What Do We Mean By ”Apocrypha?”

September 25, 2025 ~ Vincent

It’s so important to know what a word means before you start disagreeing with someone about it. I remember a whole debate that I had with an old roommate about the ethics of punching someone that was “imminently” about to attack one of your friends or you. I insisted that you should always try to de-escalate things first while he insisted that it was unethical to let someone get punched because you weren’t willing to step in. We went back and forth and back and forth for about an hour, much to the annoyance of his girlfriend. It wasn’t until we started roleplaying different scenarios (yes, it went that far) that we realized that the way that we were defining “imminent” was very different. I assumed that the hostile party had just started to become erratic and hostile, showing their fast escalation towards an attack, while he assumed that they were already deeply hostile and were literally about to throw a punch. When we recognized the difference, we realized we didn’t disagree at all on any point, much to the continued annoyance of his girlfriend, who took the opportunity to say, “You two are so stupid. I’ve been saying this all along.” We weren’t arguing about ethics; we were arguing about a definition. Unclear terms are the real culprit behind a lot of disagreements.

One theological term that is infamously unclear is “apocrypha.” The word is varyingly defined as…

•Those extra books the Catholics have (Tobit, Judith, Maccabees 1 and 2, etc.)

•Any ancient Christian-y book that didn’t make it into the Bible (Book of Jasher, Book of Adam and Eve, Book of Enoch, etc.)

•Helpful ancient books that wise Christians know about (The Epistles of Clement, Shepherd of Hermas, etc.)

•Harmful ancient books that are mostly heretical (Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Judas, Acts of Paul and Thecla, etc.)

That boils down to two key factors that our word is trying to get at: canonicity and doctrine. First, it might be an attempt to discuss the canonical status of a book. Maybe someone is trying to say it’s only canonical for Roman Catholics (or “deuterocanonical” to Protestants). That’s one option. But it might also be saying that a book is flat out non-canonical. Or maybe the key concern isn’t about canonicity, but about the doctrine presented in a particular book. That doctrine could be sound without being a piece of Scripture, or it might be horrendously heretical. Again, the term can mean either of these things. It’s saying something about canonicity and/or doctrine… but what exactly? The vagueness in the term isn’t a modern invention; it’s baked into the term from the earliest days of the Church.

Factor One: Deuterocanonical vs. Purely Non-Canonical

A fair understanding of the first factor (canonicity) can be uncovered by just looking at the meaning of the word “apocrypha”. It comes from the Greek word ἀπόκρυφα (apokryphos), which means “hidden” or “secret.” The word was originally used by ancient Christians (or heretics) to refer to books that were wise, but had somehow been obscured because they represented a threat to authority. It should be obvious how often this term was used by heretics to introduce “sacred” literature that violated church doctrine. It’s not hard to find early Church Fathers railing against apocryphal books, meaning those things that were obviously non-canonical and harmful. A good example can be found in that famous hunter of heresy , Irenaeus, when he’s against the Gnostics:

“[T]hey adduce an unspeakable number of apocryphal and spurious writings, which they themselves have forged, to bewilder the minds of foolish men, and of such as are ignorant of the Scriptures of truth.”
Irenaeus, Against Heresies, (1, 20, 1)

Cleary, he uses the word to warn Christians about harmful, non-Canonical books. Another good example comes from that rhetorician of Carthage, Tertullian, in his Treatise on the Soul. He notes that some philosophers arrived at partial truths about the world by using non-Christian sources such as Greek myths, but it doesn’t concern him because they don’t actually seem to hold those myths in particularly high esteem:

“[T]hese philosophers have also made their attacks upon those writings which are condemned by us under the title of apocryphal, certain as we are that nothing ought to be received which does not agree with the true system of prophecy, which has arisen in this present age; because we do not forget that there have been false prophets, and long previous to them fallen spirits, which have instructed the entire tone and aspect of the world with cunning knowledge”
Tertullian, A Treatise on the Soul, 2

Again, apocryphal here means any book that’s not a canonical part of Christian scripture. Clearly that is indeed a valid, historic, Christian use of the term.

At the same time, we can find Church Fathers that use the term to refer to just the opposite on this particular axis! Some use it to refer to consent that would go on to be accepted in the Catholic canon and not the Jewish or Protestant canon. For those that might be unfamiliar with this kind of so-called “apocryphal” content, the Catholic Bible contains a number of additions in the Old Testament that don’t appear in the Jewish or Protestant Bibles. Why? Early Christians often spoke Greek and consequently read Scripture from a Greek copy of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. The Septuagint contained seven extra books (Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach/Ecclesiasticus, and Baruch) and a few additional chapters in the books of Daniel and Esther. Even though a broad segment of Greek speaking Jews that used the Septuagint for Scripture readings also considered this content legitimate, ultimately the authorities in Israel neither used it nor considered it canonical. As time went on, Jews used the content less and less, returning to the Hebrew Scriptures, and Christians used it more and more. Eventually, there was debate in the Church about it. Why were Christians using versions of the Jewish Scriptures that the Jews didn’t actually think was canonical? Why use the septuagint at all instead of something that would have circulated in the region that Jesus actually lived? Should the church remove that extra content that had been used for generations? Or did it still count as sacred Scripture? In his Letter to Africanus, the ever-abstract and theological genius, Origen, argued for the legitimacy of the story of Susanna (a story from the additional chapters in Daniel):

But probably to this you will say, Why then is the History not in their Daniel, if, as you say, their wise men hand down by tradition such stories? The answer is, that they hid from the knowledge of the people as many of the passages which contained any scandal against the elders, rulers, and judges, as they could, some of which have been preserved in uncanonical writings (Apocrypha).
Origen, Letter to Africanus, 9

A word that was elsewhere used to condemn non-canonical writing is now used to point at the additional Septuagint literature as actually purer, uncorrupted, Scripture, hidden away from the tyranny of Israelite authorities. You can see that from the earliest days of the faith and in the highest circles of authority, the word is used in multiple senses to talk about the canonicity of sacred writings.

Factor Two: Safe or Dangerous Doctrine

We’ve seen how the term historically was used in different circumstances to refer to different aspects of a document’s canonicity, but that’s not all it could do! Apocryphal could also be a way to discuss expectations for the reliability of a document’s doctrine. Obviously, Irenaeus and Tertullian used the term to refer to books that were actively heretical and not worth reading, and Origen used it to refer to books that should be considered canonical and are doctrinally pure, but we can also find people that use the term to refer to things that aren’t dangerous, per se, but don’t have any claim towards anything resembling canon.

The compiler of the Vulgate, Jerome, is a perfect illustration of this still further way of using the word “apocryphal.” In the fourth century, Jerome was debating the details of the emerging Christian canon, and he objected to the inclusion of both deuterocanonical content and certain other books that had arisen popularly in key Christian communities. He listed the Old Testament books he thought ought to be canonical (identical to the modern Protestant and historic Jewish canon), and then makes this note:

Whatever falls outside these must be set apart among the Apocrypha. Therefore, wisdom, which is commonly entitled Solomon’s, with the book of Jesus the son of Sirach, Judith, Tobias, and the Shepherd are not in the canon.
Jerome, Preface to the Books of Samuel and Kings

At first glance, this appears to be little more than a further exploration of canon. Jerome is condemning the Catholic epistles to a non-canon status, just like Irenaeus and Tertullian did with dangerous books. But Jerome doesn’t have that same attitude of suspicion and frustration when regarding these books. To the contrary, he seems to like them. He occasionally quotes them in his other writings. Jerome has the utmost respect for some of these documents that he’s calling apocryphal; he just doesn’t think they’re canonical. That’s a far cry from Tertullian and Irenaeus’s use of the term, which was essentially “horrible heresy carriers.” He uses the term “apocryphal” to refer to books that have positive, doctrinally-sound additions to the Christian life.

To recap, we’ve established that even from the beginning of the church, the word “apocryphal” could refer to a writing that is either canonical or deuterocanonical/Catholic, or it could be a reference to the reliability of the doctrine within a non-canonical book. It’s a broad, flexible term! And it get’s thrown around pretty readily among church people that are exploring non-canonical writings enough that it causes issues from time to time. When you’re talking with fellow Christians about apocrypha, just remember how much history this particular term has and be careful to define what you mean when you use it. It might just save you an argument.

Birthdays in Job?

March 17, 2023 ~ Vincent ~ 2 Comments

I hadn’t thought a lot about birthdays and the Bible. I had heard some vague rumblings that birthdays were a pagan custom that was imported to the faith at a relatively late date and I uncritically accepted that and moved on. Imagine my surprise when I got to John Calvin’s eleventh sermon on Job and he spoke AT LENGTH about the Scriptural, spiritual value of… birthdays?

The origin of celebrating birthdays was the fact that the ancient fathers knew that it was right to give thanks to God and that this day was a solemn time every year for blessing God openly. Yes, for if we have lived some years of our lives, even though we are to remember God’s benefits incessantly, it is nonetheless good that, on the day we entered the world, there be a perpetual reminder to say, ‘A year has passed. God has brought me this far. I have offended him in many ways, and I must now ask him for forgiveness. But especially has he granted me great grace. He has always assured me of the hope of the salvation he has provided, and he has delivered me from many dangers. So I have to remember that, and now that I have entered upon another year, it is fitting that I prepare myself for God’s service, for the bad periods I have gone through have shown me how much I need his help and how I would have been a hundred thousand times lost without him.’
John Calvin. Sermons on Job – Volume 1: Chapters 1-14 (Kindle Locations 2362-2369). The Banner of Truth Trust. Kindle Edition.

All of this comes in reference to the third chapter of Job when Job cries out, “May the day of my birth perish!” To be clear, Calvin isn’t suggesting that’s an explicit reference to a birthday celebration. In context, it’s obviously a reference to the original day of Job’s birth. Calvin is arguing that the day of our birth is a sacred gift. On that day, God imprinted his image on us and honored us with the gift of life. From then onwards, he nurtured us with sustenance and care. We should hold the memory of such a day as holy and never speak ill of that event. Honoring its anniversary is a tradition passed down from ancient times that has sacred value. He admits that pagans twisted birthday celebrations to be something primarily about self-indulgence and that all too often, that’s what birthdays end up being. But the core of the tradition is beautiful because it’s about honoring God and acknowledging what he has given.

So John Calvin thought there was a biblical aspect to birthdays. I was shocked! But even if he’s dealing with an indirect reference in this case, Job 1:4 says that Job’s children feasted together on their birthdays in the NIV translation. Not the translation I was most familiar with, but certainly one that holds a fair amount of weight. Even beyond that, a solid chunk of commentators agree that the best understanding of this passage is that Job’s children were celebrating birthdays (John Hartley’s commentary, Pulpit Commentary, Elicott’s Commentary, etc.). Clearly, this isn’t a wild minority viewpoint. A chunk of legitimate theologians believe that birthday celebrations are biblical!

So are there other references to faithful people having birthdays in the Bible? Well, first off, let’s take care of the obvious references. In Genesis 40, Pharaoh has a (somewhat infamous) birthday that involved executions. To give some background, Joseph had previously met Pharaoh’s chief cupbearer and told the cupbearer that he’d be restored to his previous standing and the baker that he would be executed. The prophecy comes to pass on Pharaoh’s birthday. Unfortunately, the exonerated cupbearer doesn’t remember that Joseph’s prophecy and so Joe ends up stuck in jail for a few more years. The other obvious example of a birthday isn’t much better. Matthew 14 and Mark 6 both refer to King Herod’s birthday, on which he allows a beautiful young girl to wish for anything. She wants John the Baptist’s head, and he reluctantly delivers. You can definitely see why birthdays have negative cultural connotations for some readers. But there are a few more references worth delving into.

In the Jewish Encyclopedia (archived online here), Adler and Roubin argue for a few other passages being indicative of birthday celebrations. Hosea 7:5 has a festival called “the festival of our king,” or “the day of our king.” The king gets really drunk that day. They argue that a remembrance of the day of his coronation would be a more somber affair (judging from the notes Josephus left in Antiquities), but a birthday would fit the description reasonably well. They also point to Jeremiah 20:14 in which Jeremiah cries out, “Cursed be the day I was born! May the day my mother bore me not be blessed!” On one hand, this is an obvious example of Hebraic parallelism (saying the same thing twice for poetic effect), but asking that the day of his birth “not be blessed” does suggest that doing something to bless that day was a custom, which would line up very clearly with Calvin’s argument for a day of remembrance and prayer. Genesis 24 also refers to Isaac’s day of weaning, which was cause for a great feast. Rashi, perhaps the most famous Jewish commentator of all time, holds that children were weaned at 24 months and references Talmud tractate Gitten 75b as proof. This establishes that, at absolute minimum, there was a customary celebration of the second birthday, which may well have led to future remembrances as well.

There does seem to be a reasonable amount of weight against birthdays as well. First off, let’s acknowledge the bad arguments. A lot of the arguments against birthdays in that you’ll find across the internet comes from bizarre speculation. Weird websites argue that all birthdays come from this cult or that cult and gift-giving is representative of making sacrifices to false gods. There’s a mysterious lack of citations in all this, which makes sense. Birthdays aren’t really “from” any particular place, as far as I can tell. A handful of cultures all developed some form of commemorating the day of their birth, and there’s even certain eras where such celebrations gain popularity and others where they lose it depending on cultural trends. For example, Professor Howard Chudacoff argues that the modern American birthday rituals took shape in the 19th century when standardized education made age a more important factor in a young person’s life (which helps explain why there’s still an active copyright on the shockingly young song, “Happy Birthday”). All of that to say, it’s more complicated than some of the poor arguments make it out to be.

But let’s evaluate the good anti-birthday arguments. If we look to that ancient Hebrew historian, Josephus, in Against Apion book 2 chapter 26, he argues that Jews do not celebrate birthdays because they don’t want to drink to excess and want to live sober lives. Early Christians also appear nervous about birthdays. Origen definitively comes down as anti-birthday, saying in his Homily on Leviticus:

Not one from all the saints is found to have celebrated a festive day or a great feast on the day of his birth. No one is found to have had joy on the birth of his son or daughter. Only sinners rejoice over this kind of birthday. For indeed we find in the Old Testament Pharaoh, king of Egypt, celebrating the day of his birth with a festival, (Gen 40:20) and in the New Testament, Herod (Mark 6:21). However, both of them stained the festival of his birth by shedding human blood. For the Pharaoh killed “the chief baker,” (Gen 40:22) Herod, the holy prophet John “in prison.” (Mark 6:27) But the saints not only do not celebrate a festival on their birthdays, but, filled with the Holy Spirit, they curse that day.
Homily on Leviticus VIII, trans. Barkley

It does seem likely that early Christians carried the same discomfort towards birthdays that Jews of their time did. Judging from a handful of secondary sources I got my hands on, some of that Christian discomfort tended to uniquely focus on Roman and Greek religious practices that were incompatible with Christianity (the act of honoring birthday spirits and the like). As time went on, those associations dimmed and birthdays didn’t seem as threatening as they once were.

So were birthdays an alarming heathen practice throughout the entirety of Bible that the people of Israel had to resist? Or is Calvin right? Was some memorial of the day of one’s birth both reasonable and respectful and twisted only by heathen influences? I think the attitude towards birthdays likely depends on the era you’re looking at. There were a lot of groups in that region throughout history that celebrated birthdays in some way, shape, or form (Greek, Egyptian, Roman, Arabs, etc.) It would be odd for that to have been permanently and absolutely resisted as evil, especially when we take some of Adler and Roubin’s references into account. While far from airtight, they establish that there’s precedent for the idea of something like birthdays in Israel, depending on the timeframe you’re looking at. Were Job’s kids celebrating birthdays? They very well may have been, especially when you consider that Job and his family did not live in Israel and were probably used to different cultural norms. That being said, by the time you get to the New Testament era, it seems clear that the dominant Greco-Roman understanding of birthdays (along with some historical bad influences) left a distaste for them among devout Jews and Christians that wore off over the coming centuries. Ultimately, I think Calvin has a leg to stand on when he’s talking about the potential scriptural value of birthdays. Which is just a delight. Next time you have a birthday, you can rest easy knowing that you’re not secretly engaging in wild pagan idolatry.

Imaginative Interpretation with the Church Patriarchs

May 17, 2021May 17, 2021 ~ Vincent

I’m consistently shocked by the way ancient interpreters read Scripture. They draw some pretty wacky conclusions sometimes. Not bad conclusions, mind you. They’re great Christian advice most of the time! But the way they reach those conclusions feels totally removed from our modern ways of Bible reading. For example, Venerable Bede (a big name scholar born in 673 who actually helped popularize the term “AD” for measuring years) wrote this about that awkward passage in Song of Songs, “Your hair is like a flock of goats, moving down the slopes of Gilead,” (Song 4:1).

For if goats and the hair or skins of goats always signified the foulness of sinners and never the humility of penitents, that animal would by no means have been reckoned among the clean [animals], nor would it have been said in praise of the bride: “Your hair is like a flock of goats.”
Bede, On the Tabernacle 2.3

I’ve only heard that particular passage get brought up for two reasons: to point out that standards of beauty vary from one culture to another, or to laugh about how Song of Songs has some language that is not romantic by today’s standards (har har). I don’t know that Bede has done anything that seems all that legitimate by modern exegetical standards, but tying the goat to an attitude of penance actually adds a dimension of spiritual edification to this passage. Is he right? I don’t know. But is it kinda cool? Yeah.

To stick to the theme of Song of Songs, here’s a bit that Origen of Alexandria (a super-influential early Christian theologian born in 183) interpreted the line “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,” (Song 1:1) as follows:

“Let him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth”—that is to say, may pour the words of His mouth into mine, that I may hear Him speak Himself, and see Him teaching. The kisses are Christ’s, which He bestowed on His Church when at His coming, being present in the flesh, He in His own person spoke to her the words of faith and love and peace, according to the promise of Isaias who, when sent beforehand to the Bride, had said: Not a messenger, nor an angel, but the Lord Himself shall save us.
Origen’s Commentary on Song of Songs, 1:1

What? How did he get to that point? He jumped from a statement that almost entirely registers as a straightforward statement of passion to a longing prophecy about the incarnation of Christ! It’s utterly baffling! I don’t know if I could get away with making a claim like that from the pulpit… but isn’t it a little more edifying his way? Sure, it’s creative and maybe even wrong, but it’s intriguing.

Even the great Augustine, the church patriarch of church patriarchs, the theologian of theologians, has his fair share of wacky interpretations. Here’s one about Genesis 2 (which is apparently one of his many interpretations on Genesis, because he really liked that book). To give you some background, he’s already stated that the Genesis story uses Adam to represent higher reasoning (the soul’s deep wisdom), Eve to represent lower reason (the ability to make rational decisions and manage Earthly resources appropriately), and the snake to represent appetite. Now he moves on to his grand conclusion:

Now with that evident couple of the two human beings who were first created, the serpent did not eat from the forbidden tree, but only incited to eat, and the woman did not eat alone but gave some to her husband and they ate together, although she alone spoke to the serpent and she alone was led astray by it. So too… even in one man, the carnal (or if I may so put it the sensual) motion of the soul which is channeled into the senses of the body and which is common to us and the beasts, is shut off from the reasoning of wisdom. With bodily sensation, after all, bodily things are sensed; but eternal, unchangeable, and spiritual things are understood with the reasoning of wisdom. But the appetite is very close to the reasoning of knowledge, seeing that it is the function of this knowledge to reason about the bodily things that are perceived by bodily sensation.
Augustine, The Trinity, Trans Edmund Hill, Kindle Loc 9213

What a bizarre, psychological exploration of human nature, wrapped up in a Bible story! It reminds me of Freud or William Blake’s prophesies! In his hands, Genesis isn’t just a story about two people long ago; it’s about every person in every era, and the psychological resources that are so easily corrupted by appetite. And it’s history and a million other things. It speaks and it speaks and it has so much to offer.

I have no problem with the “plain sense” reading of Scripture (the assumption that most of the Bible can be read in a relatively straightforward fashion and be interpreted with a good bit of common sense). Yes, I know there is no self-interpreting book and that a knowledge of the Christian tradition is necessary to interpret well, but I do think that a story can have a meaning and the meaning is often not far from what was written on the page. Nonetheless, Auggie, Origen, and Bede are doing some really creative, cool stuff with their Bible readings, and I can’t help but stop with a mix of awe and confusion and say, “Woah.” Sure, maybe they’re just wrong, but maybe there’s more to Scripture than we see. Maybe the Holy Spirit has some crazy things to show us in our Bibles if we keep our minds open.