What Is the Deuterocanon or Apocrypha?

How the Bible Was Formed E1 — If you’ve ever compared a Protestant Bible to a Catholic Bible, you may notice some additional books in the Catholic Bible, such as Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, etc. These books, called the Deuterocanon by Catholics and the Apocrypha by Protestants, are Jewish Literature from the period after the Babylonian exile but before the time of Jesus. The Jewish people were back in the land, being ruled by Syria and other empires descended from Alexander the Great. As they read the Hebrew Bible, they created many new literary works, reflecting on stories in Scripture and what was happening in their own day. So how do we understand the status and value of these books when compared to the Hebrew Bible and New Testament? In this episode, Jon and Tim explore the background, history, and content of this Second-Temple Jewish literature.

CHAPTERS

1. Multiple Bibles on the Shelf (00:00-21:10)
2. History of the Protestant Apocrypha (21:10-34:35)
3. How Jesus and the Apostles Engaged With These Books (34:35-43:05)
4. Why We’re Talking About the Deuterocanon/Apocrypha (43:05-57:36)

OFFICIAL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

View this episode’s official transcript.

REFERENCED RESOURCES

• The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha by James H. Charlesworth
• Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, edited by Richard Bauckham, James Davila, Alex Panayotov
• You can view annotations for this episode—plus our entire library of videos, podcasts, articles, and classes—in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.
• Check out Tim’s extensive collection of recommended books here.

SHOW MUSIC

• “Pure Joy ft. John Lee” by Lofi Sunday
• “Chillbop ft. Me & The Boys” by Lofi Sunday
• “Answered Prayers ft. PAINT WITH SOUND” by Lofi Sunday
• BibleProject theme song by TENTS

SHOW CREDITS

Production of today’s episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Tyler Bailey is our supervising engineer, who edited today’s episode and also provided the sound design and mix. JB Witty does our show notes, and Hannah Woo provides the annotations for our app. Our host and creative director is Jon Collins, and our lead scholar is Tim Mackie. 

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