There are many ancient writtings produced in the inter-testamental period and for a period of time after the life of Christ that claimed to be inspired. The so-called apocrypha and pseudepigrapha are two sets of writings that are most commonly known. But, these do not exhaust the writings.
Scholars are not in total agreement as to the constitutent parts of these sets of writings. Some works are included in both sets. Some say that the pseudepigraphal works ended about 200 AD and others extend that time period a bit. Apocryphal works are generally dated to the Intertestamental period.
Roman Catholic andOrthodox churches generally accept the apocryphal works that are included in their Bibles. But they reject others. Some Protestant groups accept those typically included in Bibles.
As a point of interest: There are four (4) books of Maccabees. They first and second are included in Bibles and the third and fourth are rejected by all. First Maccabees is accepted as the best historical account of that period of time by those who reject it as inspired. Second Maccabees is accepted as having some historical value but much less than the First book of Maccabees.
I have in my library a book of selections from some of these works. Probably the most interesting of these writings are those that tell us the story of the life of Christ when he was a young child and those that provide additional material on the creation of the Earth and the entry of sin into the world. NOTE: Much of these writing conflict in major ways what we believe the Bible teaches.
Without checking, I believe the following story of Christ as a child comes from the Gospil of Thomas. [NOTE: There are other stories of Christ as a child from other writings.] In this story Christ and several other boys are playing together. They are taking clay and making figures of birds. The other boys laugh at the figures made by Christ. So, Christ in a fit of anger conmmands his figures to come to life. They do and fly off into the distance.
There is another story in another book, as I recall, where children who make fun of Christ, are struck dead.
Many of the writings about the creation of the Earth and the entry of sin into this world are a very long ways apart from what we read in the Bible.
Here is one citation taken from Wikipedia:
In Biblical studies, pseudepigrapha refers particularly to works which purport to be written by noted authorities in either the Old and New Testaments or by persons involved in Jewish or Christian religious study or history. These works can also be written about Biblical matters, often in such a way that they appear to be as authoritative as works which have been included in the many versions of the Judeo-Christian scriptures. Eusebius of Caesarea indicates this usage dates back at least to Serapion, bishop of Antioch[clarification needed] whom Eusebius records[4] as having said: "But those writings which are falsely inscribed with their name (ta pseudepigrapha), we as experienced persons reject..."
Many such works were also referred to as Apocrypha, which originally connoted "secret writings", those that were rejected for liturgical public reading. An example of a text that is both apocryphal and pseudepigraphical is the Odes of Solomon, pseudepigraphical because it was not actually written by Solomon but instead is a collection of early Christian (first to second century) hymns and poems, originally written not in Hebrew, and apocryphal because they were not accepted in either the Tanach or the New Testament.
But Protestants have also applied the word Apocrypha to texts found in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox scriptures which were not found in Hebrew manuscripts. Roman Catholics called those texts "deuterocanonical". Accordingly, there arose in some Protestant Biblical scholarship an extended use of the term pseudepigrapha for works that appeared as though they ought to be part of the Biblical canon, because of the authorship ascribed to them, but which stood outside both the Biblical canons recognized by Protestants and Catholics. These works were also outside the particular set of books that Roman Catholics called deuterocanonical and to which Protestants had generally applied the term Apocryphal. Accordingly, the term pseudepigraphical, as now used often among both Protestants and Roman Catholics (allegedly for the clarity it brings to the discussion), may make it difficult to discuss questions of pseudepigraphical authorship of canonical books dispassionately with a lay audience. To confuse the matter even more, Orthodox Christians accept books as canonical that Roman Catholics and most Protestant denominations consider pseudepigraphical or at best of much less authority. There exist also churches that reject some of the books that Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants accept. The same is true of some Jewish sects.[clarification needed]
There is a tendency not to use the word pseudepigrapha when describing works later than about 300 AD when referring to Biblical matters. But the late-appearing Gospel of Barnabas, Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, the Pseudo-Apuleius (author of a fifth-century herbal ascribed to Apuleius), and the author traditionally referred to as the "Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite", are classic examples of pseudepigraphy. In the fifth century the moralist Salvian published Contra avaritiam under the name of Timothy; the letter in which he explained to his former pupil, Bishop Salonius, his motives for so doing survives.[5] There is also a category of modern pseudepigrapha.
Examples of Old Testament pseudepigrapha are the Ethiopian Book of Enoch, Jubilees (both of which are canonical in the Abyssinian Church of Ethiopia); the Life of Adam and Eve and the Pseudo-Philo. Examples of New Testament pseudepigrapha (but in these cases also likely to be called New Testament Apocrypha) are the Gospel of Peter and the attribution of the Epistle to the Laodiceans to Paul. Further examples of New Testament pseudepigrapha include the aforementioned Gospel of Barnabas, and the Gospel of Judas, which begins by presenting itself as "the secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot".
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Topic: Other Texts besides the Bible? (Read 15593 times)
