Appendix — The Apocrypha

Read this first — these books are not Scripture. The fourteen books of the Apocrypha are not part of the canon of the Bible and are not the Word of God. They stand here, after the sixty-six books, as an appendix for historical reading only — they shed light on the years between Malachi and Matthew — and no doctrine is to be built on them. Each book below links to its reading in audio-and-text video; every book can also be read in our Apocrypha volume.

Why these books are not in the canon:

• They were never in the Hebrew canon the Lord Himself endorsed. Jesus summed up the whole Old Testament as what was written “in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms” (Luke 24:44) — the three divisions of the Hebrew Bible, which never contained these books.
• They are never quoted in the New Testament as Scripture. The apostles cite the Old Testament hundreds of times with “it is written” — never once from the Apocrypha.
• They teach contrary to the canon — prayers and offerings for the dead (2 Maccabees 12), and deliverance by almsgiving (Tobit 12) — where the canon teaches that the dead are beyond our prayers and that salvation is by grace through faith.
• They contain historical and internal errors that the inspired histories do not make.
• The early church kept the same distinction. Jerome and others allowed these books to be read for example of life and instruction of manners, but never to establish doctrine — and that is exactly how they are offered here.