Historic facts about the Biblical "apocrypha" (or "Deuterocanonical")

Here are 7 historical facts about the Biblical "apocrypha" (also called: Deuterocanonical books):

1. List of the Biblical apocrypha:

• Tobias
• Judith
• Wisdom
• Sirach
• Baruch
• Epistle of Jeremiah
• 1 Macabees
• 2 Macabees
• Additions to Esther
• 1 Esdras
• 2 Esdras
• Susanna
• Prayer of Azariah
• Prayer of Manasseh
• Bel and the Dragon

2. What does "apocrypha" mean?

The word "apocrypha" comes from the Ancient Greek: ἀπόκρυφος / apókryphos.

It means "hidden".

Source: wikipedia.org (Biblical apocrypha)

3. Time period of the Biblical apocrypha:

The apocrypha were "thought to have been written some time between 200 BC and AD 400."

Source: wikipedia.org (Biblical apocrypha)

4. The Biblical apocrypha were included in ancient Old Testament manuscripts:

"Biblical apocrypha are a set of texts included in the Septuagint"

Source: wikipedia.org (Apocrypha)

"The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint [...], is the earliest extant Koine Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible and deuterocanonical books. The first five books of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Torah or the Pentateuch, were translated in the mid-3rd century BC. The remaining books of the Greek Old Testament are presumably translations of the 2nd century BC."

Source: wikipedia.org (Septuagint)

5. The New Testament referred to the Biblical apocrypha:

References to the Biblical apocrypha are present in the New Testament, for example:

Hebrews 11:35 (WEB): "Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, not accepting their deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection."

This is referring to 2 Maccabees 7:

2 Maccabees 7:7 (LXX'12-uk): "So when the first was dead after this number, they brought the second to make him a mocking stock: and when they had pulled off the skin of his head with the hair, they asked him, Will you eat, before you be punished throughout every member of your body?"

2 Maccabees 7:8 (LXX'12-uk): "But he answered in his own language, and said, No. Therefore he also received the next torment in order, as the former did."

2 Maccabees 7:9 (LXX'12-uk): "And when he was at the last gasp, he said, You like a fury take us out of this present life, but the King of the world shall raise us up, who have died for his laws, to everlasting life."

6. Early Christian authors referred to the Biblical apocrypha:

AD 35-99: Clement of Rome (disciple of the apostle Peter) wrote:

1 Clement 3:4
"[...] each goeth after the lusts of his evil heart, seeing that they have conceived an unrighteous and ungodly jealousy, through which also death entered into the world."

This is referring to Wisdom 2:24:

Wisdom 2:24 (LXX'12-uk): "Nevertheless through envy of the devil came death into the world: and they that do hold of his side do find it."

1 Clement 55:4
"The blessed Judith, when the city was beleaguered, asked of the elders that she might be suffered to go forth into the camp of the aliens."

This is referring to Judith 8:32-33:

Judith 8:32 (LXX'12-uk): "Then said Judith to them, Hear me, and I will do a thing, which shall go throughout all generations to the children of our nation."
Judith 8:33 (LXX'12-uk): "You shall stand this night in the gate, and I will go forth with my waitingwoman: and within the days that you have promised to deliver the city to our enemies the Lord will visit Israel by mine hand."

Source: earlychristianwritings.com (1 Clement)

7. What happened later to the Biblical apocrypha?

"In 382 Pope Damasus commissioned Jerome, the leading biblical scholar of his day, to produce an acceptable Latin version of the Bible."

Source: britannica.com (topic Vulgate)

"Jerome attempted to create a translation of the Old Testament based on a Hebrew version, rather than the Septuagint, as Latin Bible translations used to be performed [had been done] before him."

"He believed that the mainstream Rabbinical Judaism had rejected the Septuagint as invalid Jewish scriptural texts because of what were ascertained as mistranslations along with its Hellenistic heretical elements."

"Jerome's decision to use a Hebrew text instead of the previous-translated Septuagint went against the advice of most other Christians."

Source: wikipedia.org (Jerome)

Jerome was using the term "apocrypha" as a synonym for "non canonical books."

Source : wikipedia.org (Apocryphe biblique)

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