The Mikado
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« on: May 14, 2011, 02:12:22 AM » |
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« edited: May 14, 2011, 02:16:02 AM by The Mikado »
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As some know, the version of the Old Testament the Catholic Church uses includes extra books added during the translation to the Septuagint or the first translation of the Hebrew Bible from Hebrew into Greek in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE, which added a variety of books to the canon written 250-150 BCE that are not canonical to the modern Hebrew Bible nor Protestant Bibles that are based on it. Even though St. Jerome himself was skeptical of these texts (and used the Hebrew whenever possible to compose his Latin version), he included the Apocrypha books in his Bible. Luther and other Protestants removed the Apocrypha from their Old Testaments, usually putting them in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments labeled "Apocrypha."
These books include additional fragments to Daniel and Esther, as well as the books of Judith, Tobit, Esdras I and II, the "Wisdom of Solomon," (come on, the Old Testament already has 3 books traditionally ascribed to Solomon, did it need a fourth?), Ecclesiasticus (the Wisdom of ben Sira), Baruch, the Prayer of Manasseh, and the historically significant First and Second Books of Maccabees.
What significance should these Old Testament Apocrypha be granted? The deuterocanonical status accorded to them by the Catholic Church (they're still canonical to the Bible, just...less so than the rest of it), the status of "Books of wisdom one might want to read, but not part of the Bible" that Protestants tend to give them, or just flat out ignoring them like is typically done outside of scholarly circles with the New Testament Apocrypha?
EDIT: As for me, the story of Judith is one of the coolest in the Bible, even if it is "Apocryphal."
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