Apocrypha / Deuterocanon
Deuterocanonical Histories
Second-temple Jewish histories preserved in Christian Bibles
Novellas of piety (Tobit, Judith), martial history (1–2 Maccabees), and parallel accounts of the return from exile (1–2 Esdras).
They fill in the four centuries between Malachi and Matthew that would otherwise fall silent.
Period
Composed roughly 200 BCE–100 CE, in the shadow of the Hasmonean revolt and Roman occupation.
Themes
- ·Faithfulness under foreign rule
- ·Martyrdom and resurrection hope
- ·Prayer, almsgiving, and providence
- ·The purification of the temple
- ·The rise and fall of empires
Authorship — traditional
These books were preserved in the Greek Septuagint used by the early church. Catholic and Orthodox tradition receives them as scripture — 'deuterocanonical,' 'second canon' — while most Protestants place them in a separate Apocrypha. Rabbinic Judaism did not include them in the Tanakh finalised by the sages after 70 CE, though some (notably Sirach and Maccabees) were widely known and cited.
Authorship — historical-critical
Critical scholarship treats them as historically valuable Jewish literature from the Second Temple period. 1 Maccabees is particularly prized as a serious historical source for the Hasmonean revolt; 2 Maccabees is a more rhetorical, theological retelling.
The books
Click a book to open it in the reader at chapter 1.
- Tobit14 ch
c. 3rd–2nd c. BCE.
A pious short story from the Assyrian exile: a blind father, a young son, an angel in disguise, and a demon named Asmodeus. About providence and prayer.
- Judith16 ch
c. 2nd c. BCE.
A widow of Bethulia beheads the Assyrian general Holofernes and saves her city. A theological novella more than a strict history.
- 1 Maccabees16 ch
c. 100 BCE, on events of 175–134 BCE.
A sober history of the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Antiochus IV — the events behind Hanukkah — and of the rise of the Hasmonean priest-kings.
- 2 Maccabees15 ch
c. 100 BCE, a rhetorical retelling of the same era.
A shorter, more theological history of the revolt, containing the famous martyrdom of the mother and her seven sons and clear affirmation of bodily resurrection.
- 1 Esdras9 ch
c. 2nd c. BCE Greek composition, reworking material from Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah.
A parallel Greek account of the return from exile, with the unique 'contest of the bodyguards' about what is strongest — wine, kings, women, or truth.
- 2 Esdras16 ch
Jewish core c. 100 CE, with Christian additions in the 2nd–3rd c. CE.
An apocalyptic dialogue in which Ezra wrestles with the destruction of Jerusalem and the justice of God. Read in the Latin West as 4 Ezra.