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Apocrypha: Books
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Those who support the canonicity of the Apocrypha argue that the early church Fathers accepted the books as Scripture. In reality, their support is anything but unanimous. Although many of the church Fathers held the books in high esteem, they often refused to include them in their list of inspired books.
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The Apocrypha consists of 15 books of Jewish literature written during the intertestamental period. Come of them have historic value, but all are spurious, of unknown authorship, and without claim of inspiration or authority. Some are legendary and fantasy. Many of them are written to reinforce post-exilic Jewish opposition to idolatry.
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The Apocrypha contains fabulous statements which not only contradict the "canonical" scriptures but themselves. For example, in the two Books of Maccabees, Antiochus Epiphanes is made to die three different deaths in three different places.
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The leaders of the Reformation were instrumental in having the Apocrypha completely rejected as the inspired Word of God. However, when Martin Luther was making his great translation of the Bible into German in the 16th century, he did include the Apocrypha in an appendix as “useful and good to be read,” but Puritan opposition to the books, along with the British and Foreign Bible Society’s decision to omit them from their versions of the Bible finally relegated them in the Protestant world to a place outside of Sacred Scripture.
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[N]o Apocryphal book claims to be written by a prophet and there is no predictive prophecy in the Apocrypha. Not once is a an Apocryphal book cited authoritatively by a prophetic book written after it, nor is there any supernatural confirmation of the writers of the Apocrypha as there is for prophets who wrote the canon.
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Most readers will probably be surprised to learn how pervasive the influence of the Apocrypha has been over the centuries. Not only have these books inspired homilies, meditations, and liturgical forms, but poets, dramatists, composers, and artists have drawn freely upon them for subject matter. Common proverbs and familiar names are derived from their pages. Even the discovery of the New World was due in part to the influence of a passage in 2 Esdras upon Christopher Columbus. In what follows the reader will find a representative selection of such examples, most of them chosen from An Introduction to the Apocrypha by B. M. Metzger (Oxford University Press), and arranged under the headings of (a) English Literature, (b) Music, © Art, and (d) Miscellaneous.
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