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Gold, Silver, Precious Stones
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Questions and Answers
AUTHOR(S): | Hassell, Sylvester
Pittman, R. H. |
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Apocrypha
Q. How should we regard the Apocrypha?
A. The old London Baptist Confession of Faith, of 1689, very well says in Chapter 1, Section 3: "The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of Divine inspiration (Luke 24:27,44; Rom.3:2), are not part of the canon (or rule) of Scripture, and therefore are of no authority to the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings." And the same views of these books are held by the Jews, the Greek Catholics, and all Protestants except the Church of England (or Episcopal Church) which, in her Thirty-nine Articles of Faith mentions the Apocrypha as books "which the church doth read for examples of life and instruction of manners, but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine." The Roman Catholic Church has always highly favored these books, and in the Council of Trent (1545-1563) received them in
part for edification, but not for "the establishment of doctrine;" yet the Romish Church, in its translation of the Bible, mixes these books with the books of the Old Testament, and derives from them its unscriptural doctrines of purgatory, prayers for the dead, and the meritoriousness of good works; and in the Apocrypha, as derived from the Persian Zend-Avesta, two-seedism, or dualism, finds its strongest arguments. The Apocrypha is not the Hebrew Old Testament, but is in the Septuagint or Greek Version of the Old Testament. It consists of the following fourteen books: 1st, Historical (First Estrous, First and Second Maccabees); 2nd, Legendary, (Tobit, Judith, Additions to Esther, Song of Three Holy Children, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon); 3rd, Prophetical (Baruch, Prayer of Manassas); 4th, Apocalyptic (Second Eadras); and 5th, Didactic (The Wisdom of Solomon, and The Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus). These books were written between 300 B.C. and 75 A.D. They are not quoted at all by the writers of the New Testament, and they abound in fictitious stories and doctrinal errors, and they show the workings of the carnal Jewish mind just before and after the coming of Christ.
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