Apocrypha (a Greek word meaning 'hidden,' 'secret') seems, when applied to religious books or writings, to have been used (1) for such as were suitable, not for the mass of believers, but for the initiated only; works containing the esoteric or recondite teaching of the faith or sect; (2) works the date, origin, and authorship of which were unknown or doubtful; (3) works which claimed to be what they were not, were spurious or pseudographic. When the Apocrypha is spoken of, the Apocrypha of the Old Testament is generally meant. Another large group may be called the apocryphal books of the New Testament.
The Apocrypha of the Old Testament is the fourteen books, or parts of books, which are found in the Septuagint or Greek version of the Old Testament, but are not in the Hebrew or Palestinian canon. The Palestinian Jews recognised only the Law, the Prophets, and such Hagiographa or sacred writings as were held to have been composed before the succession of prophets had ceased. The Septuagint, translated from the Hebrew at various dates, ultimately included a number of admittedly later works, some of them originally composed, not in Hebrew, but in Greek, whose relation to the old canon was not very precisely defined. These books are: (1) First (or Third) Esdras; (2) Second (or Fourth) Esdras; (3) Tobit; (4) Judith; (5) The parts of Esther not found in Hebrew or Chaldee; (6) The Wisdom of Solomon; (7) The Wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus; (8) Baruch; (9) The Song of the Three Holy Children; (10) The History of Susanna; (11) Bel and the Dragon; (12) The Prayer of Manasses, king of Judah; (13) First Maccabees; (14) Second Maccabees. The more important of these are treated in separate articles. They differ much in character and value. Some show manifest traces of Persian influence; others are mainly Palestinian in origin and spirit; others seem to have been written in Egypt, and reflect Greek or Alexandrian modes of thought. They date mainly from the 1st and 2d centuries B.C., and fall into three groups—historical or legendary, prophetic, and didactic or philosophical. Various as they are, the Apocrypha of the Old Testament are invaluable to the careful student of biblical literature and biblical theology. Though manifestly inferior to the canonical books in religious power and literary form, they almost everywhere reflect the current religious views of the Jews at the time of Christ's coming, the marvellous continuity of Jewish national feeling, unbroken faith in times of feebleness and trouble, and unconquerable hope in a noble and more glorious future. Theologically, they mark, in some ways, a development from the old Jewish standpoint, and a distinct approximation to the thought of the New Testament—in the doctrine of Wisdom, for example, which sometimes seems the personification of the Spirit of God, sometimes comes very near the Logos, the Messiah of the New Testament. The angelology also is nearer that of the New Testament than the Old. Prayer for the dead is sanctioned by 2 Maccabees xii.
The early Greek fathers, using the Septuagint, treated the apocryphal books very much as they did the canonical books; but from the Council of Laodicea (360 A.D.) onwards, the Greek Church had never given the 'ecclesiastical' books (as the Apocrypha came to be called) the same rank as the canonical ones. In the Western Church, Jerome and others recognised only the Palestinian canon; but Augustine gave the weight of his authority to the opposite view. While, in the middle ages, the 'ecclesiastical' books were perhaps most usually distinguished in some measure from the canonical Scriptures in authority, the Council of Trent took Augustine's view, and anathematized those who do not accept the Apocrypha contained in the Vulgate (omitting 1st and 2d Esdras, and the Prayer of Manasses) 'as sacred and canonical.' Luther held them 'not equal to Holy Scripture, but as good and useful for reading.' The Reformed Church generally emphasised this distinction. The articles of the Church of England declare that they are to be read 'for example of life and instruction of manners,' but not 'to establish any doctrine;' but many of the parts of the Apocrypha read as lessons were excluded from the lectionary sanctioned in 1871. The Westminster Confession, and most of the non-Anglican churches in Britain and the United States, regard them as 'of no authority,' 'nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings.' A bitter controversy in Scotland, in 1825-27, as well as in England, led to the omission of the Apocrypha from the Bibles circulated by the British and Foreign Bible Society; and the quotation from Wisdom iv. 13, 14, on the memorial to Prince Albert at Balmoral in 1862 revived debate on the subject. Many good people regard the Apocrypha, not with indifference, but with antipathy, as books that falsely claim to be part of the inspired Word of God.
Besides those actually included in the Septuagint, there were numerous Jewish apocryphal works, notably the Book of Enoch and others usually called Apocryphic Writings (q.v.), the Psalms of Solomon, the Book of Jubilees, and others.
The apocryphal books of the New Testament stand on a different footing: no considerable part of the Christian Church has included any of them in the canon, and most of them have been always explicitly rejected as without authority, or as fabulous. But the name has been used of very different works. Thus the First Epistle of Clement is found in the Codex Alexandrinus, and is quoted by some of the fathers as Scripture; the Shepherd of Hermas, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, and the Epistle of Barnabas, for a time received like honour from early Christian writers (see APOSTOLIC FATHERS, and the articles on these several books). The gospel according to the Hebrews (also called gospel of the Nazarenes, and gospel according to the Apostles) was the gospel of the Ebionite Christians. This is lost; and we know little but the names of the gospels used by Marcion (probably a form of Luke's gospel) and Basilides, the gospels according to the Egyptians, to Thomas, to Matthias, to Bartholomew; or of the Acts of Peter and of Paul, the Preaching of Peter, the Revelation of Peter; and other works named by Eusebius, Origen, and others. Another group of apocryphal works has actually come down to us, and was at one time widely read. More than one of them are gospels of the infancy of Christ, and tell marvels of his boyhood. To these belong the Protevangelium of James, and the gospel of Thomas. The Gesta Pilati, and others, deal with Christ's death. Tischendorf has edited the several apocryphal gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses that have been preserved; see translations by Cowper (1874), and by Walker (in Clark's Ante-Nicene Library, vol. xvi.). The other fragments of gospels have been edited by Hilgenfeld. For the Old Testament Apocrypha, see the edition with a commentary by Wace (2 vols.), and that by Churton; also the Revised Version, 1895. See also the Introductions to the Old and New Testament generally. A middle position between the New Testament Apocrypha and the canon was long held by the Antilegomena of the New Testament, whose claims to authority were long disputed in the early church, though they were ultimately everywhere accepted as canonical. These were the books of 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, the Epistles of James and Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation of St John. See Lipsius, Die Apokryphischen Apostelgeschichten (1883); and the articles BIBLE, ENOCH, PETER, &c.