The RSV translation of the Apocrypha with helpful notes explaining historical circumstances or providing external references.

A useful resource when reading the Apocrypha. ( )

I once remarked that if sheer literary beauty was the test, the Book of Wisdom deserved to be in the canon. I also like Tobit and Susanna as stories. ( )

The Apocrypha is comprised of fifteen annotated books that do not appear in the Hebrew Bible; all but one are, however, in the Latin and Greek versions of the Old Testament (the Septuagint). The 1546 Council of Trent voted to include them in the Roman Catholic Bible, but Protestant bibles follow the Hebrew canon and exclude them. Inclusion or exclusion was based on a determination of both "legitimacy" and how closely a book supported favored doctrines. In my opinion, though, these stories are [also] just lacking in the literary quality that characterizes the accepted canon. "Bel and the Dragon" for example, reads like a children's story.

These books were written during the last two centuries B.C. and the first century C.E. and include: First and Second Books of Edras, Tobit, Judith, Additions to the Book of Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah, The Prayer of Azariah and The Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, The Prayer of Manasseh, and The First and Second Books of the Maccabees.

Metzger cites many examples of the influence of the books of the Apocrypha, including oratorios by Handel, works of art and literature, and even the seeking out of America by Columbus (inspired, so he wrote, by a verse in 2 Edras). This is a good story. Columbus read in 2 Esdras that "on the third day thou didst command the waters to be gathered together in the seventh part of the earth; six parts thou didst dry up and keep so that some of them might be planted and cultivated and be of service before thee." Columbus then reasoned (and persuaded Ferdinand and Isabella of the same) that if only one-seventh of the earth was water, the ocean between Europe and Asia couldn't be that wide, and he could easily make the journey.

Metzger also gives a short description of a further set of books that didn't make it into any of the bibles or the Apocrypha. (JAF)