Apocrypha are works, usually written, of unknown authorship or of doubtful origin.
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10 Facts About Apocrypha
2.
Apocrypha was later applied to writings that were hidden not because of their divinity but because of their questionable value to the church.
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3.
Apocrypha is a plural word that originally denoted hidden or secret writings, to be read only by initiates into a given Christian group.
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4.
Apocrypha was applied to writings that were hidden not because of their divinity but because of their questionable value to the church.
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5.
Generally, Anabaptists and magisterial Protestants recognize the fourteen books of the Apocrypha as being non-canonical, but useful for reading "for example of life and instruction of manners": a view that continues today throughout the Lutheran Church, the worldwide Anglican Communion, among many other denominations, such as the Methodist Churches and Quaker Yearly Meetings.
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6.
Lessons from the Apocrypha are regularly appointed to be read in the daily, Sunday, and special services of Morning and Evening Prayer.
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7.
Many of these texts are considered canonical Old Testament books by the Catholic Church, affirmed by the Council of Rome and later reaffirmed by the Council of Trent ; all of the books of the Protestant Apocrypha are considered canonical by the Eastern Orthodox Church and are referred to as anagignoskomena per the Synod of Jerusalem.
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8.
The Protestant Apocrypha contains three books that are accepted by many Eastern Orthodox Churches and Oriental Orthodox Churches as canonical, but are regarded as non-canonical by the Catholic Church and are therefore not included in modern Catholic Bibles.
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9.
Status of the books which the Catholic Church terms Deuterocanonicals and Protestantism refers to as Apocrypha has been an issue of disagreement which preceded the Reformation.
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10.
Nevertheless, none of these constituted indisputable definitions, and significant scholarly doubts and disagreements about the nature of the Apocrypha continued for centuries and even into Trent, which provided the first infallible definition of the Catholic canon in 1546.
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