Books similar to the New Testament, but completely rejected by the Catholics.

The word "apocrypha," comes from the Greek word for "secret or hidden," is often confused with the word "apocalypse." In Christianity, apocryphal books are a body of early Jewish and Christian texts that are not a part of the Bible.

The Apocrypha or "hidden books/books or revelation books" are a series of works that are added as a separate section to the Catholic Old Testament, but not accepted by the Protestant Churches. They were originally included as additional but non-canonical books by the Jews when they made the Greek translation, the Septuagint, just before the New Testament Era, but were never accepted as having equal authority by the Jewish councils. There were good reasons for this 1)they were written long after the Jewish canon was considered closed. Most were composed in the Maccabean Period (the inter-testamental times). 2) they were written mostly in Aramaic, not in Hebrew 3) they contained historical errors and some doctrinal questions 4) some were very badly written. They were included for reading purposes because 1) some dealt with important events in later Jewish history (and weren't too bad as things go) 2) some showed some great wisdom, although, because of the doctrinal vagaries, could not be considered, as a whole, equal to the OT books When the Protestant Bible was first translated into German by Luther, he left them out, as he considered they had nothing to add to Scripture, and that they were never part of the original OT anyway. In response, the Roman Catholic Church, at the First Council of Trent, for the first time called them Scripture. The Protestant response was to say: read them by all means, but do not use them to formulate doctrine, as they have errors. None of them are quoted by either Jesus or the Apostles in the NT, showing that, to Orthodox Jews, they were not considered as Scripture. There is nothing secretive about the decision to leave them out of Protestant Bibles, or to relegate them to a separate section in Modern Catholic ones. Some people confuse these books with the Pseudographia or False Books. These are the works dating from the 3rd and 4th centuries AD that were NEVER part of the NEw Testament because they were written in Egypt, long after the time of the Apostles, were never mentioned by the earliest church leaders, and were condemned as inaccurate by contemporary church leaders.

Books which were included in the Greek version of the Bible but not accepted in the Hebrew Bible. They are accepted as Divinely inspired by the Roman Catholic Church, but not accepted as canonical by Jews and Protestants. Apocrypha means 'hidden'.

The apocrypha is a book of the canon that protestants removed from their bible in order to seperate themselves from the Catholic church in the time of the reformation. The aprocrypha is the story of when the gate of hell is unlocked by Jesus (he goes to hell during the three days that he was dead). I only glossed over it in brief but I think it's very similar to the Gospel of Nichodemus, except in Nichodemus Hell is figurative and in the aprocrypha it is an actual place. I could be wrong.

The Apocryphal books: 1. The First Book of Esdras (also known as Third Esdras) 2. The Second Book of Esdras (also known as Fourth Esdras) 3. Tobit 4. Judith 5. The Additions to the Book of Esther 6. The Wisdom of Solomon 7. Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach 8. Baruch 9. The Letter of Jeremiah (This letter is sometimes incorporated as the last chapter of Baruch. When this is done the number of books is fourteen instead of fifteen.) 10. The Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men 11. Susanna 12. Bel and the Dragon 13. The Prayer of Manasseh 14. The First Book of Maccabees 15. The Second Book of Maccabees Three of these fifteen books (I and II Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh) are not considered canonical by the Roman Catholic Church. In Catholic Bibles the remaining twelve are interspersed among and attached to the undisputed thirty-nine books of the Old Testament: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch with the letter of Jeremiah, and I and II Maccabees which are arranged separately; the Additions to Esther are joined to Esther; and appended to the book of Daniel are the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men (added after Dan. 3:23), and Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon. (I and II Esdras of the Catholic Bible are not the same as the I and II Esdras in the above list, but are different designations for our books Ezra and Nehemiah.) Since several of the apocryphal writings are combined with canonical books, the Catholic Bible numbers altogether forty-six books in its Old Testament. Non-Catholic editions of the English Bible since 1535, including early editions of the familiar King James Version, separate these apocryphal books from the canonical Old Testament. For more detailed info on each book, go here: http://www.bibletopics.com/biblestudy/23.htm