apocrypha as well as the Epistle to the Laodiceans and Psalm 151.
 
Brenton's edition of the Septuagint includes all of the Apocrypha found in the King James Bible with the exception of 2 Esdras, which was not in the Septuagint and is no longer extant in Greek.[23] He places them in a separate section at the end of his Old Testament, following English tradition.
 
In Greek circles, however, these books are not traditionally called Apocrypha, but Anagignoskomena (ἀναγιγνωσκόμενα), and are integrated into the Old Testament. The Orthodox Study Bible, published by Thomas Nelson Publishers, includes the Anagignoskomena in its Old Testament, with the exception of 4 Maccabees. This was translated by the Saint Athanasius Academy of Orthodox Theology, from the Rahlfs Edition of the Septuagint using Brenton's English translation and the RSV Expanded Apocrypha as boilerplate. As such, they are included in the Old Testament with no distinction between these books and the rest of the Old Testament. This follows the tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church where the Septuagint is the received version of Old Testament scripture, considered itself inspired in agreement with some of the Fathers, such as St Augustine, rather than the Hebrew Masoretic text followed by all other modern translations.[24]
 
Anagignoskomena
 
The Septuagint, the pre-eminent Greek version of the Old Testament, contains books that are not present in the Hebrew Bible. These texts are not traditionally segregated into a separate section, nor are they usually called apocrypha. Rather, they are referred to as the Anagignoskomena (ἀναγιγνωσκόμενα, "things that are read"). The anagignoskomena are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira (Sirach), Baruch, Epistle of Jeremy (in the Vulgate this is chapter 6 of Baruch), additions to Daniel (The Prayer of Azarias, Susanna and Bel and the Dragon), additions to Esther, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, i.e. all the Deuterocanonical plus 3 Maccabees and 1 Esdras.[25]
 
Some editions add additional books, as Psalm 151 or the Odes, including the Prayer of Manasses. 2 Esdras is added as appendix in the Slavonic Bibles and 4 Maccabees as appendix in Greek editions.[25]
 
Pseudepigrapha
 
Technically, a pseudepigraphon is a book written in a biblical style and ascribed to an author who did not write it. In common usage, however, the term pseudepigrapha is often used by way of distinction to refer to apocryphal writings that do not appear in printed editions of the Bible, as opposed to the texts listed above. Examples[26] include:
 
Often included among the pseudepigrapha are 3 and 4 Maccabees because they are not traditionally found in western Bibles, although they are in the Septuagint. Similarly, the Book of Enoch, Book of Jubilees and 4 Baruch are often listed with the pseudepigrapha although they are commonly included in Ethiopian Bibles. The Psalms of Solomon are found in some editions of the Septuagint.
 
Classification
 
 
The Apocrypha of the King James Bible constitutes the books of the Vulgate that are present neither in the Hebrew Old Testament nor the Greek New Testament. Since these are derived from the Septuagint, from which the old Latin version was translated, it follows that the difference between the KJV and the Roman Catholic Old Testaments is traceable to the difference between the Palestinian and the Alexandrian canons of the Old Testament. This is only true with certain reservations, as the Latin Vulgate was revised by Jerome according to the Hebrew, and, where Hebrew originals were not found, according to the Septuagint. Furthermore, the Vulgate omits 3 and 4 Maccabees, which generally appear in the Septuagint, while the Septuagint and Luther's Bible omit 2 Esdras, which is found in the Apocrypha of the Vulgate and the King James Bible. Luther's Bible, moreover, also omits 1 Esdras. It should further be observed that the Clementine Vulgate places the Prayer of Manasses and 3 Esdras and 4 Esdras in an appendix after the New Testament as apocryphal.
 
It is hardly possible to form any classification not open to some objection. Scholars are still divided as to the original language, date, and place of composition of some of the books that come under this provisional attempt at order. (Thus some of the additions to Daniel and the Prayer of Manasseh are most probably derived from a Semitic original written in Palestine, yet in compliance with the prevailing opinion they are classed under Hellenistic Jewish literature. Again, the Slavonic Enoch goes back undoubtedly in parts to a Semitic original, though most of it may have been written by a Greek Jew in Egypt.)
 
A distinction can be made between the Palestinian and the Hellenistic literature of the Old Testament, though even this is open to serious objections. The former literature was written in Hebrew or Aramaic, and seldom in Greek; the latter in Greek.
 
Next, within these literatures there are three or four classes of subject material.
  • Historical,
  • Legendary (Haggadic),
  • Apocalyptic,
  • Didactic or Sapiential.
 
The Apocrypha proper then would be classified as follows:--
 
Cultural impact
At which I was greatly encouraged in my soul... So coming home, I presently went to my Bible, to see if I could find that saying, not doubting but to find it presently... Thus I continued above a year, and could not find the place; but at last, casting my eye upon the Apocrypha books, I found it in Ecclesiasticus, chap. ii. 10. This, at the first, did somewhat daunt me; because it was not in those texts that we call holy and canonical; yet, as this sentence was the sum and substance of many of the promises, it was my duty to take the comfort of it; and I bless God for that word, for it was of good to me. That word doth still ofttimes shine before my face.[28]

 

See also

 
 References
  1. ^ As in the original King James or Authorized Version, and in modern Bibles such as the New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, 4th Expanded Edition: New Revised Standard Version
  2. ^ See the English Standard Version with the Apocrypha, and the New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, 3rd Revised and Expanded Edition: Revised Standard Version
  3. ^ Bruce, F.F. "The Canon of Scripture". IVP Academic, 2010, Location 1478-86 (Kindle Edition).
  4. ^ See the Theological Glossary of the Jerusalem Bible Reader's Edition: "One tradition within the Church excluded the Greek books, and this tradition was taken up by the 15th century {sic} Reformers, who relegated these books to the Apocrypha. 1 Maccabees 12:9." Note that the JB is explicitly approved by the CBCEW (the Bishop's Conference of England and Wales)
  5. ^ Catholic Encyclopaedia, "St. Jerome evidently applied the term to all quasi-scriptural books which in his estimation lay outside the canon of the Bible, and the Protestant Reformers, following Jerome's catalogue of Old Testament Scriptures — one which was at once erroneous and singular among the Fathers of the Church — applied the title Apocrypha to the excess of the Catholic canon of the Old Testament over that of the Jews. Naturally, Catholics refuse to admit such a denomination, and we employ "deuterocanonical" to designate this literature, which non-Catholics conventionally and improperly known as the Apocrypha".
  6. ^ "And the other books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine."
  7. ^ Geneva Bible, 1560; a facsimile, mostly of the Scheide Library copy, was published in 2007 by Hendrickson: Peabody, Mass. Geneva was regarded as authoritative in England (often even by Catholics) until well into the 17th century.
  8. ^ "The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the Canon of the Scripture; and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings." For more details see Development of the Old Testament canon#Church of England.
  9. ^ Catholic Encyclopaedia article on Apocrypha
  10. ^ Council of Trent, 4th Session (8th April 1546)
  11. ^ Prologues of Saint Jerome, Latin text
  12. ^ "Canon of the Old Testament". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. section titled "The Council of Florence 1442": "...contains a complete list of the books received by the Church as inspired, but omits, perhaps advisedly, the terms canon and canonical. The Council of Florence therefore taught the inspiration of all the Scriptures, but did not formally pass on their canonicity."
  13. ^ Scanned pages of the Gutenberg Bible
  14. ^ 1945 Edition of the Luther Bible on-line
  15. ^ Preface to the Revised Standard Version Common Bible
  16. ^ Six Points On Luther's "Epistle of Straw", 3 April 2007
  17. ^ Introductory material to the appendix of the Vulgata Clementina, text in Latin
  18. ^ The Bible: Authorized King James Version with Apocrypha, Oxford World's Classics, 1998, ISBN 978-0-19-283525-3
  19. ^ Article VI at episcopalian.org
  20. ^ Sir Frederic G. Kenyon, Dictionary of the Bible edited by James Hastings, and published by Charles Scribner's Sons of New York in 1909
  21. ^ Howsam, Leslie (2002). Cheap Bibles. Cambridge University Press. p. 14. ISBN 0-521-52212-9, 9780521522120. http://books.google.com/books?id=gT8f6wbTzHcC&pg=PA14#PPA14,M1.
  22. ^ A Brief History of the United Bible Societies
  23. ^ 2 Esdras at earlyjewishwritings.com
  24. ^ "The Orthodox Study Bible" 2008, Thomas Nelson Inc. p. XI
  25. ^ a b Vassiliadis, Petros (2005). "Canon and authority of Scripture". In S. T. Kimbrough. Orthodox and Wesleyan Scriptural understanding and practice. Crestwood, N.Y: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press. p. 23. ISBN 978-0-88141-301-4. http://books.google.com/books?id=q-vhwjamOioC&pg=PA23#v=onepage&q&f=false.
  26. ^ The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 2, James H. Charlesworth
  27. ^ Christopher Columbus: Motivations to Reach the Indies by Sailing West, Janet L. Dotterer
  28. ^ Gilmore, George William (1916). Selections from the World's Devotional Classics. Funk & Wagnalls company. p. 63.
Texts
Commentaries
  • O. F. Fritzsche and Grimm, Kurzgef. exeget. Handbuch zu den Apok. des A.T. (Leipzig, 1851–1860)
  • Edwin Cone Bissell, Apocrypha of the Old Testament (Edinburgh, 1880)
  • Otto Zöckler, Die Apokryphen des Alten Testaments (Munchen, 1891)
  • Henry Wace, The Apocrypha ("Speaker's Commentary") (1888)
Introduction and General Literature:

 

External links

 
 

The Jewish Apocrypha

Jewish Apocrypha

 
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 
Jewish apocrypha includes texts written in the Jewish religious tradition either in the Intertestamental period or in the early Christian era, but outside the Christian tradition. It does not include books in the canonical Hebrew Bible, nor those accepted into the canon of some or all Christian faiths.
 
Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha in Judaism
Writings dealing with this subject are extant in Greek, Latin, Slavonic, Syriac, Armenian and Arabic. They go back undoubtedly to a Jewish basis, but in some of the forms in which they appear at present they are Christianized throughout. The oldest and for the most part Jewish portion of this literature is preserved to us in Greek, Armenian, Latin and Slavonic.
  1. The Greek Διηγησις περι Αδαμ και Ευας (published under the misleading title Αποκαλυψις Μωυσεως in Tischendorf's Apocalypses Apocryphae, 1866) deals with the Fall and the death of Adam and Eve. Antonio Ceriani edited this text from a Milan MS. (Monumenta Sacra et Profana, v. i). This work is found also in Armenian, and has been published by the Mechitharist community in Venice in their Collection of Uncanonical Writings of the Old Testament, and translated by Conybeare (Jewish Quarterly Review, vii. 216 sqq., 1895), and by Issaverdens in 1901.
  2. The Vita Adae et Evae is closely related and in part identical with the Διηγησις. It was printed by Wilhelm Meyerin Abh. d. Münch. Akad., Philos.-philol. Cl. xiv., 1878.
  3. The Slavonic Adam book was published by Jajic along with a Latin translation (Denkschr. d. Wien. Akad. d. Wiss. xlii., 1893). This version agrees for the most part with the Διηγησις. It has, moreover, a section, §§ 28-39, which though not found in the Διηγησις is found in the Vita.

Before we discuss these three documents we shall mention other members of this literature, which, though derivable ultimately from Jewish sources, are Christian in their present form.
  • The Book of Adam and Eve, also called the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, translated from the Ethiopic (1882) by S. C. Malan. This was first translated by August Dillmann (Das christl. Adambuch des Morgenlandes, 1853), and the Ethiopic book first edited by Ernest Trumpp (Abh. d. Münch. Akad. xv., 1870–1881).
  • A Syriac work entitled Die Schalzhöhle translated by Carl Bezold from three Syriac MSS. in 1883 and subsequently edited in Syriac in 1888. This work has close affinities to the Conflict, but is said by Dillmann to be more original.
Armenian books on the Death of Adam (Uncanonical Writings of O.T. pp. 84 sqq., 1901, translated from the Armenian), Creation and Transgression of Adam (op. cit. 39 sqq.), Expulsion of Adam from Paradise (op. cit. 47 sqq.), Penitence of Adam and Eve (op. cit. 71 sqq.) are mainly later writings from Christian hands.
 
Returning to the question of the Jewish origin of Διηγησις, Vita, Slavonic Adam book, we have already observed that these spring from a common original. As to the language of this original, scholars are divided. The evidence, however, seems to be strongly in favour of Hebrew. How otherwise are we to explain such Hebraisms (or Syriacisms) as ευω ῥεει το ἑλαιον εξ αυτου (§ 9), οὑ ειπεν... μη φαγειν απ αυτου (§ 21). For others see §§ 23, 33. Moreover, as Fuchs has pointed out, in the words ἑση εν ματαιοις addressed to Eve (§ 25) there is a corruption of חבליס into הבליס. Thus the words were: "Thou shalt have pangs." In fact, Hebraisms abound throughout this book.[1]
 
Jannes and Jambres

The New Testament Apocrypha

New Testament apocrypha


 
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
The New Testament apocrypha are a number of writings by early Christians that claim to be accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives. These writings often have links with books regarded as "canonical". Not every branch of the Christian church agrees on which writings should be regarded as "canonical" and which are "apocryphal" (See, for example, the Gospel according to the Hebrews).
 
Definition
 
The word "apocrypha" means "things put away" or "things hidden" and comes from the Greek through the Latin. The general term is usually applied to the books that were considered by the church as useful, but not divinely inspired. As such, to refer to Gnostic writings as "apocryphal" is misleading since they would not be classified in the same category by orthodox believers. Often used by the Greek Fathers was the term antilegomena, or "spoken against", although some canonical books were also spoken against, such as the Apocalypse of John in the East. Often used by scholars is the term pseudepigrapha, or "falsely inscribed" or "falsely attributed", in the sense that the writings were written by an anonymous author who appended the name of an apostle to his work, such as in the Gospel of Peter or The Æthiopic Apocalypse of Enoch: almost all books, in both Old and New Testaments, called "apocrypha" in the Protestant tradition are pseudepigrapha. In the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, what are called the apocrypha by Protestants include the deuterocanonical books: in the Catholic tradition, the term "apocrypha" is synonymous with what Protestants would called the pseudepigrapha, the latter term of which is almost exclusively used by scholars.[1]
 
History
 
Development of the New Testament Canon
 
That some works are categorized as New Testament Apocrypha is indicative of the wide range of responses that were engendered in the interpretation of the message of Jesus of Nazareth. During the first several centuries of the transmission of that message, considerable debate turned on safeguarding its authenticity. Three key methods of addressing this survive to the present day: ordination, where groups authorize individuals as reliable teachers of the message; creeds, where groups define the boundaries of interpretation of the message; and canons, which list the primary documents certain groups believe contain the message originally taught by Jesus (in other words, the Bible). There was substantial debate about which books should be included in the canons. In general, those books that the majority regarded as the earliest books about Jesus were the ones included. Books that were not accepted into the canons are now termed apocryphal. Some of them were vigorously suppressed and survive only as fragments. The earliest lists of canonical works of the New Testament were not quite the same as modern lists; for example, the Book of Revelation was regarded as disputed by some Christians (see Antilegomena), while Shepherd of Hermas was considered genuine by others, and appears (after the Book of Revelation) in the Codex Sinaiticus.
 
The works that presented themselves as "authentic" but that did not obtain general acceptance from within the churches are called New Testament Apocrypha. These are not accepted as canonical by most mainstream Christian denominations; only the Ethiopian Orthodox Church recognizes the Shepherd of Hermas, 1 Clement, Acts of Paul, and several Old Testament books that most other denominations reject, but it should be noted that this church does not adhere to an explicit canon.[citation needed]
 
The Syriac Peshitta, used by all the various Syrian Churches, originally did not include 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude and Revelation (and this canon of 22 books is the one cited by John Chrysostom (~347-407) and Theodoret (393-466) from the School of Antioch).[2] Western Syrians have added the remaining five books to their New Testament canons in modern times[2] (such as the Lee Peshitta of 1823). Today, the official lectionaries followed by the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church and the East Syriac Chaldean Catholic Church, which is in communion with the Bishop of Rome, still only present lessons from the 22 books of the original Peshitta.[2]
 
The Armenian Apostolic church at times has included the Third Epistle to the Corinthians, but does not always list it with the other 27 canonical New Testament books. This Church did not accept Revelation into its Bible until 1200 CE.[3] The New Testament of the Coptic Bible, adopted by the Egyptian Church, includes the two Epistles of Clement.
 
Modern scholarship
 
Tischendorf and other scholars began to study New Testament apocrypha seriously in the 19th Century and produce new translations. The "standard" scholarly edition of the New Testament Apocrypha in German and English is that of Schneemelcher.[4] The texts of the Nag Hammadi library are often considered separately but the current edition of Schneemelcher also contains eleven Nag Hammadi texts.[5]
 
Books that are known objectively not to have existed in antiquity are usually not considered part of the New Testament Apocrypha. Among these are the Libellus de Nativitate Sanctae Mariae (also called the "Nativity of Mary") and the Latin Infancy gospel. The latter two did not exist in antiquity, and they seem to be based on the earlier Infancy gospels.[citation needed]
 
Gospels

Infancy gospels
 
The rarity of information about the childhood of Jesus in the canonical gospels led to a hunger of early Christians for more detail about the early life of Jesus. This was supplied by a number of 2nd century and later texts, known as infancy gospels, none of which were accepted into the biblical canon, but the very number of their surviving manuscripts attests to their continued popularity.
 
Most of these were based on the earliest infancy gospels, namely the Infancy Gospel of James (also called the "Protoevangelium of James") and Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and on their later combination into the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (also called the "Infancy Gospel of Matthew" or "Birth of Mary and Infancy of the Saviour").
 
The other significant early infancy gospels are the Syriac Infancy Gospel, the History of Joseph the Carpenter and the Life of John the Baptist.
 
Jewish Christian gospels
Some scholars consider that the 2 last named are in fact the same source.[6]
 
Non-Canonical gospels
 
Other documents entitled "gospels" came into existence in the second and third Christian centuries. Sometimes, those attributed to the text state elsewhere that their text is the earlier version, or that their text excises all the additions and distortions made by their opponents to the more recognised version of the text. The Church Fathers insisted that these people were the ones making distortions, but some modern scholars do not. It remains to be seen whether any are earlier and more accurate versions of the canonical texts. Details of their contents only survive in the attacks on them by their opponents, and so for the most part it is uncertain as to how extensively different they are, and whether any constitute entirely different works. These texts include:
 
Sayings gospels
 
One or two texts take the form of brief logia—sayings and parables of Jesus—which are not embedded in a connected narrative:
A minority of scholars regard the Gospel of Thomas as part of the tradition from which the canonical gospels eventually emerged; in any case both of these documents are important as showing us what the theoretical Q document might have looked like.
 
Passion gospels
 
A number of gospels are concerned specifically with the "Passion" (arrest, execution and resurrection) of Jesus:
Although three texts take Bartholomew's name, it may be that one of the Questions of Bartholomew or the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is in fact the unknown Gospel of Bartholomew.
 
Harmonized gospels
 
A number of texts aim to provide a single harmonization of the canonical gospels, that eliminates discordances among them by presenting a unified text derived from them to some degree. The most widely read of these was the Diatessaron.
 
Gnostic texts
 
General texts concerning Jesus
 
Sethian texts concerning Jesus
 
The Sethians were a gnostic group who originally worshipped the biblical Seth as a messianic figure, later treating Jesus as a re-incarnation of Seth. They produced numerous texts expounding their esoteric cosmology, usually in the form of visions:
 
Ritual diagrams
 
Some of the Gnostic texts appear to consist of diagrams and instructions for use in religious rituals:
 
Acts
 
Epistles
 
Apocalypses
 
Fate of Mary
 
Several texts (over 50) consist of descriptions of the events surrounding the varied fate of Mary (the mother of Jesus):
  • The Home Going of Mary
  • The Falling asleep of the Mother of God
 
Miscellany
 
These texts, due to their content or form, do not fit into the other categories:
 
Fragments
 
In addition to the known Apocryphal works, there are also small fragments of texts, parts of unknown (or uncertain) works. Some of the more significant fragments are:
 
Lost works
 
Several texts are mentioned in many ancient sources and would probably be considered part of the apocrypha, but no known text has survived:
 
A note about The Eastern Orthodox Church
 
Evaluation
 
Among historians of early Christianity the books are considered invaluable, especially those that almost made it into the final canon, such as Shepherd of Hermas. Bart Ehrman, for example, said:
The victors in the struggles to establish Christian Orthodoxy not only won their theological battles, they also rewrote the history of the conflict; later readers then naturally assumed that the victorious views had been embraced by the vast majority of Christians from the very beginning ... The practice of Christian forgery has a long and distinguished history ... the debate lasted three hundred years ... even within "orthodox" circles there was considerable debate concerning which books to include.[7]
This debate primarily concerned whether certain works should be read in the church service or only privately. These works were widely used but not necessarily considered Catholic or 'universal.' Such works include the Didache, Shepherd of Hermas, 1 Clement, 2 Clement, the Epistle of Barnabas, and to a lesser extent the Apocalypse of Peter. Considering the generally accepted dates of authorship for all of the canonical New Testament works (ca. 100 AD or before), as well as the various witnesses to canonicity extant among the writings of Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, etc., the four gospels and letters of Paul were universally held as scriptural, and only ~200 years were needed to finalize the canon; from the beginning of the 2nd Century to the mid-4th Century, no book in the final canon was ever declared spurious or heretical, except for the Revelation of John which the Council of Laodicea in 363-364 AD rejected (although it accepted all of the other 26 books in the New Testament). This was possibly due to fears of the influence of Montanism which used the book extensively to support their theology. See Revelation of John for more details. Athanasius wrote his Easter letter in 367 AD which defined a canon of 27 books, identical to the current canon, but also listed two works that were "not in the canon but to be read:" The Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache. Nevertheless, the early church leaders in the 3rd and 4th Centuries generally distinguished between canonical works and those that were not canonical but 'useful,' or 'good for teaching,' though never relegating any of the final 27 books to the latter category. One aim with establishing the canon was to capture only those works which were held to have been written by the Apostles, or their close associates, and as the Muratorian fragment canon (ca. 150-175 AD) states concerning the Shepherd of Hermas:
...But Hermas wrote The Shepherd very recently, in our times, in the city of Rome, while bishop Pius, his brother, was occupying the chair of the church of the city of Rome. And therefore it ought indeed to be read; but it cannot be read publicly to the people in church either among the Prophets, whose number is complete, or among the Apostles, for it is after their time.
 
See also
 
References
  1. ^ Charlesworth, James H (1985). Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson. p. 2257. ISBN 978-1-59856-489-1.
  2. ^ a b c Peshitta
  3. ^ Reliability
  4. ^ James McConkey Robinson, Christoph Heil, Jozef Verheyden The Sayings Gospel Q: collected essays 2005 p279 "Not only has a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth edition of the standard German work by Edgar Hennecke and Wilhelm Schneemelcher prepared under the editorship of Schneemelcher appeared, but independent editions are being produced ...
  5. ^ The fifth Gospel: the Gospel of Thomas comes of age - 1998 p105 Stephen J. Patterson, James McConkey Robinson, Hans-Gebhard Bethge -"The current edition of Wilhelm Schneemelcher's standard New Testament Apocrypha contains eleven Nag Hammadi tractates,"
  6. ^ Craig A. Evans
  7. ^ Ehrman, Lost Scriptures P 2,3

External links