Bible - Christian Bibles - Old Testament - Apocryphal or Deuterocanonical Books

Apocryphal or Deuterocanonical Books

In Eastern Christianity, translations based on the Septuagint still prevail. The Septuagint was generally abandoned in favour of the tenth-century Masoretic Text as the basis for translations of the Old Testament into Western languages. Some modern Western translations since the fourteenth century make use of the Septuagint to clarify passages in the Masoretic Text, where the Septuagint may preserve a variant reading of the Hebrew text. They also sometimes adopt variants that appear in other texts e.g. those discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

A number of books which are part of the Peshitta or Greek Septuagint but are not found in the Hebrew (Rabbinic) Bible (i.e., among the protocanonical books) are often referred to as deuterocanonical books by Roman Catholics referring to a later secondary (i.e. deutero) canon, that canon as fixed definitively by the Council of Trent 1545-1563. It includes 46 books for the Old Testament (45 if Jeremiah and Lamentations are counted as one) and 27 for the New.

Most Protestants term these books as apocrypha. Modern Protestant traditions do not accept the deuterocanonical books as canonical, although Protestant Bibles included them in Apocrypha sections until the 1820s. However, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches include these books as part of their Old Testament.

The Roman Catholic Church recognizes:

• Tobit
• Judith
• 1 Maccabees
• 2 Maccabees
• Wisdom
• Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus)
• Baruch
• The Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch Chapter 6)
• Greek Additions to Esther (Book of Esther, chapters 10:4 – 12:6)
• The Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children verses 1–68 (Book of Daniel, chapter 3, verses 24–90)
• Susanna (Book of Daniel, chapter 13)
• Bel and the Dragon (Book of Daniel, chapter 14)

In addition to those, the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches recognize the following:

• 3 Maccabees
• 1 Esdras
• Prayer of Manasseh
• Psalm 151

Russian and Georgian Orthodox Churches include:

• 2 Esdras i.e., Latin Esdras in the Russian and Georgian Bibles

There is also 4 Maccabees which is only accepted as canonical in the Georgian Church, but was included by St. Jerome in an appendix to the Vulgate, and is an appendix to the Greek Orthodox Bible, and it is therefore sometimes included in collections of the Apocrypha.

The Syriac Orthodox tradition includes:

• Psalms 151–155
• The Apocalypse of Baruch
• The Letter of Baruch

The Ethiopian Biblical canon includes:

• Jubilees
• Enoch
• 1–3 Meqabyan

and some other books.

The Anglican Church uses some of the Apocryphal books liturgically. Therefore, editions of the Bible intended for use in the Anglican Church include the Deuterocanonical books accepted by the Catholic Church, plus 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh, which were in the Vulgate appendix.