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Apocrypha: Greek Septuagint
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Many Catholics argue that the additional books found in the Apocrypha (Septuagint plus) which they call the deutero-canon, were universally held by the early church to be canonical. This is a considerable overstatement. However, Protestants have acted as if these books never existed or played any role whatsoever in the early church. This too is an extreme position. Although many of the early church fathers recognized a distinction between the Apocryphal books and inspired Scripture, they universally held them in high regard. Protestants who are serious students of their faith cannot ignore this material if they hope to understand the early church or the thinking of its earliest theologians.
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The Jewish Background of the Apocrypha: The books of the Apocrypha are largely of Jewish origin, produced for the most part during the period preceding the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in a.d. 70. With the exception of 2 Esdras, they are interspersed among the other books of the OT in early Christian copies of the Septuagint (lxx), the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures derived from Alexandrian Judaism and adopted by early Christians as their first Bible. While the source of these books is the traditions that circulated in the Hellenistic synagogue, their status among Jews in Alexandria or elsewhere is not so certain.
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The term 'Apocrypha', a Greek word meaning 'hidden (things)', was early used in different senses. It was applied to writings which were regarded as so important and precious that they must be hidden from the general public and reserved for the initiates, the inner circle of believers. It came to be applied to writings which were hidden not because they were too good but because they were not good enough, because, that is, they were secondary or questionable or heretical. A third usage may be traced to Jerome. He was familiar with the Scriptures in their Hebrew as well as their Greek form, and for him apocryphal books were those outside the Hebrew canon, hence the alternative term deutero-canonical.
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The name Apocrypha derives from the Greek apo, meaning “away” and kryptein, meaning “hide;” hence, “hidden away, or hidden things.” Apocrypha embodies this notion. Guests will experience new flavors and encounter new libations as they uncover the hidden treasures Apocrypha presents.
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In the Eastern Church, the home of the Septuagint, one would expect to find unanimous support for the canonicity of the "Septuagint plus," the Greek OT and the Apocrypha among the early Fathers. However, such is not the case. Although the well-known Justin Martyr rejected the Hebrew OT, accusing it of attempting to hide references to Christ, many others in the East accepted the Hebrew canon's shorter list of authoritative books. Melito of Sardis, the Bishop of Sardis in 170 A.D., listed the OT books in a letter to a friend. His list was identical to the Hebrew canon except for Esther. Another manuscript, written about the same time as Melito's by the Greek patriarchate in Jerusalem, listed the twenty- four (see footnote on how the books were counted) books of the Hebrew OT as the canon.{8}
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The Apocrypha in Early Christianity: It would appear more likely that the extent of the Christian LXX was determined by Christians themselves. This determination could have been haphazard, as the result of the combination of a larger selection of Jewish literature in Greek, which presumably would have been preserved as individual books in scroll form, into the codex, or ‘book’ form. The latter was pioneered by Christians because it permitted the inclusion of a number of books in one more easily managed volume. This process of editing could have taken place with minimal regard to what was considered canonical within the library of the Hellenistic synagogue. The extent of the LXX could ... be the result of the conscious selection by the early church in the late first and early second centuries of a distinctively Christian canon of Scripture. In either case, Christians came to include in their OT a wider selection of books than was considered authoritative in Judaism and to arrange them more along the lines of chronology and genre than according to the tripartite division into Law, Prophets, and Writings.
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Greek Septuagint