LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Apocrypha
built 665 days ago
Catholic response to the Protestant treatment of the Apocrypha was to affirm their canonical status. On April 8, 1546, the Council of Trent declared anathema anyone who did not accept the whole of the Vg as canonical. The edition of the Vg intended includes all of the disputed works with the exception of 1 and 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh. In later Catholic editions of the Bible, these three books are sometimes printed in an appendix.
Source:
The Apocrypha is a term designating a group of books of Jewish origin held to be in Scripture by Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. These books are not accepted as Scripture by Jews and Protestants.
Source:
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 4 Ezra, which is found in the Apocrypha of the Vulgate and the King James Bible. Luther's Bible... also omits 3 Ezra. It should further be observed that the Clementine Vulgate places the Prayer of Manasses and 3 and 4 Ezra in an appendix after the New Testament as apocryphal.
Source:
In the total body of Jewish religious writing surviving from the last centuries B.C., then, the Apocrypha occupies a place below the later books of the Old Testament and above the Pseudepigrapha. There is enough common ground between them to give the three groups a certain unity, not only in date and place but even in religious outlook and literary merit, but there are perceptible gradations. Enoch, the most influential of the group, and similar apocalypses, may have been too vivid in their eschatology and too chaotic in form to be acceptable. Jubilees and The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs may have dealt with the patriarchs too imaginatively. IV Maccabees, which is the most elegant book of the group and most attractive to the modern reader, may have been excluded by reason of its late date or possibly Antiochene provenience. These books would all be anomalous if they were included in the Bible.
Source:
The influence of the Apocrypha can ... be traced in many an anthem, cantata, oratorio, and opera. Handel's oratorios Susanna and Judas Maccabaeus, as well as his Alexander Balus, an historical sequel to the latter, will occur at once to music lovers. At an early date in operatic history the stirring story of Judith was found to lend itself admirably to dramatic presentation. Italian and German operas on this theme were written by Andrea Salvadori, Marco da Gagliano, Martin Opitz, and Joachim Beccau. In the nineteenth century the noted Russian pianist and composer, Anton Rubenstein, published The Maccabees, an opera of monumental proportions, the libretto of which was written by one of his collaborators, Dr. H. S. von Mosenthal.
Source:
The Apocrypha began to be omitted from the Authorized Version in 1629. Puritans and Presbyterians lobbied for the complete removal of the Apocrypha from the Bible and in 1825 the British and Foreign Bible Society agreed. From that time on, the Apocrypha has been eliminated from practically all English Bibles--Catholic Bibles and some pulpit Bibles excepted.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Apocrypha