Introducing the Apocrypha

Message, Context, and Significance

deSilva, David A.

• Editorial: Baker Academic
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781493413072
• Edición: 2
• Categoría: Theology & Religion
• Categoría: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

This comprehensive, up-to-date introduction to the Old Testament apocryphal books summarizes their context, message, and significance. The first edition has been very well reviewed and widely adopted. It is the most substantial introduction to the Apocrypha available and has become a standard authority on the topic. The second edition has been substantially revised and updated throughout to reflect the latest scholarship. The book includes a foreword by JamesH. Charlesworth.

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Introduction

The Value of the Apocrypha

Why study the Apocrypha? The answer to this question may not be obvious to many Christians. After all, were these texts not excluded from the canon held sacred by the Jews? Were they not excluded from the canon promoted by the Protestant Reformers, who held that Scripture alone contained the revelation of God’s way of salvation and thus took great care to purge those Scriptures of these marginal books? To many other Christians, however, the question will be equally incomprehensible—but for a very different reason. The Catholic or Orthodox Christian might reply, “Are they not, after all, part of our Scriptures? Have they not been read, used, and valued by the towering figures of our tradition for two millennia?”1 It is perhaps the internecine strife between these great limbs of the body of Christ that has most led to the disuse, neglect, and eventual suspicion of the Apocrypha among many Protestant Christians, while at the same time leading to a more decisive elevation of these texts among Catholic Christians. One of the goals of this volume is to move readers past seeing the Apocrypha as one more thing that separates one group of Christians from another and toward seeing these books for what they are in and of themselves and to value them on that basis.

What Is the “Old Testament Apocrypha”?

To many Protestant Christians “The Apocrypha” represents a collection of forbidden or heretical books scrupulously to be avoided. The word itself means “hidden things” (apocrypha; singular, apocryphon), but the adjective “hidden” has taken on a pejorative nuance: “hidden for a good reason,” “suspicious,” “heretical.” Such an evaluation is more the result of centuries of unfamiliarity with the actual texts, combined with residual denominational prejudice, than a balanced assessment of the texts’ meaning and value.

Far from being a threat to faith, the Old Testament Apocrypha are a vital witness to faith, specifically the faith of Jewish people living in the period of the third century BCE to the first century CE. The different writings come from Palestine, Alexandria (Egypt), Antioch (Syria), and possibly even Persia (from the large Jewish community that settled and remained in Babylon after the deportation under Nebuchadnezzar). Some were originally written in Greek, the common language of the Mediterranean world from the third century BCE onward, others in Hebrew or Aramaic.

These books bear witness to what it meant to remain faithful to the God of Israel during a tumultuous period of history. It was a time of political upheaval, as powerful empires vied for domination; it was a period of peril for Judaism itself, as the enticements of Greek culture led many away from persevering in the Mosaic covenant (Torah) and as forceful attempts were made to bring Jews into conformity with the customs and culture of Hellenism (the “Greek way of life”). The Apocrypha contain the testimony of faithful Jews who sought to live out their loyalty to God in a very troubled (and often hostile) world. While it is difficult to identify a single common theme running through the whole collection, a major concern addressed by many of these texts involves how Jews are to respond to the challenges of persevering as a minority culture in a Greek world while also taking advantage of the good things that the Greek world offers. It is perhaps this aspect of the Apocrypha that most draws me to these texts, since similar questions continue to face the community of disciples: What challenges threaten the commitment and the faithful practice of the contemporary people of God? How can we discover and persevere in a faithful response to God in our world?

The books of the Apocrypha certainly answered timely concerns and inspired the Jews of their period, evidenced by their wide circulation and preservation for posterity. Some continued to be read and even quoted (like Ben Sira), or their stories told (like Judith and 1 and 2 Maccabees), well into the rabbinic period, despite their “noncanonical” status. The early Christian church also received these texts as profitable writings. The evidence for their influence on the New Testament and early church fathers will astound those who are accustomed to thinking of the Apocrypha as worthless or dangerous. The measure of their usefulness is attested also by their inclusion in the major Christian manuscripts of the Greek translation of the Old Testament (called the Septuagint, abbreviated LXX). The Septuagint textual tradition began with the Jewish translation of the Hebrew Torah (the first five books of the Bible) into Greek around 250 BCE for the use of Diaspora Jews who had lost facility in their ancestral language. In due course, translations of the Prophets and the Writings were also undertaken. The body of texts finally grew to include all the books of the Hebrew Bible but also came to include several additional books from the Hellenistic and Roman periods. This was less likely a result of the reading practices of the Diaspora Jewish communities than the work of the Christian scribes who inherited the Septuagint tradition and continued to add to it the books that the Christian communities deemed central and authoritative (not least the books of the New Testament!). The only evidence for the expanded “canon” comes from the fourth- and fifth-century Christian community.2 The Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox canons of the Old Testament represent basically the Septuagint collection reflected in these early Christian codices, while the Protestant Old Testament has returned to the consensus of early rabbinic Judaism concerning the limits of Scripture.

What Do the Writings of the Apocrypha Contain?

The Apocrypha represent a fine collection of Jewish literature from the Second Temple period. First, the collection contains contributions to historiography of the period, providing essential information about a formative period for the Judaism within which the early church grew. First Esdras is a retelling of the events in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which speak of the return of Jewish exiles from Babylon and the reestablishment of the Jerusalem temple. The issues of ethnic purity present in the canonical books are also emphasized in 1 Esdras. More important, 1 and 2 Maccabees provide our principal sources for the attempt in 175–167 BCE to dissolve Jewish identity and make the population of Judea “like the nations” through radical Hellenization and for the successful resistance movement led by Judas Maccabeus and his brothers. This traumatic period left an impression on the Jewish people that rivaled the deportation to Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar. All four books of Maccabees speak to the concern of Jews for maintaining their Jewish identity in the face of a sometimes alluring, sometimes coercive, Greek culture.

The collection also contains several books of wisdom literature, similar to the canonical Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and several psalms (like Pss. 1, 19, and 119, which praise the “fear of the Lord” and the Torah). Wisdom of Ben Sira (also called Sirach or Ecclesiasticus) is a lengthy collection of the instructions of a Jerusalem sage from the early part of the second century BCE, just a few decades before the Hellenization crisis that gave birth to the Maccabean literature. Wisdom of Solomon is the product of a Diaspora Jew writing in Greek, in close contact with Greek thought yet unwilling to relinquish Jewish values and loyalty to Torah. Unlike Proverbs, these are not collections of short sayings but of much more developed arguments and instructions. Of all the Apocrypha, Sirach and Wisdom, together with 2 Maccabees 6–7, have had the most widespread influence on Christian writers of the first six or seven centuries of the church, and hence also on the exposition of Christian theology. The book of Baruch also contains a wisdom poem (together with a series of penitential prayers and a prophecy of deliverance), in which wisdom is essentially equated with knowledge of and obedience to Torah. Again, this shows an intense interest in preserving Jewish identity and fidelity to the One God in a world of powerful enticements to abandon the ancestral ways.

This collection also contains a number of what might be called “historical romances,” taking “romance” in the older sense of “edifying story.” Tobit is a tale about Jewish piety in the Diaspora and God’s providential ordering of life, even in the domestic matters of arranged marriages. Judith preserves a tale about a female military hero who delivers her people by a cunning plan, exploiting a Gentile general’s moral weakness. It too is a tale that emphasizes the efficacy of prayer and fasting and lifts up God’s providential care for God’s people in times of distress. Third Maccabees (which is more fictive than historical, despite its dress) recounts a trial that befell Jews in Alexandria under Gentile rule as these Jews likewise struggled to remain loyal to their God and traditions in a hostile environment.

The Greek versions of Esther and Daniel also contain numerous episodes not found in the Hebrew text. The Greek Additions to Esther provide a theological and religious dimension that is lacking in the original Hebrew version. The Additions to Daniel comprise two additional court tales, supplementing canonical Daniel’s first six chapters: Daniel displays his divinely given wisdom in exposing a conspiracy (Susanna) and twice shows the Gentile king the worthlessness of his putative gods (Bel and the Dragon). Greek Daniel also preserves two beautiful liturgical pieces: the Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Jews. The former is a penitential psalm, confessing Israel’s sins and imploring God’s forgiveness and restoration, and the latter is a psalm of praise and deliverance. Both were placed within the older tale of the ordeal of the fiery furnace in Daniel 3. Two independent works add to the liturgical corpus: another penitential psalm styled as the Prayer of Manasseh, which shows the boundless forgiveness of God; and “Psalm 151,” which preserves a liturgical reflection on God’s choice of David over his six brothers and a brief mention of David’s defeat of the Philistine enemy Goliath.

Two books are more akin to thematic essays. Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch’s sixth chapter in the KJV Apocrypha) explains the folly of Gentile religion and is focused on idolatry. Fourth Maccabees lauds the constancy of nine Jewish martyrs from the period of 167–166 BCE (whose story appears also in 2 Macc. 6–7). It holds up for a new generation these models of resistance to the enticements of Hellenism (where these erode commitment to the Jewish way of life) and promotes strict observance of the law of Moses as the way to embody the personal ideal of virtue prized even by the Greeks.

The last book included in this collection is an apocalypse called 2 Esdras, the core of which (chaps. 3–14 = 4 Ezra in the Pseudepigrapha) is a Jewish work written at about the same time as Revelation (ca. 95–96 CE) seeking to make sense of the destruction of Jerusalem by a far more ungodly people, those of the Roman Empire. It is extremely valuable as an example of how apocalyptic literature functioned as theodicy (seeking out God’s justice behind an unjust state of affairs), as another sample of this mysterious literary genre (of which Dan. 7–12 and Revelation are the only fully developed canonical examples), and as an expression of Judaism’s solution to the destruction of the temple: renewed interest in Torah.

At this point it is proper to admit that this way of delineating the collection of the Apocrypha is somewhat artificial. Indeed, defining where “Apocrypha” ends and “other early Jewish literature” begins has always been a problem. This is reflected as early as the three great Christian manuscripts of the Septuagint, Codices Sinaiticus (fourth century CE), Vaticanus (fourth century CE), and Alexandrinus (fifth century CE). All three contain Apocrypha mingled in with the other books of the Old Testament, but each one contains a different collection of texts (e.g., Codex Vaticanus includes none of the books of the Maccabees). Alexandrinus even goes beyond the collection to list Psalms of Solomon as an appendix (although this appendix has been removed). Likewise, different Christian communities today set different limits on the collection called (by Protestants and Jews) Apocrypha. The Roman Catholic canon includes all of the above except 3 and 4 Maccabees, 1 and 2 Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh, and Psalm 151. The Greek Orthodox Bible omits only 2 Esdras and 4 Maccabees (included as an appendix, however). The Slavonic Bible contains all but 4 Maccabees.

The present volume adopts the widest delineation of Apocrypha for three reasons. First, it allows this book to be used effectively as a companion to those texts included as the “Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books” in the New Revised Standard Version, Common English Bible, and English Standard Version. Second, it is in keeping with the ecumenical scope of biblical scholarship at the turn of the millennium. Third, it would be a shame to miss what some of the more marginal texts have to offer, especially in a context where our primary goal is to gain as rich an immersion as possible into the world of Second Temple Judaism and the matrix of early Christianity.

The Value of Studying the Apocrypha

Whatever one’s position concerning their canonicity, the books of the Apocrypha richly reward readers in several important ways. Catholic and Orthodox readers will naturally be interested in these texts as Scripture, but other readers will also find much of value from the careful study of these texts as windows into the period formative for both modern Judaism and Christianity and as devotional literature that still speaks a word for people of faith.

A first reason that motivates us to study these books is that they contribute to a fuller, more reliable picture of the Judaism of 200 BCE to 100 CE. The issues with which Jews in Palestine and abroad were wrestling during this period demonstrate continuity with issues that can be found in the Hebrew Scriptures, yet they always represent a later stage of development, and often some important modifications, of what we see in the older literature. The books of the Apocrypha close the gap between the books of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. They are invaluable as a means of approaching a closer understanding of the Judaism within which Jesus carried out his ministry and within which the early church grew both in Palestine and throughout the Mediterranean.

To begin with, 1 and 2 Maccabees provide critical information regarding the historical developments of this period, particularly the Hellenization crisis and the Maccabean Revolt, both of which left indelible marks on Jewish consciousness and ideology. The texts of the Apocrypha also bear witness to the esteem in which the Torah was held and to the promotion of (and motivations for...

Índice

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Preface to the First Edition
• Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Historical Context
• 3. Tobit
• 4. Judith
• 5. Greek Esther
• 6. Wisdom of Solomon
• 7. Wisdom of Ben Sira
• 8. Baruch
• 9. Letter of Jeremiah
• 10. Additions to Daniel
• 11. 1 Maccabees
• 12. 2 Maccabees
• 13. 1 Esdras
• 14. Prayer of Manasseh
• 15. Psalm 151
• 16. 3 Maccabees
• 17. 2 Esdras
• 18. 4 Maccabees
• Bibliographies
• Works Cited
• Scripture Index
• Ancient Writings Index
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• Back Cover