The Hebrew Scriptures: The Apocrypha

*Preached at Grace North Church February 27th, 2000*

When I was about twelve, I took my best friend Mickey up on his offer to attend church with his family. Now they were Roman Catholic, and since they attended Mass on Saturday night, and I wouldn't have to miss my own church on Sunday morning, my parents figured "what could it hurt?" and allowed it. I certainly thought the experience was surreal, but also found the ritual kind of confusing and, frankly, boring. When the time came for the Old Testament reading the text was--and I remember this very clearly--from a strange book I had never heard of called Wisdom. At eleven years old I was already ripe for a religious conniption fit. "Hey!" I objected to Mickey's mother, "That's not in the Bible!" I was immediately shushed, and unfortunately no further information was given.

A couple of years later, however, after I had felt God's call to preach when I was sixteen, I was given a wonderful gift: my great-grandfather's library. Now my great grandfather was a Baptist minister, and his books were an enormous source of mystery and wonder for me. I learned about the Baptist succession, tracing the "true Baptist faith" through Scandinavia straight back to the time of Jesus. I had visions of lonely Baptist holdouts dipping each other into the frigid waters near some icy fjord, just waiting for their turn in human history.

But the greatest treasure was a beat up old cloth-bound book titled simply "Apocrypha." Inside, to my inestimable delight was, as I called it then, "more of the Bible." Now I had already read the Bible through at least twice by this point, and I was hungry for more. I simply ate it up: the additions to Daniel, the beautiful hymns of praise in the additions to Esther, the wisdom of the seemingly endless proverbs of Sirach, and especially the grand adventure of Tobias in the book of Tobit.

Although Catholics take them for granted as simply part of the Old Testament, few Protestants are even aware of the existence of the books of the Apocrypha, let alone having read and enjoyed them. "Apocrypha" comes from the Greek word apokryphos which means "hidden." It refers to a collection of ancient Jewish writings which were penned between about 250 B.C. and the early Christian era. Although the Roman Catholic church accepts them as inspired, the Hebrew canon does not recognize them.

Their confusion with the canon begins with the Alexandrian Jews, who, in the first century before Christ translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, the language they themselves spoke. But instead of simply translating the Hebrew scriptures, they went the extra mile and also included in their collection several other books which were held in high regard amongst religious folks.

Now, since most of the world at that time spoke Greek, this Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures, known as the Septuagint, enjoyed world-wide readership. Since the early Christian church spoke and corresponded in Greek, the Septuagint was the only Old Testament they had, and so of course, the extra books that we now know as the Apocrypha were well known to the early Christians.

They were also most likely well-known to Jesus and the apostles, since both Jesus' brother James and St. Paul quote from them in their epistles. While most of the church fathers considered them to be scripture, it was St. Jerome (in around the year 400) who first set them aside from the canon, since in his translation of the scriptures into the Vulgar Latin, he went back to the original Hebrew sources and found out that these books were not included! Although he translated them anyway, he also included prefaces to the Apocryphal books, saying that these books should be "...read for example and instruction of manners, but not for the establishment of any doctrine."

Their surfacing as recognized scripture occurred in retaliation to the Protestant Reformation, since II Maccabees mentions the practice of praying for the dead. Luther's opinion of them was that they "...are books which are not held equal to the Sacred Scriptures and yet are useful and good for reading." He gathered them together and put them at the end of the Old Testament, as is also the practice for most Anglicans today.

So what do we find when we open these ancient pages? We find that God did not grow silent after the final sentence of the Old Testament. The Jews' understanding of what it meant to be God's people grew and changed after the exile to Babylon, and many of the Apocryphal books bear witness to the evolution of the post-exilic Jewish faith.

Two of the most important books in this collection are the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus, also known as the Wisdom of Jesus, the Son of Sirach). This is a different Jesus than the one we celebrate here, of course. Jesus, or Joshua, was a very popular name in ancient Israel. And these two wisdom books were very popular as well. In style they are both very much like the canonical book of Proverbs. The Wisdom of Solomon adds to the Jewish mythology of Sophia, the Lady Wisdom who was with God in the beginning and through whom all things were made. St. Paul quotes from this book more than once. It's language is mystical and profound. On the other hand, Ecclesiasticus (or Sirach), which is quoted twice by the New Testament epistle of James is a very pragmatic book, giving instruction to young men on manners and piety, and even including such all-important information such as how much one should pay a physician.

The Additions to Esther are very interesting as well. As you may have noticed if you have ever read the book of Esther in the Bible, there is no mention of God in the entire book--not one! Well, apparently this did not sit well with pious Jews after the exile, so some creative scribe added several hymns to the book, putting words of praise to God in the mouths of the books main characters. No doubt he was not the only one more comfortable with this enigmatic book once some "holy holy holies" were added.

My favorite parts of the Apocrypha, however, are the novels. Sherlock Holmes has nothing on Daniel in the Apocryphal additions of Daniel. In Bel and the Dragon, Daniel sets a trap for some conniving idolaters, exposing their trickery and saving the children of Israel from apostasy. In the section known as Susannah, Daniel comes to the aid of a Damsel in distress who has been accused of propositioning two pious men. Susannah herself, however, says that the men were trying to rape her. Daniel, in a style that would make any modern detective proud, separates the two men and questions them independently. When their stories do not match up, he declares the woman exonerated and the men guilty. As far as I know, these are the first detective stories ever written, and only the Apocrypha has them.

Tobit is my favorite. The novel involves a pious Jew, Tobit and his son Tobias. It takes place during the exile in Ninevah (about 721 years before Christ). Tobit, a pious man, loses his eyesight and sends his son Tobias to a city called Rages to collect some money entrusted to friends there. An angel named Raphael was in disguise and led him on to Ecbathana. Now enter the love interest: Sarah. Seems that Sarah has had seven husbands-yet is still a virgin because an evil demon had killed every one of her fiancées on their wedding night. Wouldn't you know, Tobias falls for her. Raphael, good friend that he is, tells him to put live ashes of incense onto some fish innards as soon as he enters the bridal chamber. "Then," the angel said, "The demon will smell it and flee away, never to return."

So Tobias returns home with the money, a fine wife, and more fish guts which miraculously cure's Tobit's blindness! What an ending! We learn that God ultimately rewards the righteous, and that demons are scared stiff of smoked fish.

In the historical books of the Maccabees, we find the gruesome and spellbinding story of the Maccabean revolt, when a rag-tag army of Jewish priests overthrew the Seleucid (Se-loo-sid) invaders and returned home-rule to Israel following the death of Alexander the Great. When the Maccabees retook the temple, they had to cleanse it and rededicate it before it could be considered holy once again. Unfortunately, they only had enough holy oil for one night, and the ritual of purification proscribed that the lamp must burn for eight days. Miraculously, the small amount of oil they had burned for the full eight days, a miracle the Jews still celebrate today in the Feast of Hanukkah. Now this story isn't found anywhere in the Hebrew scriptures, but only right here in the Apocryphal books of the Maccabees. Second Maccabees contains several features of great importance to Jews and Christians, for it is only here, and nowhere in the Jewish scriptures, that we read about such doctrines as the resurrection of the dead, and the efficacy of prayer for the dead. I dare say, we would not be praying "Let light perpetual shine upon them" were it not for the Apocrypha.

Now I apologize to those who have heard this before, but I simply cannot talk about the apocrypha without telling this story: One of my favorite memories of my college days was the beginning of my New Testament class at Cal Baptist. In order to set the political stage for the New Testament events, my professor began with the story of the Maccabean revolt. Of course, he was intending to read from the book of First Maccabees. No sooner had he opened his book than one of the students in my class leaped to his feet. "What do you think you're doing??!!" the student cried incredulously. "The Apocrypha is heresy! What, are you going to read to us from the Book of Mormon next???"

He raised such a ruckus that my teacher found it impossible to continue with the class, and had to scrap his plans of setting the stage with Judas Maccabeus. I was so horrified! The student was speaking out of ignorance, out of Protestant hubris, out of spiritual blindness that assumed that his understanding of God and scripture were the ultimate truth. So I went out and had a t-shirt made, and I wore it to my next New Testament class. It said simply, "The Apocrypha is your friend."

Now the shirt didn't make me a lot of friends among the fundamentalists in my New Testament class, and my teacher buried his head in his hands when he saw it and moaned "What did I do to deserve this?" He was NOT a fan of controversy in his classroom, and I wasn't helping!

Well, back to work. We've covered proverbs, fiction, and history, which leaves only apocalyptic literature, which is also represented in the Apocrypha. While the book of first Esdras is a retelling of the biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah, the second book of Esdras is a full-blown apocalyptic vision similar to the New Testament Book of Revelation. In this book, the prophet Ezra, or Esdras is troubled by the fact that so many evils and tribulations are visited upon humankind. Ezra asks the archangel Uriel why this should be so, and the angel answers him in a series of seven visions, which the angel then proceeds to explicate. The book contains all the hallmarks of classic apocalyptic literature, great battles between good and evil, weird beasts bearing portentous messages, and of course, the ultimate triumph of God over the forces of darkness. Esdras is an important work not only because it helps shed light upon the little-understood genre of apocalyptic literature, but also because without it we might not be sitting here today. Believe it or not, Christopher Columbus reasoned that there must be another continent across the Atlantic Ocean due entirely to a verse in 2 Esdras, which, being a good Roman Catholic, he believed to be authoritative scripture.

The verse in question reads "On the third day you commanded the waters to be gathered together in a seventh part of the earth; six parts you dried up and kept so that some of them might be planted and cultivated and be of service before you." Columbus figured that since so much of the world he knew was water, there must be a whole lot more land just out of sight, and that if you just sailed West a few days, you could find it. He quoted this verse to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, who were convinced by his logic and gave Columbus the money he needed for his voyage.

This is, of course, not the only story of the great influence these little known books have had on Western culture. Shakespeare named two of his children after characters in the Apocrypha, and references to Apocryphal literature occur no less than eighty times in his plays. Furthermore, the hymn we sing here in our own church, "Now thank we all our God" is taken from the book of Ecclesiasticus. And amazingly, the timing and cosmology put forth in the Christmas Carol "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" was borrowed directly from the Wisdom of Solomon.

So what can the Apocrypha say to us today? Aside from it being a rich source of historical and sociological data, the books are genuinely helpful for the devotional life of any religious person. Sure, they're not scripture, but neither is the latest book by Billy Graham, and folks don't seem to mind getting their inspiration from non-biblical sources they are familiar with. So I encourage you to familiarize yourselves with this inestimable treasure of our tradition. You will laugh, you will cry, you will find yourself enthralled by the drama of the Maccabees. You will also find a great deal of wisdom, where, perhaps, you did not expect it.

Most telling for me, though, is that these amazing books are useful even in spite of their obvious inferiority. Yes, they are of spurious origin, yes, they contain fantastic and contrived plots, and even some of the advice seems questionable and at times frankly bizarre. These books are the "runners up" in the canonical contest, they are the second string that almost never made if off of the bench, they are the "also rans" frequently disparaged by the faithful. No one disputes this. But you will recall that it is in the small and the insignificant that God reveals himself. Was not Jesus born a helpless baby in a stable? It is in the disparaged and outcast that the ineffable can be touched. Was not Mary Magdalene a prostitute and the disciples fishermen? They were of no account, yet they were of the greatest importance. The Apocryphal books speak similarly to us of the importance of listening to the small, the outcast, the "also rans" in our religious life. For sometimes the "official record" is not the whole story, and sometimes myth is more true than history. Let us pray.

God of the great and small alike, you come to us with gifts both obvious and hidden. Help us to value the "hidden things" which do not lend themselves to greatness, nor to praise, nor to official validation, for we find you in all things, in the small, in the forsaken, and in those things deemed insignificant. For all things and all peoples are important in your eyes, O great God of Israel. Blessed are you. Amen. *