Deuterocanonical and apocryphal books

The terms ‘deuterocanonical’ (a later, Catholic, term) or ‘apocryphal’ (used by early church writers) are popularly used to refer to religious books from the Judaeo-Christian tradition perceived as having a lower status than those books regarded as normative for doctrine. Both ‘deuterocanonical’ and ‘apocryphal’ imply the recognition of a contrasting fixed group of authoritative scriptural works, with which the ‘deuterocanonical’ and ‘apocryphal’ books are associated. This chapter focuses on books transmitted in early Greek Christian pandect bibles and associated with the LXX corpus, but whose status was debated within Christian circles and largely unrecognised by rabbinic Judaism. It explores the original language, date, Greek text form, and witnesses to those complete books most commonly listed in modern times as deuterocanonical, along with some semi-independent works including the Letter of Jeremiah, the Prayer of Manasseh, and Psalm 151. (The additions to Esther, Daniel, and Jeremiah are covered in chapters 12, 14, 16, on respectively Jeremiah, Daniel, and the Megilloth.