The Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical books are a number of books which do not appear in the modern Protestant Bible, although they were part of the King James Version at one time. These books still form an integral part of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church Bibles.
The Apocrypha were written primarily in the period between the Old Testament and the New Testament. The books are named: 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah, Prayer of Manasseh, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees. The early Christian church debated the status of the Apocrypha and certain early church fathers held these writings in high esteem, while others rejected them as not being the inspired Word of God.
Tell us what you think:
Please take a few moments to vote in our poll below.
Your comments regarding why you think the Apocrypha should or should not be regarded as important would also be appreciated in the comment section below. They could be of assistance to other readers.
Many thanks
For the Love of His Truth 
To the readers:
My apologies for the background picture on the poll (skulls!!!). I used a template to create the poll and I only noticed the ridiculous background artwork after the poll had been running for an hour. The poll had received votes by that stage and it was too late for me to change the background.
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With all respect, I could not vote. The choice of “partly true but not meeting accepted apostolic origin or divine inspiration not met, but useful for historical and textual study” was missing.
Many of the books have a use, such as de-mystifying the so-called gospel of Thomas by linguistic dating for example, but are obviously lacking in the “inspired” quality, which is what counts as being “in”.
Rarely in textual and canonical matters is any manuscript or book totally true or false. A good example of accepted but having a part almost universally accepted as having not been “original” would be the Johannine comma.
I’m not really a fan of polls in any case. Scriptural matters are not democratic. It’s true or it isn’t.
Regards,
michael
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Michael
Thank you for your comment, as always it is much appreciated.
You said:
I could have listed another four or five alternative answers as choices, but for the sake of inclusivity, I had to summarize the choices into fewer alternatives.
Your suggestion of “partly true” is catered for in the first answer, for the simple reason that a partly true book would not have been inspired by God and would therefore be false by its very nature (2 Tim 3:16, Gal 5:9).
Thus, we agree that the Apocrypha is possibly only partly true and therefore cannot be of value to the Christian for historical or textual study, but of historical interest only. That point is catered for in the second available answer in the poll.
It is of little or no relevance to the Christian that some of the Apocrypha may debug or de-mystify other irrelevant writings, such as the gospel of Thomas, the gospel of Judas or any other. Christians accept the Bible as the complete and inspired Word of God. Therefore, if anyone is of the opinion that there are books which have been incorrectly omitted from the Bible, should God carry the blame for those errors?
You also said:
If you truly believe that there are probable falsities contained in the complete canon, then what remains for you to believe as the Truth? How would you determine the Truth and against what would you measure it, if not according to the Word? Surely not the traditions of men, or one of the claimants to Apostolic succession!!
Which Biblical books, according to your information, are faultless?
Finally, you said:
I could not agree more, regarding Scriptural matters! Scriptural matters are certainly not democratic, as the Roman, modern and post-modern church would have the world believe. If any person believes that salvation is democratically attainable by personal choice, they are surely misguided to the extreme.
However, polls determine the constitution of the world’s governments, and Christians are by no means forbidden to participate in determining the outcome of those elections. To the contrary, Christians should endeavor to be ruled by Godly governments, and to enable that, polls are necessitated and inevitable.
Regarding the Johannine comma, your perception of Jesus Christ’s position within the Trinity will determine your acceptance or rejection of your Savior’s divinity.
Grace and love to you!
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