Should We Study the Apocrypha?

By Nate Corley

“Why should we not include the apocrypha in our modern Bibles? It was written around the same time and was in the Bible for a long time and still is for 70% of Christianity?”

Let’s preface all this with an analogy.

Say you come to me with a medical question (bad idea to start with, but roll with me here). I listen, try to understand what you’re dealing with, then promise to send you links to some articles addressing your issue so you know what sort of treatment to pursue. So what am I gonna do at that point? Just Google “stomach pains” and see what pops up? Randomly send you the first four results? Or will I, to the best of my ability, make every effort to make sure that what I send you is accurate, reliable, and authoritative in its advice?

You bet your burrito I would. And that’s cause I know the stakes are high. Your HEALTH is at stake in this. You’re going to read these articles and possibly make changes in your diet, your treatment plans, your medications…(again the more I type this out, the more I realize how BAD an idea it is for you to ever come to me for medical advice. Go to your doctor!!). But hopefully you get the point: when there’s a lot at stake, you need to be REALLY sure that whatever you recommend to someone else is solid.

This is the position the early Christian community found themselves in when it came to scripture. Christian leaders wanted to make very sure (rightly so) that when they pointed to a document as Scripture (capital S!), they could be 100% confident that the document represented inspired, authoritative, true, binding words from God. In the case of the 66 books found in most Protestant Bibles, this is clear (and by the way, Catholics and others agree on this! Those 66 are undisputed in historic Christian circles).

When it comes to the 18 or so documents known as the apocrypha (literally, “hidden books)…not so much. There are serious question marks regarding the authenticity and authority of each of these books. Most were written much later than the events they describe (pretty much penned in that “400 years of silence” between the end of Malachi and the birth of Jesus – so between the Testaments), and most were almost certainly NOT written by the people they claim to have been written by. These aren’t new questions either. Early church fathers such as Jerome acknowledged that these books have value, but also made clear he did not see them as canonical (that is, they should not be included with the Bible). Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin came to the same conclusion.

So why aren’t the apocrypha in your Bibles? Because: 1. Christians want to make VERY sure that when we say something is God’s word, it really is. 2. There are some legit questions about the apocryphal books.

That being said, I don’t think we should burn the apocrypha either. These books can still be very valuable for understanding what scholars call Second Temple Judaism (the social/historical context into which Jesus was born), and also – there’s plenty of stuff in the apocrypha that lines up with authentic scripture and is instructive and helpful. But where I land on this (and most Protestants do as well) is to ask: why spend time studying something with question marks attached when you could be enjoying the real deal?

Praise God we have a reliable Bible with strong historical attestation that we can read, and study, and obey with confidence!