Tuesday, October 15, 2013

October 16 The Apocrypha is Not Scripture

Although the Roman Catholic Church still accepts the much of the Apocrypha in their version of the Bible, Protestants have rejected those books as Scripture for centuries. The main reasons are that Jesus never quoted from any of them, the Jews have never accepted them as Scripture, and they contain historical errors and inconsistencies with the rest of Scripture.

The Apocrypha should be placed in a category of sort of like religious writings today. The writings of today contain historical information about our contemporary culture, thoughts about current religiosity, and other moralisms, all of which might contain error - and depending on the writer, more error than other writings. No conservative theologian would think of putting today's writings alongside Scripture - although some people use today's books or some writers as "gospel" and set the Bible to the side.

Having said all this, the Apocrypha do provide some interesting reading to understand Jewish thinking (realizing some is incorrect) during the time between the Old and New Testaments. Some history is also provided. So, as long as one knows the Apocrypha is not Scripture, its reading might have benefit.

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